Naked Came the Manatee

"This ain't no damn computer, I can tell you that for damn sure," Hector was saying, from the front of the skiff. He was frowning at the wooden crate sitting on a seat cushion and strapped to the seat with a pair of bungee cords. He kicked aside the scummy towrope at his feet and leaned down to poke around in the straw between the slats of the crate for a clearer glimpse at the plastic-wrapped, roundish object, hard and smooth like some kind of metal, pressing up against the wood.

"How the hell do you know?" asked Phil, from the stern, where he had his hand on the outboard tiller.

"Because it ain't even got a power plug," said Hector. "Computers got power plugs."

"What the hell do you care what it is?" said Phil. "We take it to the rich man's dock, we give it to the rich man, he gives us the other five thou, we're gone. Ten thou, total, five each, minus my boat expenses, easy money. You got a better plan? You maybe wanna rob another UPS truck?"

This was a reference to Hector's last major moneymaking idea, which was to snatch a box at random from the back of a UPS van parked on Kendall Drive. Unfortunately, Hector, who was also the getaway-car driver, had tried to get away a little too fast; he'd driven directly into a Lexus making a left turn across traffic, causing it to smash into a Jaguar. As it happened-this was, after all, South Florida-both the Lexus and the Jaguar were being driven by well-known, highly successful, politically connected narcotics traffickers, so Hector and Phil had gotten into big trouble with the law. They'd wound up doing eighteen months in jail.

The box they had stolen from the UPS truck-Phil would never let Hector forget this-turned out to contain dirty undershorts that a University of Miami prelaw student was sending home to his mom for laundering.

"Very funny," said Hector. "Ha ha. But you tell me, why'd the Cuban tell us it's a computer if it ain't? And that wasn't no local Cuban neither. That was a Cuban Cuban, from Cuba. That was a Cuban navy boat following his boat. It was running with no lights, trying to stay outta sight, but I saw it."

"Hector, you told me that fifty-three times, and I still don't care. I don't care if he was from Mars, OK? Ten thou is ten thou."

"I think it's nuclear," said Hector quietly. He pronounced it "nuke-u-lar," like Walter Cronkite.

"It's what?" asked Phil.

"Nuclear. Like a bomb. The way the Cuban handled it, you know? The way he was, so, like, scared of it. And did you see him open that little door in it, just before he put it in the crate? There was some kind of numbers in there, man."

"Computers got numbers," noted Phil.

"These ain't computer numbers," said Hector. "These are little lights, like glowing numbers."

"Only number I care about," said Phil, "is ten thousand dollars. You can buy a lot of underwear for that."

Hector said a very bad thing to Phil.

Back in the heart of the Grove, city of Miami rookie police officer Joe Sereno was trying to explain to an extremely large, extremely drunk male tourist that, no matter what the system was back in his hometown, the system here in Miami was, if you had to urinate, you did it in some kind of enclosed toilet facility. You did not do it out in public. You especially did not do it off the second-floor balcony of the CocoWalk complex.

"Sir," Sereno was saying, "why don't you-"

"I got the right to remain silent!" the tourist announced. He virtually never missed The People's Court.

"Sir," said Sereno, "I'm not arresting you. I'm just asking you to zip up your-''

"ANYTHING I SAY CAN AND WILL BE USED AGAINST ME!" bellowed the large man. The fast-growing crowd of onlookers cheered. Many were aiming video cameras. This was excellent entertainment, even better than the Hare Krishnas.

Joe Sereno sighed. This was not what he had in mind when he joined the police department. He wanted to make a difference, to do something useful, to fight crime, for God's sake, not to spend his nights chaperoning the block party from hell, baby-sitting a bunch of morons who-

"I HAVE THE RIGHT TO AN ATTORNEY!!!" the large man screamed. "SOMEBODY GET ME… what's his name."

"Perry Mason?" suggested a voice from the crowd.

"NO, DAMMIT! THE OTHER ONE!"

"Johnnie Cochran?"

"YES! HIM! SOMEBODY GET ME JOHNNIE COCH… COCH… Cocchhuurrrrgggghhh… "

Although he was a rookie, Sereno had worked the Grove long enough to see what was coming, and thus stepped back quickly enough to avoid the sudden eruption. Not everyone on the sidewalk below was so lucky. Bedlam erupted as the crowd, screaming, surged away from the area directly underneath the puking giant. A rickshaw, coming around the corner, was knocked over by the fleeing mob, sending an older couple sprawling into the street, directly into the path of a Harley-Davidson, whose driver turned right sharply in an effort to avoid them, hit the curb, and was launched across the sidewalk into the fountain.

Sereno sprinted for the stairs, glancing at his watch. Nine o'clock, straight up.

The night was young.