True Crime

2

I walked into the city room, and Bob Findley smiled. A bad thing, that smile. A sort of tight, satisfied tightening of his lips, a flash in the quiet blue eyes. I could see it clear across the room before he lowered his head again to the papers in front of him.

I knew what that smile meant. Luther Plunkitt had called the paper to complain. I’d messed up the Beachum interview. Professionally speaking, I might just as well have handed Bob an axe.

I held my breath and went to my desk. Sat down and switched on my terminal; tapped in my name. The machine booped and my message light flashed on the screen. I tilted back in my chair and called the messages up one by one. A guy in the mayor’s office, a cop I’d been dealing with, a statistics woman in Washington. Stories I was working on. Nothing that couldn’t wait until after Frank Beachum was dead.

On the way over, I’d stopped off to pick up a ham sandwich. I opened the paper bag now and set it near the keyboard. I looked at the hard roll dripping mustard. My stomach burned. I hadn’t eaten since I’d talked to Porterhouse, and I didn’t feel much like eating now. All the same, I took up the sandwich with one hand. With the other, I opened my desk drawer and brought out the phone book. I slapped it down on the desk as I ripped into the roll.

“Hey, Ev.”

It was Mark Donaldson, my newsside pal. His lean, sharp, cynical face leaned over my monitor, trying to look confidential. I lifted my chin to him, chewing away.

“So what’s with you and Bob?” he said softly. “He’s been giving you the evil eye all day.”

I worked the hunk of sandwich down. “I porked his wife and he’s pissed,” I said.

“Ha ha. Very funny. Not that I’d blame you.”

“Any word on Michelle?”

Donaldson nodded. “Bad. They’re telling her parents to pull the plug.”

The next bite of sandwich went doughy and tasteless in my mouth. My stomach bubbled and steamed. “That’s tough,” I said.

“Yeah,” said Donaldson. “Poor kid. Now I feel bad for calling her a snotnose.”

“Forget it. She was a snotnose. But she was one of us.”

“Was she?”

“Yeah.”

“Shame,” he said. Then he leaned in even farther. He made a gesture with his hand over my terminal, a little come-ahead wave of his fingers like a traffic cop telling the pedestrians to cross. “So come on,” he said. “What’s the poop with you and Findley?”

I shook my head. “It’s personal.”

“Ah!” he said, disgusted. “You got a personal life now?”

I swallowed the wad of dough and meat and mustard. It plopped into my roiling stomach: a stone dropping into a volcano.

“I had a personal life once,” said Donaldson. “My wife gave it to me for Christmas. I exchanged it for a tie.” He held his tie up. “Whattaya think?”

“I think you’re a wise man. Is Rossiter still here?”

“I don’t know, why?”

“I was gonna try and talk her into doing some scutwork for me. Women are feeling more secure these days or something.”

“No, I think she went home. To hang herself probably.” I laughed wearily. “So how secure are you?” Donaldson shrugged. “I’ll fetch you a cup of coffee if you give me head.”

“Could you make a couple of phone calls for me?”

“Sure, I guess.”

“See if you can track down any of the detectives who worked on the Beachum case. See if anyone ever heard of another witness who was at the scene of the murder. A young guy. A kid. Just drove in and bought a soda or something. Didn’t see anything. I just need a name and address.”

“Hokay.”

“And could you fetch me a cup of coffee?”

He blew me a kiss and walked away.

I put the ham sandwich down, half finished. My stomach couldn’t take any more. I drew the phone book to me and opened it to the state listings. Legal Services, capital punishment division.

I had just found the number when I caught a movement at the corner of my eyes. I felt that in my stomach too, a hot whiplash of acid. It was Alan, opening his office door to look out. To look at me. And Bob was standing up from the city desk, ready to join the attack. They were coming to get me.

I took hold of the phone fast. Punched in the number. Phone to my ear, I swiveled in my chair and waved at Alan. Alan glanced at Bob. Bob glanced at Alan. Alan withdrew into his office. Bob sat down.

“Whew,” I said.

“Legal Services,” a man said over the phone. A young man by the sound of it. A young, very tired man.

“It’s Steve Everett at the News,” I said. “Who can talk to me about Beachum?”

“All of us,” he said sleepily. “Anyone here.”

“How about you? You’re there.”

“Yup.”

“Okay. Nancy Larson,” I said, “the witness in the parking lot.”

“Yeah, yeah, yeah.”

“As she’s driving out, someone else drives in. Another guy, a kid, another witness.”

“No.”

“What do you mean, no?”

“There’s nothing like that in the files,” said the man with a sigh of exhaustion. “Nothing,” he murmured sleepily. “Nothing …”

“Are you sure? How can you be sure?”

He made a noise. A laugh, I think. Some kind of noise like a laugh. “Because I’m sure, Mr. Everett. Believe me,” he said. “Even if I’d never seen this case before, I’d have had all the files memorized in the last two weeks. There’s nothing like that. There are no other witnesses.”

