The Deviant

by Adam Sommers

  Of course, no one in the newsroom, particularly Eric Berger and Warren Zalinsky, believed any of the nonsense coming from the mayor’s office, but the slimy bastard had managed to seal it up tight. Even Zalinsky couldn’t find a way in. After a couple of days of fruitless pounding, the story started to feel old. It was running out of gas and thus making Eric depressed.

  Waiting for a call from a potential police source, Eric fidgeted in his chair scrolling through his notebooks seeing if there were any leads he’d forgotten to pursue. Brooding, grumpy, bored. He looked up through the giant windows and out into the woods beyond thinking it was nearly time for him to set this aside and go bother someone else.

  “Let’s get lunch.” The voice came from the bright and pale face of Carrie Scanlon, irrepressibly happy, and that made her prettier than she otherwise might have been. Eric would have compared her more to a sunset than a rose. All of which made it nearly impossible to say no to her, even though Eric tried. “I don’t know. I’m waiting for a call.”

  “Oh, come on. The mayor shit, the police shit. It can all wait. I’m starving.”

  “All right, why not?” Eric caved, not all that reluctantly. “Everyone, even a one-shot-wonder, has to eat.”

  As they left the shiny smooth lobby of The Washington Standard and headed for the parking lot, they ran into Jayne Grayman, who was on her way in. She had on her usual scowl, and it deepened even further when she saw the two of them laughing and bouncing with youthful happiness. Her squared-off nose flared a little but she did not deign to acknowledge them, and they were too frightened to even nod or wave.

  “I have a present for you.”

  “Oh,” Eric cooed. “I love presents. Should I close my eyes?”

  God, yes, thought Carrie. She’d be happy to plant one right on his lips in the middle of Dussale’s and not give a damn who saw. But this was more important. “Sure, close your eyes.”

  Eric closed his eyes but only part way. He didn’t know what Carrie was up to, but this was fun.

  “Open your hand.”’

  He did as he was told and she pressed a piece of paper into it. When she closed his hand around the paper note, there it was again, this ridiculous construction-worker strength she had in that skinny body. Where could it come from? She could not possibly weigh more than a hundred pounds. He looked down at the note.

  “Fat Tommy?” Eric looked at her, eyebrows raised, hands slightly open in the universal gesture of “Huh?”

  “He’s a friend.”

  Again, Eric raised an eyebrow.

  Carrie made air quotes. “A friend.”

  Confused, Eric guessed, “Oh, like Warren?”

  Carried burst into laughter, high and squeaky and delightful. It was the giggle of a little girl who was chasing a butterfly and had it land on her nose. Then she caught her breath, “No, idiot, I’m not seeing him. He’s a friend.”

  “You said that with air quotes. What am I supposed to think?”

  “He sells things.”

  “Things?”

  Eric thought of himself as a reasonably intelligent person, but he was lost in Carrie’s riddles.

  “Products,” Carrie added helpfully.

  Pause.

  “That make you feel good.”

  Pause.

  “Oh!” Eric said. “Yes, of course. A seller of things that make you feel good. Fat Tony.”

  “Tommy.”

  “Right, Tommy. Fat Tommy. Got it. Fat Tommy. You want me to go buy ….”

  She laughed again, though not quite as high or as long as the time before. She could sort of see why he might think that. “No, Tommy and I have done business a long time. I was telling him about the story.”

  “He could have bought the paper.”

  “I told him the woman sort of disappeared.”

  “And?”

  “And, he says he could maybe make her magically un-disappear.”

  “Un-disappear? Cute.” But now, for the first time all day, Carrie had Eric’s full attention.

  “Do tell.”

  “He said maybe. Maybe he could help.”

  “Oh, in what way?”

  “He might be able to introduce you.”

  “He knows where I can find her?! ” Eric’s heart leaped for joy, finally the key to the next story and maybe, hopefully, the demise of Grissom Lester.

