The Girl Next Door

CHAPTER 6

Hurry. I definitely needed to hurry. I pushed through the revolving doors, feeling the muggy embrace of a heat index that had to be 105 already, with the hottest part of the day yet to come. I started power-walking back toward my car, feeling the sweat popping on my upper lip after about four steps. By the end of the second block, the spot where my briefcase strap rubbed against my shoulder had started to soak through. By block four, the perspiration on my forehead was beading and rolling down the side of my face. By block six, a small rain forest had sprouted in my pants.

And then I got to my Malibu-or, rather, the side of the street where my Malibu should have been. But it was completely clear. I felt a surge of panic, which I tried to suppress. Maybe I had gotten the wrong street? I remembered parking in front of a dry cleaner. And, sure enough, the dry cleaner was still there. My car was not.

I stood there, dumbly gawking at the long stretch of naked curb. Less than an hour earlier it had been haphazardly littered with vehicles-not densely packed, mind you, but that’s why I had been able to find parking there to begin with. And now, it had either been attacked by a large and unusually well-coordinated band of car thieves or …

I looked at the parking sign for the first time: STREET CLEANING WED 10–12. Then I fished into my pocket for my cell phone: “10:41 A.M. Wed Jul 13.”

Sure enough, upon closer inspection, there wasn’t a scrap of litter on the street, except for the small, dusty parabola where the driver of a street-cleaning machine had been forced to swerve around my Malibu and then, out of spite, reported me to the parking police.

In some municipalities, being towed is merely a huge annoyance. Then there’s Newark. New Jersey’s largest city is serviced by a variety of companies that have contracts to do police towing, but most of them seem to share a few characteristics: they are headquartered in the swamp by the turnpike, in that smelly industrial crotch pit that unduly odorizes New Jersey’s reputation; they are staffed by men who have all the charm of bridge-dwelling trolls; and they are fully empowered by the law to first steal your car, then extort whatever they want out of you before they give it back.

And I just didn’t have the time to deal with that hassle, not with Brodie arming for hostilities. By the time I repossessed my car, he would have mobilized his troops, declared war, and completely overrun the small island nation that was me and my career at the Newark Eagle-Examiner. I had to make a token effort at building defensive structures while there was still the chance it might do some good.

It was a twenty-minute walk back to the newsroom, fifteen if I hustled. So I started hustling, making my legs churn as fast as I could while perspiration squirted out of every pore in my body. Before long, my feet actually started to feel squishy, my tie had become something resembling a drooling baby’s bib, and I was beginning to worry if my white shirt was about to become translucent, turning me into the hairiest wet T-shirt contestant this side of the Atlantic.

By the time I barged through the front entrance to the Eagle-Examiner, I looked like I had just run the Borneo High Noon 10K. The rain forest in my pants had become positively Amazonian, with a complex network of streams and rivers feeding into the big, mushy bog that was my ass. Even my knees felt sweaty.

But there was no time to towel off. Brodie was on the warpath and needed to be talked off it. I ducked into the elevator just as the door was closing, next to a woman from the classified department who discreetly took two steps to her left so she wouldn’t get wet. I disembarked on the floor for the newsroom to find Tina waiting for me.

“What the hell happened to you?” she demanded. “What took so long?”

“My car got towed.”

“Okay, but why did you swim here?”

“I walked. It just happens to be a hundred and fifty-seven degrees outside.”

“Well, you aren’t seeing Brodie like that. He already thinks you’ve lost your mind. You can’t come into his office looking like you’ve spent the morning practicing drowning. Come on.”

Tina charged toward her office with single-minded focus, and I did my best to keep up, cutting my way through a thick underbrush of curious stares from my (former) colleagues. Everyone, I’m sure, knew I had been suspended and they had probably been gossiping about it ceaselessly. The only consolation was that they didn’t know about my escapade at Jackman’s house.

Or so I thought. Then I went past Buster Hays’s desk. He looked up and with a sly grin let out a “meeeeeeooooow!”

Some of his enablers cackled.

“How you doin’, ‘Peeping Tomcat’?” he asked.

“What the … How do you know about that?”

“I read the paper, Ivy. You should try it sometime.”

He slid a folded copy of that day’s paper toward me. Sure enough, the third item down in the Morris County crime roundup read, “Bloomfield man arrested for peering.” I scanned it quickly-it was just a four-paragraph brief-and while I saw my name and the particulars of my crime, I didn’t see Jackman’s name. It ended with, “Borough Police, who say this is the first known case of cat door infiltration in Morris County, are calling the alleged perpetrator the ‘Peeping Tomcat.’ Ross could not be reached for comment.”

I sighed. Of course I couldn’t be reached. I was in jail.

“You got some kind of feline fetish, Ivy?” Buster asked, prompting some barely muffled tittering from the peanut gallery. I grinned-better to laugh it off than show weakness when it comes to newsroom ball-busting-but before I could come up with a retort, Tina charged toward me, grabbed my arm, and pulled me into her office. She snatched her gym bag from behind her desk, then pushed through me on her way back out.

“Follow me,” she said.

Tina was wearing a sleeveless navy blue tank top that nicely showed off her arms and a short tan skirt that did even better for her legs. I would have followed her anywhere.

She cut down the back stairwell, past a fire exit whose alarm had long ago been disabled by the newsroom smokers who sneak out for a quick cigarette. We descended into the basement, where she led me to the old pressmen’s locker room. There hadn’t been presses in the building for at least thirty years-they had been moved out of the city, to suburban facilities close to interstates-but we still had the locker room where the pressmen long ago retreated to wash off the day’s ink. It looked like it could have belonged in any high school gymnasium, right down to the communal shower.

Tina locked the door behind us.

“Strip,” she commanded.

“What?”

“Strip,” she repeated. “Now.”

* * *

Tina didn’t pause to see if I was complying, just went into the shower room and turned on the water. When she returned, she bent down into her gym bag and emerged with a towel, which she placed on one of the benches, then dove back in and came up with a hair dryer. I just stood there, watching her quick and determined movements, still fully dressed in my sopping clothes.

