“The reason I came back,” Wiley said somberly, “is to prevent disaster. To save us from international ridicule.”
As he looked up, the pale light snared his chin, the ridge of his long nose, the blond crest of his forehead. The others were struck by Wiley’s flickering visage. He reminded Jesus Bernal of a priest in the confessional, and Viceroy Wilson of a Basin Street scat singer. And when Tommy Tigertail looked at Wiley, he was reminded of an animal spirit he had once encountered at the sacred Green Corn dance.
“Our moment is at hand,” Wiley told them. “And this is no time to be losing ground or getting careless. We’ve had a rotten week. First we’re booted out of the Bahamas—humiliating, but not calamitous—and then yesterday we nearly blow it for good. Yesterday”—he glanced down at the Cuban—”we had extreme major fuckage.”
“Unngh,” Bernal remarked defensively.
“The whole idea,” Wiley said, his voice building, “of surveilling Kara Lynn Shivers was to determine if she was under police protection. I assumed we all understood that it was vitally important to remain invisible.”
The word invisible seemed to snake through the warehouse and wrap around the Cuban’s neck.
“Now, Jesus,” Wiley went on, “since your teeth got knocked out and your larynx looks like an avocado, I’m not going to make you tell me precisely what happened. Not now, anyway. Today I want you to rest, and I want you to stay here until I tell you to leave. Because, as we speak, every police officer in Dade County is out looking for you. If you were captured—and I realize that might appeal to your grandiose appetite for martyrdom—but if you were captured, there’s no telling what they’d do to make you talk.”
“No mucking way,” Bernal said.
“Let’s not take the chance. You stay put,” Wiley said. “Gentlemen, we’ve had a major setback: we’ve lost the element of stealth.”
“But Keyes already knew the plan,” Tommy Tigertail said.
“Of course, of course—but look … “ Wiley was trying to come up with a good Seminole-type metaphor. ‘Tommy, it’s the difference between knowing there’s a panther hiding in the swamp, and seeing that panther with your own eyes. What’s more frightening: wondering where it is, or finding it?”
The Indian didn’t need it spelled out for him. Neither did Viceroy Wilson. They knew the magnitude of Bernal’s transgression.
“Judging by the paper this morning, yesterday’s clumsy episode has taken some of the luster from our mission,” Wiley said sardonically. “In all my life I’ve never heard of a professional terrorist being subdued by a putz with a tennis racket.”
“Eaaamy,” replied Jesus Bernal, probably in Spanish.
“Lucky he didn’t kill you,” Viceroy Wilson said.
“Lucky’s the right word,” Wiley added. “Lucky all we lost is a car.”
“What?” Wilson cried.
“I’m sorry, old man, but the cops put a BOLO out on the Caddy so I had Tommy get rid of the darn thing.”
“No!”
“I dumped it in a rockpit,” the Indian said.
With the roar of a wounded grizzly, Viceroy Wilson hurled himself upon Jesus Bernal and began pummeling him ferociously in the ribs and kidneys.
“Ged ob me, you addhoe!” the toothless Cuban howled. “Hep!”
With great effort Tommy Tigertail was able to pull Viceroy Wilson away from Jesus Bernal. Once separated, the two revolutionaries glowered at each other, panting like leopards.
Skip Wiley rose to his feet. “Look what’s happening here! Ten days ago Las Noches was unstoppable, fearless, indivisible. Now we’re trying to maim and mutilate each other. Last week we were front-page news and today the paper’s making fun of us. Did you see the Sun? Did you see the bloody cartoon? Bearded guy supposed to look like Che Guevara, with a beret and machine gun, except he’s got a tennis racket smashed over his head! Funny, huh? Vaudeville terrorists, that’s us. That’s the Nights of December. And instead of going out to redeem ourselves with some serious extremism, what do we do? We sit in this rathole and hold our own tag-team wrestling match. Don’t you see, this is exactly what they want! They’re trying to destroy us from within!”
Tommy Tigertail thought Wiley was giving Garcia and the other white men entirely too much credit. Brian Keyes was the only one who worried Tommy.
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