====================== Deadly Campaign by Michael Bracken ====================== Copyright (c)2000 by Michael Bracken First published by Books in Motion, 1994 Wildside Press www.WildsidePress.com Mystery --------------------------------- NOTICE: This work is copyrighted. It is licensed only for use by the original purchaser. Duplication or distribution of this work by email, floppy disk, network, paper print out, or any other method is a violation of international copyright law and subjects the violator to severe fines and/or imprisonment. --------------------------------- Other books by Michael Bracken: _Fiction_ Bad Girls Even Roses Bleed In the Town of Dreams Unborn and Memories Dying Just in Time for Love Psi Cops Tequila Sunrise -------- Deadly Campaign was first published in 1994 by Books in Motion. Copyright 1994 by Michael Bracken. This Wildside edition copyright (C) 2000 Michael Bracken. All rights reserved. Cover art copyright (C) 2000 by Michelangelo Flores. Deadly Campaign A publication of Wildside Press P.O. Box 45 Gillette, NJ 07933-0045 www.wildsidepress.com SECOND EDITION -------- _to SHARON_ *_with love always_* -------- *Chapter 1* A newspaper thrives on deadlines and I was about to miss mine. Within half an hour I had to be at City Hall to interview Alderman Bill Franklin, yet I was still struggling with a short piece on his Republican opponent's campaign efforts. I swore and slapped the side of my VDT with the flat of my hand. The green-on-green image wavered. Twice I had typed my story into the newspaper's computer and twice I'd lost the damned thing when I tried to output hard copy. Across the room the clatter of typewriter keys came to a halt and Michael O'Shea, a grizzled veteran of the police beat, sat at his desk proofreading the yellow second sheets of whatever story he'd just finished typing. O'Shea had never stood in the way of progress, but from the first day the newspaper had installed the VDTs, he had avoided using his. Instead, he pushed the keyboard and the screen aside to leave room for his battered Olympia manual. I called across the room to him. "You done with that dinosaur?" He grunted affirmatively so I lugged the typewriter to my desk, pushed aside copies of our competitor's morning edition, and quickly batted out the third version of my story. On my way out, I ducked into city editor Jonny Silverman's office and dropped the yellow second sheets on his desk. "You'll have to get the composing room to keyboard it," I said. "I haven't got time to fight with the computer." * * * * City Hall was nearly deserted when I arrived. It was August 15, a Catholic Holy Day of Obligation, Assumption of Blessed Mary the Virgin, and most of the city had gone to noon mass. I walked down the hall to Franklin's office without interference. I knocked once on his office door. When I received no response, I turned the knob, pushed the door open, and almost vomited. Bits of Alderman Franklin's body were splattered across the bookcase behind his desk. What remained lay face-first on the green blotter in the center of his desk. I staggered backward. I'd dealt with violent death many times over the years, but I'd never come upon it so unexpectedly. Bracing myself with a hand on the wall, I took a deep breath. Then I reached for the phone on his secretary's desk. First I phoned the police, then I phoned the newspaper office. O'Shea was holding down the city desk during lunch. I explained what had happened and ordered a photographer. We weren't a sleazy tabloid, but we weren't above splashing a little blood on the front page if it drew readers away from our competition. "And get somebody down in the morgue to dig up everything we've got on Franklin. I'll have to patch together some kind of an obit when I get back to the office," I said. Before long City Hall swarmed with cops. I stood outside Franklin's office with a middle-aged detective. He wore an ill-fitting brown suit, the collar of his white shirt wilted and the knot of his tie pulled askew. A shadow of beard crossed his sallow cheeks. "What's your name?" he asked. "Fox," I said. "Dan Fox." "Short for Daniel?" "Long for Dan." "Middle initial?" "None." "What were you doing here?" "I had an appointment to interview the alderman." "You a reporter?" I nodded. "With who?" I gave him the name of my paper. "Read it every night when I get home," he said. "Tell me what happened when you got here." I told him in as few words as possible. While I talked, he copied my story into a battered blue notebook. At the same time I copied his name and badge number from the plastic-coated photo I.D. he had clipped to his jacket pocket. When I finished my tale, Detective Ballany flipped his notebook closed. "I'll type this later," he said. "You'll have to come down to headquarters to sign a statement." "Call me." I handed him my card. "I'm there nearly every day." He turned to leave as I underlined his name in my notebook -- I knew I would need to talk to him later -- then I tried to muscle my way back into Franklin's office where a crew from the coroner's office had begun unpacking their equipment. A uniformed officer grabbed my upper arm. "No press." "I found the body," I explained. "Tough. No press." I pulled away from his tight grip, turned and headed down the hall toward the exit. I'd only gotten a few yards when I heard hurried footsteps behind me. "Hold up," Charlie Marotta said as he caught up to me. Three cameras with different lenses hung from straps around his neck. A bulging black camera bag hung from his shoulder. "I got some great shots," he said. "How'd you get past the muscle at the door?" Charlie smiled. "Didn't need to," he said. He patted one of the cameras. "Long lens." We walked out City Hall's front door and descended the white marble steps. Parked at the curb was a white van with a dish antenna on its roof. A handsome, air-headed TV reporter stood waiting for us. A bulky man with a cigarette stub dangling from his mouth and a greying crewcut stood beneath a ton of equipment and pointed the lens of the minicam at the reporter. The talking head rushed up to me and jammed the microphone into my face. "You discovered Alderman Franklin's body. Tell me about it." I shoved the microphone aside. "Read about it in the three star final." Charlie Marotta followed me. As he passed before the lens of the minicam, he set off the flash on one of his cameras. The stocky man behind the minicam swore, spit out his cigarette, and rubbed at his eyes as the camera wavered. Half a block away I looked at Marotta. "You didn't have to blind him." Charlie smiled. "Teach him to point that thing at me." Back in the city room, I punched nine for an outside line, then quickly punched seven more numbers. Janet Horner answered on the fourth ring. "I'll be late tonight," I told her. "I've got a late-breaking story and a tight deadline." "I know," she said. "I just saw you on TV." "How'd I do?" "Not bad," she said. "But you don't look as tough as you act." * * * * An hour later I sat in the newspaper's conference room. Jonny Silverman sat at the head of the table. I sat to his right and Michael O'Shea sat across from me. Charlie Marotta sat to my right, opposite Silverman. "This is the biggest story to hit town all year," Silverman said. "If we don't get it -- get it right and get it fast -- we're up shit creek. We've got three TV stations and the morning competition on our tail. And five will get you ten, UPI dumps some reporters on the story and CNN sends in a crew." Around the table the rest of us nodded agreement. "So what do we have here?" Silverman asked. He answered his own question. "We've got an exclusive on the discovery of the body." He turned to me. "I read your story. Good stuff. Needs to be punched up a bit, but I'll get to it in a few minutes." He turned to Charlie and tapped a proof sheet before him. "The photos were great. I almost heaved." Charlie beamed. He was the best photographer on the staff. Silverman looked over at O'Shea. "So what have you got?" "I talked with O'Shannon, homicide. Franklin was shot six times at close range, probably with a .38. Ballistics hasn't reported back yet. There hasn't been time. O'Shannon thinks it was a D'Angelo family hit." I swore softly. "Why?" Silverman asked. "The method. The D'Angelo family uses two methods: car bombing when they don't want the victim to know what hit him, and close range with a revolver when they want the victim to beg." I leaned forward and rested my elbows on the table. "I thought the D'Angelo family was busted up last year when the old man bought the farm." O'Shea shook his head. "Only dormant. A few factions broke away, but Luigi 'Louie the Lip' D'Angelo returned to town about a month ago. He just got out of prison after serving an eighteen-month term for tax evasion." "Would he do something like this?" Silverman asked. "He might. O'Shannon says Louie is sloppy and violent. He's not at all like his father." "Can we take this to press?" "No," O'Shea answered. "O'Shannon won't talk on the record." Silverman scribbled on his legal pad. "Can we call him a source within the police department, maybe a high-ranking officer?" "No dice. It's too easy to trace back to him and he's been too valuable to me over the years to screw him up over this one. If I lose him now, I've lost my best source there and I won't have a line in when something big breaks loose." Silverman nervously tapped his pen against his notebook. "What the hell can we say?" "Noted underworld figure Luigi 'Louie the Lip' D'Angelo has been implicated in the murder," O'Shea said. "Who implicated him?" Silverman asked. "We have to attach a name to a broad statement like that. And is he really a noted underworld figure? What's he done time for?" "Tax evasion." "That's it?" O'Shea nodded. "That's nothing. Doctors get sent up for tax evasion. Lawyers and housewives and even journalists get caught. That doesn't make any of them underworld figures." "It's well-known that his father -- " "Fuck his father," Silverman interrupted. "If your father's a virgin does that make you one, too?" O'Shea shook his head. "Come on, Mike, think. This isn't the old days when we could print what we pleased. We walk on thin ice or the lawyers have our butts." Marotta pushed his chair back. "You don't need me anymore, do you? I've got to get the photos enlarged." Silverman pushed the proof sheet across the table. Two prints had been circled with orange grease pencil. "Give me eight-by-tens on these." Marotta took the proof sheet and left, the heavy wooden door closing slowly behind him as he headed downstairs to the darkroom. "Why don't we play it safe?" I suggested. "We could simply say that the police have no suspects and are pursuing all leads." "That's dull copy," Silverman said. "But it may be the only choice we have." "What about TV?" O'Shea asked. "What are they going to say about it?" "They'll have to play it the way they see it," Silverman said. "We've got our own butts to cover." O'Shea grunted. The decision hadn't been to his liking. Silverman turned to me. "What about the alderman? What have we got on him? Who would want to kill him, and why?" "The D'Angelo family looks the most obvious to me," I said. "He's been connected with them for years, but he's never done anything to get him into trouble. As far as we're concerned he's been clean as a whistle since the day he won his first election. On the other hand, there's a rumor that he broke off with the D'Angelos when the old man was killed. Maybe he refused to rejoin them when Louie came home and they made an example of him." "Who else benefits from his death?" "Depends on how you look at it," I said. "J. Standish Stevens is the most obvious." "Why?" "He's been trailing badly in the polls. Two weeks ago the deadline to file for candidacy passed. There's no way the Democratic machine can get a candidate on the ballot, short of a write-in." "What happens if Franklin draws sympathy votes like Bobby Kennedy did after he was shot? What if Franklin wins the election?" "Ballots are invalidated," I said. "Stevens still wins." "Okay," Silverman said. "I want his reaction as soon as you can get it. Who else?" "Franklin's wife, maybe. I don't know what their marriage was like, but if it was on the rocks and he had a hefty insurance policy, she might come out a wealthy widow." "They have any kids?" "None." "What about lovers? Was Franklin screwing somebody's wife on the side?" "Don't know. I'll check into it." O'Shea cleared his throat. "It could have been a nut case," he said. "Look at all the politicians who've been shot by crazies." "It happens," Silverman admitted, "but here? This isn't a president or a senator, this is just an alderman." "We've got to keep our options open," I said. Silverman checked his watch. "I have to meet with the editorial board in a few minutes. Unless somebody shot the president, we should get front page above the fold." He stood. "In the meantime I want you two to finish. I need that obit within half an hour and I need some solid quotes from somebody in the police department." We followed Silverman out of the small conference room. Silverman carried his notebook and a printout of my story to the elevator. O'Shea went straight to his desk, dropped into his chair, and lit a cigarette. A moment later he was on the phone, the cigarette bouncing up and down from his lips as he spoke. I returned to my desk, called up Alderman Franklin's unfinished obituary on my VDT, and began consulting the bulging file folder of photocopies and yellowed newspaper clips the boys from the paper's morgue had dredged up for me. A moment later, a pair of eight-by-ten photos gripped tightly in one hand, Charlie Marotta rushed out of the stairwell towards Silverman's office. "He already went upstairs," I called to him. Marotta swore and rushed back into the stairwell. As long as I'd known him, Marotta had sworn he could beat the elevator in a fair race, and he'd kept himself remarkably agile by repeatedly proving it. O'Shea slammed his phone down and yelled across the room to me. "I've got it, Dan. They're calling a press conference at police headquarters in twenty minutes. Tell Silverman I'll be back as soon as I can." He slapped a battered fedora on top of his thinning salt-and-pepper hair and hurried out of the city room. It was quiet for a few minutes and I finished the alderman's obit with ease. After I closed the story, the cursor sat in the upper left corner of the VDT screen blinking impatiently. I turned away from the screen and flipped open my Rolodex. As soon as I found the number, I called J. Standish Stevens' Republican campaign headquarters. A young woman with a nasal condition answered and informed me that Stevens was refusing interviews. After hanging up the phone, I flipped through my Rolodex again and came up with Alderman Franklin's home phone number. I punched it out on the phone and received a busy signal. Either some other reporter was already talking to Franklin's wife or she'd pulled the phone off the hook. While the phone buzzed in my ear, Jonny Silverman stepped off the elevator, gave me the thumbs up sign, and turned toward his office. I dropped the phone into its cradle, then leaned back and took a long, deep breath. -------- *Chapter 2* After gulping down a cup of lukewarm coffee, I returned to my desk and phoned the city's remaining Aldermen. Their reactions were all the same. Democrat and Republican alike expressed sincerest regrets and wished Franklin's widow their deepest sympathy -- superficial and politically correct, but it made for a nice sidebar that could be buried on the inside pages. Despite my constant efforts, I failed to reach Franklin's widow, and when I tried J. Standish Stevens' campaign headquarters a second time he was still refusing interviews. Silverman stormed out of his office a few minutes after my last attempt to phone Franklin's widow. "Where the hell is O'Shea?" "He's still at the press conference," I said. "It's been over for ten minutes," Silverman said. "I just caught the news on the radio." He stared nervously at his watch. "It's deadline. That paper is supposed to be on the press in ten minutes and we're holding a hole open for O'Shea." The phone rang and I turned to answer it. "City desk." "Dan?" O'Shea said. "Some bastard from Channel 3 has my car pinned in. I'll have to dictate this to you." I lodged the phone between my ear and my shoulder and turned to my VDT. I tapped a few keys, opening a new file. "Go ahead." O'Shea cleared his throat and began. "Alleged underworld figure Luigi 'Louie the Lip' D'Angelo was implicated today in the death of Alderman Bill Franklin. In a late afternoon news conference, Chief of Police Thomas Lutz detailed the similarities between Franklin's death and those of three previous 'assassinations' police authorities attribute to the extended underworld family of D'Angelo. "'It was a gangland-style execution,' Chief Lutz said, but he refused to speculate on the possible reason for Franklin's murder." O'Shea continued filling in various details of the murder, confirming that the murder weapon was a .38, and that Franklin had been dead only a few minutes when I discovered the body. Silverman hung over my shoulder and read the story as I keyboarded it. When O'Shea gave me " -- 30 -- ," Silverman reread the story, rearranged two paragraphs, and did some minor editing. "Put it to bed," he told me. I closed the file. Silverman grabbed the phone, punched the in-house number for the composing room and told them which file to pull off the computer. Within moments O'Shea's story would be composed and paginated, negative film would be output, plates would be burned and rushed to the press. Within an hour the first copies of the three star final would be rolling off the press. "He did it," Silverman said. He sat on the edge of my desk where the paper's humor columnist had perched only an hour earlier. His thighs didn't compare. "O'Shea was right." "He's been on that beat a long time," I said. Silverman grunted. "You want a drink?" I stood. "Across the street or do we raid O'Shea's desk?" O'Shea kept a bottle of bourbon in the bottom drawer of his desk for special occasions. Silverman reached into O'Shea's bottom drawer. "Raid O'Shea." I grabbed two clean Styrofoam cups from the stack by the coffee pot and Silverman poured a blind man's shot into each cup. Then he returned the bottle to the bottom drawer of O'Shea's desk. We drank slowly, savoring the minuscule amount of alcohol. My nerves had been coiled tight ever since I'd first stepped into the alderman's office; what I wanted was a full bottle and a dark corner to go with it. One of the younger reporters pulled Silverman aside. I finished the last swallow of bourbon, crumpled the Styrofoam cup, and tossed it into my overflowing waste basket. Then I dropped into the chair behind my desk and picked up the phone. Work doesn't stop just because one issue of the paper is put to bed. After five rings a weary woman's voice answered the phone in Alderman Franklin's office. I knew the voice: I'd heard it hundreds of times before. "Vicki? It's Dan Fox." "I've told you newspaper guys everything I know," said the dead alderman's secretary. "When I came back from mass this place was crawling with cops. That's all I know." I spoke fast, afraid she'd hang up before I finished. "Who'd you talk to?" She named a hot-shot young reporter with the other paper. "Look," I said. "I know you've had a rough day. Mine hasn't been easy, either." "So?" "So I'll take you to dinner and we can talk." She didn't respond. "You're off in about an hour, aren't you?" I asked. "I'll find us a quiet, out-of-the-way place and we'll have dinner. I'll buy." "That would be -- " She paused, took a deep breath, and said, "Fine. Meet me at the south doors in an hour. Don't be late because I won't wait." After I hung up, I expelled the deep breath of air I'd been holding. I'd played a long-shot with Vicki Wilber and it had worked. She had been Franklin's secretary for the past nine years and she'd always treated me with disdain. Still, nine years of seeing one another on a regular basis made for some kind of mutual tolerance. And unlike the reporters who covered City Hall for the other news organizations, I'd made it a point of connecting with my sources almost daily. I thumbed through my Rolodex, then quickly punched in the number for Shanghai's and made dinner reservations for the two of us. I wasn't sure if she'd be interested in Oriental food, but I'd forgotten to ask. After I finished talking to Shanghai's, I dropped the handset into its cradle and prayed I wouldn't have to make any more calls. My index finger hurt and I was beginning to think the handset would become permanently attached to my ear. Some of the other reporters did most of their work on the phone, but I wasn't like that. I preferred the personal contact that came from years of pounding shoe leather against pavement. Silverman poked his head out of his office and called my name. "Get in here; Stevens is on the radio." I grabbed my notebook and a pencil, knocking my chair backward as I rushed to Silverman's office. J. Standish Stevens wound up a short statement about the death of his Democratic opponent. "What'd he say?" I asked as the city editor turned down the radio's volume. "The usual bull." "The prick's been refusing my calls all afternoon." I closed my notebook -- I'd been too late to use it -- and stuffed it in my hip pocket. Silverman handed me a sheet of yellow paper covered with his usual scratches. "I caught part of it," he said as I glanced over the page. "There's a solid pair of quotes in there. Try to work them into your follow-up." I nodded and folded the sheet in half. "Is O'Shea back yet?" "I haven't seen him." I told Silverman about my dinner date with Franklin's secretary. He pulled an expense voucher from his desk drawer. "Put it on the newspaper's account." Against company policy, Silverman signed the voucher before I'd filled in the blanks. "I'll be leaving in a few minutes," I said. "I'll be back as soon as I can." As I left the office, Silverman said, "If you see O'Shea, send him in here. I need him to follow up on something from last week." I returned to my desk, opened a new computer file and typed in Silverman's notes on Stevens. Then I penciled the file number on my desk calendar and closed the file. Folding the expense voucher in quarters, I slid it into my jacket pocket and went to the men's room. I peeled off my jacket, then hung it over a stall door. I looked at myself in the scratched mirror over the sink and saw the thin sheen of perspiration on my forehead and the five o'clock shadow covering my chin. Too late to do anything about the day's growth of beard, I did manage to rinse off the perspiration with cold tap water. I ran my comb under the trickle of water and pushed my hair into place. Then I pulled my jacket back on and headed downstairs. In the press room I nodded to one of the mailers and snagged a copy of the three star final. Silverman and the editorial board had played the story big, taking up most of the front page with one of Marotta's photos and a banner headline splashed across the top of my story. I quickly scanned the paper as I walked out the rear dock to the parking lot. Once behind the wheel of my car, I folded the paper in half and stuffed it under the passenger seat. I didn't want Vicki Wilber seeing it -- I didn't know how she'd react to a photo of her boss's body. * * * * I arrived at City Hall a few minutes early, but Vicki Wilber was already standing on the top step waiting for me. I pulled the car to the curb, opened my door, and climbed out. As soon as she saw me walking around the front of my car, she hurried down the steps. I opened the passenger door for her. She tucked her knee-length skirt around her legs and slid into the car. When I dropped into the driver's seat a moment later, she said, "I really shouldn't be doing this." I glanced at her, noticing her puffy red eyes and the crow's feet at their corners. Then I glanced into the side mirror and pulled into the flow of traffic. "But Bill always liked you," she continued. "I wouldn't have come otherwise." She sat stiffly in the passenger seat, her purse on her lap and her arms folded across the purse. "I think we respected each other," I said. "He did his job; I did mine." Vicki said nothing, staring straight ahead. A few minutes later I pulled into the parking garage down the block from Shanghai's and found an open spot on the second floor. I escorted Vicki Wilber to the restaurant, where we were led directly to a dark booth near the rear of the main dining room. After a Pina Colada and a bourbon appeared before us, and after she'd quickly downed half of her drink, I asked, "Was anybody supposed to see Franklin this afternoon?" "I went over all of this with the police," she said. "They have his appointment book, and they have mine." "So who's in them?" "Just you," she said. "Nobody else?" "I don't know who's in his personal appointment book." "Isn't that odd?" I asked. "He's usually busy." "Well, he saw somebody this morning. Nice guy in a suit, but I don't remember his name and he didn't have an appointment." "Would you remember him if you saw him again?" "Probably," she said. She took another long drink of the Pina Colada. I sipped from my bourbon. When the waiter came with a pair of egg rolls, I ordered her a second drink. She didn't object. "He was supposed to give a speech tonight," she volunteered halfway through her egg roll. "He wanted to spend the day alone working on it. He wrote all of his own speeches." That sounded like Franklin. He'd never been particularly well educated, but he didn't like other people putting words in his mouth. He's cursed me early in his career for cleaning up his grammar in a story I wrote, telling me in rather crude terms that he was a blue collar worker, not a Ph.D. and if I couldn't get his slaughtered grammar into my stories, then he'd stop seeing me. "It was a hundred-dollar-a-plate affair," she continued. "They didn't cancel it. They said they were going to give the proceeds to a charity in Bill's name." I saw tears welling in her eyes so I interrupted. "He was a good man," I said. I wasn't sure if I meant it or not, even though he'd always been square with me, but I knew it was something she'd want to hear. Vicki pulled a tissue from her purse and dabbed at the corner of her eyes as the waiter placed her second