“But, Skip, there’s all kinds of clues. Wilson and the Cuban, they’re leaving a trail—”
“Fine, no problem. That we can survive. Besides, they’re secretly dying to be famous again. Me—I’ve got to work in the background right now. Too much planning to be done, juking here and there. I can’t have Metro Homicide sniffing after me; it plays hell with the creative process. See, if I’m exposed as El Fuego, I’ll lose my leverage with the troops. It’ll mean I’m not so shrewd, not so clever, not so irreplaceable. They’ll stop listening to me, Brian, and that’s big goddamn trouble. Some of the things these fellas want to do, some of the people they want to snuff! Lose me and you lose the voice of reason. Then it’s Bloodbath City, old pal, and that ain’t standard Wiley hyperbole. That’s a goddamn fact.”
Keyes studied his unraveled friend and thought of the Ida Kimmelman ceremony. Skip’s threat of a massacre seemed deadly serious.
Keyes said, “If you’ve got them so mesmerized, convince them to call it off.”
Wiley answered with a snort. “Never! The cause is just. The dream is pure.” He pointed a finger at Keyes. “It’s up to you and Cab and the others to end the violence. How? Accept the Nights of December as a legitimate terrorist cell. Give us a forum. Pass the message that we’re serious, that we’ll continue the campaign until the exodus is fully under way. Ha! Imagine: bumper-to-bumper from Key West to Jacksonville: U-Hauls, Winnebagos, Air streams, station wagons, moving vans, buses, eighteen-wheelers. All northbound!” Wiley sat up animatedly. “Brian, in the last hour we’ve been talking, 41.6 morons moved into the state of Florida. They are arriving at the rate of a thousand a day. One thousand each and every day! There is no place to put them! The land is shriveling beneath us, the water is poison, the air is rancid.” Wiley threw back his head. “Lord, such a simple equation. Nature’s trying to tell us it’s time to move on.”
“The last of the Malthusians,” Keyes said.
“Hell, Malthus only dreamed a nightmare like Interstate 95. He never had to drive the fucking thing.”
Keyes thought: He seems to have his mind made up. Maybe I’ll have to kill him after all. Certainly not now, not on a crowded beach in the afternoon. But maybe soon.
Wiley propped his fuzzy chin on his knuckles and grew silent. He watched the arrival of a gleaming cruise ship across the harbor. Its alabaster decks were lined with bright specks of tourists snapping pictures and flailing idiotic hellos toward the peddlers on the dock. Wiley looked quite amused. Brian Keyes wished he could penetrate his old friend’s twisted swamp of a brain; he felt more helpless than ever.
Wiley said: “I suppose you want to hear what’s next.”
“You bet.”
“It’s a real beaut.”
“Let’s have it.”
“Okay,” Wiley said. “We’re going to violate the most sacred virgin in all Miami.”
“Can you be a little more specific?”
“Fraid not, Brian. You’re a bright young man, you figure it out.”
“When you say violate, you mean rape.”
“No!” Wiley was indignant. “I can’t believe you’d think such a thing. All the years we’ve known each other—Christ, do I look like a rapist?”
Keyes didn’t answer because sometimes Skip Wiley did look like a rapist.
“The word ‘Violate’—”
“Dust off your dictionary, Ace. We’re going to desecrate an immaculate princess. That’s all the clues for you.”
Wiley dug into his jeans and came up with a silver traffic whistle, which he blew three times, loudly.
“What the hell is that?” Keyes asked, realizing that it was too late.
“Time for you to say good-bye to Goombay-land.”
Keyes caught sight of four starch-shirted Bahamian cops running down the beach, kicking up sand with their black boots, and waving batons.
“Oh shit,” Keyes muttered.
“Look at them move,” Wiley marveled. “Isn’t bribery wonderful?”
Keyes quickly reviewed his options. Physical resistance was out of the question; the policemen looked like four scowling black locomotives. Running also seemed futile—there was nowhere to go where he wouldn’t shine like a two-hundred-watt bulb. He considered plunging into the surf and swimming for freedom, but was dissuaded by the probability of being mortally gnawed by a bull shark, or mowed down by a ski boat. In the end, Keyes meekly presented himself to the Bahamian officers. The tropical sunshine seemed to evaporate as they encircled him.