The Inverted Pyramid (An Alex Vane Media Thriller, Book 2)

by A. C. Fuller

  Alex walked to the small window. He was still sweating from his run, but the breeze from the open window cooled him. "I don't know," he said quietly. "Maybe things have calmed down enough that he's getting back into the media game. I don't know."

  "You don't have to go, do you? Just take a few days off. I can cancel my sessions up in Boston and we can stay here. Together."

  "It's a start-up, we don't get days off. And I can't back out now."

  They were silent for a long minute. Alex was struggling with a conflict he felt often: the desire to get the story versus the desire to play it safe, to settle into his easy, safe life with Greta.

  Finally, he said, "It's not like he's going to do anything to me at the conference, Greta. Like I told you before, I don't think he wants me dead anyway."

  "That's supposed to make me feel better? Alex, I'm going to need you around long term. I mean, I need you around now. I—"

  Alex had stopped listening. His Blackberry was vibrating in his running shorts and he took it out. "It's probably James," he said, glancing down at the screen, "just let me turn it off and—"

  He went quiet when he saw it.

  Another text.

  "What is it?" Greta asked. "Alex, seriously, what the hell is that look?"

  Alex heard her voice, but didn't register the words.

  Start by speaking with Denver Bice at the Digital Media Conference. But if you do, you may not be safe.

  He handed her the Blackberry.

  She read the text. Before Alex could speak, she asked, "Is this the same source as before?"

  For a moment, he considered whether the text was from Whyte. An attempt to mess with him. But he didn't think Whyte knew about his source, and besides, the text was a reply to his earlier question. "We think so," he said.

  "You're not going to that conference." He watched her as she tapped at the phone. "Wait," she said, "This is the second text?"

  "I was about to tell you about the first one. I got it after I left this morning."

  He sat on the bed next to her, read the text again, and forwarded it to James and Lance. "I have to go."

  "No, you really don't. You said before that that source was basically right about everything. And you still have no idea who it is, right?"

  "Right, but—"

  "You're not going to that conference."

  "It doesn't make any sense," Alex said. "Bice lives in New York City. If I was in danger, I'd be in danger here, now. Why would I be in any more danger there?"

  Greta hit the bed with both fists, stood up, and moved to the window. "It doesn't matter if it makes sense. Not everything makes sense. I already had a bad feeling about the conference, and this confirms it." She turned back to Alex. "Please, don't go."

  He stepped across the room and placed his hands on her shoulders lightly. "You know how I am. That text just makes me want to go even more. I'm sorry."

  She shrugged his hands off her gently and returned to the kitchen, where she began stirring the powder in the bowl.

  "Greta? Do you want to talk about it anymore?"

  "What else is there to talk about? You're going, right?"

  "Will you forgive me if I help you make the toothpaste?"

  "I told you, it's tooth powder. But no, I don't want your help."

  "Can I at least watch you make it? You look great in those shoes."

  She didn't respond, but Alex watched her for a few minutes, Blackberry burning a hole in his pocket as he waited to hear back from James.

  7

  News Scoop Office, West 160th Street, Washington Heights

  James hung up the phone and blinked rapidly, wiping sweat from his face. In the last six months, he hadn't stuttered as much as he had over the course of that one phone call. But Innerva Shah had scared him half to death.

  At around the time they'd founded News Scoop, James had set up the phones in the office to automatically record incoming calls and save the files onto two different hard drives. It was a good thing, because he was definitely going to need to listen to the conversation he'd just had again. But first, he needed a snack.

  The kitchen was small, but efficiently constructed. He'd purchased his one-bedroom loft in Washington Heights two years earlier, with money his dad had left him when he died, and at twenty-five, James was the youngest property owner he knew. With the check from their big story two years earlier, he'd replaced the beige linoleum and crusty stove and fridge with sleek tile and apartment-sized stainless steel appliances. The only original detail that remained was a nickel-plated pendant light fixture that Alex referred to as "the art deco thing I always hit my head on." At five foot eleven, James could stand under it with an inch to spare.

