by A. C. Fuller
His Blackberry rang and he eased her off him, then rolled toward the bedside table to grab it. "Gimme two minutes."
He stood up and pressed "Talk" without taking his eyes off Greta. "Hello? . . . Yup. Hi, Cooper . . . Lemme guess why you're calling. Your editor is pissed that you got beat, again, by a start-up Web site with a staff of three?" He began pacing the room. "He simply can't believe that The Gray Lady, the paper of record, could lose on a story of this magnitude to a site with an office in a loft in Washington Heights? . . . Sure, you can talk . . . You want to interview all three of us? . . . No, I don't mind helping you. Every time you write a story about one of our stories, we get more hits and make your old buddy Lance more money." He sat down on the edge of the bed. "Plus, I get to talk about my two favorite things. Writing, and me."
Greta wrapped her arms around his chest and patted his belly, which was slightly more padded than it had been when she moved in. Between the comforts of domestic life and the stresses of running a start-up, he'd let himself go a little. He was six-foot-two and still strong, but not as toned as he used to be.
"Meet us at our executive office suite," Alex said, "otherwise known as James's apartment. I'll be up there in the next half hour."
He glanced down at Greta, who had nestled in his lap and was looking up with something between a smirk and a scowl. He smiled at her and spoke into the phone.
"Actually, give me an hour or two."
About an hour later, Alex stepped out of the shower and began dressing.
Greta was reading in bed, half covered by sheets. "What time will you be home?"
Alex buttoned up a long-sleeved black shirt and patted down his hair. "Seven or eight. We've got to finalize plans for the trip."
She closed the book as he sat on the bed and put on a pair of gray jeans.
"And why do you have to go?" she asked. "I've had a bad feeling about this conference for a while. Can't James go by himself?"
"He can't. Where's my phone?"
Greta tossed the blankets around, then found his Blackberry on the bedside table and scooted across the bed to hand it to him. "Are you gonna go to Bainbridge to visit your old house or see any friends?"
"The conference schedule is pretty tight."
"Isn't it only, like, half an hour from Seattle on the ferry?"
"Yeah, but . . ."
"Scaredy-cat." Greta tossed a pillow at him, but it landed a foot away. "I go to Germany and Japan every year. Hometowns are important. Family is important."
"I'm happy to meet your family, but my family is dead."
"Sorry. I mean . . . I know."
Alex let it roll off him, as he always tried to do when family came up. "You know, Bearon did compare me to a musician once."
"Do I want to know which one?"
"Probably not. It was that one tall Backstreet Boy. The older one. With the dark hair."
"I thought you said musician."
"You know the one I mean, though?"
"Yeah. He's doable enough, if he doesn't open his mouth to sing."
Alex finished dressing, grabbed his laptop bag, and stepped to the door. "Objectify much? You know you're an elitist snob, right?"
"I'm only a snob when it comes to music. And shoes. And body-care products. And . . . pretty much everything, I guess. It's not my fault that I know what's good and what isn't. It's why I picked you." She paused until he met her eyes. "I love you, you know."
Alex opened the door, stepped into the hall, and swiveled back around, breaking into his cheesy news anchor voice. "In other developments, local bodyworker to the stars Greta Mori has announced, after months of deliberation, that she does, in fact, love gifted reporter Alex Vane, who, according to reports, is as thoughtful as he is handsome. How will he respond? Details at seven."
Greta crinkled her nose. "Very funny, dear. You know, every man has his own way of protecting himself from his feelings."
Alex inched farther into the hallway, trying to play it cool. Greta had said "I love you" before, and Alex had said it, too, but this time it felt different. Like she needed him to say it back.
"And you're saying humor is my way of protecting myself?"
She smiled again. "Humor, work, rigidity about what you eat."
"You have to admit, I've calmed down about the last one a bit."
"A bit."
Alex flashed her a smile. "I really do have to go."
"Say hi to James for me."
