“Yes?”
Eddie recognized Keyes’ panicked squeaking.
“Yes, Frank, I saw it,” Templeton said. “Well, get a reporter on it.” He hung up. To Eddie, he said, “You’ve been busy.”
Eddie sat again in the soft chair, which seemed more comfortable than before. He slid Templeton the old news clip about Father Wojick running off to California. Templeton glanced at the headline and read no further.
“You knew this story was a lie when you wrote it,” Eddie said.
Templeton smirked again, but this one looked forced; the eyes weren’t involved. “There’s no byline—no way to tell who wrote this piece,” he said.
“I figured you’d say that.” Eddie took from his pocket the envelope Peter Sok had given him and flipped it onto the desk. Templeton looked at it a long time. He seemed to be deciding what was inside. When he could not, he opened it and took out a handwritten note, dated the same day The Empire published Templeton’s bogus story about Father Wojick.
“It’s a photocopy,” Eddie said. “And I made enough copies for every news crew in New England—who are no doubt speeding here right now for a piece of this story.”
Eddie watched with delight as Templeton’s eyes passed three times over the words:
Samuel, I hope today’s story is what you were looking for. Now we’re even.
A.T.T.
“It’s signed A.T.T.,” Eddie said. “I don’t think that’s the phone company, and I’ll wager that’s your handwriting. I know that Sok lent you the dough to buy control of this newspaper. That was quite a favor. Of course, so was printing that bogus story, so I guess you were right, you were even. I can’t prove you knew that Sok killed Wojick, but you must have suspected.”
The publisher looked up from the letter. His gray eyes darted around the room, and then landed on Eddie. Reflected in those eyes, Eddie saw a familiar tramp in a leather mini skirt. She had haunted Eddie since he had been a little boy trapped in a well. But this time, she was flirting with Templeton.
Eddie stood over the desk.
Templeton glanced at his phone. Eddie slammed his hand over it and demanded, “What did you do to Danny?” His finger hit the blotter in time with the words.
Templeton’s lips puckered sour. He opened his desk drawer and dug out a computer printout, about ten sheets, fastened with a paper clip. He dropped it on the desk. “That is my property and I trust it will not leave this office,” he said. Templeton was still the boss, even in defeat.
Eddie tilted the papers toward the light. The cover sheet had two lines:
Samuel Sok Profile
By Daniel Nowlin
Templeton explained, “Danny sandbagged me with that bit of ugliness last week. I had no idea he was working on it, and neither did Franklin—though he’s so useless, he never knows what his people are doing. The story was nearly done. All that remained was a response from Sok.” Templeton spun the chair a quarter turn and faced away. “Obviously, I couldn’t let something like this run. Do you realize what these revelations would do to our project, and to me, if anyone discovered my link to Sok?” He sighed, and answered his own question, “Yes, I suppose you do.”
“You sat on this story a few days?” Eddie said.
“And I talked with our lawyers about ways to keep Danny from taking it elsewhere.”
“But Danny didn’t cooperate.”
Templeton shook his head. “Danny didn’t make it any easier,” he said. “He was in here every day last week, demanding I set a publication date. And he wanted me to get him an audience with Sok. I told him on Friday that the story would not be published—there were just too many, well, considerations. He quit on the spot and swore he’d get the Globe to run it.”
He spun the chair toward Eddie. “We would have crushed Nowlin,” he insisted, holding up a fist. “My lawyers were going through Danny’s tax returns, his credit report, the movie titles he rented from the Video Depot. We would have found something to hang over his head, to keep that story quiet. Everybody has something they don’t want out—everybody.” He shook his seventeen-year-old note to Samuel Sok. “Even me.”
“You’re saying you didn’t kill him?”
There was no gentleness left in the publisher’s manner. “I’m saying Danny Nowlin was a fly speck, and I didn’t have to kill him to shut him up. After he died, I figured he had confronted Sok somehow, and Sok, that maniac, beat him to death.”
“And Dr. Chi? Destroying Danny’s notes?”
