Star Island

  ALSO BY CARL HIAASEN

  Fiction

  Nature Girl

  Skinny Dip

  Basket Case

  Sick Puppy

  Lucky You

  Stormy Weather

  Strip Tease

  Native Tongue

  Skin Tight

  Double Whammy

  Tourist Season

  For young readers

  Scat

  Flush

  Hoot

  Nonfiction

  The Downhill Lie: A Hacker's Return to a Ruinous Sport

  Team Rodent: How Disney Devours the World

  Kick Ass: Selected Columns (edited by Diane Stevenson)

  Paradise Screwed: Selected Columns (edited by Diane Stevenson)

  For Sonny Mehta,

  a great editor and friend

  Contents

  Other Books by this Author

  Title Page

  Dedication

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Epilogue

  A Note About the Author

  Copyright

  1

  On the fifteenth of March, two hours before sunrise, an emergency medical technician named Jimmy Campo found a sweaty stranger huddled in the back of his ambulance. It was parked in a service alley behind the Stefano Hotel, where Jimmy Campo and his partner had been summoned to treat a twenty-two-year-old white female who had swallowed an unwise mix of vodka, Red Bull, hydrocodone, birdseed and stool softener--in all respects a routine South Beach 911 call, until now.

  The stranger in Jimmy Campo's ambulance had two 35-mm digital cameras hanging from his fleshy neck, and a bulky gear bag balanced on his ample lap. He wore a Dodgers cap and a Bluetooth ear set. His ripe, florid cheeks glistened damply, and his body reeked like a prison laundry bag.

  "Get out of my ambulance," Jimmy Campo said.

  "Is she dead?" the man asked excitedly.

  "Dude, I'm callin' the cops if you don't move it."

  "Who's with her up there--Colin? Shia?"

  The stranger outweighed Jimmy Campo by sixty-five pounds but not an ounce of it was muscle. Jimmy Campo, who'd once been a triathlete, dragged the intruder from the vehicle and deposited him on the sticky pavement beneath a streetlight.

  "Chill, for Christ's sake," the man said, examining his camera equipment for possible damage. Stray cats tangled and yowled somewhere in the shadows.

  Inside the ambulance, Jimmy Campo found what he was looking for: a sealed sterile packet containing a coiled intravenous rig to replace the one that the female overdose victim had ripped from her right arm while she was thrashing on the floor.

  The stranger struggled to his feet and said, "I'll give you a thousand bucks."

  "For what?"

  "When you bring her downstairs, lemme take a picture." The man dug into the folds of his stale trousers and produced a lump of cash. "You gotta job to do, and so do I. Here's a grand."

  Jimmy Campo looked at the money in the stranger's hand. Then he glanced up at the third floor of the hotel, where his partner was almost certainly dodging vomit.

  "Is she famous or somethin'?" Jimmy Campo asked.

  The photographer chuckled. "Man, you don't even know?"

  Jimmy Campo was thinking about the fifty-two-inch high-def that he'd seen on sale at Brands Mart. He was thinking about his girlfriend on a rampage with his maxed-out MasterCard at the Dadeland Mall. He was thinking about all those nasty letters from his credit union.

  "Whoever she is, she's not dead," he told the photographer. "Not tonight."

  "Cool." The man continued to hold out the wad of hundreds in the glow of the streetlight, as if teasing a mutt with raw hamburger. He said, "All you gotta do, before loading her in the wagon, just pull down the covers and step away so I can get my shot. Five seconds is all I need."

  "It won't be pretty. She's a sick young lady." Jimmy Campo took the crumpled money and smoothed it into his wallet.

  "Is she awake at least?" the photographer asked.

  "On and off."

  "But you could see her eyes in a picture, right? She's got those awesome sea-green eyes."

  Jimmy Campo said, "I didn't notice."

  "You really don't know who she is? Seriously?"

  "Who do you work for, anyway?"

  "A limited partnership," the man said. "Me, myself and I."