“Come on, we don’t have time for you to be modest,” she said, pointing the hair dryer at me like it was a gun. “Hop in the shower and I’ll do what I can to dry off your clothes while you’re in there. Now strip.”

“Tina, I, uhh…” I stopped, feeling myself flush a little bit.

“What’s the matter?”

“Nothing, I just…”

“You want me to strip, too? Fine.”

The next thing I knew, Tina had pulled off her top and was wriggling out of her skirt. Underneath she had on a plain black bra and matching panties-no lacy underthings for Tina.

I pulled off my tie, then started fumbling with the buttons on my shirt, which had been cemented into place by sweat and were noticeably unyielding.

“Hurry up,” she said.

“I’m sorry, I’ve got more clothing on than you.”

“Yeah, you sure do,” Tina said, stepping quickly out of her underwear, then unhooking her bra and laying it neatly on top of where she had piled her other clothes. She shuffled off her shoes, then stood before me, hands on her hips, perfectly naked and, well, perfect.

“There,” she said. “That’s how it’s done.”

I was trying to maintain a professional demeanor about the whole thing-this was professional, right? — and resist the urge to attack any one of several very vulnerable, very delicious parts on her suddenly available body.

“You’re going too slow,” Tina said, exasperated. She hurried over to me and started fumbling with my belt. I felt a muscle somewhere deep in my abdomen, one I didn’t use all that often, tighten involuntarily. This was too much.

“Tina!”

But my objection-if you could really call it that-had no effect on her. She had unhooked my belt, unbuttoned my pants, and lowered my zipper. She yanked off my pants with one move, then took my boxers with the next. I had, by this point, stopped moving, having been mentally incapacitated by the flow of blood out of my brain and into other regions of my body. So Tina took over with my shirt buttons, finishing that job quickly enough. Then she shoved my arms in the air and started pulling my sodden T-shirt over my head.

But, my height being what it is, she had to narrow the distance between us and go up on her tiptoes to be able to reach that high. And somewhere during that process, she leaned into me a little bit too closely, causing parts of us to sort of, well, brush. By accident. And then suddenly it wasn’t so much of an accident.

The next thing I knew, Tina had knocked me over-I still had my pants around my ankles, so I was easily tipped-and was crawling on top of me. Her mouth hungrily attacked mine, and all that sweating I had been doing was suddenly just lubrication as our bodies slid against each other. She seemed to have at least two tongues, because at one point I swore one was in my mouth while the other was in my ear.

And for as much as I was in the moment-Tina was demanding as much-I was also sort of detached from it all. There had been so many times when the lighting and the music had been just right, when the mood was set and everything seemed preordained for us to consummate our relationship. Yet it had never happened. I just couldn’t believe, after all the near-misses, this was where we would finally collide: in the bowels of the Newark Eagle-Examiner’s basement, in the pressmen’s locker room, under the harshness of the fluorescent lights with the shower running, when I was probably just moments away from getting fired.

If any of this was going through Tina’s mind, I couldn’t tell. She was moaning too loudly, her throaty voice bouncing off the hard tile, and she seemed intent on grinding me right through the subfloor. Not that I minded. I was beyond feeling anything but pleasure at that point. The world had become one big, slippy-slidey-wonderful funhouse, and Tina was the only person in it. She readjusted herself, and I thought she was getting into one of those positions I’ve only read about in books.

Then she rolled off me.

“Oh my God, what am I doing?” she said, giggling and smacking her hand to her forehead like it was just some minor mix-up, like putting ketchup on her burger when she meant to use mustard. “Sorry, I got a little carried away.”

I groaned.

“Tina, you can’t just-”

“Oh, what, a guy could die?” she said, chortling some more and rolling her eyes. “Come on, I haven’t fallen for that line since high school. Go take care of it yourself in the shower if you have to.”

I lay on my back, breathing hard, feeling the throbbing subside. A woman laughing when you’re naked-no matter what the circumstances-tends to have that effect. Finally, I raised myself to a sitting position and untied my shoes so I was able to slip off my pants.

Tina, meanwhile, was back to being all business, plugging in her hair dryer and running it over my shirt. She was still naked, still quite stunning, but was pouring her attention into her task, paying me not the slightest bit of mind. So I stumbled into the shower, which had been running for a while and was hot enough to have kicked up a cloud of steam.

I got in for a second, then realized I was going about things all wrong. A hot shower was the last thing I needed.

I reached over to the nozzle and twisted it all the way to cold.

* * *

Twenty minutes later, Tina and I emerged from the locker room, doing our best to look respectable. My clothes were still damp, but at least there was no danger of me dripping on anyone. The shower had cooled my core temperature enough that I was practically shivering in the air-conditioning. Tina had reassembled her clothing and, other than some slight extra color to her face, looked composed.

It felt good to have Tina on my side again. We’d had our ups and downs-among other adventures-but I could tell she was fighting for me now, squarely in my corner. I was whole again.

“So what’s our plan?” I asked as we marched back up toward the newsroom, a united front once again.

“That depends. Do you have anything to say for yourself?”

“Yeah, as a matter of fact, I do.”

“Mind sharing?”

We had reached the landing with the fire exit, the one the smokers used, and I stopped there. I had, up until that point, been consumed by the drama with my car, the moisture in my pants, and, well, other happenings in my pants. It had given me no time to think of how, exactly, I was going to explain myself. But Tina could help me with that.

“You remember Nancy Marino?” I said.

“The papergirl. The reason you were out at that diner in Bloomfield with Nikki Papawhatever instead of bear-spotting with Lunky.”

“Right.”

I paused to gather strength. Here goes:

“I’m pretty sure Gary Jackman killed her.”

“Excuse me?”

“She was killed in a hit-and-run accident, only it was no accident. I interviewed a woman who said someone driving a large black SUV had been stalking Nancy for several days, then intentionally ran her over.

