Hillerman, Tony (22 page)

“They’ll send somebody.” It didn’t seem important at the moment whether they did or not. With the panic and adrenaline gone, Cotton felt exhaustion, release and comfort. He liked looking at Jane Janoski early in the morning; her hair tousled, eyes still sleepy, no makeup, and her slender shape wrapped in a housecoat or something with rosebuds all over it.

“I like looking at you,” he said. To his immense embarrassment, Janey blushed—a genuine, thorough blush—and looked away. Cotton could think of nothing to say, so he said, “I left my shoes in the capitol.”

“You don’t really have to tell me anything,” Janey said. She spoke to the coffeepot—refilling his cup. “I was just kidding about that.”

“But we had a deal,” Cotton said. “Remember?” He was glad he remembered. It was an opportunity to restore the old bantering relationship. “I was going to tell you how that highway-contract story came out and you were going to tell me what to do with the rabbit—if we caught one.” That seemed ironic now. He was the rabbit, nosing into a den of foxes.

“I gathered from what you said on the telephone you’d caught something or other.” Her face was grave. “And it sounded dangerous. It still is, isn’t it?”

Cotton laughed, wondering, as he listened to it, what he had to laugh about. It was just that he needed sleep. “It was for a while. But it’s all right now. Now the only problem is I left the story in my motel room and I don’t want to go back there. So, if you have a typewriter here, and paper, and carbon paper, and so forth, I’ll try to borrow it from you.”

“All I have is an old portable.”

“That’ll be fine. Why don’t you go back to bed?”

“I don’t get much excitement,” Janey said. “I don’t want to miss it when the posse starts pounding on the door. Will
they
be barefoot too?”

“If they’re wearing black hats,” Cotton said, “tell them to go away.”

The rewriting was easy. It’s axiomatic in the business that the big ones practically write themselves. This one, when he first tried it, had presented some organizational problems. But, once solved, they were easily remembered. Only the typewriter was balky. Cotton jammed the keys and paused to unjam them, muttering under his breath.

“Come on now,” Janey said. “It’s a gift horse.”

“Here’s the lead,” Cotton said. “Here’s what your looking up ‘borrow’ in the dictionary led to.” He read: “More than a third of a million dollars’ worth of cement—paid for with public road funds—has been siphoned away from five highway projects in the past two years and used for privately financed construction.”

Jane Janoski’s reaction was all that Cotton could have hoped for.

“My God,” she said. “Really!? But if that’s happening . . .”

Cotton interrupted her, reading on: “The affair was hidden by erroneous Highway Department construction records. They indicate all of the cement was used in the roadbed and bridges of highway projects. Actually, thousands of tons of it were diverted for construction of lodges and recreation roads at nearby state parks.

“Contractor on all five jobs was Reevis-Smith, Constructors, Inc. The same firm was also contractor for Wit’s End, Inc., the company picked by the State Park Commission to build and operate state-park concessions under a $30 million recreational bond plan approved by the Legislature three years ago.”

“Poor Paul,” Janey said. “His recreation thing is in this, too.” She got up, put her hand on the coffeepot, and then sat down again. “Poor Paul.”

Cotton became aware that the bottom of his left foot was hurting—bruised by something he had stepped on in the alley, that a toe he stubbed was probably bleeding. That his hip was bruised. That he was tired to the point of exhaustion, and that someone was trying to kill him.

“Yeah,” he said. “I’m sorry about that.” He wasn’t. Neither sorry nor pleased. Simply tired. A moment ago he hadn’t been aware of it.

He wrote rapidly, pausing no more to read, aware of Janey sitting opposite him, elbows on table, chin on hands, watching him write.

“All five of the road projects involved were in the Quality Experiment program instituted by Highway Commission Chairman Jason Flowers—projects in which cement content of concrete slab was to be enriched 37 percent.

“On all five projects, Reevis-Smith obtained the contract by offering bids far lower than other contractors on certain items—such as roadbed material. But, after the contract was awarded, the amount of these low-bid items used was reduced by ‘change orders,’ and the amount used of items, such as aluminum culverts, on which Reevis-Smith had bid high, were increased.

“In each of the five projects, another contractor would have been the low bidder had the original specifications included the change orders. All the change orders were signed by H. L. Singer as project engineer.

