Tourist Season

by Carl Hiassen

  Garcia thrust the document back at Jesus Bernal and said, "I'm not signing it, chico."He knew time was short.

  "Oh, I think you'll reconsider."

  "No way."

  Garcia lunged forward, his arms reaching out for the shotgun. Jesus pulled the trigger and an orange fireball tore the detective off his feet and slammed him to the ground.

  He lay on his back, staring numbly at the tropical stars. His head throbbed, and his left side felt steamy and drenched.

  Jesus Bernal was a little wobbly himself. He had never before fired a shotgun, and discovered that he had not been holding the weapon properly. The recoil had hammered him squarely in the gut, knocking the wind out. A full minute passed before he could speak.

  "Get up!" he told Garcia. "Get up and sign your confession. It will be read on all the important radio stations tomorrow."

  "I can't." Garcia had no feeling on his left side. He probed gingerly with his right hand and found his shirt shredded and soaked with fresh blood. Jagged yellow bone protruded from the pulp of his shoulder. He felt dizzy and breathless, and knew he would soon be in shock.

  "Get up, traidor!"Jesus Bernal stood over the detective and waved the gun like a sword.

  Garcia thought that if he could only get to his feet he might be able to run to the woods. But when he tried to raise himself from the gravel, his legs convulsed impotently. "I can't move," he said weakly.

  Jesus Bernal angrily stuffed the document into his pocket. "We'll see," he said. "We'll see about this. Are you prepared to receive your sentence?"

  "Yeah," Garcia groaned. "What the hell."

  Bernal stalked to the tip of the jetty. "I chose this spot for a reason," he said, pointing the gun across the Atlantic. "Out there is Cuba. Two hundred miles. It is nearer than Disney World, Mr. Policia.I think it's time you should go home."

  "I don't believe this," said Al Garcia.

  "Are you much of a swimmer?" Jesus Bernal asked.

  "Not when I'm fucking paralyzed."

  "Such a baby. But, you see, this is your sentence. The sentence which—you have agreed—befits your treasonous crimes. Alberto Garcia, maggot and traitor, I hereby command you to return at once to Cuba. There you will join the underground and fight the devil in his own backyard. This is how you will redeem yourself. Perhaps you may someday be a hero. Or at least a man."

  "How about shark food?" Garcia said. Even with two good arms he was a rotten swimmer. He knew he'd never make it as far as Molasses Reef, much less Havana harbor. It was a funny idea, really. Garcia heard himself laugh out loud.

  "What's so goddamn hilarious?"

  "Nothing, commander."

  The detective began to think of his family. Dreamily he pictured his wife and his children as he had last seen them. At dinner, two nights ago. They all seemed to be smiling. He thought: I must have done somethingright.

  He opened his eyes and turned his head to see the tops of Jesus Bernal's moldy sneakers.

  "Up!" Bernal cried. He kicked at Garcia, once, twice, three times, until the detective lost count. They were not hard kicks, but diabolically aimed.

  Bernal bent down until their faces were inches apart. "Get your stinking ass off the ground," Bernal said, his breath sour and sickening.

  Once more Garcia tried to sit up, but rolled sideways instead. He nearly passed out as his full weight landed on his mangled arm.

  Bernal resumed kicking and Garcia rolled again, the limestone and coral digging into his flesh.

  "Go!" Bernal shouted, prodding with his feet. "Go, go, go!"

  Garcia landed in the water with a muted splash. The salt scoured his wounds and a sudden coldness seized his chest, robbing him of all breath. Garcia did not know how deep the water was, but it didn't matter. He could have drowned in a saucepan. Somehow he clawed to the surface and slurped air.

  He looked up toward the jetty and saw Bernal's stringy silhouette, the shotgun raised over his head in triumph. Jesus played the flashlight across the waves.

  "You'd better get started!" he called exuberantly. "Head for Carysfort Light. It's a good place to rest. By daybreak you'll be ready to go again. Hurry, mi guerrero,onward to Cuba! She is not as far as you think."

