Image Imperfect
by
Bob Bowersox
(Chapters 1-4, 32-34)
PROLOGUE
It was a bitch of a curve, hidden on the far side of a rise in the road.
The driver didn't know it was there until he was well into it, and then it was too
late. Once over the rise, the only indication of direction was a ghostly line of
faded hashmarks curling down the center of the two-lane blacktop, barely
visible in the headlights. The road surface sloped down to the left while the
curve went sharply to the right. It would have been hard to handle at ten miles
an hour, much less forty-five. The car slumped hard onto its left front tire as
the driver overreacted, careening to the right, then back left, clumsily
fishtailing through the curve. The high-pitched squeal of the tires on the damp
macadam counterpointed the low, dull thump of the body being tossed around
in the trunk.
"Jesus Christ I Slow down! You're going to kill us driving like this.”
The driver glanced at his passenger, whose arms were extended and
braced against the dashboard. Even in the dim green wash of the instrument
lights, he could see fear in the eyes. He didn't expect to see that. Not in those
eyes, anyway.
The driver leaned forward over the wheel as he searched the road
ahead. He spoke to the windshield.
"My driving isn't the problem here,” he said, a note of contempt in his
voice. "The guy in the trunk is, and we don't have a lot of time to deal with it.
We screw this up and the cops and newspapers crucify everybody.”
He sat back as he saw what he was looking for, and let the car drift
onto the gravel shoulder.
"Killing both of us would probably save a lot of trouble, when you think
about it,” the driver continued. "But with my luck, I'd survive and be left to
explain everything, and that's one thing I'll be damned if I'll do.”
The stones popped and cracked under the tires as the car rolled to a
stop, sounding like muffled gunshots, disturbing the quiet of the country dusk.
The driver cut the engine and sat back, listening. No sound. Good. It was as
deserted as he remembered it. He glanced up at the rearview mirror, then out
at the wing mirrors on both sides. The road ahead was clear for a mile: he
could see that. What he couldn't see was back around the curve behind him.
That could be trouble. It would definitely not be a good thing for someone to
come around there at the wrong time.
"Screw it,” he said. "The longer we sit here, the more problems we
have to deal with. Let's do this.”
The passenger closed his eyes tightly, and let his head drop back to the
headrest, trying to wish everything away. He sighed deeply, rolling his head
from side to side.
"Get the hell out of the car,” the driver said, angry at his passenger's
hesitation. "This is your problem we're solving here.”
The passenger's eyes opened and looked back at the driver. The fear
was gone from them, replaced by a heavy despair that seemed to want to pull
them closed again. He nodded once and opened the passenger side door,
The driver went quickly to the trunk and opened it. The passenger
hesitated by the rear fender, his arms crossed over his chest. The evening air
was cooling quickly, and he could see the misty beginnings of ground fog
snaking like smoke across the small meadow beside the car and on the field
across the road. A chill ran up his back and made him shudder. It might have
been the air, but he knew it wasn't.
"Where......?” he said.
"Right here,” the driver said, pointing at the edge of the road where the
gravel gave way to the damp meadow grass. "It's as good a place as any.”
They reached into the trunk, the driver at one end, his passenger at the
other. The body was small, and wrapped in a rough wool blanket. It was
lighter than the driver imagined it would be, though awkward. They dragged it
over the lip of the trunk, and let it fall to the road. The sound was not unlike a
bag of peat moss being dropped on a driveway.
"Get the blanket off,” the driver said.
They pulled at the edge of the blanket, unrolling it as if they were
spreading a carpet across a floor. It rolled twice before the body flopped onto
the pavement, the legs spiraled around one another, the arms twisted under
the torso. In the near dark, the blood that covered the right side of the head
and shoulder looked black.
"Jesus,” the passenger said, bringing a hand to his mouth.
The driver looked behind him, into the curve, then forward down the
road. He studied the darkness a moment, letting his peripheral vision search
the far edges of the meadow and field, nearly lost in the charcoal backdrop of
trees and brush. Satisfied they were still alone, he turned his attention back to
the man at his side, whose eyes had never left the body.
He touched the man's shoulder. "Get back in the car,” he said.
“We're just going to leave him?”
"Kind of. Come on. Get in the car. We're running out of time here.”
The driver fired the engine, and put the car into gear. He moved forty
feet forward, then dropped into reverse. He turned in his seat and looked out
the back window, hesitating a moment. Then he set his jaw, and gunned the
engine.
The car jerked backwards, kicking gravel into the headlights in front of
it. The passenger's hands went to the dashboard again, bracing against the
unexpected direction. They covered the forty feet in less than five seconds. The
car jumped twice as the wheels crossed the body.
The driver braked fifty feet back. He jammed the gearshift into drive
and gunned the engine again. The car lurched forward and hit the body harder
this time, violently twisting it with both wheel impacts. It rolled across the
shoulder of the road and onto the meadow grass, grotesquely bent and broken.
The driver didn't stop to check it. He didn't need to. He knew it would
look the way he wanted it to. He swung the car through a wide U-turn, and
headed back the way he came. This time he was ready for the curve,
accelerating into it. The tires hardly squealed, and there was no sound at all
from the trunk.
1
The hotel ballroom was a woodcarver's paradise. It was an overdone,
turn-of-the-century room with a two-story ceiling covered with ornate, circular
carvings over which gold leaf had been applied. The walls were lined with tall
mirrors bracketed with carved cherubs under carved trees, spilling baskets of
carved grapes into pools with carved mermaids frolicking in them. The heavy
oak doors were twelve feet high and paneled, each panel a shadowbox of an
intricately hand-cut scene from ancient mythology. Even the mahogany
handrails along the marble steps leading from the lobby were hand-sculpted
grapevines entwined around their brass supports. I was thinking how some
fortunate woodcarver would have no problem with job security if he could
land just one ballroom gig like this.
I should have been thinking about the speech that was echoing around
this tribute to craftsmanship. Senator Jefferson Harper was firing another salvo
in his bid for re-election, and we dutiful members of the Fourth Estate were
there to hang on his every word. The television crews were lined up in front of
the podium, which was unusual, given that Harper had been over an hour late,
and their deadline was fast approaching. I'd expected them to have packed it in
by now, but they'd hung in there.
So had I, for that matter. This, too, was unusual, given my historical
impatience with anything political.
Harper had skillfully apologized for his tardiness upon his arrival. "The
business of politics can't always be punctual,” he'd said, "but it will eventually
come through for you in the end. At least it will the way I practice it.”
Uh-huh. Nice spin, pal. Bullshit, but smooth. Maybe I'll use it the next
time I miss a deadline.
My cynicism wasn't shared. The loyal throngs had immediately shown
forgiveness in the form of cheers and applause. Harper had then launched into
his Law and Order speech. He'd been holding forth for about ten minutes,
enough time for what he was saying to turn to wordzak and my mind to start
wandering.
But that was OK. I wasn't there to boil down what he'd said; that would
be left to the television reporters and their soundbites. I was there to give John
Q. Public an inside look at why Harper said what he said, and who decided
he'd say it. I had the luxury of reporting in print, with the Philadelphia
Examiner generously handing me as much space as I wanted for a series on the
pithy insides of campaign politics. I had no time constraints. So today's exact
words didn't matter all that much. Which left me time for the luxury of
considering ballroom art.
I was standing along the periphery of an arc of reporters,
photographers, the television camera crews, and political groupies. We
occupied a small area cordoned off from a crowd of about eighteen hundred of
the faithful. Harper was on a small dias in front of us that stood centered on
one wall of the room. There was an obvious bodyguard at each corner of
the platform, arms folded across their chests, feet spread and planted,
monuments to testosterone. Their eyes swept from side to side, never
looking away from the crowd. They reminded me of Caesar's carved marble
lions.
The Senator stood behind a small lectern, looking over a tangle of
microphones. His left arm was stretched out and leaning on the lectern, his
right hand in his right pocket. He wore a dark blue, three-piece suit with a
light pinstripe, a white shirt, a bright red power tie and matching pocket
square. Image perfect.
"This is not the country I grew up in as a boy,” he was saying. "I was
not afraid to walk down the street. I didn't fear being caught in the middle
of some drug pusher's turf war. Children weren't being shot on their front
doorsteps.”
He paused a beat to let the drama of his words set the mood. The
visuals helped. Centered in the brilliance of a spotlight's beam, he was the
epitome of what we think a senator should look like: tall and slim, but with
broad shoulders held straight with good posture. He had an angular face,
with high cheekbones and a solid jaw, but the hardness of the angles was
softened by a ready and easy grin. His eyes were green and spirited, his hair
dark, though he had the distinguished wings of grey over the temples that
we take as a sign of wisdom these days His voice was strong and confident,
not pushy, but emphatic.
"Corruption wasn't the norm, but the exception,” Harper continued,
the mood set. "Organizations to me were the Boy Scouts, or the Knights of
Columbus, not international cartels whose reason for being is the
destruction of the fabric this country's woven over the last 200 years. No, this
is definitely not the country I grew up in.”
A smattering of applause rose from one corner of the crowd off to my
right. It came from a knot of young ladies looking at one another and
enthusiastically nodding their heads. Their faces beamed as they looked back
at Harper, their hero. The applause caught on and moved rapidly through the
crowd. The cynic in me wondered if the girls were plants -- modern-day shills
in a game of political three-card monty.
"Frankly,” Harper continued as the applause tapered off, "I don't want
to hand over what our fathers and their fathers before them have left us to
protect. I believe we have an obligation to them, to make sure that the basic
freedoms they left us will be intact when we leave them to our children.”
He pulled his right hand out of his pocket and began to tap the lectern
with his index finger.
"Rampant crime in our streets and corruption in our institutions are
tearing these freedoms from our grasp one by one, and, by God, I will not let it
continue.” His voice became more forceful. "It's one of the reasons I went to
Washington in the first place, to represent you, and your needs and desires, to
make your voice heard in the halls of government. I've made that my sole
purpose for the last eleven and a half years And as long as you see fit to return
me to that office, I will do everything in my power to see that your freedoms
remain intact. It is my promise and my pledge to you. Thank you. And God
Bless America!"
It was the big finish, and the girls on the right made sure we all knew it.
The high school band that had been parked against the back wall of the
ballroom struck up a rousing political march, and the crowd began clapping in
time with the beat, shouting "Har-per! Har-per! Har-per!”
Jesus. Politics. I looked around the room and momentarily questioned
the wisdom in my decision to take the Harper campaign series, my opinion of
politicians being what it was. I pushed the second-guesses out of my mind.
The alternatives were worse. Make the best of it.
Harper stood back from the lectern and raised his arms in the classic
victory pose that I remembered from the Nixon days. He looked better than
Tricky Dick did, but who wouldn't? He had a prettier wife, too, if that's who
the blonde holding his hand and smiling broadly was. These days, it's a
fifty-fifty shot.
I began weaving my way through the cameras, wires and trenchcoats
toward an exit door off to the left of the dias. I knew that was where Harper
and his entourage would be leaving the rally, and I was to join them there for a
quick elevator ride to the Senator's suite eighteen floors up.
As I neared the door, a short, round man ran to my side and fell into
step with me. He had two cameras hanging around his neck, and a large canvas
bag riding on his hip. An English skimmer was pulled down across his
eyebrows.
"Hey, Cross -- what's up?” he said. "You got somethin’ on with Harper,
right? I'm supposed to grab some shots for ya.”
"Well, Jay Fitch! As I live and breathe. I'm honored they sent me
someone who knows how to load a camera.”
His face twisted in mock pain
"Aw, gimme a break, Nick. You hotshot writers started as college
interns too, you know. The kid was nervous. It was his first time out -- he just
grabbed the first camera on the bench without checking for film. Besides, he
went back and got the shots before deadline for you. He'll be okay if you don't
sweat him too hard.”