3
Pearl Street, Lower Manhattan
Denver Bice lunged toward the wall, bringing a rolled-up copy of The New York Times down hard against the windowsill. He lifted the newspaper slowly and peered under it. No fly.
He heard the buzzing and swiveled around to scan his living room. Through large, south-facing windows, sharp light reflected off the water. Bice squinted, and, as the fly zipped past him into the kitchen, he tracked its micro-movements with an intense focus that kept the voice in his head at bay.
He hadn't minded killing Sarin. At the time, he'd enjoyed it. But a feeling of wrongness had set in as soon as he'd stepped back into his apartment the previous morning. It had begun as an almost imperceptible uneasiness in his lower back, but, by the time he'd showered and dressed, the feeling had grown, creeping up his spine and filling his shoulders.
Now, Bice was aware of a single word, repeated quietly and emanating from the back of his head. Not quite a word, actually, more of a throbbing hum. Bad-bad-bad-bad-bad-bad-bad. It had something to do with guilt and shame, but also with punishment. With the call he was waiting on.
He wanted to kill the fly. Needed to kill it. But if he killed the fly, the voice would come back, louder than ever, to fill the void. He could hear it now, whispering to him. Bad-bad-bad-bad-bad.
The fly landed on the glimmering stainless-steel handle of his eight-burner Wolf range. Bice stepped around his leather sofa, took three long steps into the kitchen, and leaned against the blue granite counter, eyeing the insect as it took flight yet again. The landline on the kitchen wall rang just as the fly landed next to it. Bice lunged, slapping the wall with the newspaper, but missed, knocking the phone onto the floor instead. He glanced around for the fly, which had quieted, then grabbed the phone from the floor and pressed "Speakerphone."
"Denver Bice," he said, as casually as he could.
"Denver, it's me." The old, husky voice filled the kitchen.
Bice's eyes darted around, but he couldn't locate the fly. "Hello, Chairman Gathert."
Gathert spoke slowly and sounded like he was trying to teach Bice a valuable lesson. "Did you see The Times today?"
"I have it right here," Bice said, unrolling the paper.
"The piece on the FCC thing?"
Bice opened to page A27 and scanned the headline again: Start-up Web Site, News Scoop, Accuses The New York Times of Burying Story. "I read it. Nothing new there."
Gathert sounded concerned. "I hadn't read the News Scoop story they were following up on."
"I figured your people had leaked it," Bice said. "You're not going to throw me under the bus like you did with McGregor, are you?" Bice heard his own words, but was preoccupied with the fly, with keeping the voice at bay.
"Don't be ridiculous, Denver. The Indian, has he quieted down?"
"He turned into a slight problem at the end, but it's nothing you need to worry about. Overall, he was a good recommendation. He did his job."
"What do you mean, 'a slight problem'? Either he talked to the Kerry campaign or he didn't."
"Won't be a problem anymore."
Gathert sighed. "Denver?"
"Look, we know he spoke with the guy in Kerry's camp, but I don't think he gave him much. I assure you, he won't give them anything else."
"How can you? Denver, please don't tell me you—"
"Of course not."
"There have been accusations."
Two years earlier, Bice had been CEO of Standard Media when he'd killed their largest investor with the club guard f
rom a seven iron and dumped the body outside the Marriott on the morning of 9/11. When Alex Vane and his team at News Scoop had written a story implicating him, he'd been fired from Standard Media, though evidence to arrest him had never materialized. He remained a free man.
"Those allegations were never proven," Bice said, listening for the fly.
"Yes, I know. And I have a lot of faith in you. But the rumors hurt us, Denver. They set us back. And now, with the campaigns, and this Indian, I—"
"It won't be a problem."
"Did he get you the information?"
"Yes. Plenty. Do you want to hear some of it?"
"I don't need details. As long as we have enough to ensure that they'll both play ball."
"Oh, they'll play ball," Bice said. "With the e-mails, phone records, and police files I have, they'll be fighting for the MVP award."
"Where is the information?"
