by Carl Hiaasen
Besides Keyes himself, Skip Wiley was the only person in the world who knew the real reason for the tears. But he wasn’t telling.
A few months later Keyes got his private investigator’s license, and his newspaper friends were amused. They wondered how the hell he was going to hold together, working for a bunch of sleazoid lawyers and bail bondsmen. Brian Keyes wondered too, and wound up avoiding the rough cases. The cases that really paid.
“Still doing divorces?” Al Garcia asked.
“Here and there.” Keyes hated to admit it, but that’s what covered the rent: he’d gotten damn good at staking out nooner motels with his three-hundred-millimeter Nikon. That was another reason for Al García’s affability. Last year he had hired Brian Keyes to get the goods on his new son-in-law. García despised the kid, and was on the verge of outright murdering him when he called Keyes for help. Keyes had done a hell of a job, too. Tracked the little stud to a VD clinic in Homestead. García’s daughter wasn’t thrilled by the news, but Al was. The divorce went through in four weeks, a new Dade County record.
Now Brian Keyes had a friend for life.
García poured the coffee. “So you got a biggie, Brian.”
“Tell me about it.”
“It’s a touchy one. Can’t say much, especially now that you’re lined up with the other side.”
“Did you work the Harper case?”
“Hell, everybody up here worked that case.”
Keyes tried to sip the coffee and nearly boiled his upper lip.
“Hey,” García said, “that piece-of-shit rag newspaper you used to work for finally printed something intelligent this morning. You see it?”
“My paper was in a puddle.”
“Ha! You should have read it anyway. Wiley, the asshole that writes that column. I hate that guy normally—I really can’t stand him. But today he did okay.”
Keyes didn’t want to talk about Skip Wiley.
“He wrote about this case,” García went on. “About that little scuzzball we arrested.”
“I’ll be sure to get a copy,” Keyes said.
“I mean, it wasn’t a hundred percent right, there was a few things he screwed up, but overall he did an okay job. I clipped it out and taped it on the refrigerator. I want my boy to read it when he gets home from school. Let him see what his old man does for a living.”
“I’m sure he’ll get a charge out of it, Al. Tell me about Ernesto Cabal.”
“Dirtbag burglar. ”
“Was he on your list of suspects?”
Garcia said, “What do you mean?”
“I mean, you’ve got thirty detectives working on this murder, right? You must have had a list of suspects.”
“Not on this one.”
“So what we’re talking about is blind luck. Some Beach cop nails the guy for running a traffic light and, bingo, there’s Mr. Sparky Harper’s missing automobile.”
“Luck was only part of it,” Garcia said sourly.
Keyes said, “You caught Cabal in the victim’s car, but what else?”
“What else do we need?”
“A witness or two might be nice.”
“Patience, Brian. We’re working on it.”
“And a motive?”
Garcia held up his hands. “Robbery, of course.”
“Come on, Al, this wasn’t a knife in the ribs. It was the ritual murder of a prominent citizen. How did Harper get into those silly clothes? Who smeared suntan oil all over him? Who stuffed a goddamn toy alligator down his throat? Who sawed his legs off? Are you telling me that some two-bit auto burglar concocted this whole thing?”
“People do crazy things for a new Oldsmobile.”
“You’re hopeless,” Keyes said.
“Don’t tell me you believe Cabal’s story? Brian, you got to get this liberal-crusader shit out of your system. I thought two years away from that newspaper would cure you.”
“You’ve got to admit, it’s a very weird case. You guys checked out the car, right?”
“It was clean, except for Cabal’s prints.”
Keyes took out a legal pad and started jotting notes. “What about the suitcase?”
“No prints. Its model number matches a batch sent to Jordan Marsh about a year ago, but we can’t be sure. Could’ve just as easily come from Macy’s.”
Keyes said, “Any sign of the missing legs?”
“Nope.”
“Did you trace that terrific Hawaiian wardrobe?”
“Ugh-ugh.” García made a zipper motion across his lips.
“Oh, you got something, uh? A store, perhaps. Maybe even a salesman who remembers something odd about this particular customer—”
“Brian, back off. This is a very touchy case. If the chief even suspected I was talking to you, I’d be shaking out parking meters for the rest of my life. I think we’d better call it quits for today.”
Keyes put the legal pad back in his briefcase. “I’m sorry, Al. I appreciate what you’re doing.” Keyes was telling the truth. García didn’t owe him a damn thing.
“Normally I wouldn’t mind, Brian, it’s just that this one is Hal’s case. He’s the lead detective. Went out to the scene and all. I don’t want to screw it up for him.”
“I understand. What’s he got you doing?”
García rolled his eyes. “Checking out dead-enders. Take a look at this.” He slid a sheet of paper across the desk.
It was a typed letter. Keyes scanned it quickly. He started to read it again, when García snatched it away.
“Crazy, huh? It came in today’s mail.”
Keyes asked for a Xerox copy.
“No way, Brian. The PD’s office would cream over something like this. And it’s crap, take my word for it. It’s going right into the old circular file as soon as I make a couple routine calls to the feds.”
“Read it out loud,” Keyes said.
“I’ll deny I ever even saw it,” García said.
“Okay, Al, you got my word. Read it, please.”
García 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 García 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-three business? 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 Fuego my 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. ”
4
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 ast
ute. 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, reconstructed the 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 do see the mail. People are starting to hate you, I mean really hate 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 a Mariel 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 moming, 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 handed 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 Sun will pay for it.”
Well, it ought to, 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’m pathological. ”
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.
