by Carl Hiaasen
“Hey, they even got a gorilla,” said Danny Pogue, “name of Brutus. From the picture it looks like an African silver-back.”
“Fascinating,” Bud Schwartz said. He’d had about enough of animal lore. Lately Danny Pogue had been spending too many hours watching wildlife documentaries on the Discovery Channel. It was all he talked about, he and Molly, and it was driving Bud Schwartz up the wall. One night, instead of the Cubs game, he had to sit through ninety minutes of goddamn hummingbirds. To Bud Schwartz they resembled moths with beaks; he got dizzy watching the damn things, even the slow-motion parts. Danny Pogue, on the other hand, had been enthralled. The fact that hummingbirds also inhabited North Key Largo heightened his sense of mission against Francis X. Kingsbury.
As they set out for the Baboon Tree, Danny Pogue said, “Why’d you pick this place, Bud?”
“’Cause it’s out in public. That’s how you do these things, extortions.”
“Are you sure?”
The visitor paths through Monkey Mountain were enclosed by chicken wire, giving the effect that it was the humans who were encaged while the wild beasts roamed free. Bud Schwartz was uncomfortable with this arrangement. Above his head, screeching monkeys loped along the mesh, begging for peanuts and crackers that Bud Schwartz had neglected to purchase at the concession stand. The impatient animals—howlers, gibbons, rhesus and spider monkeys—got angrier by the second. They bared yellow teeth and spit maliciously and shook the chicken wire. When Danny Pogue reached up to give one of them a shiny dime, it defecated in his hair.
“You happy now?” said Bud Schwartz.
“Damn, I can’t believe it.” Danny Pogue stopped to stick his head under a water fountain. “Don’t they ever feed these goddamn things?” he said.
Above them, the gang of furry, shrieking, incontinent beggars had swollen to three dozen. Bud Schwartz and Danny Pogue shielded their heads and jogged the rest of the way to the Baboon Tree, an ancient ficus in the hub of a small plaza. Bud Schwartz was relieved to escape the yammering din and the rain of monkey feces. With a sigh he sat next to a Japanese family on a concrete bench. A moat of filmy brown water separated them from the bustling baboon colony in the big tree.
Danny Pogue said: “Know why they don’t let the other monkeys together with the baboons?”
“Why not?”
“Because the baboons’d eat ’em.”
“What a loss that would be.”
“Let’s go see Brutus.”
“Danny, we’re here on business. Now shut the fuck up, if you don’t mind.”
The Japanese husband apparently understood at least one word of English, because he gave Bud Schwartz a sharp look. The Japanese wife, who hadn’t heard the profane remark, signaled that she would like a photograph of the whole family in front of the moat. Bud Schwartz motioned that his partner would do the honors; Danny Pogue had stolen many Nikons, but he’d never gotten a chance to use one. He arranged the Japanese in a neat row according to height, and snapped several pictures. In the background were many wild-eyed baboons, including a young male gleefully abusing itself.
Bud Schwartz was glad the children weren’t watching. After the Japanese had moved on, Danny Pogue said: “That was two hundred bucks right there, a Nikon with autofocus. I got a guy in Carol City fences nothing but cameras.”
“I told you,” said Bud Schwartz, “we’re through with that. We got a new career.” He didn’t sound as confident as he would’ve liked. Where the hell was Kingsbury?
Danny Pogue joined him on the concrete bench. “So how much is he gonna bring?”
“Fifty is what I told him.” Bud Schwartz couldn’t get the tremor out of his voice. “Fifty thousand, if he ever shows up.”
In the parking lot, Pedro Luz and Churrito got into a heated discussion about bringing the IV rack. Churrito prevailed on the grounds that it would attract too much attention.
The first thing they noticed about Monkey Mountain was the stink, which Churrito likened to that of a mass grave. Next came the insistent clamor of the creatures themselves, clinging to the chicken wire and extending miniature brown hands in hopes of food. Churrito lit up a Marlboro and handed it to a rhesus, who took a sniff and hurled it back at him. Pedro Luz didn’t think it was the least bit funny; he was sinking into one of his spells—every heartbeat sent cymbals crashing against his brainpan. An act of irrational violence was needed to calm the mood. It was fortunate, then, that the monkeys were safely on the other side of the chicken wire. Every time one appeared on the mesh over his head, Pedro Luz would jump up and smash at it savagely with his knuckles. This exercise was repeated every few seconds, all the way to the Baboon Tree.
