Native Tongue

  One of the drivers, a French-Canadian textile executive, used a cellular phone to call the Alamo desk at Miami International Airport and explain the situation. Soon new cars were on the way.

  It took Jim Tile several hours to clear the scene. A pair of Monroe County deputies stopped by and helped search for shell casings until the mosquitoes drove them away. After the officers had fled, and after the tourists had motored north in a wary caravan of Thunderbirds, Skylarks and Zephyrs, Jim Tile got in his patrol car and mashed on the horn with both fists. Then he rolled up the windows, turned up the air conditioner and waited for his sad old friend to come out of the swamp.

  “I’m sorry,” Skink offered the trooper a stick of EDTIAR insect repellent.

  “You promised to behave,” said Jim Tile. “Now you’ve put me in a tough position.”

  “Had to blow off some steam,” Skink said. “Anyway, I didn’t hurt anybody.” He took off his sunglasses and tinkered unabashedly with the fake eyeball. “Haven’t you ever had days like this? Days when you just had to go out and shoot the shit out of something, didn’t matter what?”

  Jim Tile sighed. “Rental cars?”

  “Why the hell not.”

  The tension dissolved into weary silence. The men had talked of such things before. When Clinton Tyree was the governor of Florida, Jim Tile had been his chief bodyguard—an unusually prestigious assignment for a black state trooper. After Clinton Tyree resigned, Jim Tile immediately lost his job on the elite security detail. The new governor, it was explained, felt more comfortable around peckerwoods. By the end of that fateful week, Jim Tile had found himself back on road patrol; Harney County, night shifts.

  Over the years he had stayed close to Clinton Tyree, partly out of friendship, partly out of admiration and partly out of certitude that the man would need police assistance now and then, which he did. Whenever Skink got restless and moved his hermitage to deeper wilderness, Jim Tile would quietly put in for a transfer and move, too. This meant more rural two-lanes, more night duty and more ignorant mean-eyed crackers—but the trooper knew that his friend would have done the same for him, had fortunes been reversed. Besides, Jim Tile was confident of his own abilities and believed that one day he’d be in charge of the entire highway patrol—dishing out a few special night shifts himself.

  Usually Skink kept to himself, except for the occasional public sighting when he dashed out of the pines to retrieve a fresh opossum or squirrel off the road. Once in a while, though, something triggered him in a tumultuous way and the results were highly visible. Standing on the crowded Fort Lauderdale beach, he’d once put four rounds into the belly of an inbound Eastern 727. Another time he’d crashed the Miss Florida pageant and tearfully heaved a dead baby manatee on stage to dramatize the results of waterfront development. It was fortunate, in such instances, that no one had recognized the hoary cyclopic madman as Clinton Tyree; it was even more fortunate that Jim Tile had been around to help the ex-governor slip away safely and collect what was left of his senses.

  Now, sitting in the trooper’s patrol car, Skink polished his glass eye with a bandanna and apologized for causing his friend so much inconvenience. “If you’ve got to arrest me,” he said, “I’ll understand.”

  “Wouldn’t do a damn bit of good,” said Jim Tile. “But I tell you what—I’d appreciate it if you’d let me know what’s going on down here.”

  “The usual,” Skink said. “The bad guys are kicking our collective ass.”

  “We got a dead body off the bridge, a guy named Angel Gaviria. You know about that, right?” The trooper didn’t wait for an answer. “The coroner is saying suicide or accident, but I was there and I don’t think it’s either one. The deceased was a well-known scumbucket and they don’t usually have the decency to kill themselves. Usually someone else does the honor.”

  “Jim, we live in troubled times.”

  “The other day I pulled over a blue Ford sedan doing eighty-six down the bridge. Turns out to be a Feeb.”

  “FBI?” Skink perked up. “All the way down here?”

  “Hawkins was his name. He badges me, we get to chatting. Turns out he’s working a case at the Amazing Kingdom. Something to do with militant bunny huggers and missing blue-tongued rats.” Jim Tile gave a lazy laugh. “Now this is the FBI, interviewing elves and cowboys and fairy princesses. I don’t suppose you can fill me in.”

  Skink was pleased that the feds had taken notice of events in North Key Largo. He said, “All I know is bits and pieces.”

