by Glen Carter
Jack looked to the elevator, then the desk clerk, who shrugged. There was no way of escaping Mona Lasing. Any man who tried was quickly defeated, if not by the strength of her will, then certainly by her former Miss Arizona body. Jack realized his competition had never looked better. “I see the gang’s all here,” he said, walking reluctantly toward her.
“Everyone except the star of the evening,” she said, handing him one of her drinks. “You look like you can use this.”
“You got that right.” Jack plucked the cigarette carefully from her lips and followed her inside. “No hard feelings?”
“You got lucky on the senator’s kid, Doyle. That goddamn horseshoe again.” Lasing’s look softened. “No hard feelings, Jack. I’m just glad you’re still here.”
Journalism was thirsty work, Jack thought. Bone-dry back-breaking toil that required large amounts of Cap’n Patout’s smooth amber ale and vaporous liquors. He might well have been on the bridge of an eighteenth-century barque on the cusp of mutiny. Reporters, who had three hours before been icons of truth, were now drinking Cap’n Patout’s dry.
Jack followed Lasing to an empty spot at the bar where he was mobbed. The reporter for National Public Radio was listing thirty degrees to port when he embraced Jack. “Ladies and gentlemen,” Dirk Johnston boomed across the room, “I give you the man of the hour – the prince pugilist – Mister Jack Doyle.”
The mention of Jack’s name sent them into frenzy. He was suddenly surrounded by a blur of boozy faces and cockeyed grins – hands full of sudsy drinks. Apparently no one held a grudge over Jack’s scoop on the senator’s daughter.
“Thought you were toast, Doyle.” Bill Heinrich was the bespectacled Houston bureau chief for The Washington Post.
“So did I,” Jack said, “thought you were going to have a new lead for your story.”
“Was already working it in my head,” Bill slurred before draining half his glass. “But didn’t count on that right hook of yours.”
Everyone laughed at the little man’s joke, then pressed closer to touch Jack’s shoulder in genuine displays of affection and relief before dispersing to bar stools fashioned from dark oak rum barrels. Someone rang a bell affixed to a mast in the centre of the bar. “Next round’s on the Post.” The place went up again, only this time louder.
Mona folded a pair of shapely legs, revealing the soft underside of a tanned thigh, and looked deeply into Jack’s eyes. “You had us scared for a minute,” she said, breathlessly.
“Me too,” Jack said, looking away. “Where’s Kaitlin?”
Mona shrugged and reached for another cigarette which she placed slowly between full pouting lips. “Be a gentleman, Jack.”
Jack took her lighter and watched as the flame cast a golden hue on Mona’s pampered features. Dark green eyes softened to turquoise under the glare of light while her platinum blonde hair absorbed rich tones of fiery yellow. “Thanks,” she said, allowing her hand to linger on Jack’s arm. Gingerly she touched the thick bandage around his wrist. “Ouch.”
“War wound,” Jack said. “The other guy looks a lot worse.”
Mona laughed softly, and then held up two fingers to a bartender who seemed to be locked in her orbit. “Seriously, Jack. Congratulations on the Robicheaux catch. You won fair and square.” She leaned forward and kissed him on the cheek. “You get that because you put a deranged killer behind bars tonight.”
In the excitement over everything that had happened Jack hadn’t even considered the fact he had actually collared a multiple murderer. “Somewhere there’s a presumption of innocence, but I believe you’re right,” he replied. “Given that Sal basically confessed on live television.” Doyle swallowed a mouthful of liquor, relishing the warmth that embraced his gut. Hand suddenly trembling he reached for a cigarette, lit it, and exhaled smoke and tension in one breath.
Mona looked at him. “Thought you quit.”
“Not tonight,” Jack said. “Besides, I beat the crap out of death once today. I figure I’m safe for awhile.”
