Try Try Again (26 page)

Finally, after pressing this and moving that, George figured
out how to reduce airspeed. Not that he’d land the plane safely – that was
never going to happen. But he might, now, survive the crash.

The fuel tank’s complaints became louder, more frequent.
Still several miles from the Michigan shore its complaints stopped.

Sebastian George’s small plane blundered, like Icarus, into
unforgiving water.

Some days later a few remains of a small plane washed up on
shore. Michigan authorities identified it as a flight that had taken off from
DCA headed for Midway but never got there. The flight plan listed no one but a
single pilot, no passengers. Poor bastard must have drowned, or died on impact.
Only a few pieces of human remains were ever found.

Poor fucking bastard.

A week after Liv spoke with Brent, he phoned her. “Hey,
guess what? We got a hit on “Stephanie Bloomberg.” Liv was astonished; going to
Brent had been a desperate hope.

She began to thank him, but he interrupted her. “Don’t get
your hopes up, Liv. Bloomberg – seems to be an alias, as you said – was
recorded with D.C. connections, and has been suspected of various kinds of
spying and a variety of felonies. Her description in the files matches what you
told us.”

“Spying for whom?”

“Don’t know. Iran was suspected at one time, but that didn’t
pan out. She hasn’t actually been accused of any bookable crime, but the FBI
and NSA would both be very happy to get hold of her for a few days.”

“That’s great intel!”

“Remember ‘don’t get your hopes up?’ She’s never been definitively
associated with any specific place or organization, and the latest note in her
file dates from more than four years ago. Disappeared until she showed up in
L.A., apparently, or she’s been using a different alias. Probably the latter.”

“So where do we go from here?”

“I updated the FBI and a few other places with what you told
me. She may surface again, but once every four years is slim pickings. If we
had a photo that would help. Maybe security cameras?”

“Sorry. I checked and the cams at Dickstein’s office and at
WizWhiz both recycle after thirty days. No one was certain she was caught by a
camera in either place anyway.”

Liv and Brent exchanged a few clichéd expressions of
gratitude and farewell and hung up.

The month passed. Most of the country saw record snowfall;
even Pensacola got an inch. Only in L.A. did sunshine prevail, although rain
clouds would have been more welcome. In various parts of America, the Agonauts
were busy:

.. Jill continued on at Dill-Tech in order to train her
replacement, she said, but after interviewing eleven candidates, all of whom
she rejected on flimsy grounds, she realized she would rather work than be a
member of the idle rich – not that the Agonists’ adventures had left her that
much. So she stayed on, reviewing contracts and occasionally composing them.

.. Liv continued on with Fogle Harsh Weaver, CPAs, as their
in-house counsel. She spent most of her time examining FHW’s agreements with
their clients. Once she traveled to Washington for a business meeting and had
lunch with Jill. Later that day, it occurred to her that their two jobs were
oddly similar.

.. Hub was offered the chance to produce a new webV show,
not just direct it. Advertisers were lined up. Make My Day hired writers and conceptuality
specialists and viewer temperature-takers and gurus. Hub encountered Frankie
Dickstein at a party once, and ignored him. Occasionally, Hub thought about how
alike Liv and Jill were, despite their ages and superficially different
behavior. He looked forward to seeing them again at the Stirrup in D.C.

.. Season three of TTA was in final preparation. Surveys
indicated that there would be fewer viewers this time, and it was rumored that
season four would be the show’s last.

As Liv and Jill were comparing notes over lunch that day in
D.C., Sybille Haskin paid a rare visit to the President. This was risky, as she
knew; but none of the databases routinely checked by the Secret Service
contained any negative information on her under any of her names, and very
little information of any kind. She was shown into the Oval Office.

Casually, while discussing efforts of ConDyne to succeed in
the aerospace defense contracting business with President Conning, Haskin
mentioned certain potential policy changes in the Mideast, where ConDyne had
major contracts. She phrased these changes as of concern to ConDyne, but Conning
took the hint. He began to study up on the region, and mention his concerns
once again in press conferences, as he had done prior to his election.

What the hell, he wondered, did she have in mind this time?

