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PRAISE FOR BOB MORRIS AND HIS MYSTERIES
Jamica Me Dead
“[A] zany sophomore effort. . . .The tropical backdrop and Zack’s wisecracking commentary make for another crackling whodunit for Morris.”
—Publishers Weekly
“Good-natured . . . the Jamaica background the biggest plus.”
—Kirkus Reviews
“A year-round summer read . . . thanks to smart, polished prose; an affable narrator; swift, straightforward plotting in bite-sized chapters; and fun, exotic setting.”
—Booklist
“The splash that Morris made with last year’s Edgar-nominated Bahamarama becomes a tidal surge with his highly entertaining second novel. Briskly paced . . . Morris joins the ranks of Florida authors such as James O. Born and Claire Matturro whose second novel is even stronger than the first.”
—South Florida Sun-Sentinel
“Bahamarama is no fluke. While Morris can’t be called the Carl Hiaasen of South Florida—there already is one—he comes closest to what fans of comedic mysteries are looking for when they hear that comparison.”
—Flint Journal
“A bumpy, tightly-wound ride, with enough cliff-hangers and red herrings to satisfy even the most jaded mystery buff.”
—Sarasota Herald-Tribune
“Great characterizations, a thorough knowledge of his locales, plus an easy-breezy style that’s hard to resist make Bob Morris’s Jamaica Me Dead another must-read. A new mystery series that’s smart, funny, and slightly off-kilter.”
—Bookloons
Bahamarama
“I was wondering when Bob Morris would finally get around to writing a novel, and it was worth the wait. Bahamarama is sly, smart, cheerfully twisted, and very funny. Morris is a natural.”
—Carl Hiaasen, New York Times
bestselling author of Skin Tight
“Bob Morris, a terrific writer and Florida boy, has created a marvelous tale that perfectly captures the nation’s strangest state. Like Florida itself, Bahamarama is wild, weird, unpredictable, populated by exotic denizens—and funny as hell.”
—Dave Barry, New York Times
bestselling author and Pulitzer Prize winner
“Chasteen makes a fine hero, one who lives by his own rules . . . a highly enjoyable way to pass an afternoon.”
—Miami Herald
“Morris captures the islands and local people well . . . a great bullets-and-beaches book to pack on your next trip.”
—Caribbean Travel & Life
“This book stands out. It’s a fun and engrossing read from an author who expertly knows the lay of the land and the sea.”
—Michael Connelly, New York Times
bestselling author of The Narrows
ALSO BY BOB MORRIS
Bahamarama
AVAILABLE FROM
ST. MARTIN’S/MINOTAUR
PAPERBACKS
Jamica
Me
Dead
BOB MORRIS
St. Martin’s Paperbacks
NOTE: If you purchased this book without a cover you should be aware that this book is stolen property. It was reported as “unsold and destroyed” to the publisher, and neither the author nor the publisher has received any payment for this “stripped book.”
This is a work of fiction. All of the characters, organizations and events portrayed in this novel are either products of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously.
JAMAICA ME DEAD
Copyright © 2005 by Bob Morris.
Excerpt from Bermuda Schwartz © 2006 by Bob Morris.
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles or reviews. For information address St. Martin’s Press, 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY 10010.
Library of Congress Catalog Card Number: 2005051257
ISBN: 0-312-99748-5
EAN: 9780312-99748-9
Printed in the United States of America
St. Martin’s Press hardcover edition / October 2005
St. Martin’s Paperbacks edition / October 2006
St. Martin’s Paperbacks are published by St. Martin’s Press, 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY 10010.
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
Contents
Title
Copyright
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Chapter 36
Chapter 37
Chapter 38
Chapter 39
Chapter 40
Chapter 41
Chapter 42
Chapter 43
Chapter 44
Chapter 45
Chapter 46
Chapter 47
Chapter 48
Chapter 49
Chapter 50
Chapter 51
Chapter 52
Chapter 53
Chapter 54
Chapter 55
Chapter 56
Chapter 57
Chapter 58
Chapter 59
Chapter 60
Chapter 61
Chapter 62
Chapter 63
Chapter 64
Chapter 65
Chapter 66
Chapter 67
Chapter 68
Chapter 69
Chapter 70
Chapter 71
Chapter 72
Chapter 73
Chapter 74
Chapter 75
Chapter 76
Chapter 77
Chapter 78
Chapter 79
Chapter 80
Chapter 81
Chapter 82
Chapter 83
Chapter 84
Chapter 85
Chapter 86
Chapter 87
FOR DEBBIE . . .