  He grabbed a plastic-wrapped bowl of guacamole and sealed container of vegetable sticks from the fridge. He placed them on the counter, then reached behind his head and slid the rubber band off his ponytail. He leaned forward and shook his hair out vigorously, then stood up straight and replaced the rubber band, pulling his hair back tightly. In the online speech therapy group he attended twice a week, he'd learned that he had a milder case of stuttering than many. He was grateful for that. And over the last year, he'd gotten to the point where, sitting at his desk in the virtual cave created by his monitors, he rarely stuttered.

  He stuck ten celery sticks into the guacamole and returned to his desk.

  After opening a folder on one of the flat-screen monitors, he dragged the call file into an audio player, which opened in the center of the screen. He pressed "Play" with one hand and set the guacamole next to the keyboard with the other.

  "Hello?" he heard himself say.

  During the pause in the recording that followed, he scooped up as much guacamole as a single stick of celery would hold, then popped the whole thing into his mouth.

  "James Stacy? News Scoop?" She spoke directly, her words clipped but not cold. Her accent was Indian, and he'd expected her to say more.

  "Yes," he'd managed. He'd seen right away that the call came from a Washington DC area code, but that didn't necessarily mean anything.

  "You recently ran a story implicating Congressman McGregor in a small bribery scandal involving the telecom companies. Right?"

  "Technically, we ran a story about The New York Times failing to run a story implicating Congressman McGregor."

  "Did you know, James, that you only got the McGregor story in order to throw you off the scent of something much bigger?"

  James always heard rumors about the stories they ran, and this one had been no different. But he hadn't heard anything he'd thought worthy of closer inspection. "Are you calling to tell me what the bigger story is?"

  "James, I'm calling for information."

  "Usually it's the other way around. Who is this? And why do you keep saying my n-name?"

  "I'm an information liberator, James. My name is Innerva Shah."

  James paused the recording and bit into a guacamole-covered piece of celery. He didn't remember hearing about Innerva through any of the online hacking communities he frequented. Where had this woman come from? He took a few minutes to search the Web, but found nothing. He resumed the recording.

  "A hacker? Why do you keep saying my n-name. You're fr-freaking me out."

  "I feel like I know you."

  He remembered his face growing hot and his throat feeling scratchy. He was nervous again now, just listening.

  "So, you know there's a b-bigger story out there. But you d-don't know what it is?"

  "No, James, I was hoping you could tell me."

  He remembered feeling the sweat gathering at his shoulder blades.

  "Tell y-y-you?"

  "James, in Hindi we have an expression, Kaleja mooh ko Alana. Literally, it means your liver is coming to your mouth. Why are you getting nervous?"

  James had been a gifted child, but had begun stuttering at age four. His stuttering had been consistent throughout his childhood, but never debilitating. Historically, two things triggered the worst of it: foo
d and women. Ordering at a restaurant or talking to any woman other than his mother moved his stuttering from a consistent but minor tic—one he barely even noticed—to a throat-tightening, hard-swallowing panic. When faced with a waiter standing over him asking, "What would you like?" or a woman standing beside him asking him his name, he began swallowing uncontrollably, and everything from the chest up turned into a tight ball of fire. He always managed to get the words out, but it was never pretty.

  "I'm not n-n-n-nervous."

  "Don't worry, James, we can help each other. You and I are in the same business. Information liberation. We both want the truth exposed."

  On the recording, he coughed violently. "What are you c-c-calling about? What do you know?"

  "I know many things about many things. But in this case, I know very little. I know that the story you ran was big enough to get someone killed. Someone I knew."

  "K-killed? Who? Where?"

  "I thought you might be able to help me. I need to know what the bigger story is, and who is involved. If you can tell me that, we might be able to work together. But for now, I must go."

  "I-I-I—"

  "James, calm down. Listen to me." She was speaking more slowly now.