Fitch was about five-ten, with a full beard, and dirty blond hair that
needed a trim. Most of the time he stood a little stooped, pulled forward and
down by the weight of his cameras. He was the top photographer at the
Examiner, and you never had to worry about the art complementing your story
if he shot it. Truth be told, sometimes he did a better job in one photo than
some writers did in sixty inches. Problem was, every writer wanted him for
their story, and there were fifty stories a day that needed shots, so sometimes
you got less than the best, Sometimes you got the college interns.
But I lucked out tonight Or I should say Harper lucked out. Fitch will
make him look great,
"Yeah, yeah, okay,” I said. "Maybe you're right and the kid'll turn out
to be Ansel Adams. You've got film in the camera tonight, though, right?” I
smiled.
"You're tough, Cross,” he said, smiling back, "You're very tough. I
liked you a whole lot better when you could get me a free meal at The Striped
Bass or Suzanna Foo's. Maybe you shoulda stayed on the restaurant desk.”
"I'd be dead by now if I'd stayed there, Jay, and you know it. Ate too
much, drank too much, weighed too much. That's a bad beat for a man who
loves food, and I never met a forkful I didn't love like a brother.”
Fitch smiled, and hiked the bag on his shoulder, "Yeah, well. Just the
same. I miss those days. We ate well when you wrote the reviews.”
"Ancient history," I said, thinking how fast nearly twenty years had
gone
by.
We got to the door before Harper and his staff did. I leaned against the
doorjamb and folded my arms across my chest, and watched Fitch start to do
his dance. Harper was still about fifty feet away and moving slowly toward us,
shaking hands and exchanging greetings with the crowd. Fitch was already
shooting. He grabbed one of the cameras around his neck, crouched and fired
off several shots, then sprang up, moved a couple of steps to his right, grabbed
another camera and fired off a few more. He shot several horizontals from low
angles, then stretched himself as high as he could and shot a few verticals.
"Hey, Jay," I said toward Fitch. I had to raise my voice to be heard over
the hoopla in the room. "You ought to do those high verticals more often. You
grow about three inches when you take them."
He nodded, another pained look on his face, then turned to shoot some
more. He paused, went up for a vertical, then turned and gave me a grin and a
wink.
As Harper approached, a striking young woman emerged from the sea
of bodies around him, sidestepped Fitch and walked toward me, her hand
outstretched. I smiled automatically, hoping she was reaching for me.
"You're Nick Cross," she said matter-of-factly as she shook my hand.
"I'm Lauren Carpenter, Senator Harper's public relations director. Glad you
could make it." She had a firm handshake. One point for her.
"Thanks for accommodating us," I said. "I've always wanted to do a
story like this." I wasn't exactly telling the truth, but ingratiation is an art form
I learned in college and practiced religiously. "You have a game plan here?"
"Yes, I do. But I think it would be better to introduce you upstairs. It's a
little crazy down here. Why don't we go on ahead. The Senator will join us in a
moment, and you two can get acquainted. You'll be spending a lot of time
together in the next couple of months if things work out."
I nodded and she led the way through the exit door and down a small
corridor. It led to a single-door service elevator. She pushed the button and
stepped back.
"Have you covered many campaigns, Mr. Cross?"
"Call me Nick, and yeah, I've covered my share, from about late Carter
on. Not so much lately though. I've been doing the metro stuff for quite a
while."
"Covering what?"
"Police, fire. Hard news, basically "
She looked up at me. "Why the change?"
"Something....happened,” I said, searching for a way to change the
subject. "I just wanted out of that for a while, to focus on one story instead of
trying to balance objective and viewpoint on several at once. Metro's like that
-- you have to keep a lot of balls in the air at the same time. It can get to you
after awhile. So when this came up, I took it"
"You interested in politics, then?"
I let a smile cross my face as I looked from the elevator's blinking floor
indicator to her. "No, not really. To tell you the truth, politicians and
campaigns have all looked kind of the same to me. But the premise for this
series intrigued me. I thought it might be a novel approach to campaign
coverage."
"Perhaps we can change your opinion of campaigns," she said, a subtle
smile indicating she felt confident she would change my mind. "Senator
Harper is not your usual politician. His politics are not of the old school. You
may see some new things in this campaign."
The elevator door slid open and I held it with my left hand while she
stepped into the small compartment. As I followed her, I said, half to myself,
"'Most politicians have no politics. They are made entirely by the
circumstances of their career.'"
"Excuse me?"
"Uh...G.K. Chesterton. Something he wrote a while back about
politicians and politics. It’s not important.”
She smiled again. "G.K. Chesterton should have met Senator Harper,”
she said.
She tapped the button for eighteen, and the door slid closed. I was
leaning against the railing at the back of the cab, slightly behind her. I let my
eyes fall over her.
She was at least five-nine, maybe five-ten, slim and small-boned. An
oval face framed beautifully balanced features. She had dark, almost black
hair, gathered and worn up in a smooth turn on top of her head. Very
professional. Her red, two-piece skirted suit fit tight around a body that made
me guilty just looking at it. I was glad I was behind her and not facing her
electric blue eyes. She'd have seen every thought crossing my mind.
A bell chime brought me out of my carnal reverie, and the elevator
door opened onto the eighteenth floor.
“
After you," I said
She smiled, stepped in front of me, and led me to the Executive Suite at
the end of the hall. She pulled one of those cardboard keys with the holes in it
from her pocket, opened the door and stepped aside.
"After you," she said, and gave me that slight smile again. Liberated, I
thought to myself. Another point for her.
The suite was bigger than my entire apartment, and without question
better appointed. Large sitting area with plush couch and chairs, dining room
and wet bar, balcony, two bedrooms. I suddenly felt underpaid.
"The campaign's doing well, I take it," I said.
"This is special," she said. "We try not to be extravagant But
Philadelphia's the center of the campaign here in Pennsylvania, and we have a
lot of meetings in town. We figure a good impression can't hurt, so we justify
the expense. Would you like a drink?"
"Sure, why not? Crown Royal, if you have it. On the rocks."
She started to walk behind the bar, but stopped and pointed at a low
cabinet along the side wall of the suite. "There's some food over here on the
sideboard, if you're hungry. Some sandwiches, dip and chips, that kind of
thing."
I took a quick look. A hundred thousand calories was spread in front of
me, wrapped up in the Bellevue's classic forms of tuna, ham, and chicken
salad, potato chips and onion dip. They made their salads with big chunks of
meat and onion, and sweetened them up with just a touch of sweet pickle
relish, if I remembered correctly. Fabulous stuffed in a tomato. A few years
ago, I'd have been all over it. I forced myself to turn away and followed her to
the bar.
"No thanks," I said. "Watching the diet these days."
"You look fine to me,” she said over her shoulder, smiling. Great smile.
She walked behind the bar and opened one of the cabinets to reveal
what appeared to be an exceptionally-stocked bar. Almost exceptional.
"There doesn't seem to be any Crown... whatever,” she said. "Will V.O.
do?”
"In a pinch,”I said.
She made my drink, poured herself a glass of white wine, and came out
from behind the bar. We walked to the table and had just sat down when we
heard several voices in the hallway. The door to the suite opened and Harper
strode through, followed by two politicos in suits, two bodyguards and Fitch.
He immediately removed his suit jacket and began unbuttoning his vest as he
crossed the room to the bar. He was pumped, the energy of the crowd still with
him.
"Nice crowd, wasn't it?" he said to the room in general, and then,
without waiting for an answer, "How do you think they took the speech?
What's the early feeling on the floor?"
"So far as we can tell, it's positive," said one of the two suits, who
joined Harper at the bar, sliding onto one of the barstools. He picked up the
phone, cradling the receiver on his shoulder while he thumbed through a small
book he pulled from his jacket pocket. He was average height, a little thick in
the middle, with light hair balding from the front. Tired eyes punctuated a
reddish, doughy face. His custom-tailored suit was rumpled and had lost its
shape.
"The crowd was definitely with you," he said. "We'll see how the press
handles it in tomorrow's papers."
"Why don't you ask them right now?" Lauren said. She stood and
walked to the Senator. "Senator Harper, I'd like you to meet Nick Cross of the
Philadelphia Examiner. Mr Cross, Senator Jefferson Harper."
I stood and took the couple of steps to the bar. Harper came from
behind it and we shook hands.
"Glad to meet you, Nick. Lauren speaks very highly of your work -says you have a way of cutting through all the bullshit. Good trait to have. We
could use more of that in the Senate."
"You weren't mincing any words out there tonight, Senator," I said.
"I was trying not to. I believe this country's in trouble and we'd better
start calling it like it is if we're going to fix it." He nodded toward Lauren.
"You've met Lauren, of course. This is Bill Guitings, my campaign manager,"
indicating the man at the bar, still on the phone We nodded at each other.
"Over there is Bob Tracey, my chief of staff, and the big guys are Ron Vickers
and Mark Forschner, necessary evils in a world gone mad."
I nodded at the three men across the room. Tracey, the other man in a
suit, said "Hi," sat down on the couch and opened a newspaper. The two
bodyguards smiled mechanically. Fitch went to the balcony and sat in one of
the wrought iron chairs. His work for the evening was finished.
Harper, drink in hand, dropped himself into an easy chair and loosened
his tie. He shoved a hassock out of the way with his right foot, then crossed his
legs. "So what did you think, Mr. Cross? Gonna vote for me?"
"Maybe. I think you had a lot of folks on your side tonight. I think you
impressed them. Law and order works these days. As for voting...well, I'm a
last minute guy, actually -- make my decisions standing in the booth. You got
my vote last time, but things have changed in six years, Senator. The world's a
different place."
"Yes, it is. It certainly is." He took a long pull on his drink without
taking his eyes off of me. "So what can we do for you, Nick? As you can
imagine, my schedule is going to be nuts from now on. We've got about two
months left in this campaign, and time is getting tough to find. In fact, I've got
to be on a train back to Washington in a few minutes."
'Twenty-eight minutes," Guitings said over his shoulder, still curled
around the phone at the bar.
"Twenty-eight minutes," Harper said, smiling at Lauren, then looking
back at me. "My point is, what is it you're looking into here?"
"I'm interested in how a campaign looks from the inside as it comes
down to the wire," I said. "We always see what you want us to see, Senator:
the sound bites, the quick stops for photo opportunities, the packaged quotes
through press secretaries. The public side's all starting to sound the same -- no
offense -- so much so that I think the public's numbed to most of it. I want to
hang around in rooms like these -- the back rooms where the strategy is
formed, where you evaluate and re-evaluate, act and react, plot your moves. I
want to see why you make those moves, I want to see the motivations, the
planning. Frankly, I'm working on the premise that politics isn't what we think
it is anymore, that it's another animal somehow, and I think we need to know
what that animal is."
"We run a straight-up campaign here. No games....."
Lauren came to the center of the room. "I'm sure that Nick wasn't
implying anything like that, Senator. I think he's more interested in writing
about the enormous undertaking that mounting a campaign for high office can
be, and how it's accomplished in this high-tech world of ours." She was
looking at me the whole time she spoke. Her eyes definitely sent a message:
now's not the time.
"More or less, that's it," I said, taking the hint. "I want to write about
the process, the players. The politics are almost incidental."
I didn't believe that for a minute, but Lauren was right. This wasn't the
time to get into it. Personally, I'd begun to believe that politics wasn't about
leadership at all anymore. It's become a business, with power as its currency,
control as its profit. Once inside the arena, the game becomes more
perpetuation of the position than representation of the electorate. But we'd
have to see. Harper seemed like a nice-enough guy. Keep an open mind here,
Cross.
Harper came to Lauren's side, facing me. He took a deep breath, held it
a moment, then grinned his trademark grin.
"Sure, okay, I, uh...I guess I'm just a little gunshy about the press. I've
been bitten a couple of times by some pretty zealous writers. Sorry to
pre-judge you."
