Winder laughed. “A typo? You’re beautiful, Charlie. The paper’s a goddamn fake.”
Chelsea rolled his eyes. “And I suppose a simpler explanation is impossible—that perhaps the author’s name was misspelled by the publisher, or that the university was misidentified…”
“No way.”
“You’re not a well person,” Chelsea said. “And now I learn that you’ve telephoned Koocher’s widow in New York. That’s simply inexcusable.” The way he spit out the word was meant to have a lacerating effect.
“What’s inexcusable,” said Winder, “is the way you lied.”
“It was a judgment call.” Chelsea’s cheek twitched. “We were trying to spare the woman some grief.”
“I told her to get a lawyer.”
Chelsea’s tan seemed to fade.
Joe Winder went on: “The newspapers are bound to find out the truth. ‘Man Gobbled by Whale. Modern-Day Jonah Perishes in Freak Theme Park Mishap.’ Think about it, Charlie.”
“The coroner said he drowned. We’ve never denied it.”
“But they didn’t say how he drowned. Or why.”
Charles Chelsea began to rock back and forth. “This is all academic, Joey. As of this moment, you no longer work here.”
“And here I thought I was your ace in the hole.”
Chelsea extended a hand, palm up. “The keys to the Cushman, please.”
Winder obliged. He said, “Charlie, even though you’re an obsequious dork, I’d like to believe you’re not a part of this. I’d like to believe that you’re just incredibly dim.”
“Go clean out your desk.”
“I don’t have to. There’s nothing in it.”
Chelsea looked momentarily confused.
Winder waved his arms. “Desks are places to keep facts, Charlie. Who needs a desk when the words simply fly off the tops of our heads! Hell, I’ve done my finest work for you while sitting on the toilet.”
“If you’re trying to insult me, it won’t work.” Chelsea lowered his eyelids in lizardly disinterest. “We all fudge the truth when it suits our purposes, don’t we? Like when you told me you got that scar in a car accident.”
So he knew all along, just as Joe Winder had suspected.
“I heard it was a fight in the newsroom,” Chelsea said, “a fistfight with one of your editors.”
“He had it coming,” said Winder. “He screwed up a perfectly good news story.”
The story concerned Joe Winder’s father bribing a county commissioner in exchange for a favorable vote on a zoning variance. Winder had written the story himself after digging through a stack of his father’s canceled checks and finding five made out to the commissioner’s favorite bagman.
Though admiring of Winder’s resourcefulness, the editor had said it created an ethical dilemma; he decided that someone else would have to write the piece. You’re too emotionally involved, the editor had told him.
So Winder had gotten a firm grip on the editor’s head and rammed it through the screen of the word processor, cutting himself spectacularly in the struggle that followed.
“I’m sorry, Charlie,” he said. “Maybe you shouldn’t have hired me.”
“The understatement of the year.”
“Before I go, may I show you something?” He took out the small bottle that Skink had given him and placed it in the center of Chelsea’s desk blotter.
The publicity man examined it and said, “It’s food coloring, so what?”
“Look closer.”
“Betty Crocker food coloring. What’s the point, Joe?”
“And what color?”
“Blue.” Chelsea was impatient. “The label says blue.”
Winder twisted the cap off the bottle. He said, “I believe this came from the vole lab, too. You might ask Pedro about it.”
Baffled, Charles Chelsea watched Joe Winder toss back his head and empty the contents of the bottle into his mouth. He sloshed the liquid from cheek to cheek, then swallowed.
“Ready?” Winder said. He stuck out his tongue, which now was the color of indigo dye.
“That’s a very cute trick.” Chelsea sounded nervous.
Joe Winder climbed onto the desk on his hands and knees. “The voles were phony, Charlie. Did you know that?” He extended his tongue two inches from Chelsea’s nose, then sucked it back in. He said, “There’s no such thing as a blue-tongued mango vole. Kingsbury faked the whole deal. Invented an entire species!”
“You’re cracking up,” Chelsea said thinly.