Tricky Business

by Dave Barry

  After a full half-hour of silence, Ted turned to Johnny and said, “OK, I think I see your point.”

  Johnny looked up from the microphone. “What point?” he said.

  “About the Hawaiians,” said Ted.

  Johnny looked at Ted for a full ten seconds.

  “Well it’s about damn time,” he said.

  AS THE FIRST LIGHT OF DAWN REACHED PALM Beach, Wilfredo Hernandez, trimmers in hand, worked his way along a thick hedge, expertly snipping off the occasional protruding sprig, leaving a perfectly flat wall of green. This was his favorite time at the Breakers, the historic, elegant hotel where he worked as a groundskeeper. It was cool and still relatively quiet, as most of the guests were asleep.

  Of course, today the sea was rough, with the big waves from Tropical Storm Hector crashing against the seawall about twenty yards away. But the sky was clearing fast, and it would be a nice day—sunny, but with enough wind to keep it from feeling too hot. Wilfredo paused and looked out to sea, admiring the sunrise, and . . .

  Ay Dios mio.

  Wilfredo dropped his trimmers, turned, and ran toward the hotel, frantically rehearsing the English words he would need to tell somebody what was coming.

  Twenty-seven

  WALLY HEARD IT, OVER THE SOUND OF THE waves.

  An engine. A helicopter engine.

  Wally looked up. The sky was a lot lighter now. He hadn’t noticed this; he’d been concentrating on Fay, on keeping her head out of the water.

  “Fay,” he said. “A helicopter. You hear it? Fay? You hear it?”

  Fay moaned, mumbled something, but didn’t open her eyes.

  “Fay, come on, please,” said Wally.

  She moaned again.

  Wally strained to hear the engine, hear whether it was coming closer. For a minute or two, he thought it was, yes, definitely, it’s definitely louder now . . .

  But then it was quieter.

  And then it was gone.

  Please. Please come back.

  FOR WHATEVER REASON—PROBABLY SOME MOVEMENT of the ship—Arnie and Phil both woke up at almost exactly the same time. This meant that they saw, simultaneously, that the Extravaganza of the Seas was heading directly toward a big wall, behind which was a major building.

  And so Phil and Arnie, without saying a word, decided, simultaneously, that it would be a good idea to turn the wheel, which they were both still gripping.

  And this was when a miracle occurred, a miracle that, experts later agreed, definitely prevented a much more serious loss of property, and almost certainly saved some lives.

  Arnie and Phil, without saying a word, both turned the wheel the same way.

  TED DID NOT SEE THE ISLAND UNTIL HE DROVE the boat into it. This was because Ted had become fascinated by the compass, staring intently at the E, for east, and wondering how it worked, how it knew. He understood magnetism was involved, magnetic rays from the north pole, and somehow the compass was picking them up. But how? To him, the compass looked like a plastic ball, floating in liquid; how could a thing like that pick up rays from a pole thousands of miles away? And what happened when the north pole ran out of rays? Would compasses stop working?

  Ted wanted to ask somebody about this, but Jock was asleep, and Johnny was in some kind of microphone-click-induced trance. So Ted was left alone to ponder the issue of world magnetism depletion, which was why he failed to notice the island until the boat ran aground, shuddering as it plowed forward a few yards in the soft sand, then stopped. Incredibly, Ted had the presence of mind to shut down the engines. Then he turned to Johnny and the now-awake Jock and Tina.

  “We’re here,” he said.

  Dawn was breaking now, and they saw that they had come aground on a wide, white beach, deserted as far as they could see. Beyond the beach they saw brown, scrubby vegetation, but no trees, no cars, no buildings, no people.

  “This isn’t Miami,” Johnny observed.

  “Well,” said Ted, “at least it’s not the ocean.”

  Everybody agreed on that.

  “Maybe there’s a road up there,” said Jock. “I could go look.”

  “I’m going with you,” said Tina. “I don’t want to stay here with the dead guys.”

  “Oh man,” said Johnny, who had forgotten about the dead guys. So had Ted. Pretty quickly, they agreed that they would all go look for the road.

