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 Señor 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 morning, 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.”