  Garcia was too weak to float, much less swim. Hungrily he gulped breath after breath, but it was not enough. A marrow-deep pain began to smother his conscious thought, and he sensed himself slipping away. He paddled mindlessly with his good arm; he didn't care that he was going in circles, as long as his head stayed above water.

  "You look like a fool!" Jesus Bernal yelled giddily. "A fat little clown!"

  Another gunshot split the night and Jesus Bernal commenced a curious dance, hopping like a marionette. In his deepening fog Al Garcia thought: The idiot is shooting into the sky, like frigging New Year's Eve.

  Still another shot went off, and then more, until the crackles blended to a dull resonance, like a church bell. Garcia wondered why he saw no firebursts from the mouth of the sawed-off.

  Jesus Bernal's queer dance became palsied. Suddenly he stopped hopping, bent over double and emitted a horrific wail. The shotgun and the flashlight clattered to the rocks.

  But Garcia himself was out of strength. His arm felt like cement, and his will to save himself evaporated under a warm wave of irrepressible fatigue. He was sliding downward into euphoria, away from all pain. The ocean took him gently and closed his tired eyes, but not before he saw a final shot shear the crown of Jesus Bernal's head and leave him twitching in a heap on the jetty.

  "Nice shooting, Ace," Al Garcia said feebly.

  "I hate that damn gun." Brian Keyes had needed six rounds from the Browning to put a bullet where he'd wanted. His hands still tingled from the shots.

  "Which hospital is nearest?"

  "Homestead," Garcia said, shivering. "Call my wife, would you?"

  "When we get there."

  "I'm pissed you didn't tell me about your pal Wiley."

  "He said he'd kill lots more people if I did."

  Garcia coughed. "It couldn't have been much worse than it was."

  "Oh no? You saw what that bomb did to the John—now imagine the same thing at the parade, with all those kids. A holocaust, Al. He seemed capable of anything."

  "You shoulda told me anyway," Garcia said. "Shit, this hurts. I'm gonna sleep for a while." He shut his eyes and sagged down in the passenger seat. Soon Keyes could hear his breathing, a weak irregular rasp.

  Keyes drove like a maniac. Droplets of salt water trickled from his hair into his mouth and eyes; he was soaked to the skin. Garcia's blood dappled his shirt and pants. As he wheeled the MG back onto Highway One, a sharp pain pinched under his right arm. Keyes wondered if he had torn open the old stab wound while carrying Garcia piggyback through the hammock.

  The trip to Farmer's Hospital from Key Largo took twenty minutes. Garcia was unconscious when they arrived at the emergency room, and was immediately stripped and taken to surgery.

  Keyes telephoned Garcia's wife and told her to come down right away, Al had been hurt. Then he tried Jenna. He let it ring fifteen or twenty times but no one picked up. Was she gone? Hiding? Dead? He considered driving up to the house and breaking in, but it was too late and he was too exhausted.

  He made one more phone call, to Metro-Dade Homicide. He told them where to find Jesus Bernal's body. Soon the island would be crawling with reporters.

  Keyes looked up at the clock and smiled at the irony; two-thirty in the morning. Too late to make the morning papers.

  The phone jarred Cab Mulcahy from his sleep at seven-thirty.

  "I got a message you called. What's up?" It was Cardoza.

  Mulcahy sat round-shouldered on the edge of the bed, rubbing sleep from his eyes. "It concerns Skip Wiley," he said fuzzily.

  He told Cardoza about Wiley's criminal involvement with the Nights of December, omitting nothing except his own knowledge.

  "Goddamn!" Cardoza exclaimed. "Maybe that explains it."

  "What?"

&n
bsp; "Wiley sent me a New Year's column yesterday but I damn near tossed it out. I thought it was a fake, some asshole playing a joke."

  "What does it say?" Mulcahy asked. He was not surprised that Wiley had ignored the chain of command and appealed directly to the publisher. Skip knew how much Cardoza loved his stuff.

  Cardoza read part of the column aloud over the phone.

  "It sounds like a confession," Mulcahy said. It was actually quite remarkable. "Mr. Cardoza, we have to write about all this."

  "Are you kidding?"

  "It's our job," Mulcahy said.

  "Making a blue-chip newspaper look like a nuthouse—that's our job?"

