Kingsbury grunted at Charles Chelsea and said: “Wildlife Rescue Corps?” He raised his hands. “Well?”
Chelsea said, “The group exists, but the phone call could be a crank. We’re checking it out.”
“What’s this exploitation—shit, we’re talking about, what, some kind of rodent or such goddamn thing.”
Not even close to a quotable sentence, Chelsea thought. It was astounding—the man spoke in over-torqued, expletive-laden fragments that somehow made perfect sense. At all times, Charles Chelsea knew exactly what Francis X. Kingsbury was talking about.
The publicity man said, “Don’t worry, sir, the situation is being contained. We’re ready for any contingency.”
Kingsbury made a small fist. “Damage control,” he said.
“Our top gun,” Chelsea said. “His name is Joe Winder, and he’s a real pro. Offering the reward money was his idea, sir. The AP led with it this morning, too.”
Kingsbury sat down. He fingered the florid tip of his bulbous nose. “These animals, there’s still a chance maybe?”
Chelsea could feel a chilly dampness spreading in deadly crescents from his armpits. “It’s unlikely, sir. One of them is dead for sure. Shot by the highway patrol. Some tourists apparently mistook it for a rat.”
“Terrific,” said Kingsbury.
“The other one, likewise. The bandits threw it in the window of a Winnebago camper.”
Kingsbury peered from beneath dromedary lids. “Don’t,” he said, exhaling noisily. “This is like…no, don’t bother.”
“You might as well know,” said Chelsea. “It was a church group from Boca Raton in the Winnebago. They beat the poor thing to death with a golf umbrella. Then they threw it off the Card Sound Bridge.”
There, Chelsea thought. He had done it. Stood up and delivered the bad news. Stood up like a man.
Francis X. Kingsbury entwined his hands and said: “Who knows about this? Knows that we know? Anybody?”
“You mean anybody on the outside? No.” Charles
Chelsea paused. “Well, except the highway patrol. And I took care of them with some free passes to the Kingdom.”
“But civilians?”
“No, sir. Nobody knows that we know the voles are dead.”
“Fine,” said Francis X. Kingsbury. “Good time to up the reward.”
“Sir?”
“Make it a million bucks. Six zeros, if I’m not mistaken.”
Chelsea took out a notebook and a Cross pen, and began to write. “That’s one million dollars for the safe return of the missing voles.”
“Which are dead.”
“Yes, sir.”
“Simple, hell. Very simple.”
“It’s a most generous offer,” said Charles Chelsea. “Bullshit,” Kingsbury said. “It’s PR, whatever. Stuff for the fucking AP.”
“But your heart’s in the right place.” Impatiently Kingsbury pointed toward the door. “Fast,” he said. “Before I get sick.”
Chelsea was startled. Backing away from Kingsbury’s desk, he said, “I’m sorry, sir. Is it something I said?”
“No, something you are.” Kingsbury spoke flatly, with just a trace of disgust.
On the way back to his office, Charles Chelsea stopped in the executive washroom and threw up again.
Like many wildly successful Floridians, Francis X. Kingsbury was a transplant. He had moved to the Sunshine State in balding middle age, alone and uprooted, never expecting that he would become a multimillionaire.
And, like so many new Floridians, Kingsbury was a felon on the run. Before arriving in Miami, he was known by his real name of Frankie King. Not Frank, but Frankie; his mother had named him after the singer Frankie Laine. All his life Frankie King had yearned to change his name to something more distinguished, something with weight and social bearing. A racketeering indictment (twenty-seven counts) out of Brooklyn was as good an excuse as any.
Once he was arrested, Frankie King exuberantly began ratting on his co-conspirators, which included numerous high-ranking members of the John Gotti crime organization. Frankie’s testimony conveniently glossed the fact that it was he, not the surly Zuboni brothers, who had personally flown to San Juan and picked up the twenty-seven crate-loads of bootleg “educational” videotapes that were eventually sold to the New York City school system for $119.95 apiece. Under oath, Frankie King indignantly blamed the Zubonis and, indirectly, John Gotti himself for failing to inspect the shipment once it had arrived at JFK. On the witness stand, Frankie expressed tearful remorse that, in TV classrooms from Queens to Staten Island, students expecting to see “Kermit’s Wild West Adventure” were instead exposed to a mattress-level montage of Latin porn star Pina Kolada deepthroating a semi-pro soccer team.