Face Time

by Hank Phillippi Ryan

  And with that, of course, he does. I hear the clanking of Walt’s goofy aluminum pushcart, a ridiculous contraption. He wheels the whole shebang across the carpet. It’s teetering with battered black light kits, a tripod, and a ratty green bag of electrical cords, zipper hanging open and plugs dangling. Balanced atop the whole precarious tower, Walt’s big Sony camera.

  “Effing parking,” Walt mutters. Some people say hello. Walt doesn’t bother. He waves an orange piece of paper in the air, then stuffs it into his back pocket. “Got an effing ticket. They can pay it, they want this interview so bad.” He surveys the waiting room, one arm resting on his pile of equipment, his Hawaiian shirt garishly neon against the drab walls.

  “Can’t do the interview in here,” he says, channeling Eeyore. “Air-conditioner noise. Makes a bad hum.” He scans the room, morose, as if it’s been designed to make him unhappy.

  “Hi, Walt,” I say. “Can’t help the hum, you know? But we’re doing the interview in the inner—”

  “Charlie, I’m so sorry.” Consuela Savio strides through the door, hands fluttering to her watch, her pearls, the glasses atop her swirls of lacquered hair. She stops them on her ample hips and looks at me, shaking her head. “We’ll have to reschedule. Tek—had to go. Again, I’m sorry. But things happen. Call me to resched?”

  Well, there’s a score for the good guys. I get to leave, regroup and come back with a few more ducks in my row. I get the upper hand. What’s more, Connie’s hiding something. And not doing a good job of it.

  “What happened?” I ask. “Is he all right?”

  Connie shakes her head again. “Police matter,” she says. She pauses, seeming to choose her words. “A situation on the North Shore.”

  Walt’s already wheeling his cart toward the door, at his happiest now that he’s been granted a reprieve from actually having to do his job. But my reporter alarms are pinging into alert.

  “North shore? Situation?” I persist. She owes me one for the canceled interview. “Anything our assignment desk needs to know?”

  The PR flack sighs, her cleavage deepening to risky levels. She’s apparently balancing the pros and cons of letting me in on the scoop. She looks at me sideways, calculating. “I suppose it’s a story,” she says. “And you’ll find out eventually. A bar owner? In Swampscott. Found dead. About an hour ago. I don’t have the name. Local police say, all preliminary, signs of foul play, assault.” She smiles, weary with her knowledge and cynicism, adjusting a heavy silver earring that’s fighting a losing battle with gravity.

  “I was supposed to wait for Swampscott PD to put out the release. But since you’re here…” She shrugs, then gestures to Walt as she walks toward the door. “But that’s it. And absolutely nothing on camera from this office. You know your way out?”

  “Charlie?” Walt’s looking longingly at the doorway. I can’t decide if he’s lusting for Connie or just wants to leave.

  “Yeah,” I say. “You can head back. I’ll walk.”

  Alone in the waiting room, I reach a hand into my bag, feeling for the white envelope Del DeCenzo had given me just a few hours ago. I rub one finger across it, thinking about the hulk of a bar owner who had unearthed three-year-old paperwork for an inquiring reporter. It might not be him who’s dead, of course. I frown. Why is Tek involved in a Swampscott murder? It’s not his jurisdiction anymore.

  “Miss McNally?”

  It’s Oscar Ortega. Himself. His elegant bulk fills the office doorway, and he stands, waiting, one hand on the door frame. His white shirt fairly glows with starch, and there’s a glint of coppery thread in his tie. Even his shoes glisten.

  “Ms. Savio informed me you were still here,” he says, “which makes this somewhat easier.” Two blue-uniformed ramrods, Kojaked heads, big guns and shoes shinier than Ortega’s, materialize behind him.

  My brain spins through a catalogue of possibilities but finds no answers. I know he’s determined to stop our Dorinda story. He thinks I’m in league with Oliver Rankin and Will Easterly, his mortal enemies, so he’s threatened my job, attacked my motives and harassed my news director. But what does “makes this somewhat easier” mean?

  “Hello, Mr. Ortega,” I begin politely. I dig out my reporter’s notebook and flip it open. “How nice to see you. You certainly know I had an interview set up with Tek Mattheissen this afternoon? He’s not here, though, so perhaps we could sit down with you instead?”

