Spiked (18 page)

Her breathing grew louder as she began to drift off. Eddie got a blanket and covered her. She seemed to shrink under it, to become a little girl, a half-starved slave digging a ditch, too weak to lift the pick over her head. He watched her for a long time. Funny, he thought, they had spent the day together in a bloody fight for their lives, and his first glimpse of her humanity had come in something so ordinary as sleep.

***

Eddie lunged for the phone before it could ring a second time.

“Yeah?” he answered, looking out into the living room. He could see Chanthay on the recliner by the light of a streetlamp.

“We still on for later tonight?” Gordon Phife asked. “I got a sure-fire tip to cure your slice.”

“Gordie, this ain't a good time,” Eddie whispered.

“You can't cancel tonight!”

“Take it easy—it's just golf. We'll talk at work tomorrow.”

“No, Ed, we gotta talk tonight.”

Eddie watched Chanthay stir under the blanket. The thought of leaving her in the middle of the night nearly made him retch. “This isn't about my slice, is it?”

“This is serious.”

“Tell me now.”

“I won't talk about Keyes or Danny over the phone,” Phife insisted. “Later tonight.”

Eddie said nothing.

“Are you in or not?”

Eddie mouthed a curse word. Then he said, “Yeah, I'm in.”

At five minutes to three, the telephone rang three times. Eddie woke feeling grouchy. He dressed and grabbed his keys. Chanthay was on her right side on the recliner. The General snoozed beside her, on the arm of the chair, guarding the injured woman from the moth. Eddie tried to slip out without waking them.

“Where are you going?” she mumbled.

“To meet a friend. I'll be back soon.”

She reached a hand to him. “Keep me as your secret,” she said. “Please.”

The “please” struck him. It was an admission that she needed him, or at least needed something from him, and that was close enough to the same thing for Eddie. Her eyes were closed beneath wisps of hair across her face. An angry shiner glowered beneath her eye. Eddie winced at the sight of it, and was glad the hitmen were dead in the warehouse.

He took Chanthay's hand. They both squeezed. “You're my secret,” he promised.

***

This night was warmer than the last time Gordon Phife had worked on Eddie's swing. It was in the forties on The Empire's rooftop, almost balmy, but Phife had bundled up in gloves, a hat, and winter coat, precisely as he had before.

Eddie complained about the lesson plan. “You want to practice with a one iron?” he said. “I never take mine out of the bag.”

“That's why we need to practice,” Phife insisted. “And when I say we, I mean you.” He handed Eddie a Rolling Rock. The green bottle looked rusty brown in the red light of The Empire's giant neon E.

“What's with the Band-Aid on your ear?” Phife asked. He looked Eddie over. “And the tape on your hand? Jesus, Ed, if you got run over, I hope you got the license number.”

“Yeah, they had New York plates,” he said.

Gordon shrugged. “Major, right now you have me as confused as I ever hope to be.”

“I saw that movie—
Where Eagles Dare
.” Eddie tried to grip the club without angering the cut on his left hand.

Phife laughed. “You are on your game tonight. But can you hit?”

Eddie didn't care enough about his shot to wreck it by overthinking. He wanted to hear what was too important to wait until tomorrow. He whacked a line drive down the street, and his body ached.

Phife admired the shot. “See what good backswing tempo can do.”

Eddie said, “Lesson over.” He leaned on the club. “What have you heard?”

Phife seemed unbothered by Eddie's harshness. He looked at the dozen golf balls on the roof, and then to Eddie. “It's something Keyes said to me,” he said, softly. “But it's more than that. Lemme back up.” He drank beer. “Keyes has been on me about the political coverage—what events should be staffed with reporters, which get photogs and which get blown off.”

“Keyes is a micromanager and a prick,” Eddie said. “We knew this.”

Phife waved his hand in excitement. “Not like this, we didn't. In the past week, Keyes has scratched the news coverage for a dozen political events I had scheduled to cover. I couldn't figure it out. Some were even early-morning press conferences tailored to Empire deadlines. It wasn't until I went back over my calendar that I realized what those events had in common—all were for City Council
challengers
.”

“Every one?”

Phife nodded. “So I did a little more checking. Keyes made sure that we covered every event scheduled by the incumbents, no matter how inconvenient, or how minuscule the news value.”

Eddie sipped his beer and considered what Gordon was saying. “He's using the paper to manage the election.”

Phife shrugged. “I couldn't think of any other explanation, so I went to Keyes and that's what I told him.”

“In those words? That's he's managing the election?”

