Deceit

THIRTY-FIVE

Here’s my notes,” I said to him. “What seems to be the problem?”

I was in the office that had a stenciled Editorial on the door. He was crouched over his desk, looking as if he was half sleeping on it. He didn’t have bags under his eyes as much as fully packed valises.

“The abortion clinic-bombing doctor?” he said. “You said he took his residency in pediatrics at St. Alban’s, a hospital in Mizzolou, Missouri. That’s what it said in your article.”

“Yes?” Look calm, I coached myself, even a little affronted.

“A spokesman from St. Alban’s just called. Notwithstanding their obvious desire to separate themselves from a religious zealot and possible murderer, he swore on a stack of good Presbyterian Bibles they don’t offer residencies in pediatrics-certainly not in the years you mentioned. So we have an obvious problem here.”

“I don’t think I mentioned what years he served his residency.”

Good, just a touch of annoyance, as if he was keeping me from doing my real work, which was scratching out my next article and not answering for a minor inconsistency.

“No, I know you didn’t, Tom. But you mention his age-43. Which would pretty much tell you when he served his residency-give or take a year.”

“Okay. Well, maybe he took a little longer to become a doctor. I’m sorry-he didn’t tell me when he served his residency. I was kind of delighted he told me where. I mean, I think he tripped up a little telling me that-since the deal was anonymity or nothing.”

He had an unraveled paper clip clenched between his teeth. It was nearly bitten in half.

“Of course, now that you mention it,” I said, “he might’ve told me he served his residency at St. Alban’s to throw me off the scent. I probably should’ve left it out of the article.”

“You have your notes, Tom?”

“Right here.”

“Good.”

I leaned over and placed them on the desk, flipping the memo pad to the second page. “There,” I said, pointing to the name of the hospital. “See-that’s what he told me. St. Alban’s. Residency served. I probably should have pushed him on it-but, you know, I was kind of holding my breath that he’d told me even that much.”

He stared at my notes, running his finger across the ink like a blind man reading Braille.

“When did you interview him, Tom?”

“Oh… let’s see… uh-huh, March 5,” pointing to the date at the top of the page, the one I’d scrawled last night right after I’d interviewed the imaginary doctor in my head-Tom Valle, meet Dr. Anonymous-devolving my article into scrupulously ordered notes able to pass safely through the treacherous shoals of fact checkers, legal eagles, and increasingly suspicious editors.

“That’s odd, Tom.”

“Why?”

“March 5. You were in Florida on March 5. I remember because I turned 55 the day before, and you called to wish me happy birthday. You were in Boca Raton doing that piece on retirement communities. That was March 5, Tom-I’m positive. Didn’t you say you interviewed the doctor in Michigan?”

“Hey… what… what you’re asking me?”

“I’m asking you when you interviewed the doctor. We have a spokesman from St. Alban’s screaming about lawsuits and I need to know the facts. So again… when did you interview the doctor?”

“Well… lemme see… you know, it was more than once, of course. I talked to him on the phone, and then I met him in person in Michigan.”

“You said you met the doctor in a deserted field, the ruins of some frontier town that burned down. You drove out there and he showed up in a separate car-right?”

“Yes-that’s right. It might be… yeah, it might be that these notes were from my phone call to him. Yeah, now that you mention it, that sounds right. I probably called him from Florida.”

“Okay, Tom. You used your cell, I guess.”

“My cell?”

“Your cell phone, Tom. I assume you would use your cell phone to call Michigan? If need be, we can get the phone records and show that you called Michigan on March 5 from Florida.”

“Show who?”

“If we end up in court, Tom, we might have to walk everyone through the process.”

“Okay. The doctor obviously gave me the wrong hospital. Remember that the deal was anonymity-he didn’t even give me the name of his home or birthplace. Just anagrams, remember? My antenna should’ve gone up. He fed me the wrong hospital and hoped I’d put it in the article, and like a stupid idiot, I did. He used me-I’ll be more careful next time.”

