Tourist Season

"There's been no ransom demand, has there?" he asked Je

"Not yet. Let's sit on the couch." Je

"If Skip wasn't kidnapped," she said, "then maybe Cab's right. Maybe he just went crazy and wandered off." She curled up on the couch. "I wish I had a fireplace."

"It's seventy-four degrees outside," Keyes said.

"What happened to my young romantic?"

Keyes smiled bashfully; God, she never let up. He fought to keep a proper tone to his voice. "Is there a possibility ... have you two been getting along?"

"Better than ever," Je

"Oh."

"Right there, where you're sitting."

"Sorry I asked."

Keyes kept waiting for Je

"You've got to find him, Brian. I don't want to get the police involved, and I don'twant a lot of publicity. It could ruin his career."

Or cinch it, Keyes mused. He asked, "Do you think he's gone insane?"

"I'm not sure I'd know the difference." Je

Je

Keyes asked, "Does he get incoherent?"

Je

"Well, if he's been kidnapped—which I doubt—all we can do is wait for a ransom demand. But if he's off somewhere in a frenzy, we've got to find him before he really hurts someone. Je

"The wilderness," she said wistfully, gazing at her imaginary fireplace. "That's where to start."

"You mean the Everglades."

"Where else? What other wilderness is there? The rest is all gone."

Je

"Oh, I don't know," she said. The wine was almost gone. She went to the refrigerator and opened another bottle.

Remembering Je

"I've got an idea," Je

Je

Keyes knelt next to her and joined the search. Concentration was impossible, Je

"He used to go fishing at this place," she was saying, "when he was a boy. Not long ago he discovered that they'd built a huge development right there, next to the old dike on the edge of the Glades. A retirement community, they called it. Stocked with three thousand geezers from Jersey. Skip was livid."

"I remember the column," Keyes said. " 'Varicose Village.' "

"Right! That'd be a good place to start. Maybe he's camping out. Pla

"Oh boy," Keyes said.

Somehow Je

"The name of the place," Je

"I can find it."

"He grew up not far from there," Je

"Okay, I'll look around out there tomorrow."

"Thank you, Brian," Je

"Brian?"

"Yes, Je

"I'm getting sleepy." She looked up from his chest. "I think I'd better go to bed."

She uncurled like a cat, stretching the lavender leotard in a dozen breathtaking ways. She closed the coffin, yawned, and said, "Well."

Keyes waited, clinging to hope.

But then she said: "It's time for you to go home and get some rest."

"Good idea," Keyes said with a brave smile.

He drove off in a pinprickly sweat—euphoric, suicidal, utterly confused. All over again, he thought. God help me.

Overnight the weather cooled, and a fresh north wind brought an early whisper of winter.

Brian Keyes awoke at dawn, surprised by the dry chill. He slipped into blue jeans, foraged for a sweater, and went outside to crank up the car. The old MG was a marvelous summertime sportster, but on cold mornings the engine balked. Keyes let it warm for a full ten minutes. He used the time as unwisely as possible, reliving the di

From Miami he took the turnpike north to Road 84, a clamorous truck route that runs cross-state from Fort Lauderdale. Despite the gray gauze in the sky and the whipping wind, the highway was clogged with boxy Wi

Over the years civilization doggedly had followed Road 84 toward the lip of the Everglades. Heading west, Keyes could chart the march of the chain saws and bulldozers. What once had been misty pastureland and pine barrens were now golden-age trailer parks; medieval cypress stands had been replaced by 7-Elevens and coin laundries. And spreading like a spore across the mottled landscape was every developer's wet dream, the condominium cluster.

Later as he walked along the dike, hands in his pockets, Keyes marveled at the contrast: to the western horizon, nothing but sawgrass and hammock and silent swamp; to the east, diesel cranes and cinderblock husks and high-rises. Not a hundred yards stood between the backhoes and the last of South Florida's wilderness. It had been a while since Keyes had driven this far west, and he was startled by what he saw. No wonder Skip Wiley had been so pissed off.

Keyes was nearly two miles from where he'd parked the car when he came to the Otter Creek condominium. He smiled, remembering Wiley's snide column. "Talk about false advertising. There's no creek, and there's damn sure no otters—no live ones, anyway."

Otter Creek Village consisted of three cheerless buildings set end-to-end at mild angles. Each warren stood five stories high and was painted white with canary-yellow trim. Every apartment featured a tiny balcony that overlooked a notably unscenic parking lot. From the dike Keyes could see a solid acre of shuffle-board courts, crisp formations of aluminum lounge chairs, and a vast ulcer-shaped swimming pool. In the center of the complex, surrounded by a twenty-foot chain-link fence, was an asphalt te