“I do hate to steal Donald away from you like this, but he really does have to go scrap with the board.”
“It’s all right, darling,” said Wexler. “We were just finishing up.”
She nodded at him, her red lips slightly curved. She flowed gracefully out of the room. He watched her go, the fond smile lingering on his lips. When she was gone, he looked at me sheepishly, slightly embarrassed by his affection.
“Well …” he said.
“Who killed him?” I asked. “Who do you think killed him?” I thought of that expert assassin and added: “Or had him killed?”
“Good Lord,” said Wexler, surprised. “Good Lord, I don’t know. It could have been anyone. It could have been Communists who don’t want him to write about Afghanistan or Capitalists who don’t want him to write about Nicaragua. It could have been anyone who didn’t want him to write about anything. It could have been a jealous husband, for all I know. Let me give you a piece of advice, Wells.” He laid a hand on my shoulder—carefully. His manicure probably cost more than my suit. “If it’s a story you’re after, get your story. Write your story. But if it’s personal, if it’s just because you happened to be there, let it drop. Let the police handle it. It’s what they’re there for. Don’t become too—hooked, as it were, on Timothy Colt. He was a fascinating man, as I said. Almost like a drug in a way. And like a drug, he really wasn’t very good for people.”
As we stood together in the rich morning sunlight that fell through the rich curtains into the rich library, I studied Wexler’s face. Was he warning me? Warning me off? I looked to his damp brown eyes for a clue, but saw nothing.
But when I was outside and alone again, I remembered Valerie Colt. People got hurt a lot around Tim. That’s what she’d said. Someone always had to pick up the pieces.
I walked along Ninetieth with my hands shoved in my overcoat pockets. I watched the pale light of the near-winter morning glare up at me from the puddles of melted snow in the gutter. Maybe Wexler was right, I thought. Maybe I was just fascinated by Timothy Colt. Maybe it was an unhealthy fascination. Maybe it was deadly.
Itook a subway back to the Star. I sat in my cubicle, my I feet up on the desk. I opened my mail. I stared at each piece dutifully before I tossed it into the wastebasket.
McKay came by to greet me. He leaned against the cubicle partition, his hands behind him.
“How you feel?”
“Creaky, but better. How do I look?”
“Like shit, but better. Thank God, too. That battered-up face of yours really did a number on Lansing.”
“Yeah, well, she’s funny that way.”
“I asked her if she wanted a cup of coffee yesterday. I was going downstairs to the diner. She said, ‘Stop bothering people, McKay.’”
“Kid can’t control her emotions.” I lit a cigarette. I went through a few more letters. Tossed the rest out all at once to save time.
“Nice piece on your fight to the death,” McKay said.
“That what they called it? I haven’t seen the paper.”
“Yeah, in the subhead. The exclusive story of his fight to the death with an assassin.”
“Kind of overlooks the fact that neither of us died, doesn’t it?”
“Don’t be picky, Wells. It’s a good spread, and I couldn’t have written it better myself.”
“Yeah,” I said, taking a long drag of smoke. “Yeah, you could have.”
“Well, yeah, I could have,” said McKay, “but he’d have killed me.”
“Life’s unfair. What can I say?”
Alex, the copyboy, passed. I told him to get me a cup of coffee or I’d break his legs.
“Sure, Pops,” he said.
“I may break his legs anyway,” I told McKay.
“He’s nicer than Lansing.”
I laughed. “So what’s up today? Where’s Captain Relatable?”
“He’s coming in late. He worked till almost six last night.”
“Now, now.”
“He called to check in.”
“To make sure the assignment editor didn’t make the assignments?”
“You got it.” McKay had a wicked half grin on that baby face of his. “Lansing’s got the follow-up on Colt. She’s hot for it, too. I think she wants to track down Lester Paul herself. Vengeance is mine, sayeth the Lance.”
“He the suspect? Paul?”
“According to Lansing. She’s got it pretty much figured out. Paul hired the assassin to settle his old score with Colt.”
“What old score?”
“The one they argued about in the tavern.”
“Oh yeah. That old score. What do the cops say?”
