Tourist Season

TOURIST SEASON

Carl Hiaasen

[02 feb 2002—scanned, proofed and released for #bookz]

On the morning of December 1, a man named Theodore Bellamy went swimming in the Atlantic Ocean off South Florida. Bellamy was a poor swimmer, but he was a good real-estate man and a loyal Shriner.

The Shriners thought so much of Theodore Bellamy that they had paid his plane fare all the way from Evanston, Illinois, to Miami Beach, where a big Shriner convention was being staged. Bellamy and his wife, Nell, made it a second honeymoon, and got a nice double room at the Holiday Inn. The view was nothing to write home about; a big green dumpster was all they could see from the window, but the Bellamys didn’t complain. They were determined to love Florida.

On the night of November 30, the Shriners had arranged a little parade down Collins Avenue. Theodore Bellamy put on his mauve fez and his silver riding jacket, and drove his chrome-spangled Harley Davidson (all the important Evanston Shriners had preshipped their bikes on a flatbed) up and down Collins in snazzy circles and figure eights, honking the horns and flashing the lights. Afterward Bellamy and his pals got bombed and sneaked out to the Place Pigalle to watch a 325-pound woman do a strip-tease. Bellamy was so snockered he didn’t even blink at the ten-dollar cover.

Nell Bellamy went to bed early. When her husband lurched in at 4:07 in the morning, she said nothing. She may have even smiled just a little, to herself.

The alarm clock went off like a Redstone rocket at eight sharp. We’re going swimming, Nell announced. Theodore was suffering through the please-God-I’ll-never-do-it-again phase of his hangover when his wife hauled him out of bed. Next thing he knew, he was wearing his plaid swim trunks, standing on the beach, Nell nudging him toward the surf, saying you first, Teddy, tell me if it’s warm enough.

The water was plenty warm, but it was also full of Portuguese men-of-war, poisonous floating jellyfish that pucker on the surface like bright blue balloons. Theodore Bellamy quickly became entangled in the burning tentacles of such a creature. He thrashed out of the ocean, his fish-white belly streaked with welts, the man-of-war clinging to his bare shoulder. He was crying. His fez was soaked.

At first Nell Bellamy was embarrassed, but then she realized that this was not Mango Daiquiri Pain, this was the real thing. She led her husband to a Disney World beach towel, and there she cradled him until two lifeguards ran up with a first-aid kit.

Later, Nell would remember that these were not your average-looking bleached-out lifeguards. One was black and the other didn’t seem to speak English, but what the heck, this was Miami. She had come here resolved not to be surprised at anything, and this was the demeanor she maintained while the men knelt over her fallen husband. Besides, they were wearing authentic lifeguard T-shirts, weren’t they?

After ten minutes of ministrations and Vaseline, the lifeguards informed Nell Bellamy that they would have to transport her husband to a first-aid station. They said he needed medicine to counteract the man-of-war’s venom. Nell wanted to go along, but they persuaded her to wait, and assured her it was nothing serious. Theodore said don’t be silly, work on your tan, I’ll be okay now.

And off they went, Theodore all pale-legged and stripe-bellied, a lifeguard at each side, marching down the beach.

That was 8:44 A.M.

Nell Bellamy never saw her husband again.

At ten sharp she went searching for the lifeguards, with no success, and after walking a gritty two-mile stretch of beach, she called the police. A patrolman came to the Holiday Inn and took a missing-persons report. Nell mentioned Theodore’s hangover and what a lousy swimmer he was. The cop told Mrs. Bellamy that her husband had probably tried to go back in the water and had gotten into trouble in the rough surf. When Mrs. Bellamy described the two lifeguards, the policeman gave her a very odd look.

The case of Theodore Bellamy was not given top priority at the Miami Beach police department, where the officers had more catastrophic things to worry about than a drunken Shriner missing in the ocean.

The police instead were consumed with establishing the whereabouts of B. D. “Sparky” Harper, one of the most important persons in all Florida; Harper, who had failed to show up at his office for the first time in twenty-one years. Every available detective was out shaking the palm trees, hunting for Sparky.

