“A rodent slide show.” Joe Winder wadded up the press release. “The amazing thing is not that you’d do it, because I think you’d charge tourists twenty bucks to watch the pelicans fuck, if they’d let you. The amazing thing is, people will actually come and pay.” He clapped his hands once, loudly. “I love this business, Charlie. Every day I learn something new.”
Chelsea tightened his necktie. “Christ, here we go again. I try to pay you a compliment, and you twist it into some sort of cynical…commentary.”
“Sorry,” said Winder. He could feel his sinuses filling up like a bathtub.
“For your information,” said Chelsea, “I got people
calling all the way from Alaska, wanting to buy Vance-and-Violet T-shirts.” Chelsea sighed, to show how disappointed he was in Joe Winder’s attitude. Then he said, with an edge of reluctance, “You did some nice writing on this piece, Joe. Got us all off the hook.”
“Thanks, boss. And you’re right—it was a piece.”
Chelsea sat down, eyeing the fast-food debris on Joe Winder’s tray. One of Uncle Ely’s Elves, sitting at the other end of the table, belched sonorously. Charles Chelsea pretended not to notice. He said, “Not to brag, Joey, but I think I did a pretty fair job with this ditty myself. Mr. X loved his quotes. He said I made him sound like a real human being.”
With the tips of his fingers, Joe Winder began to rub both his temples in a ferocious circular motion.
Chelsea asked, “Now what’s the matter?”
“Headache.” Winder squinted as tightly as he could, to wring the pain out of his eyeballs. “Listen, I called Dr. Koocher’s house. He didn’t go home last night. His wife is scared out of her mind.”
“Maybe he just got depressed and tied one on. Or maybe he’s got a girlfriend.”
Joe Winder decided not to tell Chelsea that Koocher had tried to reach him. “His wife’s eight months pregnant, Charlie. She says he usually calls about nineteen times an hour, but she hasn’t heard a word since yesterday.”
“What would you like me to do?”
“Worry like hell,” said Winder. He stood up. “Also, I’d like your permission to talk to Pedro Luz. I think he’s hiding something.”
Charles Chelsea said, “You can’t talk to him, Joe. He’s in the hospital.” He paused wearily and shook his head. “Don’t ask.”
“Come on, Charlie.”
“For rabies shots.”
“I should’ve guessed,” Winder said. “My condolences to the dog.”
“It wasn’t a dog,” Chelsea said. “Can’t this wait till tomorrow? Pedro’s in a lot of pain.”
“No,” said Joe Winder, “that’s perfect.”
Pedro Luz had been taken to the closest emergency room, which was Mariners’ Hospital down on Plantation Key. The nurse on duty remembered Pedro Luz very well, and directed Joe Winder to a private room on the second floor.
He didn’t bother to knock, just eased the door open. The impressive bulk of Pedro Luz was propped up in bed, watching a Spanish-language soap opera on Channel 23. He was sucking on one end of the plastic IV tube, which he had yanked out of his arm.
“That doesn’t go in your mouth,” Winder told him.
“Yeah, well, I’m thirsty.”
“You’re bleeding all over the place.”
“What do you care?” said Pedro Luz. With a corner of the sheet he swabbed the blood from his arm. “You better get out of here. I mean right now.”
Joe Winder pulled a chair close to the bed and sat down. Pedro Luz smelled like a fifty-five-gallon drum of rubbing alcohol. His luxuriant hair stood in oily black spikes, and his massive neck was covered with angry purple acne, a side effect of the fruit-and-steroid body-building diet.
“You like your job?” Winder asked him.
“What do you mean—at the Kingdom? Sure, I guess.” The security man pulled the covers off his legs, so Joe Winder could see the bandages on his ferret-gnawed ankle. “Except for shit like this,” said Pedro Luz. “Otherwise, it’s an okay job most of the time.”
Winder said, “So you really wouldn’t want to get fired.”
“The hell are you talking about?”
“For lying. I think you’re lying.”
“What about?”
Joe Winder said, “Don’t play dumb with me.” As if the guy had a choice. “Tell me why you sent a man to Koocher’s lab yesterday. I know you did, because he called me about it.”
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