Spiked (23 page)

Chapter 32

Eddie rubbed earwax off the receiver and pumped two quarters into the gas station pay phone. The Mighty Chevette idled nearby. Having finally coaxed it to life, Eddie was afraid to shut it off. He dialed The Empire, and then punched in a familiar extension.

Stan Popko picked up on the ninth ring, a marked improvement in response time.

“It's Bourque,” Eddie said.

“Eddie! I'm nearly through researching my essay on the Stooges.”

“Stan? What's wrong with your voice? You sound strange.”

“It's my mood,” Stan answered. “I think it's good.”

“And the blind man learns to see. Good for you, but don't overdo it.”

“I'll be careful,” Stan assured him, with no hint that he was kidding.

Eddie counted the coins in his hand and got to the point. “Listen, Stan, does the paper hire outside computer consultants to give you a hand, or take jobs you can't get to?”

“Not that I know,” Stan said. “I'm overpaid and hardly worked.”

“Your candor still stuns me, man. I'm gonna ask you to do something beyond our original deal. You'll probably get fired if you're caught. And the legality of it is kind of gray.”

“This isn't dangerous, is it?” Stan's good mood teetered over a cliff.

“Sort of.”

Stan gasped, and then stammered, “I'm non-violent. I abhor violence, Eddie, whenever it's done to me—”

“Wait, wait!” Eddie interrupted. “Not that kind of dangerous. I want you to hack into The Empire's accounting department and search their records.”

“Oh.” Stan paused. “I do that all the time.”

“I should have guessed.”

Eddie heard keys clicking. Stan rambled as he typed, “The accounting department is supposed to be a completely self-contained local area network—the bean counters don't need to surf the Internet. But, naturally, I have developed my own back door.”

The clicking continued for thirty seconds. Eddie dropped another quarter into the phone.

“Ah-ha!” Stan was in. “What are we looking for?”

“Keyes said something off the cuff yesterday that bothered me,” Eddie said. “He was on a rant, you know—reporters are lazy, blah, blah, blah—and it slipped out that he was paying an outside computer consultant. I want to find that invoice, but I bet they tried to camouflage it.”

“Could be listed under anything. Any more information?”

“Check within the past week.”

Clicking, clicking, lots of clicking, and then Stan said, “The company has paid seventy invoices this week, from a high of nine thousand dollars—looks like for ink—to a low of fifty-four, for cable TV.”

“Seventy invoices—that's more than I figured,” Eddie said. “If my hunch is right, this would be a one-time payment. Does that help?”

“Yes—it—does,” Stan said slowly over a barrage of keystrokes. “I'm issuing an exclusion command against the payee database. This should eliminate accounts the paper pays regularly.” There was one final click, and then silence.

“Peculiar,” Stan said. “There are two first-time accounts. One is for wallpaper.”

“Keyes is redoing his office. What else?”

“The other is for exactly five thousand dollars, for data consultation.”

“That's the one. Who'd they cut the check to?”

More clicking, and then a pause. “I know this name,” Stan said. “Mary Chi. She's a doctor of computer science at the university.”

“That's right,” Eddie said. “And you were right about the virus that destroyed Nowlin's computer notes—it came up the elevator, and Dr. Chi carried it.”

“Huh?”

Eddie pumped his fist in the air. He shouted, “Goddam, Stan, it was perfect! She got me to punch in Nowlin's password, and I was standing
right there
when she put in the disk. She was supposed to be copying his files, but that's when she uploaded the virus.”

Stan was new to these cloak and dagger concepts; it took him a minute. “And this accounting record—you think the paper paid her to do it?”

“Five thousand bucks for a ten-minute job. Nice work if you can get it.”

Stan got excited, like a little kid. “What are we going to do?”

“Let's break ‘we' into its basic elements—you and I. You are going to keep this quiet. I am going to find out why The Empire's brass paid five grand to torch Nowlin's notes. I have a plan to flush out the truth.”
Though the guy I need to help me hates my guts.

