Deadline Man

by Jon Talton

  I Google “eleven-eleven.” I get a rock band, a real-estate trust, a psychic hotline. It’s the date World War I ended. The real-estate trust might be what Troy had asked about and it seems innocently boring.

  Next I email the day police reporter, Amber Burke, to see if she knows anything about the investigation into Troy’s death. I’ve seen her byline, but can’t place her. The Free Press still has more than 200 newsroom employees and I can’t claim to know all of them, especially the young ones that often cover the mayhem, er, public safety beats. In a moment, she emails back: “I’m going to pull the police report. Want to come along?”

  I’m in a jittery post-deadline mood, so I agree. She says she’ll pick me up in ten minutes.

  ***

  As I wait, I think about those essential five Ws and my encounter with the feds. I’ll tell you this much. They’re wrong that I don’t have close friends. They just happen to be the women I sleep with. They tend to be professional, middle class, attractive but not beautiful, in-between the chapters of their lives. They like sex, and not everyone does. I’m their transitional man, the one they will fondly remember but never admit to once they have returned to the conventional world.

  There are a few rules: I don’t sleep with sources or fish off the company pier in the newsroom. Technically, Melinda Stewart breaks the second rule, but we go way back. No married women, although Pam has a regular boyfriend who is pleasant and steady, but he bores her in bed. I avoid women with children. No starry-eyed young girls looking for marriage—I broke that with Rachel. Four lovers are about the most I can juggle, although three is best. I try to make it a point not to mix pleasure and love. I married for love once. The sex ended almost immediately and the companionship soon after. I’ll never make that mistake again.

  I make no claim to be a ladies man. I didn’t even lose my virginity until I was twenty-one. Now my lovers appreciate that I like women; I always have liked and related to them, far more than to men—insert family-drama causality here. I’m easy to talk to, good in a crisis, and clean up well for a night at the symphony. I’m discreet. I have the rules so nobody gets hurt, me included. And I know this blissful arrangement of the planets of pleasure can’t last forever.

  Who, what, where, when, why: The two men in the SUV had left me at the curb outside my place, and I can’t answer that basic, critical information about our forty-five minutes together. All I know was that I had been on the other side of a hostile interview. Now I have to shove a growing bundle of dreadful feelings into one of my infamous compartments.

  At least one compartment is untouched by my new acquaintances, the feds. They mentioned Melinda Stewart among my lovers. They apparently don’t know about Melinda Hines. Hey, I like the name.

  Chapter Six

  I climb into an old black Jetta and greet Amber Burke. She throws a stack of files from the front passenger seat to make room for me, adding to piles of file folders, reporter’s notebooks, and old newspapers in the back seat.

  “Why are you all dressed up?” she asks. I get that all the time in Seattle. I want to answer people, “Why are you dressed like hell?” But I don’t. I say, “Today it’s the rebels that wear suits.”

  Amber is wearing a black coat, black hoodie, black-and-white striped sweater, distressed denim miniskirt, and gray tights so thick they could be long-johns. Below all this are brown boots that might work well to muck out a stable. It’s a classic local look. The ensemble can’t quite conceal the attractive young woman inside. She has lush titian red hair, pulled into something like a bun in back. She’s probably been complimented on it since she was a baby. Her face is pretty in a deceptively simple way, the kind of face that you’d find growing more in beauty the longer you looked at it. She has a wide mouth. I stop looking.

  “Sorry to do this,” she says. “My editor wants me to check something out before I can go to the police station. Want to tag along?”

  I agree and we drive.

  “So, the columnist. I read your stuff. I saw tomorrow’s column in the system. That’s a great scoop.”

  “Oh, thanks.” Too bad the expression “pshaw” went out with Kerouac. I ask her how long she’s been at the paper.

  “Six months. Now I’m afraid I might be one of the first laid off.”

  It’s a real risk. But she’s a cheap new hire. They’d get their money’s worth to get rid of me and a few of the old timers. “I hope not,” I say and change the subject. “How do you like Seattle?”