Guitings hung up the phone, turned to us and hopped off the barstool.
Harper motioned toward him with his drink.
"Look, it's up to Bill and Lauren here. I'll go along with whatever they
think."
"I'm not comfortable with it," Bill Guitings said. "It's kind of like
inviting the fox into the henhouse, if you ask me. No offense here, Mr Cross,
but I've never been one to trust the motives of the press You're usually more
trouble than help.”
I grinned, and tried to look mischievous. I was a second short of
proving Guitings right by saying something incendiary, but Lauren Carpenter
cut into the conversation by flashing an arresting smile. It was as effective as a
shout, catching everyone's attention. I was impressed.
"I think we ought to take a more positive view, Bill,” she said, stepping
to the center of the room, as comfortable as a diva delivering an aria. "Think of
the image it will give Jeff. By having the press inside the campaign -everything above the waterline, all out in the open -- we generate the image for
Jeff of a man with absolutely nothing to hide. No skeletons. No clandestine
agenda. All we ask of you, Nick, is that you realize that there may be times
that what you see and hear will be confidential, for obvious reasons." She
looked back at Harper. "I don't really see a problem here, Jeff."
"Fine,” Harper said. Guitings grunted and turned back to the phone.
I was about to set a few parameters of my own when a cell phone began
ringing. Guitings, Lauren, the bodyguard by the balcony doors, Fitch and I all
reached for our phones at once.
"Whose is it?" Guitings said.
"It's mine,” I said. "My editor calling. Excuse me for a moment?"
"If you don't mind,” Harper said, “I'd like to get cleaned up before that train
ride. Nice to meet you, Nick. I'm looking forward to talking more with you."
"Me too, Senator. Me too." He shook my hand and walked into one of
the bedrooms. Tracey folded his newspaper, got up and followed him into the
room, closing the door.
I flipped open my phone and checked the number.. It was the direct line
to the city editor at the Examiner. This time of night that would be Charlie
Taunton. I punched the button and put the phone to my ear.
"Taunton here," he said after the first ring.
"You should let it ring a couple more times, Charlie -- we scribes get
the impression you're desperate when you answer like that."
"I am desperate, Cross Writers make me desperate. Especially this time
of night."
It was almost ten o'clock. Charlie was three hours from deadline.
"Where are you?"
"In a suite on the eighteenth floor of the Bellevue. I just hooked up with
Harper."
"You just got together with him? Why the hell so late?"
"He's on campaign time, Charlie, you know what I mean? Gotta kiss
every baby, shake every hand. Ever meet a politician who was on time?"
"Can't say I have. Fitch with you?"
I turned and looked across the suite at the balcony. Fitch was leaning
back in one of the wrought iron chairs, his right leg propped up on another.
The slightest of breezes pushed the gauzy curtains into the suite, as if the room
were inhaling.
"Yeah, he's here," I said, "working hard as usual."
"Good. I got something I need covered, Nick. It just came in. You and
Fitch gotta handle it."
"Oh, no," I said. "No way. I'm exclusive on this Harper thing now -- no
more handling three stories at once. You agreed. I'm off the streets. Get
Williams, or one of the sports guys."
"Nobody's free, Nick. And it's not their arena, anyway. I need you to
handle it. I got a body in the middle of a road in Bryn Mawr. Hit and run, but it
sounds like they aren't sure. They're talkin’ like the guy might have been
intentionally splattered."
"No, Charlie. I told you -- no more. After Carlito..."
"Carlito wasn't your fault, Nick. He was betrayed by his own brother.
You gotta get past that one."
"It was me who sent him in there, Charlie.”
"It goes with the territory, Nick. I told you that eighteen years ago
when you came to me wanting to move to hard news from the food reviews
and what's new at the zoo. I told you there were going to be tougher decisions
to make than what wine to have with dinner. You accepted that, you said. So
live with it. You did what you thought was right. No one holds it against you."
I wanted to shut the phone, shut off the conversation, push the
memories away from me. But I knew I wouldn't. So did Taunton.
"And now I gotta do what I have to," he said, "which is send you out to
Bryn Mawr. Just one more time. It's your metier, Cross. You know all those
guys in homicide and the M.E.'s office. It’ll be quick and easy for you. So
handle it, will you? Don't hand me any grief about it."
He took my silence for acquiescence. "It's just off the Main Line, on
Bryn Mawr Avenue, about three miles down. You got two, two-and-a-half
hours. You can make the morning edition if you get on it right now."
“
Aw, Charlie..." I heard a click on the line. "Charlie? Damn!"
He'd gotten me with that move too many times, and every time he did, I
swore I'd hang up first the next time. I was just never quite fast enough.
I put my phone back in my pocket and turned to Bill Guitings and
Lauren Carpenter.
"I have to go. Something's come up. Where can I hook up with you?"
Lauren stood. She straightened her skirt briefly by running her hands
over her hips and down the sides of her legs. I felt guilt rising again. She really
was striking, even in the low light of the suite. If I'd been honest with myself,
I'd have admitted right then that I was as interested in seeing her again as I was
in hanging out with a Senator.
"We're looking forward to having you aboard, Nick,” Lauren said.
"We'll be in Washington for the next day or two, then we'll be back in town.
I'm thinking maybe we can get together for a lunch early next week, go over
some of the things we weren't able to get straight tonight."
I nodded.
"Our next strategy session won't be until the end of next week," she
said. "That would be the best time for you to join us on a more regular basis.
Prior to
that meeting, I'll have biographical material sent to you, as well as any
campaign materials that we used last time and any that we've put together for
this campaign."
"Fine," I said. "Just send it to the paper with my name on it. It'll get to
me."
I went to the balcony.
"Come on, Jay. Father Taunton's got a live one for us."
Fitch got out of the wrought iron chair, and smoothly slipped his
camera case onto his shoulder. It was a move he'd made ten thousand times.
He followed me to the main door of the suite.
"So long," I said to Mark the bodyguard, as he opened the door.
"Good night, Mr Cross," he said. The scent of garlic was heavy on his
breath.
"Eat Italian tonight, Mark?" I said, as we went into the hall. "Maybe
DiLullo's? Smells like his marinara."
He just smiled and closed the door behind us.
2
Bryn Mawr is one in a string of small suburban burgs that lie in a line
along Route 30, northwest of center city Philadelphia. Route 30 is also known
as Lancaster Avenue, or more often, the Main Line. The townships have
names like Wynnewood, Ardmore, Rosemont, Radnor, Villanova. They're full
of antique and art galleries, rare book and coin stores, and high fashion
boutiques. Rich, exclusive, upper crust, no litter. Lots of executive floor V.P.s,
neurosurgeons, shrinks, old money. One aspires to move to Bryn Mawr, but
it's a lot better if you're born there.
Fitch and I had left the Bellevue, shot out Market Street across the
Schuykill River and picked up Lancaster Avenue near Drexel University. We
were in Fitch's ‘83 Pontiac Bonneville station wagon. Nice car, if you like
boats that belch oil fumes and sound like an unmufflered Harley.
"We're gonna get arrested in this thing someday," I said.
Fitch comically arched his right eyebrow at my seeming disrespect.
"Don't knock my machine, man. It gets me where I have to go,
and nobody ever messes with it. I’ve left thousand dollar cameras in the back
overnight and they’ve been there in the morning.”
"Uh-huh. All the same, I think it's pretty ballsy of you to be driving it
right up to a bunch of cops tonight. Kind of like taunting the lion, if you ask
me."
Fitch chuckled and shrugged his shoulders in a silent "ce la vie." He
was one of the most easygoing guys I'd ever worked with, and impossible to
get a rise out of, even just kidding around. Steady under fire. A good trait for a
news photographer.
It was humid for September. The air was thick and damp, and difficult
to inhale, and it sat on your skin like a veil. The pavement looked wet, and
misty halos hung around the street lights like iridescent cotton balls suspended
over the Main Line. It wasn't late by nightlife standards, but there were few
people out. If I didn't have to be, I wouldn't have been either. Heavy air and I
don't mix.
"You ever hear of a vehicular homicide around here?" I said. "I mean,
one where the guy was purposely run down?"
"Naw," Fitch said. "Too messy for these folks. They get real uptight
about litter on the streets. You know who the guy was?"
"Huh-uh. Taunton just told me where to go. I figure most of the law
enforcement community in Bryn Mawr will be there to reassure the hoi polloi.
When we see the red gumballs twirling, we'll know we're there."
I wasn't far from wrong. Bryn Mawr Avenue ran south from the Main
Line, near the western Bryn Mawr township line. It was a winding, tree-lined
drive, flanked on both sides by large estates set well back from the road, and
private schools with names like Saint Aloysius Academy, and The Country
Day School of the Sacred Heart. You could sense privilege dripping off of
everything.
About two miles down, we leaned around a sharp curve and came upon
six cruisers, lights ablaze. Three were marked "Township of Bryn Mawr," two
had state insignia and one had a City of Philadelphia logo on the door. They
were parked along the right side of the road. The Medical Examiner's van
straddled the center line about halfway up. Flares lined the road for a couple of
hundred feet.
Fitch pulled the Bonneville up close behind the last cruiser and parked.
He reached over the seat and grabbed his case. He'd never taken the cameras
from around his neck.
We walked toward the ME.'s van. The cruiser's lights made it easy to
see the entire area, but the red glare of the flares in the humidity gave the
scene a bloody glow. A group of men stood five feet off the road across from
the van. Several of them were in uniform. Three were in suits.
Spread on the ground in front of them was a yellow poncho, glistening
with the moisture in the air. It didn't look long enough to cover a body, but I
didn't see anything sticking out from under it. Fitch started shooting as we
approached the area. The cops turned at the first flash. One of the suits moved
toward us.
"Hey! Hey! Knock that off!” he said. He jogged to us with his arms
spread out from his sides, trying to block Fitch's shot. He was about six-two,
lean and broad shouldered. He wore what looked like a brown suit, but the
flares made it hard to tell. His jacket was open and his tie loose an inch or two.
The handle of a revolver was visible under his left arm.
"Who the hell are you guys? What do you think you're doing here?"
Fitch ducked low and to the side and took another shot.
"Hey! I told you to knock it off, asshole!" He grabbed Fitch's arm and
jerked him upright.
"We're from the Examiner, officer," I said. I pulled out my ID. "I'm
Nick Cross. This is my photographer, Jay Fitch. We're here about the hit and
run."
He took my wallet in his free hand and held it high, trying to catch the
headlights from one of the cars. He still had Fitch's arm in a tight grip. Fitch
knew enough to stand still.
"I don't care who the fuck you are," he said, shoving my ID back into
my hands. "This is a crime scene. You're outta here. Now."
I was about to try my ingratiation bit when another of the suits turned
and approached us. I recognized Jack Riggs, a lieutenant from Philadelphia's
center-city Ninth District. Jack and I went back to high school. When I'd gone
to college, he'd gone into the Army, then the Police Academy.
"Hi, Jack," I said. The big cop turned to look at Riggs. "A little far from
home turf, aren't you?"
"Nick," Riggs said in greeting, nodding his head at me, and then to the
cop holding Fitch, "Let him go, Blaisdell. These guys'll be in our hair until we
give 'em what they want. You know that. Better to let 'em get it -- then they'll
get out of the way."
Riggs was about six feet, one-eighty. He had blond hair, cut short on
the sides and back, longish on top, combed straight back. He was in good
shape, trim in a blue blazer, grey slacks and white shirt open at the collar. He
wore his nine millimeter automatic in a shoulder holster hung low over his left
hip.
The big cop looked at Jack for a moment, then let go of Fitch, who
immediately headed for the side of the road, camera firing. The cop turned and
leaned on one of the cruisers with his arms folded across his chest. He kept his
eyes on Fitch. Riggs looked at the cop, then at me and smiled with half his
mouth while rolling his eyes and shaking his head slightly.
