by Carl Hiassen
"Okay, Al, you got my word. Read it, please."
Garcia slipped on a pair of tinted glasses and read from the letter:
Dear Miami Chamber of Commerce:
Welcome to the Revolution.
Mr. B. D. Harper's death was a milestone. It may have seemed an atrocity to you; to us, it was poetry. Contrary to what you'd like to believe, this was not the act of a sick person, but the raging of a powerful new underclass.
Mr. Harper's death was not a painful one, but it was unusual, and we trust that it got your attention. Soon we start playing for keeps. Wait for number three!
El Fuego,
Comandante, Las Noches de Diciembre
Al Garcia removed his reading glasses and said, "Not half-bad, really. For a flake."
"Not at all," Keyes agreed. "What do you make of that number-threebusiness? Who was victim number two?"
"There wasn't any, not that I know of."
"So who are the Nights of December?" Keyes asked.
"A figment of some nut's imagination. 'The Fire,' he calls himself. El Fuegomy ass. I'll check with the Bureau, just in case, but J. Edgar himself wouldn't have taken this one seriously. Still, I might ask around with the guys on the antiterrorism squad."
"And then?" Keyes asked.
"A slam dunk," Garcia said. "Right into the wastebasket."
Cab Mulcahy poured the coffee. Skip Wiley drank.
"The beard is new, isn't it?"
"I need it," Wiley said, "for an assignment."
"Oh. And what would that be?"
"That would be confidential," Wiley said, slurping.
Cab Mulcahy was a patient man, especially for a managing editor. He had been in newspapers his entire adult life and almost nothing could provoke him. Whenever the worst kind of madness gripped the newsroom, Mulcahy would emerge to take charge, instantly imposing a rational and temperate mood. He was a thoughtful man in a profession not famous for thoughtfulness. Cab Mulcahy was also astute. He loved Skip Wiley, but distrusted him wholeheartedly.
"Cream?" Mulcahy offered.
"No thanks." Wiley rubbed his temples briskly. He knew that the effect of this was to distort his face grotesquely, like pulling putty. He watched Mulcahy watching him.
"You missed deadline yesterday, Skip."
"I was helping Bloodworth with his story. The kid's hopeless, Cab. Did you like my column?"
Mulcahy said, "I think we ought to talk about it."
"Fine," Wiley said. "Talk."
"How much do you really know about the Harper case?"
"I've got my sources."
Mulcahy smiled paternally. Wiley's column was on his desk. It lay there like a bird dropping, the first thing to await Mulcahy when he arrived at the office. He had read it three times.
"My concern," Mulcahy began, "is that you managed to convict Mr. Cabal in this morning's newspaper, without benefit of a trial. You have, for lack of a better word, reconstructedthe murder of B. D. Harper in your usual slick, readable way—"
"Thank you, Cab."
"—without any apparent regard for the facts. This business about sexual torture, where did that come from?"
Wiley said, "Can't tell you."
"Skip, let me read this out loud: 'Harper was tied up, spread-eagle, and subjected to vicious and unspeakable homosexual assaults for no less than five hours.' Now, before you start whining, you ought to know that I took the liberty of calling the medical examiner. The autopsy showed absolutely no signs of sodomy."
"Aw, it's the imagery that's important, Cab. The utter humiliation of this gentle man. Sodomized or not, can you deny that he was horribly humiliated by this crime?"
''Your concern for the late Mr. Harper's dignity is touching," Mulcahy said. He turned his attention to a stack of newspaper clippings on another corner of his desk. Wordlessly he riffled through them. Wiley knew what they were: more columns.
"Here we go," Mulcahy said, holding up one. "On the subject of B. D. 'Sparky' Harper, this is what you wrote a mere three months ago: 'If there has ever been a more myopic, insensitive, and avaricious cretin to lead our Chamber of Commerce, I can't recall him. Sparky Harper takes the cake—and anything else that isn't nailed down. He is the Sultan of Shills, the perfect mouthpiece for the hungry-eyed developers, hoteliers, bankers, and lawyers who have made South Florida what it is today: Newark with palm trees.' "
"I remember that column, Cab. You made me apologize to the New Jersey Tourist Bureau."
