Runaway Heart

FORTY-ONE

Jerome Sutherland had more catchy nicknames than a minor league baseball team. During his forty-plus years in PR, he was "The Flack in a Hat," because in the fifties he favored snap brims. In the seventies, he'd been called "Deadline," and for two years during the eighties, when some of his clients were Wall Street crooks, he was "Junk Bond Jerry." But the name that fit him best and lasted the longest was Swifty. He was a hundred and twenty pounds of kinetic energy packed in a diminutive, fast-moving body. His bald head was shaved and his eyebrows loomed like tangled brush, dominating a face that never stopped smiling.

Swifty had played high-stakes celebrity roulette for almost half a century, scraping up more nasty messes than a waste-removal contractor. He got fluff printed and bad news buried while cornering the market on insincerity.

One of Swifty's patented tactics was to dig up and archive scandalous, unpublished stories on stars he didn't represent. When one of his own clients checked into Betty Ford, or was on the verge of being outed by The Advocate, he would call up the reporter who was about to print the career disaster and offer up somebody else's horror story in return for keeping his star's indiscretions secret. This practice had earned him the nickname "Liar for Hire." He definitely knew how to walk the edge of a troublesome press release.

Swifty suggested that Herman meet him for dinner at the trendy Bistro Garden in the Valley where the flack had a reserved nightly "gunfighter table" that commanded a good view of the high-ceilinged, attractive room. The happy little man who never seemed to stop smiling sat with his back to the wall and gazed over Herman's shoulder at restaurant traffic while Herman filled him in. Swifty nodded as if the unusual nature of the tale was not in the least bit troublesome.

"Babs says this is on her account. She's the best, so you got the best," the little man said after Herman finished. For a behind-the-scenes employee, the statement showed a surprising lack of modesty. During all of this Swifty almost never looked at Herman, preferring to watch the busy room instead. "Dick Zanuck with Richard Cook. Wonder what those two guys are up to?" he said unexpectedly.

"Huh?" Herman was getting irritated.

"Nothing. So, what's the drill? You want me to get this trial you're doing into the press?" he said, shooting his gaze to the right as two new groups of patrons came through the door. They must've been nobodies, because he discarded them immediately, finding something else that interested him to Herman's right, slowly leaning around Herman's bulk.

"Am I in the way?"

"Nope, just workin' the hall," Swifty smiled. "So tell me how soon you need this published and what you're looking to accomplish."

Herman explained some more about DARPA and their mission to develop advanced weaponry. He explained about the TRO. When he got into more detail about the chimeras, Swifty flicked his gaze back to Herman. But instead of commenting on the strange nature of hybrid soldiers he commented on the story's newsworthiness. "Sounds more like an Enquirer lead." He spread his hands and contributed a headline: "New World Police… Government Breeds Genetic Monsters."

"Our story's gotta go in the Wall Street Journal or the LA. Times" Herman insisted. "My investigator is missing and I need this played up big and legit so they won't do something stupid, like kill him. If I shine enough light on the case maybe they won't commit a high-profile murder."

Swifty buttered his bread, took a bite, then shot his cuffs. His links would have paid Herman's office rent for a month-rubies the size of a robin's eggs.

"Okay, hitting the high points then." Swifty recapped: "We wanna make it look like he was snatched because of this restraining order against DARPA. That somebody bagged this Jack Wirta character because he got wind of something big. We wanna make it look like maybe these DARPA cats are the ones who have the most to gain by grabbing your boy, but we can't prove it, so we can't exactly say they did it, but we imply it. Probably try and get that in the lead if we can." He took another bite. "And it has to go in a rag like the Journal or the L.A. Times?'

"Exactly."

"And you need this when?"

"The morning paper. Time is everything here."

"Jesus. Aside from the fact that the chimpanzee-clone thing sounds like silly putty, they put the Times to bed in an hour. They usually keep some holes open in Sports and Metro for late scores and hot breaking stuff, but, shit."

"That's why I came to the best."

"Never ass-kiss an ass-kisser," Swifty admonished sternly, then pulled out his cell phone and dialed a number from memory. "Go ahead and order. They know what I want."

He asked for somebody named Leon at the Times Metro section. "I need something planted, Bubee," he cooed once he got him on the phone. "Above the fold… with a picture." While he talked he glanced at Herman and motioned to the menu. Herman picked it up and tried to read, but he wasn't hungry-he was too worried to eat.

"You bet," Swifty said, then dropped his voice to a confidential whisper and went into his pitch. "Since I owe you one, you get this first. My gift. When you accept the Peabody just remember to mention me at the ceremony." He turned his twinkling eyes back to Herman and shrugged impishly. Then he continued: "It's a fantastic legal action taking place in Federal Courtroom Sixteen downtown. It involves top government security, DARPA commandos, missing government secrets, the disappearance and probable kidnapping of a private investigator, illegal genetic engineering, a secret government weapons team… and, get this, bubala: the movie rights are still available. You write it, Leon, you're in first position." He listened, wrinkled up his nose, and then shook his head. "Why give those pricks the Pulitzer? This is my gift to you, boychick… and I swear it's righteous. I can back up every word, every scintilla. Every participle and modifier is emes." A moment of listening, then, "Credibility is my middle name, babe. This is public record. The TRO is in federal court. Go down there tomorrow and see for yourself. I never lie." Another pause while Swifty pulled his happy countenance into a frown. "Come on…no fair. He thought his ex-wife was balling his trainer." He listened to Leon for at least a minute more before the smile returned. "Okay, I'll scribble up the release and get it over to you with the artwork in…" He looked at Herman, then pointed at his twenty-thousand-dollar Carrier watch.

