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.
TWENTY-THREE
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 price from the estate of a murdered amphetamine dealer. Chelsea was further buoyed by the news that NEC weatherman 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.