Killer Waves

by Brendan DuBois

  “The space shuttle,” I said, interrupting her.

  “Excuse me?”

  "The space shuttle mission going on right now," I said. "Do you and your folks have any connection with it at all?"

  "Of course we don't. What's the point?"

  I leaned forward in my chair. "The point is, Miss Reeves, that the shuttle mission going on right now is one of the few areas in the federal government where I would gladly volunteer to assist. If you had come to me from NASA, we could have worked something out. Since you're from the Department of Justice, no deal."

  "Is that your final word?"

  "My solitary, last and only word. No."

  A quick, chilly nod. The smile had gone. Oh well. She reached once again into her leather bag and passed over a business card. "Here. My card. If and when you change your mind, you can contact me at any hour of the day."

  I put the card on my crowded desk. "As the saying goes, if the phone don't ring, you'll know it's me."

  She got up and I followed her out of my office and down the stairs. Three of her men were waiting outside my shattered door. One of the men was the redheaded fellow with the merry smile from the other night, the one she had called Mr. Turner. He looked over to Reeves and said, "Well, is he on board?"

  Reeves said, "Nope," as she went outside.

  Turner shook his head. "Man, you don't know what you just did. Nobody says no to Laura."

  "I feel honored to start a new tradition."

  He shook his head again and went outside. The cold wind was still blowing and the sky was overcast. Frozen rain pellets started spitting down at us. I looked at the broken door and the splintered doorjamb. I said, "Can I expect you strong fellows to come back later to fix this?"

  He laughed. "Get the door fixed and submit a claim. You should he paid by the end of April. Of next year, if you're lucky. After all these years, have you forgotten how the federal government works, Cole?"

  He joined the procession of DEA folks, trooping back up to the parking lot. I saw Reeves had a cell phone out, was talking urgently to someone by the way her free hand was waving about. I looked back to my ruined door.

  "No," I said. "I haven't forgotten how the government works."

  Later that night I was sitting alone in my living room, listening to the wind whistle through the broken door, feeling a cold draft upon my feet. The rains had begun in earnest and I had started a fire in the fireplace. My back and hands hurt, for in addition to working on the door I had also spent the past couple of hours cleaning house. The DEA crew had trooped in a lot of mud and dirt, and I didn't want anything left in the house to remind me that they had come in here, violating my peace and my privacy.

  I looked over at the door, where I had stuffed old blankets in and about the doorjamb, trying to keep the wind out, though my feet told me I had done a lousy job. Tomorrow I would pay a visit to Tyler Village Hardware to see what else I could do, but right now I was too tired to do anything but brood.

  Besides disturbing the nature of the day and my home, this little squad from the Department of Justice had also stirred up old thoughts and memories. It had been like taking a stick and moving it around rapidly in a shallow lake bed: scum and dust and bits of debris were now floating about, obscuring what had once been clear. Old memories and thoughts and fears and passions were rumbling through my mind, and I didn't like it, not one damn bit.

  Some years ago I had come to this place, tired and thin and achy from surgeries and too many bad dreams. This little home on the side of the Atlantic Coast had begun as a haven for me. When I first moved in here, I had eaten a lot of take-out food and read and gone for walks along the pounding surf line. But though I had recovered physically after some months, my mind was still there, wounded, dissolving my better nature with the acidy feeling of guilt. Guilt that of all the people I had worked with in that little intelligence group, only I had survived the accidental exposure to an experimental biowarfare agent.

  Eventually I was fortunate enough to find a way of tamping down the guilt, before I got the urge one day to start swimming out to Great Britain from the front of my house. I began to do research for columns that would never appear in print, about matters in and around Tyler that were on the fringes of law enforcement. I was also quite fortunate to find a friend in the sole detective for this town, who partially understood my need to get involved, to set things straight. A few days ago, I could have rightfully said that the day in Nevada, gasping for breath on the sands of a test range, seeing my friends and co-workers vomit blood as they died about me, was far in the distance, like my memories of grammar school and high school and college.

