Tourist Season

In early December in Miami, two disappearances signal the start of a violent conspiracy. Theodore Bellamy, a Shriner (a member of a fraternal order) visiting from Illinois, is lured from Miami Beach by two men posing as lifeguards and never seen again. That same day, the body of B. D. "Sparky" Harper, president of the Greater Miami Chamber of Commerce, is found stuffed in a suitcase floating in a canal, dressed in tourist clothing and choked to death on a toy rubber alligator. Police arrest Ernesto Cabal, a petty car burglar found driving Harper's stolen Oldsmobile, but Ernesto insists he bought the car from a large, well-dressed Black man.

Brian Keyes, a 32-year-old private investigator and former reporter at the Miami Sun, takes Ernesto's case. Keyes left journalism two years earlier after a devastating assignment involving a murdered child and now handles mostly divorce cases. His friend Detective Al García privately shares a letter from a group calling itself Las Noches de Diciembre (the Nights of December), signed by "El Fuego" (The Fire), claiming Harper's death as a revolutionary act. García dismisses it as a hoax.

Meanwhile, Skip Wiley, the Sun's star columnist and an increasingly erratic writer, publishes a sensationalized column convicting Ernesto in print. His managing editor, Cab Mulcahy, confronts Wiley about fabricated details and orders him to see a psychiatrist. Wiley dangles the doctor out a 15th-floor window and then vanishes, his car found abandoned on Interstate 95 with the engine running.

Keyes traces the Harper crime scene to a motel where a muscular Black man and a young Latin man rented a room the night Harper disappeared. At a South Beach bar, Keyes learns the Black man is Viceroy Wilson, a former star fullback for the Miami Dolphins whose career ended in bankruptcy and bitterness. Wilson attacks Keyes and escapes. Outside the bar, Keyes meets Nell Bellamy, Theodore's wife, along with fellow Shriners Burt and James, who are searching for Theodore. Nell shows Keyes a letter from El Fuego identical to García's, confirming the disappearance is connected to Harper's murder. When Ernesto hangs himself in jail, Keyes loses his client but remains convinced a larger conspiracy is at work.

Mulcahy hires Keyes to find Wiley, revealing that Jenna, Keyes's ex-girlfriend who left him for Wiley, specifically requested Brian for the job. Jenna suggests Wiley may be hiding near the Everglades. Keyes canoes to the Wiley family cabin in the swamp, where someone overturns the canoe and drags him under. He wakes bound to a tree at a campsite, where Wiley reveals himself as the leader of Las Noches de Diciembre. The other members are Viceroy Wilson; Jesús Bernal, a volatile Cuban exile and former defense minister for an anti-Castro terrorist group called the First Weekend in July Movement; and Tommy Tigertail, a wealthy young Seminole who made his fortune running bingo halls on the reservation.

Wiley explains his plan: use terrorism and bad publicity to drive tourists out of Florida, collapse the economy, and restore the land to its natural state. He threatens a massacre if Keyes reveals his identity. To demonstrate the group's ruthlessness, Wiley forces Keyes to watch as Wilson and Bernal feed an elderly resident named Ida Kimmelman to a crocodile. Bernal stabs Keyes when he tries to intervene. Tommy transports the wounded Keyes back to civilization by airboat. Terrified by Wiley's threats, Keyes withholds Wiley's identity from the police.

Las Noches escalates its campaign. Bernal, acting without authorization, bombs a detective's car, a dog-racing track, and a golf course, killing several people. Wilson and Tommy kidnap more tourists. García forms the Fuego One Task Force, and Keyes reveals that Las Noches plans to kidnap the Orange Bowl queen during the nationally televised New Year's Eve parade. The committee refuses to cancel the parade, so Keyes is hired as a covert bodyguard for Kara Lynn Shivers, the newly crowned queen, a 19-year-old University of Miami sophomore who is intelligent and cynical about the pageant world her father has pushed her into.

Keyes pursues Wiley to Nassau with the Shriners Burt and James, but Wiley has them expelled by bribed Bahamian police. On Cable Beach, Wiley promises his next act will "violate the most sacred virgin in all Miami." Back in Miami, Keyes moves into the Shivers household to guard Kara Lynn. He spots Bernal tailing them at a country club and attacks him, but Bernal escapes. Keyes and Kara Lynn begin a romantic relationship. She refuses to drop out of the parade, reasoning the terrorists will simply target another girl.

Bernal, embittered and rejected by his old exile group, goes rogue. He sends a bomb disguised as a gift-wrapped package to García's office. Ricky Bloodworth, the Sun's ambitious reporter who has been covering the case, intercepts the package and opens it. The blast blows off his fingertips and burns his face but does not kill him. Wiley calls Mulcahy and warns him to "watch the heavens."

Mulcahy, desperate to lure Wiley back, has Bloodworth rewrite Wiley's Christmas column into an insult aimed at the Bahamian government, and Wiley is deported. On December 29, Las Noches launches its most spectacular attack: from a helicopter over Biscayne Bay, they drop bags filled with live venomous snakes onto a cruise ship during the pre-Orange Bowl Friendship Cruise. Hundreds of passengers leap overboard. The helicopter crashes into the ocean, and recovered debris leads authorities to declare the terrorists dead.

The Orange Bowl parade proceeds on New Year's Eve with massive covert security and passes without incident. That night, Bernal kidnaps García, drives him to a remote jetty, shoots him in the shoulder, and kicks him into the ocean. Keyes follows, shoots Bernal dead, and rescues García.

On New Year's Day, Wiley's farewell column is published as both a manifesto lamenting Florida's environmental destruction and a veiled confession. During halftime of the Orange Bowl football game, Wiley appears on the field disguised as the King of Siam. Viceroy Wilson, very much alive, dons a Notre Dame uniform and sprints across the field to seize Kara Lynn from her float. Tommy roars onto the field in an airboat. Wilson loads Kara Lynn aboard, but Burt shoots Wilson dead. Wiley slips out of the stadium, and Tommy escapes with Kara Lynn into the night.

Keyes discovers from clippings among Wiley's belongings that the destination is Osprey Island in Biscayne Bay, a wild island scheduled to be dynamited at dawn for a condominium development. He and Jenna reach the island by boat and find Wiley with Kara Lynn tied at a campsite. Wiley intends her to die in the blast, his ultimate symbolic act equating her life with the island's endangered wildlife. Keyes shoots Wiley in the knee, frees Kara Lynn, and takes the boat. Wiley refuses to leave. Keyes, Kara Lynn, and Jenna escape as dawn nears. Tommy Tigertail vanishes into the Everglades, vowing never to be captured.

From the speeding boat, the three look back to see Wiley dragging himself up the tallest pine, waving a red bandanna, trying to frighten a bald eagle into flying away before the blast. The dynamite barge sounds its warning. The novel closes on Keyes's whispered plea, "Fly . . . Please fly away," leaving Wiley's fate and the eagle's survival uncertain.