He said, "You guys are gonna beat us here one of these days, you know
that?”
"It's Taunton, Jack. He listens to the scanner. You don't want the press,
don't talk on the radio."
Riggs chuckled and sank his hands into his pockets. We started walking
toward the crowd at the side of the road.
"So where you been?” he said. "I was just gettin’ used to being left
alone to do my job."
"Missed me, huh?"
"I didn't say that, bubba. Just wondered why I haven't seen you."
I shrugged. "I think you know why. I just took a break -- needed to
breathe some different air for awhile. Still do. I wasn't even supposed to be on
this, but Taunton wants it for the early edition and I was close. You fill me in,
we'll be gone in five minutes."
"You're gonna have a short story, friend. We don't know much at this
point. Late night jogger sees something by the side of the road, checks it out,
finds our package there. One thing I can tell you, though -- you knew the guy,
I think. Jimmy Scavullo?"
"Jimmy 'Pages'? The bookie?"
"None other."
"I'll be damned. What the hell was he doing way out here in chateau
country?"
Riggs shrugged. "Who knows? Fresh air, maybe?"
"Come on, Jack. Seriously. He hasn't left center city in ten years."
"Neither have I, but here I am."
"Yeah, why's that? This wouldn't have been your call."
"Jimmy was sort of one of ours, if you know what I mean -- center city
guy -- and just between you, me and the pavement, he'd slipped us some
information once in awhile when we needed it. He wasn't one of our regulars,
but he was useful on some things. One of the Staties here used to work for me
downtown and recognized him -- what was left of him, anyway. He gave me a
shout, I took the ride."
As we got to the body, the M.E. was pulling back the yellow poncho.
He was fat and having a tough time bending over so one of the uniformed cops
reached down and gave him a hand. What they uncovered wasn't pretty.
It was Jimmy "Pages" Scavullo. He was a mess. He was lying in the damp
grass about five feet off the pavement. His body was twisted at mid-torso, so
that from the waist up he was lying on his back and from the waist down he
was on his stomach. Both legs were obviously broken, jutting out at unnatural
angles. His face had deep lacerations on the forehead and right cheek. There
was dried blood around them. A section of scalp had been torn from the back
of his head. Broken bone was showing. His left arm was folded under his
body. His chest looked crushed – there was a lot of blood on the right shoulder
and rib area. Thank God his eyes were closed.
"Jesus, Mary and Joseph,” I said. I turned my eyes away quickly. I felt
a tightness in my throat and across my stomach. I looked at Riggs, then down
at the ground, then I closed my eyes. I tried to catch my breath, but I couldn't.
It was the same as it had been that night downtown. Except the body then had
been Carlito's, spread on the sidewalk in front of a tenement building, a fifteen
year old who wouldn't see sixteen because I needed more information for a
story.
"Goddamn,” I said, more out of anger at myself than what I had seen.
I'd never been squeamish before Carlito. Now I couldn't keep my eyes open.
Riggs drew a finger across his upper lip. "Thinking about Carlito?" he
said.
I nodded.
"Thought you might be. I would'a warned you, but you'd'a looked
anyway," Riggs said. "Everybody does. "
I took a deep breath and looked back at Jimmy "Pages" Scavullo on the
ground.
"That kind of damage, somebody had to hit him really hard," I said.
"Maybe. But he might have been hit more than once. M.E.'s not sure.
We'll know more in a couple of days, after he's had a little time with the body.
One unusual thing, though, just between you and me. His pages are gone."
I looked up at Riggs. "Not one slip?" I said.
"Nope. Watch and glasses are there, but no wallet and no slips. What's
that say to you?"
Jimmy "Pages" without anything in his pockets was like a doctor
without a stethoscope or tongue depressors. Jimmy's "pages" were his betting
slips, and he kept them in his pockets. In every pocket. It was like a filing
system to him. Today's slips in this pocket, yesterday's in that, winners in
another, losers in another. Dozens of slips. Order in seeming chaos.
"It says this might not be an accident,” I said.
Riggs rubbed a day's worth of stubble on his chin. "My thought
exactly," he said. "Somebody hoped we'd see it that way, maybe, but if it was
an accident, how come his pockets are empty? In twenty years being a cop,
I've never heard of a hit and run driver selectively rifling someone's pockets
before they took off."
"Sounds like maybe someone didn't want him identified -- dumped him
out here where they probably wouldn't know him. Also sounds like someone
might have wanted their slips,” I said.
"Or someone else's slips," Riggs said.
"What are you getting at?"
Riggs pulled me aside, away from the group around the body. He
dropped his head and spoke in a softer tone.
"You said you've been out of this for awhile, but you up on what's
going on between Philly and New York?"
I looked at Riggs. I knew what he was talking about. Taking a break
hadn't meant I'd crawled under a rock. A consolidation in the ranks of
gambling and prostitution had been going on for several months. The capos in
the eastern regions, basically split between Philadelphia and New York, were
rearranging their territories, and whenever that happened, bodies stacked up in
the morgues.
It occurred once or twice a generation, as the younger toughs ascended to
power, replacing -- often violently -- the older regimes. Every other week,
we'd run a story on the latest bloody confrontation, but there hadn't been
anything in the last six weeks or so.
"Yeah, I know about it," I said. "But it's been pretty quiet lately. I
figured maybe they got it out of their systems and set their alliances for
another decade or so."
Riggs nodded. "Yeah, maybe. But it's like the Palestinians and the
Israelis -- all kissing and hugging in the open, but they're still bombing and
shooting each other late at night when nobody's looking. Maybe the alliances
are set now, but there's still jockeying for position going on, adjusting things to
gain a slight advantage, paybacks to even out the books. I don't think
anybody's sleeping easy yet."
Riggs turned back and watched the fat M.E. direct the cops in the
loading of Jimmy's body onto the gurney. They were handling it gingerly, like
the body was cracked ceramic that would fall apart if they moved too fast.
They looked like shadows in slow motion, two-dimensional silhouettes against
the the stark fire of the flares along the road.
"So, bubba," he said, crossing his arms and sniffing offhandedly. "You
heard from your uncle Vitale lately?"
It suddenly became obvious that Riggs's accommodations were more
than holding up his end of a long-standing friendship. He'd actually been glad
to see me for his own reasons. He'd given me some information to prime the
pump, and now he wanted some in return.
"You think Uncle Vitale's involved in this somehow?" I said, turning it
back onto him. I wasn't ready to trade yet.
"You tell me Nick. When was your Uncle V. ever not involved in the
frowned-upon pleasures of society around here? He's run 'em for years. And
this...” He threw his chin at the body being wheeled by in front of us, "...ain't
exactly out of his league, if you know what I mean. He and Cartucci up in
New York have been battling it out, and they been leaving bodies around for
the last six months or so. I gotta figure ... Jimmy's into gambling, Uncle V and
Cartucci, dead guys,.. you see where I'm goin' here?"
"I haven't seen Vitale in nine, ten months, Jack. Maybe more. I don't
remember. But it wouldn't matter if it was yesterday. We don't talk about his
'league.’ We never have. That's why he still allows me to come around. He
trusts me to keep my nose pointed toward my own business."
"He's tossed you some bones now and again, though, right?"
"Yeah. Small ones."
"So, you gonna be seein’ him soon?"
"I'll ask you again," I said, trying to get him to the point. "You think
he's involved in this?"
Riggs cast a sideways glance at me.
"It ain't just me anymore, bubba. There's been a surge in Federal
activity on this latest string of wiseguy murders. Hell, it's an election year.
Somebody's looking to clean things up, make a few brownie points in the
headlines. They been coming around for the last couple weeks, asking for files
and information.
A lot of it's been about good ol' Uncle Vitale. I’d say they got a hard-on about
him, and they're looking to take him down. This here's gonna really heat 'em
up.”
He pulled a handkerchief from an inside jacket pocket and wiped the
sweat from his forehead, then dabbed the perspiration from his upper lip. He
turned to face me directly as he replaced the handkerchief in his jacket.
"But you know, I really hate it when the Feds step on my turf and
muddy things up, 'cause they always leave a mess that I have to clean up for
the next year. So if there's any way I can clear my own decks, I want to do it,
especially if I can shove it to those guys."
He looked back at the M.E'.s van. "Frankly, Nick, I think this might be
Vitale's. He's been at the top around here for a long time, and he ain't
squeamish about something like this if he thinks it's necessary. And if it's not
him directly, then maybe somebody in his organization, which is the same
thing to the Feds. But if this isn't his trash, I'd like to know, so I can go turn
over a few different rocks. Right now, though, I gotta tell you -- he's got a
bulls-eye on him."
Riggs had laid it out for me. He was telling me my uncle Vitale was
going to feel some heat, and in the same breath, he was telling me the
information had a price: talk to Vitale, and when you tell him the heat is
coming, try to find out what he knows.
We smiled at each other. Too many years of knowing what the other
was thinking. I nodded.
"OK," I said. "But between you and me, it doesn't quite make sense,
Jack. Why would a small-time bookie like Jimmy 'Pages' make a difference to
Vitale or New York? He wasn't that big a deal."
"Who knows, Nick, Maybe he was an example. Or a sacrifice. Or a
payback for one of theirs. Maybe he was caught switching allegiances.
Whatever. It looks like somebody made him dead, and I literally don't want it
to become a federal case, you know?"
"Yeah, Sure." I pulled out my notepad and pen. The stereotypical
newspaperman. "Any idea what time this happened?"
"Maybe seven, maybe eight. Nine at the latest. No neighbors close
enough to hear anything. He's cold, and a little stiff, but the temp could be
from the ground. Again, wait'll Monday. We'll know more."
"Gotta write something tonight," I said.
"Can't give you more than that, bubba. Don't know more."
I decided to walk around the area while Riggs handled his business. I
didn't really know what I was looking for, but the lights were fairly bright, and
who knew? Maybe something would stand out,
The section of Bryn Mawr Avenue we were on was near the Bryn
Mawr/Radnor Township line. On the far side of the road, an undeveloped field
of small trees and scrub brush spread out over a couple of acres, On the near
side, a grassy meadow ran about a hundred yards back from the road, ending at
a long, low stone wall that marked the rear property line of some estate out of
sight beyond a heavily wooded ridge. Jimmy "Pages" was found a few feet
into the meadow.
I walked fifty yards up and down the road from the point where the body had
been and maybe ten or twenty yards into the meadow. There was nothing out
of the ordinary, if you could call anything about a death scene "ordinary."
As I walked back toward Riggs, the Medical Examiner's van pulled
around the flares, made a U-turn and sped off toward the Main Line. One of
the Bryn Mawr Township cars followed it.
"Whattaya think?" Riggs said.
"Weird place for him to be," I said. "I mean, he never went far from
that sandwich shop on Fifteenth Street."
"Except maybe to that bar around the corner," Fitch said, joining us.
"I've seen him there...after hours, so to speak."
"Was there anything on the street about him, Jack? Did he stiff
somebody he shouldn't have?"
"Not that I know of. We never paid much attention to him. He was
small time. A few bets? So what. But we'll be asking around and if I hear
anything, I'll let you know. "
He pushed off the car he was leaning against and straightened his
jacket.
"I'm outta here, guys -- gotta get back downtown. Stay in touch on that
other thing, Nick."
I nodded and thanked Riggs for his help, and Fitch and I hopped in the
Pontiac and headed back to center city. It was moving toward midnight and
Taunton would be sweating. I didn't have a lot to write about. A short couple
of inches about a hit and run. It seemed a sad epitaph for anyone, even Jimmy
"Pages."