drink in front of her. She took a sip. "The police won't tell me anything," she said. "But they said you found him." I told her about it as simply as I could. "It could have been anybody, then," she said when I finished. "I wish I hadn't gone to mass. Maybe I could have done something to prevent it." "And maybe you would have been killed, too." Horror washed across her face. She hadn't thought of that possibility and she quickly took another drink. "There's nothing anyone can do now," I said. "Except look for the killer. The police are doing that." "And you?" "I'm just working on a story," I told her. "I have a job to do just like everybody else." "Don't you feel anything?" I hesitated. "Yeah. I suppose I do, but I can't explain it. I didn't work with him eight hours a day." In a voice so soft I barely heard her, she said, "I was with him a long time." "What do you feel?" She glanced up, startled. She cleared her throat. "Regret. He was a good man." I didn't believe her. Something in her eyes told me her feelings ran much deeper, but I didn't push her. Some things were best left private. Dinner arrived. I watched her pick at her fried rice. "Is there something else?" I asked. She looked at me. Her eyes had begun to film over from the drinks. My own drink had barely been touched. "Find out who did it," she said. "He meant a lot to me." I started to protest. "That's not my job. That's for the police." She looked away. "I suppose it is." We ate the rest of the meal in silence. Afterward I offered to take her back to her car. "I don't drive," she said. "Then I'll take you home. Where do you live?" She gave me the address and I drove south toward Franklin's ward. On the way I asked, "How did you get home those nights when you worked late?" "Bill took me." "Did you ever invite him in?" She turned toward me. "What are you insinuating?" I held up one hand to placate her. "Nothing. I just had to ask." "Stop the car you bastard. I'll take the bus from here." I kept driving. "I told you to stop." "Did you ever see him outside of work?" She slapped me awkwardly. Pain bit at my cheek. She turned to stare out the window. A few minutes later I pulled to the curb in front of her apartment building. I opened my door to get out. "Don't bother," she said as she pushed her door open. "I can take care of myself." She slammed the door behind her and stalked up the walk. I waited until she was safely inside before I pulled away. I returned to the newspaper. Silverman was still in his office when I arrived. He'd pulled off his tie and had wadded it up in the corner of his desk. His sweat-stained white shirt was unbuttoned at the collar and he had a weary look in his eye. He should have left the office hours earlier. "Well?" "Did you have anybody covering that dinner Franklin was supposed to speak at tonight?" I asked. He shook his head. "Some sort of charity function in his honor. Franklin was supposed to give a campaign speech. I probably have it on my calendar. Instead they're giving the money to charity." Silverman pushed himself out of his chair and walked to his office door. He poked his head out, called the nightside city editor, and filled him in. "Anything else?" he asked when he returned to his place behind the desk. "There was something going on between Franklin and his secretary." "Is it worth pursuing?" "It might be," I said. I loosened the knot of my tie. Silverman's office was hot. "But is it worth ruining her life if it doesn't have anything to do with Franklin's death?" "Christ, I don't know any more. Ten years ago I didn't give a damn who we hurt or what we wrote. Today I just don't know. I'm not cocky anymore, Dan." Silverman was older than me; he'd been a hot-shot reporter when I was just a copy boy, and he'd taught me everything I knew about the newspaper business. "Follow it," he finally said. "If it looks like we're going to get scooped, go with it. Otherwise, sit on it." He reached for his tie. "In the meantime, keep your ears open and pin it down better than you've got it. If she was screwing Franklin, let's have the where and the when." "And the how?" Silverman didn't smile. He hung the tie around his neck and reached for his coat. I stood. "I've got to get home," Silverman said. "It's my grandson's birthday and I'm an hour late already." He pulled the coat over his shoulders. "I was just waiting to hear from you." After Silverman left, I dropped into the chair behind my desk. On top of my desk lay a copy of the three star final. A red felt-tip pen had been used to circle my byline on the Franklin story, and the words "Nice job" had been penned in the margin by the publisher. I smiled wearily. In nearly twenty-five years with the paper this was only the third time I'd received a note from the publisher. Then I stuffed the paper in my desk drawer. As much as I appreciate notes of commendation, there were better ways to get them than stumbling over a body. After glancing at my desk calendar for the computer file number, I turned to the VDT and called up the story I'd been working on before dinner. I reread my notes about J. Standish Stevens' comments, and began filling in information I'd gotten from Vicki Wilber. All together it wasn't much. I had enough to update the Franklin story for the first Saturday edition, but I had nothing new on the murder itself. I opened my file folder of clips about the dead alderman and spent the next few hours writing a detailed biography of his political life, pointing out the many things he'd done for his south side ward, and the many political entanglements he'd been involved with over the years. When I finished, my eyes hurt and I had stiff neck. I leaned back, rubbed my neck with aching fingers, and looked at the clock. It had just passed midnight. I closed the computer file, wrote the file number on a scrap of paper and took it over to the night editor's desk. When he looked up at me, I said, "There's a Franklin bio on that file. Edit it, double check what you can, and let Silverman know about it first thing in the morning." He nodded and returned to his racing form. I retrieved my jacket from the back of my chair and made my way downstairs. The printing presses were quiet and the press room dark. I pushed open the rear door and walked down the steps. As I walked across the darkened parking lot toward my car, a stocky young man in a loose-fitting suit stopped me. "Excuse me," he said politely. "Are you Dan Fox?" I admitted I was. He glanced quickly around the lot, then balled his right fist and buried it in my gut. I doubled over in pain. A thick pair of hands grabbed my shoulders from behind and helped me straighten up. I struggled to catch my breath. It came in ragged gasps. "What the fuck do you want?" He buried his fist in my gut a second time and I doubled over again. I tried to drop to my knees but the powerful hands gripping me from behind kept me standing. While I fought for breath the stocky young man said, "You could say that I'm a media watchdog concerned with the press coverage of a specific special interest group." "Who?" When he swung his fist a third time I tried to protect myself. The effort was worthless. He stood before me. "Pay close attention to who you write about, Mr. Fox, and be careful what you say." I tried to speak, but couldn't. Then I felt a sharp pain on the back of my head, felt dizzy, and collapsed to the pavement. When I awoke sometime later I pulled myself to my feet and staggered to my car. I sat behind the wheel, the doors locked around me, and caught my breath. Then, when I was sure I was breathing normally, I drove home. The house was quiet when I finally crept through the front door. I peeled off my jacket and tie as I walked up the steps to the bedroom. When I arrived at the landing, Janet's voice, husky and ragged from sleep, filtered out. "Dan?" I responded with a monosyllable. "It's almost two in the morning." She sat in the middle of the bed watching me as I entered the room. "I know." "You've been on the story half the night." "Almost." I kicked off my loafers. "I stopped for a drink," I lied. "I needed it." I pulled my pants off, then sat on the edge of the bed. "Are you feeling okay?" Janet asked. She slid across the bed and wrapped her arms around my neck. "I ... I don't know. I just don't know." She kissed the back of my neck, her lips just barely grazing the skin. "It must have been pretty rough, finding his body." I grunted. I was tired, my gut hurt, my head pounded against the inside of my skull, and my thoughts were confused. "But still you wrote the story, didn't you?" Her fingers trailed down my chest and she unbuttoned my shirt. "It's always like that, isn't it? The deadline means everything." "Yeah," I said, too tired to argue. I knew she was right. She pulled my sweat-stained shirt off and I sat in my Jockey shorts, the thick mat of hair on my chest flattened and heavy with perspiration. I smelled bad and I knew it. "Lay back," she whispered. "Try to get some rest." I dropped back on the cool cotton pillows and closed my eyes. "We can talk in the morning." I felt her long brown hair cascade across my face as she bent forward to kiss me. Then I felt her snuggle into the crook of my arm. I fell asleep to the gentle sound of her breathing. -------- *Chapter 3* The jangling of the telephone brought me abruptly awake. I rolled over to sit on the edge of the bed. Behind me I could hear the shower running in the master bathroom. I snatched the telephone handset from its cradle and mumbled a hello into the mouthpiece. "You sound like hell," Silverman said. I glanced at the clock. It was half past eight. Sunlight streamed through an opening in the curtains and burned my irritated eyes. "I've been sleeping." He grunted. "The mayor released a statement this morning." I rubbed the back of my head, feeling the spot where I'd been hit. "The mayor said he won't be appointing anyone to fill Franklin's unexpired term. It's too close to the election." "That makes sense," I said. "I read the Franklin bio the first thing this morning," he said. "I'm scheduling it for the front page of the B section. Marotta's digging up some file photos of Franklin to go with it." "Have you heard anything about funeral plans?" I asked. "Monday afternoon," Silverman said. "Closed casket at St. Paul's. The mayor's closing all city offices for the day." "Anything on the investigation?" "O'Shea's at police headquarters right now. He should be back within the hour." I glanced at the clock again. "I'll be in as soon as I can." "Try to get hold of Franklin's wife," he said. "I don't think anybody's talked to her yet." "I'll do my best." Then I hung up. Janet stepped out of the master bathroom, droplets of water sparkling against her skin. She rubbed at her wet hair with a towel. "Who was that?" "Silverman. I have to go in." "What about the barbecue at the Carringtons'?" "Cancel," I said. "Or go alone. I don't know when I'll be home." She swore. "They'll understand. I've known them for years." "Look," Janet said. "I'll go alone, but I want you to stop by if you can." I didn't respond. "Promise?" "Yeah," I said. I pushed myself off the mattress and walked to her side. I wrapped my arms around her and pulled her tightly against me. Her taut nipples pressed firmly against my hairy chest, and she ground her pelvis against mine. I kissed her firmly, then slid past her into the bathroom. I quickly showered and pulled on a blue pin-stripe suit, leaving the grey suit for Janet to take to the cleaners. Downstairs I hurried through a pair of scrambled eggs and toast and prepared to leave. "My brother would have been just like you," Janet said. I stopped at the door and turned to face her. "He might have," I said. "He had what it took." "Deadline fever." "Yeah. He was good. He would have been great." "Don't ever do anything like that, Dan. Promise me." I promised, though I knew it was a promise I might be unable to keep. Her brother had interned with the newspaper while he was a senior in City College's journalism program. When nobody else was willing to investigate a powerful alderman's connection with the disappearance of a number of young boys, Billy Horner had. He'd gone undercover and he'd wound up dead on the front steps of the newspaper building. I knew Janet missed him. She shook her head as if to clear away thoughts of her brother, and she gave me a quick kiss on the cheek. "Call me later, or meet me at the Carringtons'." Traffic was light and soon I sat behind my desk at the newspaper office. I still couldn't get an answer at Franklin's home, but before long I'd managed an appointment with J. Standish Stevens, the Republican candidate for Franklin's position on the Board of Aldermen. When I hung up the phone I glanced up and found Michael O'Shea standing on the far side of my desk. "I want off this story," he said. "That's not my decision," I told him. "That's up to Silverman." O'Shea studied me carefully, his sagging, expressionless eyes masking his thoughts. "I told Silverman this morning. He's already got me working on something else." "I don't have any contacts at police headquarters." "If I hear anything, I'll let you know," O'Shea said. "But I won't go out of my way to help." My eyes narrowed to slits as I studied him in return. "What happened last night?" "Nothing important. You want the story, you keep the byline." I knew O'Shea had given up the Barket story twenty-one years earlier -- after his house had been firebombed and his family threatened -- but I thought the Garrison story -- the story that had killed Billy Horner -- had changed all that. Apparently I was wrong. "Okay, Mike," I said. "It's your decision. You have to do what you think is right." "Yeah." "And I understand," I said. "I know what happened." "Yeah? Maybe you do." I stood and grabbed my notebook. "I have an interview in a few minutes. Maybe we can talk about it later." "I'd rather not." "Have it your way." I turned to leave. O'Shea grabbed my shoulder. I stopped. "I'm sorry," he said. O'Shea released his grip and I left him standing there, a relic of the past afraid of the present. Stevens' campaign headquarters was only a few minutes' drive from the newspaper and soon I sat in his office. J. Standish Stevens sat behind his massive oak desk and pressed his fingertips together, his elbows resting on the neatly-arranged desktop. "I share in the grief that Bill Franklin's family must feel at his inopportune death, and I'm sure that all of the good things he's done for his ward over the years will be remembered by his many constituents." I sat on the other side of the desk with my long, thin reporter's notebook on my knee. "Cut the crap," I said. "Two weeks ago you called him, and I'll quote you direct on this, 'the worst alderman this city has ever seen.'" Stevens folded his hands, almost as if in prayer, his fingertips interlocked, waiting for me to continue. The half-smile still held his cheeks up. "You're a shoo-in for this job and you know it. This morning the mayor announced that he would leave Franklin's position open until the election, and city law prevents the Democratic machine from putting up another candidate. Their best bet is a last-minute write-in." "That's all true," Stevens said politely. "Two weeks ago you were a dark-horse candidate of the worst kind. You trailed four-to-one in all the polls. Today you're guaranteed the election. Franklin's death was the best thing that could ever happen to your political career. You must have more to say than that." "I've said everything I have to say." Stevens rose from his seat, a signal that the interview had ended. He held out his hand. I remained seated. "Mr. Fox, I only agreed to this interview because my secretary said you'd called repeatedly yesterday. I do not have much time, nor do I care for your attitude. If you'd like to know anything further about this matter, why don't you speak with the police?" I stood then, grasped Stevens' outstretched hand, and shook it firmly. He was still smiling when I left his office. If Stevens was hiding some secret joy in having his Democratic opponent -- a man who hadn't lost an election in twenty years -- safely out of the way, he had hidden it well. From Stevens' campaign headquarters, I drove directly to Franklin's home hoping to catch his widow. Parked on the street in front of the house were two television vans and half a dozen cars. Reporters from various media were stationed on Franklin's front lawn. I surveyed the circus of media people, then pulled aside Jerzy Brown, a radio reporter who'd once worked at the newspaper. "This is disgusting." Jerzy knew what I meant. "I can't help it," he said. "My boss says to sit on the lady's lawn, I sit on her lawn. If she says anything, I'll be here to record it." While we talked, a balding man popped his head out of the front door and looked around. "Who's that?" "Marcus R. Willoughby, the family lawyer. He's the only person who's been in or out of the house since yesterday." I watched the lawyer pull his bald spot back behind the wooden door, then I turned to leave. I knew I could accomplish nothing as part of the media herd. As I walked the block back to my car, I spotted the neighborhood postal carrier. I stopped him with a wave. I quickly wrote a message on the back of one of my business cards: "I'd like to talk to you -- privately." Then I handed the carrier a ten dollar bill from my wallet and told him what I wanted. "Just drop it in her mailbox with the rest of her mail?" he asked. "You got it." "It's got to have a canceled stamp before I can deliver it to the house," he protested. "I don't want to break any regulations." I handed him a pair of quarters. "When you get back to the post office," I said, "cancel a stamp for it." He nodded his bushy head and wadded up the ten spot. It found a home in his uniform pocket. I watched as he continued delivering mail to the houses along the block. Before he was anywhere near Franklin's house, I was in my car and headed downtown. When I entered the city room, O'Shea called me over to his desk. "I just got a hot tip," he said. "The police found the gun that killed Franklin." "And?" The phone rang between us and O'Shea reached to answer it. "City desk." He listened for a moment, then handed the phone to me. "Mr. Fox? This is Detective Ballany. I talked to you yesterday." "Yes?" "I got the statement typed. I'd like you to come over to headquarters and sign it." "How long will you be there?" I asked. "Another hour or so." "I'll be there in a few minutes," I said. After I hung up, I turned to O'Shea. "Who told you about the gun?" "Can't say, but the info comes from an officer I've known since I was a cub reporter." Twenty minutes later, Detective Ballany ushered me into a private room at police headquarters and handed me a sheaf of typed papers. "Read that over," he said. "If it's okay, go ahead and sign it." It took me ten minutes to read the statement Ballany had handed me, and I corrected the spelling and punctuation in nearly a dozen places before I added my signature to the bottom of the last page. "Do you have any witnesses?" I asked when I was done. "Just you." "What about the murder weapon?" "What about it?" "You've already found it, haven't you?" His eyes narrowed to slits. "Who told you?" "There're moles everywhere," I said. "We've found a pair of latent prints on the gun and they match some prints we found on the doorknob." "I touched the doorknob," I said. "When I opened the door to see why Franklin wasn't answering." "Would you mind if we took your prints?" Ballany asked. "Go ahead." Ballany stuck his head out the door and called to another detective. A few minutes later, after he'd pressed all of my inked fingers against a white card with my name printed across the top, Ballany sat in the chair across the table from me. "The lab will compare these to the prints we found," he said. "In a few minutes we'll know the results." I leaned back in my seat to wait. In the meantime I reread the statement and double-checked everything. "Would you like something to drink?" he asked. "Coffee?" "Black." Ballany left me alone in the room. He was gone quite a while, returning with a lukewarm cup of black coffee. "Sorry," he said when he handed it to me. "I was detained by some information about the case." "What?" "Your fingerprints were on the door," he said. "I expected that." He grunted. "They were on the gun, too." I spit out a mouthful of coffee. "Don't shit me." "I'm not." "If you think I did it, why don't you test me for gunpowder burns?" "Iberium," he said. "If we had thought to test you yesterday we could have tested for traces of iberium. But you can wash it off, sweat it off, wear it off over time. You would have had to stay locked under glass to still have traces of it on your body." "My clothes?" I asked. I wondered if Janet had taken the grey suit to the cleaners. "The same." I swore softly. "Did anyone see you arrive yesterday?" I shook my head. "Everybody was at Mass. I didn't see anybody else until after I phoned you." "How did your fingerprints get on the gun?" "How the fuck do I know?" "Did you kill Franklin?" "Of course not." Ballany paced the room. I sat in the hard-backed wooden chair and followed him with my gaze. "The style of murder fits the D'Angelo family," he said. "But you and that Irish guy -- " "O'Shea." " -- write about this kind of stuff all the time, don't you?" "Yeah, so?" "So you'd be familiar with the underworld style enough to mimic it." "I suppose." "And you'd know Louie the Lip was back in town." "I could." I thought for a moment. "Where would I get the gun?" "A gun like that could be bought on the street easy enough." He stopped pacing and faced me. "You know an awful lot," he said. "A lot that we haven't released." I shrugged. "Our mole is pretty high up in the department." He gripped the back of a chair. "It could just be coincidence," he said. "Or this killing could have been planned a year in advance, knowing that Stevens planned to run for election. You cover the political scene in this city. You'd know that." "That would be premeditated murder." I slumped back in my chair. "Look, Fox, if I don't find Franklin's killer, my butt'll be in a sling. I don't think you did it, but I don't know. It looks like someone's trying to set you up, but who and why?" I told him about my midnight meeting in the parking lot of the newspaper. "Why didn't you report it?" "It didn't seem important at the time. I've been threatened before. It comes with the territory." Ballany grunted, then sat down across the table from me. "Look, Fox, I'm going to let you go, even though I have enough to hold you." I said nothing. "You realize I'm going to have to release some of this information to the press." "I am the press," I reminded him. "Just let me have a few hours to make my deadline before you release it to the other media." "You got it," he said. "And watch your step. Somebody wants your ass." -------- *Chapter 4* As I left police headquarters and walked down the crowded sidewalk toward my car, two stocky men in matching business suits strode up on either side of me and matched my pace. They appeared in their mid-thirties, yuppies in Brooks Brothers suits and silk ties. One was Italian, the other a fair-skinned black man. The Italian spoke first. "We've been asked to give you a message." They didn't look like cops and my first thought was that they were related by employer to the two men I'd met in the parking lot the night before. I glanced around at the other faces on the sidewalk, realizing we were quickly traveling away from police headquarters. "What's wrong with the telephone?" I asked. "Or Western Union?" The black man smiled. "It's not quite that kind of message." "I figured," I said. The pain in my gut grew worse and the back of my head began to throb again. Still, I didn't expect them to do anything in front of so many witnesses. "Our car is parked just down the block," the Italian said. "We'd like to ask you to come with us for a little ride." Wary, I said, "Where to?" "Not far." "Do I have a choice?" "It's a free country," said the black man. The Italian said, "But the truth is that you don't." They led me to the car, a four-door royal-blue Chrysler, and helped me into the front seat. The Italian climbed in behind me and the black man climbed behind the wheel. He slowly pulled into traffic. Soon we were pointed toward the Hill, a heavily Italian section of the city on the near-south side. Before long we pulled into the parking lot of an Italian restaurant owned by the D'Angelo family. The black man led me through the back door and the Italian followed, the pair of them acting as bodyguards. We made our way through the kitchen, where the heavy smell of garlic teased my nostrils and made my mouth water. Then we pushed through a pair of swinging doors, turned, and walked down a short hall to an office. Seated behind a massive wooden desk was a man whose face I recognized from newspaper photos. He stood when I entered. "Welcome, Mr. Fox," Luigi D'Angelo said as he stuck out his beefy hand for me to shake. He had a powerful grip. When he offered me a seat, I sat. Then he ushered my two chauffeurs out of the room and returned to his seat behind the desk. A copy of the previous day's three star final lay on the desk. He pointed to it. "You've said some nasty things about me and my family." "I suppose I have," I said. "Is that why you sent two goons to bash my head in?" "Did they rough you up?" He stood. "I told them to be on their best behavior. They were just supposed to bring you here." "Not just now," I said. "Last night." He sat down again. "What happened last night?" I told him. "I didn't have anything to do with that." "Would it matter if I said I didn't believe you?" "I am a man of honor, Mr. Fox. I say this on my father's grave." I still didn't believe him, but I said nothing. "Would you like something to drink?" "Bourbon. Straight." He stood, went to the door, and spoke to someone standing in the hall. A few minutes later a young, olive-skinned woman brought a pair of bourbons to us. D'Angelo's was on the rocks. "So why did you bring me here?" I asked after my first sip of the drink. The bourbon slid easily down my parched throat. "I want you to know some things about me," he said. "I want these things in the newspaper." "I can't do that." "You write for the paper. You can do that." "I have an editor. There are people he reports to. They decide what goes in the paper. I only write." He