“She was putting together an advertising concept for her husband’s dental practice, and, I don’t know, I guess it just came out as well. What are you driving at?”
“Think about it,” he said. “What just came out?”
Roy was leading me somewhere. He wanted me to see it rather than just telling me. “I don’t know, something we’d seen.”
Roy grinned wider, and tapped his head again. “Right. Something that was still up here.”
Ding-dong! “Something that didn’t erase!” I called out.
Roy got up and paced the length of the hearing room. “You hungry?” he asked.
“I could eat a horse.”
“Meet me at the diner. The president wants you to put something out there, and I have an idea of what it should be.”
I did too, and it wouldn’t take long to write.
We Know!
Chapter 9… End Around
It was about one in the afternoon, and again the place was packed. Demetrius must have been raking it in.
“I don’t have time to talk to you,” he called as he walked by with a coffee pot and a stack of plates up one arm.
I looked around. If the soldiers were here to keep things calm, they weren’t doing a very good job of it. I mean, the inside of the diner sounded like tribesmen preparing for battle. I spotted Robert and Anne Behari at one of the window booths. I poked Roy in the ribs, and said, “The Beharis are here.”
Roy looked over his shoulder. “So they are.” Taking a gulp of coffee, he slid off his stool and started to make his way over to them. I tagged along behind as, once again, it took a while for Roy to make it through the crowd. Some of the townspeople were downright angry. Gee, I wonder why. First they’re kidnapped against their will, and then their own government comes in and locks down their town. You’d think they’d be more understanding.
“We’re all in this together,” Roy said evenly.
Even with the president of the United States in town, Roy was The Gipper in Sea Beach, and he had spoken. Temporarily, at least, everyone settled down and went back to their seats to grumble about the government and slurp some more coffee. Roy meandered over to the Beharis’ booth. “You folks mind of we sit down?”
Surprised, Robert simply nodded, and Roy and I took a seat.
Not wasting any time, Roy politely removed his battered U.S. Marines baseball cap and folded his beefy hands on the table. “You folks are new in town, right?” His tone was even and polite, but all business.
“We’ve been here about six months,” Robert answered.
“Normally, I’d say welcome to Sea Beach, but right now I’m not sure you’d agree.”
Robert forced a smile, and that was the end of the small talk. Roy pulled out the same piece of yellow paper he’d shown me earlier that morning in Romano’s office—which seemed like a week ago now. He elbowed me in the ribs, and asked, “Did you show them yours?”
I pulled out my notepad and put my doodle next to Roy’s.
Looking at Anne, Roy said, “I understand you came up with the logo for your advertisement.”
Anne was sharp. She knew exactly where Roy was going. “We all remember something important, don’t we?”
“And we need to find out what that is.”
* * * * *
The Beharis left, and I showed Roy my We Know idea. He responded with a sour look, and said, “We need to keep them guessing.”
Okay, shot down on that one. “What did you have in mind?”
“I think you should make something up,” he said, not looking at me. “We need to force them to make a move.”
I thought: hmmm. That sounded like lying to me, I guess because Roy had just used the words make something up. I was having a little trouble with that, but Roy’s motivation was way different than mine. I guess that’s why Roy did what he did, and I did what I did—which, just as it was twenty-four hours earlier, wasn’t much at this point in the day, despite my looming deadline. I needed to get something in to Romano soon, and while simply handing him the four diamonds with a We Know headline was hardly enough, I didn’t think I could just outright fabricate a story. I knew that every swinging richard in the country was reporting on Lost Friday by now, and I knew Romano wanted to be out there with some heavy copy, viewpoints from the inside, scoops that the other papers or other media wouldn’t be able to get because they weren’t close enough to the situation. To make it even more complex, Romano himself was probably ass-deep in alligators by now, undoubtedly having to defend anything we published to the higher-ups at Gannett who were more than likely already thinking the P-word.
I said, “I need to bring in some big game here, Roy. Romano isn’t looking for some squirrels, or a few chipmunks. I need to bring in an elk, and lay the bloody thing on his desk by four o’clock this afternoon.”
Roy clearly didn’t give a rat’s ass about any of that. He wanted to use me, and the paper, to set a trap, but I wasn’t about to make that call on my own, especially under my byline. I was caught between the proverbial rock and hard place. “The president wants me to write something that will make them think we’re cooperating,” I said.
Roy shifted his distant gaze back to me and looked me square in the eye. “Fuck that,” he said unapologetically.
That, I understood. “At this point, there are six people who know about that future newspaper,” I said, thinking out loud.
Roy ticked off the names on one hand. “Who’s the sixth?”
“Your wife.”
“My wife is me. She’d go to her grave with it if I told her to. What are you driving at, Johnny?”
“If more than two people know something, you might as well assume the whole world knows it. I have a responsibility to the paper, Roy, and not only are you asking me to suppress something that will somehow be revealed anyway, now you’re asking me to lie. That cuts pretty close to the bone for a reporter.”
“I’m asking you to help facilitate this investigation.”
