by Jon Talton
In between kisses, she asks, “Why are you trembling?”
I just lean down and kiss her again and she melts into me. We stand out and pay no attention. Finally, I order a double Maker’s Mark and steer her to a booth in the back.
“So shall we swap life stories?” she asks merrily. “You first.”
“I was raised by wolves and ran away with the circus.”
She smiles at me until her eyes light on the tabletop. “What’s wrong with your hand?”
Somehow in the dim light she has still spied the button-sized burn on the back of my hand. The skin has the look of clotted blood and ruined skin trying to make a scab. She takes my hand and examines it.
“It’s a long story.”
“I have time, Mister Life of Secrets.”
I smile for the second time that day. I ask if she’s all right.
“Why wouldn’t I be?”
Right at that moment I need someone to talk to more than I need the drink, which is a hell of a lot. Not just someone to tell about the feds and the National Security Letter, but the whole damned thing, the note from Rachel, the mystery about her dad, the growing web that I don’t understand. I need to talk about eleven/eleven. But it’s a lethal number and Amber is just a rookie. She gently kisses my hand.
“What do you know about eleven/eleven?” I just ask it as bar conversation. Come here often? What’s your sign? What do you know about eleven/eleven? Columnist walks into a bar…
She looks at me blankly and draws her mouth into a half smile, then shrugs.
“It was tattooed on Ryan’s calf,” I say.
“His birthday?”
“The day Hardesty jumped to his death, he asked me what I knew about eleven/eleven.”
Her hand lessened its pressure on mine.
“What does that mean?”
I shook my head.
“Coincidence? What could Hardesty and Ryan have in common. He was a poor kid. Your buddy was a rich guy.”
“A homeless woman screamed it me the other night.”
“Eleven-eleven?”
“She said it and then said ‘you’ll get yours, asshole.’”
“Maybe she was somebody you used to date, like your girlfriend with the water glass?”
“Come on. I’m serious.”
She is unzipping my pants. She disappears under the table and takes me in her mouth. My breath comes quicker and I see the faces at the bar watching us impassively. They’ve seen worse. Then the bartender looks our way and raises the gate on the bar. I gently pull her back up. He lowers the gate. Amber smiles demurely at him. She keeps her hands under the table.
“Is it a date? In a month the world comes to an end?”
I half-shake my head. “Maybe it’s a bank account in the Caymans. But how does that tie into a pair of teenagers from Seattle?”
Her face assumes a thoughtful beauty. “Maybe it’s just a meme, started on the Internet by a sixteen year old. Maybe it’s like Y2K, and it sounds scary but nothing happens in the end.”
I sip the drink and tell her about the feds and the cigarette burn, but not about Rachel’s note or the National Security Letter. Her shoulders hunch in agitation.
“Feds?”
“FBI, I guess.”
She bites her wide lower lip. “So you told the bosses? You’re going to press charges? The paper’s going to fight?”
I shrug. “I hope so. But the M.E. said he had to talk to Kathryn.”
“Fuck! They’re so spineless.”
“I’m trying to see their side.”
“Fuck their side. Corporate journalism is on the way. We’ll be left running stories about Paris Hilton and dog-washing services.” She continues to fondle me under the table. Her expression is serious.
I’m inhaling in shorter bursts, trying to stay focused. It’s not easy. “What about this Heather Brady they mentioned? Friend of Megan’s?”
“I’ve never heard of her. I can check before they send me to suburban hell. You could put in a good word for me.” I tell her I did.
She says, “You’re not giving up those notes on any conditions. You’ve got the story of your life there.”
“Uh, huh.”
“You like that, huh? Take me home, now.”
I tell her I can’t. I have to figure out what to do tomorrow, when my notes are due on pain of God-knows-what.
“What if we’re followed? You could be in danger…”
“Let them watch. Let them listen. We’ll give them a thrill.” Her hand gropes and strokes. I start to speak, but my attention span has compressed. I am about to start moaning right there in the tavern. So I slug down the rest of the bourbon and we leave.
