The Informers (The Stringers Book 2)

by TJ Martinell

  The deadline clock rang.

  I came out and found Billy. He was the only writer left at his typewriter. There was more sweat on his face. His lips quivered. One of the copy-editors was standing beside him with a reproachful expression. I waved the copy-editor away and read the story still being typed. I then examined Billy’s notes, which he had dictated with excellent handwriting.

  “You missed deadline,” I said.

  He gulped and tore the paper out of the typewriter and held it out in front of me.

  “It’s done! Please, take it!”

  “You made a promise.”

  The sweat dripping down his face could have been mistaken for tears except his eyes were dry. He showed no weakness as he bowed his head. No apologies. No excuses.

  The fear in him was gone.

  I opened my jacket and took out my revolver, holding it at my side. I cocked the hammer back slowly. The room became completely noiseless as all eyes were cast over at us I. Most the attention was directed at me.

  “I warned you,” I said.

  “Yes, sir.”

  “We can’t have people missing deadline.”

  “No, sir.”

  I aimed the revolver at his head. Most of the writers were standing. Some of them moved toward the corridor. The guards remained indifferent. They did as they were told.

  Billy finally looked up at the gun in his face. He did not appear frightened. The certainty of death seemed to comfort him.

  I lowered the hammer and put the revolver away. Gasps swept through the room as I turned to the copy-editor.

  “Find him a spot to work at in your office. He’s now one of your people.”

  He blinked in disbelief. “But, but…he just missed deadline!”

  “He brings in clean copy, doesn’t he?”

  “When he actually finishes a story.”

  “He knows the rules. He just doesn’t know how to write.”

  I motioned to the guards and pointed at Billy. “Get him out of here. Now. Take his stuff with him. Make sure he knows where to go.”

  The guards marched over to his desk and collected his things. One of them yanked him out of his chair and gave him just enough time to load his notepad into his pocket before he was escorted out. Within seconds his desk was bare other than the typewriter.

  “He won’t be a bother,” I told the copy-editor. “If he is, let me know.”

  As soon as they were gone I went to our layout team and had them remove the spot on the news section front page they had assigned for Billy’s story. They easily replaced it with several bulletin briefs. Back in the newsroom the writers had gathered by the entrance to the corridor. They were obviously less enthusiastic than usual about leaving to celebrate the end of the day at the library.

  Kowalski followed me back to my office and closed the door.

  “Don’t mean to intrude, but what was that all about?” he asked. “I only ask because we made bets whether you’d kill him or not.”

  That didn’t shock me. They made bets on anything they could think of.

  “How did you bet?” I asked.

  The old writer smiled, displaying his decayed teeth. “You’d get close, but wouldn’t do it. Lucky for me.”

  “How so?”

  “The odds were ten to one. I made myself rich today.”

  “Ten to one?”

  “Yeah. Anyways, just wondering what might have made you keep him at his desk.”

  “If he had tried to protect himself like I did when I first started.”

  Alone again, I thought about the bet. Ten to one I’d kill the kid. That had been the bet. I could hear them debating it, heckling each other to bet against me. For me.

  Rather than go to the library, I immediately went back to the train car and took an underpass, hiding in the shadows to avoid the heat and the drones. The train car was like a Turkish sauna. The fans I had installed failed to cool it. I stripped down to my undershirt and sat by the window looking out at the water as the sunlight reflected like jewels. I kept looking at the phone as if waiting for a call. None came.

  As the evening progressed a strong wind blew in from the ocean. Streaks of reddish blue clouds raced across the sky. The air was now much cooler outside. I went out on the steps to enjoy the view with a cigarette in my hand and silently mulled over father’s words. I couldn’t envision the sort of man he had hoped I would become. Certainly not what I had been before I had come to Seattle. Who was I meant to be outside of what I was?

  Whatever it was it would never be me.

  I knew I would never understand him. I wasn’t meant to. There were things about him that would always remain to no one except himself.

  One day he would understand me.

  Chapter Seventeen

  Weeks passed. No word from my father besides a concise message every week that he was making progress. Every few days Griggs came in to chew the fat with friends. His stories would arrive an hour or so ahead of him through the teletype. My father always opted to stay behind in the field. When I inquired why, Griggs would give shrug and say nothing.

  One night after the deadline was past everyone left for the library. Alone, I finally decided to call father at his safe house. The first two attempts failed. On the third try he answered with a loud yawn. I asked him what he was doing and when he planned on turning in a story. He apologized for the delay after sipping on some coffee. His source had apparently taken much longer to reestablish communications.

  “When can I expect something?” I asked.

  “Soon. I can’t promise anything more.”

  “When are you coming back?”

  “As soon as I’m finished.”

  “What’s it like to be a stringer again?”

  He laughed. “It ain’t like it used to be. But in some ways, it is.”

  I didn’t know what to say back.

  “I’m sorry for what I said to you before,” he said. “I don’t want you to think I’m ashamed of you.”

