Part 21 (2/2)

Chelsea extended a hand, palm up. ”The keys to the Cushman, please.”

Winder obliged. He said, ”Charlie, even though you're an obsequious dork, I'd like to believe you're not a part of this. I'd like to believe that you're just incredibly dim.”

”Go clean out your desk.”

”I don't have to. There's nothing in it.”

Chelsea looked momentarily confused.

Winder waved his arms. ”Desks are places to keep facts, Charlie. Who needs a desk when the words simply fly off the tops of our heads! h.e.l.l, I've done my finest work for you while sitting on the toilet.”

”If you're trying to insult me, it won't work.” Chelsea lowered his eyelids in lizardly disinterest. ”We all fudge the truth when it suits our purposes, don't we? Like when you told me you got that scar in a car accident.”

So he knew all along, just as Joe Winder had suspected.

”I heard it was a fight in the newsroom,” Chelsea said, ”a fistfight with one of your editors.”

”He had it coming,” said Winder. ”He screwed up a perfectly good news story.”

The story concerned Joe Winder's father bribing a county commissioner in exchange for a favorable vote on a zoning variance. Winder had written the story himself after digging through a stack of his father's canceled checks and finding five made out to the commissioner's favorite bagman.

Though admiring of Winder's resourcefulness, the editor had said it created an ethical dilemma; he decided that someone else would have to write the piece. You're too emotionally involved, the editor had told him.

So Winder had gotten a firm grip on the editor's head and rammed it through the screen of the word processor, cutting himself spectacularly in the struggle that followed.

”I'm sorry, Charlie,” he said. ”Maybe you shouldn't have hired me.”

”The understatement of the year.”

”Before I go, may I show you something?” He took out the small bottle that Skink had given him and placed it in the center of Chelsea's desk blotter.

The publicity man examined it and said, ”It's food coloring, so what?”

”Look closer.”

”Betty Crocker food coloring. What's the point, Joe?”

”And what color?”

”Blue.” Chelsea was impatient. ”The label says blue.”

Winder twisted the cap off the bottle. He said, ”I believe this came from the vole lab, too. You might ask Pedro about it.”

Baffled, Charles Chelsea watched Joe Winder toss back his head and empty the contents of the bottle into his mouth. He sloshed the liquid from cheek to cheek, then swallowed.

”Ready?” Winder said. He stuck out his tongue, which now was the color of indigo dye.

”That's a very cute trick.” Chelsea sounded nervous.

Joe Winder climbed onto the desk on his hands and knees. ”The voles were phony, Charlie. Did you know that?” He extended his tongue two inches from Chelsea's nose, then sucked it back in. He said, ”There's no such thing as a blue-tongued mango vole. Kingsbury faked the whole deal. Invented an entire species!”

”You're cracking up,” Chelsea said thinly.

Winder grabbed him by the collar. ”You f.u.c.ker, did you know all along?”

”Get out, or I'm calling Security.”

”That's why Will Koocher was killed. He'd figured out everything. He was going to rat, so to speak, on the upstanding Mr. Kingsbury.”

Chelsea's upper lip was a constellation of tiny droplets. He tried to pull away. ”Let me go, Joe. If you know what's good for you.”

”They painted their tongues, Charlie. Think of it. They took these itty-bitty animals and dyed their tongues blue, all in the name of tourism.”

Straining against Winder's grasp, Chelsea said, ”You're talking crazy.”

Joe Winder licked him across the face.

”Stop it!”

Winder slurped him again. ”It's your color, Charlie. Very snappy.”

His tongue waggled in mockery; Chelsea eyed the fat blue thing as if it were a poisonous slug.

”You can fire me,” Winder announced, ”but I won't go away.”

He climbed off the desk, careful not to drop the bottle of food coloring. Chelsea swiftly began plucking tissues from a silver box and wiping his face, examining each crumpled remnant for traces of the dye. His fingers were shaking.

”I should have you arrested,” he hissed.

”But you won't,” Winder said. ”Think of the headlines.”

He was halfway to the door when Chelsea said, ”Wait a minute, Joey. What is it you want?”

Winder kept walking, and began to laugh. He laughed all the way down the hall, a creepy melodic warble that made Charles Chelsea shudder and curse.

SIXTEEN.

As a reward for the successful theft of Francis X. Kingsbury's files, Molly McNamara allowed Bud Schwartz and Danny Pogue to keep the rented Cutla.s.s for a few days.

On the evening of July 22, they drove down Old Cutler Road, where many of Miami's wealthiest citizens lived. The homes were large and comfortable-looking, and set back impressively from the tree-shaded road. Danny Pogue couldn't get over the size of the yards, the tall old pines and colorful tropical shrubbery; it was beautiful, yet intimidating.

”They got those Spanish bayonets under the windows,” he reported. ”G.o.d, I hate them things.” Wicked needles on the end of every stalka”absolute murder, even with gloves.

Bud Schwartz said, ”Don't sweat it, we'll find us a back door.”

<script>