  No way he’s going to talk, I know, but best defense is a good offense. Unsettlingly, I’m still curious about why I need a defense.

  “I don’t think so, Ms. McNally,” Ortega says. Oz steps out of the doorway and into the room, his lieutenants moving around from behind him. Toward me.

  Or maybe they’re just going into the next room.

  They’re not. One of them takes me by the arm, then looks inquiringly at Ortega.

  These androids have got to be kidding. I yank my arm out of the cop’s grasp and take a step away, glaring at him, then at Oz.

  “Mr. Ortega? What’s this all about?” I say. I’m sputtering in indignation. “If this has something to do with the Dorinda Sweeney story, your tactics are beyond unacceptable.” I calculate the distance to the doorway, wondering what would happen if I simply bolted. But this is too ridiculous. This is the attorney general. We’re in a state office building. “So beyond unacceptable that if you don’t let me leave this instant…”

  Oz is still smiling, an oily iceberg, as he waves his cops to back off. But he doesn’t budge from the door. He runs a pudgy hand over his head, flashing a ring, just a bit too gaudy, and a pearly cuff link catches the fluorescent light. “You’re wanted for questioning in the death of Delbert DeCenzo,” Oz pronounces. “He was found dead in his bar in Swampscott. Your business card was in his pocket.”

  * * *

  Janelle Antoinette DuShane barricades herself in front of me, prowling like a protective mother lion. One panicked phone call to Kevin O’Bannon resulted in my very own lawyer, name partner in the scrappy but feared DuShane, Cornell and Suisman. She appeared like a one-woman hostage-rescue team to extricate me from the absurd but nonetheless terrifying captivity in the A.G.’s office. I’m silent, on her orders, but fuming.

  Cream silk shirt fairly dripping from Toni’s svelte shoulders, she clicks open her pricey patent-leather briefcase, each snap of a lock resounding through the tension-filled office. Then my lawyer stares disdainfully at Oscar Ortega. She’s elegant, Harvard-educated and adversarial. He’s silent and studiedly casual, swiveling in a massive ebony leather chair behind his perfectly paperless desk. The cop goons are dismissed.

  “Let me see here,” Toni says, flipping through a legal pad. “We have assault and battery by a police officer, false imprisonment, and countless violations of the United States Constitution. First amendment, fourth amendment. I can’t even list them all.

  “So, let’s examine your options.” Toni tilts her head, and taps one coffee-colored finger against a flawlessly tawny cheek. “You have none. And now if you’ll be so kind, Ms. McNally and I are leaving. If you have any further questions for my client,” she says deliberately, “you’ll have to call my office. And you’ll be hearing from us about your clearly illegal actions. Taking Ms. McNally into custody? Preposterous.”

  If I’m going to have a lawyer, I figure, just as well she’s six feet tall and a knockout. But I’ll be much happier when I’m out of here.

  “Not so fast,” Ortega says. He swivels slowly, ignoring Toni’s rebuke. “Your client was the last person seen with a law-abiding citizen. A person of interest in a murder case. A person who is now also deceased. Her business card was right out on the bar. What’s more, she was seen entering and leaving the premises. She—” Oz pauses, then holds out his hands as if in apology “—ain’t going nowhere.”

  “That’s absurd,” Toni says. “There’s absolutely no way of knowing when or how Ms. McNally’s card was put in Mr. DeCenzo’s wallet. A jury would laugh at you. As for my client bein
g in some bar this morning? How on earth would anyone be able to prove that?”

  Oz leans back in his chair, steepling his fingers so we know he’s serious and powerful. “Your client,” he says, his voice tinged with sarcasm as he savors the word, “is Charlie McNally. Her face is about as familiar as … well, let’s just say, it would be supremely difficult for her to remain anonymous. Charlie McNally? No doubt about who she is. She was there. Shall we start the discussion with that stipulation?”

  “Mr. Ortega,” I begin. I can’t stand this. I’ve done nothing wrong, certainly not kill someone. “We don’t need to be adversaries here. I—”

  Toni silences me with a glare, but it’s Ortega who speaks.

  “You reporters,” he says, as if that word is barely acceptable in polite company. “You think you can go anywhere. Ask questions. Interfere. And then just—skate? Without any repercussions? You poke a pit bull, he’s going to bite you back.”

