The chairman stood up and said with a smile, “I think that’s all for now.” But he was completely ignored by everyone, including Al Garcia.
“The white male suspect paid three hundred dollars cash for use of the advertising streamer,” Garcia said.
“Could that man have been El Fuego?” a reporter asked.
“It’s possible, yeah.”
“Did he give a name at the airport?”
“Yes, he did,” Garcia said.
Then all at once, like a flock of crows: ‘What?”
Garcia glanced over at the police chief. The chief shrugged. The Orange Bowl chairman waved a chubby hand, trying to get somebody’s attention.
“The suspect did use a name at the airport,” Garcia said, “but we believe it was an alias.”
“What was it?”
“In fact, we’re ninety-nine percent sure it was an alias,” the detective said, fading from the microphone.
“What was it, Al? What?”
“Well,” Garcia said, “the name the suspect gave was Hugo. Victor Hugo.”
There was a lull in the questioning while the reporters explained to each other who Victor Hugo was.
“What about motive?” somebody shouted finally.
“That’s easy,” Garcia replied. “They attacked the ocean liner for the same reason they marinated Sparky Harper in Coppertone. Publicity.” He smiled with amusement at all the busy notebooks. “Looks to me like they got exactly what they wanted.”
The press conference had taken a perilous turn, and the Orange Bowl chairman could no longer contain his rising panic. Squeezing to the podium, he discreetly placed a stubby hand between Garcia’s shoulder blades and guided the detective to the nearest available chair. Then the Orange Bowl man boldly seized the neck of the microphone himself. “Ladies and gentlemen,” he said cordially, “wouldn’t you rather hear the mayor’s firsthand account of his escape from the Nordic Princess?”
Brian Keyes watched the press conference on a television in Kara Lynn Shivers’ bedroom. Her father was out playing golf and her mother was eating quiche with the Junior League.
Kara Lynn was curled up on the bed in bikini panties and a lemon T-shirt. Keyes wore cutoffs. He squeezed her hand as they listened to Al Garcia talking to the reporters. When the mayor got up and started to tell about the helicopter attack, Keyes punched the remote control and switched to a basketball game.
For a long time he didn’t say anything, just stared at the TV screen. Kara Lynn put her arms around him and kissed him on the neck.
“It’s really over,” she whispered.
“I don’t know,” Keyes said distantly. He kept visualizing that crackpot Wiley, strolling into the Opa-locka Airport with his bush hat and two hundred bags of wild snakes. Keyes tried to imagine the scene later, aboard the Huey, Wiley and his portable record player; Wiley trying to explain Exodus to Viceroy Wilson.
“The only one left is that Cuban,” Kara Lynn said.
“Maybe.” Keyes tried to think of Skip Wiley as dead and could not. The obstacle was not grief; it was plain disbelief. It was not beyond Wiley to have rented an aged and dangerously unreliable helicopter, or to have hired an inept pilot. What was uncharacteristic was for Wiley to have placed himself so squarely in jeopardy. All through December he had kept a safe distance from the actual terrorism, sending Wilson or Bernal or the Seminole to take the big risks. Why the sudden bravery? Keyes wondered. And what a convenient way to die. He had felt a little guilty that he could summon so little sadness for his old friend—but then again, maybe it was too soon for mourning.
“The late Victor Hugo,” Keyes mused. Wiley must have known how his friends would smile at that one; he was forever edifying his own legend.
“Les Miserables,” Kara Lynn said. “Sounds like Mr. Fuego had a sense of humor.”
“Sick,” Keyes said. “Sick, sick, sick.” Wiley would be better off dead, he thought, before the incredible dismal truth were known. With Wiley dead, Kara Lynn would be safe. So would the newspaper; Cab Mulcahy could return to the world of honest journalism. It would be better for almost everybody if Wiley were lost at sea, everybody except Jenna—Jenna was another issue. She hadn’t been aboard that helicopter. Keyes knew it instinctively. Jenna’s talent was creating catastrophes, then avoiding them.