  Ignoring his snack for a moment, James focused in on the sound of her voice, as he had done during the conversation. Despite the subject matter, she had sounded calm. Her voice was like a slow river on a moonlit night. It had calmed him the first time around, and it calmed him now. He picked up a stick of celery and passed it from hand to hand.

  "Can you hear me, James? I need you to hear me."

  "Yes, I can hear you."

  "We have another expression: Khatayi me in panda. It means that you have fallen into sour mango powder. Do you understand?"

  "No."

  "It means you are in trouble."

  "How? What?"

  "Don't worry. I'll contact you again. Maybe at the conference."

  The line went dead.

  James grabbed his cell phone and checked the time. It was almost ten, but he needed to tell his partners about the call. Just then, the text from Alex popped up. James read the new message from Alex's source quickly, then replied to both him and Lance.

  We need to talk, tonight.

  8

  "What's this about?" Lance asked sleepily as Alex swung open the door to James's apartment.

  It was almost eleven, but Alex felt wide awake. He and Lance had arrived at the same time, and he was eager to talk. "I got another text."

  Lance fell onto his usual spot on the couch. "What?"

  "From my source. Another text."

  Alex sat down across from Lance as James scuttled into the living room carrying a black laptop and a tall stainless steel coffee cup imprinted with the stylized image of an open laptop with NEWS SCOOP printed on its screen.

  Alex knew immediately that something was wrong. James's gait was usually lumbering and inefficient, but now his stride was shortened and his shoulders were gathered up tensely by his ears.

  "Did you say text?" James asked, sitting down.

  "I was telling Lance about the new text."

  "That's not why I wanted to meet."

  Alex stared at James, who stared back.

  Lance had stuffed a fat, unlit cigar into his mouth but pulled it out just long enough to say, "Somebody go first, damnit."

  Alex noticed the cigar. "You know you look like a caricature of an outdated newsman, right?"

  Lance ran the cigar across his upper lip. "One cannot be a caricature of himself, Alex. When you are the origin of the stereotype, that makes you a legend."

  "Guys, this is serious," James said. He clipped a thin wire to his ear, then connected it to the computer and took a long sip of coffee. "You know how I said that after we ran the McGregor thing I got some calls? It seems like we may have riled something up."

  "How?" Alex asked. "I mean, it was a good story, but it's not exactly earth shattering that a second-term congressman from Missouri would take a bribe to vote a certain way."

  "I know," James said. "That's what I thought, too. But the calls I got were more than we usually get for a story like this. One guy said that we need to look into which politician McGregor is working for. Another said McGregor was just the fall guy—told me that his own camp had leaked the story to The Times just to throw them off the scent of the real guy. Another guy called me claiming to be McGregor's bookie, said he was in a ton of debt."

  Alex had investigated all of the rumors. They'd known the congressman was probably a low-level player in the FCC corruption scheme, but that hadn't been reason enough not to run the story. Alex knew what most good journalists knew: one rarely gets the whole picture. And publishing a small piece of a bigger story can sometimes start the snowball rolling down the mountain.

  Lance sat up in his chair. "James, none of this is news. I guess if his own camp is throwing him under the bus with The Times, that's news, but not big news. Just regular politics. Happens all the time."

  Alex agreed. "And most Americans have only heard of the FCC because of Janet Jackson's nipple slip. Of all our stories, this one seems least likely to have real legs."

  James opened his mouth to speak, then glanced at his screen. Alex followed his eyes to a large box that displayed a few numbers and squiggly red, blue, and green lines.

  "Why the hell do you keep looking at that screen?" Lance asked. "And what's that thing on your ear?"

  "I'm analyzing the effects of the coffee—and this conversation—on my heart rate."

  Lance laughed. "You're tracking whether or not this conversation is stressing you out?"

  "Basically, yes. It's part of my speech therapy."

  Alex leaned back and sighed. "So, you got a bunch of calls after a big story. That always happens."