sipped from his glass. "I tell you," he said. "You tell them. They decide. Okay?" "Okay." I reached in my hip pocket for my notebook. From inside my jacket I pulled a pen. I opened the notebook and balanced it on my knee. "So tell me." "I didn't kill Bill Franklin. I didn't have anything to do with it." "That's not what the police think." "The police are fools." I wrote that down. D'Angelo stared at me. "Don't write that." It was too late. I didn't scratch it out. "The police have asked many questions. They have made accusations that are not true. Bill Franklin was like family. I sat on his knee when I was a baby. He was like this with my father." D'Angelo crossed his fingers. "Are you saying he took payoffs?" D'Angelo slammed his fist against the top of his desk. The ice in his bourbon rattled. "My father was his friend. They grew up together. That's all I'm saying." "That's enough," I said, "for some people to make that assumption." "The police say I am an underworld figure." "They've said it more than once." "They come into my restaurant and upset my employees. They say things that upset my mother. They offend my sisters." "And you?" I asked. "What do you think about what they say?" "They hurt my business. I do not like that." I sighed heavily. "Cut the crap, D'Angelo. You sound like a politician." He took another long drink. "Close your notebook." I closed it. "Put it in your pocket." I slid the notebook into my hip pocket. "When my father was alive he had power in this city. When he told people to jump, they jumped. Sometimes the people who worked for him weren't too smart. Sometimes they did more than my father told them to. Sometimes they hurt people." "That's an understatement." I still remembered the way the Bronski killing had dominated the news. John Bronski had crossed the D'Angelos unknowingly and had wound up as hamburger. "When my father died I was out of town and his business disintegrated. When I came home it had fallen apart. There was no unifying force in his business, no single person with the balls to take control. Mama still had the restaurant. Some of my father's employees had stayed loyal to mama." He reached for his bourbon, lifted the glass to his lips, and drained it. I shifted in my seat. I was beginning to understand how he'd come by his nickname. "This is what I come home to," he continued. "So I try to put my father's business back together. Some of his employees come to me. I take them back. Some of his employees I have to invite back. They come back." He took a breath and looked me straight in the eye. "But the south side is different. On the south side they say they have a new boss and they don't need the D'Angelo family. I say bull." "Is that why you had Franklin killed?" D'Angelo slammed his fist against his desk for the second time, his face flush with anger. "You do not understand!" I waited for him to calm himself. "The people on the south side know Bill Franklin. He's a good man for them to put in office. If I hurt him I lose the respect of the south side forever. It was in my best interest to protect him. But I did not know he needed protecting. I did not know someone wanted to harm him." His eyes narrowed to slits. "And I do not know who's taken control of the southside. My employees have been removed from that side of town." "So what do you do?" "I have proposed an acquisition of the new company, and I have offered a merger. They want neither. I can do nothing but wait -- wait to see if they try to invade my territory." He reached for his glass and discovered it empty. "But this they must know: they have killed Bill Franklin. They have harmed my family. I do not sit idly by when my family is hurt." "Are you announcing the start of a war in the underworld?" "I did not say that," D'Angelo said. "You did. Do not put words in my mouth." I stood. I'd heard enough. "There is one thing you must know," he said. "Someone does not like you. You need protection." "By you?" I asked. "Or from you?" I opened the door and the two chauffeurs stood waiting. "Take him away," D'Angelo said. They led me through the kitchen and out to the car. Before long they'd dropped me off at my car. They drove away while I inspected the parking ticket I'd received. Then I climbed into my car, drove directly to the newspaper building, and took the elevator upstairs to the city room. At my desk, I turned to the VDT, opened a new file on the computer, and typed my conversation with D'Angelo from memory, avoiding direct quotes where I was unsure. Then I opened another file and wrote about my visit to police headquarters and my interview with J. Standish Stevens. While I typed, Silverman came out of his office and stood over my shoulder. I closed the file, then punched the keys to get hard copy printed on the dot-matrix printer in the center of the room. Silverman waited until the printer stopped clattering before ushering me into his office. "Deadline for the first edition passed while you were out. We should be able to get some of this into the second edition." He silently read the hard copy, then he looked up at me. "The police said it could be D'Angelo, but he denies it." "Right." "Police have the murder weapon in their possession and they say it has your fingerprints on it." "Right." "So how'd your fingerprints get on the gun?" I shook my head. "Damned if I know." "How did they find the gun?" "They didn't say. O'Shea told me about it. Detective Ballany confirmed that they have it." "And you say this is an exclusive?" "Ballany promised me a two-hour head start with the information he gave me. I don't know who else D'Angelo has talked to." "Okay," Silverman said. "I'll take this up to the editorial board right away." He stood. "In the meantime, find out what Stevens' stand on gun control is." We separated at Silverman's office door. He headed for the stairs; I headed for my desk. As I sat, the phone rang. I answered, "City desk, Dan Fox speaking." "I received your note, Dan," said Franklin's widow. "I thought you would, Angela." "What would you like to know?" "Can we meet someplace?" "There's a circus outside my window," she said. "I don't want to leave the house until the funeral. I know what to expect from those media apes out there." I'd attended a few cocktail parties at their home, one of the few journalists allowed into their private life. "Then I'm going to ask you a few personal questions over the phone," I said. "Is your lawyer still there?" "Yes." "You may want to ask his advice before you answer." "I'll be the judge of that." While we spoke, I opened a new file on the VDT. "You ready?" "Sure." "Was your husband having an affair?" "Yes." "You knew this all along?" "Yes." "Do you know who with?" "His secretary." "For how long?" "A year or two. Maybe longer." "And you didn't divorce him?" "No." "Why not?" I heard muffled voices, then she said, "My lawyer says not to answer that." "Was your husband accepting payoffs?" "You know better than that, Dan." "So you're saying he was clean?" "As honest as they come." "That's not too comforting," I said. "Have you talked to the police?" "They asked who might have killed my husband." "What did you tell them?" "I said I had no idea." "Do they know about his affair with his secretary?" "I didn't tell them. They didn't ask." I typed as fast as I could to keep up with her answers. "Have you talked with them today?" "No." "What were you doing around noon yesterday?" "I didn't kill him, if that's your question, but I have no convincing alibi." "You aren't the only one," I said. "How's that?" "Neither do I, and neither does Vicki Wilber." "The police say she was at mass." "That's what she says, but the cathedral downtown is a big place." Angela Franklin was silent. "What will you do now?" "In what way?" "A vacation to get away from all this, maybe." "I have no plans," she said. "I will attend my husband's funeral on Monday. After that, I don't know." I could think of no other questions to ask, and I told her so. She gave me the phone number of her lawyer's office. "Leave messages for me there. I'll call you." I agreed, and she hung up. I arranged what she'd told me into a coherent order, added a strong lead, then had it punched out through the printer. I took the hard copy upstairs to where the editorial board was meeting. After tapping on the door, I pushed it open and weaved my way through the chairs to Silverman. I bent over his shoulder, whispered into his ear, and handed him the copy. He quickly scanned it. "I'll be down in a minute." -------- *Chapter 5* "What about the other media?" I asked. "They've been behind us almost every step of the way," Silverman said. He pitched a copy of our competitor's Saturday morning edition across his desk to me. "Mostly they've reworded what you said in last night's three star final." I scanned the paper while he talked. "I had my wife watch the news on all three stations. They haven't got anything more than we have." "Radio?" "That one station had an interview with J. Standish Stevens yesterday, but he didn't say much. And everybody covered the press conference yesterday at police headquarters. I presume they all know about the mayor's statement this morning." I tossed the newspaper back on Silverman's desk. "So what now?" "Christ, I don't know," Silverman said. "You're the one sitting in the middle of all this." I knew that only too well. I'd spent years cultivating my sources in and around City Hall, waiting for the big story to break so I could be sitting in the middle of it. Now it had and I was beginning to wish I hadn't been so efficient. The heat in Silverman's office was stifling and I pulled at the knot of my tie. The air conditioning didn't vent into the room and when Silverman closed his office door for privacy the temperature quickly escalated. "You look tired," Silverman said. "I didn't get much sleep," I replied. "But I'll be okay." "Good. I'll need you to follow up on all this." Silverman stood and moved to his office door. "The people involved aren't talking to anybody else." I stood and followed him out of the room. Silverman mopped beads of sweat from his forehead with the back of his hand as I passed by him. I returned to my desk and called downstairs to the morgue. A young male voice answered. "See what you've got on J. Standish Stevens, Luigi 'Louie the Lip' D'Angelo, Angela Franklin, and Vicki Wilber." I spelled each name carefully, giving the guy the necessary details about each person. "This may take a few hours," he said. "You've given me a lot of names." "That's fine," I said. A minute later I dialed Stevens' campaign headquarters. The girl with the nasal condition answered. I identified myself. "Mr. Stevens isn't in his office at the moment," she said. "He's stepped out to lunch." I checked my watch. It was a few minutes before noon. "Does he always take his lunch at this time?" "Mr. Stevens always takes his lunch between 11:30 and 12:30." "Is this the same time he ate yesterday?" "Yes, sir. He never varies." "Thank you," I said. "Let him know I called." I hung up. Then I opened the phone book and quickly found Vicki Wilber's home phone number. I dialed and waited four rings before she answered. "Vicki? This is Dan Fox." She slammed the phone down. I redialed. After twelve rings she answered again. "Don't hang up," I insisted. "Franklin's wife knew all about you and Bill. You've got nothing to hide now. I'm quoting her in the next edition, but I didn't use your name in the story. Not yet." Vicki stammered. "What did she say about us?" "She said she knew about your affair for two years, but that she wouldn't divorce him." "That bitch." "I don't like doing this on the phone," I said. "Can I come talk to you in private? I want to get your side of the story." "I don't want to -- " "Look, if you don't tell me first, somebody else is going to find out about it and they might rush into print with some misinformation. I want to hear your story." "Okay," she said. "You can come over here. I'll be waiting." * * * * Twice on my way to Vicki Wilber's apartment building I thought I spotted a royal blue Chrysler in my rearview mirror, but it was never close enough for me to distinguish a driver or a passenger. I also spotted the same light-green sedan three times. By the time I arrived, I hadn't seen either car for ten minutes and I convinced myself I was just shaky from the events of the previous twenty-four hours. The dead alderman's secretary opened her apartment door a few minutes after I rang the bell. Then she closed it, removed the safety chain, and opened it again, this time wide enough for me to enter. Behind me, she rechained the door. Vicki motioned me into an overstuffed chair and she stood with one hand on her hip. "You want a drink?" My throat was parched, but I said, "No, thanks." She dropped onto the couch across from me. She wore no make-up and her hair was straggly. Her tight-fitting jeans and red-plaid workshirt looked like she'd pulled them on just after I phoned, and I could tell she'd been crying. "What do you want to know?" "What have you said to the police about your affair with Franklin?" "Nothing." I had my notebook on my knee and she glanced at it nervously. "Then they wouldn't know about it?" "How would I know? I thought we were discreet. How did you find out?" I'd seen it in her eyes the night before, the little sparkle that tells me there's more to the story than what people are saying. I told her, "I'm a newspaperman. A lot of people talk to me." "If they told you, they'll tell the police." "I'm sure they will. Anything I know, the police will discover sooner or later. They aren't stupid." Vicki sat silent for a moment, thinking. I waited. "At first I was almost glad he was dead." I hadn't expected her to say that. "Why?" "He lied to me. He promised he would divorce his wife and marry me." Vicki stared at the wall. "But he was afraid to divorce her. Her money kept him in office. She financed all his campaigns. She had her purse strings tied around his balls." "Revenge is a good motive for murder," I said. "The police will think the same thing when they find out." She turned to face me. "You think I killed him?" "I don't think anything. I just ask questions." "I didn't do it. I loved him." "Even after the way he treated you?" She nodded. "He lied to you, made false promises, and you believed him." "At first I believed him. But the longer it lasted, the less I believed and the more I wanted to believe. Does that make sense?" I nodded and kept writing. "When I left him at a quarter to twelve he was working alone in his office. He didn't have any appointments until yours. I walked over to St. Mark's for noon Mass. When I came back, the office was swarming with police." "How long did it take you to walk over to St. Mark's?" "Ten minutes. Maybe fifteen. I was a few minutes early." "Where did you sit?" "In the last pew," she said. "Most of the church was full." "So you could have arrived late and no one would have known." "How's that?" "Everybody else in the church is facing the front except the priest. St. Mark's is a pretty damn big cathedral. In the dark the priest might not have seen you sneak in." "But I wasn't late," she protested. "I was early. I -- I was early." "Did you walk over to the church with anybody from the office? Did you see anybody there who knows you?" "I talked to Father Carneghi after mass." "Before mass," I said. "It has to be before mass." She shook her head. "Nobody?" "I can't think of anybody. Everybody had left the office by the time I got out." "Why did you leave late?" "I -- " She turned away from me again. "I don't want to talk about it." "Tell me," I said. "You're going to have to tell somebody sooner or later. It's better me than one of those television jerkoffs." "I left late because I had an argument with Bill." "Great," I said under my breath. "I suppose there were witnesses." "There might have been. We weren't quiet. Some of the walls are thin." "So it won't be long before the police find somebody at City Hall who heard the two of you arguing." "I suppose not." "And nobody knows what time you arrived at St. Mark's." "Nobody." "So they could make a case against you by saying that you argued with Franklin. Then, after everybody left for mass, you got a gun, shot him, dumped the gun, and hurried to St. Mark's. You arrived late and snuck into the last pew. At the end of the service you talked to Father Carneghi, walked back to City Hall with some of the other secretaries, and discovered the police already there. You knew I would discover the body because I was in your appointment book and I'm rarely late." "But -- " "That's what they could say." I didn't mention that my fingerprints were on the murder weapon. Until the two star edition of the paper hit the newsstands, the only people who knew were the police, Silverman and the editorial board, whoever had managed to arrange it, and me. Vicki Wilber began crying. "But I didn't do it." I put my notebook away and moved to sit beside her on the couch. I took her in my arms and let her cry on my shoulder, the salty tears staining my jacket. After a few minutes she sat upright and brushed at her cheeks with her fingertips. "I -- I'm sorry," she said. "Is there someone you can call, someone who will come over and sit with you for awhile?" "Yeah," she said. "I know someone." "I'm going to put some of this in the paper," I told her. "It might be best if you call the police and tell them everything before that happens." She stared at me. I pushed myself up from the couch and moved to the phone. "I'll call them." "No. Please don't." I watched her. "I mean, give me a minute. I want to -- to freshen up." She stood and walked toward the rear of her apartment. I considered Detective Ballany's number, then decided against it. It wasn't my decision to make. "Vicki," I said, unsure of which door she'd ducked behind. "I've got to go back to the newspaper." She didn't respond. "I'll let you call the police. I can't make that decision for you." She still didn't respond. I walked down the narrow hallway, ducking my head into a bedroom. "Vicki?" I ducked my head into the other bedroom and still didn't see her. I opened a door in the hall. It was a closet. I tried the other door. It was locked. "Vicki?" No response. "Vicki!" I didn't know her as well as I might, but I knew damned sure she should answer me. "Open the door." I rattled the knob, twisting it back and forth. When she still didn't respond, I stood back, leaned against the other side of the narrow hall, put my right foot up and kicked the door as hard as I could. The doorframe cracked, but the door didn't open. I kicked at it again, then rammed my shoulder into it. The door swung open and slammed against the toilet. Vicki Wilber lay naked in the bathtub, blood smeared across her torso. A straight edge razor with the initials "B.F." inlaid on the handle lay beside the tub. Her left arm hung to the tile floor. Blood from her wrist pooled around her fingers. I swore. I tugged at my tie, pulling it from around my neck. As quickly as I could, I tied a tourniquet around her left wrist. Then I reached across her and tied the other half of my tie to her right wrist. I turned to go to the phone, slipped as her panties slid across the tile floor under my shoe. I stumbled into the hall, crashed against the wall, and knocked a pair of photos to the floor. In the living room I grabbed the phone and dialed 911. The call was answered immediately and I quickly explained the situation. Then I dropped the phone, jerked open the apartment door, and returned to the bathroom. Blood seeped from Vicki's wrists. I tightened the tie as best I could, then I tried holding her arms above her head, hoping that blood wouldn't run uphill as fast as it ran down. Before long a team of paramedics arrived and pushed me out of the way. I stumbled down the hall to the living room and collapsed on the couch. As the paramedics left with Vicki Wilber, Detective Ballany and one of his assistants entered the apartment. Ballany sat on the chair across from me. "You seem to be in all the wrong places these days," he said. I grunted in response. My hands were warm and sticky and my suit was covered with Vicki Wilber's blood. "If I didn't know better, I'd say this looked like a sex crime, what with your tie wrapped around her wrists and all." "I did the best I could," I said. "I didn't expect this. I didn't expect this at all." "What happened?" I told him. "You frightened her." "I didn't mean to. I just wanted to get the story. I was only doing my job." "I have the same problem," Ballany said. "Sometimes it's hard to tell what the best thing to do really is." I swore. "I'll want to talk to you later. In the meantime I have to talk to Franklin's widow. I didn't know anything about this affair." Ballany helped me to my feet. "Can I drop you off anywhere?" "My car's outside." Ballany looked me over carefully. "Have it your way," he said. "Just drive carefully. Go home, maybe. Get some rest." -------- *Chapter 6* Instead of driving home, I drove to the newspaper building, bounded up the stairs to the city room, and burst into Silverman's office. "What happened to you?" he asked. As quickly as I could, I gave him the rundown on Vicki Wilber's suicide attempt. "Is she dead?" "I don't know. Call the hospitals while I get this stuff ready. Find out where she went." I left him reaching for the phone while I hurried to my desk. I dropped into my seat, opened a new file on the VDT and began typing, my sticky fingers clinging to the keyboard. I worked from my notebook and from memory, describing everything that had happened. Silverman came out of his office. "She's alive, but in critical condition," he said. I scrolled the blinking cursor upward, inserting Silverman's information into the story. When I finished, I stood, allowing Silverman to occupy my seat. He read the story, scrolling down from the beginning, edited it, and closed the file. Then he phoned the composing room and told them which file to output. "How come we didn't get any photos on this one?" Silverman asked. "There wasn't time," I said. "I thought her life was more important." He leaned back in my chair. "You're right." "I have to clean up," I said. "I feel like hell." I left Silverman at my desk and went to the men's room. Once there, I peeled off my blood-soaked jacket and hung it over a stall door. Then I unbuttoned my white shirt and peeled it off. I was bare-chested underneath, having never grown accustomed to undershirts. I turned the hot water on and soaped my hands. As I washed, Michael O'Shea entered the rest room. He looked at my jacket and shirt hanging over the stall door, then he looked at my reflection in the mirror. "You don't look so good," he said. "You'd better start carrying some protection." He unbuttoned the front of his jacket and opened it just far enough for me to see the butt of a .45 jutting from his waistband. "It wasn't me," I said. "I'm not hurt." "It doesn't matter, Dan. Next time it might be you." "What have you heard?" I spun around to face him, soap suds still clinging to my forearms. "What made you so scared, Mike?" He stepped backward. "I can't say." "Did somebody plant a fist in your gut last night? Did you get the message, Mike?" I grabbed the lapels of his jacket. I was frustrated, angry, filled with self-loathing for what I'd made Franklin's secretary do to herself and I took it out on Michael O'Shea. "Those sons of bitches gave me the same message," I told him as I pushed him back against a stall door. "Only I didn't like it. Nobody tells me what to write." O'Shea held up his hands to placate me. "I know those boys, Dan. They play rough. When they deliver a message, it stays delivered." "Bullshit!" "Dan, let go of me," he said. I released my grip on O'Shea, realizing I had no reason to be angry at him. There were wet soap stains on his jacket where my fingers had gripped his collar. I stepped away from him. "You're off the story now," I said. "Why the heavy artillery?" "I still cover the police beat," he said. "Tidbits of information still come my way. Sometimes maybe I shouldn't pass them on. Sometimes maybe I don't but you still get them. And sometimes maybe they think I didn't keep my promise." "They've got you running scared, don't they?" "You can bet your ass they've got me scared," O'Shea said. "I've lived though this shit before. You haven't." "The Barket story?" "That's right." "That was more than twenty years ago." "And I'm still around to talk about it," O'Shea said. "That's all I want to be. Alive." "Then don't fuck with me no more, Mike," I said. "Keep your distance." "I plan on it. You're dead meat and you don't even realize it." He turned and stalked out of the men's room. O'Shea was at his desk when I finished washing, but I said nothing to him as I passed. As I sat down and slung my damp shirt and jacket over an empty chair, he stood and went back to the men's room. Waiting at my desk were the files I'd requested from the newspaper's morgue. The thinnest file was the one marked Vicki Wilber, so I opened it first. There were only two clippings inside. One was a two-year-old photo of Franklin presenting her with a rose on secretary's day, the other was a birth announcement almost thirty-five years old. I opened Angela Franklin's file next. It was crammed full of photos of her with her husband at various functions, notes from the gossip column about her involvement with this charity function or that, a photo of her debutante ball back when she was in finishing school, a notice of her father's death leaving her as the only heir to a large estate, the wedding announcement when she and Bill Franklin had set the date, and a story describing their wedding at St. Paul's. D'Angelo's file was about what I expected: a thick folder of information concerning his father's activities more than his own. In most of the stories he was only mentioned when his sisters were, as members of the senior D'Angelo's family. Except for a pair of drunk driving charges as a teenager, he had been clean as a whistle until he was collared on a tax-evasion charge stemming from faulty bookkeeping in a small cement company he owned. Silverman interrupted my reading. "I need you to get on an update of the Franklin killing for the Sunday morning edition. Take everything you've got and wrap it up into one neat package. We need it by midnight -- sooner if you can." I pushed aside the file folders and reached for the newspapers that had piled up in my