Insane City

by Dave Barry

  “Shit,” she said.

  About a quarter mile behind her she saw a black Navigator turning from Miami Gardens Drive onto Biscayne Boulevard. She looked up at the light; it was still red. Behind her, the Navigator had made the turn and was coming fast.

  “Shit,” she said again. She looked around the cruiser dashboard. Next to the radio was a panel of red toggle switches, including one labeled SIREN and one labeled LIGHTBAR. She stuck her left arm out the window and made a Follow me gesture to Seth. Then she flipped the siren and lightbar switches. She flinched at the sudden loud whoop of the siren, then swerved right onto the right shoulder, passing the cars waiting at the light. She waved again for Seth to follow, muttering, “Come on.” Two seconds later she saw Seth coming around on the shoulder. She accelerated. Cars were pulling aside to let her by. She glanced into the rearview and saw that Seth was keeping up. At the moment, she didn’t see the Navigator.

  She gripped the wheel and stared ahead, heart pounding, trying to visualize a map of Miami, and a way to get from here back to the hotel.

  52

  “I don’t believe this,” said Castronovo. “She’s using the fucking siren.”

  “Go around,” said Brewer. He was holding a Huggies Little Snuggler disposable diaper to the oozing wound Trevor had inflicted on his nose. “We can’t lose them.”

  Castronovo drove onto the right shoulder and past the clot of cars. “What’re we gonna do?” he said.

  “I’m gonna kill the fucking monkey.”

  “OK, but what about the rest of them?”

  Brewer thought about that. “First priority, we get the Haitians back,” he said. “Those were Mike’s orders, get rid of the Haitians. We can’t admit we lost them because we stopped to buy fucking diapers.”

  “Which was your idea.”

  “All right, it was my idea, but we’re both fucked if Mike finds out.”

  Castronovo nodded. “So what’s our plan?”

  “We stop the Escalade, get the Haitians back, get rid of them.”

  “Get rid of them how?”

  “Whatever’s quickest.”

  Castronovo gave him a look.

  “I’m not saying that,” said Brewer, “necessarily. I’m saying we get them back and dump them somewhere quick. Mike doesn’t have to know we never made it to Delray. What we can’t do is let Seth take them back to the Ritz.”

  “What about Seth and Meghan? They’ll be pissed off, we take the Haitians away. If they keep trying to be heroes out here”—Castronovo glanced at his watch—“they could miss the wedding.”

  “Not our problem. We report to Mike. If Meghan and Seth want to fuck up Tina’s wedding, that’s on them. But they’re not gonna do that. Once they realize this stupid little game they’re playing is over, they’ll go back to the Ritz. She’s not gonna piss off her daddy and he’s not gonna pass on all that money.”

  “Do we call Mike? Tell him what’s going on?”

  “Definitely not,” said Brewer. “Not until we have the Haitians back.”

  “There they are,” said Castronovo. In the distance they could see the flashing lightbar of the police cruiser. Castronovo put a little more pressure on the accelerator. The Navigator surged forward.

  Brewer dabbed his oozing nose with the Little Snuggler and said, “I’m gonna kill that monkey.”

  53

  Mike Clark was feeling pretty good. He’d slept well. The weather was spectacular. Castronovo and Brewer had taken care of the idiotic Haitian distraction. Marcia had just called from her meeting with Tina and the wedding coordinator, reporting that everything was on schedule. The only bit of bad news was that Meghan was nowhere to be found. But Meghan was always disappearing; Mike was sure she’d be back.

  And there was one more piece of excellent news that Mike had just gotten from his personal assistant: The governor of Florida was coming to the wedding. It had been uncertain, but now it was definite. Mike was pretty sure the governor was coming because he’d found out that Wendell Corliss was there. But that was fine with Mike. It was a huge feather in his cap. The governor of Florida.

  So this was shaping up to be a very good day. And Mike was determined, as he strode down the corridor to the Corliss suite, to make it a great one. He and Wendell had a breakfast scheduled for this morning, a power meal, just the two financial titans. It would be their only time alone together this weekend, and Mike did not intend to let it go to waste. He had decided that he was going bring up the topic of membership in the Group of Six.

