“First Waldron, then you,” he muttered darkly as his eyes darted toward the message spike on the corner of his desk. “Damn…”
Sandy frowned, confused. “What was that about Bert?”
“Never mind Bert!” snapped her editor. “This is your article we’re talking about, DiGianni.”
He settled back in his chair, visibly searching his mind for the right combination of words. “My God, Sandy,” he said at last, “the Parmentier case? You have reconstructed, in painful detail, a murder that is less than a year old. A murder that is probably still under active investigation. And even if it weren’t, it would still be a Homicide Squad file; and Homicide Squad files are always strictly confidential. Didn’t you know that?”
There went her scoop. Sandy shook her head slowly. She could feel the weight of everything she still had to learn bowing her shoulders like a heavy yoke.
“The PMRC is going to give us a rough ride on this one,” he warned her. “There’s no legal way you could have got hold of any detailed information about this murder, unless…” Pursing his lips around the tattered cigar, Paul scowled at her across his desk. “Your source wouldn’t happen to be inside the Toronto Police Department, would it?”
Sandy tried to visualize Charlie in a blue uniform, but the image just didn’t fit. “No…”
Paul shifted his cigar again and bit down hard. “Thank God for that,” he muttered. “The last thing this magazine needs is to trigger a Departmental scandal. What about a witness? Did your source actually see the murder go down?”
“I don’t think so.”
“Maybe he talked to someone else who did. Or maybe he found a way to steal the information from police files.”
Paul sounded strangely matter-of-fact about this last possibility. “Are we in trouble?” she asked, her frown deepening.
“Only if you knowingly purchased information stolen from the Toronto Police. Did you?”
Sandy swallowed hard. “No, I— He wouldn’t let me see it until after I’d paid him.”
Her editor snorted past the cigar teetering on his lips. “You bought a pig in a poke, in other words. Oh, Sandy, Sandy, Sandy,” he groaned. Paul clapped a hand to the bald spot at the back of his head and polished it slowly with his palm.
“Okay, kid,” he sighed at last, “you’re probably in the clear. As long as you didn’t ask this source beforehand to get you the information—”
“I didn’t.”
“—and you’d never used him for anything before—”
“Never!”
“—and I’ll vouch for the fact that you’re an ignorant rookie who wouldn’t recognize sensitive information if it cried tears all over her desk, then I doubt whether they could charge you with anything. Remember that when you have your little chat with Sergeant Gaine later on.”
“Sergeant Gaine?” she echoed weakly, wondering whether she’d missed part of this conversation.
Paul leaned forward and yanked a scrap of paper off the bottom of his message spike. “The call came in early this morning. I was about to give it to you when you barreled in here and jumped down my throat. Detective Sergeant Ted Gaine, Homicide,” he read, then tossed the scrawled message onto the growing pile of paper debris on his desk. “Obviously, Media Relations spotted the confidential information in your article and passed it along. Sergeant Gaine will probably ask you to reveal your source. You, of course, will adhere staunchly to the journalist’s code and refuse.”
“Even if he stole the information from police files?”
“Even if he mugged your grandmother the day before,” said Paul sternly. “It isn’t his business ethics you have to worry about, kid—it’s ours. If you’re using a source, even if he’s a criminal, you have to protect him. Look, this confrontation between the press and the police isn’t that big a deal. In fact, it’s the best-choreographed routine in the news reporting industry. Ted Gaine has probably been through it a hundred times.”
Sandy felt a sudden chill. “Is that supposed to be reassuring, Paul?”
“What I mean is, he knows the drill by heart. Okay? He will be expecting you to say no. However,” he added, causing something to drop with a thud to the pit of her stomach, “he’s one of the toughest, smartest cops around. He knows you can’t reveal your source, but that won’t stop him from trying to force or trick or even charm the information out of you. So be careful.”
“How about if I just don’t phone him back?” she offered nervously.
