Tourist Season (34 page)

“You’re right,” Keyes said. “Congratulate him on all the ink they got. The newsmagazines, the
Post, USA Today.
Tell him the Nights of December made their point. They got everybody’s attention.”

‘Which is true.”

“Of course it’s true.”

“But is it enough for Skip?”

Keyes and Mulcahy looked at each other with the same answer.

“What are we going to do,” Keyes asked, “when he tells us to go beat our meat?”

Mulcahy stroked his chin. “We could talk to Jenna.”

“Forget it,” Keyes said sharply. “Lost cause.”

“Then it’s over. Bloodbath or not, we go to the cops.”

“Yup.” Keyes glanced at the telephone.

“Imagine the headlines, Cab.”

“God help us.”

The phone rang. Once. Twice. Mulcahy swallowed hard and answered on the third ring.

“I see,” he said after a few seconds.

Keyes excitedly pointed to the speaker box. Mulcahy shook his head unhappily. Then he hung up. His face was like gray crepe.

“That wasn’t him,” Mulcahy said. “It wasn’t Wiley.”

“Then who was it?”

“Sergeant Garcia,” he said gravely. “Apparently the Nights of December just blew up the one and only Richard L. Bloodworth.”

The bomb that exploded in Ricky Bloodworth’s lap was powerful by Little Havana standards, but not utterly devastating. To build it, Jesus Bernal had hollowed a round Styrofoam lobster float and packed the core with generous but unmeasured amounts of Semtex-H, C-4, and old gunpowder. Then he ran a fuse through the middle and plugged the ends with gasoline-soaked Jockey shorts and two Army blasting caps. Next Bernal had meticulously embedded into the Styrofoam ball hundreds of two-penny nails (the sharp ends facing out), as well as assorted slivers of rusty cola cans and soup tins. It was not a bomb designed to wipe out embassies or armored limousines; this was, in the terrorist vernacular, an antipersonnel device. Bernal had packed the bristling lobster buoy into an empty one-gallon paint drum and threaded the fuse through a hole in the lid. The fuse became part of the magnificent bow that adorned the deadly brown box—an inspired touch of which the Cuban was especially proud.

Yet, as always, Jesus Bernal had a problem with quality control. He had envisioned a weapon that would fire shrapnel in all directions at an equal force, leaving no square centimeter of human flesh unpunctured. The paint can, Bernal had determined, would itself disintegrate into jagged fragments and become part of the lethal payload.

Fortunately for Ricky Bloodworth, that is not what happened. Fortunately, Jesus Bernal had failed to seal properly the bottom of the paint can, which blew off at the instant of explosion and gave the bomb something it was never supposed to have: rocket thrust.

In what the Metro-Dade Bomb Squad calculated was no more than two-thousandths of a second, Jesus Bernal’s prize package blasted off from Ricky Bloodworth’s lap on a nineteen-degree trajectory, passed cleanly through three plywood toilet stalls, and detonated in the men’s urinal. The rest room was gutted.

An hour later, when Cab Mulcahy and Brian Keyes arrived, men in white lab coats were balanced on stepladders, scraping what appeared to be chunks of pink bubble gum off the charred rest-room ceiling.

“Mr. Bloodworth’s fingertips,” Al Garcia explained. “We’ve found seven out of ten, so far.”

“How is he?” Mulcahy asked.

“He’s got a nosebleed like Victoria Falls,” the detective said, “but he’ll make it.”

Luckily, the police station was only five minutes from Flagler Memorial Hospital. Ricky Bloodworth had arrived in the emergency room semiconscious and suffering from hand injuries, lacerations and second-degree burns over his face and groin.

“The tip of his cock got fried—don’t ask me how,” Garcia said. “He’s also deaf, but the doctor says that might be temporary.”

Mulcahy stepped gingerly through the smoky chamber, his shoes crunching on a carpet of broken mirror, splintered wood, and powdered tile. Pretzeled by the blast, naked water pipes sprouted from the walls and floor, dripping milky fluid.

Brian Keyes knelt next to the bomb-squad guys as they picked through the ceramic ruins of the urinal. “Look at all these damn nails,” Keyes said.