When it became clear that the police were too preoccupied to launch a manhunt for her husband, Nell Bellamy mobilized the Shriners. They invaded the beach in packs, some on foot, others on motorcycle, a few in tiny red motorcars that had a tendency to get stuck in the sand. The Shriners wore grim, purposeful looks; Teddy Bellamy was one of their own.

The Shriners were thorough, and they got results. Nell cried when she heard the news.

They had found Theodore’s fez on the beach, at water’s edge.

Nell thought: So he really drowned, the big nut.

Later the Shriners gathered at Lummus Park for an impromptu prayer service. Someone laid a wreath on the handlebars of Bellamy’s customized Harley.

Nobody could have dreamed what actually happened to Theodore Bellamy. But this was just the beginning.

They found Sparky Harper later that same day, a bright and cloudless afternoon.

A cool breeze kicked up a light chop on the Pines Canal, where the suitcase floated, half-submerged, invisible to the teenager on water skis. He was skimming along at forty knots when he rammed the luggage and launched into a spectacular triple somersault.

His friends wheeled the boat to pick him up and offer congratulations. Then they doubled back for the suitcase. It took all three of them to haul it aboard; they figured it had to be stuffed with money or dope.

The water skier got a screwdriver from a toolbox and chiseled at the locks on the suitcase. “Let’s see what’s inside!” he said eagerly.

And there, folded up like Charlie McCarthy, was B. D. “Sparky” Harper.

“A dead midget!” the boat driver gasped.

“That’s no midget,” the water skier said. “That’s a real person.”

“Oh God, we gotta call the cops. Come on, help me shut this damn thing.”

But with Sparky Harper swelling, the suitcase wouldn’t close, and the latches were broken anyway, so all the way back to the marina the three of them sat on the luggage to keep the dead midget inside.

Two Dade County detectives drove out to Virginia Key to get the apple-red Samsonite Royal Tourister. They took a statement from the water skier, put the suitcase in the trunk of their unmarked Plymouth, and headed back downtown.

One of the cops, a blocky redhead, walked into the medical examiner’s office carrying the Samsonite as if nothing were wrong. “Is this the Pan Am terminal?” he deadpanned to the first secretary he saw.

The suitcase was taken to the morgue and placed on a shiny steel autopsy table. Dr. Joe Allen, the chief medical examiner, recognized Sparky Harper instantly.

“The first thing we’ve got to do,” said Dr. Allen, putting on some rubber gloves, “is get him out of there.”

Whoever had murdered the president of the Greater Miami Chamber of Commerce had gone to considerable trouble to pack him into the red Samsonite. Sparky was only five-foot-five, but he weighed nearly one hundred ninety pounds, most of it in the midriff. To have squeezed him into a suitcase, even a deluxe-sized suitcase, was a feat that drew admiring comments from the coroner’s seasoned staff. One of the clerks used up two rolls of film documenting the extrication.

Finally the corpse was removed and unfolded, more or less, onto the table. It was then that some of the amazement dissolved: Harper’s legs were missing below the kneecaps. That’s how the killer had fit him into the suitcase.

One of the cops whispered, “Look at those clothes, Doc.”

It
was
odd. Sparky Harper had died wearing a brightly flowered print shirt and baggy Bermuda-style shorts. Sporty black wraparound sunglasses concealed his dilated pupils. He looked just like any old tourist from Milwaukee.

The autopsy took two hours and twenty minutes. Inside Sparky Harper, Dr. Allen found two gallstones, forty-seven grams of partially digested stone crabs, and thirteen ounces of Pouilly Fuisse. But the coroner found no bullets, no stab wounds, no signs of trauma besides the amputations, which were crude but not necessarily fatal.

“He must have bled to death,” the redheaded cop surmised.

“Don’t think so,” Dr. Allen said.

“Bet he drowned,” said the other cop.