3
Fitch dropped me off in front of the Examiner building on Broad
Street
before driving into the underground garage. He said he'd bring his shots to me
upstairs after he'd developed them. I went through the double doors and
showed my ID to the guard behind the plexiglas. He pressed a buzzer and let
me through the inner doors. I took the elevator to the third floor, and the doors
opened onto the city room.
The room was large and open, and you could take in the whole thing
with one glance. Rows of desks in twos, set facing one another, two sets side
by side between aisles that went the entire length of the room. Along the left
side were glass-walled cubicles where the various editors tweaked their
writer's prose. The city editor's desk was at the end of the line, set catercorner
so he had a view of the entire room. Along the right were tall windows that
overlooked the street. Disturbingly bright flourescent fixtures ran front to
back, side to side. It was never night in the city room.
There was more activity than I expected for that time of night. Several
reporters were still hunched over their terminals, heads bobbing from
keyboard to screen and occasionally to the clock on the wall as they raced
toward deadline. After a few minutes in the room, the staccato chatter of their
individual computer keyboards would fuse into white noise in the background.
I could never consciously catch the point where it made the transition.
My desk was on the far right, about midway down. I liked being next to
the window for those days when the words wouldn't come. It was a lot nicer
staring at the action down on the street than at a blank computer monitor.
Especially in the springtime, when the ladies left their coats at home. It was
also a practical position: as far as you could get from the editors. A sanctuary
of sorts.
But you had to get there first. The elevator doors were line-of-sight
from the city editor's desk, and every city ed knew the sound of the elevator
doors opening. They would look up instinctively, and if they wanted you or
your copy, you were had -- nowhere to hide. Not two steps into the room, I
heard Taunton.
"Cross!"
He waved his hand as if I didn't know who had called out to me.
"Christ, it's about time!"
I walked to his desk. "Nice to see you too, Charlie. A little harried are
we?"
"You're cuttin’ it fine, Nick," he said, ignoring me. "How fast can you
send the story?"
"There's not going to be much, Charlie. At least not tonight. It won't be
but a few inches, unless you want me to go into Jimmy 'Pages' history."
"Jimmy 'Pages?' That's who the guy was? Jimmy 'Pages?’”
I sat down in a chair across from Taunton and propped my feet on the
corner of his desk. I picked up a rubber band from the desk and started twirling
it around my fingers, an obsessive habit I'd picked up years ago.
"Yeah," I said. "Can you beat that? Out in Bryn Mawr, of all places."
Taunton sat down, crossing his Nike walking shoes on another of the
desk's corners. He'd forgotten about deadline for a moment Charlie was short
and round, with a big head set on sloping shoulders. His thinning hair was
fluffed up and back from his forehead, the result of years of nervously running
his hands through it. Though he seldom smiled, his overall countenance was
that of a jovial man.
"What happened?" he said.
I told him what I knew. Like most of us, Taunton was peripherally
acquainted with Jimmy "Pages." You had to be, working on the paper. The
Examiner was in his territory, and you couldn't help but run into him a couple
of times a week. Leo Stein's, the sandwich shop he worked his book from, was
where most of us grabbed our lunch. He was always cordial, asking how it was
going, and what the hot news was. It was a little more than just being friendly,
though. Jimmy was smart enough to know that someone from the paper might
have some information that could affect his odds. He'd never push you to place
a bet, but if you wanted to drop a fiver on the Eagle's game on Sunday, he'd
cover you. No one minded talking with him. He was actually entertaining, in a
weasily kind of way. He could make you laugh.
"Jeez," Taunton said. "Jimmy 'Pages.” That makes me feel a little
weird, you know? I just saw him a couple days ago, down in the shop. What
do the
cops think -- somebody roll him, or get yanked off about the way he was doing
business?"
"Maybe," I said. "But there's nothing to indicate that specifically. " I
paused, then tossed the rubber band back on the desk as I stood. "But it might
have something to do with what's been going on with the wiseguys lately.
Riggs thinks my uncle Vitale might be involved."
Taunton's eyebrows moved north on his forehead. It was a dead
giveaway that he smelled something interesting. You always knew you had a
story sold when you saw his eyebrows twitch.
"Involved how?" he said.
I shrugged. "I don't know. He not-so-subtly suggested I go talk with
him at my earliest convenience, see if he'll toss us a bone about it. Riggs is
worried about the Feds poking their noses into Philly's business."
"You gonna see him?" The eyebrows moved a notch higher.
I sighed deeply. "Look, Charlie -- I didn't come back to get involved in
this kind of thing again. I handled it for you tonight, but I'm not hip on getting
any deeper, you know what I mean? I'm gonna slide into this Harper series for
a while.”
Taunton stood, and his face softened, his eyes looking directly into
mine.
"You're not going to be able to hide out there forever, Nick. When the
Harper thing's over, I don't see you covering the flower show, or the new tiger
at the zoo. That's not where you belong anymore."
"Maybe not But I'll take that step when I get to it. I just want a little
more time away from the hard shit. OK with you?"
His eyebrows dropped, and he smiled weakly. I knew I'd disappointed
him, especially since no one but me was able to get to Vitale, and that's where
he sensed the story was.
`"Yeah. Sure.” he said. "I understand. Write it up for tonight and I’ll see if I
can find someone to pick it up for you, assuming we'll need it. There might not
be anything else to it, you know?"
I thanked him and walked to my desk.
I flipped on my screen and looked out the window as I waited for it to
light up. Nothing much was happening on the street. A couple of street folk
wandered by, but there wasn't anyone to panhandle from except each other.
They stopped at Flora's newsstand on the corner, lit a couple of smokes, then
moved on. I looked at the screen. It's blank eye looked back.
Somebody famous once said that writing was easy; you just sit down
and wait for the beads of blood to form on your forehead as you sweat out the
story. It's always been my opinion that that may be true, but it depended on the
story you were writing. If you let it matter to you, it was a bitch to write. If
you could remain detached and unemotional about the subject, the story
seemed to write itself.
I didn't want this one to be tough. I'd written a lot of stories like it in
twelve years: from traffic accidents to rapes, muggings to drug deals gone bad.
But Jimmy was part of a loose-knit family of sorts. I didn't want the story to be
as cold as I knew it was going to have to be if I wanted it to write easy. But as
I sat there, I found myself caring a little and that made me uncomfortable.
I looked at the clock. I had about fifteen minutes to file the story. I
picked up the keyboard and sat it on my lap as I leaned back in my chair. I put
my feet up on the desk and touched the keys:
One Dead In Bryn
Mawr Hit and Run
by Nick Cross
BRYN MAWR - The body of a
56-year-old Philadelphia man
was found by the side of a road
in Bryn Mawr late last night, the
possible victim of a hit-and-run
driver.
The 32-word lead. Journalism 101.
"Just the facts, Ma'am,”I said in my best Jack Webb. Then, under my
breath, "Sorry, Jimmy.”
4
It was almost one in the morning when I walked out of the building.
The story was a quick write -- only about eight inches, tops. I'd mentioned the
fact that the police were investigating the possibility that it was more than a hit
and run, but hadn't gone any further into it. There wasn't any evidence on that
yet. Taunton had passed the story through without making any changes. I'd cut
the deadline too close. Score one for me.
I was beat, and I drove directly home. I thought about nursing a drink
and trading some useless conversation somewhere, but decided against it. The
long day had been punctuated with ugliness, and I wanted to wash some of it
off.
Climbing the three flights of stairs to my apartment seemed like scaling
the north face of the K-2. Any energy I'd had left was gone by the time I
closed the door and tossed my jacket on the sofa. I grabbed a light beer from
the refrigerator and took it into the shower with me. The hot water soothed
tensions on the outside and the cold beer quenched thirsts on the inside. I
finished the
beer about the time the hot water ran out. I fell across the bed, hoping for the
deep sleep of the untroubled. Instead, I dreamt about Carlito.
"I can get the story for you," he'd said that afternoon, tossing his head
back and looking down his nose at me with the balls-to-the-wall confidence
that most fifteen-year-old Latins have far too much of. "Nobody else can get in
there, I'm tellin' you. No way! Especially not you, gringo. They won't let you
within a block!"
Carlito had worn a rayon shirt that day. It was colored like a Hawaiian
sunset and patterned like a Picasso, and he'd stuffed it into black jeans a size
too small for him. He was slight, a stick figure with broad shoulders, and the
shirt hung on him like a bolt of loose fabric draped on a cross. He'd sat on the
corner of my desk and leaned across it, balanced on one elbow, speaking
around a toothpick wedged between his teeth.
"It's gotta be me, man,” he'd gone on. "You know I'm right."
"Forget it, Carlito," I'd said. "As much as I need to get some eyes and
ears inside Vacca's organization, I'm not sending some kid in there for me.
These guys are dangerous, They hurt people. I’ll find some other way to get
what I need."
“There is no other way, man," he'd said, rolling the toothpick to the
other side of his mouth. "Only way to know's to be inside the crib. And I'm
golden with Vacca and his people, see? I'm one of them. Besides, my bro's
tight with those guys, man -- been with 'em a couple years now. He'll let me
slide in an' out, no problem. Vacca won't know a thing. I can go in, check it all
out, let you know what's goin' down, man. We'll help the badges pop this
sucker. Then you and me -- we write the story together, win a Pulitzer!"
I'd been amused by Carlito's optimism from the first day he'd shown up
at the Examiner. He'd won the right to serve as an intern at the paper for
several weeks by writing an essay about the value of journalism in the
community. His was the best in his school district. He was supposed to spend a
few days in each department, learning about the realities of publishing a daily
paper. But somehow he always turned up at the City Desk, listening to the
scanner, pumping the street reporters about their breaking stories. Mostly,
though, he'd hung around me.
He'd said he'd read everything I'd ever written for the Examiner, had
followed my stories from as early as he could remember reading. He told me
he'd even gone back and read my early restaurant reviews. Part of me was
flattered. Another part felt old. He'd particularly liked my series on the health
department's regulation of food in the open air markets downtown, where his
sisters worked. But his favorite had been the series on corruption in the Child
Welfare Department, a rat's nest of criminal mismanagement and neglect that
Carlito had had first-hand experience with as a young boy. The series
graphically depicted life for kids like Carlito, and eventually led to a few
corruption indictments and to the department's reorganization.
Carlito had told me it was that series that had shown him the power of
the word. He'd said he wanted to write investigative stuff like I did, though
he'd probably move on to television, where the real money was. But for now,
he'd said he thought it best to start with me, "just to learn the ropes, you know?
Might as well learn from the best." How could I refuse him anything with that
coming at me?
As the weeks passed, I grew to like the kid. He reminded me of myself
when I was his age -- ballsy, electrified, the energy of optimism running full
tilt boogie through my veins. So I let him hang around, do a little research,
write a little background.
"So what do you say, Cross?" Carlito continued, simply not giving up.
He was nothing if not persistent "I can get us everything we need."
"I told you. No. N-O. As in forget it. You're a kid, kid. Besides that,
you're not even supposed to be hanging out here in the first place. Taunton’ll
saute us both if he finds out I'm even talking to you about this."
He'd jumped off the desk, shaking his head. "Aw, man, you disappoint
me. We could be so good on this, you an' me. It could be my big break, man -could be my launching pad. But you just don't get it." He'd slipped on his
jacket, and slung his backpack over his shoulder, heading for the door. "I'll see
you later, Cross." And he'd left, still shaking his head.
Actually, I did get it. I'd known what he'd wanted. The same thing any
writer worth his stuff wants: to be on the inside of a good story. But this story
was a little too hairy. It wasn't for the uninitiated.
I'd been digging into a cocaine ring for a number of months at that
time, a real nasty little group of Latin sweethearts who called themselves Los
Camisanegros -- the Blackshirts. Their top man was a hardass named Antonio
Vacca, a real piece of work who was obviously leading a charmed life. He'd
been busted a dozen times in six years -- rape, assault, drug trafficking,
suspicion of homicide -- but he had walked on every charge. Evidence would
disappear, or a witness would, or a technicality would spring him. Nobody
could make anything stick. Jack Riggs said he was beginning to believe Vacca
was made of greased teflon.
