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his client as ‘yellow-bellied vermin culled from the stinkpot of Castro’s jails for discharge at Mariel’s harbor of shame.’ The Hispanic Anti-Defamation League sent a telegram voicing similar objections. The League also notes that Señor Cabal is not a Mariel refugee. He arrived in this country from Havana with his family in 1966. His older brother later received a Purple Heart in Vietnam.”
    “Perhaps I got a little carried away,” Wiley said.
    “Hell, Skip.” Mulcahy’s voice was tired and edged with sadness. “I think we have a big problem. And I think we’re going to have to do something. Soon.”
    This was a conversation they had been having more often, so often that Wiley had stopped taking it seriously. He got more mail than any other writer, and the publisher counted mail as subscribers, and subscribers as money. Wiley knew they wouldn’t lay a glove on him. He knew he was a star in the same way he knew he was tall and brown-eyed; it was just something else he could see in the mirror every morning, plain as day. He didn’t even notice it anymore. The only time it counted was when he got into trouble. Like now.
    “You aren’t going to threaten to fire me again, are you?”
    “Yes,” Mulcahy said.
    “I suppose you want me to apologize to somebody.”
    Mulcahy handed Wiley a list.
    “I’ll get right on it—”
    “Sit down, Skip. I’m not finished.” Mulcahy stood up, brandishing the stack of columns. “You know what makes me sad? You’re such a damn good writer, too good to be turning out shit like this. Something’s happened the last few months. You’ve been slipping away. I think you’re sick.”
    Wiley winced. “Sick?”
    Mulcahy was a slim man, gray and graceful. Before becoming an editor, he had had a distinguished career as a foreign correspondent: he had covered two wars and a half-dozen coups, and had even been shot at three times. Wiley had always been envious of this; in all his years as a journalist he had never once been shot at. He had never dodged a real bullet. But Cab Mulcahy had, and he had written poetically about the experience. Wiley admired him, and it hurt to have the old boy talk like this.
    “I took all your columns from the last four months,” Mulcahy said, “and I gave them to Dr. Courtney, the psychiatrist.”
    “Jesus! He’s a wacko, Cab. The guy has a thing for animals. I’ve heard this from seven or eight sources. Ducks and geese, stuff like that. The paper ought to get rid of him before there’s some kind of scandal—”
    Mulcahy waved his hands, a signal for Wiley to shut up.
    “Dr. Courtney read all these columns and he says he can chart your illness, starting since September.”
    Wiley clenched his teeth so tightly his fillings nearly cracked. “There’s nothing wrong with me, Cab.”
    “I want you to see a doctor.”
    “Not Courtney, please.”
    “The Sun will pay for it.”
    Well, it ought to, Wiley thought. If I’m nuts, it’s this place that’s to blame.
    “I also want you to go to an internist. Courtney says the mental degeneration has occurred so rapidly that it could be pathological. A tumor or something.”
    “A guy who screws barnyard animals says that I’m pathological.”
    Mulcahy said, “He’s paid for his opinions.”
    “He hates the column,” Wiley said. “Always has.” He pointed at the stack of clippings. “I know what’s in there, Cab. The one I did six weeks ago about shrinks. Courtney’s still mad about that. He’s trying to get back at me.”
    Mulcahy said, “He didn’t mention it, although it was a particularly vile piece of writing. ‘Greedy, soul-sucking charlatans’—isn’t that what you said about psychiatrists?”
    “Something like that.”
    “If I’d been here that morning, I’d have yanked that column,” Mulcahy said evenly.
    “Ha!”
    “Skip, this is the deal. Go see the doctors and you can keep your column, at least until we find out what the hell is wrong. In the meantime, every