Mulcahy leaned back and gave Skip Wiley a very hard look.
Wiley squirmed. "I suppose you want to know why I crucified Harper a few months ago and made a hero out of him today. It's simple, Cab. Literary license. You wouldn't understand."
"I've read a book or two. Try me."
"I did it to dramatize the crime problem," Wiley said. "The Harper murder symbolizes the unspeakable mayhem in our streets. Don't you see? To make people care, I needed to bring Sparky Harper and his killer to life. Don't look at me like that, Cab. You think I'm a hypocrite? Sure, Harper was a fat little jerk. But if I put that in the paper, no one would care about the murder. I wanted to give 'em goose bumps, Cab."
"Like the old days," Mulcahy said with a sigh.
"What's that supposed to mean? I get more goddamned letters than I ever did. People read the hell out of my column. You should see the mail."
"That's the trouble, Skip. I dosee the mail. People are starting to hate you, I mean reallyhate you. Not just the usual fruitcakes, either."
Not true, Wiley said to himself. The people who counted were on his side.
"So you've been taking some heat, eh?"
Mulcahy looked away, out the window toward the bay.
"A few ad cancellations, perhaps? Like maybe the Richmond Department Store account—"
"Skip, that's one of about forty things on my list. It isn't funny anymore. You're fucking up on a regular basis. You miss deadlines, you libel people, you invent ludicrous facts and put them in the paper. I've got a lawyer downstairs who does nothing but fight off litigation against your column. We've had to print seven retractions in the last four months—that's a new record, by the way. No other managing editor in the history of this newspaper can make that claim."
Wiley was starting to feel a little sorry for Mulcahy, whom he had known for many years. Cab had been the city editor when Wiley had come to work at the Sun.They had been drinking buddies once, and used to go bass fishing together out in the Everglades.
It was a shame the old boy didn't understand what had to be done, Wiley thought. It was a shame the newspaper business had gotten such a frozen grip on his soul.
"The public defender's office called me this morning," Mulcahy continued. "Mr. Cabal's lawyer didn't appreciate your description of his client as 'yellow-bellied vermin culled from the stinkpot of Castro's jails for discharge at Mariel's harbor of shame.' The Hispanic Anti-Defamation League sent a telegram voicing similar objections. The League also notes that Senor Cabal is not aMariel refugee. He arrived in this country from Havana with his family in 1966. His older brother later received a Purple Heart in Vietnam."
"Perhaps I got a little carried away," Wiley said.
"Hell, Skip." Mulcahy's voice was tired and edged with sadness. "I think we have a big problem. And I think we're going to have to do something. Soon."
This was a conversation they had been having more often, so often that Wiley had stopped taking it seriously. He got more mail than any other writer, and the publisher counted mail as subscribers, and subscribers as money. Wiley knew they wouldn't lay a glove on him. He knew he was a star in the same way he knew he was tall and brown-eyed; it was just something else he could see in the mirror every morning, plain as day. He didn't even notice it anymore. The only time it counted was when he got into trouble. Like now.
"You aren't going to threaten to fire me again, are you?"
"Yes," Mulcahy said.
"I suppose you want me to apologize to somebody."
Mulcahy ha
nded Wiley a list.
"I'll get right on it—"
"Sit down, Skip. I'm not finished." Mulcahy stood up, brandishing the stack of columns. "You know what makes me sad? You're such a damn good writer, too good to be turning out shit like this. Something's happened the last few months. You've been slipping away. I think you're sick."
Wiley winced. "Sick?"
Mulcahy was a slim man, gray and graceful. Before becoming an editor, he had had a distinguished career as a foreign correspondent: he had covered two wars and a half-dozen coups, and had even been shot at three times. Wiley had always been envious of this; in all his years as a journalist he had never once been shot at. He had never dodged a real bullet. But Cab Mulcahy had, and he had written poetically about the experience. Wiley admired him, and it hurt to have the old boy talk like this.
"I took all your columns from the last four months," Mulcahy said, "and I gave them to Dr. Courtney, the psychiatrist."
"Jesus! He's a wacko, Cab. The guy has a thing for animals. I've heard this from seven or eight sources. Ducks and geese, stuff like that. The paper ought to get rid of him before there's some kind of scandal—"
Mulcahy waved his hands, a signal for Wiley to shut up.