Paul shook his head. “My people don’t play hide-and-seek with the police. Besides,” he added, glancing at his watch, “according to the message he left, Gaine isn’t interested in talking to you over the telephone. He wants a face-to-face in about twenty minutes in that little Greek cafe just across Yonge Street. Don’t be fooled by his informal choice of location, by the way. Smart detectives know that a cozy chat over coffee is a great way to get a suspect to drop his guard and maybe let something slip—so I’d keep my defenses up if I were you. Oh, and, Sandy? Don’t lose your temper with this guy, okay? He understands Italian.”
Sandy left Paul’s office and walked directly to the washroom, where she spent the next fifteen minutes splashing cold water on her face and doing breathing exercises. Nothing worked. Her cheeks continued to burn, her heart was beating a tattoo inside her chest, and her limbs were humming with adrenaline. She felt like a gladiator about to enter the arena, but armed with a pen instead of a sword.
And against tough, smart Sergeant Gaine, who would apparently stoop to any dirty trick to pry the identity of her source out of her, Sandy wanted a sword. No, she sighed as the last of the water gurgled down the drain, what she really wanted was a reprieve.
As she dried her face with a paper towel, Sandy surveyed herself critically in the mirror. If she had to go to this meeting with a guilty-looking flush in her cheeks, then the rest of her must project utter calm. Fortunately, she was wearing green, a cool color, and the simple lines of her straight skirt and matching tunic gave her a businesslike air. She would need it, she thought disgustedly, if she hoped to convince this Ted Gaine that she was old enough to vote.
In school, Sandy had been the envy of her friends, with her flawless olive complexion, her large brown eyes fringed with naturally curly, dark lashes, and her thick, wavy hair that looked professionally styled with no more than a vigorous brushing. It was a look all the other girls had to sleep on rollers and spend hours in front of mirrors trying to achieve.
At sixteen, Sandy had blessed her good luck. Now that she was twenty-seven, and about to have a close encounter with tough-as-nails Ted Gaine, she realized that she’d been culturally deprived. Other women could paint cool sophistication on their faces when they needed a new persona. They generally carried the equipment with them. But all Sandy found in her handbag was a half-used tube of lip gloss and an atomizer bottle of Silken Shoulders cologne.
With a sigh, Sandy smoothed the lip gloss on her naturally rosy mouth and sprayed some fragrance on her wrists and the base of her throat, able to draw some comfort from the fact that Paul Rudd still considered her one of “his people”. Not only had Paul not fired her, but he’d complimented her for being “a hell of a writer”, and her editor didn’t hand out compliments lightly.
“I’m a hell of a writer,” she told herself in the mirror, screwing up her face in an approximation of Paul Rudd’s habitual scowl. Then she gathered up her belongings, gave her hair one last pat and her tunic one last tug, and hurried to confront Sergeant Gaine before her nerve completely failed her.
The Midtown Cafe was a modest, family-run place specializing in light lunches and takeouts. The menu was handprinted in grease pencil on a long Arborite slab mounted behind the counter, and the daily special was always a Greek dish, meaning that even at ten thirty in the morning, the cafe held a tantalizing mixture of aromas. Today the chef was preparing moussaka, and the a
ir was redolent with lamb, tomatoes and tangy feta cheese.
Sandy stood just inside the door and glanced around at the dozen or so small tables with their burgundy cloths and polished chrome napkin holders. All the tables were empty but one. Tucked into the far corner of the cafe, sitting with his back to both walls and frowning into a coffee cup, was a disgruntled-looking man in a gray two-piece suit. Could this be Ted Gaine?
