Insane City

by Dave Barry

  “Shit,” said Meghan, hanging a squealing left onto Third directly against one-way traffic. Honking cars swerved out of her way as she barreled across the northbound lanes of Biscayne Boulevard and into the big semicircular front driveway of Bayside Marketplace. Behind her, she heard more horns, then the unmistakable bang-bang-bang of vehicles colliding in chain reaction. Meghan screeched the cruiser to a stop and looked back. The Escalade was still right behind her. Beyond it, the intersection of Biscayne and Third was a chaotic scene of automotive carnage. Meghan stomped on the accelerator again, her plan now being to go out the other end of the Bayside driveway and escape northbound on Biscayne, but flashing lights in that direction told her she’d be driving right into another roadblock.

  “Shitshitshit,” she said and opened the cruiser door. From Biscayne Boulevard came the sounds of shouting and sirens. Many sirens.

  She ran back to the Escalade. Seth had the window open.

  “This is bad,” he said. “This is really, really bad.”

  “I know that,” said Meghan. “You think I don’t know that? We need to get out of here right now.” She opened the rear door, gestured to Laurette. “Come on!”

  “Come on where?” said Seth.

  “In there,” said Meghan, pointing toward the Bayside complex. “I’m thinking we go out the other side, maybe get a taxi or something.”

  Cyndi and Seth got out of the Escalade, then helped Laurette and her children get out. Cyndi was closing the back door when she noticed something on the seat.

  “Seth,” she said, reaching for it.

  “What?”

  Cyndi handed him the red velvet ring box.

  “Ohmigod,” he said, taking it. “I almost forgot about this.”

  “Will you guys hurry up?” said Meghan. She herded the group onto a sidewalk leading into the complex. Seth and Cyndi got on either side of Laurette, helping her along. Meghan, behind them, glanced back toward Biscayne Boulevard. The sirens were louder, but at the moment she saw no police officers.

  She did, however, see Trevor.

  He had sat up and was pressing his face against the rear window of the police cruiser. He was looking at her.

  “Shit,” she said. “You guys go ahead. Hurry!”

  As Seth and Cyndi helped Laurette and her children along the sidewalk, Meghan ran back to the cruiser and opened the rear door. Trevor had bled all over the backseat. She could see the oozing wound on his right thigh, surrounded by dark matted fur.

  “You poor thing,” said Meghan, softly. “I am so sorry about this. But they’ll fix you up. You’ll be OK, OK?”

  Trevor just looked at her and blinked. She leaned forward quickly and kissed him on his left cheek pad, then turned and started running down the sidewalk after the others. She came to a clot of cruisers, recognizable by their blinding white sneakers, stoplight red sunburns and spherical shapes. As she sprinted past, one of them screamed.

  Meghan looked back, stopped and for what felt like the five hundredth time in the past half hour said, “Oh shit.”

  Trevor, on one leg and two arms, was following her.

  61

  “Where the fuck are they?” said Castronovo.

  He had pulled the Navigator to the curb on the southbound side of Biscayne Boulevard, which was now blocked in both directions by police cruisers and the wreckage of what looked like at least a dozen crashed civilian vehicles. A crowd was gathering, consisting of onlookers and police swarming from their cruisers.

  “There,” said Brewer, pointing to the left. Castronovo looked and saw Seth and Cyndi, supporting the Haitian woman, walking quickly into the Bayside complex. Trotting up behind them was Meghan. Just behind her, limping but covering ground, was Trevor.

  In two seconds Castronovo and Brewer were out of the car, trotting toward Bayside.

  “OK,” said Brewer. “First priority, we get the Haitians out of here. That’s what Mike told us to do. And we stay away from the cops.”

  “What about Meghan and Seth?” said Castronovo.

  “Like I said before, they’re on their own.”

  “And you still don’t want to call Mike.”

  “Do you want to try to explain this to Mike?” said Brewer.

  “No,” said Castronovo.

  “So we get the Haitians and get the fuck out of here,” said Brewer as they reached the Bayside walkway. “And we definitely kill the monkey.”