  "I got a new one," James said, unclipping the wire from his ear. He set the laptop on the table and, after a few clicks of the trackpad, the call came through the speakers.

  When it had finished, they all sat in silence until Lance stood up and walked behind the couch. "Maybe she's playing you. It could have been someone involved in the cover-up, just fishing to see if you had the larger story, if there was one."

  "Maybe," Alex said, "but you sounded afraid, James. Greta's trying to get me to trust myself more. Maybe we should trust James's response."

  "Sounds like a lotta bullshit to me," Lance said. "Some lady calls saying she's got info, and it turns out she's just trying to find out how much you already know. Used to happen to me once a week."

  "It d-didn't feel like that," James said.

  "Did you trace the call?" Alex asked.

  "Payphone in DC. But if she's a hacker, that means literally nothing."

  Lance laughed. "Like half our calls these days."

  Alex thought for a moment. In all his reporting, he hadn't uncovered anything about McGregor that would connect him with any hackers. "Wait, why would a hacker be connected to the McGregor story in the first place?"

  "Could be a lot of things," James said. "Interest in protecting Internet freedom, someone blackmailing him with info she'd recovered."

  Lance waved a hand dismissively. "I'm tired, and we get enough crazies who call us that we can't make a big deal out of each one. I hope there's an amazing story at the end of this rope, but I'm gonna keep working the steroids cover-up thing."

  "That's good," James said. "Don't want all our eggs in one . . . whatever. You leave for Boston tomorrow?"

  Lance nodded. "Got a few interviews lined up."

  Alex said, "Greta's going, too."

  "I got her a job working on a couple players," Lance added.

  Lance got up and started to leave, but stopped when James said, "Wait, we need to talk about the text."

  Alex scrolled to the new message from his source. " Start by speaking with Denver Bice at the Digital Media Conference. But if you do, you may not be safe."

  "And you got this when?" James asked.

  "About two hours ago. Wh
at are you thinking?"

  "I know what he's thinking," Lance said. "He's thinking it's that bastard Cooper. Just the kinda thing he would do. To mess with you."

  "Can't be," Alex said. "It was a reply to my reply."

  "I'm telling you," Lance said. "This guy is crazy."

  "But if you take the two texts together," Alex said, "it's like the source is trying to lead me straight to Bice."

  "And warn you at the same time," James added.

  "Look, you two should pursue this if you want," Lance said, "but I've gotta get some sleep. Be careful." He walked to the door, then turned back. "By the way, Alex, how pissed was Greta about the texts?"

  Alex chuckled and forced a smile. He was conflicted. He hated to disappoint Greta, but there was no way he could stop pursuing Bice, no way he wasn't going to Seattle. "Let's just say that I'd give two-to-one odds against her driving me to the airport tomorrow morning."

  9

  Washington State Convention Center, Seattle, Washington, Monday, September 13, 2004

  "Isn't Seattle supposed to be rainy?" James asked.

  The afternoon was warm and sunny, and they stood for a moment, staring up at the buildings—two twenty-story hotel towers of dark glass on either side of a five-story convention center that filled a large city block.

  "Wait a day," Alex said. "It'll turn gray soon enough."

  "The air feels clean for a city."

  "That's because it rains so much."

  They walked into the marble lobby of the west tower, past a placard that read: DIGITAL MEDIA CONFERENCE, 2004—WELCOME TO THE FUTURE. A porter met them and took their bags. After checking in, they took the elevator to the tenth floor, where they had rooms side by side.

  Alex unpacked his clothes, splashed some water on his face, and tried to comb his hair into place with his fingers. Then he looked at himself in the mirror, changed his shirt twice, pocketed his keycard, and knocked on James's door.

  James let him in, then returned to his chair and laptop; Alex sat down by the window, resting his feet on the coffee table between them. The convention center was in downtown Seattle, about a mile from Pike Place Market and the ferry docks on Elliott Bay. He looked past the buildings and down the sloping hill to the water. A ferry was just pulling into the dock.