Templeton fumed under a scowl. “Chi was an insurance policy to obliterate any trace of the story.”
“And then you applied political pressure to phase out the investigation.”
To that, he shrugged. “Imagine the irony if the publicity over Nowlin’s death turned the focus of the campaign to crime and public safety, and then cost the election for my incumbents. That would jeopardize the whole Acre project. I don’t think Mr. Nowlin would want that responsibility on his soul.”
Eddie flipped the page and read the beginning of Danny’s story:
LOWELL—The city’s honored philanthropist, Sawouth “Samuel” Sok, whose name graces a wing at the County Hospital, two branches of the Public Library and a veteran’s hall, was a Khmer Rouge officer in Cambodia charged with overseeing the execution of hundreds of civilians, including women and children.
He stashed ill-gotten wealth in Swiss banks and fled with his two sons to Thailand upon the Vietnamese invasion of Cambodia. There, he blended with the refugees of the Khmer Rouge regime and took on a new identity. Under a false name, on the pretense of a false life, he painted himself a victim of the movement he helped lead—
Eddie was stunned. In his shortsighted zeal to tear down the Acre, Templeton had spiked a potential Pulitzer Prize. He read on.
Danny had assembled exquisite details—a paper trail, stretching from Lowell to Phnom Penh, supported the facts. He had interviewed Cambodian officers, immigration officials, and the merchant marine who captained the ship that carried Sok and his sons to America. He quoted men and women who survived the killing fields; he had interviewed foreign correspondents and authors who studied Pol Pot’s Khmer Rouge regime, and the reconstruction of the country that followed it. The story was logically structured and the writing was wonderful, so smooth.
Eddie tossed the paperwork on the desk. He had been sure that Templeton had plotted to kill Danny. And now? The publisher had prostituted the paper, the greatest sin in journalism, but that wasn’t even a crime under the law….
He rubbed his eyes.
Wait a minute….
Eddie snatched up the paperwork and skimmed it again. The story gave Eddie a dizzying new insight; a revelation he didn’t like. He slapped the papers down.
“I gotta go check something out,” Eddie said. “Stay off the phone until I’m gone.”
“The police need no help from me to catch you, Mr. Bourque.” The publisher’s smooth voice had returned. “And when you stand before a judge, be assured that this newspaper’s coverage of the blessed event will rightfully reflect your discretion with certain information.”
“Is this the way you extorted Danny to shut him up?”
Templeton leaned forward. His chair squeaked. “Every reader is a potential juror,” he said, spitting words hammered from iron. “You got the drop on me this evening, Mr. Bourque. But not for long. This newspaper will hang you from its masthead, if need be. By the time I get done covering your legal case, your best friend would convict you of every unsolved murder since Jack the Ripper.”
Not if I expose Danny’s true killer.
Eddie gave the publisher a sarcastic little salute. “Thanks for firing me,” he said. “Saves me the trouble of typing a resignation.”
Chapter 36
Eddie didn’t trust the publisher.
He waited for the elevator doors to close, and then pushed every button on the panel. The elevator stopped first at the ninth-floor photo
production office, where Eddie got off. The photo department was a sprawling space cluttered with large-screen computer terminals for electronic editing. It reeked of the darkroom chemicals still used by the paper’s old-timers, who refused to shoot digital pictures. Eddie peeked out a darkened window—as he had figured, the police were running across the street to The Empire.
Eddie tiptoed down the stairs.
Three flights later, he heard boots stomping up. One set. That meant the other cop was downstairs in the lobby, waiting for the elevator to make its stop-and-go descent from Templeton’s office. Eddie ducked onto the sixth floor, the back-issues office. The department was closed, and nobody was working the counter. Eddie ran behind it.
He let the police officer pass, and then darted across the room to the west side of the building. He tore an insulating plastic sheet off a window frame and knocked open the window with the heel of his hand. Cold air rushed in. Darkness had fallen and a few faint stars were visible.