“So I started asking myself, Who would want to kill Nancy Marino?” I continued. “I interviewed her sister, who told me Nancy had taken a very hard line in our paper’s negotiations with IFIW-Local 117. Then I talked to Jim McNabb, the union’s executive director, who said the night before Nancy was killed, he was having a drink and/or some unofficial negotiations with Jackman. McNabb kept telling Jackman that Nancy wouldn’t budge, and then suddenly Jackman went nonlinear and started making all kinds of threats about how he would ‘take care’ of Nancy Marino. The next morning Nancy was dead.”

I stopped to see how Tina was taking all of this. Unfortunately, she was looking at me like she usually did when I was selling her a story that was still half-assed.

“So to prove all this, you thought you’d get your head stuck in Jackman’s cat door?”

“I was trying to peek into his garage to see if there was an SUV in there.”

“And?”

“No dice. He must have hired someone to do it for him.”

“And the thing with Jackman’s secretary yesterday … what was that?”

“I was trying to get confirmation that Jackman had been drinking with McNabb last Thursday, maybe learn where they went so I could interview the bartender.”

“And?”

“Nothing,” I admitted. “But McNabb did give me this. It shows how desperate Jackman was to get Local 117 to renegotiate. Pretty much everything was at stake.”

I went into my pocket and fished out my copy of the Jackman e-mail that McNabb had given me. It was a little damp but had otherwise held up okay. Tina pored over it for a second, then handed it back to me.

“This … this doesn’t prove anything other than that the paper is in trouble, which anyone knows.”

“It’s a piece of the puzzle,” I said.

“Still … let me get this straight. You’ve been harassing the publisher of this paper because you think he killed someone?”

I nodded.

“He’s the publisher,” she said.

“A publisher who once brained a guy with a seven-iron.”

“Yeah, but … that’s … I mean, someone came after him. Say what you will about the brutality of the act, but he was defending himself.”

“So say he and his golfing buddies.”

“Look, publishers of major newspapers don’t just go around killing people.”

“Don’t they? Why? Because they live in fancy houses and wear pocket squares? Don’t let yourself get blinded by a title.”

“I’m just saying, you know how tight Brodie and Jackman are. I don’t know if Brodie is going to buy this.”

“We can convince him,” I said.

“We?”

“Yeah, we. You do believe me, right?”

Tina looked down at the floor, to a corner of the landing where a few dust bunnies had accumulated. It was not the first time in the last few days she couldn’t bring herself to make eye contact.

“Tina, I’ve got to know I have you behind me. For whatever personal history we have and for whatever that was”-I gestured in the direction of the pressmen’s locker room-“we’ve still got a lot of professional history, too. We’re on the brink of a huge story, and I just need you to have a little faith and a little patience and give me time to prove it. I’ve told you that a lot of other times before and I don’t think I’ve ever led you wrong. That’s got to count for something.”

Her head was still down. The dust bunnies were obviously quite fascinating.

“I want to believe you, I really do,” she said. “It’s just you’ve been acting so strange. You lied to me about being with the intern. You made a scene at a funeral ho-”

“That was not a scene. Jackman is twisting everything. He’s obviously trying to get rid of me.”

“Was he twisting everything when he said you lied to his secretary? Honestly, Larry from accounting?”

“Ted,” I corrected her. “I was Ted from accounting. I was just trying to get a little information. I wasn’t really representing myself because it’s not like I was going to quote her in the newspaper. I just didn’t want Jackman to know I was on to him.”

“Well, you sure have a strange way of going about it, showing up at his house and getting yourself arrested like some peeping pervert? Jackman told Brodie his wife had to take two Valium just to settle herself down enough to sleep last night…”

“Imagine how tough it’d be if she knew she was sleeping next to a killer…”

“Then Tommy has to come bail you out? Think about that behavior from someone else’s perspective. You’ve always been on the edge as a reporter, but this is so far beyond that. It’s so strange and bizarre. I don’t…”

Her voice trailed off.

“Okay, but think about it from the perspective of-” I started, then stopped myself.

I am, in general, a fairly easygoing guy. I don’t even simmer most of the time, much less reach a boil. But every once in a while, I get hot-and when I do, it’s molten. And then it’s pretty much Mount Saint Helens time. Which is where I suddenly found myself. I was through with this conversation, through with Tina and her ridiculous games, through with having editors who trusted some empty-suited scrooge of a publisher rather than one of their own reporters.

So I blew up.

“You know what? Forget it. Just forget it. I’m not crawling up to Brodie’s office to grovel when he’d rather listen to a bunch of lies from some cold-blooded murderer. Here,” I said, handing her my company-issued cell phone, then reaching into my bag for my company-issued laptop and thrusting it into her arms. “Brodie can kiss my ass and you can, too, because I quit. I quit. I don’t want to work at a newspaper where my editors don’t believe in me.”

I slammed my weight into the fire exit door, barging through it before Tina had a chance to say a word. She just stood there, juggling my computer and phone, looking bewildered. I heard the door slam behind me but didn’t see it. I wasn’t looking back.

* * *

Not that I knew quite where I was going. This is the problem with my eruptions: they last all of fifteen minutes, after which I’m left with a bunch of soot and ash and a few gassy belches.

For a while, all I did was wander around in a daze, trying to figure out just what had happened to me. At the beginning of the week I had a job, a car, a quasi-girlfriend, a clean criminal record, a phone, and a computer. In the span of two breathtaking days, I had managed to lose all of those things. My life had swirled right down the toilet, and I couldn’t figure out when I missed the flushing sound.

Eventually, when heat and hunger overwhelmed me, I stumbled into an air-conditioned pizzeria and settled into my usual two-slices-and-a-Coke-Zero routine, which allowed me to regain equilibrium. Jersey pizza is noted for its restorative powers in that respect.

