In slow motion Skip Wiley picked up an iron mallet. He studied it methodically, weighed it in each hand, then began to pound the aluminum door like a gong. With every swing came a new expletive. “That crazy-cretinous-brain-less-shitheaded putz of a Cuban!” he grunted. “Worthless-misguided-suicidal-goddamn miscreant!”
Viceroy Wilson flinched each time the mallet landed, the noise amplified in his skull by forty freshly ingested milligrams of methamphetamine.
“Why didn’t he tell me about this?” Wiley cried. “Who ordered him to go bomb that reptile Bloodworth?”
“Maybe he thought it would make up for the tennis thing,” Tommy Tigertail said.
“Rubbish! Even after my lecture on solidarity, he pulls a silly stunt like this! No wonder the other crazy Cubans kicked him out. I should have known better—I should have listened to you guys.”
Viceroy Wilson resisted the temptation to rub it in. Actually he was somewhat puzzled by Skip Wiley’s anger. He figured that after all that had happened, Wiley ought to be elated to see Ricky Bloodworth go up in smoke. And if a new wave of counterpublicity was what Wiley sought, the bombing had been a bonanza: Las Noches were all over the morning papers and TV. But Viceroy Wilson listened unquestioningly to the harangue because he simply couldn’t bring himself to defend Jesus Bernal. He’d warned the little bastard to chill out until after New Year’s.
“Insubordination!” Wiley bellowed. “A group like ours can’t survive with insubordination. You know what this is? A test, that’s what. That slippery hot-blooded weasel is trying to push me as far as he can. He thinks I’m not tough enough. He wants mucho macho. He wants machetes and machine pistols and nightscopes. He wants us to dress in fatigues and crawl through minefields and bite the necks off live chickens. That’s his idea of revolution. No subtlety, no wit, no goddamn style.”
Wiley was getting hoarse. He dropped the iron mallet. Viceroy Wilson handed him a jar of cold Gatorade.
“We need to find him,” the Indian said.
“Damn soon,” added Wilson.
Wiley wiped his mouth. “Any clues?”
Viceroy Wilson shook his head. In one corner of the warehouse, on Bernal’s pitiful carpet remnant, sat the Smith-Corona typewriter. It was empty.
“He won’t be back,” Tommy Tigertail said.
“A loose cannon,” growled Wiley, subsiding a bit.
Viceroy Wilson decided there was no point in keeping Jesus Bernal’s secret. “The other night he was on the phone to his old dudes. Trying to get back on the A-team.”
“The First Weekend in July?”
“They told him no way,” Wilson said.
“So he decided to put on a one-man show,” Wiley said.
“Looks that way.”
“Well, that’s gratitude for you.”
“Let’s try to find him,” Tommy Tigertail repeated, with consternation.
“Hopeless,” Skip Wiley said. “Anyway, he’ll crawl back when he gets lonely—or when he can’t stand the heat from Garcia.”
“Oh fine,” Viceroy Wilson grumbled. “Just what we need.”
Wiley said, “Besides, I hate to completely give up on the guy.” What he really hated was the thought that anyone could resist his charisma or so blithely spurn his leadership. Recruiting a hard-core case like Jesus Bernal had been a personal triumph; losing him stung Skip Wiley’s ego.
“Look, I’ve got to know,” he said. “Are you boys still with the program?”
“Tighter than ever,” Viceroy Wilson said. The Indian nodded in agreement.
“What about the chopper?”
“Watson Island. Nine tonight,” Wilson said. “The pilot’s cool. Free-lance man. Does some jobs for the Marine Patrol, the DEA and the blockade-runners, too. Long as the price is nice.”
“And the goodies?” Wiley asked.
“Safe and sound,” Tommy Tigertail reported.
“Nobody got hurt?”
The Indian smiled—these white men! “No, of course not,” he said. “Everybody had a ball.”
Wiley sighed. “Good, then we’re on—with or without our Cuban friend.” He reached into a pocket and came out with something in the palm of his hand. To Viceroy Wilson the object looked like a pink castanet.
“What the hell,” Wiley said. He carefully placed the object on the keyboard of Jesus Bernal’s abandoned typewriter. “Just in case he comes back.”
It was a brand-new set of dentures.
Cab Mulcahy had waited all night for Skip Wiley to call again. He’d attached a small tape recorder to the telephone next to the bed and slept restlessly, if at all. There was no question of Wiley reaching him if he’d wanted—Skip knew the number, and had never been shy about calling. Back when he was writing in full stride, Wiley would phone Mulcahy at least once a week to demand the firing or public humiliation of some mid-level editor who had dared to alter the column. These tirades normally lasted about thirty minutes until Wiley’s voice gave out and he hung up. Once in a while Mulcahy discovered that Skip was right—somebody indeed had mangled a phrase or even edited a fact error into the column; in these instances the managing editor would issue a firm yet discreet rebuke, but Wiley seldom was satisfied. He was constantly threatening to murder or sexually mutilate somebody in the newsroom and, on one occasion, actually fired a speargun at an unsuspecting editor at the city desk. For weeks there was talk of a lawsuit, but eventually the poor shaken fellow simply quit and took a job with a public-relations firm in Tampa. Wiley had been remorseless; as far as he was concerned, anyone who couldn’t weather a little criticism had no business in journalism anyway. Cab Mulcahy had been dismayed: firing a spear at an editor was a sure way to bring in the unions. To punish Wiley, Mulcahy had forced him to drive out to the Deauville Hotel one morning and interview Wayne Newton. To no one’s surprise, the resulting column was unprintable. The speargun episode eventually was forgiven.