“Well, you know Gottlieb.”
“Yeah, in fact I talked to him,” I said. “He’ll find Paul, they’ll sit, they’ll chat.”
“Right. He hasn’t said much more than that, far as I know.”
“Hard to believe he’s the meanest tec in the south, isn’t it?”
“Is it true he once shot a matchstick out of Fats Thompkins’s mouth?”
“Who knows? The way I heard it he lit the match with the bullet.”
Alex brought me coffee. I let the snotty little bastard live. I ditched the nicotine and went after the caffeine.
“So anyway,” I said, “Lansing’s doing the follow on Colt. What about you?”
“Something of my own. Homeless children. With the snow and winter coming on and all.”
“Sure.” I waited. McKay said nothing. I finally had to ask him. “What about Wellsey? The old bird dog? The man who duels to the death?’’
McKay lifted his eyes to the fluorescents, bounced his butt against the hands folded behind him. “Well …”
“Don’t tell me: The Day After I Fought An Assassin and Found God.”
“Worse. You see the News this morning?”
“No. I haven’t seen anything.”
“They led with Colt, same as us. But they dumped the second-day snow stories and page-three’d a copyrighted piece on the Corlies Park bribe.”
“They page-three’d my two-day-old story? Did they have anything new?”
“Details. An interview out of the U.S. attorney’s office. Not Ciccelli. Basically the same stuff.”
“So they’re saying we got the story first but now they’re gonna run with it.”
“Right,” said McKay, still watching the fluorescents. “So—sort of casually this morning, while he was telling the assignment editor his job, General Cambridge says, ‘I’d use Wells on Colt but, of course, he’ll be bird-dogging the scandal. I mean, obviously that’s our big story.’”
I was taking a long sip of coffee when he spoke. I nearly scalded my sinuses. I put the Styrofoam cup down, wiping my mouth with my hand. “That son of a bitch,” I said. “Suddenly it’s a big story.”
“So unless you were planning something else …”
I thought it over. “No,” I said. “I want to do something on Colt, but not yet. Maybe a profile after the funeral tomorrow … No, this is what I was going to do anyway, I guess. I just hate to make it look like he thought of it.”
“Life’s unfair. What can I say?” said McKay. He pushed off the partition. “Anyway, I’m glad you look like shit but better. I gotta get to work.”
“Okay,” I said. “Thanks, Mac. If you see Alex, kick him in the face, then tell him if he doesn’t bring me a copy of the News, you’ll do it again. The Times, too.”
“Sure thing.”
Off he went.
I got on the phone. I checked in with my friend at the parks department. I left a message with borough president Robins. I wrangled with Ciccelli’s secretary. She’s a divorcée with orange hair who feels that answering the phone in the U.S. attorney’s office is pretty much the same as running interference for a quarterback with shaky knees. I got nowhere with her.
Alex brought me the papers. I looked them over. The News was pretty much as McKay had said. They’d filled in a few blank spots and called it
an exclusive. The story still belonged to me. I started hunting through the Times. As I did, I got the sensation I was being watched. I glanced up. I was being watched.
“Yo ho, there, Lansing,” I said.
“Don’t go around yo ho–ing me,” she said grimly. “How do you feel?”
“Super. Great,” I said.
“You look a little better.”
“I’m telling you. I haven’t felt this wonderful in years. I should be nearly killed more often.”
“I’ll say.”
“How’s the Colt case?”
“Have you had breakfast?” she asked me.
“Uh … yes.”
“Liar.”
“Okay—no.”
“Idiot.”
“What’s the right answer here?”
She thumped a paper bag down on my desk. “Here’s a bagel,” she said. “Eat it.”
I dug into the bag. The bagel was a toasted garlic with cream cheese. My favorite. There was orange juice, too.
“Gee,” I said.
“Just shut up and eat it.”
“Mmmpf,” I said around a mouthful of bagel. “Sho howsh the Colt cashe?”