“And I’m sure the president and the other thirty government agencies that are in on this have their own idea on how to do that.”
“Yeah, by cooperating. That’s enough to make me sick.”
I shook my head. “This is all getting so complicated that I don’t know whether I’m scoring, or just jerking off. If I don’t get something to Romano with some teeth in it, he’ll take me off this story and stick some asshole handed down from corporate in my place. Is that what you want? I’ll work with you Roy, but I’m not going to put my integrity, and the integrity of the paper, on the line, not unless I get the go-ahead from the higher-ups.” I wondered if that’s what my dad would have done.
Roy gave me a gaze that held me frozen for several moments. Finally, he said, “Write it all.”
“Huh?”
“Write it all, Johnny, as in everything—the future newspaper, the fact that this has been going on for weeks, the fact that our government has kept this from us—the whole enchilada, including the doodle. That a big enough scoop for you?”
Stunned, I said, “Are you feeling okay?” Then I saw a little twinkle in Roy’s eye, so I waited.
“You’re right,” he said, prompted by my silence. “You’ve already spilled the news anyway. Your piece about David’s abduction was quite good, by the way.”
“Thanks.”
“I mean, what the hell. Lost Friday is already a phenomenon. It’s going where it’s going as far as a news story is concerned, especially now that it’s been revealed that it’s also happened outside Sea Beach. I can’t control it, Johnny. Break it all. I’ve seen the light.”
Which was still twinkling in his eye. Okay, I felt my strings being pulled. “Let me get this straight. Instead of doing a set-up piece in the spirit of cooperation like the president wants—”
“I want you to report everything, including our meeting with him—every word of it.”
“I think some
of what he told us was in confidence, especially the part about the scientists.”
“Did he ask you specifically not to report it?”
“No.”
“Did he say the words off the record?”
“No.”
“So? What’s the problem? Isn’t this the elk you’ve been hunting for?”
It was, of course, but I didn’t understand Roy’s sudden change of heart. “What about the cooperation angle?”
“You just write the story, and let the people make up their own minds. I’ll tell you one thing, though, if I was John Q. Public, I wouldn’t bend over for these bastards, not one bit.”
Okay, there it was. Roy knew a story like that would be like dynamite. The people would be up in arms, and he knew it.
Demetrius came by and slapped down our cheeseburgers without so much as acknowledging our presence. I’d completely forgotten that we’d ordered food. I mean, my head was spinning. Roy grabbed his burger with both hands and took a huge bite, while once again my appetite disappeared. I looked at my watch and saw that it was going on two o’clock, which meant that if I was going to write it all as Roy had said, I needed to get moving. The words were barely contained, just inside my head and threatening to explode it if I didn’t get them down on paper soon. I thought of the magnitude of the story, or stories, for there were multiples here, and about how Romano would react to exclusives on the government abductions, the frozen helium, the three-way doodle coincidence—there could be more on that, but we wouldn’t know until we published it. All of these were huge revelations in what was already the hugest story in American newspaper history. To top it all off, my source was the president of the United States himself, and I was about to write something that could cause him great political pain. But, this wasn’t a political issue; this was a security issue, black and white, defend ourselves, or not. Surely, the president saw that. There had to be another agenda. I thought: fuckin’ A. I could even let Lost Friday go to the other hacks; I didn’t need it. Could it get any bigger for me?
“You know, the shit is really gonna hit the fan if what I just said is true, the part about our conversation with the president not being for public knowledge, I mean.”
“Let it,” Roy said as he munched some fries. “It’ll keep everyone distracted.” He grinned, and the crow’s feet around his eyes deepened into thick folds.
Hey, you don’t have to hit me in the head with a baseball bat to get me to see the point—normally, that is. Roy had hooked me as if I was a striped bass, luring me into thinking the situation was beyond his sphere of influence. Right.
My face must have displayed my I’m-a-doofus look because he said, “Write your ass off, Johnny, then give it away.”
“Give it away, like, how?”
Roy squeezed some ketchup on his plate. “Tell Romano the story is too big for one man. Tell him you need help.”
Okay, I thought. That much was true, but Roy was working an angle. I tried a bite of my cheeseburger and put it back down disgustedly.
“You gonna eat that pickle?” Roy asked.
I slid the whole plate toward him. “Why would I want to write the story of my life, and then give it away to someone else? That takes away the very meaning of investigative reporting.”
“Because all of it will be meaningless. When people learn that the scientists have been abducted, it’ll send government, the media, the whole fucking country into a total tizzy. Everyone will be so busy defending themselves, or chasing after information, they’ll be spinning like a top.”
All right, there was a point in there somewhere. “It’ll certainly keep them occupied,” I said.
“Especially if the terrorists respond,” Roy replied. “You gonna eat the rest of that burger?”
“Take it,” I said. “This spot on my lip is just a cold sore.”
Roy took it and started wolfing down again. “Precisely, my young friend,” he said, spitting out bits of food as he talked. “And while everyone in the country is chasing their own all-important tail, you and I will be concentrating on the heart of the matter.”