“In a procedure unusual for the Highway Department, Singer was transferred from district to district to serve as project engineer on all five jobs. His signature also appears on the concrete weight slips, which erroneously indicate that all of the cement delivered to Reevis-Smith mixing plants was used on the highways.

“The records of hauling companies which also work on the jobs show that $342,000 worth of the mixed cement was actually hauled away from the mixing plants on the highway jobs and delivered to nearby Reevis-Smith projects on the parks.”

Cotton paused, thinking. Was it here he stuck in the lying-out-of-it paragraphs? He thought it was.

“Singer declined comment when asked for an explanation. Flowers said he wished to ‘look into it’ before commenting. And Herman Gay, promoted to Construction Engineer under the Flowers administration, also withheld comment.”

He pulled out the page, shook out the carbon paper and dropped the two copies on the table. She picked one up without a word. Cotton put together a second carbon-paper sandwich and put the three sheets in the machine. (Who was it? Some famous writer. Asked if he had any advice for someone who wanted to be a writer, he said, “Always remember the shiny side of the carbon paper has to face away from you.” This morning it wasn’t amusing.)

Cotton typed, reporting the ownership link between Wit’s End and Reevis-Smith through the Highlands Corporation, wishing again that he knew how Midcentral Surety fit into this picture, and wishing fervently that he had something more than circumstance to pin Jason Flowers into this complex corruption. Given a couple of days of digging, and he could nail Flowers.

“This time it’s somebody named Singer,” Janey said. “Who is he?”

“He’s identified there. The project engineer. On all five jobs.” The typewriter keys jammed again.

“I mean
who
is he? Is he like Leroy Hall’s Mr. Peters? Is he a little skinny man with a mustache? Is he shy, like Arthur Peters?” Janey was staring at him. “You talked to him. It says here he said ‘No comment.’ Don’t you know anything about him? Weren’t you curious?”

“Oh,” Cotton said. (Janey’s eyes were dark, dark, dark. Who are you, Janey Janoski? You’re not what they say about you.) “Yes,” Cotton said. “But it was on the telephone.” He looked down at the typewriter, unclogging the keys. And then back at her. She might as well know it. “But he had a nice voice. And he has a daughter in high school.”

“Then why don’t you . . .” Her voice trailed off. She just looked at him.

“Why don’t I what? Use the child’s name? Singer is the father of Alice Singer, a junior at Washington High School, the fat, homely girl who already has social problems and pimples. Point your finger at her, classmates. Her daddy is a thief.”

Cotton typed. Changed pages. Typed again. Details now of how the bid rigging worked. Background on the Quality Experiment program. Background on the way the park-concession contracts were granted—with private firms like Wit’s End submitting the development plans, using allocations from the state bond fund for construction, paying it back with concession fees.

And finally he was finishing it, with the final paragraphs based on the information Rickner had given him about the pattern of transfers within the Highway Department. And Janey broke the heavy silence between them, talking over the sound of the typewriter keys.

“I can’t understand it,” she said.

Cotton’s anger surprised him. “Goddamn it. It’s easy enough to understand. Some bastard steals the public’s money. The public has a right to know about it.”

“And if you don’t do it somebody else has to,” Janey said. Her voice was very low. “That’s what my husband said. In the Navy. Flying a fighter-bomber. He said somebody had to do it. But it wasn’t really that. When he had the hundred missions he volunteered for another tour.”

Cotton looked at her. (She wasn’t explaining it to him. She was explaining it to herself. Now I see a little more of you, Janey Janoski. Now I know you a little better.)

“He didn’t hate anybody. The bombs didn’t really hurt anybody. It was Dick against the antiaircraft guns. It was a game you played.”

The room was silent again. Cotton could think of nothing to say.

“But people do get hurt,” Janey said. “Mr. Peters and Mr. Singer—and somebody threatened to kill you.” She looked at him. “Somebody tried to kill you tonight, I think. That’s what was happening at the capitol, wasn’t it? Somebody trying to kill you because of this article?”

“Somebody doesn’t want it printed. I guess that’s obvious.”