Eddie stepped out onto the fire escape, a terraced system of iron grates and ladders under many sloppy layers of black paint. The fire escape was probably as old as the building, and it trembled under his weight. The bolts fixing it to the wall squeaked as Eddie pattered down to the second floor, where the last ladder ended. The drop looked a lot higher from above than it ever had from below. Eddie pulled off his belt, looped it around the bottom rung, and climbed down it. He hung as low as he could, but his feet were still nearly ten feet above the sidewalk. Eddie wished he were fatter. I’d have a longer belt. He waited until he stopped swaying, and then let go.
The ground rose to meet him. His teeth clacked together at impact. He rolled over a sidewalk speckled with pigeon droppings and popped up. The balls of his feet stung as he dashed away.
The neighborhood where he had left the Chevette was confusing by day; it was a maddening labyrinth by night. Eddie paced through it, afraid to run and attract attention. After half an hour, it seemed that he had walked every street twice. Had the Mighty Chevette been stolen? That would defy logic. Who would bother?
He found it a few minutes later, wedged in a dark space between a minivan and a full-size pickup. Eddie got in, muttering to himself. He slammed the door, inserted the key, and then smelled hot coffee.
“Did you forget where you parked?”
A dark figure sat in the front passenger’s seat. Detective Orr!
“I was tempted to hit the horn the second time I saw you go by,” Orr said. She was in uniform, sipping coffee from a plastic Thermos cup.
Eddie threw his head back and stared through the roof, at a mental picture of the inside of the police station. “How’d you find me?”
“It’s terribly hard to park in this neighborhood,” Orr explained. “All these spots are restricted, and the residents are rabid about calling the authorities when somebody parks here without a residency sticker.”
Eddie shook his head. How stupid to not have thought of that. “Have you been waiting long?”
“Since you dove in front of the train,” Orr said. “Very dangerous. Do you mind telling me how you got away?”
“I’ll plead the Fifth on that one.” For a moment he considered fleeing from the car, but decided against it. “Do you mind pouring me some coffee?” he asked. “I feel a caffeine withdrawal headache coming on.”
Orr handed him her plaid Thermos. “You’ll have to drink from the bottle.”
“Fine, anything.” The coffee was a medium roast, black, very smooth, and the perfect temperature, cool enough to sip, but still too hot to guzzle.
“I didn’t kill Danny,” he said.
She clicked her tongue. “Wouldn’t be an impossible case for the district attorney,” she said. “I’d even say the odds would be on her side to win a conviction.”
Eddie considered that in silence.
Orr continued, “You and Danny were competing for the same jobs in Boston.”
Eddie looked at her, surprised. “You know that?” He sighed. “You probably checked the applicant pool at every major newspaper in the country.”
“Most of them,” she confirmed. “So there’s a possible motive, albeit a pretty weak one.”
“Very weak,” Eddie agreed.
“You don’t always have to prove motive to win a conviction,” she said. “There are no witnesses, so the case would come down to physical evidence. The BCI team found the weapon in your house, with your fingerprints and Danny’s blood on it.”
“I know—the smoking gun.”
“So to speak.”
Eddie considered fleeing again, but decided he couldn’t outrun Detective Lucy Orr. Oh, he’d probably beat her in a footrace, but she’d turn up uninvited eventually. It seemed to be a habit for her. “Are you at least going to tell me where they found the weapon?” he asked.
She nodded. “In your bedroom closet.”
Eddie thought for a moment, and then clutched his head. Jesus, no….Much became clear. He pictured Danny collapsing, the side of his head caved in. He said slowly, “They found it in my golf bag.”
“Hmm. That’s right.”
Eddie rapped his knuckles against his skull. “I know who killed Danny,” he said. He met her eye. “But I need your help to prove it.”
***
Eddie dialed Chanthay’s pager service from his home telephone. She wouldn’t recognize his number, but maybe she’d be curious enough to look up Eddie in the telephone book, to see that the numbers matched, and call back.
He waited. There was no answer.
He paged her again.
Eddie looked out his window. Detective Orr’s unmarked black police SUV was parked behind the Mighty Chevette. She was speaking to four other cops who had arrived in an unmarked white van.