Bice glanced at a black laptop sitting on a small oak desk in the living room. Beyond the desk, through a floor-to-ceiling window, he could see a sailboat pulling into a slip along a T-shaped dock. "I have it all here. The next presidency will be our decision."
"Then just sit tight. Our friends will talk to Kerry's people first. We may be able to get more guarantees out of them."
"Sure you don't want the details? There's some sleazy stuff there."
"Worse than the cocaine story we leaked about Bush in 2000?"
Bice smiled. "Way worse."
"Well, keep it ready, in case we need to let them know what we have."
"And if it doesn't work with Kerry?"
"We try Bush's people."
"You'd really do that? You pushed for Bush as hard as anyone four years ago."
"And he knows I can push just as hard to the left," Gathert said. "The people you work for enjoy nothing more than predictability, especially on the FCC. We all appreciated when you stepped aside quietly two years ago. And we know you have a big future in this business."
Gathert was about to launch into a spiel, and Bice spotted the fly on a black laminate cupboard. "Thank you, sir. I hope to," he said, placing the phone on the counter. Listening out of one ear, he inched across the kitchen toward the insect. When he was a yard away, he leapt forward with a flat palm and smashed it. He studied the black and green mush on his hand, wiped it off on his pants, then glanced back at the phone.
"For now," Gathert was saying, "you're quiet, but there will be a time when we need you out front again, running a company. As you know . . ."
With the fly dead, he began wandering around the apartment, looking for his cell phone.
He'd heard Gathert's speech before. Once Gathert and his partners got their people on the FCC, they'd be able to define the next twenty years of policy regarding radio, cable and network TV ownership, and, most critically, broadband and mobile technology. Of course, they could never completely control the Internet. "This isn't China," Gathert was fond of saying. But they could make sure small towns didn't get together to make broadband a public utility. They could control prices and download speeds. They could make sure ads appeared where they wanted them to appear. And they could ensure that they had a voice at the table during every discussion of the mobile Internet that would be accessed by three billion people within ten years.
"And, Denver, you'll have a voice at that table as well," Gathert said.
"I couldn't agree more," Bice heard himself saying.
The person he heard saying the words was just a shell on his surface. The shell was working with Gathert to sway the 2004 election. The real Bice was the voice—bad-bad-bad-bad—with the desire to be punished, the certainty that he deserved to be punished, and the recognition that there was only one way to truly quiet the voice. It was the only thing that had worked when he'd killed Macintosh Hollinger on the morning of 9/11, the only thing that had worked when he'd ordered the murder of Professor John Martin to cover it up, and it was the only thing that would work now.
He found his cell phone on a table by the door, but thought better of using it. He returned to the kitchen, retrieved a cheap plastic phone from a drawer, and waited for a crack in Gathert's monologue. "I agree, sir. And what do you see ten years out?"
"In ten years, mobile technologies will . . ."
He'd bought himself a couple minutes. He powered on the new phone and leaned on the kitchen counter, staring at the specks of gray and black in the granite as he waited for the screen to light up. "When you hurt someone you deserve to be punished," he whispered to himself as the phone beeped and the screen flashed.
He opened a new text message.
Gathert was wrapping up. "Like I said, we'll be in touch with the Kerry campaign and I'll call you in a week or two. Good-bye, Denver."
"Good-bye, Chairman Gathert."
Bice heard a buzzing from across the room. Another fly.
He listened for a few seconds, then tapped Alex Vane's number into the new cell phone.
He was beginning to feel a bit better.
4
News Scoop Office, West 160th Street, Washington Heights
On the landing between the first and second floors, Alex's Blackberry vibrated with a text notification from an area code he didn't recognize. He scrolled through the text:
Bice has killed again. This time was worse than the last. And the first time was worst of all.
Alex read it twice, then sat on the steps, staring at the screen. He called the number; after four rings, it went to voice mail. "The DT Wireless customer you are trying to reach has not yet set up his or her voice mail."