Midway through the first slice, I had the impulse to call Tina, beg her to take me back, and offer to do the necessary groveling with Brodie. Then, toward the end of the second slice, I talked myself out of it. Tina was right: I sounded like a nut, trying to push some wild theory about a murdering publisher without being able to prove it. Once I had the Jackman story nailed, the old man would beg me to come back-mostly because if he didn’t, I’d take it to the New York Times or the Wall Street Journal. The last thing any newspaper wanted was to be scooped on its own news.

But until such time as I had the goods on Jackman, I was on my own.

Over the next few hours, I got myself back on my feet as a fully functioning mobile journalist. My first stop, after another sweaty trudge through downtown Newark, was an electronics store. There, I got myself outfitted with the latest iPhone, one of those do-everything models that could take phone calls, surf the Web, and dispatch the nuclear arsenals of several small former Soviet Republics.

After setting up a new e-mail account, I used my iPhone to determine which towing extortion racket had stolen my car. I briefly debated unleashing some of my newfound warheads-Chechnya’s maybe-on the guilty party. In the end, I decided to call a cab, ride out to the far swampy reaches by the turnpike, and repurchase my car. All told, the transaction took a shade over four hours.

By which point I was hungry again. And while I needed to get on with the work of saving my career, I knew I could serve both needs with a trip to the State Street Grill. I hadn’t yet followed up with Nikki Papadopolous, who had left that message that had gotten me in trouble with Tina. Since I had never been given the number Nikki left for me-and wasn’t exactly in a position to call Tina up and ask for it-I’d have to make a visit in person. And I might as well select an item or two from State Street’s twenty-four-page menu while I was there.

I fired up the Malibu, put the air-conditioning on high, and started trying to find my way out of the maze that was industrial Newark, all the while luxuriating in the fact that I once again had a V6 engine to do the hard work of transporting my tired carcass from point to point.

As I got under way, I decided to continue exercising my new iPhone and call Tommy. I needed someone on the inside to do snooping outside Jackman’s office, and being that it was now after six, it was late enough for him to do it undetected.

“This is Tommy,” he answered.

“Hey, it’s your favorite jailbird.”

“Shhh … I’m not allowed to talk to you.”

“Says who?”

“Tina.”

“What?”

“She said you were probably going to call me, looking for help on this Jackman thing, and that I shouldn’t take your call.”

“But you’re going to ignore her, right? I just need one quick favor.”

Tommy didn’t reply.

“You wouldn’t leave a fellow reporter in the lurch, right?” I asked.

“Well, technically, you’re not a fellow reporter anymore…”

“Ouch. Oh, wow, major ouch.”

“I’m sorry. I didn’t mean it like that. It’s just, well, I guess Jackman called Brodie and got him pretty stoked up. And you know how that goes. Brodie gets a fever and the rest of the newsroom catches cold. So you’ve sort of been, uhh, banned.”

“Banned?”

“Or banished. Or something like that.”

“According to whom?”

“Jackman, I guess,” Tommy said. “I don’t know. It’s not like there was a formal memo or anything. Tina just told me it was in my best interests to keep my distance.”

“Oh. That’s nice of her.”

“She also said you were on a self-destructive path and that I shouldn’t enable you. She said if I was a real friend, I’d try to talk you out of going down this path. She’s really worried about you.”

“She has a strange way of showing it. She fired me this morning.”

“She what? She didn’t mention that.”

“Yeah, well … Needless to say, I could really use your help.”

He groaned.

“Again,” I added.

“Okay, but if you get me fired, too, you’re the one who’s selling his body into male prostitution to support us.”

“What, you can’t find us a sugar daddy?”

“Oh, I totally can. I just think you should sell your body as punishment.”

“Fair enough,” I said.

“Okay, can you hang out for a second?”

“Yeah, I’m just driving.”

“Good. I can’t risk getting caught aiding and abetting a known scoundrel like you. But I’ve got an idea of someone who might be able to get away with it.”

He hung up before I could ask what that meant, and I finally started paying attention to where I was driving. It suddenly dawned on me I had no idea where I was. I had gotten myself tangled somewhere in the endless labyrinth of overlapping exit ramps near Newark Liberty International Airport.

Lost in Newark. It was starting to feel like the metaphor for my existence.

* * *

Eventually, after a few more misguided turns, I found my way out and further assessed my situation. To say nothing of my other issues, my clothing had absorbed well more than the FDA-recommended allowance of sweat, and I was starting to smell a bit like moldering hockey gear. Rather than inflict that odor on the State Street Grill, I made a brief stop at the Bloomfield home of Deadline the Cat for a shower and a new wardrobe.

The only thing I couldn’t do much about was my notepad. As I transferred it from my old pants to my new ones, I discovered it had retained some dampness. Still, it was backed by sturdy enough cardboard that it would survive to fight another day.

Was the rest of me as stern? I checked in with my soul for a moment to ponder that question and found that, yeah, it was a little shaken, but it was basically still whole. A reporter without conviction is not much of a reporter at all. My only chance at this point was to stick with my principles and hope they bore me out, just as they had so many times in the past-whether I had Tina’s backing or not.

I was just returning to my car when my phone rang.

“Carter Ross,” I said.

“Hi, Mister Ross, it’s Kevin,” a voice replied.

Kevin? Did I know anyone named Kevin? Oh, of course: Lunky.

“Hi, Kevin,” I said. “It’s after six. Shouldn’t you have gone home already?”

“Yeah, I know. But, well, I just sort of like hanging around the newsroom. No one ever bothers me so I get lots of reading done.”

Sad but probably quite true.

“Anyway, what’s up?” I asked.

“Mister Hernandez said I should give you a call because you needed a favor.”

I smiled. Good ol’ Tommy. Lunky was the perfect choice. The kid may have been roughly the size of Alaska, but he was invisible as far as the editors, Tina included, were concerned.

“He said I should go out in the parking lot and call on my cell phone and not tell anyone I was doing it,” Lunky continued. “So now I’m out in the parking lot, which seems a little strange to me. Do you know why Mister Hernandez asked me to do it this way?”

“Kevin, you said you’re into Thoreau, right?”

“Oh, definitely.”