  “What about the other stuff?” said Jock. “There’s two bags full of money downstairs, and a whole lotta pot.”

  Everybody looked at everybody.

  “All that shit belongs to somebody,” Johnny pointed out.

  “True,” said Tina, who, as a croupier, had more experience with financial and legal matters than the other three combined. “But whoever it belongs to is probably dead.”

  Everybody looked at everybody some more.

  “OK, then,” said Ted.

  Twenty-eight

  WALLY HAD GIVEN UP ON TRYING TO GET FAY TO open her eyes. She hadn’t spoken in quite a while now; she hadn’t even moaned recently. Wally was trying to concentrate on keeping her head up, but he was very tired himself now, and very cold, and Jesus he was thirsty. And although he fought against thinking it, it was beginning to creep into the corners of his mind, the thought that it would be so much easier, so much more pleasant if this just ended, whatever way it had to end.

  As hopelessness and surrender inexorably took possession of Wally’s soul, he thought about his mom, wondered why he’d always acted so annoyed at her, a lonely woman who loved her boy, who just wanted to make her boy some waffles. When he’d left for the ship last night, a million years ago, she’d tried to give him her umbrella, which was purple, and he’d brushed it away, saying Mom for God’s sake it’s purple, and she’d said yes but it would keep him from getting wet out there, if he got wet he might catch cold, and he’d said Mom for God’s sake I’m not a baby, and he’d barged out the door, ashamed to be a man living with his mom, without saying good-bye. He hadn’t even said good-bye.

  And now Wally was weeping, for himself, and his mom, and Fay, and her mom, and her little baby girl who liked to play Snow White, and now Wally’s weeping had turned to sobbing, and now he hoped that Fay wouldn’t wake up, wouldn’t see him like this, and he tried to stop but it just got worse, Wally bawling until snot dripped from his nose, bawling so hard that he could not see straight, bawling so hard that he did not hear the noise until it was coming from right there above him, the noise from the big engine of the big helicopter with the man leaning out the side doorway, the loudspeaker saying something, something that Wally couldn’t make out. But he knew it had to be good news.

  Epilogue

  IN THE WEEKS THAT FOLLOWED, TWO STORIES dominated the news.

  One was the aftermath of Tropical Storm Hector. In terms of property loss, it was not that bad: some trees down; some power outages; flooding in the areas that always get flooded.

  What made Hector newsworthy was the loss of life, for what was a minor storm: a total of nine deaths. Incredibly, all nine of these were employees of Channel Nine News—four reporter-cameraman teams and one helicopter pilot, all of whom were killed in a freakish cause-and-effect chain of accidents. One of the accidents also injured an ambulance driver, but he was expected to recover.

  Ironically, the report that set off this chain reaction—that a boy was electrocuted playing in water near downed power lines—turned out to be incorrect. The boy had in fact slipped, hit his head on a fire hydrant, and been knocked out. He soon regained consciousness and was released after treatment.

  The story of the tragic deaths of these nine courageous journalists was to dominate Channel Nine’s programming for almost two full weeks. There was the extensive live coverage of the funerals, of course, but there were also numerous special reports, and a major three-hour tribute to what the station called the Fallen NewsPlex Nine, which featured an elaborately remixed and overdubbed version of Elton John’s “Candle in the Wind,” which resulted in a lawsuit filed by lawy
ers for Mr. John, who pointed out that their client had never sung any verses involving a helicopter.

  As a result of its coverage of this story, Channel Nine News won six TV-news awards, four of them for graphics.

  The other major story, which soon became much bigger than Hector, and which produced surprising twists and wrinkles almost daily, was the saga of the casino cruise ship Extravaganza of the Seas.

  At first it seemed simple enough, although certainly dramatic: Somehow, perhaps because of the bad weather, the ship had gone far off course; at dawn, it crashed into the seawall at the historic and posh Breakers Hotel in Palm Beach. The ship was badly damaged, but fortunately it hit the wall at enough of an angle that it ground slowly to a stop without the violence of a head-on collision, so none of the passengers were seriously injured (although ultimately more than three hundred lawsuits were filed).

