"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'sreporter 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."
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.
"Nice of you to show up," Shivers said archly. He wore a monogrammed wine-colored robe and calfskin slippers. A walnut pipe bobbed superciliously in the corner of his mouth.
"Nice to see you, too, Mr. Hefner."
"Don't be a wise guy—where've you been? You're getting big bucks to be a baby-sitter."
"There's been another bombing," Keyes said, brushing past him. "A newspaper reporter."
"The Nachos again?" All the Anglos in Miami had started calling Wiley's gang the Nachos because it was so much easier to pronounce than Las Noches de Diciembre.
"Where's Kara Lynn?" Keyes asked.
"Out in the game room working her fanny off. Try not to interrupt."
Keyes examined Reed Shivers as he would a termite.
"After all this, you still want your daughter to ride in that parade?"
"They have dogs, Mr. Keyes, dogs trained to sniff out the bombs."
"You're incredible."
"We're talking about a career decision here."
"We're talking murder, Mr. Shivers."
"Not so loud!"
Keyes heard music coming from the game room. It sounded like the Bee Gees. Stayin' alive, stay in' alive, oooh-oooh-oooh-oooh.The bass guitar thumped through the wall.
"Jazz aerobics," Shivers explained. "Since Kara Lynn can't go out to class, the teacher came here. I thought that was damned considerate."
Keyes went into the game room. The stereo was extremely loud. The pool table had been rolled to one wall. In the middle of the carpet, Kara Lynn was stretched out, grabbing her heels.
Keyes smiled. Then he looked up and saw Jenna.
"Oh God, no," he said, but the words were lost in the music. Jenna and Kara Lynn were so absorbed that neither noticed him standing there gaping.
Their choreography was enthralling; each woman gracefully mirrored the other, stretching, dipping, arching, skipping, kicking. Keyes was transfixed by the vision—the two of them in sleek leotards and practically nothing else, both with their blond hair up in pony-tails. Of course there was no mistaking one for the other: Jenna was bustier, fuller in the hips, and she had those gold earrings. Kara Lynn was taller, with long thoroughbred legs. Tennis legs.
Brian Keyes could not have dreamed up a more stunning, or baffling, apparition. He turned off the stereo, leaving the dancers stranded in mid-jumping jack.
"Whoa!" Jenna said, dropping her arms to her sides.
"Hey! What's the idea?" Kara Lynn was a little annoyed.
"I'll explain," Keyes said.
Jenna turned around and stared. "Brian!" She seemed shocked to see him.
"Hey there," Keyes said. "Since when do you make house calls?"
"Oh boy."
Kara Lynn looked quizzically at Jenna, then back at Keyes. The prickly silence gave it all away.
"So you two know each other," said Kara Lynn.
"Long time ago," Keyes said.
"Not so long," said Jenna, talking with her eyes.
Kara Lynn looked embarrassed. "I'm going to get some lemonade."
When she was gone, Jenna said, "How'd you find me here?"
"Don't flatter yourself. I wasn't even looking." Keyes felt rotten. And angry. "Tell me what's going on," he said.
Jenna dabbed her forehead with a towel that matched her pink lipstick. "Kara Lynn's been a student of mine for two years. She's a good dancer and quite athletic, in case you didn't already know."
Keyes let that one slide.
"She said she couldn't come to class this week—something about a parade curfew—so I offered to stop by here for a short workout. I don't know what you're being so snotty about."
"Where's Skip?" The eternal question; Keyes wondered why he even bothered.