She could tell from the way he filled his chair that he was a big man, well over six feet, and broad-shouldered. His coloring was Mediterranean, like hers, although his closely trimmed hair and mustache were several shades lighter than Sandy’s own nearly black hair. It occurred to her briefly that this man in the gray suit and charcoal-and-blue tie might not be Ted Gaine at all, that she might be agonizing about walking over to some accountant or insurance salesman who had wandered into the cafe. And then he looked up, eyes as gray and hard as steel locking commandingly with her startled brown ones, and Sandy knew, as the knot in her stomach turned slowly to ice, that this was Sergeant Ted Gaine, exactly as Paul had described him—tough and smart, and not about to let her off the hook easily.
Sandy licked her lips nervously and began walking toward him. He got to his feet with surprising ease for a big man who’d been crammed into a corner behind a little round table.
“Ms. DiGianni?” Before her eyes, the stubborn glower melted into an expression of watchful neutrality. His official police face, Sandy realized, was not exactly honey, but certainly not the vinegar she’d first seen on his handsome features—and they were handsome, she had to admit, classically proportioned and perfectly regular, like a Roman statue come to life. There was Italian blood in his veins, she would bet on it.
“Sergeant Gaine?” When he nodded, she took the seat he’d already pulled out for her.
“Would you like a cup of coffee?” he offered, in a deep, warm voice that seemed to pour lazily over her senses.
This was the honey, she decided, a breath away from giving in to the sheer pleasure of being wrapped in that velvety baritone. And then common sense cut in with a ruthless reminder that the tall, good-looking man across the table was tough, smart Sergeant Gaine, her adversary in a matter of professional ethics; and the velvet turned to snow against her skin.
“No, thank you. I’d rather just get down to business.” Sandy almost cringed at how flat and cold the words sounded.
For a moment, the gray eyes looked hard enough to spark. “As you wish,” he replied, his voice still surprisingly soft. “I’ve read your article about the unsolved murders. You write very well.”
She nodded stiffly, not trusting her voice to acknowledge the compliment.
“I was particularly interested in your reconstruction of the Parmentier case,” he went on. “You went into some detail, describing his personal life, the nature of his partnership with Vermeyer, the way he was found in the back seat of a one-year-old Dodge, even the amount of money he had in his wallet at the time. Is all that factual?”
“I don’t know. I submitted it to the police so that you could tell me.”
Sandy thought she glimpsed a flicker of amusement in his eyes before they settled back into steel again. “You do realize that Homicide Squad files are strictly confidential, even after they’ve been closed?”
“I do now.”
“Your covering letter contained a request that we verify the reliability of the information provided by your source.”
“That’s right.”
“Would you care to name this source?”
His question might be the raison d’être of this interview, but according to Paul Rudd it was a formality, nothing more. Emptying her voice of all emotion, Sandy gave the formula answer. “No, sir, I cannot. As a journalist, I have an ethical obligation to protect my sources.”
“Well, Ms. DiGianni, your obligation places my department in a rather difficult position. You see, your article contained certain facts about the Parmentier case that appear only in our files.”
He was waiting for her response, watching her face carefully, his cold gray eyes like bullets locked on to a target. Dio, what difference did it make how warm and wonderful a man sounded if he looked at a woman like that? Sandy had to force down a nervous flutter in her throat before she could reply with any semblance of composure. “Really? I guess that proves my source is reliable, then.”
“All it proves, Miss, is that you know more about the murder of Lou Parmentier than an uninvolved civilian is supposed to know.”
“Quite true,” she agreed. “I got the information from my source.”
“Whose identity you refuse to reveal?”
“Whose identity I cannot reveal, Sergeant—there’s a difference.”
“Even if I told you that the knowledge your source possesses could place him in danger?”
“That’s right.”
“Or if I told you that by passing the information on to you, he might have placed you in grave danger?”
Sandy had to swallow hard to force the butterflies back down to her stomach. “Not even then.”
