“Ida is dead,” Keyes had told him.
Richard L. Bloodworth emptied his typewriter and started working the phones like a dervish.
13
Skip Wiley had a plan.
That’s what he told them—the Indian, the football player, and the Cuban—whenever they got restless.
Trust me, boys, I have a plan!
And he was such a convincing eccentric that they usually calmed down. Wiley overpowered them—even Viceroy Wilson, who thought Wiley would’ve made a righteous TV preacher. Of all Las Noches de Diciembre, only Wilson was absolutely certain of Wiley’s sanity. As much as he hated honkies, Wilson found Skip Wiley vastly amusing.
Jesus Bernal, on the other hand, was not amused. He thought Wiley was a reckless lunatic, and wasted no opportunity to say so. Bernal believed discipline was essential for revolution; Wiley, of course, believed just the opposite.
Usually it was Viceroy Wilson who was left to suffer the Cuban’s ravings because the Indian just ignored both of them. Without Wiley around, Tommy Tigertail invariably climbed into his airboat and roared into the Everglades without a word. Viceroy Wilson didn’t mind, as long as Tommy left the keys to the Cadillac.
On the morning of December 10, Skip Wiley was gone and the Indian had vanished, leaving Viceroy Wilson alone with Jesus Bernal. At Wiley’s instruction, the two of them were driving to Miami on an important mission.
“He’s Loco,” Bernal was saying. “Did you see his eyes?”
“He just drank a six-pack,” Wilson reminded him.
“Crazy fucker. All this work and what do we have to show for it? Nada. Remember all the publicity he promised? NBC! Geraldo Rivera! Mother Jones! Ha!”
Jesus Bernal no longer spoke Spanish in the presence of Viceroy Wilson because Wilson had promised to kill him if he did. The mere sound of people speaking Spanish gave Viceroy Wilson a terrible headache. Opera had the same effect.
“The man’s got a plan,” Wilson said, “so chill out.”
“What plan? He’s a fucking nut!” Bernal nervously knotted the tail of his undershirt. “We’re all going to wind up in prison, except him. He’ll be at the Betty Ford Clinic while you and me do twenty-five at Raiford, getting butt-fucked in the showers.”
“Be a good experience for you.”
“Don’t tell me about plans,” the Cuban groused.
Viceroy Wilson slid Lionel Richie into the tape deck.
“Oh, man, turn the jungle drums down—” Jesus Bernal reached for the volume knob but Wilson forcefully intercepted his arm. “Okay, okay! Christ, take it easy.” Bernal couldn’t see Viceroy Wilson’s eyes behind the Carrera sunglasses; it was just as well.
“So tell me about Dartmouth,” Wilson said in a phony Ivy League tone. “Did you excel?”
‘That wasn’t me, that was another Jesus Bernal. I’m a different person now.”
“Too bad,” Wilson said. “Tell me about the First Weekend in July Movement.”
“Never!”
Wilson chuckled dryly. He’d done a little checking at the Miami Public Library.
“Why’d they kick you out?”
“They didn’t kick me out, coño, I quit!”
Viceroy Wilson didn’t like the sound of coño, but he let it slide. He was having too much fun. He’d been waiting for this since the first time Jesus Bernal had flashed his switchblade. Jesus was a bully, his mean streak carefully rehearsed; Viceroy Wilson would have loved to play football against Jesus Bernal. Just one play. Thirty-one Z-right.
“So tell me about the bombs.”
Bernal sneered.
“Come on, Jesus. I read where you were in charge of munitions.”
“I held the title of defense minister!”
“Yeah, that was later. I’m talking about 1978, June 1978.”
Bernal’s upper lip twitched. He stared out the car window and started humming “All Night Long,” drumming on his knee.
Viceroy Wilson said, “June 15, 1978.”
“Turn up the music.”
This is what had happened on the afternoon of June 15, 1978: Jesus Bernal manufactured a letter bomb which was meant to kill a well-known Miami talk-show host. This TV celebrity had been foolhardy enough to suggest that the United States should send emergency medical supplies to a rural province in Cuba, where a deadly strain of influenza had afflicted hundreds of children.
The talk-show host had actually made this appeal for Cuba on the air. In Dade County, Florida.