Tourist Season by Carl Hiaasen

of integrity and printed it anyway.
    Why?
    To flush Skip Wiley from his hideout.
    It had seemed like a good plan. No sense blaming Keyes.
    But what had Mulcahy done? He’d unleashed a monster, that’s what. He glanced again at the phone. Where the hell was Wiley? How could he sit still while a jerk like Bloodworth came after his job?
    Mulcahy pondered one plausible explanation: Skip Wiley was dead. That alone would account for this silence. Perhaps a robber had snatched him from his car on the expressway and killed him. It was not a pleasant scenario, but it certainly answered the big question. Mulcahy figured that death was the only thing that would slow Wiley down on a day like today. The more Cab Mulcahy thought about this possibility, the more he was ashamed of his ambivalence.
    He could hear the phone ringing every few minutes outside the door, at his secretary’s desk. Readers, he thought, furious readers. How could he tell them, yes, he agreed, Bloodworth’s writing was disgraceful. Yes, it’s a bloody travesty. Yes, he’s a congenital twit and we’ve got no business publishing crap like that.
    Much as he wanted to, Mulcahy could never say all that, because journalism was not the issue here.
    There was a firm, well-rehearsed knock on the door. Before Mulcahy could get up, Ricky Bloodworth stuck his head in the room.
    “I hate it when you do that,” Mulcahy said.
    “Sorry.” Bloodworth handed him a stack of columns. “Thought you might want to take a gander at these.”
    “Fine. Go away now.”
    “Sure, Mr. Mulcahy. Are you feeling okay?”
    “A little tired, that’s all. Please shut the door behind you.”
    “Any one of those could run tomorrow,” Bloodworth said. “They’re sort of timeless.”
    “I’ll keep that in mind.”
    Mulcahy sagged behind his desk and scanned the columns. With each sentence he grew queasier. Bloodworth had generously penciled his own headline ideas at the top of each piece:
    “Abortion: What’s the Big Deal?”
    “Capital Punishment: Is the Chair Tough Enough?”
    “Vietnam: Time to Try Again?”
    Mulcahy was aghast. He buzzed his secretary.
    “Seventy-seven calls about today’s column,” she reported. “Only three persons seemed to like it, and one of them thought it was satire.”
    “Has anyone phoned,” Mulcahy asked, “who remotely sounded like Mr. Wiley?”
    “I’m afraid not.”
    Mulcahy’s stomach was on fire; the coffee was going down like brake fluid. He opened the curtains and balefully scouted the newsroom. Ricky Bloodworth was back at his desk, earnestly interviewing two husky men in red fez hats. Mulcahy felt on the verge of panic.
    “Get me Brian Keyes,” he told his secretary. Enough was enough—he’d given Keyes his lousy twenty-four hours. Now it was time to find Skip Wiley, dead or alive.
     
    How’s the fish?” Jenna said.
    “Very good,” said Brian Keyes.
    “It’s a grouper. The man at the market promised it was fresh. How’s the lemon sauce?”
    “Very good,” Keyes said.
    “It’s a little runny.”
    “It’s fine, Jenna.”
    She lowered her eyes and gave a shy smile that brought back a million memories. A smile designed to pulverize your heart. For diversion, Keyes took a fork and studiously cut the fish into identical bite-size squares.
    “I liked your hair better when it was shaggy,” Jenna said. “Now you look like an insurance man.”
    “I’m in court so much these days. Gotta look straight and reliable up on the witness stand.”
    Keyes wondered how much small talk would be necessary to finesse the awkward questions: Where’ve you been? What’ve you been up to? Did you get our Christmas card? He was no good at small talk, and neither was Jenna. Jenna liked to get right to the juicy stuff.
    “Are you seeing anybody?”
    “Not right now,” Keyes said.
    “I heard you were dating a lady lawyer. Sheila something-or-other.”
    “She moved,” Keyes said, “to Jacksonville. Got on with a good firm. We’re