  But now that damn woman had to show up and shove that piece of paper under my nose, showing me that shaky signature, reminding me with brutal quickness of how weak and scared I had once been, and now it was all coming back. The smell of the desert air. The smile from Cissy Manning, my dear love. And the sounds of those damn helicopters, swooping down upon us, spraying out a fine mist...

  I shivered, got up and switched on the television. After about a half hour of channel surfing, from one end of the cable spectrum to another, I caught what I was looking for: a quick update on the Endeavour mission, including an interview with the shuttle commander. He was grinning as he spoke into a handheld microphone, saying everything was just fine, the mission was going great.

  But remembering what he had once said to me, I knew better.

  "Not all of us get to do what we want," I murmured to the television screen. "Not all of us get to go to Mars. Or even the moon."

  I watched for a little while as the cold wind from my poorly-repaircd door whipped around my feet.

  Chapter Five

  Two days after my door had been broken down, it was now again secure and firm in its new form. Earlier I had gone to Tyler Village Hardware and had talked to a couple of the workers there. After a bit of discussion and some folded green had been passed around-my hardware skills typically begin and end with fixing a leaky faucet-they had come down to my house during their lunch break and had made everything right.

  Now I was back in the center of Tyler, looking to have lunch with Paula Quinn, but when I pulled into the parking lot I saw that her Ford Escort was missing. I stayed there for a couple of minutes to see if she would show up, but the only thing that did appear was a slow-moving train on the nearby tracks, rumbling its way north. I got out and went through the rear entrance of the Chronicle, thinking that maybe her car was in the shop or was parked in the municipal lot across the street, but the newsroom was empty save for the hired gun, Rupert Holman. He looked up at me as I went up to his polished desk and said, "Paula Quinn about?”

  Today he still had on those red suspenders, but his shirt was different, one of those blue-striped ones with white collars, popular among bond traders who are about five minutes away from being indicted by the SEC. He shook his head no. "She's down at Falconer, near the harbor. There's just been a fire at an apartment building, so I imagine she'll be there for a while."

  "Oh," I said, and I was about to turn around and head out when Rupert spoke up again.

  "Tell me, Cole ... It is Cole, isn't it? Tell me, if you don't mind, why you just went through the 'Employees' Only' entrance just now."

  That's when I decided to sit down in front of his desk, which I did. "Because it was there, that's why."

  Another shake of the head. "Unless I'm mistaken, you're not an employee of this company. You should go through the front entrance, just like everyone else."

  "Well, I'm not just like everyone else," I said. "I've been coming through that door long before you got here, and I'll be coming through it long after you're gone. And I don't like having to announce myself to whomever you've hired this month as a receptionist. Maybe I'm just being cranky, but that's the way it is."

  He managed a slight smile as he rubbed his fingertips across the smooth wood of his table. "The way it is, Cole, is that the owners of this newspaper have given me full an
d total authority here. I like that, very much. What I don't like is you undermining my authority among the members of the staff, including Miss Quinn. And speaking of Miss Quinn, I have her last month's expense report right here. I could sign it and send it along to accounting, or I could misplace it. And knowing what I know on how much she's paid, a few bills that she owes probably won't be paid on time this month if that expense report gets lost."

  I tried to imagine what he would look like if he were on the floor and I was busy twisting an arm out of its socket. "Just so that I’m clear --- unless I start being a good boy around the newspaper office, you're going to make life miserable for Paula."

  He just smiled, said nothing. I went on. "Man, you sure are a peach. What rock did you crawl out from under of to get here?”

  “Just here to do a job, that’s all,” he said.

  “Some job,” I said. “I mean, what’s the point of all this hoo-ha this past month --- the special reports, the big headlines and photos?"

  "My job is to raise circulation. Since I've been here, it's gone up one point five percent. I intend for it to go up another two full points before I'm finished."

