Tourist Season (26 page)

Keyes said: “They did it for effect. For headlines, that's all.”

“Why didn't you report this a week ago?”

“And read about it on the front page? No way, that's exactly what they wanted. I wasn't about to let them use me.”

“Very noble,” Garcia said caustica1ly. “Really showed 'em who's boss. By the way, hotshot, you been reading the fucking newspaper this week? Your pals out there in the swamp make Richard Speck look like Soupy Sales.”

“For God's sake, Al, it's not like I've been on vacation What do you think I've been working on?”

“Tell me more.”

“I'd like to.”

“Excellent.” Garcia tapped his pen on the table.

“Al, they're planning something big.” Without naming Skip Wiley, Keyes recounted the enigmatic threat to “violate the most sacred virgin in all Miami.”

“Sounds like Rape City.”

“I think it's worse than that.”

“Maybe you could find that camp again.”

“Not in a million years,” Keyes said. He was telling the truth.

“I'll get a chopper and we'll take a SWAT team.”

“How about the National Guard?”

“Don't laugh,” Garcia said. “They've promised whatev er I need.”

“Find the Cuban and the football player,” Keyes advised, “and that'll be the end of it. No more kidnappings.”

“Brian, I get the feeling you're holding back.” García peered over the top of his reading glasses. “Tell me you're not holding back.”

“Al, I don't remember much. I was busy losing three units of blood.”

“Yeah, well, maybe something'll come back to you.” García waved good-bye with the cigarette. “We'll talk again. Sanchez will give you a lift downtown. ”

Keyes started to get up from the table.

“By the way,” García said, “that was a helluva funny piece in the Sun today. D'you see it?”

“My paper was in a puddle.”

“Well, I got it in my coat somewhere. Clipped it out. Here it is ... I hate to admit it, but I actually started to miss this asshole's column while he was out sick.”

“May I?” Keyes asked. Apprehensively he lifted the folded newspaper clipping from García's brown paw. He opened it at arm's length, as if it were radioactive.

“Go ahead, read it,” Al García said. “It's funny as hell. All about his vacation in the Bahamas. The guy's got a regular way with words.”

“So he does,” said Brian Keyes, trying not to appear dumbfounded by what he saw.

In print.

With a studio photo.

Under a headline that said:

Wiley Returns
.

“How could you print that crap?” Brian Keyes demanded.

“Calm down,” said Cab Mulcahy, “and close the door.”

But Keyes could not be calm, not with Wiley's elongated face leering from the pages of the Miami
Sun
. That the newspaper would revive his column was beyond belief, a monstrous gag. Wiley had the gun, and Mulcahy had just handed him the bullets, gift-wrapped.

“Cab, you don't know what you're getting into.”

“I'm afraid I do.” Mulcahy looked chagrined. “Skip's involved with these terrorists, isn't he?”

“He's not just
involved,
Cab, he's running the whole damn show. He's the Number One Nacho.”

“You're certain, Brian?”

“Absolutely.”

The editor closed his eyes. “How bad?”

“Imagine General Patton on acid.”

“I see. ”

They sat in morose silence, pretending to gaze out Mulcahy's office window. On Biscayne Bay the waves had turned to slate under pickets of bruised thunderclouds, advancing from the east. It was probably raining like hell in the Bahamas.

“He called yesterday from Nassau,” Mulcahy began. “Said he was feeling better. No more visceral rage, he said; back to big-league journalism. He sent the column by telex—totally harmless, no preaching, no politics. You've got to admit, it's good for a chuckle. I told Skip we'd run it after he came back to Florida and we had a long talk, to which he replied: ‘In due time.' ”

“So you published the damn thing anyway.”

“I was outvoted,” Mulcahy said.

“By whom?”

“By the only one who matters.”

“Cardoza?” Keyes asked.

Cardoza was the publisher.

“The prince himself,” Mulcahy said. “Two weeks is a long time without your clean-up hitter, Brian. I told him Skip was still under the weather, suffering from exhaustion, the whole nine yards. But Cardoza read the column and said Skip sure didn't write like he was exhausted so we might as well print the column. And that was it, end of argument. Listen, we were getting a lot of mail, a lot, including some cancellations. You would've thought we yanked Doonesbury or
Peanuts. ”

Keyes said, “Did you tell Cardoza everything?”

“About as much as you told the cops.”

Keyes shrugged.
Touché.

“This is grand,” Mulcahy said sardonically. “Here we are, two truth-seekers who for once actually get hold of the truth. So what do we do? We hide it. Swallow it. Smother it. You should be telling the police, and I should be telling my readers, but look at us—the original chickenshit twins. We're both worried about that crazy sonofabitcb—as if he deserves our concern—and we're both telling ourselves that there's got to be another way. Except there isn't, is there? It's gone too damn far. People are dead, the cops are rabid, and the city's in an uproar. Meanwhile our old pal Wiley is hiding somewhere out there, dreaming up a punch line for this hideous joke.”