  "Our job is printing the truth. Even if it's painful and even if it makes us look foolish."

  "Speak for yourself," Cardoza said. "So what exactly do we do with this column? It's not the least bit funny, you know."

  "I think we run it as is—right next to a lengthy story explaining everything that's happened the last month."

  Cardoza was appalled. In no other business would you wave your stinky laundry in the customers' faces; this wasn't ethics, it was idiocy.

  "Don't go off half-cocked," Cardoza told Mulcahy. "I heard on the radio that the whole gang is dead. I assume that means Mr. Wiley, too."

  "Well, tonight's the big parade," Mulcahy said. "Let's wait and see."

  Cardoza was stunned by the revelation about Skip Wiley. Of all the writers at the paper, Wiley had been his favorite, the spice in the recipe. And though he had never actually met the man, Cardoza felt he knew him intimately from his writing. Undoubtedly Wiley was impulsive, irreverent, even tasteless at times—but homicidal? It occurred to Cardoza that a newspaper this size must be riddled with closet psychopaths like Wiley; the potential for future disasters seemed awesome. Expensive disasters, too. Lawyerly-type disasters.

  "You sure we have to print this?" Cardoza said.

  "Absolutely," Cab Mulcahy replied.

  "Then go ahead," the publisher growled, "but when the calls start pouring in, remember—I'm out of town."

  The crusty businessman in Cardoza—which was to say, allof Cardoza—immediately thought of selling the newspaper, getting out before they straitjacketed the whole building. Just last week he'd had an excellent offer from the Krolman Corporation, makers of world-famous French bidets. A bit overcapitalized, but they'd cleared thirty million last year after taxes. Cardoza had been impressed by the bottom line—thirty mil was a lot of douching. Now the Krolman boys were looking to diversify.

  The publisher's fingers were flying through the Rolodex even as he hung up on Cab Mulcahy.

  Reed Shivers pounded loudly on the door to, the guest room. "Young man, I want to speak with you!"

  "Later," Keyes mumbled.

  "No, not later. Right now! Open this door!"

  Keyes let Shivers in and met him with a scowl. "Open this door right now!What do I look like, the Beaver? Gee, Dad, I was only trying to get some sleep."

  "That's enough, Mr. Keyes. You said you were going to be gone for one hour last night—one hour! The housekeeper says you got in at six."

  "A situation came up. I couldn't help it."

  "So you just run off and forget all about my daughter," Reed Shivers said.

  "There was a squad car at each end of the block."

  "All alone, the night before the big parade!"

  "I said I couldn't help it," Keyes said.

  Kara Lynn walked in wearing a shapeless pink robe and fuzzy bedroom slippers. Her hair was pinned up and her eyes were sleepy. Without makeup she looked about fourteen years old.

  "Hi, guys," she said. "What's all the racket?"

  Right away she saw that Brian had slept in his street clothes. She stared at the sticky brown stain on his clothes, somehow knowing what it was. She also noticed that he still wore his shoulder holster. The Browning semiautomatic lay on a night stand next to the bed. It was the first time she had ever seen it. It seemed unwieldy, and out of place in a bedroom.

  "The Cuban's dead," Keyes said flatly.

  Reed Shivers rubbed his chin sheepishly. It occurred to him that he had underestimated Keyes or, worse, misread him entirely.

  "Bernal kidnapped Garcia last night and I had to shoot him," Keyes said.

  Kara Lynn gave him a long hug, with her eyes closed. Keyes stood there stiffly, not knowing how to respond in front of her father. Reed Shivers looked away and made a disapproving cluck.

  Keyes said, "I expect there'll be some police coming by a little later to ask me some questions."

  Reed Shivers folded his arms and said, "Actually this is extremely good news. It means all those damn Nachos are dead. According to the papers, this Cuban fellow was the last one." He tugged his daughter safely back to arm's reach. "Pumpkin, don't you see? The parade's going to be wonderful—there's no more threat. We won't be needing Mr. Keyes anymore."

  Kara Lynn looked up at Brian questioningly.

  "Let's play it safe, Mr. Shivers. I've got my doubts about that helicopter crash. Sergeant Garcia and I agree that everything should stay the same for tonight. Nothing changes."