Lansing shook her head at me, sighed. She crossed her arms under her breasts. She leaned her shoulder against the partition. “Fine, fine,” she said. “Gottlieb’s after Paul. He gave out some stuff this morning. Says it looks like Paul’s some kind of international smuggler type. Nothing fancy. Stones, metals. Fencing for pickpockets. Some guns, too. Some drugs. Whatever’s happening.”
“How does Gottlieb get this?”
“He’s been busted—Paul, I mean. In Morocco and again in France. He’s even wanted for questioning in a pornography case out of Boston.”
“Charming guy.”
“Kind of elusive, as I understand it,” Lansing said. “Escape artist-type. In Morocco, they actually had him in prison. One of those little stone boxes where people draw pictures of windows on the walls for twenty years and then die. Eat the bagel, Wells.”
I ate the bagel. “Urph?” I said.
“So one day they walk in, he’s gone. No tunnel. No hole in the wall. Just gone. Three guards lost their jobs over it. He beat the gendarmes, too. In France. That’s where they keep the gendarmes. And the cops in Boston still can’t figure out how he got away. Even Interpol’s had him cornered a number of times. He’s pretty impressive.”
“He’s never met Gottlieb.”
“That seems to be Gottlieb’s attitude. Speaking of which, he says you’re supposed to come in and look at some mug shots. He says the guy who beat you up is probably some kind of international hired-gun type. Hard to ID, but it’s worth a shot.”
“We beat each other up.”
Lansing let that pass. “Gottlieb says Holloway and Wexler are being helpful not at all so anything you can do would be appreciated.”
“Yeah, I talked to Wexler this morning. He wouldn’t give me anything either.”
“You talked to Wexler? What for?”
I shrugged as casually as I could. “Background,” I said. “I might do a piece on Colt after the funeral.”
Lansing straightened. Her high white cheeks turned red. “Back off it, Wells,” she said. “It’s mine.”
I was taken aback. “Boy, McKay was right about your mood.”
“McKay’s an idiot. Just stay off my story.”
Now I began to be a tad peeved. “Your story? The guy got killed right in front of me.”
“That’s right,” she snapped, “and the killer saw you.”
“So what?”
“So just keep a goddamned low profile, okay?”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“If you get killed on this, Wells, so help me, I’ll be really, really mad.”
We glared at each other for a second. “Get out of here,” I mumbled, turning from her to the paper on my desk. “I’m busy with Corlies Park. Trying to find out what the Times did with it, for crying out loud. They’re burying this stuff, I swear it. I think they’re sleeping with these people over there.”
I continued to mutter to myself until I heard Lansing shift behind me. “Just eat your goddamned bagel, Wells,” she said. When I sneaked a look, she was gone.
I went back to work. It was slow going. There were no big breaks to be had. It would take me all day just to leapfrog over the News with a few new details of my own. I took a new tack, running down a few old rumors about Giotto, the mobster who’d gotten the contract for the playground. I was on the phone so long I felt my ear was welded to the receiver.
Around three that afternoon, McKay returned. He thumped a paper bag on my desk.
“What am I, an underprivileged nation? What is this?” I said.
“A BLT,” said McKay. “Lansing says eat it or she’ll kill your cat.”
“I don’t have a cat.”
“She says she’ll buy you a cat and then kill it. She’ll name it Scruffy.”
“Man,” I said, “she’s tough.”
I exhumed the sandwich, bit into it. Leaned my head back and stared at the ceiling, chewing.
McKay sat on top of the papers on top of my desk. “You look beat,” he said.
“I thought I looked like shit.”
“You look like beat shit.”
I chewed a while. “You ever think about birdcages?” I said.
“What, you mean, like, the lining thereof?”
“Yeah.”
“Sure. You bust your ass, you get it, you write it, you print it. Next day, they use it to line birdcages. Or wrap fish. Who doesn’t think about that?”
“Doesn’t bother you? Good writer like you? You could write books.”
“I’ll write books.”
I nodded. “Sure you will,” I said. I took another bite of the sandwich, closed my eyes. I hardly had the energy to chew. I was beat, like the man said. I opened my eyes. The fluorescents made them ache. “I’ll bet Colt would’ve written books,” I said. “Good books.”