“What do you want to do?” Keyes asked.

“Go to the cops,” Mulcahy said. “Right now.”

Keyes shook his head. “Skip said there'd be a bloodbath if his name got out.”

“Bloodbath—he used that word?” Mulcahy asked incredulously.

“Yep. ‘Massacre,' too, if I'm not mistaken. We've got to think about this carefully, Cab. Think about what they've already done—the kidnappings, the bombings. Look what they did to Dr. Courtney and that detective, Keefe. I don't think Wiley's bullshitting when he talks bloodbath. They've got the credentials now.” Keyes didn't mention his fear for Jenna or for Mulcahy himself.

“All right, suppose we tell the police but embargo all the press.”

“Be serious,” Keyes said. “Once the cops heard Wiley's name they'd leak like the Haitian navy. And when the radio and TV folks get wind of it, the
Sun
will have no choice. You'll have to go with the story. Out front, too.”

“We have to get him back from the Bahamas,” Mulcahy asserted. “I'm going to try the embassy.”

“It won't work, Cab. Skip's untouchable over there. I found out he entered the island on a fake passport, but nobody in Nassau seems to care. Apparently he's bribed everyone but the prime minister.”

“So what the hell do we do?”

Keyes said, “I think we've got to play rough. You've got the one thing he cares about, that column.”

“Yeah,” Mulcahy said, “and every damn word goes through me.”

Keyes thought about that.

“I know a little something about the Bahamas government,” he said. “They're hypersensitive about their national image.”

“What are you suggesting?”

“Suppose you rewrote Skip's next column.”

“Suppose I let Bloodworth try it,” Mulcahy said.

“Oh boy.” In Wiley's words, rewriting was a mortal sin punishable by castration. Spray-painting the Sistine Chapel he used to call it.

Keyes thought he noticed the old boy's eyes twinkle.

“Suppose I gave it to Bloodworth and told him to punch up the lead. Make it more hard-hitting. Asked him to tinke' with some of Skip's more energetic passages.”

“Might turn into something the Bahamians wouldn't like. Keyes mused. ”Might wear out Skip's welcome real quick.'

“I can't believe we're talking about this.”

“Suppose it works,” Keyes said. “Let's say he comes back to Miami. Then what?”

“Intercept him at the airport,” Mulcahy said. “Turn him in, take him out of circulation. Get him some professional help.”

“He could always plead insanity.”

“I'm considering it myself,” Mulcahy muttered. “After twenty-two years you'd think I could spot a psychopath in my own newsroom.”

“On the contrary,” said Keyes. “The longer you're in the business, the harder it gets.”

Mulcahy was one of those rare editors who'd gone into newspapers for all the right reasons, with all the right instincts and all the right sensibilities. He was a wonderful fluke—fair but not weak, tough but not heartless, aggressive but circumspect. The Wiley situation was tearing him up.

Mulcahy toyed with a memo, shredding the edges. “I pulled his personnel file today, just for kicks. Jesus Christ, Brian, it's full of wild stuff. Stuff I'd forgotten all about.”

The episodes had escalated in gravity:

December 13, 1978. Skip Wiley reprimanded for impersonating National Security Adviser Zbigniew Brzezinski in an effort to obtain box seats to an NFL playoff game.

April 17, 1980. Wiley reprimanded after filing an IRS return listing his occupation as “prophet, redeemer, and sage.”

July 23, 1982. Wiley suspended two days with pay after using obscene cunieform symbols to describe Senator Jesse Helms of North Carolina.

March 7, 1984. Wiley suspended five days with pay after telling a radio-talk-show audience that Florida's entire supply of drinking water had been poisoned by Bolivian drug dealers.

October 3, 1984. Wiley suspended three days without pay for allegedly assaulting a Jehovah's Witness with a long-handled marlin gaff.

“I guess I wasn't paying attention,” Mulcahy said, “on purpose.” He leaned forward and dropped his voice to a whisper. “Brian, do you really think he's crazy? I mean,
crazy
crazy?”

“I'm not sure. Skip is no drooling yo-yo. If he were, we'd have nothing to worry about. You could let him write all he wants—who'd give a shit? Whatever he wrote wouldn't make sense anyway—if he were
crazy
crazy.”

“Are you saying—”

“He makes some sense, yes,” Keyes said. “Wiley's goddamn plan makes sense because it seems to be working. He's got the entire Gold Coast terrified, your venerable newspaper included. I saw where the big Teamsters' convention was moved to Atlantic City—”

Mulcahy nodded lugubriously.

“And
The Battle of the Network Bimbos or whatever—
switched from Key Biscayne to Phoenix, of all places.”

“Tucson,” Mulcahy corrected.

“You see my point.”

“It'll wear off,” Mulcahy said. “Panic always does.”

“Not if the tourists keep disappearing.”

“He's wiring us a new column tomorrow afternoon. I'll give it to Ricky for a good butchering and we'll publish it Sunday. See if
that
doesn't bring the bastard back from his tropical vacation.”