Nor was he was lacking in cohones. He'd called me directly at the
Examiner, to tell me he didn't like what I was up to. I'd written half a dozen
stories by that time about the general drug trade in Philly, and had thrown a lot
of heat directly at Vacca. I'd surreptitiously watched his dealers in their
open-air drugstores in the West Kensington and Feltonville areas of North
Philly, where the Spanish gangs ruled like feudal lords. Fitch had documented
a couple of dozen deals on film, and we'd followed the money from the streets
to Vacca's stronghold in a five-story tenement in the heart of the West
Kensington section. I was hitting nerve tissue with my stories, and Vacca
didn't like it.
At first he'd been polite when he'd called. He'd taken a wounded tone,
wanting to know why I was so unkind to him, why I would tell lies about a
man I'd never met. When I wouldn't back off, he'd called again, irritated, and
wanted to know where I was getting my information, who the traitor among
his friends was. He wouldn't believe me when I told him it was just good
reporting.
Finally it had come down to slightly-veiled threats: how would I feel if
I suddenly had someone coming after me for no good reason, disrupting my
business, destroying my reputation, maybe my life? There was no mistaking
that the ante was being raised.
But that hadn't bothered me all that much. I was a little cockier then,
and if he wanted it mano y mano, it was OK with me. I figured I could bring
him down. But catching Vacca himself involved in the trade proved tough. In
two weeks, I'd caught a glimpse of him only three times. Tall and thin, a
walking
shadow in black silk shirt and suit, he'd emerged from his lair only far enough
to stand on the stoop. He'd survey the street, talking and laughing easily with
his compadres. Dealers would pass him as they entered the building, casting a
look his way, but none spoke directly to him, nor he to them. Money never
went into his pockets, drugs never came out of them. The police couldn't tie
him directly to anything, and he knew it. And my stories, while incensing the
public and focusing the problem, weren't really doing anything but making
Vacca mad. Without inside information that would tie him directly to
trafficking or money laundering, Riggs and I were both pissing into the wind.
Thus my need to get inside Vacca's operation somehow, either by
slipping someone in, which seemed almost impossible, or turning one of his
band of merry men, which was probably even more remote a possibility.
The first call later that night had come at eight-twenty. It had been
Carlito. I'd been at home, he'd been in a phone booth down the street from
Vacca's tenement.
"I been in, man," he'd said, the excitement evident in his voice. "In an'
out, like a cool breeze, no problems."
"In where?" I'd said, though I already knew.
"Vacca's, man. Walked right in, hung out a while with my brother. I
could go anywhere in there, man -- just like I told you."
"Jesus Christ, Carlito, I told you to stay away from there."
"Oh, come on, Cross. Lighten up, man. It's cool. It's just like I said it
would be. I'm golden. I'm a homie. They got no reason to suspect me of
anything. I'm Earnesto's little brother, that's all."
"How long were you there?"
"Couple hours. Maybe a little more."
"Nobody questioned you being there?"
"No, man. Not really,"
"What do you mean, 'not really?"'
"One of Vacca's security guys wanted to know who I was, why I was
there, that kind of shit, but my bro backed him off. He kept lookin' at me
funny, followin’ me around. But I played it cool, hung with my brother. He's
got me covered."
"I don't like this, Carlito."
"You don't have to like it, Cross. You just gotta write it." He paused a
moment, then said, "OK, so what is it you want me to look for, man?" He said
it as if it was a foregone conclusion that he was going to go back into Vacca's
tenement.
It was at that moment that my judgement went south. Maybe it was
fatigue -- too many late deadlines caused by waiting for the Medical
Examiner's report or the police write-ups; or I'd tired of fighting Carlito's
persistence, or maybe -- and this is what still disturbs me the most -- maybe it
was that I'd let myself slip across some unmarked line at that moment,
allowing my greed for the story to supplant my objectivity, or rational thought,
or conscience, or whatever it was that separated me from those I wrote about.
Whatever it was, I slipped over the edge with it, without even realizing it.
"You think you can get back in, huh?" I'd said.
"Yeah, man. I’m tellin' you -- it's cool. Now hurry up. What should I
check out?”
I’d taken a deep breath. What could it hurt? The kid had already been in
and out. He could do it one more time, and if he did it right, we could very
well have what we needed to seal it on Vacca. So I’d let the breath go and I’d
told him. Did it look like the drugs were kept on the premises? Did he see
Vacca handling them, or handling the money that came in the front door?
Look for anything that might indicate where the money went -- getting Vacca
on a tax charge would be just as nice as busting him for dealing. He'd be off
the streets either way. I told Carlito to listen to every conversation with an
objective ear, to try and pick out anything that might indicate delivery times or
places -- anything Riggs could use to bust Vacca, with us standing right beside
him, getting the exclusive.
"But don't get stupid," I’d said. "Be a fly on the wall, and that's it. Don't
be asking any stupid questions, don't ruffle any feathers, don't do anything
dumb. Just look and listen, You got that?"
"Yeah, yeah. I got it. Jeez, man, you sound like my mother." And he'd
hung up.
The second call had come just after midnight I’d grabbed it in the
middle of the first ring.
"You get the goods?" I’d said, expecting to hear Carlito's excited patter
on the other end of the line.
"Nick. It's Jack," Jack Riggs had said. Which is the last thing I can with
any certainty recall that he'd said that night. What I do remember of what
happened after his call is still in disconnected sequences: letting the phone
drop
onto its cradle and forcing myself to breathe; a sensation of numbness, both
emotional and physical; driving to West Kensington; twirling red lights; Vacca
in handcuffs in the back of Riggs's car; Carlito sprawled on the sidewalk in
front of Vacca's tenement, the bright colors of his shirt darkened by a chestful
of blood that had dripped into a puddle on the cold concrete.
I'd learned later that Carlito had been caught looking through some
ledgers on a desk in Vacca's office. A stupid move -- enthusiasm blinding
common sense and betraying inexperience. When confronted, he'd called on
his brother to bail him out, but Earnesto, whether out of fear or some twisted
sense of gang loyalty, had chosen his homies over his blood and sided with
Vacca. Not knowing its import, he'd let it slip that Carlito was working at the
Examiner. Vacca had flown into a rage, figuring Carlito for the traitor he'd
been looking for. He'd dragged him into the street and shot him dead.
That was almost a year ago. It's not hard to keep Carlito pushed down
deep now, back behind consciousness, hidden from my view. But there are
nights, when consciousness sleeps, that he'll pay me a visit. I think he's trying
to tell me it's OK, but I don't listen.
The driver let the phone ring only once. He didn't jump at the sharp
sound piercing the coccoon of silence in his study -- his reach was measured,
calm, and timed perfectly. All that was required was making sure he didn't
hear the rudeness of that ring again. Once was enough at this time of the
morning. He glanced at the antique wooden clock on his desk as he brought
the receiver to his ear. Five-forty-five a.m.
"Yes?" he said, almost whispering the word.
"Have you seen the morning paper yet?" The passenger's voice was
sharp in the earpiece, as disturbing as the ring of the phone had been. The
driver pulled the receiver off his ear, holding it two inches from his head.
"No, I haven't. Is there something I should know?"
"It's in there," the passenger said. "The story on ... him. They're calling
it a hit and run."
The driver sat back in his executive's chair and swivelled it toward the
double doors behind his desk. The patio and gardens spread out beyond the
glass. Dawn was amber on the horizon, above the tops of the trees. He loved
this time of the morning. The peace. The quiet. Too little of that in his life right
now. He didn't appreciate the intrusion this phone call had become.
"I told you to trust me," he said. "I told you they'd see it that way."
"Yeah, you did. But there's something else about it that you may not
have expected."
"What's that?"
"The story was written by a guy named Nick Cross." The passenger
waited for a reaction. When he got none, he said, "That's your boy, isn't it?
The one you told me about?"
The driver swung the chair back around to the desk. He sat forward,
and rubbed his eyes with his free hand. Interesting wrinkle, he thought.
"Yeah, that's him," the driver said. "But it's still nothing to worry
about."
"You don't think so?"
"No, I don't. He's not going to be a problem. I can handle him."
"You 're sure ? I don't want..."
"Trust me," the driver said. "I'm sure."
He hung up, not wanting to talk anymore. He swivelled his chair back
toward the double doors and watched the sky brighten above the trees. Spots
of sunlight were dropping onto the lawn, the hot yellow light igniting the dew
in the still-dark grass.
"I'm less sure about you, however,” he said, his voice a reverent
whisper in the study's quiet.
*****
32
I took the elevator to the hotel's sub-street garage level, where I'd
parked Baby an hour earlier. It wouldn't take me more than ten minutes to get
back to the Examiner, depending on how the lights and traffic were. I was
anxious to find out what legal had dictated we do with the story on Austin
Chase. I'd already decided to take it all the way to the publisher himself if they
killed it. I smiled at myself as I realized I was going to go to the mat on a story
I'd originally wanted no part of.
The doors opened onto the concrete pad of the garage floor. Though it
wasn't dark, it wasn't well lit, either. There were bright halogen bulbs set into
the ceiling at intervals through the area, but each created a pool of light only
beneath itself, leaving stretches of near-dark lying between the pools. It
reminded me of the closing to the Jimmy Durante show I remembered seeing
as a kid during the early days of TV, when he used to walk out of the show by
passing through circles of light into the distance.
"Goodnight, Mrs. Calabash, whereever you are," I growled in my best
Durante.
Baby was parked on the far back right. Though the floor wasn't full,
there were enough cars in the rows closest to the elevators that I had to go
down a ways and cut over. As I walked, I fumbled in my jacket pocket for my
keys. They had caught on a loose thread -- I stopped in one of the halogen
pools to untangle them.
Out of the corner of my eye, I caught some movement in the shadows
near one of the concrete pillars supporting the building above. I turned toward
it, trying to see what it was, but the light above me was too bright. I hadn't
caught anything definable -- a silhouette, an impression -- the flap of a
trenchcoat, maybe, slipping out of sight behind the pillar.
I was suddenly uneasy. I'd seen this trenchcoated shadow one too many
times now for it to be a coincidence. As I stood there peering into the
darkness, the phone threat echoed into my consciousness: Forget about the
bookie. He's dead. You don't want to be.
I quickly moved out of the light, into the darker space beyond it, and
listened for a second. I looked hard at the spot where I thought the movement
had been. But I saw and heard nothing. Perhaps it was nothing This was the
kind of place that played right into an overactive imagination.
I walked briskly to the end of the first row and turned right toward the
back of the garage. I could see Baby's white finish down about sixty feet. What
I didn't notice was that the last two halogen bulbs along this row weren't on.
The back corner of the garage was dark. I might have realized it in a moment,
but I didn't get a chance.
As I passed one of the last pillars, about ten feet from my car,
something was thrown over my head. It felt rough, like burlap, and it was
pulled down
hard from behind, covering my shoulders. My first instinct was to roll and
turn my shoulder into the person wielding the bag, but I was immediately
grabbed from behind, my elbows pulled together behind me and held firmly
by someone's arms -- strong arms -- threaded through them at the elbows.
At the same time, my feet were pulled out from under me and I was swiftly
lifted and thrown sideways into a small compartment. I realized it was a car
trunk by the sound of my torso landing in it and the give of the springs
responding to my weight. I went in face first, and my shins hit hard on the
edge of the trunk. Intense pain shot through them instantly. My arms were
released as I was stuffed toward the back of the trunk.
I rolled and tried to prop myself up on my hands, and kick out with
my feet. But my legs were slow and clumsy because of the pain, and my
feet caught under a rim of the trunk. I dropped to my back and tried to pull
off whatever was over my head. I yelled loudly through it.
