“Come on!” Wiley’s brow furrowed. “You don’t know?”
Somewhere in the brush an animal scampered, emitting a high-pitched trill. Keyes glanced toward the darkness apprehensively.
“Relax,” Wiley said. “Just a raccoon. My constituency, Brian. Along with the eagles, the opossums, the otters, the snakes, even the buzzards. All of this belongs to them, and more. Every goddamn acre, from here west to Miami Beach and north to the big lake, belongs to them. It got stolen away, and what we’re going to do … “ Wiley made a fist and shook it. “ … is get it back.”
Keyes thought: A cross between Dr. Dolittle and Che Guevara. Wait’ll I tell Cab Mulcahy.
“Don’t give me that you-poor-sick-boy look,” Wiley said. “I’m just fine, couldn’t be better. You’re the one who’s got a problem, Brian. A big goddamn problem, I might add. Before this is over you’re gonna wish you were back at the Sun, covering the bozos in the mayor’s race.”
Keyes said, “I’ll take some of that tea now.”
He was trying to slow Wiley down, keep him from getting too wound up. Keyes remembered what Wiley could be like on one of his fast burns, all reckless fury.
Wiley held the hot mug to Keyes’s lips and let him sip.
“Brian,” he said giddily. “We’re gonna empty out this entire state. Give it back to Tom and his folks. Give it back to the bloody raccoons. Imagine: all the condos, the cheesy hotels, the trailer parks, the motor courts, the town houses, fucking Disney World—a ghost town, old pal. All the morons who thundered into Florida the past thirty years and made such a mess are gonna thunder right out again … the ones who don’t die in the stampede.”
Skip Wiley’s brown eyes were steady and intense; he was perfectly serious. Brian Keyes wondered if he was face to face with raw insanity.
“How are you going to accomplish this miracle?” he asked.
“Publicity, old pal. Bad publicity.” Wiley cackled. “It’s my specialty, remember? We’re going to take all the postcard puffery and jam it in reverse. The swaying palms, the murmuring surf, the tropical sun—from now on, Transylvania South.”
A postcard to end all postcards, Keyes thought.
“When I say bad publicity,” Wiley went on, “search the extreme limits of your imagination. Think back to some of the planet’s great disasters—the bubonic plague, Pompeii, Hiroshima. Imagine being tourism director for the city of Hiroshima in 1946! What would you do, Brian? Or think modern times: try to sell time-shares in West Beirut! Christ, that’s a tall order, but it’s nothing compared to what it’s going to be like down here when we’re finished, me and the guys. By the time we’re through, old pal, Marge and Fred and the kids will vacation in the fucking Arctic tundra before they’ll set foot on Miami Beach.”
Wiley was pacing before the fire, his voice booming through the copse. Viceroy Wilson sat impassively on a tree stump, Kleenexing the lenses of his sunglasses. Jesus Bernal swatted at gnats and moved herky-jerky in the firelight, tossing his knife at a tree. Tommy Tigertail was out there somewhere, but Brian Keyes couldn’t see him.
“Did you kill Sparky Harper?” Keyes asked Skip Wiley.
“Ho-ho-ho.”
The suntan oil, the rubber alligator, the tacky Hawaiian shirt. Keyes thought: Who else but Wiley?
“And Ted Bellamy, the Shriner?”
“I’m afraid he’s dead,” Wiley said, tossing a stick in the fire.
“What about the girl at the Seaquarium?” Keyes asked.
“Brian, settle down. We’re simply trying to establish credibility. Nobody took us seriously after the Harper episode. Jesus, amigo, get my briefcase.”
“My God, Skip, you’re talking about murder! Three innocent people—four, if you count Ernesto Cabal. You set him up, didn’t you?”
“It was Viceroy’s idea, to get rid of the car,” Wiley acknowledged. “He was your client, I know, and I’m sorry he killed himself. By the way, did you really stab his lawyer in the tongue with a shrimp fork? That was wonderful, Brian, I was so goddamn proud when I heard about it. Made me think you must’ve learned something, all that time sitting next to me. For what it’s worth, we had planned to spring little Ernesto when the time was right.”