"Dr. Courtney read all these columns and he says he can chart your illness, starting since September."
Wiley clenched his teeth so tightly his fillings nearly cracked. "There's nothing wrong with me, Cab."
"I want you to see a doctor."
"Not Courtney, please."
"The Sunwill pay for it."
Well, it oughtto, Wiley thought. If I'm nuts, it's this place that's to blame.
"I also want you to go to an internist. Courtney says the mental degeneration has occurred so rapidly that it could be pathological. A tumor or something."
"A guy who screws barnyard animals says that I'mpathological."
Mulcahy said, "He's paid for his opinions."
"He hates the column," Wiley said. "Always has." He pointed at the stack of clippings. "I know what's in there, Cab. The one I did six weeks ago about shrinks. Courtney's still mad about that. He's trying to get back at me."
Mulcahy said, "He didn't mention it, although it was a particularly vile piece of writing. 'Greedy, soul-sucking charlatans'—isn't that what you said about psychiatrists?"
"Something like that."
"If I'd been here that morning, I'd have yanked that column," Mulcahy said evenly.
"Ha!"
"Skip, this is the deal. Go see the doctors and you can keep your column, at least until we find out what the hell is wrong. In the meantime, every word you write goes through me personally. Nothing that comes out of your terminal, not even a fucking obituary, gets into this newspaper without me seeing it first."
Wiley seemed stunned. He shrank into the chair.
"Jeez, Cab, why don't you just cut off my balls and get it over with?"
Mulcahy walked him to the door. "Don't write about the Harper case anymore, Skip," he said, not gently. "Dr. Courtney is expecting you tomorrow morning. Ten sharp."
Brian Keyes read Skip Wiley's column as soon as he got back to the office. He laughed out loud, in spite of himself. He had become amazed—there was no other word for it—at how much Wiley could get away with.
Keyes wondered if Ernesto Cabal had seen the newspaper. He hoped not. Wiley's column would absolutely ruin the young man's day.
Assuming Ernesto was innocent—and Keyes was leaning in that direction—the next step was figuring out who would have wanted B. D. Harper dead. It was a most unusual murder, and robbery seemed an unlikely motive. Dumping the body in a suitcase was like the Mob, Keyes thought, but the Mob didn't have much of a sense of humor; the Mob wouldn't have dressed Sparky up in such godawful tacky clothes, or stuffed a rubber alligator down his throat.
Finding a solid suspect besides Ernesto Cabal wasn't going to be easy. B. D. Harper had not risen to the pinnacle of his trade by making enemies. His mission, in fact, had been quite the opposite: to make as many friends as possible and offend no one. Harper had been good at this. He positively excreted congeniality.
Sparky had lived and breathed tourism. His singular goal had been to lure as many people to South Florida to spend as much money as was humanly possible in four days and three nights. He lay awake nights scheming new ways to draw people to the tropical bosom of Miami.
As a reporter, Brian Keyes had come to know B. D. Harper fairly well. There was nothing not to like; there simply was nothing much at all. He was an innocuous, rotund little man who was jolliest when Florida was crawling with snowbirds. For years Harper had run his own successful public-relations firm, staging predictable dumb stunts like putting a snow machine on the beach in January, or mailing a ripe Florida orange to every human being in Prudhoe Bay, Alaska. This was in the boom days of Miami and, in a way, Sparky Harper had been a proud pioneer of the shameless, witless boosterism that made Florida grow.
In later years, as head of the Chamber of Commerce, Harper's principal task was to compose a snazzy new bumper sticker every year:
"Miami—Too Hot to Handle!"
"Florida is ... Paradise Found!"
"Miami Melts in Your Mouth!"
Brian Keyes's personal favorite was "The Most Exciting City in America," which Sparky propitiously introduced one month after Miami's worst race riot.
Harper shrewdly had peddled his lame slogans by affixing them to color posters of large-breasted women sunbathing on the beach, sprawling on the bows of sailboats, or dangling from a hang-glider—whatever Sparky could arrange. The women were always very beautiful because the Chamber of Commerce could afford to hire the top models.