  62

  Even by Miami standards, this was a weird group making its way through the Bayside crowd. In front were Seth and Cyndi, holding tight to Laurette and her baby, with Stephane right behind. A few steps back were Meghan and Trevor, who was dripping blood but gamely keeping up, his eyes focused always on Meghan. The cruisers stopped and stared, not sure whether they were seeing some kind of performance or actual reality. They all had their phones out, taking video. Whatever this was, it was definitely YouTube quality.

  They had reached a crowded plaza. Directly ahead was a marina, and on either side were buildings full of stores and restaurants.

  “Where’s the taxis?” said Seth.

  Cyndi looked around. “I think that way,” she said, pointing along the water to the left. “Maybe we could get one up on the port road.”

  They angled left across the plaza. With each step the crowd around them grew thicker; they were drawing a lot of attention. A man asked Meghan if he could take a picture with her monkey. Meghan said it was an orangutan, and no. From the distance behind them came the sound of sirens, more and more. Seth glanced back across the plaza, looking for pursuing police.

  Instead he saw Castronovo and Brewer. They had just reached the edge of the plaza and were scanning the crowd, Brewer’s face blood-smeared. Seth quickly turned away.

  “We have a problem,” he said.

  “What?” said Meghan.

  “Your dad’s thugs are back there.”

  “Shit,” said Meghan.

  “Keep moving,” said Seth. “They haven’t seen us yet.”

  “I see them,” said Castronovo, pointing. “Over by the water. Big crowd around them.”

  “Out of the way, asshole,” said Brewer, shoving a cruise passenger aside.

  Seth looked back. “They saw us,” he said. “They’re coming. Excuse me! Let us through, please!” He and Cyndi tried to push forward, but the crowd was becoming impenetrable, penning them to the railing that separated the plaza from the walkway along the marina’s edge.

  “Cyndi!” called a raspy voice.

  Cyndi looked over the railing. “Duane!” she called back.

  He was standing, with Blossom draped over his shoulders, at his usual post at the end of the Barco Loco gangplank. “What’re you doing here?” he called.

  “We’re trying to get out of this crowd!”

  “Lemme give you a hand.” Duane trotted up some steps through an opening in the railing, then shouldered his way through the crowd, which parted readily for the large bald man with the large white snake. Reaching Cyndi and the others, he said, “What’s going . . . Whoa! Is that Trevor? How in the fuck did—”

  “It’s really complicated,” said Cyndi.

  Seth was looking over the crowd. Castronovo and Brewer were bulling their way through the cruise passengers, getting steadily closer. “Listen,” he said, “we need to get out of here now.”

  “You can get on that boat,” said Duane, pointing to the Barco Loco. “Lay low in there.”

  Seth, Meghan and Cyndi looked at each other, then around at the still-growing crowd. There was no way they were going to be able to escape through that mob.

  “OK,” said Seth.

  “This way,” said Duane. He led them along the railing, Cyndi and Seth doing their best to shield Laurette and her children from the crowd. He descended the stairs to the Barco Loco.

  “Bobby!” shouted Duane. “We got guests!”

  Bobby Stern, a tall, thin man who cultivated a black piratical beard, appeared on the pirate ship deck, holding a glass of tequ
ila. His eyes swept the boarding party, stopping on Trevor.

  “Is that a gorilla?” he said.

  “No,” said Duane. “Orangutan.”

  “Ah,” said Stern. He raised his glass. “Welcome aboard.”

  Seth put his arm around Laurette and started walking her toward the gangplank. She balked, staring at the boat. Stephane clung to her, looking terrified.

  “They’re afraid of the boat,” said Seth.

  “It’s OK,” Cyndi said to Laurette. Carefully, she took the baby from Laurette’s arms.

  “Yeah,” said Seth, “it’s OK.” He took Laurette’s hand in his, looked in her eyes. “I know you had a bad experience, but you have to trust us, all right?”

  Laurette clearly didn’t understand a word he was saying. But this time when he started toward the gangplank, she and Stephane went with him. Cyndi followed, carrying the baby. Behind them, Meghan was trying to coax the weakening Trevor onto the gangplank.

  “What happened to his leg?” said Duane.

  “He got shot,” said Meghan.