“Then let’s just say Tommy knows I need you to practice a little civil disobedience. Can you do that for me?”

Lunky responded with enthusiasm. I provided him a brief rundown of how I believed the publisher was a killer, which he accepted without question, comment, or dispute. Then I instructed him how to find the secretarial pool outside Jackman’s office, locate the lockbox atop the filing cabinet, and use the key to break into Courtney’s desk-where he would hopefully discover Jackman’s appointment book and the name of the bar he and Jim McNabb visited the night before Nancy was killed.

“So, really, the only hard part would be getting into that lockbox,” I concluded. “You might have to smash it open. But it’s pretty flimsy. A big guy like you shouldn’t have a problem with that.”

“Do I really have to smash it?”

“Well, it’s a lockbox, so it’s probably … locked.”

“Oh, that won’t be a problem,” he assured me.

“Are you sure?”

“Mister Ross, can you keep a secret?”

“Of course.”

“When I was young, just a freshman in high school-before I knew better, really-I … I…” He started to speak but couldn’t seem to bring himself to finish. Was Lunky about to confess to a life of juvenile delinquency? A life that included boosting cars and picking locks?

“Go ahead, Kevin,” I urged him in my best therapist’s voice. “This is a safe space for sharing.”

“Okay, okay,” he said, taking a deep breath, then blurting out, “When I was a freshman in high school I … I read The Da Vinci Code.”

He paused, like I should be gasping in horror. But really I was just trying to stifle my laughter. Lunky plowed on: “And … and … I really liked it. Please, please don’t tell anyone, especially not my professors. It would forever ruin my standing in the academy. You know how those people are. You’re not supposed to read a book like that. And if you do, you’re not supposed to admit it. But if you get caught, you’re supposed to pass it off as, I don’t know, an intellectual lark, like you’re trying to understand some misguided pop culture phenomenon from an almost anthropological view. But the truth is, I liked it, and it really got me into the science of cryptography-you know, finding hidden information, cracking codes, that sort of thing. I sort of made a hobby out of it in high school.”

“So you’re saying you’ll be able to guess the combination on the lockbox?”

“It’s not guessing,” he corrected me. “Guessing suggests it’s somehow random. There’s a system to it. How many digits does the box have on it?”

“Oh, it was tiny. Three, I think.”

“Oh, that’s child’s play,” he assured me. “It’ll take ten, fifteen minutes tops.”

“All right. Well, give me a call when you’re done.”

“Righto,” he said, then disconnected.

I shook my head. A six-foot-five, 275-pound defensive end who had devoured the entire canon of Western literature, considered himself an amateur cryptologist, dead-lifted bears, and finished conversations with “righto.” Sure, he couldn’t bang out a newspaper article to save his Emerson collection, but it was hard not to like the kid.

As Lunky made like Professor Langdon, I drove toward the diner. I had just found a parking spot-a legal one this time, I checked-when he called.

“So you were able to crack the code?” I asked.

“Not exactly,” he said. “I tried opening the desk first. It wasn’t locked.”

“Oh,” I said. Genius cryptographer, indeed.

“I went back to last Thursday, like you asked.”

“And?”

“The last thing written down is, ‘IFIW Meeting.’”

“What else?”

“Nothing.”

“What do you mean nothing? There’s got to be something else,” I said, because it ought to have been easier than this. It was in the Bad Guy Handbook somewhere: Jackman was supposed to leave easy clues for me to follow. Whether he did it before or after he waxed his mustache and donned his black cape was up to him.

“I’m looking at it right now. All it says is, ‘IFIW Meeting.’”

“Well, that’s still something,” I said, knowing it at least proved Jackman and Big Jimmy had been together, even if it didn’t tell me where. “Look, do me a favor and make a photocopy of that page then return the appointment book where you found it.”

“Sure thing,” Lunky said. “Anyhow, this was fun. Thoreau never mentioned civil disobedience could feel like a scavenger hunt. If you need anything else, just let me know. No one else around here ever asks me to do anything.”

I assured him I would, and he hung up. I killed the engine on the Malibu and walked toward the State Street Grill, finding myself looking forward to again seeing Nikki and her alluring green eyes.

What I saw instead momentarily rendered me incapable of putting one foot in front of the other. It was two men sitting at a window booth, bent toward each other in what appeared to be an intense conversation. One was the ill-tempered and combed-over owner of the State Street Grill, Mr. Papadopolous.

The other was Gary Jackman.

* * *

Not knowing what else to do, I positioned myself behind a tree for a moment. I would say I hid behind it, but this particular tree had only recently been planted and was probably fifty years away from being wide enough to offer a guy my size any real concealment, even if I turned sideways. But I at least wanted to get something between myself and the Jackman-Papadopolous conference.

The questions began pouring into my head. Actually, that’s not right. It was really just one question I kept asking myself in different ways: What were they doing together? What were they doing together? What were they doing together?

Or perhaps more pressingly: What had they already done?

I flashed back to when I saw them at the funeral home and replayed it in my mind: Papadopolous waving his arms around frantically, Jackman staying cool and collected-but eventually telling him to bug off, in a way that suggested they would talk again. I had, frankly, forgotten all about the encounter because it didn’t seem significant at the time. Besides, I had become convinced Jackman was my villain.

But now? Seeing them together again? It seemed to strain the bounds of anything that could be considered happenstance. I couldn’t think of anything that a mighty newspaper publisher and a small-time diner owner would have in common … except for the one employee they shared. And she was a woman who happened to be dead at the present time.

Were Jackman and Papadopolous somehow in on this together? Was that why there was no dented SUV in Jackman’s garage-because Papadopolous was actually the owner/driver of said vehicle?

In my one prior run-in with Papadopolous, he certainly acted like a man with something to hide, throwing me out of the diner because I was a reporter. Here I had thought the golf-club-wielding Jackman fit the profile of a killer. But I had to admit a short-tempered Greek guy-the kind of guy who wanted to corporally remove me from his restaurant-might be just as capable of violence.

