Read Online Tourist Season by Carl Hiaasen - Free Book Online Page B

Wilson at Pauly’s Bar.
    “You deserve a good whack on the head for showing your shiny angel-food face in that snakepit,” the detective said. “You wanna file A-and-B on the sonofabitch?”
    “Just find him, Al.”
    “Yes sir, Mr. Taxpayer, I’ll get right on it.”
    “This might help.” Keyes handed Garcia a scribbled note that said “GATOR 2.” “It’s the tag on the Caddy that Wilson was driving.”
    “Hey, you do good work. This’ll be easy,” Garcia said. “Come on, let’s get a sandwich and some coffee.”
    Both of them ordered a hot Cuban mix and ate in the car, wax paper spread across their laps.
    “Al,” Keyes said, savoring the tangy sandwich, “what do you make of the name of this group? Las Noches de Diciembre— the Nights of December, right?”
    Garcia shrugged. “Usually Cuban groups name themselves after some great date in their history, but the only thing I know happened in December is Castro came to power—nothing they’d want to celebrate. ‘Course, there is another possibility.”
    “What’s that?”
    Garcia paused for another enormous bite. Somehow he was still able to speak. “They got something planned for this December. As in, right now. And if what we’ve seen already is any indication—he glanced over at Keyes—”it’s gonna be a treat.”
     
    Daniel “Viceroy” Wilson stood six feet, two inches tall and weighed 237 pounds. He usually wore his hair in a short Afro, or sometimes plaited, but he always kept enough of a gritty beard to make him look about half as mean as he really was.
    One of the things Wilson fervently wished this afternoon, skulking in the parking lot of the world-famous Miami Seaquarium, was that he could own this fine Cadillac he was driving. It didn’t seem right that it belonged to the Indian, who didn’t appreciate it, didn’t even use the goddamn tape deck. One time Wilson had left a Herbie Hancock cassette on the front seat, and the Indian had thrown it out the window with a bunch of Juicy Fruit wrappers and bingo tickets onto I-95. At that moment Wilson had contemplated killing the Indian, but when it came to Seminoles, one had to be careful. There was a wealth of mystical shit to be considered: eagle feathers, panther gonads, and so on. Wilson was much more fearful of Indian magic than of jail, so he let the Herbie Hancock episode slide. Besides, for the first time in years, Wilson had something to look forward to. He didn’t want to spoil it by pissing off the Indian.
    Still, he’d have loved to own the Caddy.
    Life had not been kind to Viceroy Wilson since he was cut from the Miami Dolphins during the preseason of 1978, a month before his own Cadillac Seville had been repossessed. Since then Wilson had been through three wives, two humiliating bankruptcies, a heroin addiction, and one near-fatal shooting. Yet somehow he had managed to maintain his formidable physique in such a way that he could still bring silence to a crowded restaurant just by walking in the door. Wilson’s fissured face looked every day of his thirty-six years, yet his body remained virtually unchanged from his glory days as a star fullback: taut, streamlined calves; a teenager’s spare hips; and a broad, rippling wedge of a chest. Wilson’s strength was in his upper body, always had been; his shoulders had been his best weapons inside the twenty-yard line.
    As a rule, Viceroy Wilson didn’t go around clobbering strangers in stinky taverns. He believed in the eternal low profile. He was not homesick for the Orange Bowl locker room, nor did he especially miss getting mobbed for his autograph. A free case of Colt .45 was the only reason he’d signed that football in Pauly’s Bar. Generally Viceroy Wilson believed that the less he was recognized in public, the better. Part of this attitude was personal preference (autographs being a bitter reminder of the Super Bowl years), and part of it was a necessary adjustment in order to lead a successful life of