in-box. I reread all the stories I had written since early Friday afternoon and then I opened a new file on my VDT. As I typed, I tried to put the entire story into perspective. Unfortunately, the more I typed, the less I felt sure of. Even worse, there were things I had been told by various people close to the story that I was unable to include. Libel laws tied my hands. I worked on the overview for almost two hours, writing and revising as I went along, trying my best to keep my personal bias out of the story. When I finished, I punched out the hard copy and carried it into Silverman's office. He glanced up and nodded when I placed the story on his desk. I returned to my desk and the Stevens file. Quite a few of the clippings were stories that I had written during his campaign for alderman. Although he'd never gone out of his way to provide me with information about himself, Stevens had usually been good for a few thought-provoking quotes, and his style was so opposite Franklin's that their race had gotten more coverage from our paper than the races for most of the other contested seats. A small clipping barely more than a year old, and dated prior to Stevens' announcement of candidacy, gave details about the theft of his .38. The clipping didn't say much, only that his home had been broken into while he was away for the evening. A window had been smashed. His revolver had been stolen from the drawer in his night stand and some jewelry had been taken from his wife's jewelry box on the dresser. The police had had no suspects at the time. There was a gap of almost twenty-eight years between that and the next older clipping. At first when I read the clipping I wasn't even sure it was about Stevens. Three different clippings mentioned a young boy named John Stevens, each in connection with petty theft. Twice charges against him had been dropped, and once the only witness had refused to appear in court. It wasn't anything particularly astonishing to me; I'd pocketed a few candy bars in my time. Still, I felt it my responsibility to follow up on the information. I dialed Stevens' home phone number, spoke briefly to his wife before she put him on the line. After the preliminary greetings, I said, "I've got some old newspaper clippings here that say you were quite the young hoodlum." J. Standish Stevens laughed. "So you found those, did you? I thought they would have been lost by now. They're certainly not important." "Perhaps not," I said. "What I really wanted to know about was the theft of your .38 last year." "That theft made me think long and hard about my position on gun control. I'm in favor of it. I have to admit that I was an ardent handgun owner myself for years. But after my .38 was stolen last year I realized how easily those kind of guns could wind up in the hands of maniacs -- like the one who killed Alderman Franklin." I changed the subject. "Where did you have lunch yesterday?" "The federal court building," Stevens said, "with Judge Freeman from 11:30 sharp until almost 12:30. I went straight to my office from his chambers. I assure you I had returned to my desk by 12:40 because I had an appointment with my campaign manager at precisely 12:40." "You were with the judge the entire time?" I asked. City Hall and the federal courts building were only two blocks apart. "Indeed I was. I did not even leave his chambers to use the men's room." He was too smug for my taste but there was nothing I could do about his attitude. After Stevens wished me a pleasant evening, I hung up and reached for his folder again. I read until my eyes grew weary, and I was unable to find any blemishes on his record after he'd left his teen years behind. Stevens had graduated high school a year late, went on to college where he excelled in business courses. After graduation he joined Richardson Tool and Die as an accountant. Within two years he owned the company. Later, he branched out in a variety of areas, building his personal income and rapidly becoming the darling of the banking set. He'd been a Republican for years, apparently from the first day he realized the city's money was controlled by conservative Republicans. He'd been active in politics city-wide as a major contributor to a variety of successful and unsuccessful Republican campaigns. Finally he was bitten by the desire to run for office and he mounted his campaign for Alderman in his own neighborhood, a traditionally blue-collar, Democratic part of town where men like Bill Franklin had been elected since the turn of the century. At best it was an uphill battle for Stevens, one that he had little chance of winning. That is, until Franklin's death. -------- *Chapter 7* When I left the newspaper building half an hour later, the sun hung low over the horizon. I scanned the parking lot, unsure of how many unwanted visitors I might have. When I saw nothing unusual, I walked down the concrete steps beside the loading dock and weaved my way through the lot to my car. I jammed my key into the lock on the driver's side, twisted it, and pulled the door open. Before I slid into the driver's seat, I took one last look around; I'd had too many strangers introduce themselves to me recently to be anything other than wary. My stomach growled as I pulled out of the lot onto the street. Only then did I realize I'd missed the Carringtons' barbecue. I ignored my stomach and wondered what I would tell Janet when I finally made it home. I caught sight of a light-green sedan in my side mirror just after I made a left up the on-ramp to the highway. If it was one of D'Angelo's helpers following me around town all day, then he had been switching cars. The porch light was on when I pulled into the driveway and I made sure I locked the car before I crossed the walk and climbed the front steps. Janet was sitting in the living room, a magazine spread across her lap. She looked up as I opened the door. "It's about time," she said. "I've been busy. All hell broke loose this morning. Didn't you see the paper?" She shook her head. "I haven't been paying any attention to the news." "My fingerprints were found on the murder weapon." She caught her breath. "I didn't do it," I said. "Of course not." Janet was braless beneath her sheer white blouse and I could see her nipples rising as they strained against the material. "But how did -- ?" "Damned if I know." She noticed the stain on my shirt as I stepped into the living room. She stood and came over to me. "What happened?" I explained about Vicki Wilber. "Do you think she did it?" I shrugged. "I only told her what I did to get a reaction from her. It wasn't the reaction I expected." "I guess not." Janet unbuttoned my shirt and peeled it off me. "This stuff's ruined." I agree as I reached down to pull off my loafers. Then I unbuckled my belt and dropped my pants to the carpet, kicking my legs free of the confining material. I retrieved my wallet, my notebook, and my change from the pockets, then handed the pants to Janet. She took the suit and the shirt with her through the kitchen doors. "I'll be upstairs," I called. I didn't hear her response, so I climbed the stairs to the master bedroom. I dropped my wallet and other accessories on top of the dresser and headed for the bath. I peeled off my socks and underwear, turned on a steady stream of hot water and stepped under the shower. It was my second shower that day and the hot water felt especially soothing as it slammed against my taut shoulder muscles and ran in rivulets down my chest. I turned and let the water cascade down my back. When I heard Janet's bare feet pattering into the bathroom, I said, "I want to go to St. Mark's in the morning." "Why?" she asked over the sound of the shower. "You're not Catholic." "Find out what time mass is." I heard her leave the bathroom. I'd turned off the shower and pulled the curtain back before she returned. "Too damned early," she said. She gave me the time. "We don't need to be there for the whole thing," I said as I toweled myself dry. "I just want to catch Father Carneghi alone for a few minutes." "Are you going to confess something?" she teased. I snapped the towel at her, the corner just flicking against her left buttock. She reached down to rub at the spot where the towel had hit her. Later, I lay beside Janet on the bed, the solitary lamp on the night stand casting odd shadows on the ceiling. It was the first time in two days I'd had the opportunity to think quietly about what had happened. "Something's wrong," I said. Janet rolled over to face me. "Mmm?" "Follow me on this," I said. "If you were a cop and you had the murder weapon with clearly identifiable fingerprints on it, and you had the man who matched the fingerprints sitting in your office, what would you do?" "I'd arrest you," she said. "Then why didn't Ballany lock me up? My alibi's no better than anybody else's. Worse, in fact." "You don't have a motive." "Maybe I'm a psycho." "You're not." "But I could be. I could be anything. Maybe I'm a hit-man for the mob during my spare time." I shook my head at the thought. "Ballany knows something that I don't and it was enough for him to release me." "Don't worry about it," Janet said. "He knows it wasn't you. Isn't that enough?" "It can't be enough," I told her. "Somebody scared the shit out of Michael O'Shea and tried to get me to back off the story. Luigi D'Angelo made a special point out of seeing me and telling me that he had nothing to do with Franklin's death. Vicki Wilber was so afraid of being accused of killing Franklin that she tried to kill herself. Angela Franklin is buttoned up inside her house with her lawyer, waiting for her husband's funeral before she'll come out. And me? I'm running all over God's creation talking to these people." We lay silent for awhile. Finally I said, "The only person who seems to be taking this whole thing in stride is J. Standish Stevens." "The wimp Republican who can't win an election on his own?" Janet asked. She was a die-hard Democrat. I folded my hands behind my head. Janet snuggled close to me and lay her head on my chest. Her hot breath tickled my chest hair as I fell asleep. * * * * I awoke Sunday morning with a start, my eyes snapping open suddenly, and then closing just as quickly when a stray sunbeam burned at my retinas. Sunday was a day of rest but I still had work to do. I pushed myself upright and swung my legs out of bed. A quick shower was in order; regardless of how many I'd taken the day before, I always started the day under the shower's pulsing stream. It seemed to bring my senses alive in a way nothing else could. I glanced down at Janet's still form, her uncovered breasts rising and falling slowly as she slept. I was in and out of the shower before she woke, and I kissed her lightly on the forehead before heading downstairs. Barefoot, I walked out to the front lawn to retrieve the Sunday paper. I hoisted the heavy bundle of newsprint to the kitchen table. I slid the paper out of its yellow plastic baggie and unrolled it so I could see the front page. Franklin's murder had been kicked down below the fold, apparently not as important now that his death was two days old. News value is highly dependent on time. The more time passes after an event, the less news value it has. For some people Franklin's death was already as cold a story as it was ever going to be. Without a sudden confession by the murderer, within a few days the updates would be buried inside the first section. Before long all the stories about it would be buried deep inside the paper and I would be assigned to another story. Sometimes that attitude bothered me. Like today. I finished scanning the story I'd written before I began cooking breakfast. Janet joined me a few minutes later. We ate, dressed, and headed downtown to St. Mark's. We found an empty parking spot on the far edge of the lot and walked across to the church, up the marble steps, and through the massive doors of the cathedral. Mass had already started, so we slid quietly into the last pew on the left, perhaps even sitting where Vicki Wilber had sat a few days earlier. I hadn't been to a church service since childhood, and had never been to a Catholic mass, so I wasn't prepared. Still, I knelt when others knelt and stood when they stood. When mass finished, and people were filing quietly out of St. Mark's, I searched for Father Carneghi. I found him easily, standing out front with his parishioners. When there was a break between handshakes, I edged in and identified myself. Father Carneghi smiled at another couple and waved to two more. "This is Sunday," he said without looking directly at me. "I want to talk to you about Vicki Wilber," I said. "Do you know her?" He nodded as he shook hands with an elderly man. "How well?" "She came into my church on many holidays," he said. "But she wasn't a parishioner. I believe her parish was St. Mary's. Why don't you talk to Father Phelan?" "But did you know her well enough that you would recognize her at a distance?" "I'm sure that I do." "Was she here Friday?" "I spoke to her after the service. A troubled young woman, I'd say." "What did you talk about?" He turned to face me. "I'd say that's not your business." "What time did she arrive here for Friday's mass?" "I'm not sure," he said. Janet stood off to the side, waiting. Most of the people had left the church and the parking lot was rapidly emptying. "Roughly," I said. "Was she early? Late? Right on time?" "I wouldn't know," he said. "I only saw her after the mass." "Would anybody have seen her come in?" "Perhaps." "Would you ask around for me?" I handed him my card. He took it. "I'll ask. That's all I can do." I thanked him, took Janet's hand and led her down the marble steps and across the nearly-deserted parking lot to my car. As we approached, I realized there was another car parked on the far side of it, a light-green sedan that hadn't been there earlier. I released my grip on Janet. "Go back inside the church." "Why? What's wrong?" I pushed her away. "Don't argue. Just go." She stopped where she was, turned, started to walk back toward the church, then turned again, hesitating. I kept walking, hoping she would be smart enough to take care of herself. As I rounded the back of my car, two men climbed from the sedan. The smaller of the two I'd met before in the newspaper parking lot. The other I'd never seen before but from his size I figured he had been the goon holding me upright while the other played tether-ball with my abdomen. "I spoke to you before," said the smaller of the two men. "You didn't listen." I shoved my arm in front of me to guard against the meaty fist that zeroed in on my gut. "What does D'Angelo want this time?" I asked. Before the over-sized goon could grab me from behind, I lurched forward and planted my left fist on the cheek of the talky one. He staggered backward but didn't fall. Somehow, I hadn't expected him to. The big goon grabbed for my shoulder. I swung my fist at him. Missed. Swung again. He grabbed my forearm, twisted me around. The smaller goon planted a fist in my gut. I tried to double over. Couldn't. This time he wasn't worried about leaving scars. He struck my face. My head snapped around to the side. I lifted my foot and stomped on the arch of the goon holding me. He swore, released his grip on my shoulder, and hobbled backward against the sedan. I couldn't see Janet. I didn't know where she'd gone. I couldn't take the time to look for her. The big goon recovered. Reached for me. Before he could grab me, I swung my arm around and thumped him in the chest. It didn't stop him. He grabbed me again. I struggled. His smaller partner buried another fist in my gut. Then he swung a meaty fist at my jaw. Connected. My caps broke loose. Involuntarily, I swallowed. One cap lodged in my throat. I couldn't breath. I struggled against the thick hands holding me. I stomped my foot down as hard as I could. Missed his arch. My thoughts spun wildly inside my head. I twisted around, pulled one arm free and kicked my knee upward into the big man's groin. He released me. I threw myself at his partner, but not because I was brave. Because I knew he'd hit me again. He did. I coughed the lodged cap up and into his face, felt warm blood ooze down my chin as I struggled to regain my breath. I fell to one knee. He kicked upward with his foot, catching my chest. I fell backward. Reached for the car bumper to pull myself up. The two goons grabbed my arms and hauled me to my feet. I was too weak to continue struggling. The back door of the sedan opened and they shoved me toward it. Suddenly the big goon erupted in a fountain of blood, showering his partner and me with the warm, sticky fluid. He fell against the car, holding his neck with both hands. I jerked free of his partner, stumbled around the car, away from the open door. The big goon spun around as another bullet struck his side and I heard a sickening crack as his head smacked against the pavement. The smaller goon reached into his coat, pulled a .38 from a holster under his arm, and looked around wildly as he ducked between the sedan and my car. I fell over the hood of my car, retching on the fender, my stomach heaving up breakfast. Another shot shattered the rear window of the sedan and I rolled off my car. I couldn't see where the shots came from, could only see what happened when the bullets came to rest. The talky hood jerked open the driver's door on the sedan and crawled in. The car roared to life, then it squealed out of St. Mark's parking lot. I only saw the top of the driver's head as he maneuvered the sedan onto the street, around the corner, and out of sight. Cautiously, I pulled myself to my feet. Janet ran across the parking lot toward me. Behind her came Father Carneghi and a pair of alter boys. Janet grabbed my shoulders, holding me upright to stare into my face. Then she gathered me into her arms in a sobbing bear-hug. I motioned Father Carneghi toward the dead man. "I think he needs last rites, Father." "The police are on their way," he said. "We phoned them from inside." Janet mopped my face with a handkerchief, wiping the blood and the sweat away from the cuts and bruises. I looked over her shoulder, toward the street, wondering where the shots had come from. As I did, I saw a royal-blue Chrysler slowly pass by. Seated on the passenger side was the Italian who'd taken me to see D'Angelo. He gave me a thumbs-up sign, smiled, and then the car accelerated away in traffic. -------- *Chapter 8* "So who was he?" Detective Ballany asked as an ambulance crew worked with the body. I shook my head. "I've never seen him before." "What about his partner?" "He was the guy in the parking lot Friday night." "Thought so," Ballany said. "Did you see who shot him?" He pointed a pencil stub at the deceased. "No." In truth I hadn't. I didn't tell Ballany about the guys in the Chrysler. "What did they want?" "They wanted me off the Franklin story," I said. "I was writing about someone or something and they didn't like it." "Did they tell you who was behind all this?" I shook my head again. "I don't know any more about it than you do. I just write the damn stories. Nobody seems to understand that. I only write what people tell me. I don't make the news. I just report it." Ballany smiled, just barely, the amusement pulling up the corners of his mouth. "Doesn't seem to matter to these guys." "It matters to me," I said. "Can't you protect me against this kind of stuff?" "Only one way," Ballany said. "Lock you up in a jail cell. Put a twenty-four-hour guard on you. You might be safe there." I said, "That won't do any good." "Probably not, but it's the only way to keep you out of trouble." I reached up and touched a new trickle of blood coming from the corner of my mouth. Janet handed me a stained handkerchief to hold against it. "You'd better get something done about that," Ballany said. Charlie Marotta arrived then, distracting my attention from Ballany. Marotta was too late to snap any photos of the action, but he managed a pair of shots of the ambulance crew loading the body and a few more of the ambulance pulling out of the parking lot. Before I had a chance to refuse, he'd begun snapping photos of my face. "Must you?" I put my hand up to block the lens. "Give me a break, Dan." Marotta peered at me through the camera lens. "You're the only thing happening today. The news is dead." I dropped my hand. "I guess I'll have to call in a story about this." "You know you do," Marotta said. "Union says I just take the photos." "Who's watching the city desk today?" "Pat Nevins." "Okay," I said. "I'll give her a call from home. Tell her to expect it." "You got it." Charlie snapped his last photo, packed his equipment and drove off in a rattle-trap Volkswagen. On the way home, Janet asked, "Who killed that guy?" "One of D'Angelo's boys. It's like he told me, this city's on the verge of a crime war. The death of Franklin must have been the starting gun. Somehow I got into the middle of all this." "Because you found Franklin's body," she said. "That has to be why. If it had been Franklin's secretary who found him, the story wouldn't have gotten the same kind of newsplay. It would have been her fingerprints on the door to his office, not yours." "Do you think they meant to set someone else up?" "Maybe. Maybe you just got in the way. They tried to scare you off the story the way they scared off O'Shea, but it didn't work. You act like an English bulldog sometimes; you grab hold of something and won't let go till you've had the shit kicked out of you. You've been like that the entire time I've known you." I drove in silence for a few blocks. "Then if this was meant to set up someone else, who?" "Can't help you," Janet said. "I don't pay enough attention to city politics." She thought for a moment. "Maybe the set-up was an after-thought. Maybe they hadn't meant to set anybody up." "And maybe nothing we've said means anything at all," I told her. "The only way to make sense of this is to wait and see what happens next." Back home I dialed the number for the newspaper office. "City desk. Nevins," came the answer. "This is Fox. Are you ready to take a little dictation?" "Hold on a moment," she said. I imagined her turning to her VDT and opening a file on the computer. "Go ahead." I rapidly dictated a piece on the murder at St. Mark's and about my assault. When I finished, Nevins said, "One other thing. I think they found that sedan." "Where?" "Parked in front of the building when Marotta got back. He's got some great shots of it burning to a crisp." "Thanks," I told her, and hung up. I told Janet about the sedan. "I doubt if it will do the police any good now." The phone rang and Janet answered it. She listened, then handed the phone to me. "It looks like you owe me a favor, Mr. Fox," Luigi D'Angelo said. "How's that?" "Let's say that my company witnessed an unfriendly take-over bid and we terminated it an opportune moment. We acted as a white knight, so to speak." "So to speak." "Ah, good," he said. "I think we understand each other." "We might." "I trust you're feeling better now." "Some. I'll have to visit the dentist soon. What do you want from me?" "I only want to come to an understanding. Many people owe me favors, Mr. Fox. Someday I may call in my debts." "I understand," I said. "But I may not pay mine off when it comes due." "Foreclosure is a possibility," D'Angelo said. "Have a nice day, Mr. Fox. Keep in touch." He terminated the connection before I could reply, so I gently placed the handset in its cradle. From the phone I went to the window, pulled the curtain back a quarter of an inch, and stared intently up and down the block. Four minutes later I saw what I was looking for: the tail-end of a royal-blue Chrysler as it passed the end of the block. "He's having me watched," I told Janet. "Maybe he thinks this southside kingpin will try to get me again. D'Angelo is covering my ass pretty good. The cops sure as hell aren't." I released my grip in the curtain and let it fall back into place. I paced the room. When the phone rang as I passed it, I jerked, startled. Ballany was on the other end. "The guy who bought it in the parking lot was Rocko Andretti. Ever since that boxing movie a few years back he's been going by Rocky. He used to work out of New York with a partner, a blond guy about ten years younger than him. Sound like the guy that popped you in the mouth?" "Could be. What're they doing in the midwest?" "Don't know. We're working on it." "You got a name on his partner?" "All we got to work with is John Anderson. Sounds like an alias." "What about the car?" "Reported stolen in Chicago about a month back. The plates were legit -- exact duplicates of a pair owned by a Mrs. Finklestein." "Shit." "Another thing," Ballany said, "That reporter friend of yours -- " "O'Shea?" "That's him. We've got him locked up in the drunk tank right now. He was juiced to the gills and he pulled an unregistered .45 on one of our undercover officers." "Leave him there," I said. "He's better off." "Thirty years he's been prowling these halls. You'd think he'd know better." I agreed. "Maybe I can explain it to you later." "Don't try. I got too many problems already." I hung up and turned to Janet. "You up for an early dinner?" She glanced nervously at her watch. "Now?" "Let me change, first. Then we're going to D'Angelo's on the hill." "Italian? Sounds fine to me." I rushed through a quick change of clothes, then escorted Janet to the car. I backed the car slowly out of the driveway, not wanting to lose the tail D'Angelo had placed on me. As soon as I saw a flash of royal-blue at the end of the street, I pulled away from the house. D'Angelo's restaurant was only a short drive away and I made sure I kept my rearguard in sight the entire time. Inside the restaurant, I told the maitre d', "I want the best table in the house, and I want Mr. D'Angelo to know that I've come to repay a debt." I was sure D'Angelo knew I was in his restaurant, but I wanted to make sure he knew why. The maitre d' escorted us to a table near the window, with an excellent view of the street. Then he disappeared into the back. While we waited for his return, a young waitress with flowing black hair handed us each a menu. I ordered a hearty red wine and we each ordered our favorite pasta. After she left with our order, the maitre d' returned. "Mr. D'Angelo would like me to inform you that whatever you order this evening will be on the house. Also, he is ready to see you