But why would they both want Nancy dead? And how would they have discovered their mutual desire for her termination? Was Nancy also causing problems for Papadopolous in some way I had yet to discover?

All I knew was that I didn’t know enough.

I now really needed to track down Nikki Papadopolous, who might be my only source on whatever was happening between her father and my ex-publisher. Finding her would obviously require some finesse, inasmuch as I didn’t want to alert her daddy to my presence.

I eased out from behind my spindly little tree, casting one quick look at Jackman and Papadopolous, who were still engrossed in their collusion. I rounded the corner and jogged up the front steps, aware I would have to avoid the left side of the restaurant when I entered. Luckily for me, the office was on the right side. Nikki and I might be able to talk there without her father being the wiser.

Entering the second of the front doors, I found a woman at the hostess stand whom I recognized as being Jen the Waitress, Nikki’s friend. I positioned myself so I couldn’t be seen from the Jackman-Papadopolous table.

“Hi,” she said, smiling pleasantly. “Just one today?”

“Actually, I was here to see Nikki. Is she around?”

Jen smiled again, but this time in a way that suggested it perhaps wasn’t unusual for young men to come there and ask for Nikki.

“Sorry, she’s not around right now. It’s her day off. You’re the reporter who was here the other day, right?”

“That’s me.”

She pointed toward the left side of the restaurant and said, “Is it something Gus can help you with? He’s just back there.”

Gus? Who was Gus? Then it dawned on me that she was gesturing toward the diner owner. Of course his name was Gus. What else would a guy named Gus Papadopolous do in New Jersey other than own a diner?

“That’s okay, actually,” I said. “He, uh, had some anger-management issues the last time I tried to chat with him.”

“Yeah, he has those a lot. Once he goes off about something, there’s just no talking him down.”

Noted.

“Actually,” I said. “Would you mind giving me Nikki’s number? She left a message for me at the office, I just forgot to write her number down”-or, rather, Tina never gave it to me, but I didn’t want to get lost in details-“and I feel rude not calling her back. Do you have it by any chance?”

Jen glanced back toward Gus’s table for a second. “Yeah, sure,” she said, took a phone out of her pocket, pressed some buttons, then dictated ten digits to me.

“Thanks,” I said. “I’m Carter Ross, by the way.”

I extended my right hand. “Jen,” she said, shaking it. “Jen Forbus.”

“Thanks, Jen Forbus,” I said. “You’re a real sweetheart.”

She smiled and I gave her a quick salute as I departed. I walked around the corner toward the pizzeria I had visited the day before-I was still starving, after all-and gave Nikki a ring. We established she would meet me at the pizzeria, and before long I was shoveling the first of two slices into my mouth.

I was finished with both slices-and a life-giving Coke Zero-and was starting to get tired of sitting there by the time Nikki arrived. Then I saw her and realized it had been worth the wait. She was wearing a light green, knee-length summer dress made out of some gauzy floral-print fabric. It was wrapped around her and secured at her waist with a little spaghetti string. I had untied that string with my eyes at least twice in the time it took her to cross the restaurant toward my table.

“Hi, there,” I said, feeling the smile overtake my face as I rose from the booth.

“Hey, there, handsome,” she said, and I accepted a kiss on the cheek. She was lightly perfumed and freshly made up. Her dark hair-which she wore up while at work-was now down just below her shoulders. She looked nothing short of fabulous, and I wondered if the effort had been on my account. One way to find out.

“I hope I didn’t interrupt anything,” I said. “You look like you’re about to go out on a date or something.”

“Oh no,” she said quickly, then added, “It’s just so nice to wear a dress on a hot day.”

So it was for me. But we were pretending it wasn’t. I could play that game. I could play it all day and all night if she wanted.

I tried to remind myself I was there for, you know, business purposes; that she was the daughter of the man who might have helped murder Nancy Marino; that this was potentially an important interview.

I needed to keep my wits about me. I needed to be like those guards at Buckingham Palace. They don’t let anything distract them from their duty-not goofy, picture-taking tourists; not those ridiculous fur hats they wear; not even beautiful Greek women.

Then I got another eyeful of that summer dress and realized the British Royals would be toast under my watch. I gestured to the opposite side of my booth and said, “Have a seat.”

* * *

She sat. I smiled. She smiled. It could have been awkward, but wasn’t. I have come to believe human interactions are at least partially governed by things we barely understand, things that determine-without our active participation in the process-whether we’ll be able to get along with someone or whether it will always be a struggle. There was no struggle with Nikki. It was easy.

“You want anything to eat or drink?” I asked.

She laughed.

“What’s so funny?”

“Nothing,” she said, “I just spend all day asking people that question.”

“Oh right,” I said, and I was tempted to pass the next several hours just studying her face and making delightful small talk. But I forced myself to stay on task. “So you called me about something?”

“Oh yeah,” she said, clearly a little distracted herself. “My dad interrupted us yesterday before I had a chance to tell you something about Nancy. And I don’t know if it even matters anymore or not. But I thought you should know.”

“Okay.”

“This guy came in last week and was asking my dad a lot of questions.”

“About Nancy?”

“Yeah. They went into a booth in the back of the restaurant, and I couldn’t hear what they were saying. I just saw my dad getting pissed off like he always does and waving his hands in the air a lot. I asked him what it was about later and he said, ‘Nancy.’ And I was like, ‘What about Nancy?’ But he was just fuming about affidavits and subpoenas and stuff like that.”

“So your dad was going to have to give an affidavit or else he’d get subpoenaed?”

“Something like that, I guess. Yeah. I’m not a lawyer or anything.”

Neither am I, of course. But I’ve learned enough about the law to know that whenever subpoena power is involved, things are usually pretty interesting.

“So who was the guy?” I asked.

“Well, I didn’t know. He just came and left. But then I saw this business card tacked to the bulletin board in the office. I made a photocopy for you.”

She pulled a folded sheet of paper out of a small green clutch she was carrying. She handed it to me, and I unfolded it to see contact information for Peter Davidson, regional director of the National Labor Relations Board. It had an address in Newark and a phone number with a 973 area code.