  Ortega stands, leaning toward us, his hands flat on his desk. “I am the attorney general of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts. Chief of the pit bulls. My job is to solve this murder. And if your client can help me do it, reporter or not, she’s going to have to do it.”

  Two lawyers, immovable object and irresistible force. They glare over the expanse of Oz’s desk, the antagonistic silence between them almost sizzling.

  As much as I hate to admit it, Oz is right. Not about the reporter thing, but about solving the murder. But I’m thinking he may get more than he bargained for. I’d been dying to confront Tek about the photographs, hoping they’d be the key to exonerating Dorinda. Now, it seems, she could get her freedom another way. Because someone is trying to take out everyone who knows about the case. Me in the archives. Clay Gettings. Del DeCenzo.

  Whoever killed those people is not Dorinda. I reach into my purse and pull out the white envelope.

  “Toni. Mr. Ortega,” I say. Toni attempts to stop me again, but I shake my head, waving her off. I open the envelope and unfold Tommy Bresnahan’s job application. “This is why I was with DeCenzo.”

  Smoothing out the paper on Ortega’s desk, I explain who Bresnahan is, how he disappeared after the murder, and how he recently called DeCenzo, alleging he wanted to pick up an uncashed paycheck. I point to his place of birth and his social security number.

  “I was going to try to find him, out West or wherever. But maybe he’s not that far away,” I say. “Because now I’m wondering if he did show up. Today. After I left. And it wasn’t some old paycheck he was after.”

  Toni and Ortega examine the application, then Ortega holds it up to the light. All at once, with a quick gesture, he folds it back into thirds, and tucks it into his desk drawer. “Evidence,” he says, as the drawer clicks closed. “Thank you so much.”

  Toni gasps. “How dare you?” she says. Her voice is seething and brittle. “My client is cooperating, much against my better judgment, and you—”

  I raise a hand, interrupting her. “Toni,” I say. “It’s fine. And Mr. Ortega? Feel free to take that copy. Happy to help. The original, of course, is elsewhere. I certainly wouldn’t carry that around. And if you’d like another copy? I have several in my bag.”

  * * *

  “So did you bring up the photo array? What’d he say?” Franklin asks, as we walk into the Channel 3 newsroom. It’s almost seven-thirty, and somehow at day’s end, his pale and pristine sweater is untouched by coffee, ball-point-pen ink or copier toner grunge. Both sides of the ribbed collar of his white polo shirt are still pointed up in perfect fashion symmetry. I don’t know how he does it. If I wore a buttercup-yellow sweater, it would be a Jackson Pollock by midmorning.

  “Do you think Oz is complicit in that?” Franklin continues. “I mean, it is plausible that the fake photo idea was concocted by Tek alone. His colleagues at the cop shop—they didn’t like him much. Once he signed up with Oz, they told me, it was worse. Bought a lot of fancy clothes, had his eye on the big time. Oh, sorry.”

  Franklin steps back to make way as a gaggle of studio technicians, pushing a black canvas cart overflowing with poles and light stands and dragging electrical cords moves across the newsroom floor. We promised Maysie we’d be here for the first rehearsal of her show. The production, which was supposed to start at just after the six-o’clock news hour, is running late. My dinner, yet again, is in serious jeopardy. You’d think I’d be much thinner, but somehow it doesn’t work that way.

  Maysie’s in the makeup room. That’s an event I wish I could share. Miss “I’m so natural and I’m on the radio anyway” has teased me about my extensive and constantly changing collection of lipstick and eye shadow for years. Now, I think with satisfaction, she’ll want to borrow it.

  “Yeah, no,” I reply. I puff out a breath of air and lean against someone’s desk, crossing one leg over the other. “I was going to ask Oz about the photos, you know? But then there was the whole unfortunate custody situation. Frankly, as soon as it became clear he was going to let me go, I just wanted out of there.”

  I shrug, trying to smooth the obstinate creases in my irreparably wrinkled linen skirt. Sitting on the bar stool was not the best. I wince, remembering what happened in that bar. Just this morning. Next life, maybe I’ll choose a job where I’m a little more in control. At least where people I meet don’t get murdered soon afterward.

  “Kevin and Susannah, though. Loved it,” I say. “Susannah actually said she wished they would have kept me longer, you know? Investigative reporter in custody. Film at eleven.” I talk like myself again. “She said it would be a huge ratings getter.”

