Part 22 (1/2)

Seitz snorted.

”What?” asked Baker.

”What makes you think this is the first time?” said Seitz.

”This isn't the first time?” said Baker.

Seitz snorted again.

”Never mind which time this is,” said Greer.

”Here's the thing. What I told you here, it's because, like I said, you're a cop, and you got cops involved. But what I'm also telling you is, when we get these sc.u.mbags, we take them, and the suitcase, and we leave, and that's the end of this as far as you are concerned, understand?”

”What do you mean?” asked Baker.

”What I mean,” said Greer, ”is that as far as the federal government is concerned-and I am talking about way, way, way the f.u.c.k high up in the federal government-none of this happened. There was no nuclear bomb in Miami. There never have been any nuclear bombs going around loose in suitcases anywhere in this great land of ours. Because if people start thinking there are, we are gonna have panic like you cannot imagine-people leaving for Montana, h.o.a.rding food, taking all their money outta the banks, lynching every guy with a beard, you get the picture. The economy goes into the toilet, civilization collapses, end of story. So this did not happen. Understand? Whatever happens, it did not happen.”

Baker said, ”But I have to report ... ”

”You don't have to report s.h.i.+t,” said Greer. ”You repeat any of this, Agent Seitz and I, backed by pretty much the entire federal government, will deny it. You push it, and we will push back on you, hard. Very hard. Nothing personal, because seems to me like you're a good cop, but we can and will f.u.c.k your career up so bad you won't be able to get a job policing Porta Potties.”

Baker sat back in his seat, staring out the window again. He said, ”What you said before, about if you told me what was going on, you might have to kill me ... ”

Greer turned and looked back at him. ”What about it?”

Baker said, ”You weren't kidding, were you?”

Greer looked forward again. ”Traffic's getting bad,” he said.

CHAPTER eleven

Even veteran air travelers find Miami International Airport disorienting. It's often crowded, and it seems to have been designed so that every pa.s.senger, no matter where he or she is coming from or going to, has to jostle past every other pa.s.senger. The main concourse looks like a combination international bazaar and refugee camp. There are big clots of people everywhere-tour groups, school trips, salsa bands, soccer teams, vast extended families-all waiting for planes that will not leave for hours, maybe days. There aren't enough places to sit, so the clots plop down and sprawl on the mungy carpet, surrounded by Appalachian-foothill-sized mounds of luggage, including gigantic suitcases stuffed to bursting, as well as a vast array of consumer goods purchased in South Florida for transport back to Latin America, including TVs, stereos, toys, major appliances, and complete sets of tires. Many of these items have been wrapped in thick coc.o.o.ns of greenish stretch plastic to deter baggage theft, which is an important airport industry, another one being the constant ”improvements” to the airport, which seem to consist mainly of the installation of permanent-looking signs asking the public to excuse the inconvenience while the airport is being improved.

The airport air smells of musty tropical rot, and it's filled with the sounds of various languages-Spanish, predominantly, but also English, Creole, German, French, Italian, and, perhaps most distinct of all, Cruise s.h.i.+p Pa.s.senger. The cruisers just arriving are usually wearing brand-new cruisewear. They follow in groups close behind cruise-line employees holding signs displaying cruise-line names; they tell each other what other cruises they have been on, and they laugh loudly whenever anybody makes a joke-which somebody does every forty-five seconds-about how much they're going to drink, gamble, or buy. The cruisers heading home are more subdued-tired, sunburned, hungover, and bloated from eating eleven times per day, whether they were hungry or not, because ... it's all included! Some of the women have had their hair braided and beaded, a style that looks fine on young Caribbean girls, but on most women over sixteen looks comical or outright hideous. Some pa.s.sengers are clutching badly ma.s.s-produced ”folk art”-large, unattractive, nonfunctional sticks are popular-and a great many of them are lugging boxes containing the ultimate cruise-s.h.i.+p pa.s.senger trophy: discount booze! Never mind that they spent thousands of dollars to take this vacation: They're thrilled to have saved as much as ten dollars a bottle on scotch and brandy and liqueurs that they will never actually drink, but which they lug through miles of airports, on and off various planes, so that when they get back home they can haul it out and display it proudly to visitors in the months and years to come (”We got this for twenty-three-fifty in the Virgin Islands! Guess what it costs here!”).

On the night that Snake and his party walked in with a nuclear bomb, the airport was even more chaotic than usual. There was bad weather in Chicago, which of course meant that virtually every flight in the western hemisphere, including s.p.a.ce shuttle launches, had been delayed. And now some airlines were noticing a problem getting clearance for outgoing flights to push back, although the control tower was not saying why. Most airline ticket counters had sprouted long lines of p.i.s.sed-off pa.s.sengers shoving to get to the counter so they could argue fruitlessly with p.i.s.sed-off airline employees. Police had already been summoned to arrest one returning cruise pa.s.senger who had threatened a ticket agent with his souvenir stick.

Eddie came through the airport door first, followed by Puggy, lugging the suitcase, and then Snake, who had one hand under the sweats.h.i.+rt and the other holding Jenny's arm. Like Eddie and Puggy, Snake had never been inside MIA before, and for a moment, when he saw the roiling mob, he thought about turning and running. But then he squeezed his gun, his wand, and the moment pa.s.sed. He was not going back to scamming dimes.

