Keyes said, “Did you tell Cardoza everything?”
“About as much as you told the cops.”
Keyes shrugged. Touche.
“This is grand,” Mulcahy said sardonically. “Here we are, two truth-seekers who for once actually get hold of the truth. So what do we do? We hide it. Swallow it. Smother it. You should be telling the police, and I should be telling my readers, but look at us—the original chickenshit twins. We’re both worried about that crazy sonofabitch—as if he deserves our concern—and we’re both telling ourselves that there’s got to be another way. Except there isn’t, is there? It’s gone too damn far. People are dead, the cops are rabid, and the city’s in an uproar. Meanwhile our old pal Wiley is hiding somewhere out there, dreaming up a punch line for this hideous joke.”
“What do you want to do?” Keyes asked.
“Go to the cops,” Mulcahy said. “Right now.”
Keyes shook his head. “Skip said there’d be a bloodbath if his name got out.”
“Bloodbath—he used that word?” Mulcahy asked incredulously.
“Yep. ‘Massacre,’ too, if I’m not mistaken. We’ve got to think about this carefully, Cab. Think about what they’ve already done—the kidnappings, the bombings. Look what they did to Dr. Courtney and that detective, Keefe. I don’t think Wiley’s bullshitting when he talks bloodbath. They’ve got the credentials now.” Keyes didn’t mention his fear for Jenna or for Mulcahy himself.
“All right, suppose we tell the police but embargo all the press.”
“Be serious,” Keyes said. “Once the cops heard Wiley’s name they’d leak like the Haitian navy. And when the radio and TV folks get wind of it, the Sun will have no choice. You’ll have to go with the story. Out front, too.”
“We have to get him back from the Bahamas,” Mulcahy asserted. “I’m going to try the embassy.”
“It won’t work, Cab. Skip’s untouchable over there. I found out he entered the island on a fake passport, but nobody in Nassau seems to care. Apparently he’s bribed everyone but the prime minister.”
“So what the hell do we do?”
Keyes said, “I think we’ve got to play rough. You’ve got the one thing he cares about, that column.”
“Yeah,” Mulcahy said, “and every damn word goes through me.”
Keyes thought about that.
“I know a little something about the Bahamas government,” he said. “They’re hypersensitive about their national image.”
“What are you suggesting?”
“Suppose you rewrote Skip’s next column.”
“Suppose I let Bloodworth try it,” Mulcahy said.
“Oh boy.” In Wiley’s words, rewriting was a mortal sin, punishable by castration. Spray-painting the Sistine Chapel, he used to call it.
Keyes thought he noticed the old boy’s eyes twinkle.
“Suppose I gave it to Bloodworth and told him to punch up the lead. Make it more hardhitting. Asked him to tinker with some of Skip’s more energetic passages.”
“Might turn into something the Bahamians wouldn’t like,” Keyes mused. “Might wear out Skip’s welcome real quick.”
“I can’t believe we’re talking about this.”
“Suppose it works,” Keyes said. “Let’s say he comes back to Miami. Then what?”
“Intercept him at the airport,” Mulcahy said. “Turn him in, take him out of circulation. Get him some professional help.”
“He could always plead insanity.”
‘I’m considering it myself,” Mulcahy muttered. “After twenty-two years you’d think I could spot a psychopath in my own newsroom.”
“On the contrary,” said Keyes. “The longer you’re in the business, the harder it gets.”
Mulcahy was one of those rare editors who’d gone into newspapers for all the right reasons, with all the right instincts and all the right sensibilities. He was a wonderful fluke—fair but not weak, tough but not heartless, aggressive but circumspect. The Wiley situation was tearing him up.
Mulcahy toyed with a memo, shredding the edges. “I pulled his personnel file today, just for kicks. Jesus Christ, Brian, it’s full of wild stuff. Stuff I’d forgotten all about.”
The episodes had escalated in gravity:
December 13,1978. Skip Wiley reprimanded for impersonating National Security Adviser Zbigniew Brzezinski in an effort to obtain box seats to an NFL playoff game.
April 17, 1980. Wiley reprimanded after filing an IRS return listing his occupation as “prophet, redeemer, and sage.”
July 23, 1982. Wiley suspended two days with pay after using obscene cunieform symbols to describe Senator Jesse Helms of North Carolina.