Chapter Sixteen
Tuesday, October 26th
Amber leaves before sunup, the darkness, sweet aches, and the scent of sex on me making the previous day’s events seem unreal. I make a cup of coffee and again check the new lock on the door. It looks undisturbed. I sit at the desk and go through my email, seeing a response from a FOIA coordinator at the Department of Defense: my requests related to contracts with Olympic Defense Systems have been received and will be reviewed, blah, blah. It’s a form response but at least the request is moving ahead. We’ll see how committed the new administration is to transparency.
I am less interested in the Olympic story now. It could be a great tale: get inside the head of Pete Montgomery, reveal the private equity players working to do the deal, peel the bark off of Heidi Benson’s press releases once an acquisition becomes public. Winners and losers. Stakes. It’s the stuff of a great column. But my mind returns to the piece of paper with the Department of Justice letterhead. Troy Hardesty. Megan Nyberg. Heather Brady. Ryan Meyers. Half of them dead. Maybe more. Maybe I’m “just the business columnist,” but I am still curious. And the paper, for the first time in my career, doesn’t have my back. I am not looking forward to the day. I sip hot, bitter coffee.
Back to the screen. My personal email inbox holds a note from Pam, sent Monday night:
I’m sorry about the ice water. Yes, I was a jealous bitch. So come over Tuesday night and make me territorial and horny with all the gory details about the underage redhead. You know what your problem is? You want flings, but women fall in love with you. Some day that’s going to get you in real trouble.
P
I would have missed Pam more than most if she went away. But now there’s Amber. The thrill of complications makes me shake my legs. To distract myself I go to Conspiracy Grrl. She has a post about the sale or closing of the Seattle Free Press and a rant about consolidation of the corporate media. Grrl notes how our Washington bureau has been aggressive in challenging lies about the war and uncovering scandals in the government. “They’ve pissed off a lot of powerful people. No wonder there’s an interest in this newspaper company going away.” She also has a link to my Sunday column about Olympic Defense Systems. It’s nice to be noticed. What the hell: I click the passion page and see that she has consummated her relationship with Mister EU. But it’s a short entry. She promises more details to come. I’ve never been a voyeur, but I’m interested.
Chapter Seventeen
Wednesday, October 27th
I wake up with a headache. Like my forehead collided with an anvil. Maybe it’s the price to pay for the bottle of red wine I shared with Pam the night before, or the release from having a calmer day Tuesday. Cooler heads prevailed. That’s one of those clichés that good writers avoid and editors remove. Clichés like “police remained tight-lipped” and “bright and early.” Trite and overused expressions bore readers. Good editors also add a layer of skepticism that reporters and columnists might miss, being too close to a story. So the day after Amber took me home from the Siren and gave me a working over, the M.E. called me in and settled me down. What proof did I have that the two thugs are federal agents? Anyone can buy badges. Anyone can fake a letter that is conveniently snatched away before it can be
verified. It sounded more like a hoax. They had talked to the newspaper’s security people and the police, and I could have protection if I wanted it.
I wasn’t so easily convinced: there’s eleven/eleven, the unexplained (and apparently uninvestigated) deaths, and Rachel’s pleading letter, delivered dramatically by her father. Unfortunately I couldn’t say all this without bringing Rachel into it. I also noticed that the story about CIA missteps didn’t appear in Tuesday’s paper. Instead, there was a very un-Free Press-like feature on Page One about fall leaves.
Amber has the sentimentality of the idealistic. It’s not as if the Free Press hasn’t done its share of stories that bored me, and we have more than a few lazy reporters and editors breathing the air, people who had long ago abandoned any curiosity or passion about what I consider a calling. Ones who, in a superior tone of voice, shoot down any story idea by saying, “We’ve already done that” or “I don’t see the story there.” They’re rigid and they dither. It’s just a job to them, and if any higher-ups call them on it, they’ll raise a stink with the Guild or threaten a lawsuit. Still, our staff is better than most papers. We are still a destination newspaper—a place people aspire to reach and spend their careers. Or they once could. And we didn’t do stupid weather stories—“it’s sunny today!”—or feel compelled to put a weak mom feature on page one for Mother’s Day.