“Oh—the brass,” Stan said, “they're looking for you, but I guess so is everybody.”

“For me? Like who?”

“Well, Ed, the police. I've heard your name on the scanner a few times. Sounded serious.”

The police? Eddie switched the phone to his other ear. “You're telling me this
now
?”

“Now's when I'm thinking of it.”

“Christ, Stan, did the cops say what they wanted?”

“I can't say—been working on my essay and playing games, so it's hard to hear. Keyes has been paging you over the intercom, too.”

“And what the hell does
he
want?”

“Could have to do with the cop car outside the building. Been there all morning.”

“This is weird,” Eddie said. “Do me a favor and don't tell anybody you talked to me today.”

“Who's to tell?”

“Right.” Eddie hung up. He drummed his fingers on the telephone. What were the police so anxious to talk about?

Forget it, they'll have to wait.

Eddie got a number from directory assistance and dialed it. A receptionist answered on the first ring and spewed in one breath, “Thank you for calling Channel Eight, Boston's number-one, twenty-four-hour news leader, to whom may I direct your call?”

“Newsroom.”

The line transferred and rang four times. Another receptionist answered.

Eddie said, “Chuck Boden, please.”

“Yessir. Mr. Boden is in a news meeting. Whom may I say is calling?”

“Tell Boden it's Eddie Bourque, and he's got no balls if he doesn't come to the phone.”

After a moment of stunned silence, Eddie heard a click, and then two minutes of numbing banter between the anchors on Channel Eight's wakeup show, taped that morning. Then Boden got on the line. “Nice manners, Bourque,” he growled. He snapped his gum in Eddie's ear. “The receptionist doesn't get paid to deal with assholes.”

“Then give her half your clothing stipend and let her retire to the Vineyard.”

Boden snorted. “Still the funny man. Did you call to share your wit, or just to wreck my day?”

“This ain't fun for me either,” Eddie said. “But I got a gift for you.”

“Any gift from you,” Boden swore, “I will turn over to the bomb squad.”

“It's a story, and it's in your size—big.”

“Yeah? What?”

“You have to come out here to find out.”

Boden said nothing for a moment, and then, “Not interested, Bourque. You have nothing I'd want.” But he stayed on the line, and he chewed the gum faster.

“I have every station's lead story for a week, and I'm offering it to you.”

“Why aren't you writing it?” Boden demanded. “You could win a big prize and get your ass out of that two-bit rag.”

“I got my reasons. Don't tell me that you suddenly care about what I write.”

“I don't,” Boden said. He chewed his gum for a few seconds. “Why me, Bourque?” He added with suspicion, “Is this about those story tips from when we were interns?”

“Not a chance, Chuck. I'm over that.”

Eddie meant it. All it took was a near-death experience with a warrior goddess in an abandoned warehouse. Should have done it years ago. “Don't get me wrong,” Eddie explained. “I still think you're a prick. But my opinion is now based solely on your wretched personality. Unfortunately for me, you're also a big name in TV news, and that'll give the story more weight. I need a big punch.”

“You're setting me up,” Boden accused. But he didn't sound convinced.

“As much as we hate each other, Chuck, we both respect the news,” Eddie reasoned. “You sensationalize the hell out of it, like every TV clown, but you're a reporter, not a script reader. And I'm sure we agree you're the best in Boston.” He paused. “Now that I've said that, I need to go puke.”

Boden chuckled. “So touching. By leaking this to me, I assume you hope to screw somebody.”

“With a flagpole. Till his distant cousins are sore.”

Boden thought for a moment. “Nothing leads at Channel Eight without video.”

“You'll get film,” Eddie promised.

Boden spit out the gum and mumbled something under his breath. He warned, “So help me, Bourque, if you're wasting my time…”

Chapter 33

Eddie could not shake the feeling that he should avoid the police until he had what he wanted.

Twice on the way downtown he had spotted cruisers on patrol, and had jerked his car into the nearest driveway, out of sight. He wasn't sure why he was hiding. The cops might want to talk to him, but they wouldn't be prowling the city looking for him.
Would they?
He had misled Detective Orr on a couple points, but the police wouldn't send out an APB for that.