"Hey! Help!" was all I got out. Something hit me in the face. Hard. It
stunned me and I sank back. I tasted blood and my head became wobbly on
my shoulders.
"Jesus," I said.
I was hit again, this time a blow off my right cheek, just below the
eye. It put me flat on my back. A big hand went around my throat and I
heard a voice speaking very close to my face.
"Shut the hell up," the voice said. Then I was hit again. This one
brought the blackness. The last thing I was aware of was the heavy scent of
garlic lingering on the cloth over my face.
33
The sound of the highway is louder from the trunk of a car. The thukthuk of the tires over imperfections in the road is much more defined, with the
hard topnote of each hit reverberating with a hollow ring inside the tires. You
sense the roughness of the road, too, a constant buzz that's felt as much as
heard. The scents of gasoline and exhaust are pervasive, mixed in an aromatic
cocktail which is at once both sweet and sickening.
It was these senses of sound and smell that awoke first. My mind was
working on identifying the stimuli as consciousness returned, and for a
moment, I thought I was emerging from a dream where road and gasoline were
playing parts in some Freudian night revelation. A large bump in the road
bounced me back to full realization. I was in the trunk of a car, and someone
was taking me somewhere.
My right cheek was tender, and it felt swollen and spongy when I
touched it. My lower lip was puffed too, and I could taste the coppery flavor of
an open wound inside it. I felt caked blood on my chin.
I might have had my eyes open, but I couldn't really tell. It was
absolutely black in the trunk. I felt my way around in an attempt to orient
myself. I was on my back, with the back of the car to my right, the spare tire at
my feet, tucked into the fender well.
I pushed up on the trunk lid with my hand. It gave a bit at the center,
but was firmly locked. I tried to bring my feet up to the back edge of the lid,
figuring that if I could wedge myself correctly, I might be able to push against
my back and spring the lid at the lock. I gave no thought as to just what I'd do
if I was successful and found myself peering from the trunk of a car doing fifty
on some highway.
I rolled on my right shoulder and reached down to pull my legs to my
chest, My shins were extremely sore just below the knees. I couldn't remember
why. It was a tight fit to ball up in the trunk, a fit compounded by the fact that
I seemed to be in a recessed area centered in the trunk floor.
I pushed myself up over the lip of the center well, and wedged my back
against the back wall of the trunk. I could just barely bring my feet to the
center edge of the truck lid, where I assumed the lock would be. I thrust my
legs outward and pushed hard against the lid.
I could feel a little give, but nothing popped. I tried again. Still nothing.
I thought about a kick, but just before trying it, I realized a kick might be heard
by whoever was on the other side of the trunk wall. I cocked my head back
toward the wall and listened for thirty seconds. If I could determine that they
had the radio playing, there might be a better chance of a kick not being heard.
No radio. At least not loud enough that I could hear it. I turned back to
the lid. I twisted a bit more onto my right side and wedged just my left foot at
the seam between trunk and lid. I pushed out again, this time putting
everything I had into it. My shins screamed at me, but I pushed harder.
Nothing.
"Goddamn it."
The sound of my voice was muffled to me, partially covered by the
hum of the tires on the road. I relaxed for a moment, trying to think with a
cloudy mind. I needed something to force the lock. Something harder than my
foot.
"Oh, shit," I said aloud, letting a short laugh follow the words. "You're
getting softheaded, Cross."
I bent down toward the spare tire. It was bolted to the frame of the car
with a plate that covered the axle and lugnut holes. I figured there had to be a
crowbar or lug wrench stored behind the tire, or stashed near it. I didn't know
the year of the car I was stuffed into, but if it was an older model, it might be
carrying the old style of wrench with a flattened wedge at one end, a wedge
that I could use to force the lock.
There was a small, raised handle on the cover plate. I turned it
counterclockwise until it popped off its bolt. The tire tipped toward me, but
stayed tucked into the fender. I reached around it and felt along the fender
panel, then down along the tread of the tire. I could feel the wrench under the
tire, in a little pocket in the floor of the tire well. I tried to lift the tire enough
to free the wrench, but the trunk lid left no headroom above. I could get a grip
on the wrench head, but didn't have the leverage to pull it from the pocket.
I shimmied sideways and dropped into the center well, with my feet
toward the tire, I grabbed the tire across the tread at the top and pulled it away
from the fender wall. It fell onto my legs, I reached around, pulled the wrench
from the pocket, and set it down next to me. Then I pushed the tire back up
into the fender. The process was like playing some nightmare game of Twister.
I reached down and found the wrench. It was the kind I needed, with a
flattened, somewhat sharpened blade at one end. I felt along the trunk rim and
was in the process of fitting the blade between the lid and rim, when the car
braked, and I was suddenly thrown sideways in the trunk.
We'd taken a hard left turn. By the sound of the tires on the surface, and
the bouncing around I was taking, I was pretty sure we were on some kind of
side road, maybe dirt or old macadam. I could smell dust mixing in with the
gasoline and exhaust. Wherever we were heading, it probably wasn't far ahead.
The new road we were on was cratered with potholes, and we hit every
one of them. I was tossed around inside the trunk like a ball in a lottery
machine. Every time I got the blade close to the seam between trunk and lid,
one of the tires would drop into a hole, and I'd be thrown sideways or
backward. I knew I didn't have much time, but I couldn't stabilize myself
enough to work with the wrench.
I decided to take another tack. Whoever was driving had some plans for
me, and I had a feeling I wasn't going to like them. But they would have to
open the trunk to get at me. If I were ready at that moment, wrench in hand, I
might be able to spring out, do some immediate damage to whoever was
closest, and catch anyone else off-guard. I figured there had to be two of them
– one had held my arms behind my back, another had taken my legs.
The pothole dance continued. I tried to get my feet under me, and my
back up against the lid. There wasn't a whole lot of room to fold my six feet
into, and every time I thought I was stable, we'd hit another hole, and I'd get
tossed to one side or the other. The best I could achieve was lying on my left
side, with my left leg tucked under me, and my right leg wedged against the
trunk's floor well for leverage. I was folded at the waist, and had propped my
upper torso on my left forearm, with which I could push off with some force.
My back was flat against the trunk lid. My right hand held the wrench.
As long as I was close to this position, I figured I had enough time to
get set between the time we stopped and when the lid popped open. I held the
wrench firmly at the end with the angled lugnut socket. I would be able to
swing it with authority as soon as my eyes found something to swing at.
Two minutes later, the car slowed, turned what felt like a half circle,
and stopped.
34
There was a slight rocking motion as first the driver and then a
passenger stepped out on opposite sides of the car. Both closed their doors
roughly. I don't think they cared if they woke me.
I heard the crunch of their steps on loose stone as they walked to the
back of the car. I picked up bits and pieces of staccato conversation, but it was
muffled. I could only hear the odd consonant or emphasized syllable. I couldn't
make sense of it.
I braced myself in position. Since they weren't expecting anything, I
hoped I might have an advantage, if only a second or two. My grip tightened
on the wrench.
I heard the jingle of keys, then the sound of a key in the trunk lock. I
heard the thick pop as the lock let go, and then the lid was going up. Time
slowed down at that instant.
Someone was laughing. The bright beam of a flashlight was dancing
around at about license plate level. Though it was directed at the ground, the
sidespill of its light was still strong enough to hurt my eyes. But it gave me a
target.
As the lid went up, I followed it. I had the wrench in my right hand,
wrapped across my chest to my left shoulder. As the lid and I rose, I uncoiled
my right arm and brought the wrench down as hard as I could just behind the
flashlight.
The crisp snap of the wrist bone preceded the scream of pain by a fifth
of a second. The flashlight hit the ground and rolled under the back of the car.
The light from its beam crawled over the ground to the left. Whoever I'd hit
spun off to my right and fell to his knees, holding his right arm and screaming.
I followed the motion of my arm and body out of the trunk. It led me in
a natural roll to the ground. I coiled into a shoulder roll across my left shoulder
and back, and rolled up onto my feet, my back to the car. I spun quickly,
looking for the other man.
I recognized him instantly, despite the low light. It was Mark
Forschner, one of Harper's bodyguards -- the garlic lover. He was near the left
rear fender of the car, crouched slightly with a body language that said he'd
been surprised. Good for me.
But he was already reacting when my eyes found him. His right arm
was coming from behind him, pulling something from under his coat. I went
for him, raising the wrench as I did. I didn't make it.
A bright silver handgun flashed upward. He'd probably had it stashed
under his belt in the small of his back. It was an automatic -- a nine millimeter,
maybe a forty-five. It really didn't matter to me at the moment. He had it
pointed at my head before I got within two steps of him.
"Go ahead, asshole! Swing it! Go ahead!" His voice was loud,
commanding, but there was an element of control in it. "We'll end this right
now!"
I didn't move. All I could see was the little round hole at the end of
the barrel of the gun.
"Lose the wrench!" Again, loud and insistent, but in control.
I dropped the wrench, relaxed my stance and showed my hands. He
sidestepped across the back of the car, keeping the gun pointed at my head.
He snuck quick looks at his partner, who was still crouched on the ground,
rocking back and forth, cradling his arm.
"You all right?" Forschner said.
"No, I'm not all right. The son of a bitch broke my arm. Jesus
Christ!"
He was in some serious pain. He struggled to his feet and turned
toward Mark. It was Ron Vickers, the other bodyguard I'd met the first
night in Harper's suite at the Bellevue.
"Why don't we just shoot the bastard, and be done with it?" Vickers
said, looking at me, then at Forschner. "It's what we're here to do, ain't it?"
My heart seized. I'd not let myself think that this ride was about my
disappearing. For good. Now it was fact. These guys were supposed to kill
me.
I cast a quick glance left, then right, looking for anything that might
offer me an alternative to just standing there and taking a bullet in the head.
The headlights of the car threw light onto a thick wall of large whitish
bullrushes in front of them. The reflected light cast a pale, almost misty
illumination into the area around us. Beyond the rushes, there was nothing but
darkness, though half a moon hung brilliantly a quarter of the way up the sky.
It put a touch of silver on everything.
We were in a small clearing. The bullrushes encircled the space, with
the only opening off to the left front of the car. Two worn ruts, separated by a
band of short marsh grass and filled with sparse, uneven-sized gravel, left the
clearing and curved off into the darkness beyond. There was nowhere to go
that Mark didn't have an unobstructed line of fire. There was nothing to do but
talk.
"Look, guys,” I said, "this isn't a good move here. Too many people
know about Guitings and Chase, and Jimmy ScavuIIo. There are at least a
dozen people who know what I know."
"Shut up, asshole," Vickers said to me, then turning to Forschner, "Just
do it. We're wasting time here."
"I wouldn't, Mark," I said. I was amazed at the calm in my voice. I was
shivering uncontrollably from the overdose of fear-generated adrenaline
spilling through me, but my voice was smooth and steady.
"Making me disappear is going to cause more trouble than Guitings
already has. You don't have to go down with him. Shit, man, politics isn't
worth it."
"Nobody's going to see politics in this,” Forschner said. He seemed
remarkably calm compared to how I felt. "They're going to see a mafia hit,
execution-style, with a hole behind the ear. We'll make sure they find you that
way. They're going to see a reporter iced for sticking his nose too far up the
mob's ass and bringing too much heat down on their gambling operations.”
“They’ll never buy that,” I said.
"Oh, yeah They will. All you been writin’ stories about is a bookie bein'
killed, and about how the mob might be involved. You haven't been writin’
anything about any of our people bein’ involved in it at all. As far as anybody
knows, it's all about the syndicate offing a guy. It's gonna make perfect sense."
He looked quickly over his shoulder as an upstart wind shook the
rushes behind him, pushing them like waves of wheat across a Kansas plain. A
thin cloud passed over the moon, changing the color of the light in the clearing
from silver to light grey.