“Hell,” said McKay, “you’ll write books, too.”
I laughed. “I don’t even read books.”
He pushed off my desk. “Nowadays, that’s not a problem.”
When he was gone, I finished the sandwich. I smoked a cigarette. I smoked another. Finally I turned to the papers scattered on the desk before me. With a sigh I gathered my notes on Corlies Park. I began to assemble them into a story. There wasn’t much to work with. I’d gotten a guy in Ciccelli’s office to give me a little on their investigations into Giotto’s construction company. If I led with it, it would look like we’d gotten something new the News had missed. I could do to them, in other words, exactly what they’d done to me.
I started writing it. My typewriter clacked loudly in the room filled with quiet keyboards. It was routine stuff. The background was copied straight out of my original story. My mind drifted as I copied it. It drifted to Colt. I thought about him writing books. He would’ve done it, too. He would’ve written the books that I would never write. The stuff I wrote would just keep lining birdcages.
My mind drifted on. It drifted to Eleanora. I thought about her moving among her refugees, whispering to them. What was her voice like, I wondered. English, Wexler had said. Did she have one of those sweet, melodic British voices you hear in the movies? Deborah Kerr, that sort of thing. When you saw her—when Colt saw her—walking among the sick and suffering, did he suddenly feel there was something more to life? Something better than lining birdcages?
I finished the story around five o’clock. Around 5:01, all hell broke loose.
It started with a shout from the city desk.
“Lansing!”
I had just gotten up to bring my story to the editor. I was in the aisle when Lansing came tearing out of her cubicle across the room. She had her purse strapped over one shoulder, a camera strapped over the other. She was wearing a tight wool dress, dark green, with a skirt that flared. It lifted from her legs as she stepped briskly toward the desk. Re
porters, editors, and copyboys stopped in the aisles to watch.
She was halfway to the desk when she called out to Rafferty: “Got him?”
Rafferty’s old, bald, bullet-shaped head nodded in imperturbable calm. “Maybe,” he said—quietly, but so it carried to her. “Just heard a call over the scanner. There’s a raid on at Thirtieth and Madison, the Hotel Lincoln. Thought I heard Paul’s name. We’re calling on it.”
Lansing changed directions. She headed toward the glass doors. The reporters, editors, and copyboys watched her green skirt. “I don’t want to wait,” she called over her shoulder. “I wanna be there. Get me on the two-way if you get it confirmed.”
I walked up to our medical reporter, a guy named Vaughn. I stuffed my story into his hands.
“Stop drooling and give that to Rafferty,” I said. I left him there staring and ran after Lansing. I caught up with her as she threw the big glass door open. I held it for her, followed her out to the elevators.
We stood next to each other, waiting for the doors to open. Lansing did not turn. She pressed her lips together. She tapped her foot angrily.
The elevator bell rang. The door slid back. The box was empty. We got on, pressed the button. We watched the arrow above the door sweep toward one.
“Why are you doing this?” she said.
“Because I was there, Lansing. And hell, if he wants to find me, I’m in the book.”
She bit her lip. The elevator touched down. “Okay,” she said.
Even before the door fully opened, we were hurrying through the lobby to the street.
Lansing’s car was parked in the press section just out front on Vanderbilt. She drove a Honda Accord, a semisnazzy hatchback, all red. She had her keys out of her purse as she came around the driver’s side. She let herself in and leaned over to snap open the passenger door for me.
It was rush hour. It was dark. Up in front of us, we could see the glaring lights of the traffic packed tight on Forty-second Street around Grand Central. We could hear the horns as motionless cars fought for space amidst motionless city buses. The cold purple of the evening air seemed to shimmer with the rising exhaust.
On one side of Vanderbilt, the stream of cars flowed slowly but steadily toward the logjam up ahead. On the other side, sparser traffic zipped toward Forty-fifth. Lansing turned the key in the ignition, flicked on the headlights. She hit the gas and made the engine roar. With one fluid motion, she looked over her shoulder, put the car in gear, turned the wheel, and shot out into the street.