Yet Amber is right. The paper is changing already.
But on my personal troubles, the M.E. promised to talk to the U.S. Attorney and ask about the supposed national security letter. If it proved to be a fake, as it almost certainly would, then we could file an assault complaint against the two “agents.” And so, cooler heads…well, sanity makes a welcome reappearance in my life. I ignored Stu and Bill’s deadline and nothing happened. I even kept my job for another day.
Now it’s sunny outside, I am supine on soft sheets, my head hurts, and my ears are buzzing. I quickly shut my eyes. Pam’s bedroom has big windows on three sides and the light floods in joyously. I have overslept and a column is due today, yet somehow I don’t care. I can feel Pam asleep next to me. My high-functioning executive is usually out the door before sunrise. Amber had wanted to come over last night, but I had put her off. “Must be the blonde who poured water on you,” she said.
Before I can even decide whether to lie, she added, “Give her a goodbye fuck and come back to me,” and gave me a long, lewd kiss.
And so I had spent the night at Pam’s, something about which I am careful. There’s the boyfriend. I brought the red wine and she intended to make dinner, except we devoured each other at the front door, eventually made it to the bedroom, and the wine seemed enough to keep us going. At one point, she wanted me to tie her hands to the headboard and blindfold her while I took her roughly. She likes to use my neckties for this purpose. Then we made love missionary style, eyes meeting, bodies comfortable with each other’s pleasure, and it was as sweet as life gets.
But as my head clears now, the buzzing and the quality of light make me panic. The buzzing is Pam’s alarm and she hasn’t shut it off. She hasn’t gotten me out the door at five a.m. as she promised, so she could be prepared when her boyfriend, Ron, came by at seven for coffee. Something is terribly wrong. My hand reaches toward Pam’s shoulder to shake her, but her arm is raised toward the headboard and she’s very cold. My hand follows her arm up and her wrist is tightly bound with fabric. None of this makes sense. I had untied her long before and we had fallen asleep, her back to my front, my arm around her, the way she likes it.
I hear myself shouting her name even before my brain processes what my eyes see. Her face is gone, half of her face, replaced by a pulpy crater of blood, brains, and pillow feathers. Skin tatters at the edges. The wound looks like a meteor strike. Blood is spattered onto the wrought iron of the headboard and the tastefully painted wall beyond. My hands are fluttering uselessly over her, not knowing what to do, she is so hopelessly gone…her lovely face…she worried about the wrinkles around her eyes…my hands cupping what’s left of my beautiful Pamela’s skull, halfway preparing for a hopeless resuscitation and then I am on the floor, flat on my back, having fallen straight backwards out of the bed and all around us is the damnable sunlight.
I stand. In the silence I hear myself mumbling and crying.
She lies on her back, totally nude, her hands tied to the headboard and her legs partly open. The sun illuminates her obscenely. A gun is sitting on the bedclothes where I had been lying. It’s a black semi-automatic, but small, like a .22. I’ve never seen it before. I back away, spin around, look for her phone. Help me…help us. I trip across something heavy and immovable, fall across it and barely get my arms out to avoid hitting the hardwood floor face-first. The floor is very cold.
When I look over my shoulder, I see a man lying on the floor. He wears jeans and a flannel shirt. His head is turned at an angle and he’s staring at me. I am on my feet before I am even conscious of the movement. It’s Ron and he has a hole in his chest. It’s about the size of a quarter, dark red, and singed. Under his back is a plume of darkening blood. He stares to the side with wide doll eyes. The torrent from inside my stomach is already flying up my esophagus.
Then I am outside, fully clothed. The autumn light has never been more beautiful. It makes the trees look like golden and orange mushroom clouds. Loose leaves swing around in the light breeze coming up from the bay and the sidewalks are comfortably broken and old, grass hopefully poking up. I don’t know how my legs walk on them, but they do.