“Two hundred seven,” said one of the bomb experts, “and still counting.”

Keyes looked up and saw Mulcahy with his black tie loosened and French sleeves rolled up. He had a notebook out, and was descending on Al Garcia. Keyes had to grin: the old boy looked right at home.

Mulcahy asked Garcia: “How do you know this was the Nights of December?”

“Your Mr. Bloodworth’s been working on the story, right? That makes him a prime target.” Garcia eyed the notebook uneasily. “Besides, the boys here tell me this looks like another Jesus Bernal special.”

“What was Ricky doing down here?” Keyes said.

“Probably taking a dump,” Garcia said.

“Come on, Al, this is Traffic. Why wouldn’t he be upstairs in Homicide?”

“ ‘Cause I kicked his sleazy ass out when I caught him trying to tape-record me. Had one of those little James Bond jobs tucked in his vest.”

Mulcahy frowned. “I’m sorry about that, Sergeant. That’s strictly against newsroom policy.”

“Fucking A.”

“When you saw him last,” Keyes said, “did he have a package?”

“Nope,” Garcia said. “But here’s my theory, Brian. After I chase him out of here, he goes home, finds this hinky package in the mailbox, freaks out, and comes racing back to show me. On the way upstairs he stops in the John and bang!”

“How’d he get the box past the security desk in the lobby?” asked Mulcahy. A damn good question, Keyes thought.

But Garcia just chuckled. “You could waltz a Pershing missile by those bozos downstairs and they’d never look twice.”

At first Keyes didn’t want to believe that Bloodworth himself had been the target, or that Skip Wiley might have ordered his execution. It was something Wiley had threatened for years around the newsroom, but then so had almost every other reporter. Bloodworth was always on somebody’s shit list.

Yet Keyes couldn’t deny that the bombing made perfect sense, considering what Bloodworth had written about
Las Noches,
and considering what had happened to Wiley’s Christmas column. Keyes felt guilty about his role in the Bahamas scheme; Cab Mulcahy felt much worse. Across the rubble the two men exchanged anguished glances and shared the same chilling thought: Skip wasn’t kidding about a bloodbath. Imagine a bomb like this, in a crowd …

If this was Wiley’s way of warning Keyes and Mulcahy to keep their silence, it worked.

With a gloved hand, one of the bomb-squad guys displayed a twisted scrap of tin which still bore a red-and-white soup label. “Minestrone,” he announced. “This baby was sharpened with a diamond file.”

“Cute,” Mulcahy said, pocketing the notebook. “Come on, Brian, let’s go see Ricky.”

Within minutes of the explosion, the emergency room of Flagler Memorial had been occupied by a clamorous army of journalists, each resolved to make Richard L. Bloodworth a hero of the Fourth Estate. News-wise, it would have been a better story (and certainly less work) if Ricky had been killed outright, but near-martyrdom was better than nothing.

The mere fact that the Nights of December had bombed a news reporter guaranteed international headlines, and the event was sure to draw the Big Boys from New York—the networks, the
Times
and
Sixty Minutes,
all of whom would do anything to get out of Manhattan in the winter. The locals realized that now was the time to score the big interview, before Diane Sawyer strolled into town and scooped them all.

Two policemen escorted Brian Keyes and Cab Mulcahy through the mob and hustled them into a laundry elevator. Five minutes later they stood at the door of Bloodworth’s private tenth-floor room.

The hospital’s official press release had listed Ricky in satisfactory condition, but in no sense of the word did he seem satisfactory. He looked like he’d stuck his head into a bonfire—burnt ears curled up like fortune cookies, hairless eyelids swollen tight, the seared nose and cheeks stained burgundy with surgical antiseptic. He looked like a barbecued mole.

Cab Mulcahy quaked at the sight of his wounded reporter. Like a stricken father, he stood at the side of the bed, lightly touching Bloodworth’s arm through the sheets.

Bloodworth made a singsong noise and Keyes edged closer. It was hard to tell through the bruised slits, but Ricky’s eyes seemed to be open.

“Grunt if you can hear me,” Keyes said.

Bloodworth made no sound.

“Brian, he’s deaf, remember?”

