"Belize Nationalism Day?"
"Perfect. Go with it. Run a nice big picture, too."
"But, Cab ... "
"And call Jenna. Right away."
The screen door on Pauly's Bar was humming with flies. Inside there were six bar-stools, a gutted pinball machine, a boar's head, and a life-size cutout of Victoria Principal, a bourbon stain on her right breast. The bar itself was made of cheap pine and appeared to be recently repaired, bristling with fresh nails and splinters. Behind the bar was a long horizontal mirror, its fissures secured with brown hurricane tape.
At first glance Pauly's was not a raucous joint, but a careful person could sense an ominous lethargy.
Brian Keyes decided to be the perfect customer. He slipped the lumpy-faced bartender a twenty-dollar bill and discreetly assured him that no, he wasn't a cop, he was just trying to buy some information.
The bartender, who wore a mesh tank top and a shiny mail-order toupee, turned out to be somewhat helpful; after all, twenty dollars was a banner night at Pauly's. Keyes knew from looking around the place that the man he hunted would be remembered here, and he was right.
"Don't get many big niggers in here," the bartender remarked, secreting the money in a pocket. "Then again, they all look big at night." The bartender laughed, and so did a greasy wino two stools down. Keyes smiled and said ha-ha, pretty funny, but this one you'd remember especially because of the fancy black sunglasses.
The bartender and the greasy wino exchanged looks, their grins getting bigger and dirtier. "Viceroy!" the bartender said. "Viceroy Wilson."
"The football player?"
"Sure."
"I don't believe it!" Keyes said.
"Well, take a look here," and then the bartender tossed an official NFL football at Brian Keyes, knocking over his Budweiser. Viceroy Wilson, former star fullback for the Miami Dolphins, had autographed the ball with a magnificent flourish, in red ink right under the stitch.
"He's a regular," the bartender boasted.
"No!"
"He sure is!"
"Well, I really need to talk to him."
"He don't give autographs to just anybody."
"I don't want an autograph."
"Then why you asking for him? He's not a man that likes to be asked for."
"It's personal," Keyes said. "Very important."
"I'll bet," croaked the wino. Keyes ignored him. He had a feeling these guys were full of shit anyway. Keyes was an avid football fan and, looking around, he wasn't able to picture the great Viceroy Wilson—bad hands, bankrupt and all—rubbing elbows with a bunch of pukes at Pauly's. Viceroy Wilson didn't belong in a rathole dive on South Beach; Viceroy Wilson belonged in Canton, Ohio, at the Football Hall of Fame.
"I'll get him for you," the wino volunteered, oozing off the bar stool.
"Hey, what if he don't want to be got?" the bartender said. "Viceroy's a very private man."
"Twenty bucks," the wino said. Keyes handed it to him and ordered another beer. Twenty dollars apparently was now the going rate for everything at Pauly's. The wino shuffled out the door.
"Kiss your money good-bye," the bartender said reproachfully.
"Relax," Keyes told him, knowing it would only have the opposite effect. People in bars don't like to be told to relax.
"I'm beginning to think you're a narc!" the bartender said loudly. He calmed down when Keyes laid another twenty bucks on the bar next to the beer glass.
Forty minutes later the screen door wheezed open and stayed that way for several moments. A cool salty breeze tickled Keyes's neck. He longed to turn around but instead just sipped on the beer, pretending that the 235-pound black man (Carrera sunglasses dangling on his chest) who loomed in the tavern mirror wasn't really glaring at him as if he were the proverbial turd in the punch bowl.
"I don't think I know you," Viceroy Wilson growled.
Brian Keyes was in the process of spinning around on the barstool, about to say something extremely witty, when a black fist the approximate size and consistency of a cinder-block slammed into the base of his neck.
At that instant Keyes's brain became a kaleidoscope, and he would later be able to recall only a few jagged pieces of consciousness.
The sound of the screen door slamming.
The taste of the sidewalk.
The cough of an automobile's ignition.
He remembered opening one eye with the dreadful thought that he was about to be run over.
And he remembered a glimpse of a vanity license tag—"GATOR 2"—as the car peeled rubber.
But Keyes didn't remember shutting his eyes and going nighty-night on the cool concrete.
"Hello?"
Brian Keyes stared up at the round, friendly-looking face of a middle-aged woman.
"Are you injured?" she asked.
"I think my spine is broken." Keyes was lying outside Pauly's Bar. The pavement smelled like stale beer and urine. Unseen shards of an ancient wine bottle dug into his shoulder blades. It was eleven o'clock and the street was very dark.
"My name is Nell Bellamy."
"I'm Brian Keyes."
"Should I call an ambulance, Mr. Keyes?"
Keyes shook his head no.
"These are my friends Burt and James," Nell Bellamy said. Two men wearing mauve fez hats bent over and peered at Brian Keyes. They were Shriners.
"What are youdoing here?" one of them asked benignly.
"I got beat up," Keyes replied, still flat on his back. "I'll be fine in a month or two." He ran a hand over his ribs, feeling through the shirt for fractures. "What are youdoing here?" he asked the Shriners.
"Looking for her husband."
"Theodore Bellamy," Nell said. "He disappeared last Saturday."
"Give me a hand, please," Keyes said. The Shriners helped him to his feet. They were big, ruddy fellows; they propped him up until the vertigo went away. From inside Pauly's Bar came the sounds of breaking glass and loud shouting in Spanish.
"Let's take a walk," Keyes said.
"But I wanted to ask around in there," Nell said, nodding toward the bar, "to see if anybody has seen Teddy."
"Bad idea," Keyes grunted.
"He's right, Nell," one of the Shriners advised.
So they set off down Washington Avenue. They were a queer ensemble, even by South Beach standards. Keyes walked tentatively, like a well-dressed lush, while Nell handed out fliers with Teddy's picture. The Shriners ran interference through knots of shirtless refugees who milled outside the droopy 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.