For two years, Alex had lived with a low-level frustration about the anonymous tips that had helped him break the story implicating Bice in the murder of Macintosh Hollinger and derailing Standard Media's merger with Nation Corp. But calls from the source had ceased, and both Alex and the police had failed to dig up a smoking gun.
Bice had gotten away with it, and as time had passed, Alex's frustration had turned into a quiet dissonance in an otherwise happy life. He'd resigned himself to the fact that he'd never hear from the source again.
His first instinct was to reply to the text, but he decided to check in with James and Lance, his two partners at News Scoop. He even thought for a moment that the text could have come from one of them. James was five years younger than Alex, and Lance about thirty years older, but they shared a dedication to keeping the atmosphere at work as light as possible, and maybe the text was just a twisted joke.
Two years earlier, they'd all been working at The New York Standard—Alex as a court reporter, James as a tech intern, and Lance as a sports reporter who'd achieved living-legend status when Alex and James were still teenagers. Now, they were an odd band of partners trying to transform the world of online journalism.
Alex's next thought was that the text had come from one of a handful of others who knew about the calls from his anonymous source, someone like his friend Sadie Green, who worked at the Media Protection Organization and often helped connect him to information. But everyone he'd told about the source knew how much it had tormented him, and he doubted any of them would make light of it, even James and Lance.
He bounded up the last two flights of stairs into James's loft, which doubled as the corporate headquarters of News Scoop. As soon as he came in, he saw Lance, sitting on the leather couch in the living room reading a newspaper.
"Stay there," Alex said.
Lance crossed his right leg over his left, but didn't even look up.
Alex passed from the living room through a black curtain and into the office space in the back. He found James Stacy walking on a treadmill. "We need to talk," Alex said.
"Almost done. If I don't finish . . . my . . . exercise first . . . I'll feel like . . . crap all day." James pointed at the flat-screen monitor on his desk across the room. His face was red and slick with sweat, his long blond hair was pulled back in a ponytail, and he was breathing hard. "Go check our stats, Alex . . . I have it . . . set up so . . . they refresh
automatically."
"I really need to talk with you, it's important."
"Two minutes."
Alex walked over to the desk, where the large monitors on the right displayed two windows of rapidly-changing numbers, one for overall Web site traffic and one with stats from their last story. The window was marked with the headline from the story entitled "Times Buries Congressional Corruption Story."
James was panting, but managed to say, "I know you need . . . constant updates . . . to satisfy . . . your fragile ego."
Alex watched the numbers creep up on their last story. 1,236 unique page views, 1,241 unique page views, 1,249 unique page views.
"Throw me a towel," James said.
Alex threw him a towel that was draped across an office chair, then turned back to the monitor on the left, which blinked with numbers he didn't understand and something that looked like an EKG reading.
The treadmill slowed, then stopped, and James came up behind him, wiping his face. "That's my biofeedback device. You can see my walking pace, heart rate, heart rate variability, calories burned during this workout, calories burned this week, month, and so on. On the right, a real-time graph of my weight and projected weight based on what I've eaten, my workouts, and my general activity level. Plus, my protein intake. I'm aiming for 178 grams per day."
"How much have you lost?"
"Nineteen point seven pounds in fifty days." James was still thick, but the diet and exercise had brought the vitality back to his face and revealed a handsome—though shy—man underneath. "I'm no Alex Vane," he said, "but I'm feeling great."
Alex ran his hand over his belly. His favorite shirt was getting a little tight. "If you've lost twenty pounds, I think I've found at least half of them." He paused for a moment. "We need to talk. With Lance. Now."
James followed him into the living room, where Alex sat next to Lance on the black leather couch. James took a seat across from them in a matching armchair.
As eager as Alex was to tell them about the text, part of him wanted to pretend it hadn't happened, to enjoy the everyday trivialities they usually engaged in before focusing on work. He slapped Lance on the knee. "Did you hear about—I mean, do you need a shoulder to cry on?"