Still, he needed a few more hours. It was time to dump the Mighty Chevette; the car was too old, ugly and conspicuous to drive when he was trying not to be noticed.

Eddie motored slowly down side streets spiraling through a thickly settled neighborhood of concrete apartment buildings and boxy duplexes, about a mile from downtown. Every street in the neighborhood was jammed, both sides, with cars parked bumper to bumper: SUVs and minivans, older-model German convertibles and Japanese econo-boxes of every make. There might have been two thousand cars crammed in this cramped maze of two dozen streets, a perfect place to hide one little Chevette, if he could find a parking spot.

He drove around muttering about how frustrating it must have been to live in that neighborhood, until—success!—he spied a patch of blacktop between two massive, battered sedans. The space at first looked too small to be called a parking spot, but Eddie was a determined driver in an old junker, and he bumper-knocked the car in there, tight to the curb. For drivers traveling in either direction, the Chevette would have been nearly invisible.

Eddie put on his leather coat and black sunglasses. He popped his Red Sox cap on his head and pulled it down low.

The sun was bright above a few high clouds. He strolled sidewalks piled with trash bags and plastic recycling bins. He saw two dog walkers, some kids racing on their bicycles, a few joggers, and an old man picking returnable cans from the junk.

Eddie turned a corner onto a commercial stretch of street-level storefronts built into the first floor of triple-decker apartment homes.

A police car was coming toward him on the street.

Eddie ducked into a doorway of some kind of bookstore. He faced away from the street and pretended to tie his shoe. The cruiser's reflection passed in the storefront's milky white windows.

The door opened and a man came out dressed like Eddie: dark glasses, baseball cap low on his head. He cradled a brown paper bag in his arm. He mumbled to Eddie, “Lithuanian erotica, fifty percent off.”

“What?”

“Nice selection, too.”

Eddie stepped back and read the sign above the door. “Oh,” he said. He had heard of “The Licker Store,” an adult book outlet, but never knew where it was. Eddie got indignant. “Lithuania, you say? I was told all of Eastern Europe would be on sale. I'm never shopping here again.”

He spun and marched on toward downtown, keeping watch for police patrols. From a distance he saw the police car, two cops inside, stationed outside The Empire.

Still there? Waiting for me?

Eddie turned up his collar and hustled across an intersection to a neighborhood pub with clean views of both the Empire Building and police headquarters.

***

Chuck Boden did as Eddie had asked, and parked the Channel Eight van in front of the police station. Any Empire editor glancing out the newsroom window would see the truck. The editor might call the police to make sure nothing big was brewing. But if the cops had no murders, political corruption or quirky crimes—a holdup at a bowling alley or an assault with a weed whacker—the van would blend, chameleon-like, into the downtown streetscape.

A dumpy man in jeans and yellow work boots got out on the driver's side. He would be the guy paid to run the camera. The newsman paid ten times more got out on the passenger's side, looking like a Wall Street mogul in a gray suit and black overcoat. His hair defied wind.

Boden waited while the cameraman collected his equipment. A car horn beeped. Boden grinned and waved to the driver. They crossed the street and met Eddie in the bar. Boden let the dumpy guy lug the camera, the tripod and a gym bag stuffed with wires and microphones and other TV junk.

Boden slid across the booth from Eddie. The cameraman took a chair nearby and busied himself with testing batteries.

Boden started to offer his right hand to Eddie, but changed his mind and pulled away the moment Eddie reached for it. Then Eddie pulled back, just as Boden reached for
his
hand. Then they repeated the whole awkward scene, moving like lumberjacks working a two-handed saw, until they both gave up and Boden asked, “Are we in a rush?”

“No.”

The TV man checked his reflection in the window. He said, “What a picture, huh? You and me—at the same table. I know a few people who'd bust a vein if they saw this.” He called to the cameraman, “Hey, Rusty, get some film of me and my new best friend.”