AGAIN AND ALWAYS
Jamica
Me
Dead
1
It was the first game of the season at Florida Field, and in typical fashion the Gators had scheduled something less than a fearsome opponent. This year it was the University of Tulsa. Midway through the second quarter the score was already twenty-seven us, zip for the Golden Hurricanes.
Reality would come home to roost in two weeks when we faced off against Tennessee
, but for now the future appeared glorious, and the only thing in life that even mildly concerned me was why a football team from Oklahoma would call itself the Golden Hurricanes.
I turned to Barbara Pickering and said: “Don’t you think they ought to call themselves something more geographically appropriate? Like the Golden Cow Patties?”
It got laughs from the people sitting around us.
“Or the Golden Tumbleweeds,” said a woman to my left.
Barbara looked up from her book.
“I’m sorry,” she said. “Did you say something?”
It was Barbara’s first time at Florida Field. In fact, it was her first time at a football game. I was trying hard not to be offended by the fact she had not only brought along a book—A House for Mr. Biswas, by V. S. Naipaul—she was actually reading it. I had never seen anyone reading a book at a football game.
A man sitting in front of us turned to Barbara.
“Honey,” he said. “Please tell me that’s a book about football.”
“Well, actually, it’s about the Hindu community in Trinidad and how this poor downtrodden man, Mr. Biswas, so badly wants a house of his very own, yet—”
I gave Barbara a nudge. She stopped.
“You’ll have to forgive her,” I told the man in front of us. “Barbara’s British.”
Barbara gave the guy a smile so stunning that his ears turned red. I could relate. I do the same thing whenever she smiles at me.
I reached under my seat and found the pint flask of Mount Gay that I had smuggled into the stadium. I poured a healthy dollop into my cup. Then I pulled a wedge of lime from the plastic baggie in my pants pocket and squeezed it into the rum.
The man in front of us turned around again. Mainly because I had succeeded in squirting the back of his neck with lime juice.
“You’ll have to forgive him,” Barbara told the man. “Zack has scurvy.”
Moments later, the Gators scored. I stood to cheer with the rest of the crowd. Barbara took the opportunity to stretch and yawn and work out the kinks. She glanced at the scoreboard.
“Oh my, only two minutes left,” she said. “Perhaps we should go now and beat the crowd.”
“That’s just until halftime.”
“Meaning . . .”
“Meaning, with TV time-outs and the Gators’ passing game, I’d say we can look forward to at least another two hours of this. Good thing the relative humidity is 187 percent. That way it will seem like a whole lot longer.”
She faked a smile. Even her fake smiles are pretty damn stunning.
Just then I heard someone yell: “Yo, Zack!”
Monk DeVane was standing in the aisle, waving for us to join him.
“Come on, there’s someone I want you to meet,” I told Barbara.
“An old college friend?”
“Yeah, we go way back.”
Barbara put her book on her seat and we began edging our way toward the aisle.
Monk DeVane had been my roommate when we played for the Gators. Like me, he had knocked around in the pros a few years before getting hurt and calling it quits. He opened a car dealership, but it went belly-up. So he tried selling real estate and tried selling boats and tried selling himself on the idea that he could stay married. Last I heard there had been three wives, but I had lost track on exactly what he was doing to make a living.
Monk’s real name was Donald, but one Saturday night on a bye weekend during my freshman year, when I had gone home for a visit, Coach Rowlin decided to conduct a curfew check at Yon Hall. He caught Monk in bed with not one but two comely representatives of Alpha Delta Pi.
While Coach Rowlin booted players off the team for missing practice or talking back to a coach, and did it in a heartbeat, bonking sorority girls at 2 A.M. was not high on his list of misdeeds. At the following Monday’s team meeting, when Coach Rowlin handed out punishments for a variety of weekend infractions, he gave Donald twenty extra wind sprints.
“You boys need to be saving your strength during the season,” Coach Rowlin told us. “Not engaging in wild-monkey sex.”
Donald had been Monk ever since.
Despite all Monk’s ups and downs over the years, he seemed none the worse for wear. Still fit and handsome, his sun-streaked brown hair was considerably longer than I remembered, and he had grown a beard. It was spackled with just enough gray to lend a note of dignity.
Monk stuck out a hand. I took it without thinking, and a moment later I was grimacing under his grip. Monk had a Super Bowl ring. I didn’t. He liked to remind me of that by catching my hand in just the right way for his big gold ring to bear down on my knuckles.
I wrenched away and introduced him to Barbara. Monk pulled her close and wrapped an arm around her.
“How about you dump this joker you’re with and come up to the skybox and have a drink with me? We’re throwing a little party.”
“This skybox of yours, is it air-conditioned?” asked Barbara.
“Cool as Canada, with an open bar and food that’ll make your eyes bug out.”
“Since when do you have a skybox?” I said.
