Naked Came the Manatee (1996)

by Elmore Leonard

  Members of the crowd registered their scorn by hurling rocks, bottles, and ripe coconuts at Juan Carlos Reyes, who fled the stage at a dead run. He showed fair speed for a short-legged fellow, but the mob chasing him through Bayfront Park was fueled by outrage. When Reyes reached the seawall, he hesitated only briefly before diving into Biscayne Bay. The bearded head went with him.

  While Booger didn't know much, he did know where human idiots liked to run their speedboats. From traumatic experience he'd learned to remain submerged in the busiest lanes of the bay, especially the waters between Dodge Island and Bayfront Park.

  Thus Booger and his new female friend, having taken a prodigious breath, were safely coasting across the bottom when the yellow Donzi full of would-be playboys roared out of Bayside Marketplace. The boat swung south at the ridiculous speed of fifty-eight knots. At its helm was a seventeen-year-old trust fund troglodyte, culturally intoxicated by his first visit to Hooter's.

  Reflexively, Booger glanced upward at the approaching growl of the Donzi. Fifteen feet above him, haplessly flailing into the boat's path, was a man in a business suit. One of his hands clutched something round and mossy-looking, though it definitely wasn't a head of lettuce.

  The Booger of forty-eight hours before--the febrile, erratic Booger with Flipperian fantasies--might have been reminded of poor old Marion, might have shot upward to rescue this wallowing specimen from the deadly propellers that had claimed so many of Booger 's dearest manatee companions.

  But the new Booger knew better. The notion of playing hero never entered his unconvoluted brain, which at the moment was singularly focused on procreation. Thirteen hundred pounds of saucy sea cow nooky had paddled into Booger's life, and he was serene beyond distraction.

  So he dismissed the human commotion on the surface of the bay; lowered his shoe button eyes and swam onward, nudging and nuzzling his slippery new mate. Booger might have flinched slightly at the familiar thud of the impact above, the sickening whine of cavitating props, but he didn't look up a second time.

  Every mammal for himself.

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