The noise level was an indicator that expense accounts were taking a real pounding. Everyone on the same mental health plan. Drink until the visions of body bags faded. Survival, Jack thought. Easier done in groups, because, like cops and soldiers, reporters coped better in clumps. Jack knew things were getting nasty when he saw Popeye was in trouble. Cap’n Patout’s mascot was a macaw, and the sign over the bar said he was seventy-five years old in human years, and he didn’t like to be touched, or fed, or even looked at the wrong way. Maybe Ricky, the AP guy, couldn’t read because he was maneuvering poor old Popeye onto Bill Heinrich’s shoulder. The bird flapped its wings and squawked in protest, and in a flash of revenge loosed a great glob of something roughly the same colour as its plumage onto Bill’s three-hundred-dollar Hugo Boss shirt. Everyone howled, including the soiled, Pulitzer-Prize winning, Washington Post bureau chief.
Someone yelled, “Give ’em a wipe!” to howls of laughter. “Not Heinrich. The bird.”
Jack wanted to tell them to put Popeye back on his perch. Figured, what good would it do? Besides, the bird would survive.
Mona stared at the jokers with the bird and shook her head in disgust. “You missed the White House.”
Jack had heard radio clips from the president’s address on his way over in the cab. “Denton’s on a mission.”
“Definitely,” Mona added, drawing deeply on her cigarette, casually exhaling a plume of smoke towards the ceiling. “The Christian evangelicals are threatening to pull their support if he doesn’t do something about the drug violence, they want the death penalty for drug dealers.”
“Voices of reason.”
Mona smiled, and then struggled for a presidential voice. “My administration is committed on this issue. To stop the poison that’s leaching into our neighbourhoods, our schools and workplaces.”
Jack chuckled, took another sip, and was thinking about the president’s bluster when Mona leaned over and laid a hand on his knee.
“Jack, we had good times, didn’t we?”
The warmth from her fingers felt to Jack like it was melting his flesh. “Sure, Mona. But things are different now.”
Mona ignored him. “Remember Kosovo? That villa. Shells exploding all around us. Remember what you said that night?”
He remembered. Also remembered he regretted the night deeply because of the complications it created. “Let’s not go there, Mona.”
Lasing pouted.
“Fraternizing with the enemy again?” Kaitlin O’Rourke’s voice could have seared flesh.
Mona withdrew her hand as Jack turned to see Kaitlin standing behind him with a look that matched the tone of her voice.
“Wondering where you were,” Jack said.
“You know how it is. Reporters get the glory, producers get the work,” Kaitlin replied, looking around. “Up talking to New York. Malone’s pissed at you, as usual.”
Jack smirked. “That’s what he gets paid for.”
Kaitlin glared at Mona, refused to blink until Lasing backed off. She spied Popeye recovering on his perch and then flashed her eyes at the woman sitting too close to Jack. “Poor old bird looks tired. Feathers aren’t nearly as colourful and soft anymore.”
Shit, Jack thought. Here we go.
Mona straightened. “Cockatoos are–”
“A macaw,” Kaitlin interrupted. “Central and South America. A macaw.”
Lasing stared straight into Kaitlin’s eyes. “Macaw then. Macaws are pretty resilient. Can take a lot of roughhousing. Probably enjoy it. Whaddya think, Jack?”
Jack felt the heat emanating from both female bodies. Made him feel like a piece of burning toast. “Parrots aren’t my specialty,” he said cautiously, shooting Mona a look.
Kaitlin refused to break eye contact. “We all have our specialties, don’t we, Mona? Strengths and weaknesses.” Kaitlin punched out the words like hooks and jabs.
Jack cringed. They were treading a minefield. Mona’s weak
nesses involved a married senator, touted as a Republican contender for the White House. The affair was being kept quiet, but word was the senior senator for California was about to leave his wife.
Mona Lasing stubbed out her cigarette and got up to leave. “I’ve always had a weakness for good men, Kaitlin, and I can assure you the feelings are always mutual.” Mona touched Jack on the arm. “Thanks for remembering the old times.” She turned and strode away.
Kaitlin didn’t take her eyes off Lasing until she had disappeared in the crowd. She then sat. “That woman,” she said, exasperated.
Jack caught the waiter’s attention and ordered Kaitlin a drink. “Mona’s harmless, Kaitlin, though I don’t expect you’ll ever believe it.”
“It’s none of my business,” she shot back. “I just think you can do better.”
“Now you’re sounding like my Aunt Muriel.”
