“See,” Kelly said, tapping the SunPass box with a fingernail, “it already paid for itself.” She seemed almost giddy, and I realized that she had scarcely been breathing since descending onto Watson Island.
Nick said, “Well, I guess we know the damn thing is working now.”
“Yeah,” I agreed. “It’s working for sure.” We slowed again in the narrowing traffic funnel as the twenty other lanes merged back into only three. I still wondered if the beige box was sending out an alert signal, advising law enforcement to keep our vehicle under covert surveillance. We could already be under observation, handed from camera to camera in some law enforcement fusion center.
In the sandbox we sometimes intentionally “lost” weapons or radios after planting tracking devices in them. Our spooks would follow them to their final destinations, in order to gather as much intelligence as possible. I kept these worrisome thoughts to myself while studying the inspection protocols in the lanes to our right for future reference. I noticed long lines of yellow cabs on the far side from us and asked, “What’s the deal with all the taxis?”
Kelly answered, “Most tourists coming from the airport switch cabs on Watson Island. It’s the dividing line. Herman calls it Checkpoint Charlie. Miami Beach cabs can’t operate in Miami, and Miami cabs can’t go over to Miami Beach. You just walk from one line of taxis to the other.”
“People don’t mind the hassle?” I asked. “Not just the people taking taxis. I mean everybody, the whole thing.”
“They don’t have much choice, do they?” she said. “And it gives the police a chance to look for car bombs before they get onto the island. That’s a big deal after what happened in San Francisco and Washington. And of course it helps to keep out the criminal element. Anyway, it makes the tourists feel safer in Miami Beach, and tourists with money only go where they feel safe.”
Soon we were back to only three travel lanes and the straight shot across the low MacArthur Causeway. Halfway across the three-mile land bridge on the north side, a low white bridge extended out toward Palm Isle. The bridge had its own traffic signal on the causeway, and hundreds of cars came to a stop in both directions so that a solitary white SUV could make the left turn and head to Miami Beach.
Stopping for the red light gave me a minute to study the entrance to Palm Isle with my binoculars. These private islands were all about privacy and security. Famous celebrities, sports superstars and other gazillionaires made the isles their home for at least part of the year. Most of them were people with a genuine reason to avoid the paparazzi and even worse forms of stalkers. Every hour, thousands of people glimpsed the private isles in passing from the causeway, but only a few of them would ever step foot on them. The private man-made real estate was part of the limited-access parallel world of the über-rich, sharing Biscayne Bay as their common moat.
Every entering vehicle had to stop at a tasteful stone guardhouse just past a sparkling fountain for an actual eyeball inspection of the vehicle, the driver and the passengers. An armed guard would courteously ask uninvited visitors to use the roundabout to make a 180-degree turn and then leave. A pseudo police car belonging to the same private security company was parked just past the circle. Videos would be recorded, and multiple attempts to enter without an invitation would doubtless be noted and analyzed.
The only realistic way to approach Topaz would be by water. This meant using the cover of darkness for a stealthy surface-swimmer approach. Just to get close enough for me to swim between the private isles would require a boat with an outboard motor, either an inflatable or a skiff. The tidal currents between the isles could be powerful, and unknowable without local knowledge, so I’d need a nearby drop-off point. With fins I can swim for a few miles at about a knot and a half per hour, but that ability is useless against a two-knot current.
The MacArthur Causeway rose up and over one more high bridge above Biscayne Bay’s eastern boat channel. We moved ahead slowly, because Miami Beach digested new vehicles at her own pace. From the top it was possible to look past South Beach and out to the open Atlantic through Government Cut, the ship channel into the Port of Miami. It was my first glimpse of the blue ocean horizon since coming into Port Everglades.