“So why do you do it?” It was an honest question. Not part of an argument. “Everybody gets hurt. Mr. Singer and Mr. Singer’s daughter and Paul’s reputation as Governor, and his chance at the Senate. And maybe you get killed.”

Cotton was tempted to tell her. To explain that printing it was his way of not getting hurt, of ending the hunt for him. But why? Why not let her think he too was playing some Don Quixote game of ethics and morality? Anyway, that was part of it. And her interest really wasn’t with him, or with Singer, or Singer’s daughter-in-high-school. It was with Paul Roark. (Know yourself, Janey Janoski. Examine your own motives.) His anger returned, hardened, the decision quickly made, the product of fatigue and emotion.

He pushed the chair back, got up, handed her the last pages of the story, jammed the carbon copy in his coat pocket.

“I’m going to let you try it for yourself, Janey. I told you I would. I said I’d give you a chance to rescue the rabbit. So you decide.”

He walked to the telephone table, flipped through the yellow pages, looking for “Taxicab.” “You’ll have to play by the rules. That means you can’t put it off. You have a deadline. If you take it to work with you and get it to Rickner in the pressroom by 9
A.M.
that makes the first edition. He teletypes it to the city desk and they have it in time.”

Cotton found the Checker Cab number and started dialing. “There’s another rule. Between thinking about Singer and Paul Roark, you have to think a little bit about this cab driver I’m calling. He pays his taxes out of money he could use for his own daughter in high school. He has a right . . .”

Somebody at the cab company answered the telephone.

Cotton gave him Janey’s address and ordered a cab. The dispatcher, sounding sleepy, promised it in ten minutes.

“Keep this cabbie in mind,” Cotton continued. “If he doesn’t know somebody’s stealing his money, the mess doesn’t get cleaned up.”

“This isn’t fair,” Janey said. “It’s your story. What if I . . .”

“The best you can do is give Singer a reprieve,” Cotton said. “My managing editor knows a lot about this now. They’ll dig it out.” He thought about telling her that if she didn’t give Rickner the story for today, he would have to deliver it tomorrow. Would have to because he owed that much to the
Tribune.
He was their man. At least he was while he was working the yarn, and until he could get his resignation to Danilov. And the yarn belonged to the
Tribune
just as much as its printing presses did. But why make it easy for her?

“There’s another way to do this,” Janey said. “You could tell Paul about it. He could clean it up. The cab driver doesn’t have to know.”

“What if Paul already knows about it?”

“You don’t believe that.”

As a matter of fact, he didn’t believe it. But the outrage in Janey’s voice hurt and he wasn’t going to admit it.

“If he doesn’t know, he’s supposed to. It’s his administration. His Highway Commission and his Park Commission.”

Janey picked up the coffeepot, took it into the kitchen.

“One other thing,” Cotton said. “Discount what you said about me getting hurt. There’s no reason left for anything like that now. It’s all over with.”

Janey’s answer came from the kitchen. “Not quite,” she said. “It won’t be over with for Mr. Singer.”

>22<

A
t the truck-stop café where the cab left him, Cotton realized there was just one thing left to do. Then it would be as complete and tidy as he could make it. He would call in his IOU from Joe Korolenko. He would tell the National Committeeman everything he knew and ask Korolenko to examine these facts and tell him what was behind them. He had no doubt that Korolenko’s generation-spanning knowledge of the state’s politics, politicians and power structure would make it easy for the old man to put it all into perspective. Korolenko would be able to guess who was behind Flowers, how the deal was set up, how the fixes were arranged. And he had little doubt that Korolenko would tell him. It would have to be off the record, but that wouldn’t matter. Korolenko would tell, unless the facts caused the old man to suspect that Paul Roark was the fixer. If that was the case, he would be evasive, because Roark was one of his own. Otherwise Korolenko would talk freely, because he owed Cotton a favor.

The IOU dated back more than four years to another session of political maneuvering. It involved persuading a man not to file as a candidate for Congress in the Democratic primary. Korolenko hadn’t asked the favor. He had simply approached Cotton in the Senate lounge and explained the problem, letting his eyes make the request.

And Cotton had done it. He had called the would-be candidate, and had obliquely let the man know the press hadn’t forgotten a grand-jury investigation involving him. Two days later the man had announced he wasn’t running. It seemed a small favor.