I hesitated. I listened to the silence on the line. “Thanks,” I said finally. I put the phone back in the cradle.

With a nervous glance at Alan’s door, I got up and walked down the aisle to Donaldson. He was still on the phone. He looked up at me as I leaned over his monitor. He shook his head.

“Shit,” I said.

The door to Alan’s office opened again. Alan stepped out again.

“Shit,” I said.

Donaldson hung up. “That was Benning. He was whip on the investigation. He says it rings a bell, but he doesn’t remember any names. He said it was just some minor thing.”

“Shit,” I said.

“And Ardsley, who headed the investigation, is retired. In Florida somewhere.”

“Shit,” I said. “What about the files?”

“He says they’re all over at the CA’s office.”

“Shit,” I said.

“Everett!” Alan was calling me from across the room. Bob was standing up again at the city desk. “Everett, get in here.”

“Shit,” I said.

Donaldson raised one corner of his mouth. “Come on, man, what is this?”

I left his desk and walked across the room slowly toward Alan.

Bob had joined him now at the office door. Alan waved me inside. “Would you step this way, Mr. Everett.” Bob came in behind me and closed the door. He was smiling that smile again.

“You don’t have to look so happy about it,” I told him. “I’m not happy,” he said softly. “Why would you say that?”

Alan lowered himself into his chair. He massaged his forehead with his hand. “I should be home dancing with my wife,” he said.

I grabbed my cigarettes and shot one into my mouth. “Look, I don’t have time for this. So Plunkitt’s pissed. That’s too bad.” I lit the cigarette and sucked on it hard.

“Oh yes,” said Bob, his eyes glittering. “He’s pissed all right. And there’s no smoking in this building.”

Alan heaved a deep sigh. “Boys, boys, boys. Come on. I can’t have this. I got ten reporters out there covering you guys and no one’s watching the city. Everett, say you’re sorry. Bob, punch his lights out. Let’s get it over with.”

Bob looked surprised. “Look, this isn’t a personal matter.” His voice was calm, reasonable. “This was an important story.”

“Yeah, yeah, yeah.”

“I mean it, Alan. I gave Steve very specific instructions on this. I wanted a human interest sidebar, that’s it, that’s all. The paper made promises to Plunkitt …”

“The guy’s innocent!” I said, jabbing the cigarette at him.

“Oh …” Smirking, Bob rolled his eyes. He turned his back on me.

I felt my blood go hot. “He is!” I said to his back. “Bob. It’s not a human interest sidebar! It’s a cruci-fucking-fiction, man! What did you want me to say to him, ‘How’s the weather up there, Mr. Christ?’ ” I pulled a notebook out of my back pocket. I tossed it onto Alan’s desk. “Look, I got all that personal … crap you wanted. He believes in God. He’s going to heaven. He’s happy as a pig in shit, all right? He can’t wait to be juiced. It’s all in there. You can use that in the sidebar.”

Bob bowed his head as if sadly. “That’s not the point.”

“You bet it’s not the point.”

“Well,” Alan said to him, “look. We’ll take Everett off the execution. Okay? Everett, you’re off the execution. We’ll put Harvey on the execution. That’s what you wanted in the first place, isn’t it”

“Yes,” said Bob, “but that’s still not the point.”

“Yeah, well, we all know what the point is,” Alan said.

Bob spun back around. The flush had come up into his cheeks again, but the dark depths of his eyes were shut away. There were only the surfaces showing, flat and hard. He spoke deliberately now, without a trace of passion, without a sign of any feeling at all. “The only point,” he said slowly, “is that I can’t work with you anymore, Steve. We’ve had this problem from the start, but it’s just gotten to be too much. Maybe you’re a good reporter sometimes. Everyone says so. But there are other good reporters and they don’t have your attitude and they follow instructions. I can’t work with you.” He looked at Alan. He looked at me again. That was all he said.

A silence followed. Alan let out a low moan. I drew on my cigarette, studying the floor. I could feel the seconds pass. Bob gazed at me coolly, not moving. He had made his play. He had said what he had to. If he really forced Alan to choose between us, I was out of a job for sure.

My stomach guttered blackly. What a mess this was turning out to be, I thought. What a mess I’d gone and made of it. And what time was it anyway? Almost quarter of seven by the clock on Alan’s desk. Cecilia Nussbaum would be having her meetings now, probably with the governor’s people at some hotel somewhere or at the Wainwright Building. Then, I guessed, they’d all drive down to the prison together. At the prison, Plunkitt would be asking Mrs. Beachum to leave the Deathwatch cell and there’d be great weeping and gnashing of teeth. The cook would be preparing the condemned man’s final meal. Jesus, I thought, what a mess.

“Alan …” I said.

But Bob cut me off. “No. No. I think we have to deal with this. It’s a simple situation. I can’t work with you, Steve. I can’t work with you anymore.”

