“When are you gonna learn to lock the door?” she asked. She handed him the front page. “Take a look. The puddy tat’s out of the bag.”
Keyes sat up and spread the newspaper across his knees. He tried to read, but his eyes refused to focus.
“I figured you’d be decked out in black,” he said groggily.
“I don’t believe he’s dead,” Jenna said. “I will not believe it, not till I see the body.” Case closed. She forced a smile. “Hey, Bri, seems you’re a big hero for killing that Cuban kidnapper.”
“Yeah, I look like a big hero, don’t I?”
He glanced at Wiley’s column. “December 28—the day before the helicopter crash. When’s the last time you heard from him?”
“Same day. I got a telegram from Haiti.”
“What did he say?” Keyes asked.
“He said to spray the lawn for chinch bugs.”
“That all?”
She pursed her lips. “He also said if anything happens, he wants to be buried in that pine coffin he got from the swap meet. Buried with all his old newspaper clippings, of course.”
“Very touching.”
“I think he stole the idea from the Indian,” Jenna said. “Seminole warriors are always buried with their weapons.”
Keyes stumbled downstairs to a vending machine and bought three cups of coffee. Jenna took one look and said she didn’t want any, so Keyes drank them all.
It put him in a perfect mood for Skip Wiley’s farewell column, which Keyes found mawkish and disorganized and only slightly revelatory. He was more interested in Cab Mulcahy’s companion story. In it, the managing editor explained that Wiley’s key role in the Nights of December had not been exposed because of a threat that many more tourists and innocent persons would be murdered. For several days the information about Wiley was withheld while an investigator hired by the Sun searched for him; in retrospect, Mulcahy had written, this decision was ill-advised and probably unethical.
“Poor Cab,” Keyes said, not to Jenna but himself. He felt hurt and embarrassed for his friend.
Jenna came around from behind the desk and sat on the tattered sofa next to Keyes. “Skip really got carried away,” she said, stopping just short of remorse.
“He carried all of us away,” Keyes said, “everyone who cared about him. You, me, Mulcahy, the whole damn newspaper. He carried all of us right into the toilet.”
“Brian, don’t be this way.” Jenna wasn’t wearing any makeup; she looked like she hadn’t slept in two days. “It was a good cause,” she said defensively. “Just poor administration.”
“What makes you think he’s not dead?”
“Intuition.”
“Oh really.” Keyes eyed her with annoyance, as he would a stray cat.
He said, “I can’t imagine Skip passing up that parade. National television, half the country tuned in. It was too good to resist—if he’s not dead, he’s in a coma somewhere.”
“He’s not dead,” Jenna said.
“We’ll see.”
Jenna had never heard him so snide.
“What’s with you?” she asked.
“Aw, nothing. Blew a guy’s head off last night and I’m still a little bushed. Wanna go for a Danish?”
Jenna looked shaky. “Oh Brian,” she said.
A plaintively rendered oh Brian usually would do the trick; a guaranteed melt-down. This time Keyes felt nothing but a penetrating dullness; not lust or jealousy, rage or bitterness.
“He was supposed to meet me at Wolfie’s this morning, but he never came,” she admitted. “I’m kind of worried.” Her eyes were red. Keyes knew she was about to turn on the waterworks.
“He can’t be dead,” she said, choking out the words.
Keyes said, “I’m sorry, Jenna, but you did the worst possible thing: you encouraged the bastard.”
“I suppose,” she said, starting to sob. “But some of it sounded so harmless.”
“Skip was about as harmless as a 190-pound scorpion.”
“For instance, dropping those snakes on the ocean liner,” she said. “Somehow it didn’t seem so terrible when he was arranging it. The way he told it, it was supposed to be kind of funny.”
“With goddamn rattlesnakes, Jenna?”
“He didn’t tell me that part. Honest.” She reached out and put her arms around him. “Hold me,” she whispered. Normally another foolproof heartbreaker. Keyes took her hand and patted it avuncularly. He didn’t know where it had gone—all his feeling for her—just that it wasn’t there now.