Wednesday was slow, as usual, in the Stirrup Bar and Grill,
even slower because of the forecast of snow. Liv had been looking forward to
being there as a kind of homecoming, looking forward to getting the same kind
of “hero” reception she’d had before.

But tonight, she didn’t recognize anyone but the bartender.
Well, she thought, it’s really the wrong evening. But if we’d scheduled the
Agonists’ meeting for Friday or Saturday, we wouldn’t have found a table and
wouldn’t be able to have a confidential conversation anyway.

Liv spent twenty minutes staring down the few men who looked
her way. Most of them seemed relieved, as if they’d made the required gesture
and that was all they had to do as male human beings, and now they could get
back to their drinks.

Hub walked in, looked around with distaste and then more
appreciatively, as if the place could be reproduced in plastic for a webV set,
or simply used as is. Briefly, he considered shooting an episode of
Make
My Day
there.

He saw Liv at a corner table and sat down across from her.
“Heard from Jill?” he asked.

“She’s local, so it shouldn’t be a problem,” Liv said. “No,
I haven’t heard from her lately. We had lunch once when I was in town on
business.”

Just then the outer door opened again and Jill entered.
Being younger than Liv and appearing rather frightened by being there, she was
greeted with calls and winks and one or two whistles. Ignoring them as much as possible,
she joined Liv and Hub. Hub ordered a beer, Liv a bourbon and Coke. Jill shook
her head.

After the drinks arrived, each of the three looked at the
other two, wondering what to say. Finally, Hub offered “Well, good to see you
two again. I’ve got a flight, so let’s get down to business.” The women nodded.
“Jill?”

“I’m afraid my report is going to be pretty brief,” said
Jill, looking worried. “I did find Darlene, although the manager at that 7-11
wasn’t inclined to be cooperative at first.”

“Had anyone else been asking about her?” Liv said.

“I don’t think so. In fact, I asked Darlene’s contact about
that and he said no. I guess he was just protecting Darlene’s privacy. So I had
to make something up about knowing her from high school, which was chancy
because I didn’t know how old Darlene was – ‘classmate’ might not have been
plausible.”

“But you found her?” urged Hub, trying to move the
conversation along.

“Yes,” Jill said, “I did. It was like something out of
Lolita
,
you know, as we said before, being telepathic and all that.” Jill smiled at her
own attempt at humor. Hub and Liv did not. “At the end where she’s living in a
trailer park and has a baby?” Jill said, trying to cover her embarrassment, “And
living in all that squalor?”

“And then?” prompted Hub.

“Well, we talked for quite a while. She wanted to know all
about her father – she never knew his name, y’know, just someone calling
himself “your dad” sent her money every so often, every few months or even
longer.

“I had to tell her he was dead, and she wouldn’t be getting
any more money. I made up a story about Charley, admitted he’d been in trouble
with the law and that’s why he couldn’t come out in the open and try to visit
her…”

“That’s true,” said Liv.

“But I didn’t say anything about the murder. Mainly, I was
trying to find out if anyone she didn’t know had been hanging around about two
years ago, or a little farther back, and she said no.”

“So that idea Charley had about Darlene’s being under surveillance
was phony.”

“Looks that way,” said Jill. “George apparently knew there
was a Darlene and she lived in Roanoke because he’d traced Charley’s money
there. He apparently checked her out, but never made contact or sent anyone
there.”

“Didn’t have to. The threat was enough,” said Hub.

“She never got any kind words from Charley, she told me, just
money.”

Liv looked up from her drink. “Kind of sad.”

“But it kept her safe, looks like. Ah – I gave her some
money,” Jill said hesitantly. “In honor of Charley.”

“Honor?” Hub asked.

“Charley loved his daughter,” Jill said. “That’s honor
enough.”

She paused. “And then, for that other task, I met with three
of Ezra Barnes’ former staff, one of them still working in the seventeenth CD
office. Thanks to Liv’s asking a favor from Brent Nielsen, they took the time
to see me.

“They all agreed Barnes thought then-Senator Conning had
been up to some mischief. Staff had checked out a few possibilities, such as
selling his vote, but had come up dry. Nonetheless, they were convinced Barnes
knew something, because of some vague remarks he dropped.”