now, Mr. Fox." I followed the maitre d' to Luigi D'Angelo's office. "Already you want to repay a debt that isn't due," D'Angelo said when we were alone. "The guy you killed this afternoon -- " "Killed?" he interrupted. "Perhaps you misunderstand me, Mr. Fox. I have killed no one." I took a deep breath. "Let me say that this afternoon a man died in the parking lot of St. Mark's." "Such a waste of life." "That man had a name." "Perhaps I should know that name so that I may send a card to his widow." "Rocko Andretti. He came from New York." "Jesus!" D'Angelo slammed his fist against the top of the desk, sending papers scattering across the room. "This man had a business partner. His name is John Anderson." "What the hell were they doing here?" "That's the question I wanted you to answer," I said. "What do you know about these men?" "The names, I've heard," D'Angelo said. "You know how families talk to each other? Yes? A friend of the family tells me that these two men deliver messages. A sort of Western Union -- but they don't do singing telegrams and they don't deliver candy. Do you get my message?" "I got theirs," I said. "They don't deliver many messages outside of New York because the expenses are too high to stay in business. When they leave the city they try to deliver many messages at the same time." "So whoever hired them has had them around awhile? I'm not the first delivery." "By no means." D'Angelo paced behind his desk, puffing on a cigarette. "Whoever hired them has money. Big money. Money he don't want to lose to nobody else." "Meaning you." "Meaning if his business is in the south side and my business is in the rest of the city, then maybe someday our businesses would interfere with each other. Maybe he don't want to lose his business. He doesn't want any unfriendly take-over bids." "He's scared of you so he hires his own muscle." D'Angelo smiled. "You think good for a pencil-pusher." "So what's your next move?" "I wait. When you're number one you wait for the competition to come to you." "How long?" "I have a good business. I can wait a long time." I stood. "My dinner should be ready. I have a guest." D'Angelo took my hand and gripped it firmly. "You have lived in this city a long time, Mr. Fox. You understand how it works. Perhaps someday we can do business again. I consider this debt paid." I shook his hand firmly. Owing D'Angelo a favor had not been my goal in life. Having repaid it so quickly was a load off my mind. Yet, as I walked out of his office, other thoughts nagged me. I was sure D'Angelo would have gotten the information from Monday's first edition, or even from the television news later in the evening, but by then it might have been too late for him to use. After all, news was my business and I was just delivering it in a slightly different package. Dinner arrived at my table as I crossed the dining room. Janet waited until I was seated before she asked, "How did it go?" "Fine." I took a sip from my wine glass. "So you know he didn't have anything to do with Franklin's death." I nodded. "But this isn't the place to talk about it." Janet glanced around the room. "Enjoy your dinner," I told her. "After all, it's free." * * * * The royal-blue Chrysler followed us home and stopped a half block from our drive. Although I didn't relish having D'Angelo's boys watching over me, it was a damn sight better than what the police had been doing. Once inside the house, I pulled my loafers off, dropped my jacket over the back of a chair, and switched on the television in the living room. A pair of overly-endowed young blondes danced across the screen for a local car parts store, then a news announcer's head filled the screen. "Earlier this evening, the Channel Three news team had the opportunity to speak with J. Standish Stevens, Republican candidate for Bill Franklin's now-vacant seat on the city's Board of Aldermen." Stevens' face replaced the newscaster's. "And I would like to reiterate my position on gun control," he said. "It is a sad and tragic fact that each year many fine citizens of this city are killed by handguns. I should know: a handgun I once owned was stolen from my home more than a year ago. On Friday, Alderman Bill Franklin was killed by a handgun. This strikes home to me, more than any event ever could, of the tragic consequences -- " "What crap," Janet said. She flipped through the channels. "Look," I said. "He's a politician. What do you expect him to say?" She shrugged and flipped back to channel three. Stevens' face had disappeared, replaced by live footage of a three alarm fire on the south side of the city. A beer distributor's warehouse was engulfed in flames. "Turn it off," I said, since Janet still stood next to the television set. "I just want to have some peace and quiet. It's my damn day off anyhow." -------- *Chapter 9* Janet lay against me on the couch, reading the newspaper. The paper crinkled as she folded it to an inside page and kept reading. She stopped, looked up at me, and asked, "So who was Franklin's visitor Friday morning?" I shrugged. "His secretary didn't know." "How long did Franklin talk to him?" "Only a few minutes." I reached for the glass of wine she'd poured. "Give me a drink of that." I handed her my wine glass. She took a sip and handed it back. "This guy didn't give his name or anything?" "Vicki said she didn't remember his name." "Would she recognize him?" "She said she would." "Mmm." Janet read a little more of the paper, then crumpled it up and threw it to the floor. "That doesn't make sense." "What?" "That Franklin would have a visitor that his secretary didn't recognize." "It could have been just about anybody." "But Franklin saw this guy right away. If it was a nobody from his ward he would have let the guy sit in the reception room for a few minutes." "Probably." "So who was he?" I shrugged again. "Consider this," Janet said. She pushed herself upright. "Anderson and Andretti were brought in to deliver messages to a variety of people. Somebody on the south side hired them, right?" I nodded. "Franklin was connected to the D'Angelo family, right?" She didn't wait for a response. "And the last people they want on the south side are people with ties to D'Angelo." She paused. "It was somebody giving Franklin a message." "To do what?" "Join sides with them. You told me when Louie the Lip came back home Franklin was leery of reestablishing his ties with the family. So maybe he was being courted by the other side." "So, if that explains the visitor, explain the killer." "Franklin refused to cooperate. They came back later and killed him." "So you think the person who visited Franklin that morning came back?" "Sure. Why not?" I couldn't give her a reason. "And then you came along a few minutes later and found the body." "So he only had about half an hour between the time Vicki Wilber left and the time I arrived." "That's enough time to fire a gun six times, isn't it?" "More than enough." The phone rang and I reached across Janet's lap to grab it. Ballany was on the other end of the line. He said, "Just after I talked to you this afternoon there was a three alarm fire at a beer distributing company on the south side. We believe the company has ties with organized crime, but we didn't think it was important until about half an hour ago. Somebody kicked in the doors of a north side whorehouse. Six people are dead, all known associates of Louie D'Angelo." "You think there's a war on?" "Don't know," Ballany said. "I just don't like the looks of it." I said nothing. "Anyhow, we've got a photo of John Anderson. Can you come down here to identify him?" I glanced at my watch. "Do you realize how late it is?" "Don't give me a hard time, Fox. I've been here all day." "I'll be down soon." I glanced at Janet and shrugged. * * * * Ballany paced the conference room and rubbed his chin. Then he reached into a file folder he'd placed on the table and pulled out a black-and-white photo. He tossed it across the table to me. "This is what we have on Anderson. Is this the same guy who jumped you at St. Mark's?" I carefully studied the photo. Anderson was a remarkably plain fellow, without the distinguishing characteristics that normally make people easy to remember. "Close," I finally said. "If the hair was a little longer, like he hadn't had a haircut in a month, and if he were, say, five years older, this might be the same guy." Ballany took the photo back. "That's all I needed to know." He poked his head out the door and spoke to another detective. When he came back, he dropped into the chair across the table from me. "We're putting out an all-points bulletin on him. Somebody must've seen that bastard." "Do me a favor," I said. "Show the photo to Franklin's secretary. She said she had a visitor Friday morning. Could be the same guy." "Think so?" I told him Janet's theory about Franklin's visitor. He shook his head. "Women's intuition. Shit." "You got any better ideas?" Ballany sat silent. "What's next?" I asked. "You tell me," Ballany said as he leaned forward on the table. "You're the reporter. You're the guy everybody talks to. Tell me the story, Fox." "It starts a few years back," I said. "Louie D'Angelo goes up for tax evasion. A few months later his father gets blown away by a hot-shot private detective. The family business splinters. When Louie comes home he tries to put it back together. In the meantime somebody on the southside gets cocky. They don't want to deal with the D'Angelo family anymore, and they bring in a New York City messenger service to keep things in line. Something goes wrong. Bill Franklin, a long-time friend of the D'Angelo family, gets killed. You blame it on D'Angelo. D'Angelo blames it on the southsider. Somebody tries to frame me for it. That's all I've got." "And what we've got is a handful of corpses," Ballany said. "This isn't getting any easier to figure out." He stood and motioned for me to follow. "Come on, we're going to the hospital to check on Vicki Wilber." I followed Ballany out of police headquarters and across the parking lot to his car, wondering if D'Angelo's boys were sitting on the street somewhere watching my car and waiting for me to come walking out another door. Ballany took his time driving across the city to Mount Mercy. On the way I asked, "What did you turn up on Franklin's affair?" Ballany glanced over at me. "It was straight-forward, just the way his secretary said. According to Mrs. Franklin, her husband had been screwing Vicki Wilber for at least two years." "Why did they stay married?" "Franklin's wife has all the money. He was just a dockworker when they met, doing work for the union and all. Her father had a wad of money in stocks, bonds, real estate, that sort of thing. After her father died, she inherited the estate. About that time Franklin got an urge to become involved in city politics. He was already well-known for his union work. A lot of the guys respected him and when he announced his first campaign for alderman, his wife put up the money and his union buddies did all the door-knocking. Over the years Angela Franklin has become well-known around town as a socialite, a position almost ensured by her marriage to an alderman." He glanced over at me in the darkness. "I guess the marriage slowly dissolved into a business arrangement. One hand washes the other and all that. I can't really say." "Franklin made a lot of promises to his secretary that he didn't plan on keeping." Ballany shrugged. "That's politics. You promise one thing, you deliver another." "But Franklin never came across like that. In all the years I've covered City Hall, he always stood out as being straight-forward." "How can you tell?" Ballany asked. "Twenty years ago I found out my best friend was pushing LSD to college kids." We were both silent until Ballany swung the car into the reserved lot at Mount Mercy. As we climbed out of the car, a light drizzle began to fall and I buttoned the front of my jacket. It was a warm rain, one that dampened my hair as we crossed the lot to the hospital lobby. At the reception desk, Ballany flipped open his wallet to show his badge to the startled young woman stationed there. "How do I get to Intensive Care?" She stood up from her desk and leaned over the chest-high counter and pointed down the hall. "Straight ahead. Turn right at the first corridor. End of the hall." We followed her directions, Ballany a half-step ahead of me. At Intensive Care he displayed his badge again, this time to a matronly nurse with salt-and-pepper grey hair piled into a beehive. He asked for Vicki Wilber. "I'm sorry, honey," the nurse said. "She ain't here no more." "Where's she been transferred to?" "I'll see." She turned to look through her files. When she looked back at us, she wasn't smiling. "I'm afraid you'll have to talk to the doctor." We waited while she had a doctor paged, and a moment later we were met by a middle-aged Chinese woman. She introduced herself as Dr. Ching and led us to an empty room. She held a folder in her hand and referred to it as she spoke. "Vicki Wilber died at precisely 3:12 p.m.," the doctor said. "This is a copy of the certificate of death as signed by the physician on duty at that time." She handed Ballany a sheet of paper. "Why wasn't I notified?" he asked. "I'm afraid I can't answer that," she responded. "However, there is a note here that a phone call was placed to your office at a few minutes past four, and an oral report was made to someone there." "Christ," Ballany swore. "Damn paperwork screws me over every time." The doctor continued. "It was all very straightforward. The young woman attempted suicide, and she succeeded." She shrugged as if the thought didn't bother her. "I'll never understand how they get the courage to cut themselves up like that." "She was unconscious when she left her apartment yesterday," I said. "Did she ever come to?" Dr. Ching quickly scanned the records. "There's no indication here that she ever came out of the coma." Ballany looked at me. Then he folded the paper Dr. Ching had given him and stuffed it into his jacket pocket. "Thanks," he mumbled as he turned to leave. I followed him down the corridor. "Why'd she kill herself?" Ballany asked as we pushed open the lobby doors and stepped into the warm drizzle. I walked silently beside him. "You in a hurry to get home?" Ballany asked as we slid into his car and he brought the engine to life. "Not particularly," I said. Day off or not, I still had to follow the story. I made a mental note to ask Silverman for a few extra days off when this was over. I knew I'd need it. Ballany dropped the car into gear, backed out of the parking space, then drove from Mount Mercy's lot. "It's going to be a long night," he said as we turned in a direction opposite police headquarters. The windshield wipers whispered as they swept across the glass, and the police radio crackled with static. Ballany glanced over at me in the darkness of the car. "How long you been a reporter?" "All my life," I said. I was tired. I felt the way Ballany looked. "I was a copy boy at sixteen. I don't remember when I crossed the line to being a reporter." "Then you remember Barket?" "He tried to take the city away from the D'Angelos. It didn't work." Barket hadn't gotten the city, but he'd twisted Michael O'Shea's mind and sent an invisible yellow streak up his spine. "My father was a cop," Ballany said, continuing as if he hadn't heard me. "He died trying to hold the city together. He only had two years until retirement." I leaned against the car door and listened. Ballany didn't need prompting. "I was a beat cop then, fresh out of the academy. I was all gung-ho, go-in-with-pistols-blazing and all that. When my father died, it took something out of me." He was silent as we passed through a green light. "My grandfather was a cop, too. The D'Angelo family had this city by the balls during prohibition and I remember sitting on my grandfather's knee listening to his stories of gun battles in the streets, like something out of a Dashiell Hammett novel." He glanced my way. "You ever read any of Hammett's work?" I grunted. I'd started one of his novels once, but never finished. "That's what I wanted to be when I was a kid, a cop just like my grandfather, breaking up the mob and making the city safe for Boy Scouts and Cocker Spaniels. Nobody ever told me about all the paperwork, the dead-ends, and the long, boring hours spent doing nothing much at all, just waiting, constantly waiting for something to happen." He glanced at me again. "Now it looks like I'm going to have my big chance and you know something? I'm not sure that's what I want after all." Ballany made a left turn. We were heading for the south side of the city. He continued. "I just want to put in my nine-to-five and go home to my wife and kids." He reached into his hip pocket, pulled out his wallet, and pointed to an attractive woman and a pair of teenage boys. "That's Edna with Jimmy and Craig." I looked at the photo politely, then returned the wallet to him. He folded it closed and slid it into his pocket. "I don't like messing with the D'Angelo family. They play rough." After Ballany had driven four blocks in silence, I asked, "So what do you think is happening on the south side?" "This new guy's smart," Ballany said. "We don't know who he is or where he came from. We don't even know for sure what he wants from D'Angelo. He might want the entire city. He might just want to keep a tight grip on the south side. He's playing his cards tight to his chest." "What about Anderson and Andretti?" I asked. "How do they fit in with what you've got?" "They're serious muscle. Whatever this southsider wanted them for, he knew who to contact in New York. He might have connections with one of the families there." "You think they're trying to muscle in?" "No. Anderson and Andretti are good, but they're not the best. One of the New York families would have sent the best. It's got to be a local boy with a short memory." "Barket had the muscle but he didn't have the brains to overrun the D'Angelo family," I said. "This guy might be smarter than Barket was. He's had a year to solidify his position on the south side. He's going to take advantage of that if he can." Finally Ballany turned the car around and pointed us back toward midtown and police headquarters. The radio crackled out a call for a patrol car. "When we get back," Ballany said. "I'm going to check out for the night and go home. Nothing else is going to happen. Everybody's waiting. D'Angelo made his statement with the beer distributor's warehouse. The other side responded with a visit to one of D'Angelo's whorehouses." It had become a waiting game and I felt like somebody's pawn. I didn't like it. -------- *Chapter 10* The chatter of gunfire jerked me awake. I bolted from the bed to the window and stared out at the royal-blue Chrysler D'Angelo had had tailing me for two days. The windows were shattered and the black man who'd helped escort me to D'Angelo's restaurant the day before slumped over the wheel. The passenger door hung open and the Italian was out of the car and running down the sidewalk toward my house. He was bent in half, trying to stay behind the various cars parked along the street, and every few dozen steps he turned to fire the revolver in his hand. A delivery van was stopped in the middle of the street, the side doors thrown wide open. Inside, a beefy, olive-skinned man with shoulder-length hair and an M-16 peppered the cars along the street, shattering windows and digging holes in the parking strip. I swore and turned to Janet. She was wide awake with the phone in her hand. I dashed down the stairs and jerked open the front door. The Italian stumbled across the front lawn and up the porch steps. He jerked around when a bullet caught him in the side. The van began moving. Gunfire laced the picture window, shattering glass and ruining the drapes. The Italian lay on the porch. I crawled onto the porch and grabbed his wrists, then pulled him through the open front door. The olive-skinned man with the M-16 jumped from the van and charged up my front lawn. "They fucking killed Eddie," the Italian said as he tried to stuff his shirt sleeve into the hole in his side. I pulled the revolver from his hand and pointed it at the front door, bracing myself with my right hand against the stairway. I hadn't fired a gun since basic training. The olive-skinned man burst through the front door and I squeezed the trigger of the revolver. It clicked on a spent chamber. He spun toward me, bullets from the M-16 shattering a lamp above my head and sending a shower of glass down the back of my neck. I dropped the gun and rolled behind the couch. I had one advantage: I knew my own house in the dark. The guy with the M-16 didn't. I heard the Italian swear and then felt the floor shake as the two men tumbled to the floor. I dove from behind the couch, around an over-stuffed chair, catching the silhouette of the two men wrestling in the hallway. The Italian hand a handful of the other man's hair and was holding on with everything he had left in him. The M-16 lay on the floor a foot from them. The olive-skinned man rolled over and slammed a beefy fist into the Italian's face. The Italian slumped, his fingers losing their grip on the goon's hair. I rolled out from behind the chair and grabbed the M-16 before the olive-skinned man could untangled himself from the Italian. I lay on the floor with the butt of the M-16 braced against the carpet. He loomed over me as he stood. I squeezed the trigger. The gun jammed. I swore. He came toward me. I kicked up and out, catching his ankle with the ball of my foot. He stumbled and I rolled away from him. Pushed myself up quickly and stumbled up the stairway. He tried to follow, but I turned and planted a fist in his jaw. Sirens wailed in the distance. He must have heard them because he spun around and headed for the door. He grabbed the M-16 as he went, fumbling with it as he headed across the blood-stained porch. Gunfire from the van cut him down. Then the van squealed down the street, away from the sound of the police sirens. I stood, my knees about to buckle under me, and moved to the Italian's side. His nose was shattered and blood covered his face. Blood still seeped from the hole in his side, and he drew breaths in shallow, ragged gasps. Janet stood at the top of the stairs, a pale yellow robe wrapped around her shoulders. "Is it over?" A patrol car slid to a halt in the center of the street. A second joined it. Their blue and red lights flashed garish patterns around the neighborhood. Slowly the sidewalks filled with nosy neighbors in their night clothes. There was nothing I could do for the Italian, so I stood. Janet came down the stairs to stand beside me and I took her in my arms. Then we walked out to the porch to meet the officer who was heading up our walk. "What the hell happened here?" he asked. He was young, with short blond hair and pale blue eyes. He carried a service revolver in one hand. "It's over," I said. "Call Detective Ballany. And an ambulance." Then I went back inside to pull a pair of pants on over my Jockey shorts and call the newspaper office for a photographer. Ballany arrived a short time later. The small amount of sleep he'd had hadn't done him much good. There were dark bags under his eyes and he wore the same suit he'd worn a few hours earlier. The Italian had still been breathing when the ambulance took him away, but the other two men hadn't been as lucky. Officers from Ballistics combed the neighborhood, measuring things, examining the black rubber streaks in the center of the street left behind by the van's squealing rear tires, collecting blood samples, digging spent bullets from their places of rest, and carefully retrieving the .38 from my living room and the M-16 from my porch. Ballany consulted with a few of the other officers, then came into my house, carefully stepping over the broken glass. "I was wrong. They're not sleeping tonight." I nodded and offered him a steaming cup of coffee Janet had prepared while we waited. He took the coffee and pulled up a chair at our dining room table. I joined him. "Eddie Washington was found outside in a Chrysler. He worked for D'Angelo," Ballany said. "Who were the other two?" I told him about the van the guy with the M-16 had come from. "The Italian they took out of here also worked for D'Angelo." "He was too smashed up to identify," Ballany said. "We'll get a positive ID on him later." Janet came out of the kitchen with her own coffee cup and pulled up a chair next to me. "What were D'Angelo's boys doing here?" Ballany asked. "They've been tailing me for two days." "You knew it and you didn't tell me? What kind of shit are you trying to pull, Fox?" "Check their weapons. Just after Andretti was shot at the church, I saw the Chrysler driving away." Ballany wrote something in his notebook. "I could have your ass for withholding evidence. Maybe even lock you up as an accomplice. What else have you forgotten to tell me?" Charlie Marotta stumbled through the front door, cameras strung around his neck. "I got a call on this," he said. "When I heard the address I almost shit." I turned and spoke to him over the back of my chair. "You getting any good shots?" "Dozens," he said. "Looks like you had a fucking war in your living room." "Almost." "You doing okay?" Marotta asked. "Yeah. We're fine." He returned to his work, snapping photos of Ballany, Janet, and me seated around the table. "I'll have to talk to you in the morning," Ballany said. "In my office where we can have a little peace and quiet." "That would be nice." "What are you going to do for the rest of the night?" he asked. "How's that?" "I wouldn't stay here. If the southsider knew you were here, he might come back." "Station some men outside to watch the house for us." "D'Angelo already did that," Ballany said sarcastically. "Look what happened." "We'll get a hotel room," Janet said as she stood. "I'll check around." Ballany and I were left alone in the dining room as Janet hunted for the phone. Charlie Marotta went out to the porch. "Go over this again," Ballany told me. "What happened tonight?" I told him as much as I could remember. "You didn't leave anything out this time, did you?" I shook my head. "I've given you everything." "I'll get the report typed by somebody in the office. I'll meet you there in a few hours. You know the routine." I nodded wearily, stood when he stood, and walked to the door