by Alina Adams
"I understand. However, without written permission from the next of kin—"
"They're all in Italy. And they don't speak English," Bex improvised. "And, well, you know, the time zone..." Bex gambled that if she didn't insert any verb, the manager would insert an appropriate one of his own.
Bex failed miserably.
Having struck out with pretty much the entire hotel chain of command, Bex threw all caution to the wind and decided to appeal to the highest authority she could: Rupert Newman, president of the ISU. He of the "Silvana Potenza's death was a tragic accident" press release.
Bex had spent a season in the same general vicinity as the man. She doubted he could pick her out of a police lineup if she stole his protocol. Nevertheless, she had no doubt he could recognize a 24/7 credential when he saw it. Besides, nowadays they were old friends; they'd practically bonded back in the refrigeration area over Silvana's accident-ravaged corpse.
She found him inside the ISU room, a converted ballroom on the hotel's balcony level. Since she was looking for printers, she noted that Rupert did have a travel-sized, personal one attached to his laptop. Complete with European-sized paper. And that another, larger printer stood in the far corner, attached to a computer currently being occupied by a chipmunk of a woman busily entering a long string of numbers into a spreadsheet. However, a quick peek at the computer connection told Bex that this particular machine wasn't connected to the Internet. Silvana couldn't have used it to print her E-mail unless she'd transferred it to a disc first.
Floppy discs, Bex made a mental note. Something else to search Silvana's room for.
Rupert Newman's desk—actually, a four-seat dining table obviously reassigned by the hotel for the occasion—was, nevertheless, the largest one in the room. It sat against the far wall, giving Rupert the ability to survey every activity taking place before him and in his name. He was a dapper little man, a former skater himself, once dubbed The Bug. Rupert Newman stood barely three inches over five feet and didn't so much walk as hop from place to place. Except on the ice. Where, somehow, all of that nervous energy magically and magnificently transformed itself into grace, passion, and near liquidity of movement. Until he got off again.
Despite his miniature stature, however, and very much unlike the Russian delegation, he was an impeccably snappy dresser. His pocket handkerchief always matched his tie, and his suits never so much as hinted at the possibility of a wrinkle. Bex knew the man was going for class and grace, and she genuinely respected his efforts. Though, to her, he resembled nothing so much as a very tidily put-together doll. And, being the smart-ass that she was, Bex inevitably couldn't help wondering if he were anatomically correct.
Fortunately, all thoughts of Rupert being a child's doll were easily shaken from her head the moment he opened his mouth. Not that his language wasn't delightfully proper or his accent as charming and cultured as you would expect a British product of the public school system to be. The problem with Rupert was that early on in life he'd decided to make up for his lack of stature with a combination of ego and volume. Ten years earlier, he'd been fired from his commentating job with the BBC due to a tendency to yell all his remarks, most of which weren't even about the skater currently on the ice but rather about himself, his skating career, his past results, and what he thought his results should have been if only the judges had been more appreciative of his unique style. However, for better or worse, his brief stint with the BBC had convinced Rupert that he understood the media far better than any ISU president who ever came before him, and he was always eager to prove this by telling everyone, from Bex up to Gil Cahill, how to do their jobs.
In fact, when he saw Bex's ID, the first words out of Rupert's mouth were, "Shouldn't you be at the arena, luv? After all, there's still the exhibition show to get on air come Sunday."
"Yes," Bex agreed. "That's why I'm here."
"Oh? Care for an interview, do you?"
"Sure." Bex leapt on his suggestion. "I mean, yes. Yes, I would."
"All right, then. Best start taking notes, then, wouldn't want to miss anything."
"Right," Bex pulled out her notebook and pen. "Ready," she said.
For the next ten minutes, Rupert Newman proceeded to wax poetic about what a fine championship this has been, how many records were set, how the technical level of skating was continuing to be raised alongside the artistic level, and how his fine management was responsible for it all. Bex scribbled furiously. The faster her pen went, the more Rupert seemed to want to talk. The more he talked, the more details Bex added to her pen-and-ink doodle of him.