“National Labor Relations Board?” I asked. I knew the NLRB was a federal agency, but I was only vaguely familiar with it from articles I had read. Usually, the NLRB was called into negotiations that had become huge pissing matches between labor and management-sort of like what the Newark Eagle-Examiner had going with IFIW-Local 117.

But I was still confused. “What would the NLRB want with your dad? You guys aren’t unionized, are you?”

She shook her head.

“So, uh, okay, I don’t get it,” I said, intertwining my fingers on the back of my head.

“I tried to pump my dad for information, but he told me it was nothing to worry about. He’s not the kind of man who likes to unload his problems on other people, even his own daughter. Especially his own daughter. I asked him two or three times, and he just patted me on the head and said, ‘Eet’s fine, eet’s fine, no troubles.’”

But there were troubles. There had to be. And maybe they were substantial enough to turn Nancy Marino into the kind of obstacle that made Gus Papadopolous every bit as interested in her removal as Gary Jackman. All I knew was feds just didn’t waltz into your place of work and threaten you with a subpoena unless there was trouble somewhere. The trick was figuring out where.

Or maybe, at least for now, the better question was when it started.

“You said the guy was here last week,” I asked. “What day?”

Nikki cast her eyes upward and found the answer swirling in an old ceiling fan. “Monday,” she said. “It was Monday.”

A timeline was assembling in my head. On Monday, a representative from the NLRB waltzed into the State Street Grill to talk about something that had Gus Papadopolous waving his hands in the air. On Tuesday morning, the black SUV began stalking Nancy on her paper route-at least according to Mrs. Alfaro’s memory. By Friday, Nancy was dead.

So Gus was involved. He had to be, right?

But did that mean Jackman wasn’t involved? Maybe yes. Maybe no. But if it was no, why did I keep seeing them together?

It was, potentially, a brilliant bit of criminality: any prosecutor could tell you nothing weakens a murder case like having two suspects, each of whom has an equally strong motive. In the absence of good physical evidence-which this case was unlikely to have-each suspect ostensibly guarantees reasonable doubt for the other, because each defendant’s attorney can argue, hey, it wasn’t my guy, it was the other guy. Unless the prosecutor can find some kind of reasonable link between the perpetrators-e-mails, phone calls, payment of some sort-and charge them together, there’s pretty much no case.

I suddenly wished I had snapped a quick cell phone picture of the two of them sitting at that booth. Not that it would truly prove anything-given enough time, I’m sure they could concoct a reasonable cover story-but it would at least establish that the men weren’t total strangers.

Or, for all I knew, they might have another tie. Maybe one everyone-or at least Gus’s daughter-knew about already. I focused on Nikki and tried to act nonchalant.

“Hey, this may seem like a strange question, but does your dad know a guy named Gary Jackman by any chance?” I asked.

“Uh, I don’t know. Who is he?”

“He’s the publisher of my newspaper, which sort of makes him like my boss.”

Or ex-boss. But let’s not quibble.

“Gary Jackman,” she said, pondering it more deeply. “I don’t think so. But it’s not like I know all my dad’s friends, you know? He does a lot of stuff with the Bloomfield Chamber of Commerce, so he’s always bothering people about that. Why do you ask?”

“Oh, I’ve just seen them together a couple of times and I was just … curious.”

Nikki shrugged and smiled sweetly. Then she asked me a question no guy could resist coming from an attractive woman: “So, you want to get out of here, grab a drink or something?”

And I know that I should have been like those boys at Buckingham. I know it was entirely possible that she wasn’t as innocent as she appeared. I know she might well have been an enemy agent sent to seduce me, pry information out of me, and then kill me with some exotic, undetectable poison, like a girl in a Bond flick.

But perfume has a way of clouding my judgment. Besides, doesn’t the enemy agent end up falling in love with Bond despite herself?

“I don’t know, Nikki,” I teased. “What would Gus think about me having a drink with his little girl?”

She grinned. “I don’t think Gus is allowed to have an opinion on the matter.”

“Then let’s get out of here.”

* * *

Soon, we were riding in my babe-magnet Malibu on our way to a trendy bar in Montclair, the kind of place with low couches and lower lighting where we could spend a little time getting acquainted. We swapped our stories-you reach a point in singlehood when you’ve got your standard first-date material pretty well down-and the hour grew late. We drank but not excessively. Just enough to have a nice little buzz. It was all quite enchanting.

I found it pleasant talking to Nikki, who laughed easily and told fun stories. She had wanted to be an actress and did the New York audition thing for a while until she concluded they didn’t want someone who looked, as one casting director put it, “so ethnic.” After that, she returned to school and studied restaurant management and was being groomed to take over the family business.

We were from somewhat different sides of the track-me with my Wonder bread background, she with her pitas-but that didn’t seem to matter. I found her refreshingly uncomplicated as compared to game-playing Tina. And maybe Nikki was just a rebound from Tina. But even if that was the case, any basketball coach could tell you rebounds have helped with a lot of ball games. And it was becoming obvious where the evening was heading.

It started with a little hand-patting, which turned into hand-holding. Then I might have started idly stroking her forearm, which she must not have minded because she suddenly scooted quite close to me on the couch we were sharing. She got up at one point to visit the ladies’ room, and when she returned, she gave me a kiss on the lips-no tongue, but it was still meaningful-then snuggled herself against me. The smell of her was at least as intoxicating as the drinks we were having.

One thing I enjoy about being a grown-up is that, at a certain point in time, you stop needing quite so much pretense with the opposite sex. When you were in high school, you had to lure a girl out to the park with the ploy that it was the best place to see shooting stars. When you were in college, she came back to your dorm room because you wanted to show her your fish tank. But then sometime in your twenties, all that subterfuge-which never really fooled anyone anyway-becomes unnecessary. So when last call went out sometime short of midnight, I suggested we head back to my place, and she accepted. Just like that.

