Two tourists stood at the rail and waved at the tiny figures of snook fishermen out on the jetty. Mack Dane watched the tourists for a few minutes and decided to interview them for his story. They looked like a reasonable couple.
"The Gilberts," they said warmly. "Montreal."
Sam Gilbert was about forty years old. He wore pale yellow slacks and an expensive toupee that was having a rough go of it with the wind. Other than that, he was a handsome-looking gentleman with a pleasant smile. His wife appeared to be in her late thirties. She was dressed in a tasteful beige pantsuit, a sheer silk scarf tucked around her neck. Her hair was so unnaturally blond that it was attracting fireflies, but other than that Mrs. Gilbert looked like a friendly and decent person.
"This your first cruise?" Mack Dane asked.
"Yes," Mrs. Gilbert said. "We had to book four months in advance. This is a very popular trip."
Mack Dane told them he was a travel writer, and a guest of the Chamber of Commerce.
"You didn't have to pay?" Mrs. Gilbert said.
'Well, no."
"What a great job," said Sam Gilbert.
"First trip to Miami?" Mack Dane asked.
"Right," Gilbert said. "We're here to see the Irish stomp the Huskers." Notre Dame was playing the University of Nebraska in the Orange Bowl football game on New Year's Day. According to many sportswriters, the game would determine the national collegiate football championship.
"I don't like football," Mrs. Gilbert confided. "I'm here for the sunshine and shopping."
"We just bought a winter home in Boca Raton," Sam Gilbert said. "Not a home, actually, a condominium."
"Sam's a doctor," Mrs. Gilbert explained.
Mack Dane felt like another drink. The Nordic Princesswas out to sea, rocking ever so lightly in the northeast chop. Behind her, the skies of Miami glowed a burnished orange from the sodium anticrime lights.
"So it's safe to say you're really enjoying this trip," Mack Dane said.
"Oh yes." Mrs. Gilbert noisily attacked a stone-crab claw. Mack Dane wondered if she'd considered removing the shell first.
"Put in your article," she said, "that Dr. and Mrs. Samuel Gilbert of Montreal, Canada, are having the time of their lives."
Sam Gilbert said, "I wouldn't go that far."
"Mr. Dane, could you do us a favor? Could you take our picture?"
"Sure." Mack Dane put away his notebook and wiped his hands on a cocktail napkin that was decorated with the seal of the State of Florida. Mrs. Gilbert handed him a small thirty-five-millimeter camera with a built-in flash and built-in focus and built-in light meter.
The Gilberts posed arm-in-arm against the rail of the ship. Sam Gilbert wore his doctor face while Mrs. Gilbert kept reaching up and fiddling with his toupee, which, in the strong wind, had begun to resemble a dead starling.
Mack Dane squinted through the viewfinder and tried to frame the Gilberts romantically, with the lights of Miami shining over their shoulders. At first it was a perfect picture—if only there'd been a full moon! Then something went wrong. Suddenly Mack Dane couldn't see the Gilberts anymore; he couldn't see anything through the camera except a white light. He figured something broke on the focus.
But when he took the camera away from his face, Mack Dane realized that the white light was real: a beam piercing down from the heavens. Or from something inthe heavens. Something that hovered like a dragonfly high above the SS Nordic Princess.
"A helicopter," Mack Dane said. "A big one." He knew the sound of a chopper. He'd flown them lots of times out to the oil rigs.
The Gilberts craned their necks and stared into the sky, shielding their eyes from the powerful search beam. The other partiers crowded together, pointing. The salsaband took a break.
Mack Dane said, "It's coming down."
The helicopter did seem to be descending slowly, but it was no longer in a hover, it was flying in a slow arc. Trailing behind the chopper was a long advertising banner.
"This is really tacky," Sam Gilbert said.
Mack Dane put on eyeglasses and turned in circles, trying to read the streamer. In four-foot letters it said: "AVAST AND AHOY: WELCOME TO THE REVOLUTI—"
"Revoluti?" puzzled Sam Gilbert.