I gritted my teeth. I stuck my chin out at him, letting the smoke roll out of my mouth and nose. “Why don’t you just hit me?” I asked him. “Why don’t you just punch me out, god damn it? I deserve it, man. I’ll fall down. I’ll bleed. You’ll love it. It’ll be great.” I should have shut up then, but I couldn’t stop myself. “Then you can go home and hit your wife too,” I muttered. “She likes it.”

I saw his head go back a little at that, absorbing the blow. For a second, I thought he really would take a swing at me. I half hoped he would anyway. But his lip only curled slightly and his eyes remained flat and icy.

“I guess …” he said quietly. “I guess we can’t all live in the world of your imagination, Steve. I’m not going to hit anybody, no matter what they want. If Patricia needs some other kind of relationship, she’ll have to go find that. If she wants to work with me to keep us together, then I’m willing to work. But whatever happens, my marriage isn’t any of your goddamned business. The only thing you need to know about me right now is that I think you’re a tawdry, sexist, thoughtless, mentally unbalanced man. And I can’t work with you anymore.”

Alan moaned again, covering his eyes with his hand.

I turned to him desperately, leaned toward him, pressing my fists down on his desk. Why didn’t it ever occur to me how much I needed a job until I was about to lose it?

“Alan, listen,” I said. “I’ve got the shooter.”

He lowered his hand. “You what?”

Bob made that gesture he favored, that stay-calm motion with his hand. He lapsed into his schoolmarm style of instruction. “I don’t think we should confuse two different issues …”

I cut him off. “I know who he is.”

“Who?” said Alan.

“The guy, the real guy. Who shot Amy Wilson.”

“You got the shooter?”

“Look, even if he knows who killed Kennedy …” said Bob.

“Shut up, Bob,” said Alan. He considered me, frowning. “How got him have you got?”

I straightened away from his desk. I raised my cigarette to my lips. Gripped in my fist, it had split near the filter. I had to draw hard to make the smoke come through.

“I know who he is,” I said.

“All right. Who is he?”

“Huh?”

“The shooter. Who is he?”

“He’s … he’s a guy. A guy who was there.”

Holding his breath, Alan pinched his nose in the web of his hand. He closed his eyes, opened them. “You’re telling me the shooter was a guy who was there? Well. Well. Good work, Steve. But let’s not jump to any conclusions. I want that confirmed by two unnamed sources before I hold the front page or anything.”

“I’m telling you!” I said, throwing my arms around. “The CA has his name. She just won’t give it to me.”

“What about the defense?”

“This is ridiculous,” said Bob.

“No,” I said. “It’s not in their files.”

“The cops?”

“They don’t remember. Or they’re sitting on it.”

“Have you tried the Yellow Pages under S?” said Bob.

I made a noise that astonished even me. A throaty growl, like a cornered animal. I moved to the wall and crushed my busted cigarette against the side of the wastebasket. I stood with my back to them, staring at an Associated Press plaque for journalistic excellence. Things did not look good for our hero, or at least for my hero.

Behind me, Bob let out a weary, mournful sigh. “Alan,” he said, “I’m sorry. Really. I know this is causing problems for everybody. But I want to be clear about this. I’m ready to leave. I owe you a lot and I love this paper, but I’m not going to spend my life in an environment that’s become intolerable.”

Alan moaned.

Whereupon, suddenly, inspiration struck. I was running my hand up through my hair at the moment. I was feeling the sweat come away, cling to my palm. I was thinking about Barbara and what I would say to her when I came home with no job again. I was wondering how long it would be before she figured out the truth. Five minutes? Ten? I could see her standing in the doorway, pointing sternly into the distance. And me with all my belongings wrapped in a handkerchief tied to a stick, hefting the stick to my shoulder as I trudged off miserably into the snow. It was ninety-five degrees outside, but the way my luck was running, the snow was a dead cert.

And then it came to me. Just like that. Like a hallelujah. Bells pealed. Choirs sang. The federal budget balanced. A glorious sun rose heavenward to the east and showered its beneficient rays on this great land of ours. Oh ho, I thought. Oh ho ho. What end is dead, what door is closed, what road has no turning to a man piss-desperate to hold on to his job?

I turned from the wall. Bob cocked a look at me. If hate were a laser he’d have had a view through my forehead to the back of the room.

“I’m sorry, Steve,” he said gently. “I truly am.”

“You have to give me notice, Alan,” I said.

“Notice?” said Alan. He moaned.

“That’s in my contract. You can’t just boot me. You have to give me notice.”

Even the blank calm of Bob’s expression, even the sheets of ice that had dropped down to cover his eyes were not enough to contain the radiance of triumph that shone from within him. He had won.

“Just how much notice do you want, Steve?” he asked kindly.

I glanced at my watch as I started toward the office door. “Five hours and seven minutes,” I said.