"Look," Garcia said, "you guys have to put on a parade and I have to solve murders. Maybe even prevent 'em, if possible. So listen real good 'cause here's the plan: we're gonna have cops crawling all over Biscayne Boulevard on New Year's Eve. We're gonna have the Orange Bowl queen so completely surrounded by police that you might as well paint a badge on her goddamn float. I don't care what it looks like on television. Fuck NBC. Fuck Jane Pauley. Fuck Alf Landon."

"MichaelLandon," Keyes whispered.

"Him, too."

The Orange Bowl chairman looked like he'd have killed for a Maalox. He said, "Sergeant, that's the worst plan I ever heard. It would be a catastrophe, image-wise."

"I agree," said Sparky Harper's successor.

"This is not a military parade," scoffed another Chamber of Commerce man.

"Now, wait a minute," said one of the orange-blazer guys. "Maybe we can compromise. Suppose we have the police wave batons and march in lockstep behind the queen's float! I'd say that would look mighty darn impressive. And no one would suspect a thing."

"How about screw the batons," said Al Garcia.

"Then plainclothes," suggested the Dade County police chief.

"Maybe," Garcia said.

"And have them hiding in the crowd," the Orange Bowl chairman said. "Not in the blessed parade."

"Won't work," Keyes said. "I've been stuck in that crowd before, when I covered the parade for the Sun.You can't move—it's like acres of human taffy. Something happens and it'd take you five minutes to reach the float, and that's too long."

The Orange Bowl chairman was not persuaded. He scrunched his blackberry eyes and said, "There will be no police marching in this parade! We're selling Tropical Tranquillity, not Dragnet"

"Okay, if that's the way you want it," Garcia said. "How about we just stash a midget with a MAC-10 underneath the queen's gown?"

"Al, please," groaned the Dade County police chief.

"No one would notice a thing," Garcia said mischieviously, "except maybe the midget."

"Don't you have another plan?" pleaded one of the blazers.

"Yeah, matter of fact, I do." Garcia winked at Brian Keyes. "I sure do."

Skip Wiley's Christmas column arrived from Nassau by telex on Saturday, December 22.

Cab Mulcahy read it carefully before he summoned Ricky Bloodworth to his office.

"You've been doing a fine job on the terrorist story," Mulcahy said. This was a shameless lie, but Mulcahy had no choice. Bloodworth was a sucker for phony compliments.

'Thanks, Cab," he said. "Did you hear? Timemagazine called."

"Really."

"Yup. Wanted all my clips on Las Nachos"

"LasNoches," Mulcahy corrected.

"Right. But isn't that great? About Timemagazine?"

"Terrific," Cab Mulcahy said, thinking: Does this chowderhead really believe Timemagazine wants to hire him?

"Ricky, I need your help."

Bloodworth's squirrelly features furrowed. "Sure, Cab, anything at all."

"I got this column from Skip Wiley"—Mulcahy waved the telex—"and, frankly, it's not up to par."

Ricky Bloodworth didn't say anything immediately, but his eyes brightened with an it's-too-good-to-be-true look.

"You want to substitute one of mine!"

"Not exactly," Mulcahy said.

"I've already got a Christmas column worked up," Bloodworth persisted. "Christmas in Palm Beach. I interviewed Rose Kennedy's butler. It's a nice little story, Cab. Rose Kennedy bought the butler a Chevrolet last Christmas, and you know what he got for her? You'll never guess."

"Probably not."

"Two tickets to Torch Song Trilogy."

"Ricky ... "

"Don't you think that's a good Christmas story?"

"Very moving, but not precisely what I had in mind."

God forgive me, thought Cab Mulcahy as he handed Wiley's column to Ricky Bloodworth.

"I want you to punch up Skip's piece," Mulcahy said. "Really make it sing."

Bloodworth skimmed the column warily. "Geez, Cab, I don't know about this."

"Do it as a favor," Mulcahy said, "for me."

"But what's Skip going to say?"

"Let me worry about that."

"He can get pretty nasty, Cab. He punched me once," Bloodworth said, "in the groin area."

"Skip punched you?"

Bloodworth nodded. "He said I burned one of his sources."

"Did you?"

"It was a misunderstanding. I didn't know the guy was off-the-record. Anyway, he gave me a helluva quote."

"So," Mulcahy said, "you printed his name in the story."

"Right."

"What happened?"

"I think the guy got fired."

"I see."

"And possibly indicted," Bloodworth said.

"Hmmm." Mulcahy thought: When it's all over, I'm getting rid of this asshole. Send him up to the Okeechobee bureau to cover Cucumber Jubilees for the rest of his life.

"The whole thing was just a misunderstanding, but Skip was totally irrational about it. He blamed me for everything."

"Did he now?" Mulcahy's ulcer was shooting electric messages.

Bloodworth said, "The point is, I don't want Skip to go on the warpath again. He's a violent man."

"Ricky, let me worry about it. Just take a crack at the column, all right?"

It had arrived as a lovely little piece, one of Wiley's traditional holiday tearjerkers. It began like this:

Rollie Artis rowed out to sea last Thursday dawn.

You could watch him from Cable Beach, paddling out Nassau harbor, his thick black arms flashing at the oars.

Rollie went to hunt for conchs, which was his livelihood, as it was his father's. And, as his father, Rollie Artis was a splendid diver with strong lungs and sharp eyes and an instinct for finding the shellfish beds.

But on Thursday the winds were high and the water was ferocious, and the other conch divers had warned Rollie not to try it.

"But I got to," he had said. "If I don't go fishin', there, be no Christinas for my babies this year"

At dusk Rollie's wife Clarisse waited on the dock behind the Straw Market, waited; as she always did, for the sight of the bright wooden skiff.

But Rollie Art is never returned. The next morning the seas calmed and the other fishermen searched for their friend. Not a trace was found. A few of the men were old enough to remember that the same thing had happened to Rollie's father, on another winter's day. An act of God, the old divers said; what else could explain such tragic irony?

Yesterday, at Rollie's house in Queen's Park, Clarisse put up a yule tree and sang to her two small children. Christmas carols. And the song of a fisherman.

Ricky Bloodworth took Wiley's column to his desk and slaughtered it. It took less than an hour. Cab Mulcahy was surprised at Bloodworth's aptitude for turgidity; it came naturally to the kid.

This, unedited, is what he brought back:

The Bahamas Coast Guard has some real explaining to do.

Nassau fisherman Rollie Artis disappeared from sight last Thursday and nobody except his fishing pals seem to give a hoot.

In our country, Artis would have been the object of a massive air-and-sea rescue effort. But in the Bahamas, nobody lifts the first helicopter. Is it money? Manpower? Equipment? Makes you wonder where all those tourist tax dollars are going—especially when you consider what they're gouging for a decent hotel room these days on Paradise Island.

It also makes you wonder about a supposedly modern government that fails to enforce basic safety regulations for boaters. If a law had forced Rollie Artis to carry life jackets, he might be alive today. And if his boat had been properly equipped with an outboard motor, he might have made it back to port.