  "Must be lots of laughs, to go after people's private lives, to print stories about porn and sex rings and all that," I said. "Here's a thought for you. Why not do some real stories for a change? Like how many senior citizens have to sell their homes each year in this county because of our property-tax system. Or how a handful of business people actually own the best property on Tyler Beach, and how their great-grandparents basically stole that land from the town last century. Or a story about a couple of the corporations in and around Tyler, and how much they donate to local charities, all while they're busily storing toxic waste in barrels out in the open. There's enough real stories out there to report on instead of all this tabloid nonsense."

  He picked up a paper clip on his desk, examined it as if he were trying to be sure that it really was a paper clip, and then placed it in the top drawer of his desk "We do the stories I want to do, the ones that will fulfill the requirements of the newspaper's owners. In my professional opinion, we're doing the right type of stories here in Tyler. This paper goes where I send it."

  "And who elected you?"

  A sharp smile. "Nobody. Ain't that a kick?"

  "People in Tyler might not like where you're taking their local paper."

  "Remember what I said, Cole. Circulation is already up one point five percent. The fine boobs around here are telling us what they want with their money, and so far, it's what I'm offering. Now, if you'll excuse me." He bent down and scrawled his signature across a sheet of paper, a rather simple scrawl for such a piece of work.

  "I'd like to think of an excuse myself'," I said, standing up, “but I can’t come up with one.”

  About twenty minutes later I was in Falconer, the next town south of Tyler and the last town on the New Hampshire seacoast before crossing into Massachusetts. I took Route 286 down to the small beach area that Falconer had, and along the way I stopped at a sandwich shop near the wide expanse of marshes that fill the area between the beach and the mainland. The smell of hot meat and grease filled my Ford by the time I found Paula, at an apartment building on Atlantic Avenue. About fifty yards up the road was the drawbridge that spanned Tyler Harbor, and entered the southern end of Tyler Beach. Two fire engines and a ladder truck were parked out on the road, causing traffic to back up. I parked in a fireworks store-Falconer is one of the few places in the state where you can buy porn, gold jewelry and fireworks in one quick walk-and I found Paula talking to an older man and woman. She was writing on the hood of her Escort, and just as I went over she nodded and said something to the couple, who then walked over to a cheerful-looking heavyset man wearing a white Red Cross coat.

  "Feel like lunch?" I said, passing over a paper-wrapped package.

  Her smile touched me. "Lewis, that would be so wonderful... thanks."

  We unwrapped our lunches on the hood of her car as we watched the firefighters continue their cleanup. The apartment building was three-story, and a couple of windows on the second floor had been broken. Some light gray smoke still seeped out of the broken windows, and firefighters trooped in and out of the entrance, stepping over hoselines that had been stretched into the building. The rumbling noise of the fire trucks was still loud, as was the chattering noise of the radios. A Falconer cop was directing the thin stream of traffic, no doubt thankful that this was April and not August, when the line of backed-up cars would have stretched deep into Massachusetts.

  I took a healthy bite of my sandwich --- steak-and-cheese sub, plain --- and managed to ask, "What happened?"

  Paula chewed a bit from her own meal --- steak-and-cheese sub with every vegetable known to man included --- and said, “Simple thing, really. Elderly guy living aloe up on the second floor decides to reheat a meal for an early lunch. Falls asleep watching TV, fire breaks out on stove. Elderly guy okay but now en route to Exonia Hospital with smoke inhalation. His dozen or so neighbors evacuated for the morning, should be back in this afternoon after the smoke and water damage is cleaned up some."

  "So, a simple thing. A simple story?"

  She took a swig from a Diet Pepsi and gave a quiet, very unladylike belch before proceeding. "No, not hardly. Last month, this would be a nice little straightforward story, with a photo. On page one if it's a slow news day, otherwise on page three. 'Stovetop fire forces evacuation of a dozen Falconer residents. One injury. Everybody back in by end of day.' But not now. I've been informed that my writing isn't sexy enough. So I've spent the past hour or so talking to the residents, trying to get juicy quotes about how they narrowly escaped death this morning. How this brought them into a new realization of how precious life is and all that crap. So instead of a simple stove top fire, by this time tomorrow the readers of the Chronicle will be reading about a blazing holocaust that almost claimed the lives of dozens of people."