"Maybe it's a new perfume," said his wife.
Mack Dane wondered if some letters had fallen off the advertisement.
The helicopter dropped lower and lower, and soon the partiers aboard the Friendship Cruise found themselves drowned to silence by the rotor noise. When the chopper was no more than one hundred feet above the deck, the banner was cut loose. It fluttered into the sea like an enormous confetti. The crowd ooooohhhed, and a few even applauded.
Mack Dane noticed that the top deck—the Royal Sun Deck, according to the ship's guide—was filling with tourists and VIPs and travel writers who had come up from below to investigate the commotion. Before long, people were packed elbow to elbow. In the meantime, the captain of the SS Nordic Princesshad grown concerned about the reckless helicopter and cut his speed to eight knots.
"Hello, folks!" said a brassy male voice. Somebody on the helicopter had an electric bullhorn.
"Having a good time in Florida?" the voice called.
"Yeaaaah!" shouted the partiers, their faces upturned brightly. Some of the stuffy civic-leader types—the mayor, the Orange Bowl committeemen, the Chamber of Commerce life members—were miffed at the interruption of the cruise but, not wanting to spoil anyone's fun, said nothing.
The loud voice in the helicopter said: "How would all of you like some genuine Florida souvenirs?"
"Yeaaaaah!" shouted the partiers.
"Well, here you go!" the voice said.
A door on the side of the helicopter opened and a white parcel plummeted toward the deck of the Nordic Princess.It was followed by another and another. At first Mack Dane thought the objects might be miniature parachutes or beach towels, but when one landed near his feet he saw that it was only a shopping bag from Neiman-Marcus. Soon the deck was being rained with shopping bags from all the finest department stores—Lord and Taylor, Bloomingdale's, Macy's, Burdine's, Jordan Marsh, Saks. Once the travelers realized what was happening, the Friendship Cruise quickly dissolved into a frenzied scrabble for the goodies.
Mack Dane thought: This is some advertising gimmick.
To her credit, Mrs. Gilbert held her own against stiff competition. She outmuscled a jewelry dealer from Brooklyn and the vicious wife of a Miami city commissioner to capture three of the prized shopping bags.
"Look, Sam!"
"Really," Sam Gilbert muttered.
"What did you win?" Mack Dane asked.
"I'm not sure," Mrs. Gilbert said. The shopping bags were stapled shut. She ripped one open and fished inside.
Her hand came out with a bracelet. The bracelet had a pattern of pale yellow chain, and looked like rubber. The odd thing was, it appeared to be moving.
It was a live snake.
Mrs. Gilbert was speechless. Her eyelids fluttered as the snake coiled around her creamy wrist. Its strawberry tongue flicked in and out, tasting her heat.
"Jesus Christ," said her husband.
It was not a big snake, maybe three feet long, but it was dark brown and fat as a kitchen pipe. The snake was every bit as bewildered as the Gilberts.
Behind Mack Dane a woman shrieked. And across the deck, another. A man yelled out, "Oh my God!" and fainted with his eyes open. As if jarred from a trance, Mrs. Gilbert dropped the brown snake and back-pedaled; her jaw was going up and down, but nothing was coming out.
By now each of the shopping bags (exactly two hundred in all) had been opened with the same startling results.
The sundeck of the Nordic Princesswas crawling with snakes. King snakes, black snakes, blue runners, garter snakes, green snakes, banded water snakes, ring-necked snakes, yellow rat snakes, corn snakes, indigo snakes, scarlet king snakes. Most of the snakes were harmless, except for a handful of Eastern diamondback rattlers and cottonmouth water moccasins, like the one in Mrs. Gilbert's prize bag. Skip Wiley had not planned on dropping any poisonous snakes—he didn't think it necessary—but he'd neglected to tell Tommy Tigertail and his crew of Indian snake-catchers. The Seminoles made no distinction, spiritual or taxonomical, between venomous and nonvenomous snakes; all were holy.