  "And where can I see this great picture you're gonna take?"

  "Everywhere. You'll see it everywhere," the stranger said.

  Eighteen minutes later, Jimmy Campo and his partner emerged from the Stefano Hotel guiding a collapsible stretcher upon which lay a slender, motionless form.

  The photographer was surprised at the absence of a retinue; no bodyguards or boyfriends or hangers-on. A lone Miami Beach police officer followed the stretcher down the alley. When the photographer began snapping pictures, the cop barely reacted, making no effort to shield the stricken woman from the flash bursts. That should have been a clue.

  Sliding closer, the paparazzo intercepted the stretcher as it rolled with an oscillating squeak toward the open end of the ambulance. True to his word, Jimmy Campo tugged down the sheet and stepped away, leaving an opening.

  "Cherry!" the photographer shouted at the slack face. "Cherry, baby, how 'bout a big smile for your fans?"

  The young woman's incurious eyes were open. They were not sea-green, mint-green, pea-green or any hue of green. They were brown.

  "Goddammit," the photographer growled, lowering his Nikon.

  The woman on the stretcher grinned behind the oxygen mask and blew him a kiss.

  Grabbing at Jimmy Campo's arm, the photographer cried, "Gimme back my money!"

  "Mister, I don't know what you're talking about," said the paramedic, elbowing the sweaty creep back into the shadows.

  Inside a chauffeured black Suburban, racing across the MacArthur Causeway toward Jackson Memorial Hospital, a performer known as Cherry Pye was retching loudly into a silver-plated ice bucket. Her real name was Cheryl Bunterman, one of many ferociously guarded secrets about her life. Since the age of fourteen, when she'd first appeared in a dubious buckskin cowgirl outfit on the Nickelodeon network, Cheryl Bunterman had been introduced to one and all as Cherry Pye.

  The person who'd invented that shamelessly porny name was sitting next to Cherry Pye in the third leather bench seat of the big Suburban, stroking her daughter's crusty blond hair. "Feel better now?" Janet Bunterman inquired soothingly.

  "No, Momma, I feel like shit." Cherry whimpered, hurled, and then drifted off again. Half-sitting and half-sprawled, she wore a white terry-cloth robe, courtesy of the Stefano Hotel, and nothing underneath it. Even in semi-consciousness her small red-knuckled hands remained fastened on the rim of the ice bucket.

  Janet Bunterman had long ago chosen to overlook her offspring's promiscuous fondness for drugs and alcohol, and on this particular occasion decreed that a late snack of spoiled shellfish was to blame for Cherry's current debilitation. Also riding in the vehicle were a locally recruited physici
an, two stone-faced publicists, a hairstylist and a chunky bodyguard named Lev, who claimed to have served with the Mossad.

  "Who ordered those vile scallops from room service, anyway?" Janet Bunterman demanded.

  "Cherry did," said Lev.

  "Nonsense," snapped the superstar's mother.

  "And also the two bottles of Grey Goose."

  "Lev, how many times have I warned you about calling 911? Like she's some sort of ... civilian."

  The bodyguard said, "I thought she was dying."

  "Oh please. We've been through so many of these gastritis scares."

  The doctor looked neutrally at his new patient, but the publicists, who were identical twins, exchanged dour glances. The hairstylist yawned like a cheetah.

  "This time was worse," the bodyguard said.

  Janet Bunterman said, "That's enough. Don't upset her more."

  "Ask the doc. It was bad."

  "I said, that's enough. Lots of girls have tummy problems. Right, Dr. Blake?"

  "Let's see what the tests show at the hospital." The doctor was being diplomatic, for he knew very well what would turn up in the blood and urine of Cherry Pye. Upon arriving at Room 309 of the Stefano, he'd found the starlet nude, speckled in sunflower husks and twitching like a poisoned cockroach on the carpet. The bodyguard had pulled the doctor aside and provided a list of all known substances that the girl had consumed during the night, and the approximate amounts. It was the doctor's earnest desire to be free of this crew before those three hundred milligrams of Dulcolax kicked in.