”Where we goin' ?” asked Eddie, staring at the airport scene. He had never felt less like he belonged somewhere, and Eddie was the kind of person who never felt he belonged anywhere.

”That way,” said Snake, pointing, pretty much randomly, toward a line of ticket counters. He jabbed the barrel of the sweats.h.i.+rt-swathed gun into Puggy's back and said, ”You stay close, punk. You don't go one step farther away from me'n you are now.”

They moved slowly through the crowd-first Eddie, then Puggy lugging the suitcase, followed closely by Snake, who limped next to Jenny, who shuffled her feet and stared ahead, zombie-like. The first airline they came to had a name Snake did not understand and a sign listing departures for cities that Snake had never heard of; everyone at the counter was talking in Spanish. Snake jerked his head to indicate to Eddie that he should move ahead. They went past a half dozen more airlines that Snake found incomprehensible, then came to a small counter with a half dozen people waiting in line for a lone agent. Over the counter was an orange sign that said: AIR IMPACT!

You're Gateway to the Bahamas Sheduled Departures Daily Snake felt a good-vibe jolt. The Bahamas! He motioned Eddie to get in line. They shuffled forward, Snake keeping his grip on Jenny and periodically letting Puggy feel the gun in his back. In ten minutes, they were standing in front of the agent.

The agent was a single mom named Sheila who had been on duty for fourteen hours without a break, because two of her three coworkers had quit that very day. Air Impact! had trouble keeping employees because its paychecks were behind schedule as often as its flights, which was quite often. Air Impact! was owned by two brothers from North Miami Beach who had done well in the pest-control business and had hatched the plan of starting an airline so that they would have a legitimate business excuse to fly to the Bahamas and gamble and have s.e.x with women who were not technically their wives. The airline was in its second year, and the brothers were spending more and more time in the Bahamas and less and less time on business details such as payroll and schedules and hiring competent personnel.

The Federal Aviation Administration had begun to take a special interest in Air Impact! after receiving an unusually high number of pa.s.senger complaints about flight delays and cancellations. Eyebrows had also been raised two weeks earlier when an Air Impact! flight from Miami to Na.s.sau, flown by pilots with questionable credentials, had in fact landed in Key West, which even non-aviators noted was several hundred miles in the diametrically opposite direction. Rumor had it that the FAA was about to shut Air Impact! down, and morale was very low among the employees who had not already quit. n.o.body's morale was any lower than Sheila's; aside from having been on her feet for what seemed like forever dealing with unhappy customers, she had just received a call from the baby-sitter she could barely afford telling her that her two-year-old daughter was throwing up, this coming on top of the call from the mechanic telling her that her 1987 Taurus, which always needed something, needed major transmission work.

Had Sheila been in a state of higher morale, she probably would have cared enough to be suspicious of the quartet now standing at the counter-a zoned-out young woman with three scuzzy-looking men. But Sheila had long since pa.s.sed the point of giving a s.h.i.+t.

”Yes?” she said to Snake.

”We need four tickets to the Bahamas, one-way, next flight you got,” said Snake.

”Na.s.sau or Freeport?” she asked.

Snake frowned. ”The Bahamas,” he said.

”Na.s.sau and Freeport are in the Bahamas,” said Sheila, mentally adding you moron.

Snake thought about it.

”Freeport,” he said. He liked the sound of it.

”There's a ten-ten flight,” said Sheila, checking her watch, which said nine-fifteen. ”Four one-way tickets is”-she tapped the computer keyboard-”three hundred sixty dollars.”

Snake let go of Jenny for a moment while he dug his free hand into his pocket He pulled out the fat wad of bills he'd taken from Arthur Herk at the house. He set it on the counter, in front of Sheila, and, one-handed, started counting off twenties out loud ... ”twenty, forty, sixty ... ” At 120, his brain fogged up-he'd always struggled with arithmetic-and he had to start again. He did this twice, said ”f.u.c.k,” and pushed the wad off the counter, scattering bills across Sheila's keyboard.

”Take it outta there,” he said.

Sheila gathered up the wad, feeling the heft of it, this big bunch of money being carried around by this guy who didn't even know how to count it. Sheila peeled off $360. Then, after glancing at Snake, who was looking around nervously, she peeled off another $480, which was what she needed to get her transmission fixed, and then another $140, which was roughly what she owed the baby-sitter for the past week. She put the rest of the wad back on the counter. Snake looked at it. He almost said something, but he didn't want any trouble here. Plus he figured he had plenty of money left. Plus a suitcase full of drugs. Maybe emeralds.

”I need the names of the pa.s.sengers,” said Sheila, tapping on her terminal.

Snake hesitated, then said, ”John Smith.”

Sheila looked up for a second, then went back to tapping.

”And the other pa.s.sengers?” she said.

”John Smith,” said Snake.

Sheila looked up again, at Eddie, Puggy, Snake, and Jenny. ”You're all John Smith?” she asked.

”Everybody,” said Snake ”I need to see photo IDs,” said Sheila.