Chapter Eighteen
The black fender glides alongside me suddenly and quietly, unnoticed, like death.
“Get in,” Amber commands.
Then we are driving toward the water down the extreme slope of Queen Anne Avenue. My already woozy stomach does an upward loop. I keep swallowing. We are right behind an electric-powered bus, its black rooftop tentacles gathering power from overhead wires, and it blocks my view. I am startled when a Seattle Police cruiser slams past with lights and siren, speeding in the opposite direction. Its engine roars insistently as it heads uphill. Five seconds later another cruiser whooshes by. The police cars are the color of the ocean in summer and their sirens make me feel as if someone is jamming knitting needles in my ear.
“They’re going to Pam’s house.” My voice is a harsh whisper.
“Your hands are shaking.” These are the first words Amber has spoken since I climbed into the car.
She’s right. I put them between my legs.
“What were you…?” I leave the sentence incomplete. Words aren’t coming easily. She had found me a block from Pam’s house on a quiet side street.
“I was spying on you,” she said simply. “What happened back there?”
“Spying? Why?”
“Because you’re my boyfriend and I’m a jealous bitch. And don’t ask how I found her address. I’m a reporter, remember? Oh my God!”
She swerves into a parking space a block beyond the Lower Queen Anne business district, unhooks her seat belt and leans over toward me. “You’re hurt.” She says my name, which sounds soothing in her voice, and she gingerly tilts my face toward her. “You’re bloody. How did you get bloody?” She examines my cheek and hairline. “I don’t see a cut. What happened back there? Did she take a frying pan to you?”
Amber’s dimples appear, but something in my expression erases it in an instant. I am feeling far away, living in the land of a giant headache. I know the symptoms of shock. When I was a Boy Scout, they said to elevate the victim’s legs. My legs look far away on the floor of the car, with more blood smudged on my slacks. I touch my face with an unfamiliar hand, feeling the fine grainy texture of dried blood.
“What happened back there?” she repeats softly.
I am the master of the white lie. It’s essential to protect sources, keep editors off my back, and manage my time with different women. Yet I say, “They killed Pam.”
“What? Who?”
“The feds.”
“What?”
“They said they’d hurt me.” I hear a slow monotone voice, mine. “They shot her in the face. I woke up and she was next to me, but she was dead and her face was gone. The gun was in the bed, right there.” I try to talk through a mouth as dry as a desert. “On the floor, her boyfriend, shot in the chest. She was cold. She was so cold. I couldn’t warm her up.” I am only vaguely aware of the tears cascading down my cheeks.
Amber leans close and hugs me tightly, my eyes covered by a curtain of her red hair. I am sobbing and shaking.
I say, “We’ve got to go back there. Tell the police.”
“No.”
“That’s where those cops were going, to Pam’s house. We have to go back.”
“No.” Amber sits back, pulls the seatbelt across her long, slim frame, and drives back into traffic. “They’ll think you did it. You were with her last night and I bet you didn’t wear a condom. She tossed a glass of water on you in front of witnesses. I bet her girlfriends know she was doing you. That’s motive. You knew that instinctively or you would have called 911 and waited for the cops. Did you call 911?”
I say that I didn’t.
“Well, somebody did. Maybe you were meant to be caught there, still passed out. Don’t worry. The cops’ll come to see you soon enough.”
I slowly come to, as if I am awakening from the kind of afternoon nap that presages a nasty head cold. Amber turns onto Denny Way and then slides south again on Second Avenue. The Jetta’s white speedometer needle stays fixed on thirty-five.
“What did you do with the gun?” she asks.
I tell her that I left it on the bed. After I had wiped it down with my T-shirt. After I rinsed my bloody hands off in the sink, not even noticing Pam’s blood on my face.
She says nothing as we pass through the condo canyons of Belltown and head into the central business district. I know what she’s thinking: Why did you have the presence of mind to do that? Did you really kill them both in, as they say in the newspaper, a jealous rage?