  “Of course, not.”

  “It’s not my job to dictate your life. I tried not to when you were growing up. But it seems by not doing enough I did too much.”

  “I don’t blame you for anything.”

  I gazed out the window at the darkened sky. I had not yet heard the clock tower mark the hour. But it was well into the night. The moon was down below the clouds.

  “I’ll call you when I’m finished,” father said. “All you need to know is this is going to be big.”

  “Alright.”

  A wry chuckle came from his end.

  “You know something your grandpa told me once, Roy?”

  Mentioning my grandfather was a strange change in topic. He rarely talked about him. I was under the impression he had died when father was young.

  “What did he say?” I asked.

  “He told me ‘Who I was, you are. What I am, you will be.’ I didn’t understand what he meant until now.”

  “Oh.”

  “Don’t worry. You will, one day.”

  ***

  The next morning, I retrieved my Royal Enfield from the garage and drove to Pike Place. I parked it a block away from the market and stopped at a coffee stand. I sipped on my drink as I came down the hill and surveyed the great mass of men and machine below where not so long ago there had been a grisly scene.

  The crater formed by the drone strike had been refilled with asphalt. On top of it they had erected a memorial with the names of those killed engraved on the side. At its base were flowers and small wooden crosses and letters.

  Other than that, nothing else hinted at the attack. Damaged buildings had either been demolished or repaired. The market commission that managed the property hadn’t wasted time to make the necessary repairs. They had had vendors to entice back.

  The stretch of ground where vendors had been killed was now covered with a new open single-story structure running vertically across the lane and
moved back to the edge facing the water. On the side of the building was a mural depicting the people who had been killed in their final pose gazing up into the sky.

  A phrase was painted at the bottom.

  Let justice be done, though the heavens fall.

  Inside the building I came to a small eatery section and ordered a breakfast. The burly dark-skinned man grinned and hastily prepared my meal. Several other men sat down beside me so that no stool was left empty. The owner came back with my food and placed it on the counter. He was taking orders from the other men when he looked at me.

  His smile fell off his face.

  “You are “Kill” Roy, yes?”

  The other men at the counter looked at me. They were older, bigger. When I confirmed my identity, they nodded their heads respectfully and scooted their stools to give me more space. They kept looking at me out of the corner of their eyes. I pretended to not notice as I enjoyed my bacon and waffles. I took out a cigarette and reached for my lighter when a man on my right offered his lighter. I thanked him and turned to blow the smoke out towards the open doorway.

  I called to the owner as I took out several coins to pay him. When he came over he held up his hand.

  “If it weren’t for you I would not have business,” he said.

  “How is that?”

  “You hired my little brother a few months ago. Now he makes good money. He also protects me from my enemies. They wanted to kill me. But they don’t touch me now that my brother works for you. They know you send your boys out if they cause trouble.”

  I offered a small grin as I hopped off the stool. I asked him for his younger brother’s name. At the entrance, more and more people stopped and recognized me. The men’s eyes flickered with deference. The women were either mesmerized or distant.

  Outside crowds parted to make way for me. The young children standing together whispered loudly about who I was. Some of the boys approached me and asked me to write “‘Kill’ Roy Was Here” on pieces of paper. I obliged them and then watched amusedly as they proudly waved them in front of the others.

  Across the street I spotted Nelson. He was our stringer covering downtown business. He spoke in short jabs of sentences like he was in a verbal boxing match. He also asked more questions than anyone else I had ever heard.

  I wanted to say hello but knew if I did he’d keep me all day.

  Too late. He saw me as well and immediately ambled over. He drank coke-cola out a green glass bottle and sighed in relief.

  “Just what a growing boy needs for breakfast,” he said. “How’s the day, boss? I know you ain’t got all day, so I won’t waste it. I can see it on your face. Real bad.”

  “Glad you’re perceptive.”

  “My guess is you want to know the scoop. Business here is good. Real good. The commission’s replaced all the old businesses that left. They had an insurance company that covered the damages, right? Well now the insurance company wants restitution. But the gov ain’t giving out no restitution, right? Now, they’re increasing the insurance fees. The vendors are paying more.”

  He jabbed at my shoulder and grinned. “I know ya got those memos saying they called off the weaponized drones. They still got the others in the sky.”

  “No way. We’re holding onto the memos for now.”

  “Come on, boss.”

  “Don’t you have something to work on?”

  “Yeah. I’ve got an interview with one of the new vendors in a few minutes.”

  “What’s he trying to peddle?”

  “Beer,” he said.

  “Not exactly original.”

  “It’s not bad,” he said. “I’ve tried some of the stuff. It’s good.”

  “What type?”

  “An assortment. The brewery is in the Olympics. Gets the water straight out of some river there. I need to chat with him to get the details.”

  “I look forward to it.”

  I walked through a row of gun vendors inside the old marketplace building. It hadn’t been touched by the explosion. They still weren’t taking chances. It wasn’t public knowledge but I knew commission had purchased some sort of anti-missile defense system and installed on the roof. Just in case.