  Duane was incensed. “Who the fuck would do that?”

  “Two assholes.”

  From the plaza came the sound of commotion. Duane and Meghan looked up and saw Castronovo, then Brewer, barge through the crowd and reach the railing.

  “Those two assholes,” said Meghan.

  Brewer spotted them, pointed. He and Castronovo started shoving people aside, heading for the stairs.

  “Come on,” said Meghan, pulling Trevor by the hand onto the gangplank. “Can we start the boat? We need to get away from here right now.”

  Duane looked up at Bobby Stern, still holding his glass of tequila, observing the drama from the bridge of the Barco Loco.

  “Bobby,” called Duane.

  “Yo.”

  “You up for a getaway cruise? We got some orangutan shooters looking to board us.”

  Bobby raised the glass to his mouth, downed the contents in one swallow, smacked his lips, then declared, “Nothing I hate more than an orangutan shooter.” He reached down, hit the ignition. The Barco Loco diesel rumbled to life. “Pull in the gangplank and cast her off!”

  “Aye, aye!” shouted Duane, scrambling aboard with Blossom.

  Exactly twenty-three seconds later, the Barco Loco was pulling away from the dock. Exactly eight seconds after that, Castronovo and Brewer reached the water’s edge. Duane, standing on the deck next to a propane cannon, smiled across the widening gap between dock and boat at the two fury-reddened faces. He waved and said, “Ahoy, cocksuckers!”

  “Now what?” said Castronovo.

  “After I kill the monkey,” said Brewer, “I’m going to kill that guy and his snake.”

  63

  Blaze Gear couldn’t get the Titanic out of her mind. Specifically, she was thinking about the part in the movie after the ship hits the iceberg, but before the passengers realize they are in deadly peril. For a while, everything seems perfectly normal: the lights stay on, the band keeps playing, the waiters keep serving drinks . . .

  And yet they are doomed. They just don’t know it yet.

  This was what Blaze Gear was thinking about as she frowned at her iPad. On the surface, things seemed to be going fine. All the really important timeline items—the bride’s hair, the bride’s makeup, the bride’s manicure/pedicure touch-up—were proceeding on schedule and without incident. The governor had arrived. The floral installations had been installed, the gazebo decorated, the chairs arranged precisely on the lawn. The tables were set for the dinner, each fork, knife and spoon, each glass and plate, each place card perfectly aligned.

  But beneath the veneer of perfection and order, some things were amiss. The groom, for example, was missing. Tina had been unable to reach him; Tracee and Traci had both been dispatched to find him and both had failed. The groomsmen were insisting that Seth had simply gone for a walk, and Blaze, whose most important job was to keep the bride calm, had assured Tina that this was so. Blaze hoped it was so. Like it or not, a truly successful heterosexual wedding required a groom.

  Also missing was the maid of honor. This was not potentially as big an issue as the lack of a groom, but it was troubling. Also troubling was the fact that the father of the bride apparently had greeted the governor of the state of Florida wearing a flamingo costume. Blaze could not think of a good explanation for this. It did not seem at all like the Mike Clark she knew. Maybe it was a rich-person joke, or some kind of Episcopalian thing.

  She hoped the flamingo suit would soon disappear. She also hoped, fervently, that the groom and maid of honor would soon reappear.

  Meanwhile she would do everything in her power to keep things sailing smoothly forward. But even as she ticked off, right on schedule, the next item on her iPad timeline—the bride’s mother’s hair—she could not escape the stomach-clenching feeling that somewhere, beyond her sight or control, the Clark–Weinstein wedding was taking on water.

  64

  Fifty feet from where the Barco Loco had just left the dock a larger boat, the Bay Wanderer, was preparing to cast off. The Bay Wanderer was a sightseeing boat that took passengers on a ninety-minute tour around Biscayne Bay, during which, it was promised, they would see the lavish waterfront homes, or former homes, of rich and famous people, including Al Capone, Gloria Estefan and Vanilla Ice.