with him. "My men will be working for quite awhile. You might be safe enough to spend the rest of the night here." He stared at the shattered window and the blood stains on the porch. "But I wouldn't want to." As he walked down the front steps, Janet came out of the house and stood at my side. "I found a room downtown." * * * * A short time later Janet and I unpacked a pair of disorganized suitcases, knowing we'd be at the hotel for at least a few days. I hung a clean suit on the clothes rack, wondering how many more I'd ruin before this was over, and if I could take them as a loss on my income tax. I finished unpacking my suitcase, arranged my razor and toothbrush on the sink counter, then flopped on the double bed. A moment later Janet joined me. Janet had been stoical ever since she'd come down the stairs at home to find me standing over the Italian, but as I held her in my arms I could feel her slender body shaking. I tilted her face up toward mine with the tips of my fingers. Tears filled the corners of her eyes. "It's time you went on a trip," I told her. "We've got enough in the savings you could go to Hawaii for a couple of weeks. Or you could visit your aunt in San Francisco for awhile." "I'm not leaving." "It's come too close to home," I said. "I don't want anything to happen to you." "Don't you think I feel the same way?" She pushed herself upright and wiped at the corners of her eyes. "Damn it, Dan, we've been through all this before." "With your brother." "Of course with my brother. He tried to be something he wasn't, and it killed him." "And after he died he became what he hadn't been." "That's right," Janet said. "But I don't want you to get killed the same way." "I'm just a newspaperman. People talk to me and I write what they say. That's all there is to it." "Bullshit." I sat up on the bed behind her, my legs crossed under me. She turned to face me. "People talk to you. Lots of people. Then you take a little bit of what each one of them says and put it all together. And when you do that, sometimes people don't look so good anymore." I knew Janet was right but I didn't like to admit it. If a man told me he was a war hero and I wrote that, then everybody thought he was a war hero. If a man told me he was a war hero, and his wife said he'd never been in the service, then everybody thought he was a fool. "That's the breaks," I said. "I don't tell people what to say." She ignored me. "My brother thought it was his responsibility to expose all the evil in the world. That's why he wanted to be a reporter. He thought reporters were gods, standing above everybody else and looking down. Damn it, Dan, a story in a newspaper can ruin a man's life. That's worse than any court of law in the country." I started to say something, but she wouldn't let me interrupt. "Somebody's trying to kill you, damn it. Can't you get that through your thick head? You wrote something somebody didn't like and they want you dead. You act like Freedom of the Press is a personal shield that deflects everything that gets thrown at you, but it isn't. Don't you understand that? You're just one man, Dan." She took a deep breath, almost on the verge of tears again. "I know what my brother saw in you. I know why he idolized you the way he did. He tried to be just like you and it killed him. If you're not careful, it's going to kill you, too." She looked me square in the face, then turned away. "And I don't think I can handle that right now." I tried to reassure her. "I'll be okay." "Sure. You're Woodward and Bernstein and Superman rolled into one. You're Clark Kent and you let the bad guys beat you up any time they want because you know you'll be the hero in the end." It wasn't like that, but I didn't know how to explain it to her. So I sat in the middle of the bed watching her bare shoulders shake as she drew in a series of ragged breaths. "I love you," I said. Even though we'd been living together since shortly after Billy's death, I'd never been able to tell Janet those three words. "And your job?" "My job is who I am. I don't love it and I don't hate it." "I have to accept that, don't I?" I didn't tell Janet what her choices were. I wanted her to discover them on her own, then reach her own decision. "Damn it, Dan, I love you, too. That's what makes all of this so difficult," Janet said. "If I didn't love you I could just walk away and not give a damn what happened. I couldn't walk away from my brother and I won't walk away from you." "That's fair," I said. "Fair? Who cares about fair? I'm telling you how it's going to be." I pulled her into my arms, my mouth finding hers in a silencing kiss. -------- *Chapter 11* Sitting in Detective Ballany's office, I balanced my notebook on my knee and sipped at a steaming Styrofoam cup of coffee. After I set the coffee cup on the corner of Ballany's desk, I picked up my pen and began writing. "It was obvious from the start," Ballany said. "But I'll show it to you anyhow." He spread out a stack of cards with fingerprints and notations on them. "The reason I never suspected you is simple. Look down at your hands." I did, but I saw nothing unusual. "You're left-handed, but I couldn't confirm it until this morning. You handled the .38 and the M-16, didn't you?" I nodded. "And you tried to fire them with your left hand, so you left prints on both. Left-handed prints." He pointed to one of the cards. "These are the prints we pulled off the gun that killed Franklin. They're your prints, but they're from your right hand. I figured when Anderson cold-cocked you in the parking lot he took the opportunity to press the gun into your hand. An unconscious man leaves as good a set of fingerprints as anybody else. And Anderson wouldn't have taken the time to notice if you were left-handed or right handed." "Why didn't you say something before?" "I couldn't be sure," Ballany said. "Just because you write left-handed doesn't mean you fire a gun with your left hand. I've seen guys like that. The prints we got back this morning confirmed my suspicions." "Okay," I said. "But what about this morning -- who was driving the van?" Ballany shrugged. "Don't know, but he wasn't about to leave a witness behind." "Who was the goon?" "Dutch Baker. A Vietnam vet who turned into a gun for hire. He'd gotten a bad rep for violence but we'd never been able to pin anything on him. Now we don't have to." "You think it might have been Anderson behind the wheel?" "That's as good a guess as any. He's the only person whose name ties into everything so far. The best I can figure is that he picked up some extra firepower and prepared an assault on your house. He knew D'Angelo's boys were watching you so he had to have some expendable help." "And Dutch Baker was it." "Yeah." Ballany gathered his cards. "So I'm in the clear?" "You were never a prime suspect. No motive." I was happy to hear that, though it didn't bring me any closer to solving the mess. "What else have you got for me?" I asked. "You promised more." "This has got to be off the record," Ballany said as he reached for a file folder. "I can't do that." He sat motionless for a moment, holding the folder half open. Then he completed the gesture and threw a pair of 8"x10" black-and-white photos across the desk to me. "We found these in Vicki Wilber's apartment." I spun them around. A good fifteen years younger, Vicki Wilber was featured prominently in both. In one photo she was on her hands and knees, pressing her mouth into a man's crotch. In the other she was alone, except for the carrot she had pressed between her legs. In both photos she was nude. I couldn't help the effect the photos had on me; Vicki Wilber had been a good-looking woman. Ballany continued. "They look like enlargements from an eight-millimeter movie. She must have been in her early twenties when they were taken." I took one last look and turned the photos face down. There was a limit to what I could look at on an empty stomach. "Why would she have these?" "Blackmail," Ballany said. "These were pretty well hidden. It doesn't seem like something she was proud of." "Who would blackmail her?" "We checked all of her bank records. She hadn't made any major withdrawals in more than two years. I figure it was somebody who knew about her relationship with Franklin and wanted to use her to get to him." "Do you know anything else about these?" "Nothing. We don't even know what movie they're from, and we really have no way of finding out. What we have discovered is that she'd been an upstanding citizen for ten or eleven years -- ever since she moved back here. She was a good kid in high school, but there's a four-year gap in her life that we haven't been able to fill. She left home and nobody knows where she went or what she did. When she came back she wouldn't talk about it." When Ballany paused to take a breath, I said, "She wasn't as innocent as she pretended to be." "Hardly. But if she was up to something, I can't figure out what it was." "And she can't tell us now." Ballany grunted. Then he reached across the desk for the photos. * * * * From police headquarters, I returned to the newspaper. Silverman called me into his office as soon as I arrived. "I heard about this morning," he said as I dropped into the chair opposite him. "I've decided to take you off the story." "That's bull and you know it." "Somebody else can follow up on your leads." "It's too late for that," I protested. "This Anderson guy is after me now and I don't think he's going to stop just because I've been taken off the story. Even if he did, who are you going to pick as his next target, one of the new guys?" Silverman waited until I finished, then said, "I wanted to give you the opportunity to back out and save face. I know what it took for O'Shea to back out. Now I think I know why he did." "Maybe he's smarter than I am," I said. "But it doesn't matter now." I explained to the city editor what I'd learned from Ballany. "Leave Vicki Wilber out of it for now," Silverman said. "But give me an update on the story about this morning, and I want you to include everything else Ballany told you." "What about Franklin's funeral this afternoon?" "You cover it. You might as well." I returned to my desk. As soon as I'd called up a new file on the VDT, I began work on the story. The latest action had kept the story alive and on the front page. After I finished the update, I dialed the D'Angelo restaurant. When I told the woman on the other end who I was, she put me through to Luigi D'Angelo. "You cost me a lot," D'Angelo said as soon as he picked up the phone. "I know." "But maybe the investment is worth it." "I'm not so sure," I said. "Why's that?" "Because it's going to cost you a whole lot more to keep me alive than I may be worth. John Anderson's gunning for me. He's already taken out one of your men and put another in the hospital. How many can you afford to lose?" D'Angelo didn't respond. "The southsider is wearing you out, nibbling at the edges of your action. I'd bet he's making you nervous -- that he's doing more damage than you'd ever be willing to tell me about." "You're a smart boy, Fox. Maybe you're too smart." This time I didn't respond. "Maybe I shouldn't put any more effort into this business arrangement." "I don't think we've ever had an arrangement," I said. "You did something for me and I paid you back. Only now I don't think you did it for me. I think you did it for yourself. You want to know who the southsider is and what he's doing. You think I'm going to find that out for you." I took a quick breath. "Maybe I won't tell you when I do find out." "Oh, you will, pencil-pusher, you will. If you don't tell me direct, you'll write something for your newspaper and I'll read about it there." "It might be too late then," I said. "Maybe I'll be around to write your obituary. Or his. I think one of you is going to kill the other before this is over. I plan to be around to write about it." The conversation didn't progress any further, even though we talked for another few minutes before I cut it short. I'd wanted D'Angelo to know I didn't consider myself in his debt because of what had happened, and by the time I'd hung up I was sure he'd gotten the message. A phone rang and was answered by one of the other reporters. He swore loudly, then yelled, "Somebody get Marotta. We need a photographer uptown. A Caddy with two lawyers inside exploded a few minutes ago." He turned to his VDT screen and began typing while I called down to the darkroom for Marotta. Soon Marotta was on his way to the parking garage and the reporter who'd taken the call was headed out the door with him. I suspected it was another move in the war, but I knew they could handle the story. If it tied in later, I'd pick up the pieces. Ballany phoned a few minutes later. "We found the van," he said. "We know Anderson was driving. We picked up a print from the door handle." "So we know he's been in on everything from the start?" "It looks like he killed Franklin, all right. And he's been up to his ears in it ever since." "The question then is why?" "Look, all I care about right now is finding Anderson. He's out walking the streets and I know he's killed at least two people since he came to town: Alderman Franklin and Dutch Baker. It looks like he's got more people on his list, too." "Like me." "You ain't shittin'." "Find out who the new guy running the south side is and you'll find Anderson not too far away." "We've been working on that angle, but it's been a brick wall the whole time." "Any possibilities?" "None," Ballany said. "This guy has insulated himself so well that we don't know how to touch him. We've rounded up some of the lower echelon boys, but they all say their orders come through people farther up the ladder. And the farther up we go, the less we can get out of these guys, and the less grounds we have for bringing them in." "Somebody's got to know something," I said. "Regardless, there's an APB out on Anderson, and we want some heavy press coverage about his being wanted for questioning. The Chief's holding a news conference at 2:00 and wants everybody from the press to be there. He wants this guy's face plastered all over the city. Somebody's seen him." "I won't be there," I said. "I'll be at Franklin's funeral at 2:00. But I'll make sure somebody from the paper covers the story." "You do that," Ballany said. "You've got as much reason to want him roped in as anybody else does." After I finished with Ballany, I relayed the information about the news conference to Silverman, then I went across the street to deComposing Room, a small bar and grill lorded over by a former Linotype operator and frequented by reporters and typesetters. I found an empty booth in the rear of the bar and settled into the shadows. While I was tossing back a bourbon and preparing myself for the rest of the day, I was interrupted by an average-looking woman in a tan pants suit. "Are you Dan Fox?" she asked. I said I was and offered her a seat. "They said I'd find you here. I need to talk to you." "What about?" "Bill Franklin and Vicki Wilber. I heard them arguing last Friday." My attention focused quickly, despite the drink. "Have you said anything to the police yet?" She shook her head apprehensively. "Do you think I should have?" "Not yet. Tell me what you heard." I slipped out my notebook and placed it on the table. She glanced nervously at it. "It's okay," I said. "Tell me what you heard." "Not much, really," she began. "I was in the next room, filing some papers for Alderman Willis, and I could hear their voices coming through the wall." "What'd they say?" "Vicki called him a ... a son-of-a-bitch and told him he'd better go home for lunch." "Why?" She shook her head. "I don't know, she just said that he'd better not stay in the office. She said she was sorry for what she'd done and that she loved him anyhow. Then he yelled something at her -- I don't know what -- and she yelled back. Then she left." "What about you? What did you do?" "I stayed in the file room until she was gone. Then I went back to my office." "Why didn't you tell the police about all of this?" "I didn't know Alderman Franklin had been killed," she said. "I only worked a half-day. Alderman Willis let me leave early. I spent the weekend on a ... a fishing trip with my fiance and I didn't see the newspaper until I got home late last night." She paused, almost blushing. "I called in sick this morning, not knowing what to do about it. I finally decided to talk to you. I've seen you going in and out of City Hall so often -- I mean I've never met you or anything like that, I've just seen you -- that I thought, maybe, you know -- " She had begun to mumble so I cut her short. "You did the right thing," I said. "What you should do now is call this number and ask for Detective Ballany." I wrote Ballany's number on a torn-out page of my notebook and offered it to her. "Tell him what you've just told me." She took the slip of paper from my outstretched hand. "I'll do that." -------- *Chapter 12* St. Paul's was bustling with activity when I arrived at a quarter before 2:00. I swung my car into the parking lot, parked, then made my way up the church steps. I eased into the cathedral and found an empty pew near the rear. From where I sat I could see Angela Franklin and her attorney, Marcus Willoughby, in the first pew. I watched as the last of the mourners filtered in. The service itself was uneventful, so I spent my time scanning the other faces. Among them I spotted the mayor and most of the aldermen. I also noticed some prominent union leaders and a variety of businessmen. Luigi D'Angelo was there. So was J. Standish Stevens. When the priest finally finished, six aldermen lifted Franklin's casket from its place and slowly carried it from the cathedral to a waiting hearse. Angela Franklin's lawyer escorted her to a waiting limo and the rest of us headed for our cars. When I slipped into mine, I found a folded square of paper waiting. My name was neatly penned on the front and when I unfolded it I found a short note from Franklin's widow. She wanted to see me after the service. I refolded the square and slid it into my pocket. Then I started my car and pulled into the funeral procession. It was a slow trip to the cemetery. Once there, we all filed out of our cars, followed the casket to the burial plot, listened to the priest's last words, and watched as the casket was lowered into the ground. Angela Franklin stayed remarkably calm through it all, and soon the crowd dispersed. Angela stayed where she was, watching as shovelsful of dirt cascaded upon her husband's casket. Willoughby stood beside her, not speaking, not looking around. I hung back until the last of the mourners expressed their sorrow and the television camera crews had packed up. When only a few people remained, I made my way to Angela's side. "Hello, Dan," she said. "I've been listening to the news the past few days, reading your articles in the paper, and all." I said something noncommittal. It might have been a grunt. "There's been a lot of killing going on since my husband's death," she continued. "It's gone too far already." "Retaliation," I said. "My husband made many friends over the years -- some enemies, too, I suppose. That's what bothers me, and that's why I wanted to talk to you." She looked up at me then. "I want you to ride back to the house with me." I said I would. She motioned to her lawyer. "Give Marcus your keys," she told me. "He'll follow in your car." I reached in my pocket for my keys, then handed them to the balding man. Willoughby hadn't said anything yet, and only nodded when the keys fell into his open palm. "It's the blue Chevy," I said as we turned and walked to Angela's waiting limo. A beefy chauffeur opened the limo door for Angela and I climbed in beside her. On the way to her home, Angela said, "I found some things in Bill's files that I want you to see." "What?" I asked. She shook her head, indicating that she wouldn't tell me until we were safely inside her house. Once there, she dismissed the chauffeur and led me inside. A few minutes later Willoughby met us in Franklin's study. Angela settled into the chair behind the desk and tossed an envelope across the desk to me. "This came back in the mail today. I found a carbon copy of it in Bill's files. He planned to announce his withdrawal from the election." I glanced at the envelope. It was addressed to the chairman of the Board of Election Commissioners, and it bore Bill Franklin's return address. Stamped in red across the front of the envelope was the notation, "Returned for postage." The envelope bore a Friday postmark and no stamp. I opened the envelope, noting that it had been torn open by someone before me. I slid the single sheet of white paper out and read the letter quickly. It was precise and to the point. Bill Franklin had intended to withdraw from the election. "You sure Bill wrote this?" I asked. "I have no reason to doubt it," Angela said. "That's his signature." "Why would he withdraw?" "He was afraid of something." "What?" "His shadow," Angela said sarcastically. "I also found these." She tossed a pair of 8"x10" photos across the desk to me. They were duplicates of the photos Ballany had found in Vicki Wilber's apartment. "Anything else?" She shook her head. "I think my husband was being blackmailed. Somebody knew about his relationship with his secretary." "Like you?" I asked. She smiled. It was an off-balance little grin. "Like me," she said. "But I wouldn't blackmail my own husband." "But you might have blackmailed Vicki Wilber." "I might have, if I'd known about these." Willoughby cleared his throat. I looked at the date on the letter and the postmark on the envelope. "He must have mailed this on his way to the office." "Bill was in a hurry Friday," Angela said. "Something was bothering him. He left without saying good-bye." "Bill must have realized he was withdrawing from the election too late for the Democratic machine to pick his replacement." "I'm sure he realized that," she said. "My husband wasn't stupid, just scared." "Did he receive any phone calls before he left Friday morning?" "None. I would have heard the phone ring." "Did he call anyone?" "He might have. I don't know." Angela Franklin glanced down at the photos. "He was in here for almost an hour before he left. I heard the typewriter for a few minutes, but I didn't pay any attention. He used to make notes for himself in the morning, write down ideas, and do things like that." "What about the mail?" I asked. "I know the carrier stops by here in the early afternoon. Did your husband receive any packages or large envelopes on Thursday?" "Not that I remember. Why?" I indicated the photos. "I thought he might have received those Thursday, spent the night agonizing over them, and wrote the resignation Friday morning." She shook her head. "I saw the mail before he did most days. I don't remember any packages for the past two or three months, at least." I pondered that, knowing Franklin could have received the photos in any number of ways, the mail being only the most obvious. Willoughby stood off to one side, mixing drinks. I asked for a bourbon on the rocks and he brought it to me a moment later, after he'd handed a drink to Angela. I paced the room with the bourbon in my hand, considering what I'd been told. They watched me. Finally, I said, "Bill had an argument with his secretary about half an hour before he died." I pulled out my notebook and quoted what the woman in the tan pants suit had said. "'She said she was sorry for what she'd done and that she loved him anyhow.' You think she meant those photos?" Angela shrugged. "If they'd gotten out while Bill was alive, and if it became known that he was sleeping with her, it could have ruined his career. Bill was wiser to withdraw from the election than to risk losing face. Better politicians than my husband have been brought to their knees by things like this." "If somebody just wanted him out of the race, and if he'd already planned to withdraw, why was he killed?" "May I interrupt here?" Willoughby said finally, drawing my complete attention. "The point we must consider carefully is whether these photos and Alderman Franklin's death were in any way connected. The first and most obvious thought is that, yes they are. On the other hand, he may have resigned for reasons other than the blackmail inherent in his possession of the photos, and we have neglected to consider the possibility that Vicki Wilber herself may have given the photos to him. After all, she is the principal subject of each photo, and the two of them were known to be sexually involved." I listened, but thought otherwise. "The other possibility is that whoever killed the alderman didn't realize that he had already written a letter withdrawing from the election. In that case, with the election drawing closer each day, there was only one way to be sure he was out of the picture. Since I don't believe he was old enough to die of natural causes without causing some sort of inquiry, why not make his death the most public spectacle possible, focusing everyone's attention on the alderman's death, and drawing the attention away from whatever the killer's real motive was." "And that is?" Willoughby shrugged. "I'm not a detective. I'm only attempting to provide you with another outlook on the matter." "Fine," Angela told him. "But have you got anything other than idle speculation?" The lawyer cleared his throat, took a sip from his drink, and cleared his throat again. Then he said, "I talked with your husband last week -- Tuesday if my memory serves me correct, though I can check my calendar at the office to confirm the date if you want me to -- and at that time he was interested in knowing his personal net worth." Angela Franklin almost spit her drink across the desk top. "He hasn't got a net worth. The money's all mine." "That's where you're mistaken, Mrs. Franklin," said Willoughby apologetically. "Although I was hired to attend to the family's legal matters, I was also involved in the investment of funds for the alderman. At the time of his death, his personal net worth exceeded $400,000, though it was filtered through a number of accounts so that it could not be easily traced to him. His personal will, which I have not yet discussed with you, left it all to Vicki Wilber should he predecease her. As it stands, I believe the proceeds will become a part of her estate and will be distributed to her heirs, should there be