  “Speaking of which, what can you tell me about killer whales? This morning a semi rolls over and I got stinking gobs of dead whale all over my nice clean blacktop. I’m talking tonnage.”

  Skink said, “That would explain the buzzard shit on this state vehicle.” Secretly he wished he would have been there to witness the spectacle.

  “You think it’s funny?”

  “I think,” said Skink, “you should prepare for the worst.”

  Jim Tile took off his Stetson and lowered his face in front of the dashboard vents; the cool air felt good on his cheeks. A gumdrop-shaped sports car blew by doing ninety-plus, and the trooper barely glanced up. He radioed the dispatcher in Miami and announced he was going off duty. “I’m tired,” he said to Skink.

  “Me too. You haven’t seen anybody from Game and Fish, have you?”

  “The panther patrol? No, I haven’t.” Jim Tile sat up. “I haven’t seen the plane in at least a month.”

  Skink said, “Must’ve broken down. Else they’re working the Fakahatchee.”

  “Listen,” the trooper said, “I won’t ask about the dead guy on the bridge, and I won’t ask about the whale—”

  “I had nothing whatsoever to do with the whale.”

  “Fair enough,” said Jim Tile, “but what about torching those bulldozers up on 905? Were you in on that?”

  Skink looked at him blankly. The trooper described what had happened that very afternoon at the Falcon Trace construction project. “They’re looking for a guy who used to work at the Kingdom. They say he’s gone nuts. They say he’s got a gun.”

  “Is that right?” Skink tugged pensively at his beard.

  “Do you know this person?”

  “Possibly.”

  “Then could you possibly get him a message to stop this shit before it gets out of hand?”

  “It’s already out of hand,” Skink said. “The sons-of-bitches are beating up little old ladies.”

  “Damn.” The trooper stared out the window of the car. A trio of mosquitoes bounced off the glass and circled his head. Skink reached over and snatched the insects out of the air. Then he opened the window and let them buzz away into the thick fragrant night.

  Jim Tile said, “I’m worried about you.”

  Skink grinned. “That’s a good one.”

  “Maybe I should haul you in after all.”

  “Wouldn’t stick. No one saw me do it, and no one found the gun. Hell, they wouldn’t even hold me overnight.”

  “Yeah, they would,” Jim Tile said, “on my word.”

  Skink’s smile went away.

  The trooper said, “The charge wouldn’t stick, that’s true. But I could take you out of circulation for a month or two. Let the situation simmer down.”

  “Why?” Skink demanded. “You know I’m right. You know what I’m doing is right.”

  “Not shooting rental cars.”

  “A lapse of judgment,” Skink admitted. “I said I was sorry, for God’s sake.”

  Jim Tile put a hand on his friend’s shoulder. “I know you think it’s the right thing, and the cause is good. But I’m afraid you’re gonna lose.”

  “Maybe not,” Skink said. “I think the Mojo’s rising.”

  The trooper always got lost when Skink started quoting old rock-and-roll songs; someday he was going to sit Skink’s shiny ass down and make him listen to Aretha. Put some soul in his system. Jim Tile said, “I’ve got a life, too. Can’t spend the rest of it looking after y
ou.”

  Skink sagged against the car door. “Jim, they’re paving the goddamn island.”

  “Not the whole thing—”

  “But this is how it begins,” Skink said. “Jesus Christ, you ought to know. This is how it begins!”

  There was no point in pushing it. The state had bought up nearly all North Key Largo for preservation; the Amazing Kingdom and the Falcon Trace property were essentially all that remained in private hands. Still, Skink was not celebrating.

  Jim Tile said, “This guy you recruited—”

  “I didn’t recruit him.”

  “Whatever. He’s in it, that’s the main thing.”

  “Apparently so,” Skink said. “Apparently he’s serious.”

  “So locking you up won’t do any good, will it? Not with him still out there.” The trooper put on his hat and adjusted it out of habit. In the darkness of the car, Skink couldn’t read the expression on his friend’s face. Jim Tile said, “Promise me one thing, all right? Talk some sense to the boy. He’s new at it, Governor, and he could get hurt. That stunt with the bulldozers, it’s not cool.”

  “I know,” said Skink, “but it’s got a certain flair.”

  “Listen to me,” Jim Tile said sternly. “Already he’s got some serious people after his ass, you understand? There’s things I can help with, and things I can’t.”