“That’s pretty much what they said when I was there two
years ago,” said Liv. “Looks like nothing new has come to light. And so, Barnes’
death may have had nothing to do with his race for the Senate, but perhaps
because he knew about some corruption in Conning’s camp would be a threat
whether or not he was running for Conning’s seat in the Senate.”

“Something he never shared with his staff,” said Jill.

There was a moment of silence.

“So now we’re going to investigate the President?” Hub asked
incredulously.

“No,” said Jill, “I’m not suggesting that. We don’t have any
idea what Conning’s misdeeds, if any, involved. There’s nowhere to begin, even
if we wanted to. And likely, if he did anything wrong it’s just some money here
and there for ‘constituent service,’ like any other politician, or some under-the-table
funding. Hardly a matter of national security.

“So,” she concluded, “another dead end. How about you, Liv?”

“Well, my turn” said Liv, “unless you’d like to go next,
Hub.” Taking silence for “no,” she continued. “I spoke with Brent and told him
what we needed. His assistant placed a call to the Hill and got names and
locations of three of Ezra Barnes’ former staff, and I turned that information
over to Jill, as she just said.”

Jill nodded.

“And I asked Brent to get the FBI to look up a ‘Stephanie
Bloomberg’, who might be involved in organized crime or terrorists or a fringe
group or something. I wasn’t expecting any hits, but Brent got one – a four
year old record that a Stephanie Bloomberg was suspected of being some kind of
foreign agent, but nothing solid.

“Brent added our information into a few databases, but
really that’s a dead end, too.”

The Agonists were silent for a moment, looked at each other
dolefully.

Liv continued. “And then I met with JTJ. She was still in
Grantwood, still looking for the gold ring. I asked her everything she could
tell me about the trial, any ideas that didn’t make it into her nightly news
reports and so on. She was eager to help, but I didn’t get anything useful from
her. She remembered the trial very well, though. In fact, she remembered what
we’re calling The Clue, but hadn’t thought anything about it at the time.

“She never believed Charley had acted alone, by the way, and
even thought for a while Charley wasn’t the actual killer.

“I asked her for copies of all the filming her students did
at the trial, all three cameras and five days. She said the tapes had been
tossed in a locker at the JC after Bigstone Productions returned them, and had
probably been thrown out. But she said she’d look.”

Liv took a deep breath. “So, no joy. Anyway, given what we
saw about The Clue, I don’t think the original tapes would add anything.”

The three sat in silence, then ordered another round.

“Remind me why we want them,” said Hub finally, “these
tapes, I mean, and who’s going to look at all that footage if we get it, and why.”

“Just a chance. Something,” said Liv. “Something we don’t
know enough to look for.”

“A hundred twenty hours of trial tape?” Hub persisted.

“Two cameras were in back,” Liv said, “and shot pretty much
the same scenes, JTJ told me. So at least one camera – a third of that hundred
twenty hours – can be ignored. And we can ignore testimony, because all of that
was shown in ‘Try Try Again’ and we’ve seen it already.

“Anyway, if JTJ comes up with the tapes, I’ll look at them myself
and let you know if there’s anything interesting. Don’t hold your breath.”

Jill and Liv looked at Hub. “That leaves you,” said Jill.

“Right,” said Hub. “I drove over to WizWhiz and spoke with
Stan Collins, who manages the place as well as owning it.

“’Yes,’ Stan told me, ‘Frankie said we had to take out a few
seconds here and there to make room for longer ads in season two, so we did.’

“I asked Stan how he selected which cuts to make, and he
said something like ‘where it made sense,’ which didn’t tell me much.

“Stan remembered a nosy woman named Stephanie Bloomberg,
who’d asked about the cuts he was making for season two and offered to make
suggestions. He only put up with her because Frankie had insisted on the ‘star’
treatment – some rich family he thought he’d heard about from back East. So
WizWhiz had to make nice with her.

“Stan let her speak with the tech staff and make whatever
suggestions she wanted to. Of course, he intended to ignore whatever she said.

