The Anonymous Source (27 page)

ALEX WAS
SITTING
on a red leather chair across from Sonia when she opened her eyes at 3 p.m.

“Sonia, I’m going to write the story. I don’t know what I’m going to do with it yet, but I’m going to get it out somehow. Is there any way you can get Harrison to go on the record about the money?”

Sonia sat up on the couch and looked at him, smiling. “Why do you want to break this story, honey? What do you think will come of it?”

Alex shifted in the chair. “I don’t know. At the very least, it will get Santiago out of jail.”

“You’re so earnest,” she said, rubbing her eyes. “You’re the perfect mix of selfish and selfless.” She put one leg up on the couch. Her robe drifted, exposing a thigh.

Juan walked in and Alex glanced at him, then looked back at Sonia. “Sonia, please. I have enough to write the story, but it will be much better if someone will go on the record. If Harrison won’t, how about you? You could tell the story of Mac, his relationship with Bice, his friendship with Martin, Sadie Green, all of it. If you’ll go on the record, I can lock down the story and nail Bice.”

Sonia glanced at Juan, who went to the kitchen. “I don’t care to
nail Bice
.”

She patted the couch and Alex got up and walked over. “But he killed your husband,” he said, sitting next to her.

“Don’t get me wrong. He should be punished. But he won’t be. Nothing I say will do anything more than embarrass him. Men like you do not
nail
men like Denver Bice. I’m sorry if that sounds rude, but it’s true. He’s like me in a lot of ways, except that I don’t kill people.”

“Then how
is
he like you?”

“He always gets what he wants.”

Juan appeared from the kitchen with a tray of tall green glasses. He handed one to each of them.

Alex smelled mango and rum. “You may be right, Sonia, but isn’t it worth trying? I may not be able to prove the murder, but I can probably get Santiago off, and I can certainly implicate Bice. That’s often how these things happen. I get the ball rolling, then maybe someone else comes forward with better evidence.”

Juan squeezed onto the couch between them and leaned his head onto Sonia’s shoulder. “You’re very serious, Mr. Alex,” he said.

“It’s happy hour,” Sonia said. “Can’t you get happy?” She threw her leg over Juan’s lap and tickled Alex’s knee with her toes. “We usually dance at this hour.”

Alex shifted away from her but Juan placed a hand on his shoulder. Alex stood up.

“Alex,” Sonia said, “don’t you know that sexuality is a continuum? Drink your drink.”

“I thought happy hour started at five.”

Sonia smiled. “It’s past ten in Brazil.”

Alex studied her tan legs. “Tell you what. Do an hour interview with me, both of you, on the record, and then I’ll stay for dinner.”

Sonia and Juan looked at each other and she nodded.

Alex took his recorder out of his bag and set it on the table. He took a long sip from the glass and nodded to Juan. “First, how about another?”

When Juan returned with another tray of drinks, Alex started in on a series of questions about how Mr. Hollinger and Sonia met and what he had been like personally. Then he asked about their finances and his dealings with Denver Bice. She did not have much new information, but she was able to provide a lot of detail that Alex didn’t yet have. Juan went on the record about overhearing Mr. Hollinger’s call on the night of August twenty-eighth.

Finally, Alex asked, “Sonia, can you tell me anything about what the coroner said when you went to identify the body? I know this is difficult.” He reached out and took her hand. Juan smiled.

“He found it a bit strange that Mac had been found in the Marriott rubble. Many people who worked on the high floors were found toward the top of the rubble but he was found on the bottom, on the north side. But bodies and limbs were found everywhere, so he didn’t make much of it.”

“Anything else?”

“He had a tiny bit of fuzz in his mouth. Black velvet fuzz, I think he said.”

“And he had no explanation for that?” Alex asked.

Sonia shrugged.

“One last question. Now that you know Bice murdered your husband to protect his company, are you going to leave your money in
The Standard
?”

“Money? It’s always about money, isn’t it?”

“It’s not always about money. But it is this time.”