  "Well, our Annie sure saved the day," Janet Bunterman said in a positive tone.

  "That's her job," one of the publicists remarked coolly.

  The other one said, "It was her night off. We lucked out."

  "Ann's a pro," Lev agreed.

  "Sometimes," added Janet Bunterman with a barbed pause, "I think she's the only one we count on in this organization."

  "What do you mean by that?" Lev asked.

  Conversation was suspended when Cherry Pye awoke and urped again, stentoriously.

  Afterward she wiped her mouth on a sleeve and whined, "Can't somebody please hold this freaking bucket?"

  "Of course, sweetheart," her mother said. "Lev will hold your bucket."

  "No, Lev will not," said Lev.

  Cherry Pye's mother reached up and angrily punched one of the dome lights, harshly illuminating a scene that had been barely tolerable in the dark.

  She said, "Lev, turn around and steady the bucket for Cherry. It's the least you can do."

  "No."

  "Somebody?" gurgled Cherry. "Jesus, what do I pay you assholes for?"

  No one, including the woman's mother, made a move. Only the hairdresser spoke. "Come on, people, step up," he said. "Baby girl's in pain."

  Janet Bunterman fixed her well-practiced glare on the stubborn bodyguard. "Lev, I swear, if you don't hold that yuck bucket for my sick child, my only child, your meal ticket, then you're fired."

  "Understood."

  "That's it? That's all you've got to say?"

  "No, Mrs. Bunterman, that's not all. Your daughter's a fucking train wreck. Also, she sings like a frog with emphysema." The bodyguard tapped the chauffeur on the shoulder. "Pull over, Francois," he said. "I'm getting out of this nut wagon."

  Still wielding his cameras, Bang Abbott returned to the lobby of the Stefano and took an ambush position behind a potted schefflera tree. The security goons paid no attention, which probably meant that Cherry Pye had already left the hotel.

  If she'd ever been there at all.

  Bang Abbott gave up and drove his rental car to a nearby McDonald's. For breakfast he ordered three McSkillet burritos, a Danish and black coffee. He was met in a corner of the restaurant by a drawn, gray-skinned man named Fremont Spores, who had come to be paid.

  "For what?" Bang Abbott scoffed. "It was a bum tip."

  Spores kept a bank of digital police scanners going 24/7 in the kitchen of his Collins Avenue apartment. He was considered the best in the business.

  "You told me to let you know, was anything beachside with a young white female. You said to call right away, was anything at the clubs and hotels." Spores bared his stained dentures. "Don't cheap out on me, you sonofabitch."

  Bang Abbott shrugged. "Your bum tip cost me a grand."

  "Twenty-two-year-old OD at the Stefano--it don't get no better than that. And now you're sayin' the information ain't worth a hundred lousy bucks."

  "Wrong bimbo, Fremont."

  "Welcome to Miami. Now hand over the dough."

  "Or what?"

  Spores stood up slowly, teetering on scarecrow legs. He probed into his shirt pocket and came out with a soggy cigarette, which he dried in an armpit of his T-shirt.

  "I got other clients more important than you," he said to Bang Abbott, who snickered.

  "'Clients'? That's rich."

  Spores lit the cigarette. "One, name of Restrepo, he's a businessman from South America. For him, I listen to the Coast Guard frequencies. Marine patrol, too. A heavy dude."

  "Relax, Fremont."

  "My man Restrepo, he said to call day or night, was any kind of favor I need. He's so grateful for all the good work I do, he said to let him know, was any problems in my life." Spores coughed and squinted at Bang Abbott through the cigarette smoke. "Is this a problem or not?"

  Bang Abbott tossed two fifties on the table. "Thanks for nuthin."

  "Blow me," said Fremont Spores. He picked up the cash and walked away.