  “She’s unstoppable,” Franklin replies. “Why didn’t you call me?”

  “Well, of course, I wanted to,” I say. “You should have been there, for so many reasons. But Oz ‘allowed’ me to call Kevin, then I had to sit in his stupid conference room until Toni showed up.”

  “No, before that,” he says. “I asked Walt to tell you to call me.”

  I roll my eyes, disparaging. “You kidding me? He forgot, the moment the words came out of your mouth. The man’s a living sieve. Anyway. What’s up?”

  Franklin unzips his leather folder, and pulls out his copy of the Bresnahan application. He points to the “most recent previous address” line, where Bresnahan had written “732 Nelson Road, Conifer, Utah.” He shakes his head. “Our Mr. DeCenzo, may he rest in peace, was apparently not much of a reference checker. I didn’t even have to make one phone call. Just checked this out on GeoTracker. And Tommy Bresnahan? Could not have lived there. There’s no such place.”

  “Let’s see,” I say, taking the paper. I’ve barely had a chance to think about what was on the form. I read it again, analyzing each entry.

  “It’s all about the social,” I say. “We need to run it, see what we come up with for a current address.” I pause and unhook my reading glasses from the neckline of my camisole. Flapping them open, I look again at the application. “The social,” I say again. “Is wrong.”

  “Wrong from what?” Franklin says.

  A new Maysie, glammed and gleaming, parades across the newsroom floor, stylist Marie-Rosina pouffing her new shaggy ’do with a last spritz of hairspray as she walks. Rick the makeup guy trails behind. Maysie stops in front of us, then twirls, showing off the sleek cherry-red pencil-skirted suit we chose from the selection Saks sent over. I think I glimpse the beginnings of a tummy, and it’s all I can do to keep from hugging her.

  “Don’t touch me,” she warns as she comes to a stop, catching her balance as the still-slick bottoms of her new high-heeled pumps slide on the newsroom carpeting. “My face will shatter into a million tiny pieces of foundation and my hair will collapse.” She smiles. “But what do you think?”

  “Not bad for a sports radio chick,” I say, nodding in admiration. “You clean up like a pro.”

  “You’ve got too much blush on your left cheek,” Franklin assesses. “Rick?” he calls out. “Blush emergency.”

  Rick dashes up with a fluffy brus
h, then waves it at Franklin instead. “You’re a funny, funny guy. Ignore him, Maysie,” he says. “You’re gorgeous.”

  A producer calls “Places!” Maysie and her entourage hurry to the anchor desk. Franklin and I wave good luck.

  “Wrong from what?” Franklin repeats.

  I pull out someone’s newsroom chair, revealing a stash of shoes, boots and umbrellas piled chaotically under the desk. A reporter must sit here. “Wrong from the … well, look. You know they usually assign social security numbers based on where you apply for the number. And usually, people born in the U.S. get them pretty young. So, like, mine begins with the numbers three-one. So do most people’s who were born in Chicago.”

  “Oh yeah, I guess I knew that,” Franklin says.

  “You did not,” I say. “But, nevertheless. Bresnahan’s social begins with zero one.”

  “Give me a break,” Franklin says. “No way you know the social security, prefix, or whatever they call it, for Utah.”

  I nod, smiling. “And that, my dear colleague, is the point. I do not know the prefix for Utah. However, I do know the prefixes assigned to people who were born in Massachusetts.” I pause, letting my meaning sink in.

  “Zero one,” Franklin says. “So Bresnahan’s whole history is fake.”

  “Yup,” I reply. “Sure does sound like it. Wonder where poor Del DeCenzo would be today if he had just bothered to check some references. Looks like we’ve got a Massachusetts boy on our hands.”

  A barrage of lights flash on overhead. A blast of techno-theme music surges through the newsroom, cuts into silence, then starts up again. A blaring loudspeaker blasts the director’s voice from the control room. “Mic check, please, Maysie?” he bellows. “And can we please get a move on with this?”

  I turn to Franklin, torn between wanting to see Maysie’s rehearsal and needing to find Tommy Bresnahan. “You know,” I whisper, not wanting to disrupt the taping, “I saw DeCenzo put my card in his wallet as I walked out of The Reefs. But Oz said police found it on the bar. If it was Tommy who killed him, I bet he knows I was there.”