The cameraman gave a dismissive wave and set at untangling a gob of black wires.

Eddie said, “Thanks for coming, Chuck. I know it couldn't have been easy because, well, you know, our history.”

Boden flashed perfect teeth in an angry wolf's smile, a wolf with caps. “You don't get it, Bourque,” he snarled.

“Why don't you explain it to me?”

Boden leaned over the table, close enough for Eddie to see his eyeliner. “You think I hate your guts because you accused me of stealing story tips off your computer all those years ago, and nearly got me fired?” He jabbed a finger at Eddie. “Get over yourself.”

Boden leaned back and gazed out the window at traffic. The anger lines smoothed from his face. “We were both working the cop beat. Did it ever occur to you that I might have heard on my own that three councilmen were about to be indicted for kickbacks? It's not my fault you sat on the story in secret, trying to nail down every little detail. When I got it, I ran with it.

“You're a hyper-competitive, needling little bastard,” Boden said. “By calling me a thief, you nearly ended my career before it started.” He laughed, spitefully. “But the funny thing is—when we were interns together, I actually looked up to you. You had Pam, who's terrific, and you obviously had talent in this business. You were going places.

“When you left for the full-time gig in Vermont, I thought you'd be in Boston in a year, and in New York in two.”

Boden gently waved off a waiter who had come to take his order.

“But you wasted your time in Vermont,” he continued. “You had to prove to everybody that you were the baddest guppy in the fishbowl, and you couldn't leave until you did.
That's
what I can't respect. And I've heard you let Pam drift away because she was in competition for your time, and you'd rather talk to your sources than to her. You're an idiot for losing her, by the way.”

The TV man shrugged. “And then you come slinking back to The Empire? You come back to the small time for
what
? To be close enough to the big papers to see what you're missing? Sorry, but when a man lies down like a doormat, Chuck Boden wipes his shoes on him.”

Boden clasped his hands behind his head, smiled and said breezily, “So fuck you, Ed, and your story tips from seven years ago. That little dust-up taught me to take command of where I was going, and not let other people control my career. I've been moving up ever since. Which is more than I can say for you.”

The lashing burned the tops of Eddie's ears. He nodded, shrugged and said, “You're right.”

“Hold on! Should we roll tape on this? You agree?”

“This has been an enlightening week,” Eddie explained. “For my whole career I've been demanding the truth from politicians. Now I'm demanding it from myself.”

The cameraman had stopped what he was doing and was intently eavesdropping. Eddie zapped him with a dirty look.

Boden said, “Rusty, can you
pretend
to be minding your own business?”

Eddie lowered his voice. “In Vermont, there was always another little secret to expose, always another story that I had to get in search of the perfect resumé. I got into a competition with myself, trying to outdo all my past work. I recognized after a couple years that Pam and I were growing apart, and I did nothing to stop it. It pissed me off that she was ready to settle down in some small town and start
living
, while I still thought of Vermont as a temp job on my way to the big time. The more she tried to make life comfortable there, the harder I worked….” He let the thought trail off.

“I was stupid to think that just getting my work back into this market would bring the big dailies to my doorstep,” Eddie admitted. “A guy stepping backward in the business to his old paper must trigger all sorts of red flags.”

“After seven years at a mid-sized daily in Vermont, yeah, I'd say so,” Boden said. “No matter how good the writer.”

That sounded like a compliment, but Eddie was unsure it was intentional. “I envy the chances you've taken in your career, Chuck,” he said. “I thought you were a fool when you gave up newspapers for a shot at TV.”

“So did a lot of people, even me at first.”

“But you saw it through,” Eddie said. “I've played it safe my whole career.” He felt the tone of the conversation sliding toward morose and clapped his hands. “But no more. I've learned this week that nothing extraordinary comes without risk.”

Boden nodded, pleased and intrigued. “Now
this
I should get on tape.”

“Maybe not. If my scheme doesn't work you'll see my career in the obituaries.”
And maybe me, too
.

“What's your game plan?”

