Tourist Season

"Invade Havana."

"Naturally." With switchblades, no doubt. Viceroy Wilson started hammering again. Every once in a while he'd step back to see how the thing was taking shape.

Tommy Tigertail sat on a blanket in the corner, beneath a somber daguerreotype of Thlocko-Tustenugee, Chief Tiger Tail. Tommy's eyes were open but unfocused; fresh from an Everglades passage, he had only just learned that Pavlov had been shot the week before in a beachfront swimming pool by the Fort Lauderdale SWAT team. Grief had robbed the Indian of all energy, and he had dropped his hammer and sat down in a trance. He feared it would be a night of dreams, when his fingers again would claw the wet bars of the dungeon where his great-great-grandfather had perished. On such nights Tommy's soul wandered, keeping company with his warrior ancestor. Tommy knew what would happen if his soul should not return from its journey by dawn: He would forever become part of his own nightmare, and never awake from it. This was the fate of many anguished Seminoles, whose souls suddenly fled in the night; for Tommy Tigertail, such a death would be infinitely worse than anything the white policemen might do to him.

"Look at that crybaby," Jesus Bernal said, scowling at the heartsick Indian. "Somebody shot his pet lizard."

"You shut up," Viceroy Wilson hissed at the Cuban, "or I'll nail your nuts to your nose."

Tommy Tigertail was the closest thing to a brother that Viceroy had found in the Nights of December. Between them was an unspoken bond that had nothing to do with the use of the Cadillac; it was a bond of history. In his post-heroin library days Viceroy Wilson had studied the Seminole Wars, and knew that Tommy's people had fought not just to keep their land, but to protect the runaway slaves who had joined them on the Florida sava

Jesus Bernal sensed that it was unwise and perhaps dangerous to make fun of the Indian, so he changed the subject.

'I'm going to show the comandantea thing or two," he said determinedly.

"That's cool," said Viceroy Wilson, turning back to his work, "long as you wait till after New Year's."

"We'll see about that, negrito,"Jesus said bravely, after Viceroy Wilson had cranked up the circular saw and could not possibly hear him.

Brian Keyes never thought of himself as lonely, but there were times when he wondered where all his friends had gone. As a rule private detectives are not swamped with party invitations and that part Keyes didn't mind; he wasn't a lampshade-and-kazoo type of guy. But there were nights when a phone call from any sociable nonfelon would have been a welcome surprise on the old beeper. It wasn't loneliness, really; aloneness was more like it. Keyes had felt it as soon as he'd quit the Sun;it was as if the quintessential noise of life had suddenly shrunk by fifty decibels. On some days the quiet tortured him; the office, the apartment, the stake-outs. Sometimes he wound up talking to the car radio; sometimes the damn thing talked back. Two years away from the Sunand Keyes still longed for the peculiar fraternity of the city room. It ruled your whole damn life, the newspaper, and even if it made vulgar cynical bastards out of everybody, at least the bastards were there in the empty times. Day or night you could walk into the Sunand find somebody ready to sneak out for a beer or sandwich. These days Keyes ate alone, or with clients so scuzzy he wanted to gag on the corned beef and rye.

Which is why he came to enjoy guarding Kara Ly

Two days after Christmas, five days before the big parade, Kara Ly

Keyes wasn't in a clubby mood. He'd spent a second straight morning at the airport, watching Customs in case Wiley tried to slip through. As usual, Miami International was a zoo—and there'd been no sign of Skip.

"I'm beat," Keyes told Kara Ly

"Not with those legs," Kara Ly

They took her VW. It was only a ten-block ride, a winding circle around the Coral Gables golf course. Keyes drove. In the rearview, two cars back, was a Cadillac Seville with tinted windows. It was the worst tail job Keyes had ever seen—if that's what it was. On an open stretch Keyes coasted the VW and the Caddy backed off by half a mile. Then it turned off and disappeared.

Kara Ly

"Do you have your own gun?" she asked casually.

"It's in the trunk."

"There is no trunk."

"There is too," Keyes said, "in the MG."

"Brilliant," she said. "How much did you say they were paying you?"

Keyes gave her a that's-very-fu

"Who do you think was following us?"

"Maybe nobody. Maybe the bad guys."

"They wouldn't try anything now, not before the parade."

"Who knows," Keyes said. "We're dealing with a special brand of fruitcake." He pulled into the clubhouse parking lot.

Kara Ly

"Badly, I'm sure." The shoes weren't the worst of it. Keyes was wearing raggedy cutoff jeans and a Rolling Stones concert T-shirt.

"Take my arm," Kara Ly

Keyes dragged himself around the te

She beat him 6-4, 3-6, 7-6. A drop shot got him. He made a valiant stab, but wound up straddling the net. He was too exhausted to feel embarrassed.

Afterward Kara Ly

Several fragrant young men stopped Kara Ly

"You ever see Goodbye, Columbus'?"he said to Kara Ly

"Oh please."

"It was before your time. Forget about it."

"I like the Rolling Stones," Kara Ly

"Yeah?"

"Your T-shirt's pretty pitiful, but the Stones are all right."