"No comment."
"Where did the chopper come from?"
"No comment."
Several reporters began to complain about all the no commentsand threatened to walk out of the press conference. The Dade County mayor excitedly whispered something to the chief of police, who leaned across and excitedly whispered something to Al Garcia. The detective glared at all of them.
"Seems I've been authorized to answer your questions," Garcia told the reporters, "as long as it won't interfere with the investigation. About the helicopter—we haven't traced it yet. It was a rebuilt Huey 34, probably stolen up in Lauderdale or Palm Beach."
"What about Jesus Bernal?" asked a man from a Cuban radio station.
Al Garcia decided to give the guys in the orange blazers something to think about. "We have no evidence that Mr. Bernal was aboard the helicopter last night," he said.
The Orange Bowl chairman shot to his feet. "But he probably was!"
"We have no such evidence," Garcia repeated.
"What about the banner?" the radio reporter asked.
"We recovered it this morning, tangled up in a swordfish line. The streamer was rented yesterday afternoon from Cairo Advertising at the Opalocka Airport. Three individuals were seen attaching the letters. A white male, bearded, late thirties, wearing an Australian bush hat; a black male, approximately the same age but heavyset, wearing a football jersey; a younger, dark-skinned male, cleanshaven, described as either a Mexican or a native American Indian. The banner on the chopper basically said the same thing as all the previous communiques—'Welcome to the Revolution' et cetera."
"Those men seen at the airport," a TV reporter said, "those were The Nachos?"
"Las Noches,"Garcia snapped.
"Who paid for the banner?" somebody shouted.
"Apparently the white male."
"How much?"
The Orange Bowl chairman sensed that it had been a tactical mistake to let Al Garcia stand at the microphone. The idiot was actually answering the journalists' questions. The more Garcia talked, the more frenetically the reporters wrote in their notebooks. And the more they wrote in their notebooks, the more stories would appear in the newspapers and the more airtime the dead Nachos would get. More was not what the Orange Bowl Committee wanted to see.
The chairman stood up and said with a smile, "I think that's all for now." But he was completely ignored by everyone, including Al Garcia.
"The white male suspect paid three hundred dollars cash for use of the advertising streamer," Garcia said.
"Could that man have been El Fuego?"a reporter asked.
"It's possible, yeah."
"Did he give a name at the airport?"
"Yes, he did," Garcia said.
Then all at once, like a flock of crows: 'What?"
Garcia glanced over at the police chief. The chief shrugged. The Orange Bowl chairman waved a chubby hand, trying to get somebody's attention.
"The suspect did use a name at the airport," Garcia said, "but we believe it was an alias."
"What was it?"
"In fact, we're ninety-nine percent sure it was an alias," the detective said, fading from the microphone.
"What was it, Al? What?"
"Well," Garcia said, "the name the suspect gave was Hugo. Victor Hugo."
There was a lull in the questioning while the reporters explained to each other who Victor Hugo was.
"What about motive?" somebody shouted finally.
"That's easy," Garcia replied. "They attacked the ocean liner for the same reason they marinated Sparky Harper in Coppertone. Publicity." He smiled with amusement at all the busy notebooks. "Looks to me like they got exactly what they wanted."
The press conference had taken a perilous turn, and the Orange Bowl chairman could no longer contain his rising panic. Squeezing to the podium, he discreetly placed a stubby hand between Garcia's shoulder blades and guided the detective to the nearest available chair. Then the Orange Bowl man boldly seized the neck of the microphone himself. "Ladies and gentlemen," he said cordially, "wouldn't you rather hear the mayor's firsthand account of his escape from the Nordic Princess?"
Brian Keyes watched the press conference on a television in Kara Lynn Shivers' bedroom. Her father was out playing golf and her mother was eating quiche with the Junior League.
Kara Lynn was curled up on the bed in bikini panties and a lemon T-shirt. Keyes wore cutoffs. He squeezed her hand as they listened to Al Garcia talking to the reporters. When the mayor got up and started to tell about the helicopter attack, Keyes punched the remote control and switched to a basketball game.
For a long time he didn't say anything, just stared at the TV screen. Kara Lynn put her arms around him and kissed him on the neck.
"It's really over," she whispered.
"I don't know," Keyes said distantly. He kept visualizing that crackpot Wiley, strolling into the Opa-locka Airport with his bush hat and two hundred bags of wild snakes. Keyes tried to imagine the scene later, aboard the Huey, Wiley and his portable record player; Wiley trying to explain Exodusto Viceroy Wilson.
"The only one left is that Cuban," Kara Lynn said.
"Maybe." Keyes tried to think of Skip Wiley as dead and could not. The obstacle was not grief; it was plain disbelief. It was not beyond Wiley to have rented an aged and dangerously unreliable helicopter, or to have hired an inept pilot. What was uncharacteristic was for Wiley to have placed himself so squarely in jeopardy. All through December he had kept a safe distance from the actual terrorism, sending Wilson or Bernal or the Seminole to take the big risks. Why the sudden bravery? Keyes wondered. And what a convenient way to die. He had felt a little guilty that he could summon so little sadness for his old friend—but then again, maybe it was too soon for mourning.
"The late Victor Hugo," Keyes mused. Wiley must have known how his friends would smile at that one; he was forever edifying his own legend.
"Les Miserables,"Kara Lynn said. "Sounds like Mr. Fuego had a sense of humor."
"Sick," Keyes said. "Sick, sick, sick." Wiley would be better off dead, he thought, before the incredible dismal truth were known. With Wiley dead, Kara Lynn would be safe. So would the newspaper; Cab Mulcahy could return to the world of honest journalism. It would be better for almost everybody if Wiley were lost at sea, everybody except Jenna—Jenna was another issue. She hadn't been aboard that helicopter. Keyes knew it instinctively. Jenna's talent was creating catastrophes, then avoiding them.
"I want this to be the end," Kara Lynn said quietly.
"Well, maybe it is."
"But you don't believe they're really dead," she said.
"The way it happened, it's too perfect."
"The Prince of Cynics. You don't believe life can ever be perfect?"
"Nope," Keyes said. "Death, either."
Later, when Kara Lynn was in the shower, Al Garcia phoned.
"It's about damn time," Keyes groused.
"Been kinda hectic around here," the detective said. "I saw this stack of messages from you and Mulcahy. Figured your conscience finally woke up."
"We had our reasons, Al. Now it's time to talk."
"Oh, I can't wait. But it just so happens I already got a line on El Fuego"
So Garcia knew.
Keyes felt lousy about not telling him in the first place, but Wiley's threats had seemed serious and, in retrospect, believable. Garcia would have to understand.
"When we were doing routine checks on Wilson and Bernal, I had a pal search the morgue at the newspaper," the detective said. "Easy, really. I guess it's all on computer now. Funny thing, Brian. About four months ago your asshole buddy Wiley does this story on whatever happened to Daniel Viceroy Wilson, the famous football star. Very sympathetic. Hard-times-for-the-troubled-black-athlete number. Typical liberal shit. Anyway, three weeks later, guess what? Guy does a column about Jesus Bernal. Ourprecious Jesus. Fire burns in the breast of a young Cuban freedom fighter—that's how the story starts off. Makes me sick, too, I gotta tell you. Nearly tossed my black beans. So I'm thinking, what a weird coincidence this is: two of the four Nights of December getting a big ride in the newspaper just before the ca-ca hits the fan. So, for the hell of it, what d'you suppose I do?"