“So this ‘Bloomberg’ looked at all of it, all of what was in
process of becoming season two of the show. It took her two days, and then she
selected three or four places where WizWhiz should make some small additional
cuts, she said.”

At this, Jill and Liv sat up straighter and glanced at each
other.

“Then,” Hub continued, “Bloomberg found Stan and thanked him
and left. And just as happened with Frankie, the woman disappeared and hasn’t
been heard from since.

“So I thought I was really on to something there,” he
continued, “and I asked if Charley’s startle-moment in episode four, where Jill
had won all that money, was one of the places she’d asked WizWhiz to cut.
Bingo, I thought. But no – the cuts she asked for were in episodes two and five
– nothing in episode four at all.

“But just then, Stan’s assistant, who’d been taking notes
for him, said ‘We’d already made that episode four cut, y’know, hadn’t we?’

“And Stan didn’t remember but asked his people and yes, that
was right; ‘The Clue’ had been cut three days before Bloomberg showed up.

“So we don’t know if she saw the cut she wanted had already
been made, or if she had no interest in it at all. Either this woman was very
clever, or what she did was completely innocent. Too bad The Clue cut had
already been made – now we’ll never know what she would have told Stan if it
hadn’t been.”

“So where are we?” asked Jill.

“Dead in the water,” said Liv.

“Curtain,” said Hub.

They looked at each other. “There’s nothing to do now,” said
Liv. “Not unless something new turns up, which doesn’t seem likely.”

The three drank up, hugged each other goodbye, and went
their separate ways.

Three weeks later and to her surprise, Liv received a
portable hard drive in the mail, with a note. “We found them! Have fun! – JTJ”

There were fifteen lengthy files on the drive: one for each trial
day for each camera, but the files weren’t labelled except for cryptic names
like “D483-te-JohnnyandMax3r.mp7.” Liv separated the files by trial day and
camera by viewing them and trying to remember what had happened at the trial,
and when. She didn’t know which camera’s film of which day had been used on the
show, and had to rely on her memory to play back the parts of the trial she wanted
to see – most importantly, day four nearing the end of Chief Gardner’s
testimony, just before her own cross-examination had begun.

What with the filename confusion and her own work at Fogle
Harsh Weaver, it took her a week to sort all the files by day and camera, and another
five days to view the three different takes of day four from three cameras. Not
having Hub’s elaborate computer setup, she was forced to move forward and back by
guess and hunch until she found the right spot in each file.

Camera One showed nothing of immediate interest. Camera
Two’s shots were similar to Camera One’s, but with a wider focal length. Both
cameras had been focused on the witness box, with occasional pans to judge or
jury, the prosecution or defense. Camera Two showed Charley’s startle at the
defense table, just on the left side of the frame, while Camera One was showing
Judge DuCasse. Liv concluded Camera Two’s footage of day four had been passed
on to Frankie’s organization and used, not footage from Camera One. Both
cameras had been stationed at the back of the courtroom, she recalled.

But Camera Three was different; it appeared to have been
placed along the courtroom sidewall to the left of the judge and slightly
forward of her and, with a wide-angle setting, took in the spectators and
people coming in and out of the room. She had forgotten where that third camera
had been two years before. Camera Three didn’t pan or zoom. Every few minutes
the picture shook slightly, as if someone had bumped into its tripod.

Liv needed to see what Camera Three saw at the exact moment
of The Clue and the following few seconds, which wasn’t easy. First she viewed
Camera Two’s footage, catching the startle and noting the exact elapsed filming
time. Then she ran the Camera Three file up to the same filming time. But that
didn’t look right. Hell, she thought, the cameras wouldn’t have been turned on at
exactly the same time, might have been paused, might have been stopped for a
battery change, and so on, so the elapsed times wouldn’t match.

She ran Cameras Two and Three footage back and forth to and
from The Clue-point several times, with no result other than frustration. She
took a break and had a gin and tonic even though it was mid-winter and not warm
outside. Then reverting to Camera One’s version of reality once again, about
five minutes before The Clue, she heard a cough on the tape. A deep cough.
Male. She stopped the file playback exactly at the point of the cough but
couldn’t see who had coughed.