Just before we descended to street level from the bridge, we passed the upscale Miami Beach Marina on our right. In her present condition, my sixty-foot schooner would not have been allowed inside the floating breakwaters even if I could have paid for a slip. The economy might have been in the crapper for most of America, but the sail and power megayachts docked in this corner of the USA gleamed as brightly as ever. Then in a moment the road was swallowed between bayside condo towers and we were in the City of Miami Beach, eastbound in heavy traffic on Fifth Street. From South Beach up to Bal Harbor, Miami Beach was nine miles long and about a mile wide.
Nick spotted a fast-food restaurant a block south and called, “Burger King at three o’clock. First rally point.”
“Roger that,” I laughed.
Kelly said, “Look at that road sign on the pole. Under where it says A1A and Fifth Street, see it? It’s also Route 41. We’ve been on 41 since we left the Miami side. Know where it ends?”
“I know that 41 is the Tamiami Trail,” I replied. “It goes across to Naples, then up to Tampa. That’s what Tamiami means: Tampa to Miami.”
“That’s right. I forgot you lived in South Florida for a while. But do you know where 41 ends?”
Nick said, “It ends a few blocks in front of us, when it runs into the ocean.”
“Right, smartass,” she replied. “But do you guys know where it winds up at the other end?”
I shrugged and shook my head no. Nick said, “Not a single clue.”
“It ends at Lake Superior, way at the top of Michigan. A nothing little place called Copper Harbor. I’ll bet you not too many people down here know where the other end of 41 is.”
“First it was Key West to Canada, and now it’s Miami Beach to Lake Superior,” I said. “Miss Urbanzik, exactly how do you acquire such fascinating information?”
“Oh, mostly by screwing around with the GPS when I’m bored. The GPS apps on my i-phone, usually. The i-phone you wouldn’t let me bring today.”
Nick said, “I’ll bet you could have shown us pictures of Copper Harbor in about ten seconds.”
“I’m sure I could have. One-handed.” She made a breathy sigh and shook her head. “Now you’ll never know what it looks like.”
“Imagine that,” I replied. “Copper Harbor on Lake Superior will just be a blank spot in my mind. An empty file. But you know, somehow I think I’ll be able to live with that.”
“If you can call it living, going around unconnected like a troglodyte.”
“Live right here, Kelly. Live in the moment, with no cyber-boost. Disconnect, breathe the air, and spend a little time grounded in plain old reality.”
“You’re a real Luddite, you know that?” We were both smiling, and I continued what I thought was good-humored banter.
“I’m not a Luddite or a troglodyte. I’ve got a few electronic gadgets with me today. But none that can track me. Except maybe that SunPassUltra there.”
“That SunPass is guaranteed safe,” she said.
“Guaranteed? Why, because it came from your friend, Herman the German?”
“I trust him a lot more than I trust you. I only met you last night, remember? I’ve known Herman for years.” Her smile was gone; I’d overstepped.
Nick said, “Take it easy, both of you. Forget the smart phone, and stop worrying about the SunPass.”
“Before the day is out,” said Kelly, “you’ll be wishing I had my i-phone.”
I let her have the last word. She was probably right. But nobody was going to be tracking us by it, either.
We took the left at Collins Avenue and headed north, catching infrequent glimpses of the ocean between hotels and restaurants. It was 9:15 and there was still shade from the buildings on the eastern sidewalks and across parts of the str
eets. The accommodations ranged from low-rise art deco to high-rise hotels with famous national names. All of them were newly painted and well turned out, with elegant trim and unique architectural features. Luxury condominiums, fancy restaurants and upscale shops lined both sides of the avenue. Tourists, primarily Asian and European, thronged the jewelry stores and boutiques. As we moved slowly from red light to red light with our windows down, I heard French, German, Chinese and a variety of other tongues spoken.
The flashy new luxury cars missing from gritty working-class western Broward County were present in abundance in Miami Beach. I tried to look comfortably affluent in Kelly’s silver GTI. It had sort of a classic sporty-ugly look to it. Really, people still liked them, I told myself. And my window was rolled down only so that I could soak in the atmosphere and better admire the shapely female legs and derrieres swishing and swaying up and down the sidewalk.
