“You okay down there?”
“Not really,” Courtney called up to him. “Mr. Wiley, your time’s almost up.”
Wiley dragged Courtney up through the window.
“Your ankles sweat, you know that?”
“I’m not surprised,” the doctor said.
“So you’re sticking with this idea that I’m crazy? That’s what you’re going to tell Mulcahy?”
Courtney brushed himself off. The palms of his hands were red and abraded, and this seemed to bother him. He straightened his blazer. “You’re very lucky I didn’t lose one of my contact lenses,” he told Wiley.
“You’re lucky you didn’t lose your goddamn life.” Plainly unsatisfied, Wiley sat down at the doctor’s desk. Courtney reclaimed his spot on the couch, a brand-new spiral notebook on his lap.
“In my opinion, it started with the hurricane column,” the psychiatrist said.
“Come on, doc, that was a terrific piece.”
“It was uncommonly vicious and graphic. ‘What South Florida needs most is a killer hurricane … ‘ All that stuff about screaming winds and crumpled condominiums. My mother saw that … that trash,” the doctor said with agitation, “and the next day she put her place on the market. The poor woman’s scared to death. An ocean view with a nine-point-eight-mortgage—assumable!—and still she’s scared out of her mind. Wants to move to bloody Tucson. All because of you!”
“Really?” Skip Wiley seemed pleased.
“What kind of drugs,” Dr. Courtney started to ask him, “provoke this kind of lunacy?”
But Skip Wiley already was on his way out the door, a honey-maned blur.
Cab Mulcahy strolled into the newsroom shortly after five. He was a composed, distinguished-looking presence among the young neurotics who put out the daily newspaper, and several of them traded glances that said: Wonder what brings the old man out?
Mulcahy was looking for Wiley. Actually, he was looking for Wiley’s column. Mulcahy harbored a fear that Wiley would devise a way to sneak the damn thing into print in defiance of their agreement.
The city editor said he hadn’t seen Wiley all day, and reported that no column had arrived by messenger, telephone, or teletype. The city editor also pointed out that, without a column, he was staring at a big sixteen-inch hole on the front page, with deadlines fast approaching.
“Ricky Bloodworth’s offered to do the column if Wiley doesn’t show up,” the city editor said.
“Has he now?”
“He worked up a couple pieces in his spare time. I saw ‘em this morning, Cab, and they’re not bad. A little purple, maybe, but interesting.”
“No way,” Mulcahy said. ‘Tell him thanks just the same.”
The city editor looked dejected; Mulcahy knew that he had been yearning to rid himself of the Wiley Problem for a long time. The city editor did not get on well with Skip Wiley. It was a bad relationship that only got worse after Wiley let it slip that he was making five thousand dollars a year more than the city editor, not including stock options. Stock options! The city editor had gone home that night and kicked the shit out of his cocker spaniel.
“Did you call Wiley’s house?” Mulcahy asked.
“Jenna hasn’t seen him since he left for the doctor’s this morning. She said he seemed fine and dandy.”
“That’s what she said?”
“Verbatim,” the city editor said. “Fine and dandy.”
Mulcahy phoned Dr. Remond Courtney and told him that Skip Wiley hadn’t showed up for work.
“Oh?” Dr. Courtney did not seem surprised, but it was hard to tell. Courtney was an expert at masking his reactions by saying things like Oh and I see and Why don’t you tell me about it.
“I was wondering,” Mulcahy said impatiently, “how things went today?”
“How things went?”
“With you and Mr. Wiley. You had an appointment, remember?”
More silence; then: “He became abusive.”
“Became abusive? He’s always abusive.”
“Physically abusive,” Courtney said. He was trying to remain clinical so Mulcahy wouldn’t suspect how scared he’d been. “I believe he threatened my life.”
“What did you do?”
“I talked him out of it, of course. I think we were doing much better by the end of the hour.”
“Glad to hear it,” Mulcahy said, thinking: Wiley’s right, this guy is useless. “Tell me, did Skip say where he was going after his visit?”