The annual unveiling of the new tourism poster made Sparky Harper neither controversial nor unpopular. As far as anyone could tell, it was the only tangible thing he did all year to earn his forty-two-thousand-dollar salary.
As for the murder, Keyes thought of the usual cheap possibilities: a jealous husband, an impatient loan shark, a jilted girlfriend, a jilted boyfriend. Nothing seemed to fit. Sparky was a divorced man with a French poodle named Bambi. When he dated at all, he dated widows or hookers. He had been known to get bombed on occasion, but he never made an ass of himself in public. And he wasn't a gambler, so it was unlikely that the Mafia was into him.
Keyes guessed that whoever killed Harper might not have known him personally, but probably knew who he was. With garish methodology the killer had seemed to be making a very strong statement, which is why Keyes couldn't dismiss the "Nights of December" letter, nutsy as it was.
Keyes decided that he needed the autopsy. He drove to the medical examiner's office and asked for a copy. Dr. Joe Allen wasn't in, so Keyes decided to wait. As he sat in a tiled room that smelled sweetly of formalin, he started to read Allen's report line-by-line. Halfway through, his curiosity got the best of him and he unsheathed the color slides. One by one Keyes held them up to the light.
The more he studied the gruesome photographs, the more Keyes was convinced that Ernesto Cabal was telling the truth: he'd had nothing to do with B. D. Harper's murder. It was beyond Ernesto's stunted imagination to have conceived something like this.
"Don't smudge up my slides!" Dr. Joe Allen stood at the doorway, laden with files.
" 'Mornin', Doc."
"Well, Brian. I hear you've hit the big time." Joe Allen had always liked Brian Keyes. Keyes had been a solid reporter and it was a damn shame he'd given it up to become a P.I. Joe Allen wasn't crazy about private investigators.
"This was no robbery, Joe."
"I don't know what it was," Dr. Allen said, "except that it was definitely death by asphyxiation."
"Have you ever heard of a B-and-E artist to show such flair?" Keyes asked.
"It seems the police are of that opinion."
"I'm asking for yours, Joe."
Dr. Joe Allen had autopsied 3,712 murder victims during his long career as the Dade County coroner, so he had seen more indescribable carnage than perha
ps any other human being in the whole United States. Throughout the years Joe Allen had charted South Florida's progress by what lay dead on his steel tables, and he was long past the point of ever being shocked or nauseated. He performed meticulous surgery, kept precise files, took flawless photographs, and compiled priceless morbidity data which earned him a national reputation. For example, it was Dr. Allen who had determined that Greater Miami had more mutilation-homicides per capita than any other American city, a fact he attributed to the terrific climate. In warm weather, Allen noted, there were no outdoor elements to deter a lunatic from spending six, seven, eight hours hacking away on a victim; try that in Buffalo and you'd freeze your ass off. After Dr. Allen had presented his findings to a big pathologists' convention, several other Sun Belt coroners had conducted their own studies and confirmed what became known as the Allen Mutilation Theorem.
Throughout the years a few spectacular cases stood out vividly in Dr. Allen's recollections, but the rest were just toe tags. Brian Keyes hoped Sparky Harper might be different.
The coroner put on his glasses and held up two of the more sickening slides, as if to refresh his memory. "Brian," he said, "I don't think they've got the right man in jail."
"So how do I get him out?"
"Give them a better suspect."
"Swell, Joe. Anyone in particular?"
"In my opinion, Mr. Harper was the victim of a ritual slaying. I'd say that several persons were involved. I would also say that neither robbery nor sexual assault was the motive. I wouldn't rule out the possibility of an occult ceremony, possibly even human sacrifice. On the other hand, the body showed no common signs of torture—no cigarette burns, welts, or bruise patterns. But you can't ignore what happened to the legs."
Keyes asked, "What didhappen to the legs?"
"The legs were removed after death occurred, probably so the body could be concealed in the suitcase. But it's the way the legs were removed that's so interesting."
Keyes said, "Joe, are you doing this just to make me sick?"
"The legs weren't just hacked off with an ax, which is the most efficient way," said Dr. Allen, pausing to choose his words. "It appears from the wounds that Sparky's legs might have been removed by a large animal. They might actually have been ... twisted off."