“It starts with you leading tonight's six-o'clock broadcast with the story of the year.”

“Yeah, about that—where the hell's my scoop?” he asked. “I got political capital with the boss riding on this.”

Eddie slid him a photocopy of a seventeen-year-old Empire story.

Boden pulled reading glasses from his coat pocket and set them near the end of his nose. He nodded when he had reached the end of the clip. “I remember the Father Wojick scandal,” he said. “He falls in love and goes to California to get laid. People gossip, he's never heard from again. The end. What's the new hook? And where's my video?”

Eddie slid out of the booth. “Let's take a walk.”

Boden frowned. “You're not going to tell me until the last second, are you? See what I mean—you're a needling little bastard.”

They strolled into the Acre. Their slow pace stirred no interest, not even from folks out on their front steps, bored speechless by being poor and waiting for entertainment to happen by. Boden let old Rusty carry all their equipment. He seemed impervious to the cameraman's huffing and puffing. Eddie led them through the brush to the side door at St. Francis de Sales Church, and opened the padlock with the key Hippo Vaughn had given him.

“Please,” Boden said as they entered, “let there be a sex cult in here.”

Rusty staggered up the stairs behind them. At the top Boden looked to Eddie and rolled his eyes to apologize for his cameraman's whimpering.

“So this was Wojick's church,” Boden said. “Impressive. A shame they don't use it anymore. This bright enough in here, Rusty?”

The cameraman wiped a sleeve over his shiny forehead. “I got lights. It'll be fine.”

“Look around,” Eddie said. “Take some film of the sanctuary, but don't go near the altar until I get back. This could take a while.”

Eddie hustled down the main aisle. His heavy footsteps echoed through the vast church like distant cannon fire. He skirted the altar and slipped through an arched doorway to a stripped-down room, painted white from the hardwood floor to the twelve-foot ceiling. A tall wardrobe cabinet, two sagging cafeteria-style tables and a few mismatched chairs were scattered around.

The room had two doors. The first led down to a dark basement. Wrong way. Eddie needed a passage leading up.

The second door led to a narrow corridor, just wide enough to walk through, which passed behind the altar to a similar room on the other side, probably at one time a dressing room for the altar boys. This room contained a dozen old folding chairs—wooden and missing slats—and two empty wardrobe cabinets.

No passage up.

Eddie peeked behind the cabinets, and then searched the rest of the walls, pushing and tapping, for a panel or utility door. Nothing. He searched back along the narrow corridor, found nothing and performed a similar hunt in the first room. He sat in a dusty chair, defeated.
There has to be a way up there.

He looked up. In the ceiling was the square outline of a trap door. Eddie smacked his forehead with the heel of his hand.

The wardrobe, he decided, would make an excellent base for a makeshift ladder; it was sturdy and tall, with a top big enough to support a chair. But it must have been made from the same wood as Eddie's mysteriously heavy piano, because the damn thing would not budge.

Instead, Eddie dragged a cafeteria table under the trap door. On the table he placed an armless wooden chair with a spindle-rod backing. On that chair, he placed the sturdiest of a rickety bunch of folding chairs from the other room. And on that chair, Eddie placed his feet.

His fingertips clung to the back of the chair until the whole tower stopped quivering. The trap door wasn't hinged; it was just a piece of plywood painted white to match the ceiling. He pushed it in, and then over to the side. With much scuffling and grunting, he pulled himself up.

He entered a utility room, the same size as the room below, but unfinished. Three of its walls were just planks nailed to wooden beams. The fourth was stone, the granite outer wall of the church. A minimal steel ladder, something like a fire escape, was bolted to the outer wall, leading up into darkness.

Eddie was prepared for the dark. He took a penlight from his pocket, clicked it on, held it in his teeth and started up the ladder. Twenty rungs later, he was still climbing. The exercise, combined with the height, produced a sweat Eddie could smell. It was the odor of parachuting or rock climbing, activities that combine sports with the chance of death. He stopped to wipe his hands, one at a time, on his pants.