Air conditioner broken? What, who, us? Of course not! Perish the thought. No, I’m just enjoying that eighty-five-degree Miami-Beach-in-June sidewalk ambience.
“I thought there was a depression on,” said Nick. “But things sure look pretty stinkin’ un-depressed over here.”
Kelly replied, “Nobody ever said everybody suffers in a depression. Just most people.”
“Well,” Nick added, “there’s not too much suffering going on in Miami Beach, that’s for sure.”
I said, “Some people do even better during a depression.”
“How do they manage that?” asked Kelly.
Nick said, “Mostly by kissing the government’s ass.”
“Which government?” she asked.
“All of them,” he replied. “It sure doesn’t seem right, though. I mean, all these rich tourists eating lobster and caviar when families are dumpster-diving for food just a few miles from here.”
“Most of them are rich foreign tourists,” she replied tartly. “You want to keep all that money out of the country?”
“Still, it doesn’t seem entirely right.”
“What,” she asked, “are you a Marxist or something?”
“Hell no, almost the opposite. But it is noticeable. Things like tent cities full of homeless Americans. I’m not even thirty, and even I can remember when we didn’t have any tent cities in America. At least none that I ever saw.”
“You’re assuming they’re all Americans,” she said. “A lot of them are illegal aliens in those shantytowns.”
“They’re just waiting for the next amnesty,” Nick replied.
“But who’s an American anymore?” I asked them both. “Only natural-born citizens? I think that stopped mattering a long time ago. At least it stopped mattering to the people who run this country, and who else matters?”
Nick said, “The government got out of control, and that was all she wrote. It’s the classic socialist death-spiral. Once you get on that airplane, you’re riding it all the way into the ground. They say you get the government you deserve. We voted for the guys who did it to us.”
“I didn’t—I was gone,” I retorted.
“I didn’t either,” he said, “but I was outvoted. Damn, what the hell happened to America?”
“I don’t know,” I said, “but I’ll tell you this much: after we find Cori, I’m going to get out as fast as I can. America is even more screwed up than when I left.”
“Screwed up for sure,” said Nick. “At least South Florida is. It’s even a lot worse than it was the last time I was here.”
“When was that?” asked Kelly.
“A year ago. I came down the Intracoastal from Charleston and jumped over to the Bahamas from here. I was down here for a month getting my boat ready for the ocean. Spent a few weeks up in Lauderdale, too, before that.”
Further up Collins, the art deco hotels and boutiques gave way to much larger buildings set further back from the sidewalks. This was the domain of the mega-hotels and where Indian Creek began. The “creek” was a hundred-yard-wide canal that continued for three miles before turning and emptying into Biscayne Bay. For its length, Indian Creek separated the Atlantic strip of high-rise hotels from the rest of Miami Beach. Along both sides of the “creek” megayachts were tied to quay walls almost bow to stern. It was easy to understand why so many of them were moored here: they were simply too long, too massive to fit into the slips of even the marinas catering to “ordinary” megayachts. Several were over two hundred feet long, with helipads and “dinghies” bigger than my newly purchased twenty-four-foot Pantera. At a hundred twenty feet, Topaz could have been tied outboard of one of these hyperyachts and you would not have noticed her from Collins Avenue.
The entire island-city of Miami Beach was like Palm and Hibiscus Isles, but on a vast scale. It was a fortress with strictly limited access over a few causeways and bridges, all guarded with eagle eyes. The aura of safety would bring in the high rollers. They had an expression for these places in the Latino world: zona rosa. Miami Beach certainly fit the South American definition of a good zona rosa, and it surpassed most of them by being physically moated-off from the peasants with the pitchforks and torches.
Over on the mainland the restless natives could burn Liberty City and Overtown to the ground, and nobody on Miami Beach would notice or care, as long as the highways to the international airports were kept open. And kept graffiti-free, thanks to King Ray and his trigger-happy police force.