Kaitlin ignored the remark. Jack was a shit when he wanted to be.
“Sorry,” Jack offered, too late.
Kaitlin didn’t care about the baggage that Jack carried in his life. She didn’t care about his fling with Mona Lasing, which was now over. Or was it? What irked her was the way Lasing had used her considerable female charms to seduce her way to the network. Brazenly manipulated the men who could help her. One of those men had been Jack Doyle. Kaitlin saw Mona deep in conversation with a good-looking male on the other side of the bar. Jack was watching too.
The waiter arrived with Kaitlin’s drink.
“Guess I kind of went to pieces today,” she said, tipping the tall beverage between her lips. The softness had returned to her face but not her eyes. She had something to get off her chest, as his friend and producer. “That was a stupid stunt today. Diego was wasted.” Kaitlin stared away, waiting for Jack to respond. He was taking his time. She pushed on. “He’d already killed nine times, what was one more to him? God, Jack.”
Jack drained what was left of his drink, licked his lips. “Diego’s brother Enrique’s quite a player.”
“Not to be stiffed apparently.”
“Nope. Danny Bastarache took him for about twenty large so Enrique sends his intellectually challenged sibling over to make things right. DB has flown the coop, but it doesn’t matter because Salvador screws up the address. And the rest is history.”
“Sad history,” Kaitlin added.
Jack continued, “They nabbed Enrique at the airport with a quarter million and a one-way ticket to Bogotá. And, by the way, about Diego’s gun–”
“Big gun,” Kaitlin replied with a reproachful look. “What about it?”
“Big…and empty,” Jack said. “Clean as a whistle. Remember, I was face-to-face with it. Every chamber was empty.”
Kaitlin stared at him in disbelief. “How about the chamber beneath the hammer? You couldn’t tell if that one was empty, Einstein.”
“Ooops.”
Kaitlin shook her head. A moment passed. “Sounds like we’ve got more work to do here.”
“We’ll see,” Jack replied.
Kaitlin had already turned around and was staring at Mona huddled in conversation now with her burly cameraman. George and the rest of Kaitlin’s crew were upstairs cutting a fresh piece for the late broadcast. The incident with Salvador Diego would roll as a separate item voiced by Frank Simmons. Kaitlin had told New York Jack was unavailable for a live pop into the show, and after some raised voices the late-night producer relented, told her and Jack to get some sleep.
Jack was about to order another drink.
“We’ve got an early morning, Jack,” Kaitlin reminded him. “So do these guys,” she added, surveying the crowd, smiling inwardly at the sight of Bill Heinrich wiping bird shit from his shoulder. Many a Washington politician would have envied Popeye, she thought.
Jack followed her stare and chuckled. “They gave that guy a Pulitzer. Can you believe it?”
“Nothing in this business surprises me anymore.”
Jack studied her for a moment. “You’re still a naïf, Cheri. So much more for me to teach you.”
“I’m yours to mould,” she said. “But I’ve got work to do upstairs. Time for me to go.”
“A producer’s work is never done,” Jack said. “If Malone calls tell him I’m in bed.”
Kaitlin stared past Jack to Mona Lasing. “Sure, Jack. Whatever you say. Reporters get to sleep now and then.”
“Sleep and glory.”
“Whatever.” Kaitlin walked away.
Jack watched her leave. Past the remnants of the evening, past Bill Heinrich and Roger Jackson who were squinting at their BlackBerrys. Past several more soused reporters representing some of the finest journalistic organs on the face of the planet, and past Popeye who had somehow managed to drift off into avian oblivion.