“No, sir,” said Dr. Allen, who was probing into the lungs by now. Dr. Allen wasn’t crazy about people gawking over his shoulder while he worked. It made him feel like he was performing onstage, a magician pulling little purple treasures out of a dark hole. He didn’t mind having medical students as observers because they were always so solemn during an autopsy. Cops were something else; one dumb joke after another. Dr. Allen had never figured out why cops get so silly in a morgue.

“What’s that greasy stuff all over his skin?” asked the redheaded detective.

“Essence of Stiff,” said the other cop.

“Smells like coconuts,” said the redhead. “I’m serious, Doc, take a whiff.”

“No, thank you,” Dr. Allen said curtly.

“I don’t smell anything,” said the assistant coroner, “except the deceased.”

“It’s coconut, definitely,” said the other cop, sniffing. “Maybe he drowned in pina colada.”

Nobody could have guessed what actually had killed Sparky Harper. It was supple and green and exactly five and one-quarter inches long. Dr. Allen found it lodged in the trachea. At first he thought it was a large chunk of food, but it wasn’t.

It was a toy rubber alligator. It had cost seventy-nine cents at a tourist shop along the Tamiami Trail. The price tag was still glued to its corrugated tail.

B. D. “Sparky” Harper, the president of the most powerful chamber of commerce in all Florida, had choked to death on a rubber alligator. Well, well, thought Dr. Allen as he dangled the prize for his proteges to see, here’s one for my slide show at next month’s convention.

News of B. D. Harper’s death appeared on the front page of the
Miami Sun
with a retouched photograph that made Harper look like a flatulent Gene Hackman. Details of the crime were meager, but this much was known:

Harper had last been seen on the night of November 30, driving away from Joe’s Stone Crab restaurant on South Miami Beach. He had told friends he was going to the Fontainebleau Hilton for drinks with some convention organizers from the International Elks.

Harper had not been wearing a Jimmy Buffett shirt and Bermuda shorts, but in fact had been dressed in a powder-blue double-knit suit purchased at J. C. Penney’s.

He had not appeared drunk.

He had not worn black wraparound sunglasses.

He had not been lugging a red Samsonite.

He had not displayed a toy rubber alligator all evening.

In the newspaper story a chief detective was quoted as saying, “This one’s a real whodunit,” which is what the detective was told to say whenever a reporter called.

In this instance the reporter was Ricky Bloodworth.

Bloodworth wore that pale, obsessive look of ambition so familiar to big-city newsrooms. He was short and bony, with curly black hair and a squirrel-like face frequently speckled with late-blooming acne. He was frenetic to a fault, dashing from phone to typewriter to copy desk in a blur—yet he was different from most of his colleagues. Ricky Bloodworth wanted to be much more than just a reporter; he wanted to be an authentic
character.
He tried, at various times, panama hats, silken vests, a black eyepatch, saddle shoes, a Vandyke—nobody ever noticed. He even experimented with Turkish cigarettes (thinking it debonair) and wound up on a respirator at Mercy Hospital. Even those who disliked Bloodworth, and they were many, felt sorry for him; the poor guy wanted a quirk in the worst way. But, stylistically, the best he could do was to drum pencils and suck down incredible amounts of 7-Up. It wasn’t much, but it made him feel like he was contributing something to the newsroom’s energy bank.

Ricky Bloodworth thought he’d done a respectable job on the first Sparky Harper story (given the deadlines), but now, on the morning of December 2, he was ready to roll. Harper’s ex-wives had to be found and interviewed, his coworkers had to be quizzed, and an array of semi-bereaved civic leaders stood ready to offer their thoughts on the heinous crime.

But Dr. Allen came first. Ricky Bloodworth knew the phone number of the coroner’s office by heart; memorizing it was one of the first things he’d done after joining the paper.

When Dr. Allen got on the line, Bloodworth asked, “What’s your theory, Doc?”

“Somebody tied up Sparky and made him swallow a rubber alligator,” the coroner said.

“Cause of death?”

“Asphyxiation.”

“How do you know he didn’t swallow it on purpose?”

“Did he cut off his own legs, too?”

“You never know,” Bloodworth said. “Maybe it started out as some kinky sex thing. Or maybe it was voodoo, all these Haitians we got now. Or
santeria.”