9
The fifteen-story Hotel Fontainebleau was instantly recognizable because it curved in an arc. The south end of the building ran parallel to Collins Avenue, and then it curved around so that the north end pointed toward the ocean. The drop-off and valet areas were in front of the beginning of the curve, closest to Collins. The separate Fontainebleau towers and convention centers were connected to the main structure by enclosed corridors on different levels, combining to form a complex of buildings at the mega resort.
Kelly asked me, “Do you want to get out in front?”
“No, drive past and I’ll get out on the other side of the next hotel, the Eden Roc.” From our Google Earth satellite recon the night before, I knew a public lot was there. After two long blocks, one for each massive hotel, she turned into the lot. The open space made me wonder if some long-dead city planner had somehow overlooked a few acres and forgotten to issue a building permit for one more high-rise hotel project. The public parking lot provided the ordinary tourist not staying in one of the grand hotels along the strand access to the world-famous beach. Some ficus trees provided shade. A scattering of palms gave the empty block between the concrete towers the appearance of a tropical oasis.
According to the signs, you needed to pay sixty dollars per hour in order to enjoy the privilege of leaving your car there. You parked, purchased a time-stamped ticket from a vending machine, and placed it inside of your windshield. Most of the lot was paved, striped and numbered, but there were some unmarked sandy areas where small infrastructure-related construction projects were on hold and the legality of parking was anybody’s guess.
There was enough open space near the entrance to make an easy U-turn and enter or exit Collins Avenue from either direction. I liked it and said, “This’ll be a good place to pick me up when I’m done. Call it Rally Point Coconut.”
“Okay,” Kelly said. “And when will that be?”
“A couple of hours at least. It’ll give you plenty of time to find a recon position for Topaz.” I looked at my watch. “It’s nine-thirty. Prechter speaks at eleven, and at twelve there’s a buffet luncheon. I should be good until at least after then.” I removed two packs of dollars from my daypack and handed one to each of my crew like a rich father passing out allowances. Don’t waste it, kids, I thought. “These are five thousand each, in case something comes up. Mission-related, I mean. Of course that covers lunch and things like that. Don’t make trouble, and above all don’t take any chances that’ll get the car searched.”
Kelly looked around and asked, “What about your gun?”
“I want you to lea
ve it right where it is, under the maps. So if you guys leave the car even for a minute, close the windows and lock it up tight. Don’t let my pack get stolen—it’s got the rest of my money and the tracker.” Then I said, “You all right, Nick? Good to go?”
“Roger, Captain, we’re good to go. So if something crazy happens, do we meet at the Burger King or at Rally Point Coconut?”
“Right here. Coconut. But call first.”
“Okay, sweetheart.”
I ignored his lame joke. My mind was already running many steps ahead. Nick passed me my leather valise and I transferred a few items to it. Then he handed me my jacket and I stepped out of the car and headed toward the Collins Avenue sidewalk, already thronged with affluent tourists, local overachievers and uniformed worker bees. It was nearing ninety degrees with less than ten percent cloud cover. I glanced behind me and saw Nick climbing into the front passenger seat of the GTI.
I slipped on my jacket as I walked between the anti-carbomb planters and up the slight incline toward the lobby of the Fontainebleau. The taxi line and hotel guest drop-off lane were at least a hundred feet from the main doors. A platoon of valets and another of bellhops took care of cars and luggage. An enormous overhead portico made of tinted panes in geometric patterns would protect us in the event of sudden downpours during our mandatory safety walk from the drop-off lanes to the actual lobby entrance. There was a second line of decorative flower planters to prevent closer approach by vehicles that somehow penetrated the first line. At least the Fontainebleau’s anti-car-bomb planters were artfully tiled and overflowing with tropical flowers. They reminded me of the anti-vehicle barriers outside a hundred large and small bases over in the sandbox, except that they were prettier. But then, Miami Beach was a very pretty sandbox.
Castigo Cay Page 27