Jack caught the bartender’s attention and ordered another drink. A minute later it was placed before him and Jack brought it to his lips, swallowed half, and then closed his eyes. There was no easy way to explain what had happened that day, no way to make Kaitlin understand. He could have said he was absolutely certain Salvador Diego wasn’t going to shoot him. He wanted to explain that unreal ability of his to flash forward during moments like that – his non-linear vision – to see an outcome before it had actually occurred. Once, when he was a kid, his cousin Tommy was hit by a truck. Jack saw it before it actually happened. The younger boy chased a ball into the road, and even before the old pickup appeared from around the curve Jack’s brain conjured a fleeting image. It was the shocked expression on his cousin’s face in the split second before the truck struck him. There might have been time to scream at Tommy, to warn him back. Jack wasn’t sure. Then it happened. Tommy was thrown thirty feet onto some rocks and hit his head. He survived, but was never really the same after that. Jack thought himself open-minded, but he didn’t believe in weird notions of ESP and clairvoyance. Whatever he was gifted with wasn’t either of those. Maybe hyper-sensitive was a better way to describe it. He didn’t waste a lot of time trying to figure it out. Just the way he was, like his dry sense of humour and lazy left eye. Jack was sorry about what happened to his cousin, but he also learned something important that day. Next time, he wouldn’t ignore his intuition.
SIX
On Friday morning, July 2, The Washington Post carried a large frontpage headline “Shooter tied to Colombian Cartel.” The kicker said, “Senator in Mourning.” The story ran on page three with a photograph of CNS reporter Jack Doyle “locked in battle” with shooting suspect Salvador Diego, who is alleged, the Post went on, to have murdered nine innocent people, eight of them high school cheerleaders who, by all accounts, were the bright lights of their families, their school, and the charitable organizations to which they selflessly donated many hours of community service when they weren’t otherwise engaged in academics, sports or being perfect young citizens and role models. Now they were dead, and a senator’s family was among the grieving.
The article, which took up most of the space above the fold, also included photographs of the victims – bright-eyed, attractive all-American kids with their lives ahead of them until thirty-four-year-old Salvador Diego “is alleged” to have broken down their back door, and brutally executed them one by one. Forty-seven-year-old Pierre Saunier, owner of a New Orleans accounting firm, was killed first, in a tragic case of mistaken identity. Salvador Diego and his older brother Enrique were both in custody, the elder Diego apprehended while trying to flee the country. Both men had numerous previous drug convictions and were known to have family ties with a major Colombian drug lord by the name of Carlos Ruiz. Sources inside the Drug Enforcement Agency had confirmed all of the above, and went on to say that Enrique Diego headed a drug apparatus that operated from the Gulf Coast west to California and north to Washington state. The Washington Post and several other highly respected news outlets also did something that day that greatly worried the handful of people closest to President Frederic Denton. They declared in stinging editorials that what had happened at 52 Avalon
Road in New Orleans was a symptom of a disease that was running unchecked through neighbourhoods and cities large and small throughout America. The disease was illegal drugs, like coke and crank and ecstasy, and the violence they spawned had long ago eroded the constitutional right of Americans to feel safe in their own homes. Something had to be done about it. It had all been said many times before, but not with the same impact, given the bloodbath at 52 Avalon Road.
The “Cheerleader Murders” consumed talk radio and television that Friday morning in a kind of collective venting ritual for the nation’s frustrated and angry.
A half hour after kicking the bedclothes off, Jack Doyle had already read the four morning newspapers that had been dropped outside his door. He had a phone pressed to his ear and was suffering his executive producer who was ramping up for another day – another lead – this time without the theatrics of Sal Diego and the exclusive on Senator Aaron Robicheaux. “Denton scrummed on the Cheerleader Murders,” Jamie Malone said, too energetically for so early in the morning. “We got great tape.”
“You’re kidding me,” Jack said.
“No shit. Aboard Air Force One. He strolls to the back of the plane and Rankin tosses it. Denton bites hard. Called it ‘a heartless attack on innocent children by the spawn of Colombian drug lords.’”
“Pulling no punches as usual.”
“Has he ever?”
It was 8 am in New York and Malone was cresting a caffeine high. “Huxley says something’s up.”
Jack cradled the cell and reached for the carafe of hot coffee, filling two cups. Cream, no sugar for both. “Huxley may be overreacting…the janitors forget to turn out the lights and Huxley’s convinced the Pentagon’s drawing up plans to invade Canada.”
“He’s been right about plenty, Jack.”
“What about Iraq? You call that fair.”
Malone coughed into the phone. Jack heard him drag deeply on a cigarette and guessed his executive producer was already well into his first pack of the morning. “He predicted the day and hour for the first shots. He won the pool.”