Sonia waved her hand dismissively. “I’ll think about it.”

Alex clicked off the recorder, and stood up. “Well, I better be—”

“No,” Sonia said. “You said you would stay for dinner. And before dinner, we dance.”

Juan took the remote control from Sonia’s robe pocket and clicked a button that caused an explosion of sound—a tribal drumbeat overlaid with string instruments playing a fast, sweeping melody. Within seconds, Juan and Sonia were off the couch, grinding rhythmically and shaking their arms.

Sonia tugged at Alex’s arm as he watched from the couch. “I don’t dance,” he said.

She looked at him and raised an eyebrow. “A body like that and you don’t dance?”

She and Juan each grabbed one of his hands and pulled him up. As she pressed into Alex’s hips and rubbed a hand through his hair, he reached down and emptied his drink.

While he attempted to dance, Camila entered his mind every few moments. Each time she did, he danced harder and squeezed Sonia’s delicate waist tighter. Every so often, Juan disappeared and left Alex alone with Sonia. Then he would reappear with more drinks and they would continue to dance and drink. Soon his head was pounding with images of Camila and Santiago and Downton. He tried to eliminate the images by staring hungrily at Sonia, his sadness tangled with desire and heat and sweat.

After what seemed like hours of dancing, Sonia sat down on the couch and reached for the remote control. She pressed a button and the curtains retracted, darkening the room. She pressed another and the ceiling of glass went black. Another and the music changed to a soft piano piece. Alex collapsed onto the couch next to her as she slipped off her robe and bikini top and moved onto his lap. “
Vamos
,” she said softly, leaning in to kiss him as Juan came up behind her and put his hands on her shoulders.

* * *

Alex woke up on the floor naked, head throbbing. He saw Juan and Sonia intertwined on the long, white couch. He saw his clothes draped over a chair. He dressed in silence, his shirt smelling of sweat mingled with Sonia’s perfume and Juan’s cologne. He looked down at the two of them, tan and naked. Instead of his usual subtle guilt, he was struck by a wave of pure shame.

He found his cell phone lodged under the couch, then went outside and found Officer Lucas asleep behind the wheel of his car. It was 2 a.m.

Alex sat down on the steps in the cool air, staring at the stars. After a few minutes, he moved down to the driveway and tried doing a set of pushups, but his stomach churned and gurgled. He collapsed, his ear flat against the cold stone, then rolled onto his back and watched Sirius flash blue, then white, then red.

As he stared at the star he felt stronger, then weaker. He heard himself whimper softly and, within a few seconds, he was sobbing.

AT 7
A.M. ALEX
WALKED
to the bathroom after a deep, silent sleep. He felt worn out, used up. He drank a glass of water and stared at himself in the mirror. Images passed through his head of Sonia’s slim, naked body pressed between Juan and himself. He felt both excited and repulsed.

On his way to breakfast he found Grady sitting outside his door, reading the paper. “It’s been two days,” Alex said. “What are you doing to catch him?” He was hung over and his muscles were sore from his night at Sonia’s.

Grady looked up from his paper. “We’re doing the things we do. We’ve got three guys on it. The guy from NYC got here late last night. Doyle. He’ll be by later.”

“They just sent one detective?” Alex asked.

“Cutbacks. Lucky to get the one guy, and he’s not even a detective. Officer Doyle, they called him.”

Alex didn’t recognize the name. “So, what’s the plan?”

“Plan?”

“I mean, have you found out where Rak is staying? What name he is traveling under? Have you called around to local hotels?”

Grady stared at him without expression. “You think we get a lot of Ukrainian assassins around here?” He looked down at the newspaper.

“Would it help if I went back to the beach and sat there with a target on my back?”

Grady shook his paper and folded it, then looked up at Alex. “We’re not as stupid as we look, you know. We think he might have gone home. There is no trace of him.”

“He didn’t go home.”

“Well then, all we can do is wait for the officer from the big city. You all seem to know what’s going on more than we do anyway.”