Finally, he stopped to take a breath. And Bex took advantage of the lull to ask, "What about the Xenia Trubin/Erin Simpson controversy?"
She even stopped doodling to better comprehend his answer.
Rupert took a deep breath. This was obviously going to be a long one. He said, "Skating is no stranger to controversy. It is, after all, a subjective discipline. Why, I can't think of a single championship, local or world, that ended without at least one result being hotly debated for years thereafter. I'll give you an example: my last world championship. I finished fourth. We had school figures back then, you understand, and that counted for a large portion of your score. But I would be damned if everyone in the arena didn't believe I deserved third place. Probably even second if it weren't for the school figures. And, in fact, if there were no school figures then, and if I had been placed a mite higher in the short program, I would have won the whole thing."
And if my grandmother had gills, Bex thought, she'd be a codfish.
"So you understand, this is nothing new, luv. I am thrilled that our sport has so many dedicated and passionate fans."
"Erin Simpson's Web master is about to send you a petition with over ten thousand names on it, asking that the ISU award Erin Simpson a gold medal."
"Is that a fact? Yes, yes, I do believe I heard some such rumbles."
"What will your response be?"
"Well, I haven't received it yet, have I?"
"Pretend," Bex said, probably sharper than was wise. But, she couldn't help it. Her head hurt. And this guy was annoying her.
"Well, naturally, the ISU takes all valid input under consideration, but we cannot allow outsiders to dictate our inner workings," Rupert said without saying anything at all.
It took all of Bex's energy to keep herself from snapping, Pretend harder. Instead, she asked him, "Will Silvana Potenza's death affect your decision one way or the other?"
"Whatever do you mean?"
"What I mean," Bex stressed the word, "is since the justification for awarding Erin the gold over Xenia is an accusation of foul play, wouldn't it make it harder to get to the bottom of things with your, chief witness—and defendant— dead?"
"Silvana Potenza was neither a witness nor, certainly, any sort of defendant. She was only one judge on a panel of nine. She voted one way. Four other judges agreed with her. I see no foul play. No foul play, at all. The only thing I see before me is two excellent performances by two wonderful, marvelous skaters. Their rivalry has made skating most exciting all season, and I look forward to many more seasons of such excitement to come."
"Not if they both turn pro." Bex had to admit, she said the last just to spite him. Skating lived and died by its superstars. Sure, the hard core would watch even a flight of pre-preliminary girls, they were that devoted. But the casual fan only tuned in when there was name recognition. The ISU knew that. It was why, a decade earlier, they'd broken down and allowed their skaters to start earning money for competing, performing, and coaching. Otherwise, as soon as a skater achieved any modicum of fame, they would inevitably turn pro and run to the ice shows, leaving the ISU without the big names they themselves had brought into being. It wasn't profitable for the ISU and so, as incentive, they allowed their skaters to make money, as long as they made money in venues the ISU approved and got a cut of. Francis and Diana Howarth's ice show most certainly didn't fit the bill. If Erin accepted th
eir offer, the ISU would be left without a rivalry and without their biggest household name. Rupert knew it. He didn't need Bex telling him. She did it mostly to let some air out of his sails.
Rupert said, "Xenia Trubin has been in skating for a long time. I'm sure she's tired and, now that she's won the gold, I wouldn't be surprised if she did, in fact, retire. After all, the lass has nothing else to prove to anyone, does she? She is our oldest ever world champion. I suspect her record is destined to remain unbroken for a long, long time. As for Erin, though... no, I don't think our Erin will be turning pro for a good, long time. I know her well, and I know her mother even better. We skated at the same time, you know. It broke Patty's heart to retire without ever having been world champion. She won't let Erin suffer the same sort of disappointment."
"So you could say," Bex chose her words with care, still forming the thought even as the words tiptoed out of her mouth, "that it was a stroke of luck for the ISU that Erin didn't win gold, here. Otherwise, she might have achieved her life's goal, turned pro, and that was that."