“I’m not talking about getting the wrong hospital, Tom. I asked you when you interviewed the doctor and you said March 5; only you were in Florida on March 5 and now you say you called him from there and conducted the interview by phone.”

“I met him in person-I sat right across from him. As close as we are now. I told you. I just forgot I talked to him on the phone first. It was over several conversations-the interview.”

“Fine. Understood. When you called the doctor on March 5 from Boca Raton and conducted your first of many interviews, did you call him on your cell phone? It was long-distance. You were in Florida-I assume you would use your cell so you wouldn’t run up larcenous charges from the hotel? I’m just trying to get the facts straight, Tom.”

“Well, let me think a minute, okay. Let me… you know, I think I called him from a pay phone.”

He took the paper clip out of his mouth and carefully laid it down in front of him.

“You called him from a pay phone?”

“Yes.”

“Why would you do that? Why would you call him from a pay phone?”

“That’s the way he wanted it. I’d forgotten about that. He was very secretive, obviously. The whole anagram thing, meeting me where no one could see us. He didn’t know whether he could trust me yet. He didn’t want me to be able to see what number he was calling from.”

“I thought you called him. You just said you called him from a pay phone.”

“I’m sorry, I got my syntax wrong.”

“Your syntax? Either you called him, or he called you. Which is it?”

“I told you. He called me.”

“How would he know the number of a pay phone in Florida?”

“I e-mailed him the number. And then I was supposed to wait at the pay phone at a certain time for him to call.”

“You e-mailed him the number?”

“Look, I don’t remember everything exactly the way it happened. I mean, I was doing two stories at once-you said so yourself-I was down there doing the retirement home story, and so you can understand why I forgot about the pay phone. I forgot about it-that’s all. That’s why I have my notes.”

“Yes, Tom,” he said. “You always have your notes.”

I’d left them at the office.

My notes from my trip to Littleton Flats.

I stared at them-my interview with the army doctor.

You met the doctor in a deserted field, the ruins of some frontier town that burned down.

I’d met the army doctor in the ruins of another destroyed town. This one destroyed by flood, not fire, even if both were weapons of biblical retribution.

Uncanny.

How the echoes of my deceitful past kept bouncing back to me.

Sam Savage, suddenly bringing a long-ago story to life, a trippy little piece about out-of-work actors pulling cons for cash.

Another exclusive in the Valle retrospective, available online for anyone who likes their news unfit to print.

And more-something I hadn’t put together before because it had been an orphan, without context. The night when I chased the plumber’s pickup and suddenly became the chased.

When he’d tapped my bumper again and again, as if he were playing, well… tag.

If you looked under D for dangerous fads, you’d find another Valle scoop about a previously unreported phenomenon sweeping the nation’s interstates: Auto Tag, cars tapping each other back and forth until the loser flames out like James Dean. Sprung whole from the inner recesses of my fervid and increasingly panicked imagination.

And what do you say when you tag someone? What do you whisper?

You’re it.

That’s what.

What was going on?

Okay, be a reporter. A real one who harbors a respect for the truth and has the facility to find it. Arrange the facts, link them end to end, make a conclusion. Figure it out.

What was real and what wasn’t?

Sam Savage was real. He’d cried real tears over a real ginger ale as his real girlfriend-or ex-girlfriend, who knows by now-had shot real daggers at him across the table.

And so was Herman Wentworth.

Real.

Later I’d dreamt about the town-the men strolling down Main Street in old-fashioned fedoras, the odor of syrup and blueberry pancakes drifting over from the Littleton Flats Cafe. I’d conjured up the town, but not him.

He’d appeared out of the desert that day in his blue sports jacket and gleaming black shoes and he’d told me a story about passing through a small town fifty years ago on the way to San Diego.

He was an army doctor who’d been all over the world.

But he’d started out in Japan. A raw recruit just off the boat, who could’ve recited the freshly memorized Hippocratic oath by heart.

The newest member of the 499th medical battalion.

That was real, too.

Another thing out there on the ledge that had needed to be coaxed back in.

I’d heard of that battalion before.