  It soon became clear that some strange things had been happening aboard the Extravaganza. For one thing, the captain, Edward Smith, had been shot in what appeared to be some kind of hijack attempt. Smith was close to death when rescue workers got to him on the bridge, but he apparently was going to pull through. He told police that he had no idea who the men were who shot him, or why.

  The story got weirder. With the captain down, the ship’s helm had apparently been taken over by two retired men, Arnold Pullman, 83, and Phil Hoffman, 81, who had somehow, with no nautical training, brought it back to land.

  But the real attention-getter was the gory tableau found on a platform at the stern of the ship, where some kind of gunfight had broken out. Five men were found, all apparently shot to death: Henry Wilde, the ship’s first officer; four members of the ship’s crew; Manny Arquero, the casino pit boss; and a William Holman, who police identified as a career criminal, and whose presence on the ship was not explained. Who had shot these men, and why, and what this had to do with the shooting of the captain, was not immediately clear; police said apparently nobody had attempted to rob the casino, or the passengers.

  Adding to the mystery was the fact that the owner of the Extravaganza, multimillionaire Miami entrepreneur Bobby Kemp, was missing, and a nationwide police man-hunt had so far failed to turn him up.

  The media were in a frenzy: What had happened aboard the Ship of Death? There were rumors that drug trafficking might have been involved, perhaps some kind of rendezvous at sea. The Extravaganza’s dinghy was missing, but that mystery was solved when the Coast Guard found the wreckage of an inflatable boat, entangled with two Extravaganza life preservers, drifting in the Gulf Stream.

  That was not all they found out there, as reported in the next day’s Miami Herald: • They found the floating body of a man, John “Kaz” Kazarstsky, who had been shot three times. Kazarstsky, who had an extensive criminal record, was identified by several passengers who said they had definitely seen him aboard the Extravaganza that night. But why he’d been there, and who shot him, was not clear.

  • They found an upside-down Cigarette boat, with eight men clinging to it, every single one of whom had long been suspected by the feds of being connected with a powerful Miami-based criminal organization involved in, among other things, narcotics smuggling. Incredibly, the boat they were clinging to contained a large quantity of cocaine, which made this an extremely easy bust. Even more incredibly, one of the men clinging to the boat was Louis Tarant, who was believed by the feds to be a very high official in this organization, much too smart to get personally involved in a delivery operation. Everybody assumed that the Cigarette boat had something to do with what happened on the Extravaganza, but what? Tarant and his men weren’t talking. The only thing that was definite was that they were all going to jail for quite a while.

  • Finally, the Coast Guard found, clinging to a single life preserver, two very lucky people who had been working on the Extravaganza, a musician named Wally Hartley, and a woman named Fay Benton, who was at first thought to be a cocktail waitress, but who was later identified as a Coast Guard agent working undercover on the ship. Hartley was basically OK; Benton was suffering from a head wound and exposure, but responded to treatment.

  When Fay was able to talk, she gave a detailed report to her superiors. There was a lot she didn’t know, but she was able to describe Tark and his boat.

  This touched off a massive search, and within hours a boat matching that description was found on a deserted beach on a small, sparsely populated island in the Bahamas. The boat contained a duffel bag filled with cocaine, and something else that made this very big news: the bullet-ridden bodies of two men, one of whom was Bobby Kemp, who, in yet another bizarre twist to this story, was wearing the costume of Conrad Conch.

  The media were insane now, reporters from around the world swarming all over the story, reporting everything they heard, most of it not remotely true. Many investigations were launched at many levels; many leads were followed; many theories were devised and endlessly speculated upon. Books were written, and there were two made-for-TV movies.

  But in the end, it remained mostly a mystery. Nobody ever did figure out what really happened out there on the Extravaganza, because the only person who had known it all was Tark, and his bones were somewhere on the bottom of the Atlantic, with Frank’s bones still strangling them. In the end, the authorities stopped actively investigating the Extravaganza case, because newer cases came up, and besides, everybody who got killed out there was a scumbag.