C’mon, Chanthay, call back. I’m up the river if you don’t call back!
***
The phone rang seven times before Gordon Phife answered with a confused, “Hello?”
“It’s me,” Eddie said. “Wake up. I need help. The cops—I’m in trouble.”
“What?” Phife said, still confused. “What time is it?”
“Three-forty-five in the morning, according to Chuck Boden’s wristwatch.”
“Do you always talk like a Chinese fortune cookie?”
Eddie recognized the line from Remo Williams: The Adventure Begins, a movie that assumed sequels that never happened. “For Christ’s sake, Gordon. Can you be serious? This is no time for quotes.”
“I’m awake now. What the hell happened?”
“A gorgeous Cambodian war crimes hunter set me up for Danny’s murder.”
“Huh? I take a day off from work and the world goes crazy. Where are you?”
“That’s not important,” Eddie said. “Just listen—I tried to make a deal with the cops to lead them to the woman who framed me. They gave me the rest of the night to make this happen. The district attorney is bringing my case to the grand jury after breakfast, and I’ll probably be indicted by lunch.”
“Jesus, Ed, do you have a lawyer?”
“To hell with a lawyer, Gordon. I’m dead if I can’t find this woman, and I need help! You told me to call if I hit trouble, and, well, I got in deep.”
“Sure sounds like you slammed your dick in the door,” Phife said. His voice quivered. “Okay. Okay. Okay. Let’s think this through.”
“Not on the phone,” Eddie said. “I don’t know who could be listening.”
Eddie could hear Gordon opening and slamming drawers. “I’m getting dressed,” he said. “Where can we meet?”
“How about the driving range?”
“Sure. There’s some leftover beer from last time.”
“Half an hour?”
“Uh-huh.” Phife took a fatherly tone. “This is just a monumental screw-up, Ed. We’ll get you through this.”
They hung up.
Eddie stepped from his bedroom to the living room.
“Well, that w
as it—the last call,” he said. He dropped hard onto the piano bench.
Detective Orr dangled a little metal box, about the size of a pager, on a thin black wire. “Take the shirt off,” she said.
Eddie, suddenly self-conscious, reluctantly complied.
“I still don’t like the idea of bringing a third party into the mix tonight,” Orr said. She pressed the metal box to Eddie’s lower back. It was cold. “Hold the battery pack for a sec.”
Eddie reached back and held it. He said, “I can see how you might be uncomfortable, but this is someone I trust with my life.”
Orr made a tiny grimace. “You may be doing exactly that.” She tore sixteen inches of cloth tape from a roll, ripped it with her teeth and affixed the batteries to Eddie’s skin. Then she pressed what seemed like the world’s thinnest microcassette recorder to Eddie’s chest. He held it for her.
“This is purely a local recording setup, not a transmitter,” she warned. “I won’t be able to listen in and decide when you’re in trouble.”
“Where’s the good equipment?” Eddie cracked.
“The good equipment is for authorized investigations,” she said. “Be thankful I scrounged up two sets of this old stuff.”
Eddie grabbed her arm. “I am thankful, Lucy.”
Orr nodded. “I can give you a panic button to press. We won’t be far.”
She tore another long length of tape.
Eddie cringed. “That’s gonna hurt coming off. Do you need so much tape on my chest?”
Detective Orr stuck her hand on her hip and looked over the few dozen lonely hairs on Eddie’s torso. “Is it really going to matter?”
Chapter 37
Eddie reclined in The Empire’s satellite dish and looked over the city. It had never looked more magnificent to him. When he had worked for The Empire, he had seen Lowell as a reporter. He hadn’t been able to see past the politics and dirty deals, drug busts and broken hearts. But to an unemployed writer, Lowell at night was special. The neighborhoods along the river were clusters of yellow specks, like candlelights. He imagined that each speck was a life, and that he was watching an entire city sleep. He thought about his investigation into Danny’s death, and how he could finally see how the pieces fit together, like he was looking down on it from high above.
Spiked Page 27