  “I love it. Haven’t made it through the winter. But I like rain.”

  “Me, too. It’s a nice town. Kind people. Our own pet volcano…”

  She has a nice smile. The wide mouth fills her face with happiness. She has great dimples.

  We make small talk. She came west from the Washington Post. I mention a couple of friends and ask if she knew them. Only their names, she says—she was out in the Montgomery County bureau and came to the Free Press to “be a real reporter.”

  The immediate task is to talk to the former boyfriend of the missing girl, Megan Nyberg.

  “The current darling of cable news.”

  “You’re a cynic.” She furrows her brow. “I don’t disagree. I also don’t want to be fired because I get beaten on this story,” she says.

  “I’m all for beating the Times.”

  “Forget the fucking Times. I want to beat the fucking Web.”

  There I am, sounding like an old fart.

  “Rich, cute teenager from Mercer Island disappears. Even a serious economics columnist has to be a little interested.”

  I hold my fingers up to measure half an inch. She laughs. I’m grateful that the paper still assigns reporters to go out and dig on the cops beat. So many others have taken to just having them rewrite the official statements of the law enforcement public information officers. In other words, getting one side of the story, and the one people in authority want put out.

  “Where’s the FBI office?”

  She looks surprised, then gives me an address on Third Avenue, a good mile from where I had been taken by the two feds. “What about the Secret Service, the DEA?” She names other locations, still different from the low, anonymous building I remember.

  The sun breaks up the soft lead in the sky as we reach a street where Capitol Hill meets the Central District. We’re blocks beyond the creeping gentrification. Megan’s boyfriend is named Ryan Meyers and his apartment is one of the old brick four-story buildings the city has in abundance. This one looks as if the bricks are crumbling, although the columns at the entrance attest to better days. Amber parks on the downhill side of the street and sets the parking brake. Three homeboys deal pharmaceuticals on the corner by a shuttered market and I’m so glad to be the only white guy in a suit on the street.

  The lobby is spare, small, and smells like dog pee. There’s no elevator, so we climb. Amber tells me that Megan met Ryan at a rave in SoDo and saw him on and off in the months before she disappeared. But while the cops initially suspected him, they never made a case. “Maybe Megan just ran away,” Amber says. “Maybe she didn’t want to be found by her parents and then got into trouble. That stuff happens all the time.”

  “Maybe she’s not in trouble at all and still doesn’t want to be found.”

  “I just work here, man. Editor says go and I go.”

  “I bet.” She laughs again. She has a loud laugh. I say, “She’s how old?”

  “Seventeen.”

  We huff up the third flight of stairs. I ask what do Megan Nyberg’s parents do.

  “Mom works at Microsoft. Dad owns a yacht brokerage.”

  “Enough money to raise hell with the cops.”

  “Exactly.”

  As we climb, the stairwell becomes even cooler than the outside. We arrive on the fourth floor and pass through the fire door out of the stairwell. The small, wire-mesh-glass window at the upper-center of the fire door is covered with a faded Doors decal. Doors, get it? T
he bleak corridor carries a heavy smell of cooked cabbage and stale miscellany best not dwelled on. Ryan’s apartment is the second door in, and it’s partly open. Amber knocks and we listen. Somewhere a Latin tune is playing. A pair of sirens passes outside.

  “Ryan?” Amber knocks again, louder. “Hello?”

  Nothing. Not a voice, not the creak of footsteps coming to answer. She knocks a third time.

  This time the door moves an inch. I see a pair of pale legs on the floor.

  “Ryan?” I push the door open and we see it: a thin man with a messy mop of brown hair and a belt around his neck. The belt is hooked to the end of the bed and looped around his neck. His body is turned at an angle. His head is cocked at an angle, as if waiting for an answer. It’s not quite as low as his left shoulder and his face, turned down nearly to the floor, is gray, his lips nearly blue. It doesn’t look like enough to kill someone, but apparently it was.

  “Fuck!” Amber rushes past me, kneels and takes his pulse.