  LOU TARANT KNEW THAT THERE WAS A LOT OF product unaccounted for, and a lot of money, a lot of money. He knew—he knew—that it was out there, somewhere. But where? Where was the money? He thought about it day and night, in prison. Day and night. It made him fucking crazy.

  JOHNNY AND THE CONTUSIONS NEVER PLAYED another gig, at least not as Johnny and the Contusions.

  Right after the Extravaganza crash, Ted, Jock, Johnny, and Tina each called friends or relatives, saying they were safe in the Bahamas, and they couldn’t talk about how they got there, but they would be back soon. They returned to Miami a week later, by private plane, and immediately instituted massive upgrades to their lifestyles—new cars, new clothes, luxury condos.

  This is the kind of bandmates Ted, Johnny, and Jock were: They offered to give Wally a full share of the money. This is how Wally had changed: He said no. He knew where the money had come from, and he knew that he could have the money, or he could have Fay. And he picked Fay.

  Ted, Johnny, and Jock thought Wally was insane. They were thrilled to be rich. They invested their fortune in, among other things, a South Beach nightclub called Scrotum, the South Florida franchise of a cockfighting league, Enron, and a series of truly astounding parties. They were broke within two years, and went back to gigging, under the name “The Cosines” (don’t ask). Sometimes they wished they’d been a little more conservative with their money. But man, did they have some stories.

  TINA USED HER SHARE OF THE MONEY TO BUY A health-food store, which she ran with great efficiency, but which got surprisingly little repeat business.

  ARNIE AND PHIL WERE FAMOUS AT FIRST, THE two old guys who drove the Ship of Death into the hotel. For a while, they were all over the media, culminating in an appearance on Letterman, where they got into an argument when Arnie told Letterman that he would have got the ship back to Miami no problem if Phil had just let go of the damn wheel.

  Eventually, the public interest in the Extravaganza case died down, and Arnie and Phil returned to their routine at the Beaux Arts Senior Living Center. Eight months after their night on the ship, while they were watching a baseball game on TV, Phil, having just disagreed strongly with Arnie about the umpire’s call on a pickoff attempt, died.

  Arnie buried his friend, and for a while stayed mainly in his room. After a few months, he started to see Mrs. Krugerman. At first, it was on a strictly pinochle basis, but in time it became more, and finally they got married at a nice ceremony, highlighted by Mrs. Bendocker singing a rendition of “Wind Beneath My Wings” that sent two guests to the hospital.


  Arnie was reasonably happy, back in married life. But once a year, he went, alone, to the cemetery, where he placed on Phil’s grave a chip from the Extravaganza casino, one of the chips he’d had in his pocket that night.

  EDDIE SMITH RECOVERED SLOWLY, BUT HE RECOVERED. He didn’t want to go back to sea, which was just as well, because nobody wanted to hire him to run a ship anyway. But he was more than content to stay on land with Luz and Alejandro, and eventually he got into a nice, successful little business, cleaning pools with his partner, retired Extravaganza bartender Joe Sarmino.

  MARA PURVIS DECIDED SHE WAS GOING TO DO something more meaningful with her life than be a cocktail waitress. She enrolled in community college, earned a degree in business administration, and got a job at a big South Florida bank. She worked in Human Resources, where her primary responsibility was to help employees fill out claims for medical benefits. In seven months, she quit and went back to being a cocktail waitress.

  FAY AND WALLY GOT MARRIED. YOU FIGURED that out a long time ago. They quickly had two more kids, both girls, to go with Estelle. Fay continued her career in the Coast Guard, and did very well, despite almost daily warnings from her mother about the deadly dangers involved. Wally gave guitar lessons part-time. But mainly he stayed home and raised the girls. He loved being a parent, and he discovered he was really good at it. He sang songs to his kids, made up games for them, packed their lunches, told them bedtime stories. The girls loved it, having a stay-at-home dad. One of their favorite things was this: Almost every morning, when their mom had left to go arrest bad people, their dad would take them over to Grandma’s house. She made the best waffles.