Tourist Season

"Sure."

She bounced up from the bed. "Stay right here, don't move," she said. "I'll model it for you."

"I'd like that," Keyes said. "I really would."

At noon Al Garcia awoke. He gazed around the hospital room and felt warmed by its pale yellow walls and the slivered shadows from the Venetian blinds. He was too drugged to pay much attention to the burning in his arm or the huge knot on the base of his neck or the burbling sound from inside his chest. Instead the detective was washed by a mood of elemental triumph: he was alive and Jesus Bernal was dead. Deader than a goddamn cockroach. Al Garcia relished the role of survivor, even if he owed his life not to his own faltering reflexes, but to Brian Keyes. The kid had turned out to be rock steady, and strong as a bear to haul him out of the ocean the way he had.

Groggily Garcia greeted his wife, who offered spousely sympathy but peppered him with questions that he pretended not to hear. Afterward, an orthopedic surgeon stopped in to report that although Garcia's left arm had been saved, it was too early to know if the muscles and bones would mend properly; the shoulder basically was being held together by steel pins and catgut. Garcia worriedly asked if any shotgun pellets had knicked the spine, and the doctor said no, though the initial fall on his neck had caused some temporary numbness. Garcia wiggled the toes on both feet and seemed satisfied that he would walk again.

He was drifting off to sleep when the chief of police showed up. Garcia winked at him.

"The doctors say you're going to make it," the chief whispered.

"Piece-a-cake," Garcia murmured.

"Look, I know this is a bad time, but the media's gone absolutely batshit over this shooting. We're trying to put together a short release. Is there anything you can tell me about what happened out there?"

"Found the body?"

"Yes," the chief replied. "Shot four times with a nine-millimeter. The last one really did the trick, blew his brains halfway to Bimini."

"Fucker blasted me with a sawed-off."

"I know," the chief said. "The question is, who blasted him?"

"Tomorrow," Garcia said, closing his eyes.

"Al, please."

"Tomorrow, the whole story." Or as much of it as was absolutely necessary.

"Okay, but I've got to say somethingto the press this afternoon. They're tearing around like a pack of frigging hyenas."

"Tell 'em you don't know nuthin'. Tell 'em I haven't regained consciousness."

"That might work," the chief mused.

"Sure it'll work. One more thing ... " Garcia paused to adjust the plastic tube in his nose. "Tell the nurses I want a TV."

"Sounds reasonable."

"A color TV for tonight."

"Sure, Al."

"Don't want to miss the parade."

In the mid-1800's Miami was known as Fort Dallas. It was a mucky, rutted, steaming, snake-infested settlement of two hundred souls, pere

No one knew what Fort Dallas might eventually become, not that knowing would have altered its future. The dream was always there, sustenance against the cruel hardships. Then, as now, the smell of opportunity was too strong to ignore, attracting a procession of grafters, con artists, Confederate deserters, geeks, bushwackers, rustlers, Gypsies, and slave traders. Their inventiveness and tenacity and utter contempt for the wilderness around them would set the tone for the development of South Florida. They preserved only what was free and immutable—the sunshine and the sea—and marked the rest for destruction, because how else could you sell it? In its natural state, the soggy frontier south of Lake Okeechobee simply was not marketable. Still, the transformation of the face of the land began slowly, not so much because of the Indians or the terrain as because of the lagging technology of plunder. Finally came the railroads and the dredge and the bulldozer, and the end of Fort Dallas.

For thirty years, begi

Those wheeler-dealers who didn't blow their brains out after the Hurricane of '26 or hang themselves after the real-estate bust were eventually rewarded with untold wealth. Today they were venerated for their perseverance and toughness of spirit, and some even had public parks named after them. These characters are regarded as the true pioneers of South Florida.

It is their descendants, the heirs to paradise (and to the banks and the land), who put on the a

The pageant began a half-century ago as an honest parade, Main Street entertainment for little children and tourists. But with the ascension of television the event grew and changed character. Gradually it became an elaborate instrument of self-promotion, deliberately staged to show the rest of the United States (suffering through winter) a su

From the Chamber of Commerce point of view, the most essential ingredient was subliminal sex. You ca

Every year the Orange Bowl Committee chose a su

As noted, this year's slogan was "Tropical Tranquillity."

At six P.M. the floats and clowns and high-school bands collected in the parking lots across from the Dupont Plaza Hotel. Dusky clouds rolled in from the north, smothering the vermilion sunset and dropping temperatures. The wind came in chilly gusts; some of the girls in bathing suits sneaked back to the dressing rooms to tape Band-Aids over their nipples, so they wouldn't be embarrassed if it got cold.

Before the parade could begin, a huge balloon replica of some comic-strip character with teeth like Erik Estrada's broke from its tether and drifted toward the high-voltage power lines. A policeman with a rifle shot it down, the first casualty of the evening.

Traditionally, the order of march began with a police honor guard and ended, a mile or so later, with the queen's float. This year the regimen would be different. Al Garcia had insisted that a troop of cops be positioned within shouting distance of Kara Ly