  Yolanda Berkowitz stood at the entrance to the Bay Wanderer, collecting tickets from boarding passengers, telling them they could either go forward to the downstairs lounge or upstairs to the open-air deck. Yolanda would also serve as the tour guide for the cruise, pointing out the sights over the PA system, making the same jokes she’d made a thousand times (“Coming up,” she’d say as the boat approached a ridiculously huge mansion, “is my boyfriend’s house”). Yolanda was in a good mood. The weather was nice and the boat was almost sold out, which meant the crew would probably split a decent haul from the tip jar.

  The Bay Wanderer captain, Joe Sarmiento, blasted the horn twice: Time to go. The dock men were untying the lines, and Yolanda was closing the gate, when Castronovo and Brewer trotted up. She didn’t like the looks of them, especially Brewer, who still had blood oozing from his nose wounds.

  “I’m sorry,” she said, “you’ll have to catch the next boat.”

  “We’re with the police,” said Castronovo, yanking the gate open and stepping aboard, followed by Brewer, who shut the gate behind him.

  “What do you mean with the police?” said Yolanda.

  “This is an emergency,” said Castronovo. “You need to cooperate, you understand?” He held open his coat, showing her his gun. “I said, you understand?”

  Yolanda nodded.

  The dock men had finished casting off. The Bay Wanderer started moving.

  “Take us to whoever’s driving this thing,” said Brewer.

  65

  The Barco Loco had left the marina and was going under the overpass to the Port of Miami. Cyndi and Meghan, down on the main deck in front of the bridge, had found a roll of paper towels and some duct tape, which they were using to jury-rig a diaper for the baby and a bandage for Trevor’s leg. They’d also found a bag of potato chips for Stephane, who had never eaten potato chips in his life and thought they were the most wonderful food ever.

  On the bridge, Seth stood with Bobby Stern and Duane, both of whom held a glass of tequila. Seth was looking back toward the Bayside Marketplace plaza, now a confused, swarming mass of people, some of them police officers. He didn’t see either Castronovo or Brewer. He hoped they’d given up.

  “So,” said Bobby as they cleared the overpass, “what exactly is the plan?”

  Duane looked at Seth. “Aren’t you supposed to be getting married?”

  Seth touched his pocket, felt the ring box. “I am,” he said. “Today. Very soon, actually.”

  “Congratulations,” said Bobby. He nodded toward the deck. “I assume one of these lovely ladies is the bride?”

  Seth shook his head. “Nope,” he said.
<
br />   “Really,” said Bobby.

  “It’s complicated,” said Seth.

  Bobby nodded. “So I probably shouldn’t even ask about the orangutan.”

  “I appreciate it,” said Seth. “Listen, I know this is a huge favor to ask, but do you think you could sail us to the Ritz-Carlton?”

  “On Key Biscayne?”

  “Yes.”

  “I can’t put you ashore,” Bobby said. “That’s a beach, shallow water. But I can get you close and you could take the dinghy in.”

  “Seriously?” said Seth. “That would be great.”

  “My pleasure,” said Bobby. “Any man fleeing from the police with three women, two children and an orangutan is a friend of mine.”

  Seth looked at his watch. “How long do you think it’ll take us to get there?”

  Bobby frowned. “This ain’t exactly a speedy craft. Let’s see . . . up Government Cut, out around Fisher, Virginia Key . . . Say twenty minutes, give or take.”

  “OK, great,” said Seth. “I’m going to go make a call.” He headed forward, toward the steps down to the main deck.

  Bobby and Duane watched him go. Bobby raised his glass. “To the groom,” he said.

  “To the groom,” said Duane.

  They drank to that.

  “Better him than us,” said Bobby.

  They also drank to that.

  66

  Marty, summoned by a call from Kevin and Big Steve, entered the Groom Posse suite in a mellow mood. He had just left the Corliss suite, where Wendell, sitting next to a half-depleted platter of brownies, was introducing Florida Gov. Derek Tritt to the many subtle complexities of World of Warcraft.

  The mood was a good deal more tense in the Groom Posse suite. Kevin was pacing; Big Steve was sitting on the sofa, hunched forward, staring at the TV screen, which showed a furrow-browed Lisbeth Renaldo next to a headline that said GANG GOES APE AT BAYSIDE.