  “Yes. I think. But it wouldn’t work like that. You have to talk to Tommy first. Or I do. I mean, I can, if you want.”

  “You tell him to tell her whatever she needs, however she wants to meet, is fine with me.”

  Then Carrie turned serious. “You gotta go easy, Eric, she’s scared, he says.”

  “Okay, okay,” Eric tried to breathe normally. “Probably good reason for her to be scared. What does she want?”

  “I don’t know. Honestly, I don’t want to be in the middle of it. Call Tommy. Maybe he can help is all I’m saying.”

  “I got you.” Carrie was clearly out of her depths. This was not a kennel club competition and it was hard for her. She looked nervously at Eric. “You think I’m doing the right thing?”

  “All you did was give me the number of a friend, Carrie. I can take it from here.”

  That set Carrie’s mind at ease. Lunch ended soon after and they went back to the office. Eric was hot to track down Fat Tommy, and, more importantly, the mayor’s druggie girlfriend. When they parked, Eric yanked the door handle to get out, but he was impeded by Carrie who pulled the front of his shirt, tugging him back into the car. She leaned over and pressed her lips to his as she grabbed the back of his head. Her lips parted and her tongue slid into his mouth where it played for a just a second and was withdrawn. She pulled open her door and stepped out, leaving Eric dazed and confused—and wildly happy.

  She was halfway to the entrance before Eric even got out of the car.

  Chapter 17

  There was no back alley, no clandestine park bench or scummy hole-in-the wall bar. Eric called. Fat Tommy answered on the first ring and they quickly set up a meeting. “I’ll come to you,” Tommy explained. “Meetcha in the parking lot of the paper. I have a red Volvo. See you in an hour.”

  The drug dealer was not the heavily-tattooed, muscle-bound tough of his imagination. The first thought that came to Eric’s mind when he got into the passenger seat of the Volvo was that the man should be sitting on phone books. He was a human squirrel. Barely five feet tall, probably 80 pounds, and old, at least for a drug dealer in Washington, which is to say, he was probably in his early forties.

  The preliminaries were quickly dispensed with. This was a business meeting and neither was comfortable in the other’s presence.

  “Carrie says you might know the lady the mayor was with.”

  “I do.”

  “Can I meet her?”

  “Maybe. She’s trying to get out of Washington. She has a kid. Her family lives in the Bahamas.”

  “Bahamas?”

  “Yeah, that’s where she’s from. The Bahamas. The thing is, the mayor likes her, and he won’t give her the money to go.”

  “Oh.”

  “It’s pretty simple. If you can give her like five hundred she can get a one-way and be out of here for good, tonight…Maybe fight off some of her demons. I don’t know.”

  “She’ll talk to me for five hundred dollars?”

  “Yeah. No. . . . I mean….” Fat Tommy was having a hard time accurately portraying the woman’s position. He looked down and regrouped. A few cars buzzed in past them, and in the window of one Eric saw John Williams’s head. It swung over to look and they briefly made eye contact. Explaining this was going to be fun, Eric thought, but that was for another time.

  “I mean,” Fat Tommy began again, “The thing is she actually wants to talk to you about it. She wants people to know the truth about Le
ster and what a piece of shit he is. But she needs the five hundred.”

  “I’m not rich. I could find some of it, but then what?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I mean, if I talk to her, won’t the police want to also? She could face charges. Who knows when she can get on a plane?”

  “You really are new to this.” Fat Tommy lit a cigarette and blew the smoke out his window. Eric fought down the urge to gag. He’d always hated the smell of cigarette smoke. “This isn’t ‘Perry Mason.’ She gets the money, you get a story, she’s on her way a few hours later with her kid. Goodbye, Charlie.”

  “Oh, yeah. That makes sense.”

  “It won’t matter, anyway. You can write what you want. Nothing can stick to Lester. He’s been in trouble his whole life and never done a day in jail. The people love him. The motherfucker could fuck a donkey on the Lincoln Memorial with cameras rolling and they’d still re-elect him. He’s handsome, he’s tall and, everyone thinks he’s the great savior.”