Before long, we were back in Bloomfield. I turned the Malibu into my driveway. My garage is detached-in the way all garages used to be-and it has become something of a repository for things better left unseen by hot dates. Plus, it’s a bit of a tight squeeze. I didn’t want her having to crawl past my lawnmower and my Weedwacker on her way out.

I pulled up short of the garage, hopped out of the car, and hurried around to open Nikki’s door for her. Then I took her hand and escorted her down the driveway, rounding the corner of the house toward the small set of brick steps that led to my front door. We were walking single file-the path wasn’t wide enough to go side by side-and I was in the lead.

It was only later, when I replayed everything in my mind, that I realized this was about the time I heard a car engine coming to life. At the time, with my mind clearly on other things, I can’t say I really paid much attention. There had to be at least fifty houses on my block. One person starting their car-even at a late hour like this-was not unusual.

But yes, a car had started somewhere. And I became aware it was traveling rather speedily, but, again, that didn’t concern me. Everyone drives too fast in Jersey. Even if I had thought about it, and I’m quite sure I didn’t, I would have assumed it was some kid heading home from his girlfriend’s house, fired up by a success or dejected by a failure.

The first thing that I noticed for sure was the headlights. They were big and bright and closer to eye level than headlights should be.

The second thing I noticed was that those headlights were coming right at us. Nikki was saying something about how she liked my little house when the SUV veered off the street, using the neighbor’s driveway like it was a highway entrance ramp and hurtling across my front yard. I felt my eyes squinting involuntarily as those big headlights suddenly bore down on us.

Then instinct took over. I released Nikki’s hand, pivoted, and plowed myself into her, shoving us over the foundation shrubbery next to the front steps. There was no real time to make it gentle or pretty. I just tackled her as hard as I could, hoping I had enough momentum to get us both out of harm’s way. We crashed through the shrubs, and most of my weight landed on her. The scream that was starting to escape from her mouth turned into a grunt as I knocked all the wind from her lungs.

I felt the rush of air and exhaust as the vehicle missed us by a few feet. I heard the roar of its engine and the small shriek of its tires as it jumped back over the curb and onto the asphalt. But I didn’t see anything. My head was down.

By the time I looked up, the SUV was gone.

He arrived at Carter Ross’s house at a quarter to six in the evening, just to have a look around. He was ready with a cover story in case Ross saw him, but that proved unnecessary. The reporter wasn’t at home.

So he treated himself to a quick but full surveillance of Ross’s domain. He eyeballed angles and imprinted the layout of the property in his head as best he could. He noted the detached garage. He studied means of access and egress-a front door and a back door, nothing on the sides. He looked for signs that might tell him what Ross’s patterns were.

He was searching for vulnerabilities, of course, for potential ways Ross might be attacked. He quickly concluded Ross entered and exited exclusively through the front door. The back door, which opened onto a small deck, simply wasn’t as convenient to the garage. And it didn’t seem to be used frequently-the grass in the backyard appeared undisturbed, as if no one had walked on it in several days.

That was good. He wouldn’t have to use his gun. Ross would be an easy target for the Escalade. He paced off a few distances, counting the seconds it took to walk them, coming up with a likely range of times. It was the same sort of mental preparation he had made for Nancy Marino, and he expected the same results.

Having made the necessary determinations, he didn’t allow himself to linger. He knocked on the front door, making himself seem like just a casual friend who had stopped by for an unannounced visit and, finding the master of the house not at home, left just as quickly. He didn’t think any of the neighbors had taken note of him. The only person he saw was a woman outside watering her lawn, but she didn’t seem to be paying attention.

Then he settled in to wait, parking just down the street. He had a place in his brain where he went at times like this-a small cerebral refuge that allowed him to keep himself physically dormant yet mentally alert. It was the place where he told himself his life story, as if he were dictating a memoir. He loved going there, and he had learned he could stay there, quite contentedly, for hours.

He changed some of the details, of course, especially ones that pertained to his father. Everyone lies in their memoir these days, right?

He had both a quick version and a slow version of the story. And since he knew he might be waiting for a while, he went with the extended edition, pacing himself. He was still only in his late twenties when he saw a car roll down the street and into the appropriate driveway.

Instantly, his body came to life. He looked at the clock, which read 12:17. The car crept past the house, on its way to the detached garage. He began a small countdown, turning his ignition key midway through. The car came alive, illuminating the street in front of him. He had hoped to go dark-all the better to catch his target unawares-but the Escalade was equipped with daytime running lights and he didn’t know how to disable them. So he opted to go for the next best thing: high beams. If he couldn’t sneak up on Ross, at least he’d blind him.

With the countdown complete, he shifted into Drive then hit the gas. The house was on the right side of the street, so he stayed on the left side, giving himself a better angle from which to swoop onto the front yard. He had decided he would enter via the neighbor’s driveway. Going over the curb might slow him down or knock him off track.

Everything was going exactly as he hoped, right until the last moment. The first thing that surprised him was the presence of another person. His assumption had been that Ross, who appeared to live alone, would be coming home alone. Yet there Ross was with a young woman. Did she look familiar? There was no time to even consider it. Not at that speed.

The second thing he hadn’t remembered to factor in was the slight upward slope to the front lawn, which slowed him down at a time when he should have been accelerating. It gave Ross enough time not only to get himself out of the way but to rescue the young woman as well.

He watched in frustration as Ross and the young woman dove toward the house, into the safety of some shrubbery. He yelled as he passed them by-like that would do any good-but didn’t dare to slow until he was out of eyeshot. He just had to trust that his high beams, to say nothing of the element of surprise, had rendered them incapable of seeing anything that would identify him.

But that, he knew, was a poor substitute for his real plan, which was not to leave a witness in the first place.

He drove in circles for a while, aggravated at himself. Eventually, he realized he might as well make the best of a botched situation. After all, if Ross could be dissuaded from continuing to investigate Nancy Marino’s death, it would be as good as having Ross dead.

It just had to be made clear to the reporter what awaited him if he persisted.