Rupert stared at Bex with a combination of new respect and utter, utter disgust. "Well, yes, I suppose one could say that. But luck has nothing to do with anything. It was a competition, and the results speak for themselves."
"Yes," Bex agreed, though not with what he was actually saying. "They certainly do." And, to herself, all she could think of was Jasper Clarke asking, "Cui bono? Who benefits?"
But while she flashed back in Latin, out loud Bex asked, "Will there be any sort of memorial service for Silvana? A moment of silence before the exhibition maybe?"
"We hadn't thought of that," Rupert admitted. "We've been so busy. The media requests at this particular championship far exceeded our usual tally."
Well, that's what happens, Bex thought, when the whole world is talking about a result this office doesn't find at all out of the ordinary.
"Was Silvana in the States alone?" Bex asked, "Or did she have some family with her?"
"Silvana's husband rarely traveled with her. Skating was Silvana's passion, not his."
"That's too bad," Bex said. "I guess it must have been difficult for you then, having to be the one to get her things and send them on. But, I'm sure her family appreciated it."
"Her things?" Rupert asked, his voice actually lowering to indicate his lack of Napoleonic confidence on this particular issue.
"Well, she was here on behalf of the ISU, so I just assumed the ISU was taking care of all the arrangements and everything. It's only proper, after all, isn't it?"
A beat. And then: "Of course it is," Rupert's head bobbed up and down. "Of course it is. It's the least we can do for her. It's the only right thing to do." A pause. And then, "Bex, luv, would you happen to know which room Silvana was staying in?"
Naturally, Rupert himself did not go to collect Silvana's things. He sent an underling. A lovely, young Swiss woman who spoke English so flawlessly Bex would have never guessed she wasn't local except for the fact that she spoke English so darn flawlessly. And, equally naturally, Rupert did not invite Bex to accompany her. Bex invited herself. Natalie, not being American, was too well mannered to say anything about it. This time, when Rupert himself called the hotel manager and asked to be let into Silvana's room, there was only the slightest pause on the other end of the phone, after which Rupert reminded the manager how careful the ISU had been about selecting his as the official competition hotel and how careful they would be when choosing one for the next event to be held in San Francisco. There was no pause, then. Simply the information that a chambermaid would be waiting outside of Silvana's room to let them in ASAP.
Natalie went in first, but Bex was the one who promptly commenced opening all the drawers and checking in the closet before determining that neither laptop nor printer, not even a lowly floppy disc, were currently on the premises.
So either someone had removed them or Silvana never had the accoutrements to begin with. In any case, Bex had learned all she could from the late judge's room.
She left Natalie to her conscientious, Swiss-like (Was that an ethnic slur? Was it an ethnic slur if you thought something positive about a people? Were the Swiss even an ethnic group, or were they a nationality?), tidy packing and headed out in search of a rogue printer.
And a killer who knew his way around cyberspace.
But first, Bex realized she had missed something very, very obvious. It was so obvious, she should have started with it instead of running around after Stace the cop/stand-up, Sergei the coach/suspect, Rupert the president/bore, and Jasper the fan/other suspect/lunch date. Before she did anything, Bex should have established a timeline for the morning Silvana died. After all, what better way was there to get to the bottom of "Sergei was with me at the practice"/”I wasn't with Xenia at the practice" than checking the one piece of evidence that, as far as she knew, had not been tampered with in any way. Following her search of Silvana's room, Bex headed to the production truck and the videotape Mark the cameraman/death messenger had been shooting prior to the body's discovery.
Naturally, that particular tape wasn't on the shelf in the corner of the truck dubbed Tape Storage. Why should it be? That would make Bex's job too easy and allow at least one thing to go her way. And no one wanted that. It would go to Bex's head and, next thing you knew, she'd feel free to slack, working only a seventeen-hour day instead of the required twenty-two.