  Skink nodded. “I’ll talk to him, I promise. And thanks.”

  Then he was gone. Jim Tile reached across to shut the door and his arm instantly was enveloped by an influx of mosquitoes. Frenzied humming filled the car.

  He stomped the accelerator and the big Crown Victoria sprayed a fusillade of gravel into the mangroves. Westbound at a hundred fifteen miles an hour, the trooper rolled down the windows to let the wind suck the bugs from the car.

  “Two of them.” His words were swallowed in the roar of the open night. “Now I got two of the crazy bastards.”

  21

  Carrie Lanier’s place was furnished as exquisitely as any mobile home. It had a microwave, an electric can opener, a stove, a nineteen-inch color TV, two paddle fans and a Naugahyde convertible sofa where Joe Winder slept. But there was no music, so on his third day as a fugitive Winder borrowed Carrie’s car and went back to the apartment to retrieve his stereo system and rock tapes. He was not totally surprised to find that his place had been broken, entered and ransacked; judging by the viciousness of the search, Pedro Luz was the likely intruder. The inventory of losses included the portable television, three champagne glasses, a tape recorder, the plumbing fixtures, the mattress, a small Matisse print and the toaster. One of Nina’s pink bras, which she had forgotten, had been desecrated ominously with cigarette burns, and hung from a Tiffany lamp. Also, the freshwater aquarium had been shattered, and the twin Siamese fighting fish had been killed. It appeared to Joe Winder that their heads were pinched off.

  The stereo tuner and tape deck escaped harm, though the turntable was in pieces. A pair of hedge clippers protruded from one of the speakers; the other, fortunately, was undamaged.

  “It’s better than nothing,” Joe Winder said when he got back to the trailer. “Low fidelity is better than no fidelity.”

  While he reassembled the components, Carrie Lanier explored the box of cassettes. Every now and then she would smile or go “Hmmm” in an amused tone.

  Finally Winder looked up from the nest of colored wires and said, “You don’t like my music?”

  “I like it just fine,” she said. “I’m learning a lot about you. We’ve got The Kinks. Seeger live at Cobo Hall. Mick and the boys.”

  “Living in the past, I know.”

  “Oh, baloney.” She began to stack the tapes alphabetically on a shelf made from raw plywood and cinder blocks.

  “Do you have a typewriter?” he asked.

  “In the closet,” Carrie said. “Are you going to start writing again?”

  “I wouldn’t call it writing.”

  She got out the typewriter, an old Olivetti manual, and made a place for it on the dinette. “This is a good idea,” she said to Joe Winder. “You’ll feel much better. No more shooting at heavy machinery.”

  He reminded her that he hadn’t actually pulled the trigger on the bulldozers. Then he said, “I stopped writing a long time ago. Stopped being a journalist, anyway.”

  “But you didn’t burn out, you sold out.”

  “Thanks,” Winder said, “for the reminder.”

  It was his fault for staggering down memory lane in the first place. Two nights earlier, Carrie had quizzed him about the newspaper business, wanted to know what kind of stories he’d written. So he’d told her about the ones that had stuck with him. The murder trial of a thirteen-year-old boy who’d shot his little sister because she had borrowed his Aerosmith album without asking. The marijuana-smuggling ring led by a fugitive former justice of the Florida Supreme Court. The bribery scandal in which dim-witted Dade County building inspectors were caught soliciting Lotto tickets as payoffs. The construction of a $47 million superhighway by a Mafia contractor whose formula for high-grade asphalt included human body parts.

  Joe Winder did not mention the story that had ended his career. He offered nothing about his father. When Carrie Lanier had asked why he’d left the newspaper for public relations, he simply said, “Because of the money.” She had seemed only mildly interested in his short time as a Disney World flack, but was impressed by the reckless sexual behavior that had gotten him fired. She said it was a healthy sign that he had not become a corporate drone, that the spark of rebellion still glowed in his soul.

  “Maybe in my pants,” Winder said, “not in my soul.”

  Carrie repeated what she had told him the first night: “You could always go back to being a reporter.”

  “No, I’m afraid not.”

  “So what is it you want to type—love letters? Maybe a confession?” Mischievously she tapped the keys of the Olivetti; two at a time, as if she were playing “Chopsticks.”