" But just in case," Forschner said, completing his thought, "there's
gonna be a story leak out about the mob bein’ very uneasy about what you
been writin’. It's gonna come from one of your famous,...what do you call
'em?"
"Unnamed sources," Vickers said.
"Yeah. One of you reporter's 'unnamed sources’. He's gonna make sure
the heat for you is on the mob. They won't be lookin1 at us at all. And
whatever you think you have tied to us is going to die with you."
I shook my head
"No, it won't,”I said. "My editor knows the whole story, and we've
given everything I have to the police. If I disappear, they're going to know
where the order came from. Your boss will have a dozen cops all over him. "
They looked quickly at each other, then back at me.
"You gave your stuff to the cops," Forschner said, as though it were
unbelievable that I'd do so.
"You bet. Everything. Lieutenant Jack Riggs has it all."
"Since when do reporters give their scoops to the cops?" Vickers said.
"I thought you guys never told each other nothin.'"
"He's a friend of mine. He has it all," I said.
Forschner was silent. He looked me straight in the eyes, as if he was
searching for something that would confirm to him that what I had just told
him was the truth. I stood motionless and stared directly at him, unblinking.
"Get me the phone," Forschner said, his eyes still locked on me. He
kept the gun pointed at me, but dropped it a little. If he'd fired, he would have
hit me in the thigh.
Vickers went around the car. He walked hunched over, cradling his
broken arm. He pulled a cellular phone from a pouch on the driver's side door.
As he walked back to Mark Forschner, he flipped it open and hit a switch. The
phone beeped on. Forschner reached into his coat pocket and pulled out a
small patch of paper.
"Dial this number, and give me the phone when it rings." His eyes were
still glued to mine. The gun rose slightly.
Vickers cradled the phone on his right arm, above the break. The pain
must still have been severe, but he didn't flinch. Tough nut, I thought. He
dialed the number, then lifted the phone to his ear. After a moment, he handed
the phone to his partner.
Forschner listened a moment, then spoke.
"Yeah" he said. "It's me." He listened a second.
"No, not yet." Another second.
"Because there might be a problem, that's why.” Another second.
"He says he's given what he has to the cops. Some guy named Riggs.
Says there'll be a shitload of heat on us if he turns up dead." Three seconds.
"No, I don't. How am I supposed to know? It's what he says, That's all."
Two seconds more.
"It's your call, Cap'n." One second.
"That's what I figured," he said, then he handed the phone to his
partner.
"Says to do it anyway," Forschner said.
"So do it and let's get the hell out of here. We've already been here too
long."
The gun raised to my head again.
"Turn around," he said, "and get on your knees."
"Screw you."
"Do it!" he commanded.
I don't know if he expected me to break down and beg for my life, but
he hesitated a moment, as though frustrated, and cast a glance at Vickers. In
the second it took him to look over, he let the gun drift down so it was pointed
at the ground in front of me.
I bolted. I figured if he was going to shoot me, better that I don't give
him the easy set-up for his story. A bullet in the back wouldn't exactly look
like the professional hit he wanted. I ran to my right, which would force him to
track me across his body to fire. I ran jerkily, like a broken field runner,
sprinting a step left, then two right, then back left again.
I felt a whisp of hot air on my right cheek, then heard the shot. I was
ten feet from the wall of rushes. If I could just make them ... Two more steps
and I could dive in ... I was about to plant my right foot and jump for it when
something grabbed my shoulder, spun me halfway around and threw me off
balance. I stumbled and fell to the ground. Searing pain shot down my arm. I
don't remember hearing the shot.
I landed on my back, but rolled over immediately and tried to get to my
feet. The top of my right shoulder felt like it was on fire. There was wetness on
my chest and running down my arm inside my jacket. I was only four or five
feet from the rushes.
Before I could struggle to my feet and jump into the rushes, Forschner
was on me. His put his foot in the small of my back and pushed me to the
ground. I heard the click of his revolver as he cocked it.
"See ya, asshole," he said. I closed my eyes.
The shot was loud. Louder than the one I'd heard moments before. I
jerked and my breathing stopped. A second shot, loud again, made me jerk
involuntarily a second time.
I gasped a breath. Something fell on the ground next to me. I opened
my eyes.
Mark Forschner's face was three feet from mine, his eyes half open, but
seeing nothing. There was a small, red hole on the right side of his forehead. A
trickle of blood snaked from it, following gravity to the marsh grass and
gravel.
I rolled and looked back toward the car. Someone was leaning over a
body lying on the ground behind the trunk. I couldn't make out who it was, but
I could see two things clearly: he was wearing a trenchcoat, and he had a large
revolver in his left hand. Though I couldn't see his face in the low light, I
realized it was probably the person I'd been seeing lately. Despite the situation,
I felt relieved. I hadn't been crazy -- someone had been following me.
He stooped and reached out, flipping the body on the ground and
pushing the face with a gloved hand. The loose flop of Ron Vicker's head told
me he was dead too. Then the man in the trenchcoat looked up at me.
I rolled and got to my feet. My shoulder hurt like hell, and my right arm
was weak, but I managed to stand. I turned and ran into the rushes.
"Nicky! Wait!"
He knew my name. I looked over my shoulder. He was running toward
me, the gun still in his hand. I could only figure I was next on his list.
"Nicky! It's OK! It's Mario, from your uncle Vitale!"
I'd broken into the rushes several steps before what he'd said sunk in. I
turned, took a step to the right and crouched as he came to the edge of the
clearing, looking into the thick tangle of rushes that had swallowed me. Light
couldn't penetrate there; I was invisible.
"C'mon, Nicky. Where are ya? C'mon outta there."
I said nothing. I don't remember breathing either. I watched him
silently, like a rabbit in a thicket watched hunting dogs sniff around the
ground, knowing he's in there, but not able to get at him. I wasn't going to trust
anybody at that point.
My mind raced. What was this guy doing here? How did he find us?
Had he been here all the time, sent to clean up everything, silence everybody
involved? Had Vitale been behind everything after all? How could I have been
so wrong? Why hadn't I seen it?
He paced back and forth two or three steps, pushing some of the rushes
to the side with the gun barrel, trying to find me.
"C'mon, Nicky," he said. "I ain't gonna hurt ya. I'm here to help ya, fer
Chris'sakes. It's Mario. I met ya the other day, remember? C'mon.”
My voice cracked when I finally spoke. "Mario?"
He turned toward the sound of my voice, though he still couldn't see
me.
"Yeah, Nicky. It's Mario, Mario Gozzi."
"Vitale sent you?" I said.
"Yeah C'mon, where ya at? I ain't gonna hurt ya, I promise. I give ya
my word. Mr V'd have my nuts, you got hurt."
What the hell. There was nowhere to go. If I moved, he'd hear the dry
stalks and leaves telling him right where I was. At the very least, he'd just wait
me out and I'd bleed to death sitting in the bull rushes. He wouldn't even have
to move my body. The loamy soil would just swallow it up. So I stood.
When he saw me, he put the gun into a shoulder holster and stepped
into the rushes. He reached out for me, his hand twirling in a beckoning
motion.
"Come on out of there, Nicky. We gotta go. Somebody mighta heard all
a’ this."
He was very matter-of-fact, but there was compassion in his voice.
Still,
I hesitated. He waved his hand at me as he held it out. "Come on, Nicky. Let's
go. Come on.”
I stepped back into the clearing.
"You're bleedin,’” he said. "Here, put this under your jacket."
He pulled my jacket open and pushed a handkerchief onto my shoulder.
"Put some pressure on it."
I fell into step next to him. He kept his hand on my arm as we walked.
He led me to the car and propped me against the rear fender. He went back to
Forschner's body, and grabbing it under the arms, dragged it back to the car.
"Think you can gimme a hand here?" he said, and pointed toward
Forschner's feet. I bent down and took a handful of trouser cuff with each hand
My shoulder hurt, but I was able to keep a grip. Together we lifted the body
into the still-open trunk. I realized where the phrase 'dead weight’ originated.
"Now this one," Mario said, moving to Vickers' body. We tossed him
into the trunk on top of Forschner. I was amazed that both of them fit, having
found so little room for just myself earlier. Mario closed the trunk lid, went to
the driver's side door, reached inside and turned off the headlights. Darkness
swept across the clearing
"Grab that flashlight," he said.
I looked under the back fender and found the beam of the flashlight I'd
knocked from Ron Vickers’ hand. It hadn't rolled far under the car. I bent and
picked it up.
"Let's go."
We walked toward the opening in the rushes. Mario pulled another
flashlight from a pocket of his raincoat, and it's beam joined mine on the
ground in front of us. We followed the rutted lanes away from the clearing.
I found my voice.
“
What are you doing here? How did you know..."
"Your uncle Vitale.. Since the day you had lunch at his place. I think he
was worried about the people you was dealin' with. He don't trust 'em -politicians. Never did. Personally, I don't think he trusted that capados
Tartucci either. So he told us to keep an eye on you. Good thing, it looks like,
huh?"
"Good thing, Mario. Real good thing."
About two hundred feet down the road, a car was pulled off to the side
of the lane, nestled into the rushes. Mario opened the passenger side door and
motioned to me to get into the bucket seat. He went around the front of the car
and slid into the driver's seat. He fired the engine and swung the car around.
He drove quickly, ignoring the potholes and the rough ride. He was obviously
in a hurry to leave the clearing behind.
“You okay?” he said.
"Yeah. A little shaky. Can't feel my shoulder, but I think I'm OK."
"I'm gonna get you to a hospital, have someone take a look at that for
ya. It don't look too bad, but you don't wanna mess with it."
He said it like he'd dealt with gunshots before and I wouldn't doubt it. I
dropped my head back on the seat and closed my eyes for a moment I felt
enormously tired, though I didn't understand how I could be anything but
wired.
"I've been seeing you the last couple of days," I said, "but I wasn't
putting it together. I thought I was just being paranoid."
"Wasn't always me. But me and the other guy are the same size, wear
the same coat. Kinda like a uniform, you know? You know how it is. Anyway,
we split the time up, kept an eye out. Your Uncle Vitale's kinda fond of you."
The two-track lane came to an end at a service road that ran parallel to
a four lane highway. I recognized it as the old Industrial Highway that ran
from the Delaware border up past the airport into Philadelphia. The four laner
was I-95, which had replaced the Industrial Highway in the late Sixties, for all
intents and purposes making it obsolete. You could still get to it, if you knew
where to go. We were just south of the airport, near the Delaware River. The
marshy area was a wildlife preserve that I'd driven by a thousand times, never
paying it much mind. I'd never drive past it with nonchalance again.
We took the service road far enough to catch an on-ramp to 95, then
headed north toward center city.
"Was it you I saw in the parking building of the hotel tonight?" I said. I
was trying to keep myself conscious by talking.
"Yeah, it was me. I been followin' you most of the day. I was waitin'
for you to come down for your car. I probably shoulda been closer to it, but I
wanted to cover the area from the elevator to the car. As it was, I almost lost
you when they grabbed you. They musta been there before I got there. I didn't
see 'em until they already had you, and they was so quick about it, I was too
far away to stop 'em. I figured it would be better that I followed them, get ‘em
when they stopped. They was easy to tail, and they never noticed me. Pretty
lucky, you know?"
"Yeah," was all I could say. I was drifting.
"But I'll tell ya this, Nicky; if I hadn't been parked close to where I was
standing, you'd be dead now. That's for damn sure. I'd a' never caught up to
them guys. You and me was lucky tonight, Nick. They weren't."
"No,” I said, closing my eyes and surrendering to the blackness. “They
sure weren't."
For a complete manuscript of Image Imperfect, or to find out how it all
comes out, please go to the “Contact” area of Bob’s website
to reach him. A full manuscript will be forwarded to you immediately.