Her voice faltered for only an instant, but Ted noticed it. In fact, very little about her had escaped his notice from the moment she had entered the cafe, too nervous to stand still even for the ten seconds it took her to locate him in the corner. Wide brown eyes under delicate brows, lustrous dark hair, full lips compressed into a hyphen of determination on a flawlessly oval face—without a trace of makeup, he realized suddenly. She was probably one of those women who would always look younger than their age. If she took care of her skin she would still be attracting admiring looks when she was well into her fifties. Was she as beautiful inside as she was outside? he found himself wondering—and immediately banished the unprofessional thought to a corner of his mind.
“How long have you been writing for magazines, Miss?”
“Altogether, six and a half years.”
“And how long have you been working on this article?”
“About two weeks.”
“Then you’ve known the gentleman at least that long?”
“You make it sound as though we have a personal relationship,” she protested.
The corners of Gaine’s mouth twitched briefly. “Sorry. How did you get together?”
“I had begun researching some past unsolved cases for a series of articles, and he…got in touch with me.”
Gaine’s forehead contracted in a frown. “He knew about your research?”
“That’s what he said, Sergeant.”
“Interesting. How did he contact you?”
“He phoned me at the office.”
“He gave you the information over the telephone?”
“No, he requested a meeting,” said Sandy uncomfortably. Was she giving Ted Gaine too much information? Had he decided to worm so many little details out of her that in the end it wouldn’t matter whether she revealed a name or not?
“So you met him face-to-face,” declared the sergeant. “Where and when exactly?”
Sandy hesitated, frowning. Would the bartender remember her from that far back? Was Charlie a regular at the Shamrock? He and Bert had apparently met there quite often.
“About a month ago, in a public place,” she replied at last, challenging Gaine with a direct stare.
His lips twitched again. “And he just approached you, out of the blue?”
Sandy shrugged. “I guess…”
“Weren’t you curious as to why?”
“He…probably had his reasons. With a source, some things are a matter of trust, Sergeant,” she informed him stiffly.
“It’s not safe to be too trusting, Ms. DiGianni. He was probably setting you up as a decoy.”
“For what?”
“The informant either witnesses the murder or knows someone who saw it. When he decides to come forward, he needs a patsy,
a decoy to draw the murderer’s fire once it becomes known there was an eyewitness to the crime. And what better patsy could there be than a crime reporter eager for a scoop?”
“That’s ridiculous!” she blurted.
“He’s a friend of yours, isn’t he?”
“Of course not,” she bristled. Charlie was any number of things, but certainly not a friend of hers.
The sergeant wore a faint, smug smile now. “What did he tell you? That he admired your work and wanted you alone to tell his story?”
“I told you before—”
“Or maybe that he admired your legs, and wanted you alone to tell his story?”
She blushed fiercely, her anger rising. “He didn’t witness either of those murders, Sergeant,” she retorted.
Gaine leaned back in his chair, still smiling. Suddenly Sandy felt a trickle of perspiration on her back, like a finger gently tracing the length of her spine. At the same moment she became aware that her entire body ached with tension. Paul had warned her about her temper, and now she knew why. In the heat of anger, she had just let slip some information about her source.
With a concerted mental effort, she pulled back and collected herself once again. She mustn’t reveal any more.
Sandy drew in a steadying breath. Then, as casually as she could manage in a voice half an octave higher than usual, she said, “If you aren’t going to arrest me, Sergeant Gaine, I’ve got things to do before lunch.” And she rose to her feet to end the interview.
“Maybe I should arrest you, for your own protection.”
Poised to turn away, Sandy halted and stared at him in confusion.
“It’s dangerous to traffic in street rumors, Ms. DiGianni.”
“Street rumors,” she echoed. “Such as?”
“Such as the one you speculated about in your article—the phantom hit man, Mr. Vanish.”
“Your own police department maintains that Mr. Vanish doesn’t exist,” she reminded him.
A frown wedged itself between his brows. “For the moment. Look, I’m not going to argue with you. There are some kinds of criminals whose activities are best left to the police to handle. So you can take this as an official warning. I don’t want you playing detective, understand?”
No Pain, No Gaine Page 2