Phife smiled. “Well, maybe I softened it a little. But it didn't matter. He started raging that I shouldn't be questioning him.” Phife glanced around the rooftop, as if looking for eavesdroppers, and then said in a low voice, “Keyes told me, ‘You saw what happened to the last guy who questioned my authority at this newspaper.' ”

“Did he mean Danny?”

“Who else? I didn't stick around to ask.”

Eddie thought about the dozens of times Danny had defied Keyes. “Danny never argued with him,” Eddie said. “He just nodded whenever Keyes told him what to do, and then Danny went out and did whatever he wanted. He usually produced a better story on his own, so it was hard to fault him.”

“Maybe Keyes decided he had enough of that.”

“You fire a guy like that, you don't kill him,” Eddie said. What Gordon was saying didn't make any sense.

“What have you found out?” Phife asked.

Eddie told him about the autopsy report. He described how he had broken into Danny's home computer and found the fragment of a news story, which Danny had called his “ticket to the major leagues.”

Phife whistled at the magnitude of the information. “Sounds like the cops are getting nowhere,” he said.

Eddie had information about that, too. “I hear there's a lot of pressure to make this case go away, including from the brass here at the newspaper,” he said.

“From Templeton? Well, he's got a lot of yank in this town.”

“I wouldn't count on Detective Orr easing up on the investigation,” Eddie said. “I don't think that woman will ever give up.”

“You got good sources. I'm impressed,” Phife said. “I'm sure whatever you're doing, it's against the law.”

Eddie knew that quote, too. “
Close Encounters
.”

“Right again.”

“And here's one more for you,” Eddie said. “If Keyes wanted Danny out of the newsroom, all he had to do was wait. Danny was interviewing at the Globe.”

“You're joking!” Phife said. He slapped his knee. “The Globe?” He thought about it over two slugs of beer and then concluded, “Danny wasn't ready. He was a great reporter, but his writing left me too much reconstruction work. Not like you, Eddie.”

Eddie shrugged, saying, “I can't get any love from the big metro dailies.”

Phife seemed not to hear him. “I had to come in early when Nowlin had a story to file.” He suddenly grew bitter. “No, check that—I didn't
have
to come in early, I did it because I'm a professional, and my job is to make the reporters look good.” He gulped down more beer. “I carried Danny's ass—nearly carried it all the way to the Globe, apparently. But I never heard him acknowledge to anyone what I did for him.”

Eddie smiled. Copy editors have sung this lament since they corrected Homer's spelling in The Iliad.

“You need an eye opener to get noticed,” Phife offered. “A page-one splash to put on top of your resumé. Something that leaves the statewide press clawing over each other in your dust.” He drank some more. “What about the story you say Danny was working when he died, his ticket to the big leagues?”

“What about it?”

“What's to stop you from following the same leads and getting it into print?”

Eddie swung the club gently with one hand. He said, “I don't have much to go on. The story was about the Cambodian Khmer Rouge. That's about all I could lift from Danny's computer, that and something about church homilies.”

“Homilies?” Phife asked. “That reminds me of something Danny said a couple weeks ago. He asked me why the paper no longer runs religious sermons from local pastors. I didn't even know The Empire used to run them.”

“Long time ago,” Eddie said.

“Danny mentioned that he was going through old homilies in some back issues. He thought they were pretty good, and might boost circulation in the Monday paper.” Phife rubbed his chin, as the details seemed to come back to him. “I asked why he was studying old homilies, and I never did get an answer. He distracted me somehow—with a movie quote, I think. Something from
A Fish Called Wanda
….”

Phife went on, but Eddie wasn't listening. He thought back to his B&E on Nowlin's computer. What had Danny said?

The homilies. It was right there all along.

Eddie interrupted, “Gordo, my friend, if you weren't my immediate supervisor, I'd kiss you full on the mouth, and I wouldn't spare the tongue.” He tossed the one iron back to Phife, who caught it mid-shaft.

“I gotta go,” Eddie said.

“We got four beers left.”

“Save them for the back nine. I need to get to bed—too much research to do tomorrow.”

Phife nodded, and warned in a solemn tone, “Don't pull a Nowlin on me. Promise you'll call me when you hit trouble.”

Eddie yelled from around the giant E, “I swear it. You're a good friend, Gordo.”

The Mighty Chevette putt-putted through empty streets. If Danny had found a clue in old issues of The Empire, Eddie could find it, too.

The car stopped outside his house with the metal-on-metal grind of worn-out brake pads.
That sounds expensive
, Eddie thought.

He slipped into the house and leaned into the door. It creaked shut.

The General was on the piano. The recliner was empty, the blanket Eddie had given Chanthay folded over the arm.

“Chanthay?” Eddie called out. “Hello? Hey General, is she in the bathroom? Chanthay?”