“Oh yeah.” Keyes made an “okay” signal with his thumb and forefinger. Bloodworth smiled feebly.

“Good boy,” Mulcahy said. “You’re going to be just fine. We’ll take care of everything.”

Bloodworth raised his right hand to return the gesture, a poignant if somewhat palsied effort. Keyes noticed that each of Ricky’s fingers was bandaged to the second joint; in fact, the fingers seemed oddly stubbed. Keyes lifted the sheet and checked Bloodworth’s left hand—same thing. Al Garcia wasn’t kidding: Jesus Bernal’s bomb had sheared all Ricky’s fingertips. Not even the thumbs had been spared. Evidently he had been holding the box at the moment of explosion.

“Oh brother,” Keyes said, replacing the sheet.

“Everything’s going to be just fine,” Mulcahy said to Bloodworth.

“He’s never gonna type again,” Keyes whispered.

“Ssshhhh!”

“Or bite his nails, for that matter.”

“We’ll get the best plastic surgeon in Miami,” Mulcahy vowed. He was wondering what in the world to do with a deaf reporter with no fingertips. For his suffering Ricky certainly deserved something, Mulcahy thought, something generous but safe. Perhaps a lifetime column on the food page—even Bloodworth couldn’t screw up a casserole recipe.

“Too bad he can’t tell us what happened,” Keyes said.

Ricky Bloodworth had no intention of telling anyone what had happened; even an elephant-sized dose of painkillers had not dulled his sense of survival. Maimed or not, he knew he’d be fired, perhaps even indicted, if it ever became known that he’d snatched the brown package from Sergeant Garcia’s desk. It was better to let the world think the bomb had been meant for him—better for his career, better for the story. And why should that lout Garcia get any attention, anyway?

Through a haze, Bloodworth saw Cab Mulcahy holding up a notebook. On it the editor had written: “You are going to make it okay.”

Bloodworth smiled and, with one of his nubs, gave a tremulous thumbs-up.

Keyes took the notebook and wrote: “Where did you get the package?”

Bloodworth shrugged lamely.

“I guess he doesn’t remember much,” Mulcahy said.

“Guess not.”

Next Keyes printed: “Are you strong enough to write a note for the cops?”

Bloodworth squinted at the pad, then shook his head no.

“We’d better let him rest,” Mulcahy said.

“Sure.”

“I don’t know what to tell the wolf pack downstairs,” Mulcahy fretted.

“Hell, Cab, they’re the competition. Don’t say a damn thing.”

“I can’t do that.”

‘Why not? You’re the
Sun’s
reporter on this one, aren’t you? So just keep your mouth shut and write the story. Write the hell out of it, too.”

Amused, Mulcahy said, “Well, why not?”

He winked at Bloodworth and turned for the door. Bloodworth grunted urgently.

“He wants to say something,” Keyes said. He laid the notebook on Ricky’s chest and fitted the pen into his gauzed claw.

Bloodworth wrote laboriously and in tall woozy letters:

“page one?”

Keyes showed the notebook to Mulcahy and said, “Can you believe this?”

A nurse came in and gave Ricky Bloodworth an enormous shot. Before drifting off, he saw Keyes and Mulcahy waving good night.

Outside the hospital, Keyes said, “It’s getting late, Cab, I’d better head back to the house.” Dismally he wondered what a nail bomb could do to Reed Shivers’ cork billiard room.

“Go on ahead,” Mulcahy said. “If our pal calls, you’ll be the first to know.”

Back in the newsroom, the other reporters and editors were surprised to see Cab Mulcahy sit down at a video-display terminal and begin to write. Before long his presence seemed to galvanize the whole staff, and the Friday night pace of the newsroom quickened into something approaching gusto.

The spell was interrupted by the city editor, who, after circling reluctantly, finally stepped forward to give Cab Mulcahy the message.

“From Wiley,” the city editor said uneasily. “He phoned while you were out.”

Mulcahy’s ulcer twinged when he saw the message.

“I say yes, you say no,” it read. “You say stop, and I say go, go, go.”

25

From the hospital Brian Keyes drove straight to Coral Gables to check on Kara Lynn. He rang the bell three times before Reed Shivers opened the door.