  Eric nodded. He didn’t really care if Mayor Grissom Lester went to jail or not. What he wanted was the story. It was a good story if he went to jail and a good story if he didn’t go to jail. The thing of it for Eric was the pursuit and the exposure. If the mayor committed a crime and the cops didn’t do anything, then he’d go after the cops. If the cops took it to the prosecutors and they didn’t do anything, he’d go after the prosecutors. If the prosecutors took it to court and the judges let him off, he’d go after the judges. Left foot, right foot.

  “I need the money upfront.”

  “What?” Eric protested. “I don’t think so.”

  “That’s the way it has to go, my friend.” He blew more smoke and sat back. It was a beautiful spring day, warm but without the crushing humidity that lurked just down the road in the Washington summer.

  “If I give you the money, what’s to stop you from simply disappearing, or giving it to her and have her get on the plane without stopping to chat?”

  “You’re a friend of Carrie’s, right?”

  “Yeah.”

  “She likes you.”

  “Yeah,” Eric admitted, the taste of Carrie still in his mouth, and couldn’t help but blush. “What does that have to do with anything?”

  “I wouldn’t screw Carrie over. We go back.”

  “Okay. But the woman might.”

  Fat Tommy absorbed that. “True, she might. Don’t think she would. Like I said, she wants to tell her story, but you never know.”

  “All right, but I also need a picture.”

  Fat Tommy took a drag, shoved the smoke out through his nose, bobbed his tiny head a bit. “That could work. Stay by your phone. I’ll call you.”

  Chapter 18

  “You probably should not do that in the office, sir.”

  Mayor Grissom Lester’s aide, Daniel Rosenkrantz (yes, weirdly, a Jew) could barely believe he was seeing his boss light a crack pipe on the portico attached to his office. He had watched with growing alarm as the mayor went from drinking Chivas starting at noon and ending whenever, to sampling weed laced with PCP and quickly making the switch to the solid, smokable cocaine. What most amazed the young flunky was that the mayor showed absolutely no concern about being seen or outed, never mind arrested and prosecuted.

  In the short span from winter to spring, he’d gone from smoking it on weekends to every single day, and now it was twice a day at least. Any attempt to ask him to slow down, or even hint that he might have a problem, would be to risk his job.

  “My office, right? I do what I want to do,” the mayor said exhaling.

  Watching the pungent smoke trail away on the gentle southerly breeze, Rosenkrantz thought to himself, looks like I was two minutes too late. Might as well hang an “out to lunch” sign on him for the rest of the day. The only thing he’d want now after getting high was a woman. And right on cue, Mayor Lester barked, “Call that little whore LaLa, get her ass in here for me.”

  “Yes, sir. I’m on it,” the toady chirped and bounced out of the office as if he were urgently going to find LaLa (a.k.a.) LaTonya Harpe-Smith. Of course he had no intention of doing any such thing because if he brought her to the office during the day in the middle of the week, too many eyes would see, too many tongues would wag. The mayor might not be concerned about suffering consequences from his impressive drug habit, but an obvious hookup in his office during the day would get back to his wife. That was trouble.

  Althea Lester knew of and tolerated her husband’s fooling around. She could abide his infidelity, which had been going on since long before they were married, but she would never tolerate being publicly embarrassed. Her weapon was not ranting or raving or even threatening divorce. Grissom Lester would not care a bit about any of that. What she could do—and would do—if he subjected her to the public humiliation of a bit of tail swishing into his office in front of the entire staff, was turn the women of Washington against him. This was the only thing the mayor feared because he was a savvy enough politician to know that in many households the women made the political decisions. So Daniel Rosenkrantz was doing the big guy a big favor and also keeping his meal ticket intact.