  The trailer was getting smaller and smaller. Joe Winder felt the heat lick at his eardrums. He said, “There’s a reason you’ve hidden that gun.”

  “Because it’s not your style.” Carrie slapped the carriage and made the typewriter ring. “God gave you a talent for expression, a gift with the language.”

  Winder moaned desolately. “Have you ever read a single word I’ve written?”

  “No,” she admitted.

  “So my alleged talent for expression, this gift—”

  “I’m giving you the benefit of the doubt,” she said. “The fact is, I don’t trust you with a firearm. Now come help me open the wine.”

  * * *

  Every evening at nine sharp, visitors to the Amazing Kingdom of Thrills gathered on both sides of Kingsbury Lane, the park’s main thoroughfare, to buy overpriced junk food and await the rollicking pageant that was the climax of the day’s festivities. All the characters in the Kingdom were expected to participate, from the gunslingers to the porpoise trainers to the elves. Sometimes a real marching band would accompany the procession, but in the slow months of summer the music was usually canned, piped in through the garbage chutes. Ten brightly colored floats comprised the heart of the parade, although mechanical problems frequently reduced the number of entries by half. These were organized in a story line based loosely on the settlement of Florida, going back to the days of the Spaniards. The plundering, genocide, defoliation and gang rape that typified the peninsula’s past had been toned down for the sake of Francis X. Kingsbury’s younger, more impressionable customers; also, it would have been difficult to find a musical score suitable to accompany a mass disemboweling of French Huguenots.

  For the feel-good purposes of the Amazing Kingdom’s nightly pageant, the sordid history of Florida was compressed into a series of amiable and bloodless encounters. Floats celebrated such fabricated milestones as the first beachfront Thanksgiving, when friendly settlers and gentle Tequesta Indians shared wild turkey and fresh coconut milk un
der the palms. It was a testament to Charles Chelsea’s imagination (and mortal fear of Kingsbury) that even the most shameful episodes were reinterpreted with a positive commercial spin. A float titled “Migrants on a Mission” depicted a dozen cheery, healthful farm workers singing Jamaican folk songs and swinging their machetes in a precisely choreographed break-dance through the cane fields. Tourists loved it. So did the Okeechobee Sugar Federation, which had bankrolled the production in order to improve its image.

  One of the highlights of the pageant was the arrival of “the legendary Seminole maiden” known as Princess Golden Sun. No such woman and no such lore ever existed; Charles Chelsea had invented her basically as an excuse to show tits and ass, and pass it off as ethnic culture. Traditional Seminole garb was deemed too dowdy for the parade, so Princess Golden Sun appeared in a micro-bikini made of simulated deerskin. The authentic Green Corn Dance, a sacred Seminole rite, was politely discarded as too solemn and repetitious; instead Golden Sun danced the lambada, a pelvic-intensive Latin step. Surrounded by ersatz Indian warriors wearing bright Brazilian slingshots, the princess proclaimed in song and mime her passionate love for the famous Seminole chieftain Osceola. At the news of his death, she broke into tears and vowed to haunt the Everglades forever in search of his spirit. The peak of the drama, and the parade, was the moment when Golden Sun mounted a wild panther (in this case, a heavily drugged African lioness) and disappeared from sight in a rising fog of dry ice.

  It was the role most coveted among the female actors employed at the Amazing Kingdom, and for six months it had belonged to Annette Fury, a dancer of mountainous dimensions whose previous job was as a waitress at a topless doughnut shop in Fort Lauderdale. A competent singer, Miss Fury had done so well with the role of Princess Golden Sun that the newspaper in Key Largo had done a nice write-up, including a photograph of Miss Fury straddling the bleary-eyed cat. The reporter had been careful to explain that the spavined animal was not actually a Florida panther, since real panthers were all but extinct. Given Princess Golden Sun’s appearance, it was doubtful that a single reader even noticed the lion in the picture. Miss Fury’s pose—head flung back, eyes closed, tongue between the teeth—was suggestive enough to provoke indignant outcries from a fundamentalist church in Big Pine Key, as well as the entire Seminole Nation, or what was left of it. At the first whiff of controversy, Charles Chelsea swiftly purchased the negatives from the newspaper and converted the most provocative one to a color postcard, which went on sale for $1.95 in all gift shops in the Amazing Kingdom of Thrills. As far as Chelsea was concerned, a star had been born.