I looked at Roy. “You sly devil.” Pausing, “What’s the heart of the matter?” I added. I mean, now I was really confused.
Wiping some mustard off his fingers, Roy asked, “Why would Scott Reemer and Allison Kovar be abducted? What are they?”
“What do you mean, what are they? They’re teachers.”
“Whose teachers?”
“David Robelle’s,” I said.
Roy nodded. “Go with that. What did they teach?”
I started putting it all together. Abductions, scientists, David Robelle, Scott Reemer—a science teacher—and Allison Kovar—a math teacher. Mentally, it was clear that Roy had already been down this road. “Was David any good in math and science?”
“The people to ask are probably home right now, and I doubt either of them knows they’re going to be abducted again. They might help us if we let them know that little tidbit.”
I finally figured out where Roy was going. “Break it all and turn it over, you say.”
Roy smiled and took another bite. “Now you’ve got it.”
I looked at my watch and I saw that I needed to get to work. “Do you think you could send a couple of officers around to see if Reemer and Kovar have some time for us?”
“I’ll go myself,” Roy said. “And then, I’ll stop by the Beharis’ place and see if they can talk about that doodle some more. In the meantime, get into a quiet space so you can meet your deadline. Put something good out there, Johnny. Make those terrorists want to talk to us.”
I nodded, already feeling the keyboard on my fingertips.
“You got anybody in mind to help you out?” Roy asked as he got up from the counter. “If you don’t ask, Romano will probably assign someone, and this might be too important to let him screw with it.”
I did have someone in mind, actually, and she had legs all the way up to her ass.
Chapter 10… Kelli Remington
Romano was beaming. He was holding a copy of the Monday morning Asbury Park Press and walking around the newsroom as if he was showing off pictures of a new baby. That baffled me because, from my point of view, I expected someone to walk in and haul my sorry ass off to journalism jail, or something. You see, I’d reported it all, just as Roy had told me to do—the part about the future newspaper, the NASA scientists, the doodle, the conversation with the president, I mean everything, but Roy and Romano were two-peas-in-a-pod on this one.
“Did anyone, including the president, say off the record?”
“No.”
“Did you hide the fact that you were a reporter, or make any indication that you wouldn’t print anything you heard?”
“No.”
“Well then, what’s the BFD, Pappas? The people have a right to know what’s going on. Hell, if the government is going to hide the fact that someone is plucking people off the face of the Earth, then screw ’em. My guess is that people might want to protect themselves.” Romano looked at me after that, and said, “This is brilliant.”
Now, Romano had never, ever associated the word brilliant with anything I’d ever written. He’d used words like garbage, or swill, or bullcrap to describe my work, but the closest I’d ever gotten to brilliant was, “It doesn’t suck.” Funny thing was, I’d just reported the facts straight on this time, extraordinarily cognizant of the fact that anything, and everything, I wrote could be challenged by some government shit-bags who would accuse me, and the Press, of sensationalizing the situation for the sake of selling papers. Luckily, I had Roy as a witness to virtually everything I’d written, so I didn’t have much to worry about as far as backup was concerned. Screw ’em, I thought, certainly on that point, and the more I reread the story, the more Romano’s point about the public’s right to know, and the peoples’ right to defend themselves made sense. I also tried to throw in a couple of unique point
s of view to make the facts a little more intriguing. I don’t know, maybe it came across. I wondered how long it would take for the political shit to hit the political fan with regards to the issue of cooperating with kidnappers.
I basked in the glow for a few moments, thinking about how I was going to get around to asking for help, when Kelli-with-an-i Remington walked by and cast a couple of sideways glances at me and Romano as we walked toward his office. That had been happening a lot during the morning—the glances, I mean—as anyone who wasn’t aware of the fact that the Press had scooped every daily rag in the country was becoming painfully aware of that fact due to Romano’s boisterous gloating.
“We need to stay ahead of this,” Romano said as he put his arm around my shoulders.
I thought: what the hell was this? Most days Romano had a hard time remembering my name; a couple of scoops, and I was his best friend? The man was a journalistic slut. Like I said before, Romano always had another angle. “We need to say ahead of this,” therefore, meant one of two things: either, “Don’t fuck this up,” or, “You need help,” which was perfect.
“I’ve been thinking about that,” I said as I watched Remington walking away from us, an exercise of which I never tired. Kelli Remington—what a great byline name that was—had been with the Press for about a year, fresh from undergrad at Columbia and grad school at Northwestern, two of the best journalism curriculums in the country. She was the WASPiest of WASPs, with that California-girl strawberry-blonde hair, and perfect, WASP teeth, and, as I’ve mentioned previously, legs that went all the way up to a rather well-toned derrière. I’d asked her out probably about sixty times over the last six months, and the closest I got to a yes was something between a sneer and a snicker, with a look that said: I don’t date Greek boys. I did notice, however, that she could write. Too bad her talent was being wasted in the local section writing about beach erosion.
“What were you thinking?” Romano asked.
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