  The man wears only a pair of jeans. No shoes or socks. One pants leg has ridden up, exposing part of his right calf. He’s lost control of his bowels and the smell assaults us.

  “We have to get him down, do CPR.”

  I stop her. “Amber, he’s cold. We need to call 911. We shouldn’t even be in here.” It’s a suicide kind of room, maybe twelve feet square and barely lit by a pair of small, dirty windows that look directly into another old building. Besides the bed, there’s a folding chair, a student desk with an iPod in a speaker setup, and a dead plant. It is the kind of plant a girl gives her boyfriend and he forgets to water it. The bathroom looks tiny and part of the floor is covered with plywood. A closet door stands open near the head of the bed. Inside are clothes and plastic storage containers. Another door is on the same wall, on the side of the bed closer to the windows. It’s closed. Maybe a kitchen. I bend down to examine a tattoo on his bluish skin.

  I’m about to say something to Amber. Something important. I need a witness, if only for my own sanity. But something stops me. I’ve never had a sixth sense. Jill claimed she did. Yet at that instant I draw a strange breath, feel my scalp leap a millimeter on my skull, and know we aren’t alone in the room.

  “Oh, fuck…” Amber whispers what seems to be her favorite word as we both see the two dogs.

  They stand silently in the open doorway, seeming too short to be much of a menace, their ears perking up playfully. But I take in their heavy dun-colored heads, weight-lifter chests, and piston front legs. Pit bulls. The sudden apocalyptic barking puts an end to any notion that we aren’t in deep shit.

  “Don’t move,” I say.

  I force back the gusher of panic inside, looking around the sad little room seeking another way out. I only move my head, very slowly. The movement sends jolts of pain into my neck and shoulders. The dogs both stop barking as if on cue and start growling. Their big eyes are black and fixed on us. One bares its teeth, white and sharp. They look the size of a saber-toothed tiger’s. They are maybe seven feet away. They are a strong, crazy-bred dog’s leap away, and the only thing between us and them is the body of Megan Nyberg’s dead boyfriend. They block the door out as well as whatever refuge the bathroom might afford. Amber’s cell phone sits useless in her hand. We’ll be dogfood before any help arrives. The other door is closer, the kitchen that might even have another door out or at least let us out to a fire escape. We could reach it, maybe. We could keep the bed between us and the dogs, unless they’re smart enough to just jump over it. I haven’t been too damned smart up to this point.

  The door is an eternal six feet away, but I nod to Amber and we both start edging in that direction.

  “Down!” I say, mustering my most commanding yet calm voice. “Bad dog!”

  The growling grows in intensity. Even the sound of their slobber being inhaled sounds chilling.

  Hell. It was worth a try, at least.

  The pair follows us, but they’re just walking.

  Suddenly I grab Amber by the arm; she’s so light I pick her off her feet, and bolt to the door. It opens. I throw her inside and follow, slamming the door behind us.

  It’s another closet. I curse the building’s long-dead architect, teasing bastard. But my oaths are drowned out by the dogs. The barking has turned to primal, banshee shrieks. Instantly the door explodes as one or both dogs hit it. The doorknob shakes and jerks. Amber grabs me tightly.

  “I have claustrophobia!” she half whispers, half screams. “I can’t do this!” She is shaking so hard it transmits to me. “I have to get out!”

  “No way.” I hold her close as they hit the door again. This time the wood bows in ominously.

  “Call nine-one-one,” I order, detaching myself from her. She opens her phone, the lighted face somehow reassuring. But at that instant they hit the door again, a bone-jarring sound. One panel starts to split. The splinters shower my hand.

  As Amber yells into the phone, I feel for a light-switch, then I feel around in the dark. I pray: Please be a gun nut, Ryan, please make my day. I enviously recall the monstrous silver revolver in the holster of the fed. Amber still clings to my arm. The barking outside the door escalates: deep voices roaring and snarling. Then the door explodes and light pours in from a fist-size hole, followed by a snout with teeth. I push us against the far corner of the tiny cell.

