“This is Burt and this is James.”
“Love the hats, guys. Sorry I missed the sale.” Wiley shook hands with the Shriners. “Pull up some beach and have a seat. Terrific view, just like on Love Boat, huh?”
Burt and James silently agreed; they had never seen the ocean so glassy, so crystalline blue. It truly was a tropical paradise. The cabdriver had said that one of the James Bond movies had been filmed in this cove, and from then on the Shriners had felt they were on a great adventure. They didn’t know what to make of this fellow under the beach umbrella, but they’d already agreed to let Brian Keyes do the talking.
“Where’s Jenna?” Keyes asked. He liked to start with the easy questions.
“House hunting,” Wiley said. “I can’t stand this goddamn hotel. Full of American rubes and geeks pissing away Junior’s college fund at the blackjack tables. It’s pathetic.” Wiley poured himself an iceless rum and cranberry juice. “How’re the ribs, Brian?”
“Getting better.” Keyes was scouting the shoreline.
“Relax, he’s not here.”
“Who?”
“Viceroy, that’s who! So you can unpucker your asshole. I sent him on some errands because I wanted privacy. Now you show up with these burly bookends.”
“They’re friends of Theodore Bellamy.”
“I see,” Wiley said, scratching his head. “So we’re here for vengeance, are we? Brian, I hope you explained to your companions that they are now on foreign soil and treading in a country that takes a dim view of kidnapping and murder. A country that respects the rights of all foreign nationals and adheres to the strictest legal tests for extradition.”
“Meaning what?” Burt demanded.
“Meaning you and your bucket-headed partner are on your way to Fox Hill Prison if you fuck with me,” Skip Wiley said, waving his rum glass. “I’m a guest here, an honored guest.”
This problem had occurred to Brian Keyes as soon as he set foot in Nassau. He had no idea how one would go about kidnapping Skip Wiley and hauling him back to Florida. By boat? Barge? Private helicopter? And if one succeeded, then what? No charges had been filed against Wiley in the States because no one, besides Keyes and possibly Cab Mulcahy, knew the true identity of El Fuego.
“Did you kill Dr. Courtney?” Keyes asked.
“Ho-ho-ho.”
“Why’d you do it?”
“Please,” Wiley said, raising a hand, “we’ve been through all this.”
“You need help, Skip.”
“I’ve got all the help I need, Ace. Look, you’re lucky I’m still talking to you. I gave you everything you’d need to turn the cops loose like a bunch of bloodhounds.”
“I lost the briefcase.”
“Swell, just swell.” Wiley laughed sourly. “Some fucking private eye you turned out to be. I will admit one thing: that was a great line you fed Bloodworth about Slavic crazoids in fright wigs. Just the right nuance of xenophobia.”
“I was hoping nobody’d believe it.”
Wiley’s cavernous grin disappeared and his lively brown eyes hardened. “Tell your friends to take a stroll,” he said under his breath. “I want to talk to you.”
Keyes motioned to the Shriners and they trudged down the beach, glancing over their shoulders every few steps.
“So talk,” Keyes said to Wiley.
“You think I’m just a deranged egomaniac?”
“Oh no, Skip, you’re completely normal. Every newspaper has at least one or two reporters who moonlight as mass murderers. It’s a well-known occupational hazard.”
Wiley sniffed scornfully. “Let me assure you, my young friend, that I’m not crazy. I know what I’m doing, and I know what I’ve done. You’re fond of the word murderer—fine. Call me whatever you want. Zealotry can be grueling, that’s for sure; don’t think it doesn’t take a toll on the psyche—or the conscience. But just for the record, it’s not my name that’s important, it’s the group’s. Recognition is damned essential to morale, Brian, and morale is vital to the cause. These fellas deserve some ink.”
“But a revolution? Skip, really.”
“Revolution?—perhaps you’re right; perhaps that’s hyperbole. But Jesus and Viceroy are fond of the imagery, so I indulge them.” Wiley tossed his rum glass into the sand. “So there’ll be no revolution, in the classic sense, but chaos? You bet. Shame. Panic. Flight. Economic disaster.”