  Past the weapon vendors I found an old Asian woman with Coke bottle glasses. Her booth was overflowing with clothes, ranging from dresses and fur hats to outer coats and thick leather boots. She was shouting in Cantonese at an Asian man with a lost look about him. He looked at her with a blank face and then kept walking away.

  I smiled at her as she looked at me. My smile disappeared as she peered at me intently and leaned over the booth.

  “I know you,” she said. “You are that big shot.”

  “Apparently,” I said.

  She wagged her finger, faking seriousness. “I know you when you were scared little shit.”

  “I wouldn’t put it that way.”

  “No, you were scared shit.”

  “If you say so.”

  “Where is your friend?”

  I looked away. “A better place than here, that’s for sure.”

  She nodded. She had heard the phrase too many times to not know.

  “He was friendly enough,” she said.

  “More than that.”

  “I barely recognized you when I saw you. You look very different.”

  “From when?”

  “When you bought your first suit from me. This was years ago.”

  I laughed as suddenly I recalled that day. It was when Tom had first brought me to the market to buy my “uniform” clothes. It seemed further in the past than it was. Barely more than a year.

  “I still have it,” I said. “It’s a little worn, but still good.”

  “Of course. I made it myself.”

  “That explains it.”

  She shook her head, a false face of severity concealing her sardonic sense of humor. “You still look like you are young.”

  “I try.”

  “But I can see you are different.”

  “How? Are my hairs graying?”

  “No. I read about you. The people talk, too. I did not think you would do those things.”

  “No? What do you think of me?”

  She wagged her finger again. “I did not think you would last very long. You surprised me. I see many new people come to this place. Usually I can tell when they will not last. You were the exception.”

  “Like you said, I changed.”

  The woman smiled, looked over my shoulder, and pointed. “Yes, just like him.”

  At first, I wasn’t certain who was approaching us. His head was bent down. Hands shoved in his jacket pockets. The brim of his fedora was pushed far over his head. It was only after he raised his head I recognized Griggs.

  He stopped abruptly and hesitated. He seemed tempted to walk away. But it was too late. I still could not see his eyes or his expression. I did not need to see them.

  His hand came out of his pocket with a piece of paper. He came forward and held it out in front of me. Still refusing to look me in the eye. Without reading it I shoved the paper into my pocket.

  If it was a letter from my father, I couldn’t read it.

  The woman offered me a tender look. I glanced down at her booth and saw flat cap for sale. I tried it on, finding it to be a perfect fit. I bought it and replaced my fedora with it.

  Griggs finally raised his head. I couldn’t tell if it was apprehension or shock in his eyes.

  I left the building. The sun was out in full display. The night’s frost still stuck to the trees and their darkened leaves. The autumn air was cold. I seemed like the coldness was inside of me as well.

  At the edge of the marketplace overlooking the water I stood against the railing. I looked at the ships sailing into Puget Sound. Fishing boats slammed into the pier as waves slapped against their sides. As I watched them I thought of when my mother had died of cancer. My father had held her in his arms aft
erwards. He had fought death over her to the end. Even when death had won he had been unwilling to accept the loss. At the time, I hadn’t realized what he had been fighting.

  He had known what I now did.

  I touched the paper in my pocket but left it there. I still couldn’t read it. I didn’t know if I ever would.

  Footsteps approached from behind. Griggs’ long faint shadow was cast against the ground on my right. Neither of us spoke. His silence was more comforting than any words he might have offered.

  “How did he die?” I asked.

  “Ambush.”

  “Who did it? Pravdites?”

  “The ISA.”

  “I want a name.”

  “It was a unit based out of the downtown Bellevue office. They caught us near Wilburton. We ditched the car and headed out on foot. We were making our way to the nearest safe house when they caught us.”

  “Go on.”

  He fumbled for a cigarette. It broke between his fingers. He crumpled it up and sighed.

  “One of the officers got him when we were running through a parking lot,” he said.

  “Who?”

  Griggs pointed at my pocket. “It’s in the note. My source didn’t want to say anything. I forced him to cough it up. But all he would give me is a last name.”

  I crumpled the paper in my hand as I took it out of my pocket. In the darkest recess of my mind a voice told me it was better to have thrown it into the water.

  Years ago, I would have done so.

  If only my father had died rather than taken from me that night in our home. I had been foolish enough to forgive. There might have been a time for such a word then.

  But not now.

  I opened my hand and unfolded the paper. I saw the name for no more than an instant. I tossed it away and clenched my fists. I leaned back over the railing. Silently I begged for time to reverse itself and erase from my memory.

  Griggs bent down and retrieved the paper. He rolled it into a ball and threw it into the water. I would not need to be reminded.

  I couldn’t say Casey’s name. Not even a whisper. It would be like pronouncing a curse upon myself.

  Griggs cleared his throat and leaned to the side.