* * *

At the buffet, Alex ate a small plate of eggs and stared out the window at the hotel courtyard, ignoring the notes he had spread on the table. Every few minutes he looked down at his phone, hoping Camila would call.

When he got up to leave, he heard wheels scraping the sidewalk outside and looked out. A teenager Alex had seen around the hotel was skateboarding across the courtyard. He looked about sixteen and wore ripped, baggy jeans. His hair was green and his forearms were almost completely black with tattoos. His face was fresh and bright. Alex watched him as he rolled by the window. When he passed a bed of bright blue and white orchids, he dismounted the skateboard, kicked it up into his hands, and looked from side to side. Then he bent down and sniffed a single orchid for a long time before throwing his skateboard back to the ground, leaping onto it, and skating away.

Alex sat back down and looked at his empty plate, then stared out at the spot where the boy had been.

He was still staring at the orchids when his phone rang.

“Hello?”

“It’s Sadie Green.”

Alex walked out to the courtyard. “What’s up?”

“Alex, when you called before, why were you asking about Denver Bice and when he might have heard about the five hundred million?”

“What? No insults about me and
The Standard
?”

“C’mon,” she said.

“I told you, I’m working on a story.”

“Look, you don’t need to say what you’re working on. You may actually be trying to do real journalism for once in your life and I don’t want to get in the way of that. But I need to tell you something.”

Alex sat on the edge of a cedar planter filled with bright yellow flowers. “What do you need to tell me?”

“I told Denver Bice about Mac’s money. I called him, drunk, in early September. He knew Mac’s plans because I told him. And you can quote me on that.”

“Why? I mean, why would you do that?”

“I was drunk. I was gloating. A gorgeous girl at the bar was flirting with me. I thought I was Captain Kirk for a minute.”

“So why’d you lie when I asked you before?” Alex asked.

“Lying to members of the corporate media just comes naturally to me. I mean,
you
spend all your time lying to the public. At this point, I lie to guys like you just on principle.”

“So why are you telling me now?”

“I heard you got fired. And if you got fired by
The Standard
, you must be doing something right.”

“Thanks,” Alex said.

When they hung up Alex sat in the courtyard and stared at the orchids. After a few minutes, he called Camila and left a message. “Hey, it’s Alex. I’m still here in Hawaii. I hope your dad is okay, or, well, as okay as can be expected. Anyway, I need your help. I need advice. I need . . . something. Call me when you get a chance, okay?”

OVER THE
LAST FEW MINUTES
, Camila thought she’d felt her father dissipate and move into the room. The expression on his face had changed, his cheeks growing softer and his eyes opening wider. He mumbled things about his mother.

“Papa, what was Grandma like?” Camila asked.

Her mother, sitting on the floor next to Camila’s chair, shot her a glance. “He can’t talk now, Cam. Can’t you see that?”

They each took one of his hands and he smiled, sinking deeper into his chair. He looked at the cross on the mantle and Camila knew he was thinking about his mother. He closed his eyes. She imagined him as a thin wisp of smoke, thinning and disappearing as he filled the room.

He opened his eyes and looked at the cross again. “She hit me a lot,” he said weakly.

Camila’s mother burst into tears and looked away.

He smiled again. “She thought it would make us Christian.”

He closed his eyes and was silent for a minute. He spoke once more with his eyes closed. “Will you take the cross, Camila?”

“I will,” she said.

* * *

Camila sat once again under the oak tree. The dirt was marked with paw prints and scattered with leaves. She moved the leaves and smoothed the dirt with a stick, then looked down at her phone, which she had turned off the day before. There were new voice mails, but she put her phone down in the dirt instead of listening to them. She stared up at the deep green leaves and billowing white clouds, feeling a deep quiet in her body.

She picked up her phone and listened to the messages from Alex. Then she dialed his number.

ALEX RECOGNIZED
CAMILA’S
number, sat up in bed, and flipped open the phone. “Hello?”

“Hey, I got your messages.”

“Hey.”