any." "The bastard." "I should like to reserve judgment on that, if I may. However, I would like to point out that you're hardly likely to miss such a small amount, considering your own worth." I interrupted. "What did he want the money for?" "I didn't say he wanted the money, only that he wanted to know how much he had." "And why did he want to know that?" "He never said and I never asked. The alderman's affairs, so to speak, were personal, and were only my concern to the extent that they directly affected me." He smiled. "He did, however, ask me to liquidate a certain amount of stock and some bonds, and have the funds transferred to ready cash." "For a payoff of some kind?" Angela prompted. "Or a trip?" "He didn't say." "Well, what did he say?" "I've told you everything I know about the matter," Willoughby said, "and I believe I've violated lawyer-client confidentiality in doing so. Believe me, Mr. Fox, I would have told you none of this if I didn't think it relevant to the discovery of the alderman's murderer, and if Mrs. Franklin were not here to hear it herself." I was beginning to think of Willoughby as an oatmeal lump -- something that gets in the way of an otherwise fine breakfast. I turned to Angela Franklin. "What else did you find in the files? Any threatening letters, additional photos, anything?" "Nothing. I've spent the weekend sorting through my husband's things. I found the photos this morning and the letter came back this afternoon. That's when I examined the files more closely and found the carbon of the letter." The doorbell rang and Willoughby left the study to answer the front door. A moment later Detective Ballany followed him into the room. "Surprise," I said. "You're a step ahead of me today, aren't you?" Ballany asked. "Have to be." "I talked to the woman you sent." "And?" "I suppose I heard the same thing you did. Which edition is it scheduled for?" I glanced at my watch. I'd missed the deadline for the three-star final with everything I'd learned since noon. "It's too late now," I said. "It'll be in tomorrow's first edition." Ballany cut me short and looked at Franklin's widow. "I suppose Dan has already told you that we know who killed your husband." She stiffened. "I haven't," I said. "John Anderson -- he's a gunman out of New York." While Ballany spoke, I quietly folded Franklin's letter of withdrawal, slid it into the envelope, and placed it in my pocket with my notebook. Angela Franklin watched me, but said nothing. Ballany crossed the room when he saw the photos on the desk. He picked them up, recognized them, and smiled. "Vicki Wilber was a popular girl. Her photos seem to be every place I go these days." I changed the flow of conversation. "What happened with those two lawyers uptown?" "Dead," Ballany said. Willoughby blanched. "Car bombing. We have a team going through their offices now, but it looks like they handled transactions for the D'Angelo family." Ballany stared at Willoughby. "Whose side are you on?" "Mrs. Franklin's," Willoughby said, his voice hoarse. "What about John Anderson?" Angela asked. "Where is he?" "I wish I knew," Ballany said. "But we can't find him." -------- *Chapter 13* "You're an incompetent fool," Angela Franklin said. Ballany smiled. "You're entitled to your opinion, Mrs. Franklin," he said. "I'm not here to change it." "So why are you here? Just to give me the unpleasant news that you know who murdered my husband, but you can't put your finger on him?" "No, ma'am. I came to talk about Vicki Wilber." "She was a tramp." Angela's hand waved at the photos. "What else do you need to know?" "I'd like to talk to you alone, if I may." I prepared to leave. "Willoughby stays," Angela said. "If you insist." "And Dan might as well stay, too. I've got nothing to hide." Ballany looked at me, then sighed. "You might as well," he said. "You've been in on everything else." I refilled my bourbon glass and pulled up a chair. Ballany turned to Angela Franklin. "How long did you know Vicki Wilber?" "We've been through all this before," Angela said. "I met Vicki a few weeks after my husband hired her." "How well did you know her?" "Not nearly as well as my husband." I smiled. Angela was being sarcastic and she wasn't making it easy for Ballany. Ballany had a file folder tucked under one arm. He pulled it out and set it on the corner of the desk. "I was going to show you a pair of photos and ask if you'd ever seen them before." He indicated the two photos already on the desk top. "Obviously you have. How did you get them?" Angela told Ballany exactly what she'd told me about finding the photos in her husband's files. She didn't mention the letter that had prompted her search. Ballany covered all the territory about blackmail, his questions and Angela's answers adding nothing to what I already knew. "If I may interrupt for a moment, Detective," Willoughby said. "If you are in any way suggesting that my client was in any manner involved with the alderman's death, then perhaps we should see a warrant for her arrest before you continue questioning her in this manner." "I'm suggesting nothing," Ballany told the little man. "I'm only trying to understand what's happened here. As I see it, Mrs. Franklin had every reason to divorce her husband, yet she chose not to. That's rather odd, given today's divorce-ridden society. The question is, why? Did she know something was going to happen to her husband that would solve all of her problems, leaving her a wealthy widow?" Angela interrupted. "You think I hired this Anderson person to kill my husband?" "Mrs. Franklin," Detective Ballany said in his most soothing voice. "I'm only trying to understand your relationship with your husband. That's all I'm doing." Angela lifted her drink to her lips, found the glass empty, and motioned for Willoughby to refill it. Ballany continued. "Why didn't you divorce your husband?" "I'm Catholic." "Even Catholics get divorced." Angela didn't respond. "Were you still sleeping with him?" "We had separate rooms." "Since when?" "As soon as I found out he was shacking up with Vicki Wilber." "How long has that been?" "About a year. No more than that." "Did you ever threaten to kill your husband if you found him with another woman?" "No. I never -- " "At a party, about four years ago." "I...." She paused. "I might have." "There were witnesses." "It was meant as a joke. It was idle conversation. I didn't mean anything by it." Angela's eyes had the wary look of an animal backed into a corner. "I'm sure you didn't," Ballany said. "But you did say it, didn't you?" "Yes. I said I'd kill my husband if I ever caught him with another woman." "What about the other woman? Did you ever threaten Vicki Wilber?" "You're fishing," Willoughby told Ballany. "Whether my client made any such remarks or not is a moot point. The newspaper articles say that Vicki Wilber committed suicide. If you're not accusing Mrs. Franklin of her husband's murder, and you can't accuse her of Vicki Wilber's death, just what do you want to know?" Ballany turned on the little man. He was angry, the blood rushing to his face. "I want to know just why the hell Bill Franklin died." The lawyer took an abrupt step backward, away from the raging cop. I slid the envelope from my pocket and stood. "Look at this," I said as I held it out toward Ballany. Angela gave me a sharp glance. I'd broken her trust by offering the envelope to the detective, and I realized it. I'd violated the trust of quite a few people since Alderman Franklin's murder, but I couldn't find it in my conscience to do otherwise. Perhaps when this was all over I wouldn't be able to regain that trust. Perhaps I'd lose my credibility as a journalist. But right then it didn't seem to matter. Ballany took the envelope, read the letter inside, and said only, "I'm taking this with me." Then he picked up his file folder and headed for the door. I followed him. Angela Franklin said, "I trusted you." On the front porch, Ballany turned to me and said, "You're a hell of a lot of help. If you had this, why did you take so long to give it to me?" I didn't answer his question. Instead I told him the story of the letter as we walked to our cars. "Do you think she wanted to keep it from me?" Ballany asked. "I'm not sure. I stuck it in my pocket just for good measure." I smiled. "Possession is nine-tenths of the law." Ballany opened his car door. "Let me know what you find out about the letter," I said as Ballany slid into the driver's seat and pulled his door closed. He waved the envelope at me. "Nine-tenths." * * * * When I returned to the office, Silverman was angry. "Where the hell have you been? You missed deadline almost two hours ago." Then he softened a bit and said, "Nothing happened, did it?" "I'm okay," I said. "Nothing happened to me." He breathed a sigh of relief. "Any word about O'Shea?" I asked. "He refuses to post bail. I offered to go down and bail him out personally, but he won't let me. He says he's better off where he's at than he would be walking the streets. I offered to let him take his last week's vacation so he wouldn't lose any pay," Silverman said. "He took it." I nodded. O'Shea was better off sitting in a jail cell with a shifting tide of drunks and disorderlies. Silverman left me alone at my desk when I promised to have a story for him by morning. I peeled off my jacket and slung it over the back of my chair. Then I sat, turned to the VDT and began punching keys to open a new file on the computer. As soon as a fresh screen appeared, I began typing. And when I began, the words tumbled over one another. I found myself constantly scrolling backward to insert forgotten characters, or scrolling upward to insert a paragraph of important information. Everything that had been said to me, and everything that had been said in front of me, was on the record. I used my notes extensively, and my memory filled in a few gaps where my pen hadn't worked as fast as my hearing. By the time I finished I had outlined the latest development in the murder of Alderman Bill Franklin, and this time I hadn't spared Vicki Wilber's reputation. Then I turned to the three-star final laying open on my desk and read about the police chief's press conference and about the car-bombing of the two lawyers. I read the stories twice, then inserted bits of information from them into the story I had written, attempting to give the readers a complete overview of what had been happening. Despite my best efforts, though, I knew Silverman or one of the other editors would give my story the once-over before the editorial conference the next morning, and they would remove something or rearrange the story. The odds were against me presenting the entire story as I knew it, but I left the building knowing I'd given it my best shot. With my jacket slung over my shoulder, I headed for the hotel room where Janet waited. * * * * I never made it. Inside my car, slumped against the passenger door and bleeding on the seat, was John Anderson. I held the driver's door open and stared at him in surprise. He opened one eye, then the other. When he recognized me, he weakly lifted a .38 from his lap and pointed it in my direction. "You should learn to lock your doors," he said. His voice was a harsh whisper. He waved the gun at me. "Get in." The gun was a powerful incentive. I climbed in. Anderson scooted upward, pulling himself with one arm slung over the back of the seat. More blood oozed from the wound in his gut. I slid my key into the ignition, started the car smoothly, and pulled from the newspaper's lot. "Where do you want me to go?" I asked. I could tell that he needed a doctor, but I didn't offer to find one. "Just drive," he said. The gun wavered a bit, then steadied. I drove in silence until Anderson said, "I want to see D'Angelo." "You'll be dead before you get to him." "That's why you're gonna take me. He likes you." I didn't mention that D'Angelo wasn't feeling kindly towards me at the moment. Instead I pointed the car towards the Hill. Anderson coughed, spit blood onto the front of his shirt, and made no effort to wipe it away. "Why do you want to see D'Angelo?" He didn't answer. I glanced over at him, remembering our first conversation. "It looks like the media watchdog has had his balls cut off." "Still got my teeth," he said. The barrel of the .38 waved at me. "Why'd you come to me?" "Two birds," he said. "One stone." I figured I was one of the birds and the gun in his hand counted for the stone. I was in the mood to talk. Anderson wasn't. But I kept trying because as long as I was talking, I was still alive. "You've been big news lately." "I read the papers." "A lot of people are looking for you." "You found me." I glanced over at him again. "It looks like somebody else found you first." "Yeah," he said. "He'll regret it." "You expect to get revenge?" I stopped for a red light. The streets were almost empty at this hour, rush-hour traffic long past. He coughed again, spit up more blood. I didn't expect him to last long, but he still held the gun on me. "You're just a messenger boy," I said. "Who's the man at the top?" "It don't concern you." "My ass," I said. Anderson smiled weakly. "He'll have your ass if he wants it." "Who?" "Just drive." Anderson wouldn't answer any more questions after that. I finished the drive in silence, pulling my car to a halt behind D'Angelo's restaurant. I couldn't see any of D'Angelo's goons hanging around, but I knew they were there. They had to be. Anderson slid down in the seat. When I opened the car door and the overhead light came on mine was the only silhouette people outside the car could see. I stood beside the car and shut the door. A deep, gruff voice asked my name. "Dan Fox. Is D'Angelo here?" The voice was wary. "Why?" "I need to talk to him." "Talk to me." I stepped away from the car toward the restaurant's rear door. "Another step and you're dogmeat," said the voice. I stopped. "I want to make a deal with D'Angelo." "He don't make deals." "Tell him I'm here," I said. "I'll wait." I heard a second voice whispering to the first and the first whisper back. I couldn't understand what was said. A door opened and closed. Time passed, then the same door opened and closed again. "He knows you're here." "And?" "He doesn't want to see you. He says you've got nothing to talk about." I gambled. I figured I had at least two guns trained on me: the one in John Anderson's hand and the one held by the voice. "Tell him I know where John Anderson is." I heard the hammer on the gun inside my car click back into place. The voice did not respond. I opened my car door and stood silhouetted in the light. D'Angelo had barricaded himself in the family restaurant and I could think of nothing to say that would open the door for me. "Get in and start the car," Anderson whispered. "Tell D'Angelo he had his chance," I said to the voice. Then I slipped into the car and pulled the door shut. I started the engine, shifted the car into reverse, and snapped the headlights on. I caught a husky, pale-skinned man in the headlights. He had a revolver pointed at me but the headlights blinded him. Anderson fired two shots through my windshield, spinning D'Angelo's goon around with the first, and placing a hole in his side with the second. I shoved my right foot hard against the accelerator. Gravel pelted the underside of my car as it sped backward from the parking lot. Gunfire erupted around me. My rear window exploded in a shower of tiny fragments. Anderson fired a third shot. I slammed on the brakes, throwing Anderson back against the passenger seat, slapped the car into gear, and left a pair of smoking rubber streaks in the middle of the street as I sped away from D'Angelo's restaurant. Anderson leaned over the back of the seat and fired twice at a car that tried to follow us. I watched in the rearview mirror as a sedan slid sideways and slammed into a telephone pole. I didn't know how many rounds had been in Anderson's .38 when he had climbed into my car earlier that evening, but I knew he'd used five of them. I took a chance, released my grip on the steering wheel, and slammed my right fist into the side of Anderson's face, knocking his head back against the passenger window. I wrenched the revolver from his grasp and pumped the last shot through the passenger door inches from Anderson's leg. Anderson swore. I threw the gun over the seat. It skittered out the broken rear window, down the trunk, and into the street. "Now you're playing my game," I said under my breath. I slammed the accelerator to the floor and ignored a few stoplights. "I've got a friend who wants to talk to you before you cash in your chips." By then Anderson was too weak to argue. The gun battle at D'Angelo's had taken a lot out of him and the fist I'd planted in his face had done the rest. A few minutes later I slid the car to a halt at City Hospital's emergency room doors, my horn blaring. -------- *Chapter 14* I was standing with Detective Ballany when a grey-haired surgeon found us in the hospital's waiting room. "He didn't have a chance," the doctor said. "We did everything we could." Ballany swore. I wrote in my notebook. When the doctor left us, I said to Ballany, "You've got your killer." "Fat lot of good it does me. I could pin the rap on any stiff you drag in here and be just as well off." "Any stiff wouldn't be John Anderson." Ballany finished his cold coffee, crumpled the Styrofoam cup, and dropped it into a plastic wastebasket. He stared at me a moment, his eyelids squinting against the harsh glare of the hospital lights. "You're getting to be bad luck, Dan," he said. "People die when they talk to you." We walked down a long corridor toward the hospital's rear entrance. Ballany said, "Do you ever get the feeling that maybe nobody wants you around?" I'd gotten the feeling before, from Michael O'Shea, and I was beginning to get it from Ballany. I nodded curtly. As we pushed through the glass doors leading to the parking lot, Ballany said, "You need a ride someplace? I had your car impounded." "The hotel." "I don't think that's a good place to go. You registered under your own name. Anybody could find you there." This time I swore. Janet was still in the room and D'Angelo's men had a good reason to be looking for me. When Ballany saw the look on my face, he said, "It's okay. I took your wife to my house." "We're not married," I said. "Is she safe?" "I'm the only one who knows she's there. I wouldn't risk my family." He unlocked the door of his unmarked police car, slid into the driver's seat, then reached across to unlock the passenger door for me. I dropped in, pulled the door closed, and Ballany drove slowly away from the hospital. "You think Anderson was double-crossed?" he asked. "Looks that way." "Did he tell you why he wanted to talk to D'Angelo?" "Nope," I said. "Maybe he wanted to set up his own double-cross." "Why come to you?" "Maybe he was in the neighborhood." "How far could he have walked like that?" "A few blocks, maybe." I watched cars pass us in the other lane. "Somebody should have seen him, though." Ballany was silent, concentrating on his driving. Then he said, "D'Angelo probably thinks you had something to do with the shooting at his place." "I'd make book on it." "Shit, Dan, maybe I should drive you to a mortuary so you can get yourself buried now." "I'm not ready," I said. "When I am, I'll let you know." "Do that, will you? I don't want to miss it." Ballany drove directly to police headquarters and we climbed the stairs to his office. Once inside, he prepared two cups of coffee, handed one to me, and sipped at his. I dropped into the seat on the guest's side of his desk. "What'd you find out about Franklin's letter?" "It looks like he wrote it, all right. The type matches his typewriter, the letterhead's his, the whole bit." "So why did he withdraw from the election?" Ballany shrugged. "He'd been in politics a long time." "Long enough to quit? He'd never lost an election." "The Vicki Wilber thing could have done it." "That's what his wife said. I don't believe it." I was treading on thin ice again. "Franklin talked like a southside truck driver, but he was smart -- smart enough to walk the fine edge of a razor and not get cut." "Everybody makes a mistake," Ballany said. "Franklin's turned out to be fatal." "What if Franklin didn't make a mistake?" I asked. "What if Franklin knew he was going to be killed?" "You make a lousy detective," Ballany said. "Angela Franklin said her husband was upset when he left the house Friday morning. If you assume he was, then you also assume he accidentally dropped that letter in the mailbox without sticking a stamp to it." "Yeah?" "But look at it this way: assume Angela Franklin is lying. If the alderman left the house in a perfectly calm state, not the least bit flustered, then he might have dropped the letter in the box without a stamp on purpose." Ballany shook his head. "What would be the point of having the letter come back?" "Maybe he hoped to be there when it came back. If he was, he could destroy the letter and nobody would know it had ever existed. If he wasn't there, somebody else would see it, open it up, and see what it was." "Insurance." "Of a sort." "But his wife got the mail first most days. Wouldn't she have just stuck a stamp to the envelope and dropped it back in the mail?" "Franklin would be expecting the letter. He'd keep his eyes open." I remembered the little sticker I saw on the mailbox every time I dropped my bill payments in the blue box on the way to work. "If the post office had been on their toes, Franklin would have received the letter back Saturday, and he would have been home waiting for it. They guarantee overnight delivery within the city's zip code areas. In the box by five, delivered the next day." "But they sat on it." "Not on purpose," I said. "How could they? A letter goes through so many different hands." Ballany made a note on his desk pad, then reached for a stack of file folders on the far corner of his desk. He reached into the pile and pulled out a slim folder. He thumbed through the contents -- about a dozen various size sheets of paper -- then he looked up at me. "What we need to know, then, is what kind of mood Bill Franklin was in when he left the house Friday morning." He wrote something on one of the sheets of paper, perhaps copying what he'd written on his desk pad. "Who would know?" "His wife. She said Franklin was in a hurry." I consulted my notes. "Something was bothering him and he left without saying good-bye." Ballany shuffled papers, found another that he liked, and wrote on it. "Who else?" "His secretary." "She's dead. No use to us now." I thumbed further back in my notebook. The pages were covered with a nearly-illegible scrawl. "She had an argument with Franklin that afternoon. If he was already upset, he could have started it. There's a witness to the argument, a secretary of some kind. I met her -- " "Betty Zale. The lady in the tan pants suit." "That's her," I said. "And that means at least three different people claim Franklin was having a bad day." "Bad enough to get killed." I looked up at Ballany. I hadn't expected a joke, even a poor one. A weak smile crossed the lower half of his face, but his eyes didn't twinkle. They were dull and unresponding. He'd had a long day. So had I. I returned to my notes, thumbing further back. "What about the guy who talked to Franklin earlier that morning?" I asked. "Vicki Wilber said Franklin knew the man because as soon as Vicki announced him, Franklin had the guy come straight in." "What guy?" "I don't know. She didn't know his name." I looked up. "Didn't she tell you?" "This is the first I've heard about another visitor." I swore. Even the most accurate notes did no good if you didn't use them and I'd presumed Ballany knew everything I knew. I thumbed back a page. "I took her to Shanghai's Friday night. She told me, 'I went over all of this with the police. They have his appointment book, and they have mine.'" "She didn't say anything about an earlier visitor." I considered. "Look, she was distraught. Her lover had just been gunned down. Maybe she wasn't thinking straight when she talked to your boys, or maybe somebody didn't take good notes." "You seem to." "I have to. Libel laws. I have to be prepared to have my notes subpoenaed." Ballany closed the folder and reached for another one. "What did she say about this guy?" "Only that he was a 'nice guy in a suit' and that she thought she could remember him if she saw him again. She'd never seen him before." "Tall, short, medium height? Give." "She didn't say. I didn't think to ask." Ballany pulled a sheet of paper from the thick second file folder. He slid it across the desk to me. "Here's a photocopy of Franklin's appointment books. Yours is the only name on it for Friday." I glanced at the photocopy and nodded. "Vicki Wilber's appointment book is the same." "So?" "So he had the entire day free. He didn't have to make his visitor wait. That doesn't mean he knew the guy." I slid the photocopy back to Ballany and leaned back in my chair. It was getting late and my eyes hurt. I massaged my temples. "Look at this," Ballany said, indicating the stack of file folders on the corner of his desk. It was better than half a foot tall. "Every single one of those contains something about Franklin's murder. Coroner reports, statements from witnesses, fingerprint cards, copies of the news stories in both papers, copies of the report by the first cop on the scene, copies of my own god-damned reports. All that paperwork for nothing. It doesn't mean a damned thing when we have every cop in the city searching for Alderman Franklin's killer and the son-of-a-bitch falls into your lap and dies." I listened, mostly because I had nothing to say. I felt as frustrated as Ballany, certainly no worse. It was his job to solve the puzzle; I only had to write about it. Ballany slapped his hand against his desk top. A file folder slid slowly from the top of the stack and landed next to his hand. "We could wrap the case up right now," he said. "We've got the killer and he can't clutter up the court docket with motions and bullshit. But if we did we'd be holding a ball of string with dozens of loose ends." He meant the photos of Vicki Wilber and the letter Franklin had written and the reason behind Franklin's argument with his secretary, and whether or not Franklin knew the man who had visited him a few hours before his death. But mostly he meant that we still didn't know