  The conventional wisdom among Mike’s fellow multibillionaires in the Group of Eleven was that it was bad form to lobby for membership in the Group of Six, and that any such effort would result in being permanently blackballed. But Mike, while flossing this morning, had gotten to thinking about something Corliss had said at the rehearsal dinner the night before. It had happened when Mike, in a coy effort to refer indirectly to the Group of Six vacancy, had mentioned the death of industrialist Herb Wentworth. Corliss had responded with a weird story about watching a fly walk into Wentworth’s ear and then marveling at how confident the fly would have to be to do that. At the time Mike had assumed that Corliss had simply drunk too much wine, although he wasn’t known to be much of a drinker.

  But then this morning a startling thought struck Mike: What if Corliss had been trying to tell him something? What if he’d been saying to Mike: Hey, if you want to join the Group of Six, you have to be confident. You have to plunge into the dark unknown of the earhole.

  The more Mike thought about it, the more certain he became: Corliss was daring him to make the bold move.

  And by God, he was going to make it.

  He reached Corliss’s suite and pressed the door buzzer. From inside he heard a shout, which sounded like Corliss, and then a laugh, which sounded like another man. Mike frowned: This was supposed to be a one-on-one breakfast. He waited at the door. Nobody came. He heard more shouts and laughter. He pressed the door buzzer, leaving his finger on the button longer this time.

  He heard footsteps. The door opened. Mike’s jaw dropped. It was Marty, wearing only a huge bathing suit the color of a traffic cone, his pasty white belly drooping over the waistband.

  “Look who’s here!” said Marty.

  “Who’s there?” replied Wendell from inside the suite.

  “The father of the bride!” said Marty.

  “Who?” said Wendell.

  “Mike,” said Marty.

  “Ah,” said Wendell.

  Mike stepped into the suite, which was huge. To the left, beyond a barrier of sofas, the TV was showing SpongeBob SquarePants. In the distance, Wendell, in a bathrobe, was seated at the dining-area table, frowning at the screen of a laptop computer. The table was strewn with coffee cups, dirty plates and ravaged stainless-steel platters of bacon, toast and potatoes. In the middle was a large Styrofoam takeout container containing two pancakes.

  “So,” said Mike, approaching Wendell, “are we—”

  Wendell raised a hand, stopping him. “Marty,” he said, “how do you capture a graveyard again?”

  “Which graveyard?” said Marty.

  “Snowfall.”

  “No no no,” said Marty, waving his arms. “Do not capture Snowfall Graveyard.”

  “Why not?”

  “We don’t want to re-spawn out of the battle.”

  “Ah,” said Wendell.

  “What’s going on?” said Mike.

  “World of Warcraft,” said Marty. “Ever play?”

  “No,” said Mike, trying not to look at Marty’s vast mayonnaise-white belly. He turned to Wendell. “So, are we still on for breakfast?”

  Wendell looked up at Mike. His eyes were bloodshot. “You have got to try the pancakes,” he said. “There’s a couple left.”

  Mike looked at the pancakes, then back at Wendell. “I’m cutting down on gluten,” he said.

  Wendell nodded. “Is it just me,” he said to Marty, “or does it seem like everybody’s cutting down
on gluten?”

  “It’s not just you,” said Marty. “Five years ago, I never even heard of gluten. Then all of a sudden it’s the worst thing in the world. It’s the Nazi Party of food ingredients. People are scared to death of gluten. You could rob a bank with it. The bank people would be like, ‘Do whatever he says! He’s got gluten!’” Marty burped. “What the fuck is gluten, anyway?”

  “It used to be trans fats,” said Wendell.

  “Gluten did?” said Marty.

  “What I mean,” said Wendell, “is that it used to be you weren’t supposed to eat anything with trans fats. Or maybe you were supposed to eat things with trans fats. I don’t remember which. You never hear anybody talk about them anymore. They’re over.”

  “Like Myspace,” said Marty. “Or global warming.”