  "But it was on TV. All these maniacs are dead."

  "And what if they're not?" Kara Lynn said. "Daddy, I'd feel better if we stuck to the plan. Just for tonight."

  "All right, cupcake, if you'll sleep easier. But as of tomorrow morning, no more bodyguard." Reed Shivers marched down the hall, still wondering about that hug.

  Brian Keyes closed the door quietly and locked it. He took Kara Lynn's hand and led her to the bed. They lay down and held one another; he, hugging a little tighter. Keyes realized that he had crossed a cold threshold and could never return to what he was, what he had trained to be—a professional bystander, an expertly detached voyeur who was skilled at reconstructing violence after the fact, but never present and never participatory. For reporters, the safety net was the ability to walk away, polish it off, forget about it. It was as easy as turning off the television, because whatever was happening always happened to somebody else; reality was past tense and once removed, something to be observed but not experienced. Two years ago, at such a newsworthy moment, Keyes himself would have been racing south with the wolf pack, jogging through the hammock to reach the jetty first, his notebook flipped open, his eyes sponging up each detail, counting up the bullet holes in the corpse, by now gray and bloodless. And two years ago he might have gotten sick at the sight and gone off to vomit in the woods, where the other reporters couldn't see him. Later he would have stood back and studied the death scene, but could only have guessed at what might have happened, or why.

  "We don't have to talk about it," Kara Lynn said. She stirred against him. "Let's just lie here for a little while."

  "I had no choice. He shot Garcia."

  "This was the same man we saw outside the country club. You're certain?"

  Keyes nodded.

  He said, "Maybe I ought to say a prayer or something. Isn't that what you're supposed to do when you kill somebody?"

  "Only in spaghetti westerns." She slid her arms around his waist. "Try to get some rest. You did the right thing."

  "I know," he said dully. "The only thing I feel guilty about is not feeling guilty. The sonofabitch deserved to die."

  The words came out soulless. Kara Lynn shuddered. Sometimes he frightened her, just a little.

  "Hey, Sundance, you want to see my gown?"

  "Sure."

  She bounced up from the bed. "Stay right here, don't move," she said. "I'll model it for you."

  "I'd like that," Keyes said. "I really would."

  At noon Al Garcia awoke. He gazed around the hospital room and felt warmed by its pale yellow walls and the slivered shadows from the Venetian blinds. He was too drugged to pay much attention to the burning in his arm or the huge knot on the base of his neck or the burbling sound from inside his chest. Instead the detective was washed by a mood of elemental triumph: he was alive and Jesus Bernal was dead. Deader than a goddamn cockroach. Al Ga
rcia relished the role of survivor, even if he owed his life not to his own faltering reflexes, but to Brian Keyes. The kid had turned out to be rock steady, and strong as a bear to haul him out of the ocean the way he had.

  Groggily Garcia greeted his wife, who offered spousely sympathy but peppered him with questions that he pretended not to hear. Afterward, an orthopedic surgeon stopped in to report that although Garcia's left arm had been saved, it was too early to know if the muscles and bones would mend properly; the shoulder basically was being held together by steel pins and catgut. Garcia worriedly asked if any shotgun pellets had knicked the spine, and the doctor said no, though the initial fall on his neck had caused some temporary numbness. Garcia wiggled the toes on both feet and seemed satisfied that he would walk again.

  He was drifting off to sleep when the chief of police showed up. Garcia winked at him.

  "The doctors say you're going to make it," the chief whispered.

  "Piece-a-cake," Garcia murmured.

  "Look, I know this is a bad time, but the media's gone absolutely batshit over this shooting. We're trying to put together a short release. Is there anything you can tell me about what happened out there?"

  "Found the body?"

  "Yes," the chief replied. "Shot four times with a nine-millimeter. The last one really did the trick, blew his brains halfway to Bimini."

  "Fucker blasted me with a sawed-off."

  "I know," the chief said. "The question is, who blasted him?"

  "Tomorrow," Garcia said, closing his eyes.

  "Al, please."

  "Tomorrow, the whole story." Or as much of it as was absolutely necessary.