“Who?” asked Gladys.

“The actor.”

“No,” said Gladys. “Danny DeVito the replicant. I heard about him during The X-Files. Agents broke in on a special frequency that only I could hear.”

Kefauver was back in the race.

But it would still be close. Despite Gladys’s interesting bearings, she immediately inherited the built-in Jesse Ventura constituency in every precinct as the yahoo/sabotage candidate.

Until now, reporters never considered covering the Beverly Shores campaign. With Malcolm and Gladys in the race, every network had a mobile transmitting van outside the polling station at the Calusa Pointe condominiums.

On election night, Gladys took the lead on early returns, and Florida Cable News broke in from coverage of the governor’s race. But as the absentee snowbird votes were tabulated, Malcolm pulled off a narrow, four-vote victory. When the TV camera lights went on, Malcolm pledged conciliation. “I will reach across the aisle in my administration for bipartisan cooperation to work for the common good of the people of this great city.”

After the speech, Malcolm Kefauver set about identifying exactly who among his neighbors had voted against him and how he would prepare his cold dish of revenge.

T he next morning at Calusa Pointe Tower Arms began with a hard knock on the front door of unit 1193.

A second firm knock. “I know you’re in there!”

Mrs. Ramirez opened the door and smiled. “It’s Mayor Kefauver, from 2193, right above us. How nice to see you, Mr. Kefauver! Congratulations on the election!”

“Knock off the bullshit. I know you voted against me. How dare you!”

“But…but…how do you know how we voted?” asked Mrs. Ramirez. “It’s supposed to be secret. The sanctity of the ballot box.”

“Sanctity, shmanctity,” said the mayor, stepping into the living room, uninvited. “Guess what? We peeked! We have to do things like that because you immigrants are sneaky. You think you can just fall off the banana boat and start voting in secret?”

“But that’s what they taught us in citizenship class. We would be regular Americans. We could vote and have constitutional rights and everything. We just couldn’t be president.”

“But we could be in the cabinet,” added Mr. Ramirez, “like the great Mr. Kissinger.”

“Save it for the next load of greaseballs!” interrupted the mayor. “You’re all a bunch of friggin’ wetbacks as far as I’m concerned, and we don’t want your kind here! I’m going to make your life a living hell until you…”

Mrs. Ramirez felt someone grab her from behind and shove her out of the way, and Edna Ploomfield stepped up to the mayor.

“Wetbacks? Greaseballs? You don’t even know your racist geography. Your slurs missed by a whole goddamn continent both times, you ignorant fuck!”

She gave him a fast, two-handed shove in the middle of his chest and he stumbled backward. Ploomfield advanced and stood up to his chest again.

“You wanna dance with someone, cocksucker?” She gave him another hard shove and he stumbled back again, too surprised to know what to do.

She shoved him again, and he stumbled again. On a bookshelf she saw the rocks glass of scotch she’d been drinking, and she grabbed it.

“You sonuvabitch!” She threw the scotch in his eyes. Since the mayor had been shrinking, he was now right at Mrs. Ploomfield’s eye level, and she smashed the glass into his forehead, opening a large cut over his brow. He fell in the doorway and pressed his hands against his head to stop the bleeding, and Edna jumped on his back. She grabbed him by the hair and bounced his head on the sidewalk until the Ramirezes pulled her off.

When the police arrived, Kefauver was sitting up holding his forehead and screaming about the psychotic old lady who attacked him. He reeked from the booze splashed on his face and shirt.

Edna Ploomfield hobbled to the door and a young policeman helped her by the arm. “Oh, my, my. Thank heavens you’re here, you nice officers,” she said in a delicate, creaking voice. “That terrible man threatened us. Ohhhh, I’m just a sweet little ol’ lady, and he was mean to me. He fell and hit his own head because he was so crazy and drunk…”

“You’re putting on an act, you old bag!”

“…just like that,” Ploomfield said, and pointed.

“We’ve heard enough,” said the sergeant in charge, and they handcuffed the mayor and took him away in a patrol car, but not before the TV crews arrived and pointed cameras in the back window and yelled in unison, “Why’d ya do it?”

T he Diaz Boys held an emergency meeting right after watching the mayor of Beverly Shores being driven off in a squad car on the nightly news. Tommy Diaz told Rafael and Pedro to take the shotguns, and he gave them a map to Calusa Pointe, unit 1193.

“How do you want it handled?” asked Rafael.

“Just knock on the door.”

“Then what?”

“Shoot whoever answers.”

Three weeks into December, the meteorologic tragicomedy known as El Niño produced two markedly abnormal conditions in the Lesser Antilles. The trade winds exceeded the annual average by five miles per hour, and the water temperature rose two degrees. The changes were imperceptible to the islanders living in the region. But they made the critical difference when the remnants of a barely organized and forgotten storm system limped into the area. Overnight, Rolando-berto roared back to life and came ashore on one of the Leeward Islands, where the residents did not possess a prescient dog, but instead relied upon a goat wearing an Ohio State sweater bestowed as a peace offering in 1977 by a shipwrecked alumnus who mistook the natives for cannibals.

Before the goat could ring the bell on its neck, Rolando-berto promptly dispatched the animal through the side of a quaint and gaily painted barn, and entire villages were leveled without warning.

News of the death toll in the Leewards whipped Florida into action and cranked up the state’s Hurricane Industrial Complex. Commemorative “I survived Rolando-berto” T-shirts were printed in advance, and shelves were stocked with packing tape, weather radios and splatterproof party ponchos. Water was bottled, plywood nailed, and candles and batteries shipped in by tram. TV advertising time was purchased to demonstrate two-hundred-dollar panes of miracle glass that could withstand coconuts fired from special cannons. Florida Cable News bought a new wardrobe for Toto.

N ews of the hurricane was playing in hi-fi in the Lexus, and Sammy Pedantic changed the station to techno-dance.

“Those were great guys,” Joe said as they drove through Orlando on I-4. “What a deal-just drive their car across the state to Tampa Bay and give it to their cousin and we get five hundred bucks.”

“I’ve heard about this before-rich people actually pay someone to drive their cars city to city. It’s like house-sitting. Except there’s no house.”

“Plus a free weekend on the beach!”

“And chicks, too!” Sammy turned around and saw City and Country driving eight lengths back in their maroon Mercury Cougar. He popped two beers and handed one to Joe. “Now, this is living.”

They concentrated on drinking for a moment, then threw the empties onto the leather backseat. Joe burped first, then Sammy, then it became a contest.

“You know anything about the Gulf Coast?” asked Joe.

“Are you kidding? It’s ten times better than the East Coast. And Miami has nothing on Tampa. We’re lucky we fell into this deal.”

“How do you know all that?”

“Those guys told us, remember?”

“That’s right.”

“There is a God,” said Sammy.

“And he has plans for us,” said Joe.

On the way through Orlando, Joe and Sammy began hearing a peculiar sound inside the dashboard, but it didn’t seem to be affecting the car’s performance. They continued southwest on Interstate 4, past a collision of money and architecture. Castles and resort hotels and imperial pagodas. Wild West sets and Polynesian discos. Artificial beaches and heliports. Down both sides of the highway, like the master growth plan of a small, oil-producing state. Pirate ships and towers of terror. Giant Las Vegas signs: “Buffet $4.99.” Reptile petting farms, go-cart tracks. Fun World, Fun Mania, Fun ’n’ Sun. And it wasn’t even Disney yet. The Great White Shark was still ahead; these were just the remoras and trash fish that clean its teeth and suck the scales for sidestream commerce.