  “Or Deepak Chopra.”

  “Who?

  “Exactly.”

  “What about carbs?” said Marty.

  “What about carbs?” said Wendell.

  “Are they still bad?”

  Wendell frowned. “I think so,” he said. “But not as bad as gluten. Or lactose! Lactose is evil. Lactose is death. Lactose is Glenn Close, in that movie where she stalks whatshisname.”

  “Who?”

  “Whatshisname. You know. She boils his daughter’s rabbit.”

  “Who does?”

  “Glenn Close.”

  “Glenn Close boils a rabbit?”

  “You never saw this movie?”

  “No. Why did she do that?”

  “She was in love with whatshisname.”

  “So she boils a fucking rabbit?”

  “Yes.”

  “How?”

  “How does she boil it?”

  “Yes.”

  “In a pot.”

  Marty thought about that. “Why doesn’t it jump out?”

  “Of the pot? They don’t explain that.”

  “That’s a plot flaw. I mean, a rabbit is not a lobster. You put a lobster in a pot, it stays in the pot. But a rabbit would definitely jump out.”

  “Yes, but if she boiled a lobster, nobody would care. I mean, as a viewer you’d be thinking, Big deal, a lobster.”

  “No, I understand that. It couldn’t be a lobster. But it could be a small dog.”

  “Dogs can jump.”

  “OK, maybe a chicken.”

  “No, because there you have the lobster problem all over again. A chicken boiling in a pot, the viewer goes, Well, it’s only a chicken.”

  “So you’re saying it has to have fur.”

  “No, I’m not ruling out feathers entirely. For example, it could be a parrot, but it has to have some personality. Like earlier in the movie it says some comical words or phrases so the viewers get to know it, and their reaction is, Oh no! Glenn Close boiled Polly!”

  Marty thought about that. “Why wouldn’t the parrot just fly out of the pot?”

  “Excuse me?” said Mike, trying not to show how pissed off he was getting.

  Wendell and Marty looked at Mike, whom they had both forgotten about.

  “So, Wendell,” said Mike, “about breakfast.”

  “Absolutely,” said Wendell. “You should try these pancakes. They’re gluten-free.”

  “Seriously?” said Mike.

  “No. But they’re very special pancakes.”

  Wendell gave Marty a look, and Marty snickered. That did it for Mike. He was Mike Clark, and nobody treated him this way, not even Wendell Corliss. He was about to deliver a cold good-bye and stalk out when suddenly it hit him what was going on here: Corliss was testing him. He was deliberately trying to annoy him by talking nonsense with this idiot Marty, to see if Mike would give up and walk away.

  Well, fuck that. Mike Clark didn’t get where he was by giving up. This was his opportunity and he wasn’t going to let it slip away: He was going into the earhole. He pulled out a chair and sat down at the table.

  “Wendell,” he said. “Let’s cut the bullshit here.”

  Wendell looked at Mike, suddenly interested in him. “OK,” he said.

  Mike looked at Marty, who was listening while at the same time reaching inside his gigantic orange swim trunks and scratching himself.

  “Can we speak privately?” said Mike.

  Wendell looked at Marty, then back at Mike. “I think whatever we have to discuss, we can discuss it in front of Marty.”

  “Fine by me,” said Marty. He then farted.

  “All right, then,” said Mike. Clearly this was part of the test. He took a breath, exhaled. “Wendell, I—”

  “Michael Douglas!” said Wendell, snapping his fingers.

  “What?” said Marty.

  “It was Michael Douglas whose daughter’s rabbit was boiled.”

  “Which one is he?” said Marty.

  “Michael Douglas,” said Wendell. “You know, he’s married to whatshername.”

  “Glenn Close?”

  “No. Whatshername.”

  “Excuse me,” said Mike.

  Wendell looked at him.

  “I want in,” said Mike.

  Wendell blinked. “You want in.”

  “That’s right. I want in, and I think I belong.”

  Wendell nodded thoughtfully. Several seconds passed.

  “He wants in what?” said Marty, in a stage whisper.