The burglars—and it had to be them, greasy-looking rednecks—were sitting on a bench. Nobody else was around.
Pedro Luz whispered to Churrito: “Remember to get their car keys. They left the damn files in the car.”
“What if they dint?”
“They did. Now be quiet.”
Danny Pogue wasn’t paying attention. He was talking about a TV program that showed a male baboon killing a zebra, that’s how strong they were. A monkey that could kill something as big as a horse! Bud Schwartz was tuned out entirely; he was sizing up the two new men. The tall one, God Almighty, he was trouble. Built like a grizzly but that wasn’t the worst of it; the worst was the eyes. Bud Schwartz could spot a doper two miles away; this guy was buzzing like a yellowjacket. The other one was no prize, dull-eyed and cold, but at least he was of normal dimensions. What caught Bud Schwartz’s eye was the Cordovan briefcase that the smaller man was carrying.
“Get ready,” he said to Danny Pogue.
“But that ain’t Kingsbury.”
“You don’t miss a trick.”
“Bud, I don’t like this.”
“Really? I’m having the time of my life.” Bud Schwartz stood up and approached the two strangers. “Where’s the old man?”
“Where’s the files?” asked Pedro Luz.
“Where’s the money?”
Churrito held up the briefcase. It was plainly stuffed with something, possibly fifty thousand in cash.
“Now,” said Pedro Luz, “where’s the damn files?”
“We give ’em to the old man and nobody else.”
Pedro Luz checked over both shoulders to make sure there were no tourists around. In the same motion his right hand casually fished into the waistband of his trousers for the Colt. Before he could get to it, something dug into his right ear. It was another gun. A burglar with a gun! Pedro Luz was consumed with fury.
Bud Schwartz said, “Don’t move.” The words fluttered out. Danny Pogue gaped painfully.
Churrito laughed. “Good work,” he said to Pedro Luz. “Excellent.”
“I’m gonna be straight about this,” said Bud Schwartz, “I don’t know shit about guns.”
The veins in Pedro Luz’s neck throbbed like a tangle of snakes. He was seething, percolating in hormones, waiting for the moment. The gun barrel cut into his earlobe but he didn’t feel a thing. Trying not to snarl, he said, “Don’t push it, chico.”
“I ain’t kidding,” Bud Schwartz said in a voice so high he didn’t recognize it as his own. “You even fart, I may blow your brains out. Explain that to your friend.”
Churrito seemed indifferent to the idea. He shrugged and handed the briefcase to Danny Pogue.
“Open it,” Bud Schwartz told him.
Again Pedro Luz asked, “Where are the files?” He anticipated that the burglars would soon be unable to answer the question, since he intended to kill them. And possibly Churrito while he was in the mood.
Even the baboons sensed trouble, for they had fallen silent in the boughs of the ficus. Danny Pogue opened the Cordovan briefcase and showed Bud Schwartz what was inside: sanitary napkins.
“Too bad,” said Bud Schwartz. And it was too bad. He had no clue what to do next. Danny Pogue took one of the maxi-pads out of the briefcase and examined it, as if searching for insight.
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br /> Pedro Luz’s steroid-marinated glands were starting to cook. Infused with the strength of a thousand warriors, he announced that he wouldn’t let a mere bullet spoil Mr. Kingsbury’s plan. He told Bud Schwartz to go ahead and fire, and went so far as to reach up and seize the burglar’s arm.
As they struggled, Pedro Luz said, “Shoot me, you pussy! Shoot me now!”
Out of the corner of his eye, Bud Schwartz spotted Danny Pogue running away in the general direction of the gorilla compound—moving impressively for someone fresh off crutches.
Just as Pedro Luz was preparing to snap Bud Schwartz’s arm like a matchstick, Mrs. Kingsbury’s chrome-plated pistol shook loose from the burglar’s fingers and flew over the moat. The gun landed in a pile of dead leaves at the foot of the ficus tree, where it was retrieved by a laconic baboon with vermilion buttocks. Bud Schwartz wasn’t paying attention, what with Pedro Luz hurling him to the ground and kneeling on his neck and trying to twist his head off. Meanwhile the other man was going through Bud Schwartz’s trousers in search of the car keys.