Neither spoke for a moment. Finally, Alex said, “How’s your father?”

“He died a few hours ago. I’m sitting under the tree I used to sit in as a little girl.”

“I wish I had been there when my parents died. I miss them.” Camila said nothing. “I understand why you left,” Alex continued. “I mean, it hurt like hell but it makes sense.”

“Tell me what’s going on out there. I guess you haven’t been murdered yet.”

Alex laughed. “Almost, but not yet.”

“What happened?”

Alex told her about Rak breaking into the room, murdering Officer Balby, and taking the video. “But it was what he said at the end that got to me. He said, ‘This isn’t him killing you, it’s me.’ And before that, he said, ‘You weren’t supposed to die.’ What the hell could that mean?”

“I don’t know. Sounds like he’s watched too many dumb movies where the bad guy has to say something sinister before killing the good guy. What about the case?”

Alex told her about Bice killing Hollinger and his theory that Sharp was the source who had been calling him. She listened without speaking. “So, I have enough to publish,” he concluded, “but nowhere near enough to do much real damage to Bice. And Rak is still out there somewhere.”

“I guess I should be surprised, but I’m not. Maybe I’m still in shock about my father. You sound different.”

“How?”

“I don’t know . . . softer, but also firmer.”

Alex stood up and looked out at the beach. “I had a strange night. I’ll tell you about it sometime. I don’t feel different. I mean, I don’t know how I feel.” He wished she were in the room with him. “I miss you.”

“I kind of miss you, too.”

He sat back down on the bed. “I need to ask you something.”

“Ask.”

“You know how you’re into trusting our intuition, feeling into people? All that stuff?”

Camila laughed. “Yeah.”

“Well, I want to tell you what happened before my parents died. It’s never felt right and I want to tell you.”

“Okay. Why now?”

“Will you just listen?”

“Yeah.”

Alex lay down on the bed, closed his eyes, and pressed the phone to his ear. “I graduated the first week of June, 1997. My parents came the week before. They hadn’t visited once in my four years at NYU, so it was a big deal. I took them around to all my favorite spots, introduced them to friends. Like parents do, they reminisced about what the Village was like back in the early seventies. Is it just me or do you always imagine the Village in the seventies in those sort of off-color, pastel film colors?”

“You’re changing the subject, Alex.”

“So they were there for a week. We go to the graduation—six thousand of us in a big auditorium. Afterwards, they take me out to dinner, an Italian place in the Village. My mom was really into food, kind of like you. She knew in advance what restaurant we would go to. Anyway, we have a real fancy dinner and, at dinner, they seemed all weird.”

“Weird how?”

Alex stood and walked to the glass door that led to the balcony. He stared out at the water. “It’s hard to say. You know how after years of marriage a couple has a thing? An equilibrium? Like the relationship has become a third person? Around me they had always felt soft, like they had each melted a bit around the edges and the third person had formed in the space between them.”

“Sounds kinda hippyish for you.”

“You know what I mean, though.”

“I do.”

“At dinner that night it was like the third person, the one in the middle, had disappeared. Like they were separate people again and there was nothing between them.”

“Did you ask them about it? Did you ask them what was going on?”

“No. I only noticed in retrospect. I didn’t become fully conscious of it until the next day, when I found out they were dead. And I didn’t really trust it anyway. I forgot about it until the last week.”

“What made you remember?”

“I think it was that day we walked in the park, and you said something about Bice and Martin at the funeral. That you had a feeling something was off. Turns out you were right. I guess I’ve had that feeling for a long time, like something was off. Never told anyone about it, though.”

They were silent for a minute.

“There’s something else,” Alex said. “When Rak was about to kill me, and he said what he said, I got that same feeling. Something is off and I don’t know what.”

“I don’t know what’s going on, but you’re probably right.”

“What are you going to do now?” he asked.

“Stay with my mom a couple days. There will be a small funeral. Then I’ll head back to the City.”

“Okay, I’ll call soon. I’m gonna meet the New York cop later today.”