  “I have no idea,” Wendell whispered back. “I’m just nodding thoughtfully to stall for time.”

  From across the room, a woman’s voice called, “Are there any more pancakes?”

  Mike looked and saw Greta Corliss’s head poking above the sofa in front of the TV. Mike hadn’t noticed her before.

  “There’s two,” said Marty.

  “Could you toss me one?”

  Marty reached into the foam container, picked up a pancake and flung it, Frisbee style, across the room. Greta—New York society superstar Greta Corliss, famed for her elegance, her poise, her fashion savvy and her lavish yet exquisitely tasteful dinner parties—caught the pancake one-handed, stuffed the entire thing into her mouth, then sank back onto the sofa to resume watching SpongeBob SquarePants.

  Mike was shaken. But he was not going to quit.

  “The Group of Six,” he said.

  “What?” said Wendell and Marty both.

  “I want to join the Group of Six.”

  “Ah,” said Wendell, suddenly realizing why he’d been invited to the wedding.

  “What’s the Group of Six?” said Marty.

  Wendell turned to Marty, his face solemn. “You must not tell anyone what I am about to reveal to you,” he said.

  “OK,” said Marty.

  “The Group of Six,” said Wendell, “is a very secret, very exclusive organization of highly successful men who get together from time to time for the express purpose of hanging around with other highly successful men.”

  Marty arched his eyebrows. “Is that where you talk about your helicopters?”

  “Exactly.” Wendell turned to Mike. “So you want in.”

  “I do,” said Mike.

  “Are you sure? You really want in?”

  Mike fought to hide his excitement. He had passed the test. This was going to happen. “I’m sure,” he said. “I really want in.”

  Wendell’s eyes met Marty’s for a half second. Then he stood, put his hands on Mike’s shoulders and said, “There’s a sort of initiation.”

  54

  “Where does this road go?” said Seth. The Escalade was still southbound on Biscayne Boulevard, Seth doing his best to keep up with Meghan in the police cruiser. She was using the siren and lights as needed, turning them on to blast through red lights or force slower drivers to get out of her way.

  “It goes right into downtown Miami,” said Cyndi.

  “Can we get to Key Biscayne this way?”

  “Yeah,” said Cyndi. “You go through downtown, then down Brickell Avenue to the causeway.”

  “I guess that’s what Meghan’s doing. I just hope we can make it there without g
etting stopped by some real cops.”

  “Or getting caught by those guys,” said Cyndi, turning to look through the Escalade rear window. “They’re still after us.”

  Seth glanced in the rearview mirror and picked up the Navigator about a half mile back, weaving through traffic. Castronovo and Brewer had gotten hung up at a couple of intersections, but they weren’t giving up.

  “How’re they doing in the backseat?” said Seth.

  Cyndi looked back at Laurette, holding her fussing and aromatic baby, huddling close to Stephane. She gave them what she hoped was an encouraging smile.

  “They look kind of in shock,” she said.

  “Can you blame them?” said Seth.

  “No,” said Cyndi. “What are we going to do with them when we get back to the hotel? We can’t just let those guys grab them again.”

  “I’ve been thinking about that,” said Seth. “Maybe we could put them in Marty and Kevin and Steve’s room. They could hang out there until tomorrow, and by then maybe Carl will have some good news for them.”

  Cyndi nodded. “That might work.”

  “On the other hand,” said Seth, “we might all be getting arrested soon, after last night and what just happened in that parking lot back there.”

  “But we didn’t do anything, really, when you think about it.”

  “I don’t think the police would agree. Especially now that Meghan stole a police car. They really frown on that.”

  “She was just trying to save the orangutan. That guy was shooting at it.”

  “I know that, and you know that. But I don’t see the police being sympathetic.” He glanced at her. “Listen, Cyndi, this could get bad, and you really don’t have to be part of it. I could pull over and stop for a second and you could just get out and walk away.”

  Cyndi shook her head. “Nope.”

  “You sure? We could be in some pretty serious trouble. The cop back there was talking about robbery.”