  After breakfast the photographer drove back to the Stefano. His plan was to sneak up to the third floor and knock on the door of Room 309, just to make sure. He got halfway to the elevator before one of the security guards intercepted him. Because it was early and the lobby was empty, the security guard felt free to knee Bang Abbott in the groin.

  Limping back toward his parking space, Bang Abbott spied the scrawny bellman who'd assured him that Cherry Pye was partying on the third floor, a piece of apparent misinformation that had cost the photographer another fifty bucks. The bellman had just gotten off work and was standing at a bus stop, tugging off the nappy jacket of his monkey suit and yakking on a cell phone. Bang Abbott came up behind him and twisted the fuzzy flesh of his neck until the bellman whinnied.

  "You screwed me over," the photographer said.

  "No way!" The bellman wriggled free.

  "It wasn't her, chico," Bang Abbott said.

  "In 309, right?"

  "So you said."

  "Man, I seen the babe with my own eyes."

  "Wrong babe. Now gimme back my fifty dollars."

  The bellman backed away, fearing that the hefty photographer might actually try to mug him for the money. "Hold on, man--it was totally her. I'd know that lady anywhere. I got all her videos downloaded, you don't believe me." He held up his iPhone for effect, though he had no intention of letting the fat man put his grimy paws on it.

  "Listen to me, junior," the photographer said. "I eyeballed the girl myself. It was not Miss Cherry Pye. I shot her picture on the goddamn stretcher when they were haulin' her to the ambulance."

  The bellman cocked his head. "Whatchu talkin' 'bout, bro? She didn't go out on a stretcher, she went out in a wheelchair."

  "Don't tell me this."

  "Through the kitchen, man. I was the one who held the doors."

  Bang Abbott kicked at the curb.

  "And there wasn't no ambulance," the bellman added. "They put her in a black Suburban."

  "Well, fuck me up the butthole." Bang Abbott scratched his scalp.

  "I wondered where chu was, man. How chu missed her."

  "They took her out through the goddamn kitchen?"

  "The chick was major messed up," the bellman said. "I mean, she was pukin' into an ice bucket."

  A money shot, the photographer thought ruefully. Worldwide gold.

  The bus rumbled up, brakes hissing. The bellman made a quick move, but Bang Abbott blocked his path.

&nbs
p; "Did you see any other shooters outside?"

  "Any whats?"

  "Photographers. Anybody get a shot of our girl blowing chunks?"

  The bellman shook his head. "Swear to God, I dint see nobody."

  "'Cause if that picture turns up anywhere in this universe, even the West Fargo Weekly Foreskin, I'm comin' after you for my fifty bucks. Understand?" Bang Abbott stepped aside, and the bellman scrambled onto the bus. The photographer returned to his car, inhaled four Advils and headed for the Standard, where Jamie Foxx was rumored to be staying.

  These days a photo of the actor was worth maybe a grand or two, depending on the wardrobe and sobriety level of his dates, who were customarily gorgeous. However, a single exclusive picture of Cherry Pye in the debasing throes of a narcotics overdose would have fetched five figures, Bang Abbott figured. A very solid five.

  He hoped with all his withered, calcified prune of a heart that the bellman was telling the truth. He hoped that nobody else had gotten the shot.

  He also made up his mind to find out how he'd been tricked. It wasn't really a matter of honor, for Bang Abbott held no illusions about the odious station of his profession. However, he owned a fiercely competitive streak and he hated to be stymied or outwitted, whether it was by a fellow shooter or the celebrity target. He took such setbacks hard.

  The dull and often lonely nature of his work--stalking people who kept no schedule--provided hour upon unhealthy hour in which Bang Abbott could work himself into a fevered snit. That is what happened as he paced the sidewalk outside the Standard Hotel, waiting for Jamie Foxx to swagger in from a wild night of clubbing.

  It wasn't unusual for stars to attempt to fool the paparazzi by donning wigs or switching cars, but this time Cherry Pye's handlers had shown exceptional guile and enterprise. The more Bang Abbott thought about it, the more agitated he became.