An intern was manning the tape shelf. A gawky, local kid with a sprinkle of white-tipped pimples around his lips, who'd probably volunteered for the job with visions of Spielberg dancing in his head and, instead, found himself as far away from the action as humanly possible without actually being in another county. He sat now in a lightless crawl space, surrounded by shelves full of videotapes, all of which needed to be logged, color-coded with orange, green, yellow, and red sticky dots, and available whenever a producer burst in, wild-eyed and screaming that they needed a certain tape with a certain shot, and they needed it yesterday. After two weeks, the poor kid looked perennially on the edge of tears.
Bex saw no reason to upset his routine. It would probably just confuse him. She asked, "Who's got the tape from this morning's ladies' practice?"
He opened his logbook. Over his shoulder, Bex was impressed to note that despite his terror, he'd done an excellent job keeping track of what was shot when, by whom, and who'd checked the tape out most recently. Maybe the little guy had a future in the business, after all.
The intern gulped. The tears that usually merely coated his pupils now threatened to cross the line into actually hovering at the very precipice of his lower eyelid.
"Gil," he whispered with a horror most often reserved for the words cancer, no survivors, really big snake that eats people whole and then spits out the bones, and, well, Gil.
"Oh," Bex said, feeling her own eyes grow uncomfortably moist. The intern nodded in understanding and handed her a tissue.
A production truck is a twenty-wheeled monstrosity. In Bex's view, it possessed all the drawbacks of a big rig—very cramped space, impossibly complex mobility, eau de gasoline—without the cool stuff like a CB radio, tire flaps with naked girls on them, and trucker food. It was, however, the quickest way to set up a temporary television facility anywhere on the globe for very little money and even less comfort. Still, she had to admit, the 24/7 production managers were whizzes at their jobs. With only three trucks at their disposal, they'd managed to set one up for office space, one for editing and sound dubbing, and a third with the actual equipment to tape and broadcast the show.
It was the latter truck that Gil—after losing one too many battles with his rolling chair—had designated home base. He set up shop in the main, portable control room, a ten-by-five-foot rectangle of space, one wall covered in television monitors showing what every single camera was shooting at a given moment, and two rows of desks. The director, assistant director, audio guy, and technical director sat in the front row, actually putting the show together. Gil sat in the
back row. His job was to throw pens, crumpled wads of paper, and an occasional stapler in the belief that such encouragement actually helped in the process of putting the show together.
However, when the show wasn't in the process of being put together, Gil sat in the front row, screening tapes the feature producer gave him to sign off on, and other video odds and ends.
When Bex walked into the production truck, Gil was pointing at one of the monitors, a playback machine showing the tape Mark had shot of the morning ladies' exhibition practice, and telling the operator sitting next to him, "Damn it, I told you I wanted a shot with Erin and the Russian girl skating in two different directions. I need it to open the Sunday show. Why the hell can't you find me that shot? How hard could it be?"
Pretty hard, Bex gambled, if said shot didn't actually exist.
"Pretty hard," the operator snapped, "since I keep telling you it doesn't exist."
Bex's mouth metaphorically dropped open. She'd never heard anyone speak to Gil like that. And then she remembered. The tape guys were union.
"You sure?" Gil asked.
"I ain't hiding your shot in my jockstrap, Cahill." Also, the tape operators were the same guys who did all of 24/7's football, basketball, and hockey shows. The guys were famous for being able to cue up and air an instant replay in the time between a ball/puck going in and the audience erupting in cheers. They were union, and they were good at their jobs. God himself wouldn't be stupid enough to fire one.
"Bex!" Gil thundered in her direction as there clearly was no appropriate answer to the tape operator's comment "How's the research coming? We know yet who put Silvana on ice... so to speak?"
"Getting there," Bex reassured. She figured it wasn't a lie as long as she didn't specify where exactly "there" was.
"Better be, kiddo. 'Cause right now, for Sunday's show, I've got a couple of snooze-fest Russians who give interviews like they're out looking to capture moose and squirrel, and Erin Simpson grinning and telling me how much she friggin' loves her silver medal. I need something big, Bex. I need something I can tease at the top of the show that's going to pin butts to seats as sure as if I used this stapler, here."