When Bud Schwartz tried to shout for help, Pedro Luz slapped a large moist hand over his mouth. It was then that Bud Schwartz spotted the bandaged nub of the right index finger, and assimilated in his dying deoxygenated consciousness the probability that this was the same goon who had brutalized Molly McNamara. The burglar decided, in the hastening gray twilight behind his eyeballs, that the indignity of being found mugged and dead in a monkey park might be mitigated by a final courageous deed, such as disfiguring a murderous steroid freak—which Bud Schwartz attempted to do by sucking Pedro Luz’s hand into his jaws and chomping down with heedless ferocity.
The wailing of Pedro Luz brought the baboon colony to life, and a hellish chorus enveloped the three men as they fought on the ground. A gunshot was heard, and the monkeys scattered adroitly to the highest branches of the graceful old tree.
Pedro Luz rolled off Bud Schwartz and groped with his bloody paw for the Colt. It was still in his waistband. Only two things prevented him from shooting the burglar: the sight of fifty chattering children skipping toward him down the monkey trail, and the sight of Churrito lying dead with a grape-sized purple hole beneath his left eye.
Pedro Luz pushed himself to his feet, stepped over the body and ran. Bud Schwartz did the same—much more slowly and in the opposite direction—but not before pausing to contemplate the visage of the dead Nicaraguan. Judging by the ironic expression on Churrito’s face, he knew exactly what had happened to him.
Now the killer was halfway up the ficus tree, barking and slobbering and shaking the branches. Mrs. Kingsbury’s gun glinted harmlessly in the brackish shallows, where the startled baboon had dropped it.
The oxygen returning to Bud Schwartz’s head brought a chilling notion that maybe the monkey had been aiming the damn thing. Maybe he’d even done it before. Stranger things had occurred in Miami.
Bud Schwartz lifted the keys to the Cutlass from the dead man’s hand and jogged away just as Miss Juanita Pedrosa’s kindergarten class marched into the plaza.
23
Francis X. Kingsbury was on the thirteenth green at the Ocean Reef Club when Charles Chelsea caught up with him and related the problem.
“Holy piss,” said Kingsbury as Jake Harp was about to putt. “If it’s not one thing, it’s—hell, you deal with it, Charlie. Isn’t that what I pay you for, to deal with this shit?”
Jake Harp pushed the putt to the right. He looked up stonily and said, “Thank you both very much.”
“Sorry,” Chelsea said. “We’ve got a little emergency here.”
Kingsbury said, “If you’re gonna be a crybaby, Jake, then do it over. Take another putt. And you, Charlie, what emergency? This is nothing, a goddamn prank.”
Charles Chelsea suggested that it was considerably more serious than a prank. “Every television station in South Florida received a copy, Mr. Kingsbury. Plus the Herald and the New York Times. We’ll be getting calls all day, I expect.”
He followed Kingsbury and Jake Harp to the fourteenth tee. “The reason I say it’s serious, we’ve got less than a week until the Summerfest Jubilee.” It was set for August 6, the day Kingsbury had rescheduled the arrival of the phony five-millionth visitor to the Amazing Kingdom of Thrills. The postponement caused by the truck accident had been a blessing in one way—it had given Charles Chelsea time to scout for a flashy new giveaway car. The “classic” Corvair had been junked in favor of a jet-black 300-Z, which had been purchased at bargain prices from the estate of a murdered amphetamine dealer. Chelsea was further buoyed by the news that NBC weather-man Willard Scott had tentatively agreed to do a live broadcast from the Kingdom on Jubilee morning, as long as Risk Management cleared it with the network.
Overall, the publicity chief had been feeling fairly positive about Summerfest until some worm from the Herald called up to bust his hump about the press release.
What press release? Chelsea had asked.
The one about hepatitis, said the guy from the newspaper. The hepatitis epidemic among Uncle Ely’s Elves.
In his smoothest, most controlled tone, Chelsea had asked the newspaper guy to please fax him a copy. The sight of it creeping off the machine had sent a prickle down the ridge of his spine.
As Jake Harp prepared to tee off, Chelsea showed the press release to Francis X. Kingsbury and said, “It’s ours.”
“What the hell you—I don’t get it. Ours?”
