Read Online Tourist Season by Carl Hiaasen - Free Book Online

boardinghouses and peeling motels. The refugees flashed predatory smiles and made wisecracks in Spanish, but the Shriners were imperturbable.
    Nell Bellamy asked Keyes what had happened inside the bar, so he told her about Viceroy Wilson.
    “We saw a black fellow speeding away,” Nell said.
    “In a Cadillac,” Burt volunteered.
    “Burt sells Cadillacs,” Nell said to Keyes. “So he ought to know.”
    The four of them had reached the southern point of Miami Beach, near Joe’s Stone Crab, and they were alone on foot. This part of South Beach wasn’t exactly the Boardwalk, and at night it was generally deserted except for serious drunks, ax murderers, and illegal aliens.
    With Nell leading the way, the entourage strolled toward the oceanfront.
    Burt remarked that he once had seen the Dolphins play the Chicago Bears in an exhibition game, and that Walter Payton had made Viceroy Wilson look like a flatfooted old man.
    “That was in 75,” the Shriner added.
    “By then his knees were shot,” Keyes said half-heartedly. He didn’t feel much like defending any creep who’d sucker-punch him in a place like Pauly’s. In all his years as a reporter he had never been slugged. Not once. He had been chased and stoned and menaced in a variety of ways, but never really punched. A punch was quite a personal thing.
    “You should file charges,” Nell suggested.
    Keyes felt silly. Here was this stout little woman searching godforsaken neighborhoods in the dead of night for her missing husband, while Keyes just moped along feeling sorry for himself over a lousy bump on the neck.
    He asked Nell Bellamy about Theodore. She mustered herself and told, for the sixteenth time, all about the convention, the venomous jellyfish, the unorthodox lifeguards, and what the cops were saying must have happened to her husband.
    “We don’t believe them,” Burt said. “Teddy didn’t drown.”
    “Why not?”
    “Where’s the body?” Burt said, swinging a beefy arm toward the ocean. “There’s been an easterly wind for days. The body should have floated up by now.”
    Nell sat on a seawall and crossed her legs. She wore blue slacks and a modest red blouse, not too vivid. Biting her lip, she stared out at the soapy froth of the surf, visible even on a moonless midnight.
    The loyal Shriners shifted uncomfortably, conscious of her grief. For the sake of distraction Burt said, “Mr. Keyes, what’d you say you do for a living?”
    Keyes didn’t want to tell them. He knew exactly what would happen if he did: he’d have a missing-persons case he really didn’t want.
    “I work for some lawyers in town,” he said ambiguously.
    “Research?” Nell asked.
    “Sort of.”
    “Do you know many people? Important people, I mean. Policemen, judges, people like that?”
    Here we go, Keyes thought. “A few,” he said. “Not many. I’m probably not the most popular person in Dade County.”
    But that didn’t stop her.
    “How much do you charge the lawyers?” Nell asked in a businesslike tone.
    “It depends. Two-fifty, three hundred a day. Same as most private investigators.” No sense ducking it now. If the fee didn’t scare her off, nothing would.
    Nell got up from the seawall and daintily brushed off the seat of her pants. Excusing herself, she took the Shriners aside. Keyes watched them huddle in the penumbra of a streetlight: a chubby, pleasant-faced woman who belonged at a church bake sale, and on each side, a tall husky Midwesterner in a purple fez. Nell seemed to do most of the talking.
    Keyes ached all over, but his head was the worst. He checked his pants pocket; miraculously, his wallet was still there. Just thinking about the three-mile hike back to the MG exhausted him.
    After a few moments Nell approached again. She was holding a folded piece of paper.
    “Do you take private cases?”
    “Did I mention that my fee doesn’t include expenses?”
    Not even a flicker. “Are you available to take a private case?”
    “But, Mrs.