"An hour," Herman said. "My daughter's picking up Wirta's picture now."

"In an hour you'll have the scoop of a lifetime. And, Leon? If you can get it on the Times' wire and leak it to the AP for the next news cycle, I'll owe you my firstborn. If I'm lyin', I'm dyin'." A moment more of eyebrow calisthenics, then Swifty nodded. "You're a mensch. Be back atcha." He closed the phone, sighed theatrically, then looked at Herman. "He's down. Now let's see if I can write this up the way you want and still not come off like a complete asshole when Leon reads it."

At 8 p.m. Susan stood in the corridor outside of Jack Wirta's office in Boy's Town and waited. The office door had been replaced and was bolted. She didn't have a key, but she had called Jack's ex-partner, Shane Scully, whose son's estate owned the building. After she'd filled him in on the phone, Shane said he'd stop by the realtor's for a key and come right over.

Ten minutes after she arrived, a good-looking, dark-haired man came up the stairs and into the hall. He was dressed in blue jeans, an LAPD windbreaker, and tennis shoes. He smiled as he approached.

"Ms. Strockmire?"

"Shane Scully?"

"Yep." After they shook hands Shane put a key into the lock. "You said on the phone you think Jack's been kidnapped by the feds. You real sure about that? Jack would be a hard guy to snatch. Maybe he's just working your case and hasn't had a chance to phone in yet."

"He was arrested by federal police at the airport, then disappeared. There's been no sign of him since. Besides that, we've been under surveillance by some kind of urban commando unit since the day before yesterday."

"That sounds ugly." He pulled the key out of the lock, looked at it, then tried again. "This isn't working."

When Scully looked directly at her she saw that he had beautiful aqua-blue eyes and was attractive in a rough-and-tumble kind of way. His vibe was all male.

"It's a new door, maybe the lock was changed when they replaced it," she said.

Shane smiled, then reached into his pocket, withdrew a little leather case full of long-handled picks, and started to feed them one at a time into the lock. First he pushed in a slender, flat one, then slipped in several tiny picks with hooked ends behind it.

"You pick locks, too?"

"We're a full-service police department," he quipped, carefully turning the four picks in his hand. In a second she heard the lock spring. He opened the door, checked inside to make sure it was safe, then stepped back and said, "Your party."

Susan walked into the office. The place had been thoroughly tossed and whoever had done it had made no effort to hide the search. The file cabinets were open, the dividers strewn all over the floor. The desk had also been ransacked. The closet door was ajar and the boxes Jack had stacked in there had been ripped open, their contents-mostly law enforcement reference books and manuals-strewn everywhere.

"Not very neat, were they?" Shane commented. "Dad and I were hiding next door when it happened. That was yesterday."

She moved to the east wall and looked at the pictures hanging there, finally taking down one of Jack and Shane. "This is you?"

"Yeah. Police barbecue, the first year we partnered in Southwest. My third year on the job. Jack and I rode together in a Plain-Jane for almost eighteen months."

"Was he a good cop?"

That brought Scully around fast. "He was a great cop, okay?" he growled at her. "He took chances out there, for all the good it did him. He probably didn't tell you this, but during that bank shoot-out in North Hollywood, even after he stopped the Parabellum and couldn't walk, he was crawling around under cars, exposing himself to fire, cranking off rounds while those two assholes emptied armor-piercing ordnance at him. Guy is a hero, but all he got for it was a buncha shit and a disability check that he had to sue the department to collect."

"Don't snap my head off," she said. "Pisses me off, is all."

"If I need your help down the road on this, can you give it?"

"If you need me to help pull Jack Wirta out of a hole, I'm here. I can also line up some guys to join us if you want. Jack still has a lot of friends on the job."

"Thanks." She looked down at the picture again. They appeared young in the shot… young and eager. Untouched by the cop cynicism that she sensed had finally scarred them both. In the picture they looked boyish and heroic, full of idealism, comfortable inside their skins.

"I need a picture of Jack, so I'm going to cut you out of this," she said, holding up the picture.

"Why should you be any different?" he quipped, confirming her suspicions about his now-dark view of law enforcement.

Then Susan noticed something on the floor under the desk. She leaned down… it looked like dried blood.

Shane crossed to where she was standing.

"That wasn't there when I was here the first time," she said. "I hope Miro didn't try to…"

"Who's Miro?" Shane interrupted.

"The guy who runs the escort service next door."

Shane followed as she hurried out of Jack's little office and down the hall. The door to Reflections was locked. "That's strange, it's a dating service. They should be open. They operate at night."

"Dating service, as in young men for rent?"

"I try not to be judgmental."

"And you're to be heartily congratulated for that," he said sarcastically, but she let it slide.

While they were standing there a man wearing a ripped T-shirt came up the stairs at the end of the hall. "They're closed," he called out.

"Why?" she asked.

"The guy who owns it got the shit kicked out of him. He's in Cedars. They took him outta here in an ambulance about four hours ago."