  Over the barking, I yell, “We can’t wait for help here.” Mr. Obvious.

  Clothes, boots, smelly socks… Then, a baseball bat. I grab it and use it as a spear against the snout, which withdraws without a sound.

  In the silence that follows, I give Amber instructions. I use some of Ryan’s coats to pad her against dog bites. I zip up her coat. I have her tie a sweater around my left arm, as if the knitting will really cushion against those crushing jaws.

  When I open the door the dogs don’t spring at us. They are crouched intelligently in front of our only way out. I walk first, slowly advancing on them. When one attacks, he is instantly longer, in the air, his mouth headed to my face. I take a desperate jab of the bat and I can hear its teeth break. In the instant that the dog pauses, I take a savage swing downward on its skull. The dog’s scream is high-pitched and short. The second dog backs away, growling. Its muzzle is bleeding. We make it into the hallway and past the fire door into the stairs. I slam it securely. Jim Morrison stares at us soulfully from the small window. Then a sudden slamming explosion from the other side, and Jim’s iconic face cracks and crumples.

  “Are you okay?” Amber, suddenly calm, puts a hand on my shoulder. She says my name. “You don’t look well…”

  Okay is a relative term. We’re alive and unharmed. But the body back in that apartment had a tattoo on the right calf. It said it in simple blue ink:

  Eleven eleven.

  Chapter Seven

  “You were good back there. Very calm and self-assured. Is that what they teach you in columnist school? I always wanted to end up as a columnist after a long and distinguished career. I don’t mean you’re washed up or anything. You know what I mean. Anyway, wow. My arm still hurts from where you grabbed me and threw me into the closet. You were so cool. Then you just lost it after we were safe in the stairwell. People are so odd.”

  I let Amber talk. So I was good at concealing my terror. I don’t tell her why I lost it in the stairwell. I have my reasons. Afterward, we spent an hour with the cops. My new friend, Sgt. Mazolli, is less chatty about the financial markets, probably wondering why I keep showing up at suicides. But Amber knows him and he likes her. Who wouldn’t? Now I am halfway through my third martini and my calm, self-assured side decides I’d better eat something. I pull over the bar menu and am surprised that “eleven/eleven” isn’t printed inside. Hell, I’m seeing it everywhere else.

  I’m not going nuts. I almost say it aloud.

  “You’re like me,” Amber continues. “You’re a news junkie. You need the rush of something new every day.”

  “Today was a little
too much rush.”

  “Sorry we didn’t get the report on this Hardesty dude. Did you know him well?”

  “No, just a source,” I say.

  “So tell me about you. Are you from Seattle? Not married, or you don’t wear a ring and you can be out at a bar after work with a nosy female co-worker. What about your family?”

  “I’m an orphan.”

  She gently elbows me. The bar is crowded so we’re standing very close. “Liar. I can tell when people are lying.”

  “What was that about back there?” I interrupt early into her life story.

  “The boyfriend? Suicide. You heard the cops say he left a note on top of his desk. Hey, I wish he had written a note saying he’d killed Megan…”

  “That’s just it,” I say. “I didn’t see anything on the top of his desk but the iPod and the speakers. Nothing else. Not a note. Not a computer. Whoever heard of somebody his age without a computer?”

  Amber looks at me straight on and curses under her breath. “I think you might be right. I didn’t see a note, either.”

  “Did you see the tattoo on his calf?”

  “No.” She frowned into her drink. “Why would the cops be lying? Not that they need a reason to lie to the press.”

  A cup of chowder arrives. I ignore it. “And the dogs. The cops couldn’t find them. I didn’t see any evidence Ryan owned dogs. No bowls on the floor. The place was tiny.”

  “Yeah, but in a neighborhood like that? They’re the favorite pets of gang-bangers. So maybe these were strays looking for dinner. What are you saying?”

  I make myself eat a spoonful. Everything right that moment lacks taste except the liquor. I say, “What if somebody wanted us out of that apartment or worse?”