She was gone.

Eddie's chessboard had been turned around. A king was on its side. She had made his next move for him, charging the queen across the battlefield, into checkmate.

Chapter 23

An Ethiopian Sidamo coffee grind, thick with cream, provided the caffeine that defibrillated Eddie's brain in the morning. The coffee's glorious aftertaste was still on his breath when he stepped off the elevator and over a dog's leash.

Boyce Billips and Superdog were waiting to go downstairs. Boyce was unusually pale and twitchy, even for him. He seemed too young for the dark circles beneath his eyes. He wore a yellow-patterned necktie with pink swooshes and white squares. It looked like three ugly ties had been stitched into one supremely ugly tie.

“Nice noose,” Eddie said.

Boyce laughed nervously. “The tie? I got it yesterday. Would you say this tie is yellow?”

“I suppose.”

Boyce spoke too fast to make much sense. “It has some other colors in it, too. But they didn't have any ties that were just yellow. I checked everywhere. But this one is mostly yellow, so wouldn't you say, if you were looking for a yellow tie, that this tie was—yes!—yellow?”

“Boyce, have you slept recently?”

“Not recently.” Superdog shook his head hard and flogged himself with his own ears, and then snorted like a steam shovel.

“It's yellow,” Eddie confirmed, feeling a mixture of remorse and morbid curiosity at having incited Boyce's paranoia with the email from Nowlin's computer. Eddie spoke slowly, careful to pronounce every syllable in full, as he might speak to a jumper on a ledge, “I'm going to my desk now. Okay Boyce?”

Boyce grabbed Eddie's elbow. “I sent you an email yesterday,” he confessed. “Don't open it! Just delete it. I didn't mean to send it. It's stupid. I realize that now.”

“I'll delete it.”

“Thank you, Eddie. And you're sure this is yellow?”

“Your fingernails are digging into my arm.”

Boyce let go and led Superdog into the elevator. “I'm doing a feature on the cat that lives at the Dracut library,” he said. He smiled weakly and yelled as the elevator doors were closing, “I hope he likes yellow ties!”

And yellow dogs
. Eddie made a mental note to speak to Boyce about ghosts.

The morning quickly got worse—Detective Orr and Franklin Keyes were at Eddie's desk. Orr was in plain clothes again: black slacks, bomber jacket, purple scarf. Keyes wore a business suit worth more than the Mighty Chevette.

“Bourque? You still work here?” Keyes said. “I haven't seen your byline for so long, I forgot.”

Eddie mentally welded his eyes in place before they rolled. “I'm filing my election analysis this morning,” he said. “And I got another idea to pitch after that.”

“More dope fiends?” Keyes said. He sneered, and then glanced at Orr. “Reporters need to produce around here, Bourque. But I think Detective Orr needs a word with you before you start, ah…producing.”

“Fine with me,” Eddie said.

They stood there.

Orr shifted her weight from foot to foot. Eddie checked the clock. Keyes scratched his nose. Orr finally suggested, “Maybe you could offer us your office, Mr. Keyes?”

Keyes snapped to attention. “Of course.” He led the way, opened the office door and stood aside to let them in; first Orr, then Eddie.

“Thanks, Frank,” Eddie said, shutting the door before Keyes could enter. Keyes froze a moment, unsure, and then abruptly spun and marched away.

Eddie headed for the editor's chair behind the desk, but Orr stopped him. “I would prefer to sit in Mr. Keyes' chair,” she said.

So she did. Eddie took a chair in front of the desk. “Is that a police thing?” he asked. “You sit in the seat that projects the most authority?”

“No,” said Orr, unbothered by his smart-ass analysis. “I prefer not to be between you and the door, so as not to imply a physical barrier. You are not in custody, and therefore free to leave any time.” She smiled, all teeth and phony. “Makes it more difficult for lawyers to argue that incriminating statements were coerced. It's just policy.”

Eddie shook his head and shrugged.

Detective Orr took an index card from her shirt pocket and slid it across the desk. “Read this, please,” she said. “Then print your name in the space, sign the bottom and date it. In ink, please.” She gestured to a pen on the desk, as if there was some question about what she meant by ink. “Speak up if there's anything you don't understand.”

On the card was printed a short paragraph. Eddie got one line into it:

I ________ understand that I have the right to remain silent….

He looked up. “What the hell is this?”

“Your Miranda warnings. These are rights determined by the Supreme Court—”

“Yeah—I've seen
Dragnet
,” he said, cutting her off. An image of the hitman plunging down the elevator shaft flashed into his mind. His voice inched higher. “Why are you giving this to me? Am I under arrest?”