“Meaning it’s the real thing. The stationery is authentic.”
Kingsbury frowned at the letterhead. “Jesus Christ, then we got some kinda mole. That what you’re saying? Somebody on the inside trying to screw with our plans?”
“Not necessarily,” Chelsea said.
Jake Harp hooked his drive into a fairway bunker. He said, “Don’t you boys know when to shut up.”
This time Charles Chelsea didn’t bother to apologize. He itched to remind Jake Harp that dead silence hadn’t helped him one bit in the ’78 Masters, when he’d four-putted the third hole at Augusta and let Nicklaus, Floyd, everybody and their mothers blow right past him.
Kingsbury said, “Probably it’s some bastard from Disney. A ringer, hell, I should’ve known. Somebody they sent just to screw me up for the summer.”
“It’s nobody on the inside,” said Chelsea. “It wasn’t done on one of our typewriters.”
“Who then? I mean, why in the name of fuck?”
Jack Harp marveled at the inventive construction of Kingsbury’s profanity. He imagined how fine it would feel to take a two-iron and pulverize the man’s skull into melon rind. Instead he said, “You’re up, Frank.”
Charles Chelsea stood back while Kingsbury took a practice swing. It was not a thing of beauty. From the safety of the cart path, Chelsea said, “I think it’s Joe Winder. The fellow we fired last week. The one we’ve had some trouble with.”
“What makes you so sure—wait, Christ, didn’t he used to work for The Rat?”
“Yes, briefly. Anyway, there’s some stationery missing from Publicity. I thought you ought to know.”
“How much?”
“Two full boxes,” Chelsea replied. Enough to do one fake press release every day for about three years. Or one hundred a day until the Summerfest Jubilee.
Kingsbury knocked his drive down the left side of the fairway and grunted in approval. He plopped his butt in the golf cart and said to Chelsea: “Let me see it one more time.”
Chelsea gave him the paper and climbed on the back of the cart, wedging himself between the two golf bags. He wondered if this was how the Secret Service rode when the President was playing.
Pointing over Kingsbury’s shoulder, Chelsea said, “It’s definitely Winder’s style. I recognize some of the dry touches.” The press release said:
Medical authorities at the Amazing Kingdom of Thrills announced today that the outbreak of viral hepatitis that struck the popular theme park this week is “practically under control.”
V
isitors to the Amazing Kingdom are no longer in immediate danger of infection, according to specialists who flew in from the National Centers for Disease Control in Atlanta. So far, five cases of hepatitis have been positively diagnosed. All the victims were actors who portray Uncle Ely’s Elves, a troupe of mischievous trolls who frolic and dance in daily performances throughout the park.
Experts say there is no reason to suspect that the highly contagious disease is being transmitted in the food and beverages being served at the Amazing Kingdom. A more likely source is the vending machine located in a dressing room often used by Uncle Ely’s Elves and several other performers.
Charles Chelsea, vice president in charge of publicity, said: “We know that the candy machine down there hadn’t been serviced for about seven months. There are serious questions regarding the freshness and edibility of some of the chocolate products, as well as the breath mints. All items have been removed from the machine and are presently being tested for contamination.”
Although no cases of hepatitis have been reported among visitors to the Amazing Kingdom, Monroe County health officials advise testing for anyone who has had recent contact with any of Uncle Ely’s Elves—or food products handled by the elves. This advisory applies to all persons who might have posed for photographs or danced with one of the little people during the Nightly Pageant of Tropics.
Moe Strickland, the veteran character actor who popularized the role of Uncle Ely, said the stricken performers are resting quietly at Baptist Hospital in Miami, and are expected to recover. He added, “I’m worried about what the kids will think when they don’t see us around the park for a few weeks. I guess we’ll have to tell them that Uncle Ely took the elves on a summer vacation to Ireland, or wherever it is that elves go.”
Chelsea said there are no plans to close the Amazing Kingdom to the public. “This was a freakish incident, and we are confident that the worst is over,” he said. “From now on, we get back to the business of having fun.”
Beginning tonight, the Amazing Kingdom of Thrills will present a multi-media tribute to Vance and Violet, the last surviving blue-tongued mango voles. The gentle animals were stolen from the park ten days ago in a daring daylight robbery, and later died tragically.