  Another chew of the sandwich and a swallow, and Paula pressed on. "The thing is... if I had the time and the backing, I could do a really good story about this fire, one that involves the owners. You see, some of these apartment buildings are owned by some shadow corporations, making lots of money for investors in Boston and New York City. And the on-site management is pressured to keep improvement and maintenance costs down, so you've got a lot of code violations. With those kind of violations, these places should be shut down. Problem is, they generate a good chunk of tax revenue for the town, and if they were forced to close, bang, the town budget gets faced with a shortfall. Oh, it's not a blatant corruption, but if I had time, I could make this into one hell of a story."

  "But your new editor is more interested in other kinds of stories."

  She wiped her chin with a paper napkin. “Yeah, he is. Spice and sex and blood. His mandate is to get circulation up, no matter what. Hell, I’m no newspaper absolutist. Without a healthy circulation, there's no newspaper, so what's the point of bitching about plans to raise it? Which reminds me... have you talked to Diane yet about the story Rupert wants to do on her?"

  "That I have," I said. "Simply put, Detective Woods appreciates the heads-up but she's not in a mood to do any kind of favors regarding her personal life. Including passing on a juicy story to you that will offset any planned story about her and what kind of woman she is."

  "Lewis, that's not good enough."

  "I know."

  "Damn it, the things this holier-than-thou guy wants us to do ... He sees himself and the rest of us as moral beacons of the community, all working toward one big-ass goal: more papers sold. And you know what's funny? Last year we got stock options as part of our compensation. An increased circulation means more money in my pocket, but that increased circulation is going to depend on mining some people's lives. You think there could be a healthier way of doing it."

  I finished my lunch, watched as the Falconer firefighters drained their hoselines and then began the tedious job of rolling them up. "If there is a health
ier way, I don't think Rupert is interested in hearing about it. I had a little visit with him about an hour ago. He surely does take his job seriously, especially the part of' being in control."

  Paula frowned, began stuffing soiled napkins into a paper hag. "Yeah, he does. Each week we have staff meetings, on Wednesday, at lunchtime. Casual little things, not too serious. But when he came aboard, he put a memo out --- and I think it's the first time we've actually seen a memo in over a year --- that said the meeting starts promptly at noon. Well, I got there on time, but a couple of our freelancers didn't, and when it came to the noon hour, he locked the conference room door. He practically made these two women --- about my mom’s age ---- beg forgiveness before letting them into the conference room, and he said that was his first and last lesson in promptness. Tell me, did you have a run-in with him?”

  I thought for a moment about Rupert’s threat to hold up expense reports, and decided it wasn't worth getting her upset over it. "No, not really. Except he's a bear about non-employees using the rear entrance of the newspaper. Hell, if that's so important to him, I won't tick him off."

  Paula smiled at me. "Tick him off as much as you want. That's about one of the few fun things I get to see in that newspaper office."

  "And how long does he get to stay there?"

  "Until the circulation reaches a certain level, or we murder him in the conference room. Whichever happens first." She glanced at her watch on her tanned slim wrist. "Speaking of murder, someone's gonna kill me if I don't get back to the office and start working on this story. Thanks again for lunch, Lewis. You're a dear."

  I picked up her trash and said, "Next meal will be more proper. In a restaurant, with real tables and chairs and everything."

  Another smile. "Such a deal."

  Then I leaned over and kissed her, and Sighed and kissed me back. The sound of the fire trucks and radios all seemed to fade away as I tasted her lips and her mouth, tasted the sharp tang of onions, and not caring one bit. When I finally stepped back she reached over and stroked my face. "My, that was nice. Do call me, will you?"