Monk grinned.
“Since never. It’s the president’s skybox.”
“As in president of the university?”
“As in,” Monk said.
“Traveling in some pretty swank circles these days, aren’t you?”
“Well, it helps that I work for Darcy Whitehall.”
Monk saw the look on my face. On Barbara’s, too.
“Yeah, that Darcy Whitehall,” he said. “I’d like for you to meet him, Zack. Plus, there’s something I need to talk to you about.”
I had seen Darcy Whitehall that very morning at Publix when I went to pick up a few things for our pregame tailgate lunch. He was staring at me from the cover of People, along with a host of other celebrities the magazine had proclaimed “Still Sexy in Their Sixties.”
Barbara spoke before I had a chance to.
“We’d love to join you,” she told Monk.
After that, things went straight to hell.
2
We cut under the stands and headed for the elevators that would take us to the skybox level. The concrete breezeways echoed with the boisterous buzz of game day, and we wove through a happy crowd all decked out in variations on a theme of orange and blue.
I had been coming to Gator games since I was in diapers, and the seats I now held season tickets to originally belonged to my grandfather. I felt right at home at Florida Field, but it seemed an odd place for the likes of Darcy Whitehall.
Darcy Whitehall was Jamaican, a white Jamaican, part of a family that could trace its roots on the island back to colonial days. He had made his name as a young man in the music industry. Catching reggae’s early wave of popularity, Whitehall had started a music label and signed a number of musicians who hit it big.
Since then, he had branched out and was now best known as founder and figurehead of Libido Resorts, a collection of anything-goes, all-inclusive retreats scattered throughout the Caribbean. The first one, in Jamaica, just up the coast from Montego Bay, immediately gained notice as the ultimate swingers’ haven. Naked volleyball. Group sex in hot tubs. “Formal” dinners for three hundred where the women were clad only in pearl necklaces and high heels, and the men wore black bowties, but not around their necks.
In recent years, Libido had tried to present a more refined image, no doubt to justify the many thousands of dollars it cost to stay there for a week. Gourmet dining. Serene spa treatments. Yoga pavilions under the palms.
Turn on the television and there was Darcy Whitehall, an icon of rakishness, strolling along a dazzling stretch of beach, an umbrella drink in one hand, a gorgeous young woman on his arm, telling would-be guests: “Yield to Libido.”
The pitch was upscale, but the subtext was the same as it always had been: book a week at Libido and you’ll definitely get laid.
As we approached the elevators, Monk gave us laminated badges that said “Sk
ybox Access.” We clipped them on, and I stood up straight and tried to look presentable. We would soon be mingling with all sorts of movers and shakers. The conversation would be dignified, the company refined. And I wouldn’t have to pour my rum out of a plastic flask hidden underneath my seat.
I was wearing my sit-in-the-sun-and-swelter outfit—flip-flops, khaki shorts, and a T-shirt from Heller Brothers Produce that I had chosen because it had a plump, juicy navel orange on the chest that was my nod to sporting Gator colors. The T-shirt also bore a variety of stains—Zatarain’s Creole Mustard, Louisiana Bull hot sauce, Big Tom Bloody Mary Mix—which spoke to the success of our tailgate lunch and the zealousness with which I enjoyed it.
The skybox elite might sniff that I was underdressed, but I wasn’t concerned. Barbara was at my side and, like always, she looked dazzling. Her outfit was simple—something beige and linen—but she wore it with a grace that few women can claim. She had recently cut her long dark hair and was wearing it in a swept-back style that fell just above her shoulders. I was still getting used to the look, but it was tugging at me in all sorts of pleasing ways.
Barbara caught me staring at her and smiled and gave my hand a squeeze. I knew she was thrilled by the chance to meet Darcy Whitehall. It had nothing to do with his sexiness or his celebrity. Well, maybe it had a little to do with that. But for Barbara it was mostly a matter of business. I saw the look in her eyes. Her mind had undoubtedly slipped into overdrive as she tried to figure out a way to leverage this lucky encounter into an opportunity for Tropics.
Tropics is Barbara’s baby, her pride and joy, a classy travel magazine that covers Florida and the Caribbean. She launched it on a shoestring and, against long odds, carved out a niche in the market, thanks both to the quality of the magazine and her very considerable will. The success of Tropics has allowed her company, Orb Communications, to start tourist magazines on several islands—Barbados Live! and St. Martin Live! among others—along with occasional custom publications for cruise ships and resorts.
She’s done well, very well. Still, in the publishing world she’s small-fry, and she’s on the road often, roping in new advertisers, stroking old ones, and promoting her magazines with dauntless zeal.
Bob Morris_Zack Chasteen 02 Page 1