  Chapter 19

  Whether Daniel Rosenkrantz made the call or not was actually immaterial. Neither he nor Grissom Lester would ever see LaTonya again. Once Fat Tommy had said goodbye to Eric and called her with a potential way of getting her traveling money, she told him to set up the meeting as fast as possible.

  Fat Tommy called Eric immediately. “She’ll come to where you live if you can be there in like the next thirty minutes.”

  “Uh, yeah,” said Eric, who hung up, got his notebooks and ran for the door.

  “Whoa, whoa, whoa,” called John Williams as Eric sped by his desk. “Where’s the fire? And who’s that guy in the car?”

  “Can’t tell you right now. Working on something. Call you soon,” Eric shouted over his shoulder.

  “Jesus. Take Warren with you.”

  “No time for that. Be back by deadline.”

  “Wait!”

  Eric halted in his tracks. It wasn’t like John to raise his voice. “The guy in the car, he’s not dangerous, right? Just tell me he’s not dangerous.”

  “He’s harmless, John, he’s fine.”

  “Sure?”

  “Sure.” And Eric bolted from the desk.

  “Eric,” Williams yelled at the reporter’s back. “Are you writing for tomorrow’s paper?”

  “Don’t think so. Call later.”

  Eric skidded into his spot in front of the apartment exactly eleven minutes later. He did the best he could to clean up. Frenetic spraying, wiping, and vacuuming wasn’t going to make the place beautiful, but at least he made a dent. They’d have a clean kitchen table to sit and talk at without spaghetti sauce clinging to their elbows. They’d have clean glasses from which to drink water or iced tea.

  She knocked on the door as Eric was stuffing laundry that had been piled on the couch into the closet in the hallway. Despite her somewhat desperate situation, LaTonya Harpe-Smith seemed remarkably composed. Mayor Lester certainly had good taste, Eric thought as he took in the statuesque, trophy-wife gorgeous LaTonya Harpe-Smith. Even though she had left her wig off, sporting instead a very close-cropped hairdo, there was no denying those high, sculpted cheekbones and wide-set hazel eyes.

  “Nice place you have here,” she teased. Just the way she said it and how she comported herself gave Eric Berger the distinct impression she was from a family of some status. And it seemed a little incongruous that she’d be smoking crack with and then running from the mayor with such urgency. Eric was dying to ask about her background, but he needed to stay focused on the target.

  “It’s a dump. But it’s okay by me,” Eric admitted.

  “Fat Tommy said you’d give me the money.”

  Wordlessly Eric handed
her an envelope. She counted out four-hundred and fifty dollars, fifty more than they agreed to since she already had the hundred from Fat Tommy.

  She looked up with a question mark. “We’re not fucking.”

  Eric chuckled. “No, not what I’m looking for just now, but thank you. The extra is just because I appreciate your situation.”

  “Oh,’’ she said relaxing. From her bag she pulled out several pictures of her and the mayor, with the money shot being of them in robes on a bed in what appeared to be a hotel room.

  She answered questions: How did they meet? Was it a serious relationship? How many times had they hooked up? When did it start? Did his wife know?

  LaTonya Harpe-Smith was patient and poised and answered them all. She was a dancer whom he took a fancy to. They’d had a regular thing once a week, sometimes more, for the past three months. She was far from alone. The mayor had many side pieces. His wife knew, but she also knew better than to say anything. “That man will fuck whatever walks past. She had to have known that before they got married.”

  How did he treat her? Was he abusive?

  “He never hit me or anything, but he’s got a temper. I know how to chill him out, but there have been times I was afraid.”

  “Like the other night?”

  “No, he wasn’t going like that. He was just being annoying and drunk.”

  “Drunk?” Eric asked skeptically. “I saw the smoke coming out of the windows.”

  She had not counted on that. “Okay, he smokes,” she tried.

  “I know, but this was not cigarettes. Don’t be coy, LaTonya. I’d hate to have to make a phone call you don’t want me to make. Besides, by the time anyone reads this you’ll be on a beach a thousand miles from here.”