“No, Mr. Bourque.” As Eddie grew excited, she became proportionally more calm. “I said you were free to go any time. We can make an appointment to meet at headquarters, if you'd like, and you may bring your attorney. But please finish reading the card.”

Eddie understood the damn card. It meant she would use whatever he said to nail his ass, if at all possible. And if he could not afford a lawyer, the state would provide a public defender two years out of night school, who was already juggling thirty cases.

What the hell does she want from me? I leveled with her last time.

He signed, in ink.

With the little card back safe in her pocket, Detective Orr took out her notebook, a spiral flip-top model like Eddie used, except smaller. She wasted no time. “What were you doing at Mr. Nowlin's apartment?”

“Um….”
How could she know that?

As if reading his thoughts, Orr explained, “I followed up yesterday with Mr. Nowlin's landlady. She mentioned that you had been by. I didn't know you liked Sinatra, Mr. Bourque.”

Okay, at least the landlady hadn't ratted about Eddie's con job. “I was fishing for clues,” he admitted.

“Doing
my
job again.”

“Not that I doubt the way you—”

“How did you know Mr. Nowlin's address?”

“Huh?” She had trapped him. He looked at his feet. “I found Danny's wallet the night those people saved me from the canal,” he said.

“Found it where?”

“Under a bridge.” He ran his hand through his hair. “These people, they're drug addicts, okay? They had found Danny's wallet. But he was already dead—I'm sure of that.”

“Fine,” she said. “Let's talk some more about your connection to certain known users and possible traffickers of narcotics, namely heroin.”

“I've been talking to these people, these heroin addicts, under the bridge, for a news story. That's my job.”

Orr flipped the page in her notebook. “Uh-huh. Let's start at the beginning, Mr. Bourque. Who are these people under the bridge?”

Eddie told her about his night with the addicts.

Orr scribbled it all down. She looked him over and frowned. “Every time I see you, Mr. Bourque, you look a little worse. Mind explaining where you were yesterday?”

Eddie got a mental picture of the other hitman, face-down in Billings Mill, like he was peeking through a hole in the floor.

For a moment, Eddie considered leveling with her. Detective Orr seemed like an honest, effective cop, who was pressing on with her investigation despite political pressure to make the case go away. Eddie had information that might help. But there was no way to help Detective Orr without breaking his promise to keep Chanthay's secret. And no way to help her without explaining the two dead men in the mill, one impaled on God-knew-what at the bottom of an elevator shaft and the other with a cracked skull and a bullet in his brain.

So much for leveling with her.

Eddie squirmed through the interview, evading questions when he could, offering the truth whenever possible and flat-out lying when he had to. He did not fool her—that much was obvious. But with no hard evidence with which to challenge his story, Detective Orr was stuck with what he gave her.

She closed the notebook and rose in one motion. “I have taken a good deal of your time, Mr. Bourque, but investigations such as this depend greatly on the recollections of the people who knew the deceased,” she said.

“I know that.”
Just leave
.

“That's why the statements I collect are so important,” she said, waving the little notebook. “And why it's a crime if anything false gets in here.”

Eddie eyed her. “You think that notebook is sharp enough to cut the politics in this town?”

She hesitated—just a split-second, but Eddie saw it. “I'll be in touch,” she said, and walked out smiling. Good God, how Eddie hated that phony smile. But her hesitation had confirmed for him that someone was applying pressure to ease off the investigation. Not that Orr would, and Eddie felt sick that he could not level with her. He sat in Keyes' office, clutching his head and counting the ways she could puncture his tale. They seemed endless.

Melissa poked in her head. “I'm braving the elements and brutalizing my body for the sake of stimulating the mind,” she said. “Care to come on a coffee run?”

“She thinks I'm obstructing the investigation,” Eddie said, still clutching his head.

“Who? That police lady with the fabulous Ann Taylor scarf? I love that color, not quite violet, more like a plum—”

“Did you hear me? She thinks I
don't
want her to find out who murdered my beat partner. Remember him? The chipper redheaded guy who sat next to me and would have scooped my ass all over town if he were my competitor instead of my partner? Or at least that's what the Globe thinks—do you ever listen to what I'm saying?”

Eddie didn't realize until he finished that he had been yelling.

Melissa recoiled one step back. Her hand drew over her heart.

“Maybe it's time you switch to decaf,” she said softly.

She left him there.

Eddie started after her. But Melissa sped away on her long getaway sticks. Eddie couldn't catch her without running, and that would just draw attention to a bad scene. This was becoming the worst day of the week—and he had already been thrown in a canal and chased by two New York hitmen. Both, Eddie suddenly realized, probably had been Yankees fans.