Tourist Season

This is terrible, you say, but what can we do?

Well, for starters, you can get out. And since you won't, I will.

It's been pure agony to watch the violent taking of my homeland, and impossible not to act in resistance. Perhaps, in resisting, certain events happened that should not have, and for these I'm sorry. Unfortunately, extremism seldom lends itself to discipline.

At any rate, my pals and I certainly got your attention, didn't we?

By the time this is published—if it's published—I certainly won't be where I am now, so I don't mind revealing the location: a palm-shaded porch of an old hotel on a mountainside overlooking the sad city of Port-au-Prince. Above my head is a wooden paddle fan that hasn't turned since the days of Papa Doc. It's humid here, but no worse than SW Eighth Street in July, and I'm just fine. I'm sitting on a wicker chaise, sipping a polyester-colored rum drink and listening to last year's NBA All-Star game on French radio. Upstairs in my hotel room are three counterfeit passports and $4,000 U.S. cash. I've got a good idea of where I've got to go and what I've got to do.

Evidently this will be my last column, butwhatever you do, please don't phone up and cancel your subscription to the paper. TheSun is run by mostly decent and semi-talented journalists who deserve your attention. Besides, if you quit reading it now, you'll miss the best part.

Historically, the function of deranged radicals is to put in motion what only others can finish; to illuminate by excess; to stir the conscience and fade away in exile. To this end, the Nights of December leaves a worthy legacy.

Welcome to the Revolution.

For the first time in nearly half a century, the front page of the Miami Sunon New Year's Day did not lead with a story or photograph of the Orange Bowl Parade. Instead, the paper was dominated by uncommon pieces of journalism.

The farewell column of Skip Wiley appeared in a vertical slot along the left-hand gutter, beneath Wiley's signature photo. Stripped across the top of the newspaper, under the masthead, was a surprisingly self-critical article about why the Sunhad failed to co

The other key element of the front page was a dramatic but incomplete account of the killing of fugitive terrorist Jesus Bernal on a limestone spit in North Key Largo. This story carried no byline because it was produced by several reporters, one of whom had confirmed the fact that private investigator Brian Keyes had fired the fatal shots from a nine-millimeter Browning handgun, which he was duly licensed to carry. Keyes's presence at the remote jetty was unexplained, although the newspaper noted that he recently had been hired as part of a covert Orange Bowl security force. The only other witness to the Bernal shooting, Metro-Dade Police Sergeant Alberto Garcia, was recovering from surgery and unavailable for comment.

When Brian Keyes woke up in the dinginess of his office, Je

"When are you go

Keyes sat up and spread the newspaper across his knees. He tried to read, but his eyes refused to focus.

"I figured you'd be decked out in black," he said groggily.

"I don't believe he's dead," Je

"Yeah, I look like a big hero, don't I?"

He glanced at Wiley's column. "December 28—the day before the helicopter crash. When's the last time you heard from him?"

"Same day. I got a telegram from Haiti."

"What did he say?" Keyes asked.

"He said to spray the lawn for chinch bugs."

"That all?"

She pursed her lips. "He also said if anything happens, he wants to be buried in that pine coffin he got from the swap meet. Buried with all his old newspaper clippings, of course."

"Very touching."

"I think he stole the idea from the Indian," Je

Keyes stumbled downstairs to a vending machine and bought three cups of coffee. Je

It put him in a perfect mood for Skip Wiley's farewell column, which Keyes found mawkish and disorganized and only slightly revelatory. He was more interested in Cab Mulcahy's companion story. In it, the managing editor explained that Wiley's key role in the Nights of December had not been exposed because of a threat that many more tourists and i

"Poor Cab," Keyes said, not to Je

Je

"He carried all of us away," Keyes said, "everyone who cared about him. You, me, Mulcahy, the whole damn newspaper. He carried all of us right into the toilet."

"Brian, don't be this way." Je

"What makes you think he's not dead?"

"Intuition."

"Oh really." Keyes eyed her with a

He said, "I can't imagine Skip passing up that parade. National television, half the country tuned in. It was too good to resist—if he's not dead, he's in a coma somewhere."

"He's not dead," Je

"We'll see."

Je

"What's with you?" she asked.

"Aw, nothing. Blew a guy's head off last night and I'm still a little bushed. Wa

Je

A plaintively rendered oh Brianusually would do the trick; a guaranteed melt-down. This time Keyes felt nothing but a penetrating dullness; not lust or jealousy, rage or bitterness.

"He was supposed to meet me at Wolfie's this morning, but he never came," she admitted. "I'm kind of worried." Her eyes were red. Keyes knew she was about to turn on the waterworks.

"He can't be dead," she said, choking out the words.

Keyes said, "I'm sorry, Je

"I suppose," she said, starting to sob. "But some of it sounded so harmless."

"Skip was about as harmless as a 190-pound scorpion."

"For instance, dropping those snakes on the ocean liner," she said. "Somehow it didn't seem so terrible when he was arranging it. The way he told it, it was supposed to be kind of fu

"With goddamn rattlesnakes, Je

"He didn't tell me thatpart. Honest." She reached out and put her arms around him. "Hold me," she whispered. Normally another foolproof heartbreaker. Keyes took her hand and patted it avuncularly. He didn't know where it had gone—all his feeling for her—just that it wasn't there now.