who had hired John Anderson and Rocko Andretti. Ballany pushed back his chair and stood. "Let's go home," he said. "It's been a long day. It won't get any shorter by sitting here." -------- *Chapter 15* I spent an abbreviated night at Ballany's suburban home. Janet was there waiting for me. She'd had a reasonable evening with Ballany's wife and his two sons and she'd had time to discuss our destroyed living room with our insurance agent, but when we were finally alone in the guest bedroom, she asked if it was necessary for her to stay. I told her it was, but only because I knew she wouldn't leave town and I knew of no better place for her to be. The next morning -- a dull, rainy Tuesday -- Ballany dropped me off at the newspaper building, waited until I was inside the lobby, then drove away. I walked to the elevator, punched the button and waited for it to descend. I wasn't like Charlie Marotta, trying to prove my youth by racing the elevator every day. I'd reached the point in my life where just waking up each morning was enough for me. Sometimes it was more than enough. The elevator was empty when the doors slid open. I stepped in and rode slowly up to the city room, wondering how I'd handle John Anderson's death when I began work on the story. The city room was nearly deserted when I weaved my way through the jungle of desks and chairs to my own appointed spot. I'd arrived before the day shift usually began filtering in, and after most of the night crew had ducked out. I dropped into my swivel chair and, as I spun myself into place before the waiting VDT, my gaze crossed over the top of Michael O'Shea's deserted desk. Two reporters at the other end of the room laughed at something, then one glanced at his watch and grabbed his jacket. The other followed his lead. A moment later they headed down the stairs, still discussing something they found mutually funny. I turned back to stare at O'Shea's desk. Something he'd told me in the john just before he'd gotten himself arrested came back to me. It was something I hadn't bothered to write in my notebook, something that hadn't meant much to me at the time. I reached for the phone and dialed the in-house number for the newspaper's morgue -- the place where old stories go to die. I wanted one exhumed. A young man answered. It was the same one I'd talked to on Saturday. I told him what I wanted. "Give me a few minutes to get started," he said. "I just got here a few minutes ago and it looks like somebody threw a party down here." "How long?" I wanted to know. "If you had the exact dates I could have it upstairs in a few minutes, but you've got me searching through two years of newspapers. Give me a couple of hours at least." "You've got it," I said. He hung up without responding. I'd never met the body that went with the voice, didn't even know the kid's name, but someday I was going to send him a bottle of good wine. He knew his job and he did it well. I looked over at the coffee pot. It was still plugged in so I walked over to it. My shoes echoed slightly as I walked across the linoleum floor. There's nothing quite like being alone in the city room those few minutes between shifts. It fills me with an awesome feeling of power, the power to write anything about anybody and send it to the composing room. There were no editors to advise against it, nobody looking over my shoulder to tell me not to. The spell broke when the phone rang. By then I had a cup of coffee scalding my hand and was on my way back to my desk. I leaned over and snatched up the telephone's handset. "City desk." "That you, Mr. Fox?" It was D'Angelo. "Good morning, Louie," I said. I wasn't feeling courteous. He sighed. "I thought your mother taught you better manners. I suppose I was wrong." "My mother taught me to wipe my shoes after I've stepped in shit." The jab didn't phase him. "You come to visit my establishment last night," he said. "You did not come in the front door like a customer. You came to the back door like a beggar." "I never beg." He continued as if I hadn't spoken. "I was in conference at the time and I could not see you. You left quite a calling card behind, did you not?" "It was not a decision I made by choice," I said. "There was another involved." "Yes? I suppose there was." "Do you have the time to pick some flowers?" I asked. "You may need to send some to a widow." "Someone I know has died recently?" "Someone whose reputation you know well enough. John Anderson is no longer with us." "How sad that I should learn of his death in this manner." If I had expected D'Angelo to act surprised, I was wrong. Still, the tone of his voice informed me that Anderson's death had been news and I assumed that none of his employees had been responsible for it. D'Angelo had called me but he hadn't come to the point yet. Perhaps he didn't have a point, was just checking on my location so that he could dispatch a few of his goons to follow me around the city waiting for the opportunity to talk to me without witnesses. It didn't matter -- I had no place to hide. "Who were you meeting with last night?" "You ask many questions," D'Angelo said. "It's my job." "Good-bye, Mr. Fox," he said. "I hope this conversation wasn't our last." Then he hung up. By then other people had begun drifting into the city room, shaking off their wet coats and settling into their chairs. I turned to my VDT and stared at the blinking cursor in the upper left corner of the screen, waiting impatiently for me to begin work. I opened an old file and began. The story I'd typed into the computer the night before was already outdated by John Anderson's death. I edited the story, changed the lead to reflect the latest events, and read through it. What I'd written before the trip to D'Angelo's stood up fine. What I had just typed was equally as good. After I finished reading the story, I punched it through the printer, then gathered the fan-folded paper and carried the story into Silverman's office. I dropped it on his desk so it would be waiting his arrival. I returned to my desk and glanced at my watch. I stifled an urge to phone the morgue downstairs and hurry the search along. Instead, I read the early-morning edition published by our competitor. I looked up a few minutes later when one of the other reporters called my name. "Hey, Dan, somebody here to see you." Then a solidly-built man in a poorly-fitted blue suit was directed to me. He wore tight-fitting black gloves and one hand was wrapped tightly around the handle of a brown-leather briefcase. I stood as he approached my desk, and I reached out a hand. He took it in his without removing the gloves, shook it firmly, then introduced himself. "Arthur Knowlan. I'm a private detective." I offered him a seat. He accepted it without releasing his grip on the briefcase. "Marcus Willoughby thought you might be interested in my work." If Willoughby's name was connected to it, I knew I would be. I said, "What have you got?" "First we make a deal." "I can't make deals." Knowlan sat patiently in the chair opposite me. "If you want what I've got, you'll listen to the terms." "I'll listen," I said, "but I can't make any promises." "Do you have some place more private than this to talk?" He looked at the other reporters. "Follow me." I led him into the conference room. As we reseated ourselves, Knowlan said, "I'll tell you what I've got if you keep my name out of the paper." "You want to be an unnamed source, right?" "More than that," he said. "After I leave here, I don't want anybody to know where you got the stuff I give you. No friends, no cops, no judges. You got that?" I understood. "Should I go to jail rather than reveal my source?" "Sarcasm I don't need," he said. "So do it if you have to." I nodded. Knowlan opened the briefcase and placed a thick file folder on the conference table. Neatly typed on the tab at the top was Vicki Wilber's name. "Willoughby hired me to investigate Franklin's secretary. He never told me why. I never asked." "You've worked for him before?" I asked. Knowlan's line of reasoning sounded almost the same as Willoughby's. "He pays me good money to keep my mouth shut. This time he pays me to play stool pigeon." He closed the briefcase. "The money's good either way." I reached for the file folder. Knowlan stood. "I'm going out of town for a few weeks," he said. "If you want me, you won't be able to find me. Don't bother looking. I'm nobody important to you. I just do my job like everybody else." I told him I understood, then he left me in the conference room and headed toward the elevator. I returned my attention to the folder. Inside I found contact prints of Vicki Wilber and Bill Franklin sharing dinner, riding in various automobiles together, standing before Vicki's apartment door. A pair of photos taken though Vicki's bedroom window with a telephoto lens showed the two of them undressing. Knowlan had done a thorough job of following them. In addition to the contact prints, I found a neatly typed report, detailing not only the couple's activities, which were a bit kinky for my taste, but also outlining Vicki Wilber's life from the time she was born. Her childhood and adolescence were quite normal, according to the report. Vicki had received good grades in school, though she was never at the top of her class, and she had never experienced detention or suspension. In short, Vicki Wilber had been the kind of average girl that most parents would gladly claim. After her high school graduation, Vicki had packed a suitcase, told her parents that she needed to find herself, and had left with no indication of where she was headed. They didn't hear from her until four years later when she returned home, went to secretarial school, worked a couple of unassuming jobs, and then found employment as Bill Franklin's personal secretary. It was the four-year gap in her life that held the most interesting material. Knowlan had managed to trace Vicki Wilber's path to New York, where she joined a commune. She worked as a cashier at a health food store part of the time, and participated in a couple of sit-ins. The people Knowlan had spoken with about Vicki all said she didn't really fit in. No matter how hard she'd tried to be a part of the counter-culture, her strict, middle-America family upbringing always interfered. Except for one night. One of the girls in the commune had brought a friend back to the brownstone where they all lived, identifying the guest as a movie producer. He'd brought along an eight-millimeter camera, saying he was shooting some preliminary film, trying to find some new actors and actresses for his films because he was tired of using the same people. Most of the commune's members sat in the living room smoking pot. A few tripped on LSD. Vicki Wilber had stayed in her room, avoiding the blatant drug use as if to ignore it denied its existence. A few hours after the movie producer's arrival, Vicki went down the back stairs to the kitchen and found a batch of freshly-baked oatmeal cookies. Hungry, she took a handful, poured herself a glass of milk, and returned to her room. The oatmeal cookies had been spiked with LSD, but nobody in the kitchen at the time bothered to tell her. About half an hour later, apparently stoned out of her mind, she joined the other members of the household in the living room where they were already in various degrees of undress. Vicki, who the others said had never been a participant in any of their previous free-love scenes, had stripped off her clothes and joined the party as a particularly robust participant. The film producer, a small-time porno director with a lot of film, had turned on his camera and had let it run continuously. Edited down, the film, titled Hippies in Heat, had made a brief tour of the porno houses across the U.S., and then had died without fanfare. The day after the party, learning of what she'd done and not realizing she'd been filmed, Vicki Wilber packed her belongings and returned home. Knowlan, unable to obtain a print of Hippies in Heat, had nevertheless obtained a pair of prints from the movie, both featuring Vicki Wilber. He had turned these over to his client and had closed the case. I stopped reading. The report was dated almost a year earlier, about the same time Angela Franklin claimed she had found out about her husband's affair with his secretary. I closed the file folder and returned to my desk with it in my hand. After seating myself in the swivel chair, I picked up the telephone's handset and punched in Marcus Willoughby's phone number. The law firm's receptionist answered, then put me through to Willoughby's personal secretary. Willoughby came on the line a moment later. "You're a sneaky little shit, aren't you?" "Excuse me?" he asked. "You've been playing the Franklins off against each other, haven't you?" "I was employed by both of them," he said. "I was not particularly fond of either one." "What did you hope to gain?" "Nothing at all," Willoughby said. He was a cold-hearted bastard. "As each of them came to me with a problem, I in turn maintained a vow of silence. I was instructed by each of them in their turn to perform various acts of which I am capable. In return, they paid my fee without question. What they did with the information I presented them was not a matter of my concern. For Alderman Franklin I maintained a separate and distinct record of his financial activities. For Mrs. Franklin I hired a private detective." "So what's your motive in sending Knowlan to me? Why not send him directly to the police?" "You may question my personal ethics if you wish. However, I believe there has been a crime committed and it is one with which I do not particularly wish to have my name associated. To have tried to cover up my possible connections with it would only have led to aspersions being cast on my name at some point in the future. By providing you with the details now, I can only assume that, should my name be mentioned, it will be in a positive manner. Unlike yourself, the police fail to maintain the proper subtlety in their investigations, and the man I sent to you prefers not to have his name bandied about by the police in connection with any investigation. It sheds a bad light on his reputation, as it would on my own." I was silent, trying to write down everything he said, so Willoughby continued. "As I have provided you will all of the information I currently have available to me regarding this situation, I would prefer it if you no longer contacted me in regard to this matter. I have recommended to Mrs. Franklin that she seek counsel elsewhere as I am not, and do not wish to be, a criminal lawyer." With that, Willoughby terminated our conversation. -------- *Chapter 16* A young girl, apparently hired only months out of high school, stopped before my desk and offered me a file folder of photocopied newspaper clips. "These are from the morgue." I took the folder from her outstretched hand and thanked her. She turned and walked away from my desk. If I'd been a bit younger I might have watched as she walked away. Instead, I opened the file marked "Barket" and began reading the news stories Michael O'Shea had written twenty-one years earlier, as well as the stories written by another, long-forgotten reporter who'd taken the story over after O'Shea had backed out. I couldn't blame O'Shea for refusing to continue work on the Barket story. After all, his house had been firebombed and his wife and daughter threatened. It had been a rougher, wilder time back then. Organized crime had been more obvious with their violence, willing to take unnecessary risks to intimidate the people they didn't like. After I finished reading, I phoned for a taxi. Then I gathered the two file folders, pulled my jacket on, and went downstairs to wait. * * * * At police headquarters a few minutes later, I stood at a sergeant's desk. I'd asked to see Michael O'Shea, but he'd refused to see me. The sergeant said, "Look, buddy, I can't make him see you if he don't want to. You ain't his lawyer or nothin' are you?" I told him I wasn't, then I turned and walked upstairs and down the other wing to homicide. Ballany was in his office when I arrived. He'd pulled off his jacket and his shirt was rumpled. He looked up when I entered. "What've you got?" "I want to talk to Michael O'Shea. He's downstairs in one of your cells and he refuses to see me." Ballany shrugged his shoulders. "That's his right." "Not when it interferes with your investigation." "What do you think he knows about it?" "Let me talk to him and we'll find out." Ballany picked up the handset on his telephone. Before he dialed, Ballany said, "He'd better know something, Dan." Then Ballany dialed, spoke to someone at the other end, and hung up. He stood, grabbed his coat, and said, "Come on. They'll have him waiting in one of the interrogation rooms." When we arrived, O'Shea was sitting behind the small room's only table, smoking a cigarette. "Looks like you've got pull around here," he said as I entered the room. "I've made a few friends lately." I dropped the two file folders on the table top and pulled one of the chairs up close. Ballany pulled up another chair and sat silently. "So what do you want from me?" O'Shea asked. "Why'd you pull a gun on a cop?" "I was drunk." He shrugged. "It happened." "Not too drunk," I said. "The gun wasn't loaded." O'Shea's eyes were dull and lifeless. "You wanted to be put in here, didn't you?" He shrugged again. I opened the Barket file and slid it across the table to him. "Read some of these." O'Shea glanced at the top story, recognized it, and said, "I don't have to read these. I know what they're about." "Are you sure?" I demanded. "Do you know what they're really about?" O'Shea didn't respond. "They're the story of a reporter who lost his balls. That's what they're about," I said. I pushed myself out of the chair. "It's not about Barket. He was a dumb jerk who tried to take the city away from D'Angelo. He could never win but he didn't know that. And there you were in the middle of it, a hot-shot police reporter milking the story for every by-line you could get." "I got my share," O'Shea said. He stubbed his cigarette out in the tin-foil ashtray in the center of the table. "That was a long time ago." "Not long enough," I said. I turned to face him. "Somebody from Barket's gang is still in town and he's taken his time building up the resources to challenge the D'Angelo family." Ballany coughed. O'Shea stared at me. His face hardened into an expressionless mask. "Read your stories," I told O'Shea. "You said Barket wasn't smart enough to challenge D'Angelo on his own turf. You said somebody had to be behind him, pushing him into it. The next guy assigned to the story doesn't dig very deep. He goes for the surface stuff, the killings, the violence. When Barket was machine-gunned on Grant Avenue everybody thought it was over. D'Angelo still had the city. Barket was out of the picture. Everybody was glad to see the violence end." "So?" O'Shea lit a second cigarette. "So who was behind Barket and where is he now?" O'Shea shook his head. "You don't know what you're talking about. Barket was the boss. That's all there was to it." "Then why are you so scared now?" O'Shea stood. He looked at Ballany. "I want to go back to my cell." To the back of O'Shea's head, I said, "Do you think you're safe in here?" "Safer than you are out there," he said, whirling to face me. "I'm going to walk away from all this. You're going to wind up in a god-damned pine box." "At least I'll die with dignity," I yelled back. "You've lost yours." Ballany stood between us. "This isn't getting anywhere." Ballany led O'Shea to the door and called for the guard to take O'Shea back to his cell. I swore under my breath as I gathered up the files. I was still angry as Ballany and I walked from the interrogation room a few minutes later. "He knows who it is," I said. "How can you be sure?" "The only time I've ever seen O'Shea scared like this was when the Barket gang got to him. There's got to be a connection." "Should we get the rubber hoses and beat it out of him?" I glanced at Ballany. He wasn't smiling. He continued. "It wouldn't be any use. O'Shea's a reporter. He can claim confidentiality of sources. So we put him before a judge and O'Shea does the same thing. We get him in jail on a contempt of court rap, maybe. We'd be no better off than we are now." I shook my head. Jonny Silverman had once spent two months in jail for refusing to turn his notes over to a federal judge. That was one of the hazards of being a journalist -- sometimes the First Amendment wasn't sufficiently protective, sometimes it protected too well. "Anyhow, O'Shea goes up before Judge Freeman tomorrow morning," Ballany said. "On the judge's recommendation, the charge was reduced to drunk and disorderly." I stopped in the lobby and told Ballany I'd talk to him later and that I was sorry I wasted his time with O'Shea. "That's okay," Ballany said. "I'm getting used to chasing wild geese." It was still raining outside when I flagged a taxi. I gave the driver directions to Angela Franklin's house, then I leaned back, shook the water out of my hair, and tried to relax. I couldn't. The more I thought about O'Shea hiding inside a jail cell, the more I thought about the newspaper and everything I'd written over the previous few days, and everything I'd dredged up from the morgue. Mostly I realized that I might have overlooked something contained in the file folders still in my desk drawer, the ones I'd had sent up Saturday. By the time I realized I needed to reread those files, the taxi was pulling to a stop at the curb in front of the Franklin house. The rain had slowed to a steady drizzle. I stepped out of the taxi into it, carefully protecting the file folders under my coat. I handed the driver a fistful of singles and told him to keep the change. It wasn't much. He drove away as I walked up Angela Franklin's porch. She opened her front door on the third ring and I pushed past her into the foyer. She was wary. "What now?" I shook off my coat and hung it over the coat rack standing in the corner. Then I turned to her, the file folders in my hand. "When did you first see those photos of Vicki Wilber?" I asked. She followed me into her husband's study. "The other day. I told you I found them in his files." I dropped the file Knowlan had given me onto the desk top. "Look at this." She peeled open the front of it, then blanched when she recognized what it was. "Where did you get this?" I didn't answer her question. Instead, I said, "You received a copy of that report about a year ago. I know who wrote it, and I know who hired him to do the job." Angela dropped into the chair behind her husband's desk. She wasn't looking at the contents of the folder now; she was watching me. I leaned over the desk. "Let's try this again," I said. "Were you blackmailing Vicki Wilber?" "No," she said. "I just told her I knew what she'd done. I just told her I'd -- " "Blackmail isn't always for money." Angela averted her eyes. "I wanted her to stay away from my husband." "So you threatened to do what? Release copies of the photos to the local press? Did you think you could ruin Vicki Wilber without hurting your husband's career?" She looked up at me again, this time calmer than she had been. "It wouldn't have mattered," she said. "His career was almost over anyhow, wasn't it?" "Did you have him killed?" "I had nothing to do with it," she said. "But he'd talked about it once. He said he'd have to withdraw from the election." "Why?" "He never told me. I didn't think he was serious so I never asked." "How did the photos of Vicki Wilber get in your husband's files? Did he know about them?" "I just told you that's where I found them. I don't think he'd ever seen them." "What good did you think it would do to lie about it?" "I wanted to ruin that bitch," she said. Her voice had grown spiteful. "I didn't know she'd saved the copies I'd sent her. I wanted to make sure somebody saw them." "I'm going to have to tell Detective Ballany about this," I said. "I won't talk to Ballany." I told her it didn't matter. I reached for the phone. Angela placed her hand on top of mine. "I'll need a lawyer," she said. "Willoughby dumped me." "Too bad," I said. "You two deserve each other." -------- *Chapter 17* "You got any more tricks up your sleeve?" Ballany asked. The rain had stopped and we stood on the front porch of Angela Franklin's house watching as she was led to a patrol car parked at the curb. I shook my head. "I'd check into Willoughby's affairs, though. He's bullshitting somebody." I still held the file folder I'd gotten from Knowlan. I'd retrieved it from Bill Franklin's desk before Ballany's arrival. He eyed it carefully. "I'm going to need that," he said. "And I'll need to know where you got it." "Where doesn't matter," I said. "I'd have to claim confidentiality of sources. It was part of the deal." He held out his hand. I placed the folder in it. "What's going to happen to her?" Ballany shrugged. "I don't think we could make an extortion charge stick. The evidence is flimsy." He considered for a moment, then said, "We'll get her locked away for a few months for hindering a police investigation. That's probably the worst that'll happen." Ballany stepped off the porch and walked down the steps. I followed him. "You headed downtown?" I asked. When he nodded, I asked for a ride back to the newspaper. At the car, Ballany said, "Get in." I climbed in beside him. He started the car and pulled away from the curb. A dozen blocks away, he said, "Somebody's following us." I turned and looked out the back window of the unmarked police car. "I don't see anybody." "Just wait," he said. "It's a tan Ford, couple of years old." A moment later I saw the Ford pull around the corner onto the street two blocks behind us. "Friends of yours?" Ballany asked. I watched the Ford. It stayed a consistent two blocks away, turning when we turned, ducking out of sight for a block or two and then reappearing. "Could be," I said. "Can you read the license plate?" I shook my head. "Too far away." I'd needed glasses for years but I'd been too vain to admit it. The Ford followed us all the way to the newspaper building. Ballany left me at the front door and pulled away. I scanned the street before entering the building, but I didn't see the Ford. I made my way upstairs and dropped the Barket folder on my desk. I glanced into Silverman's office and found it empty. I kept my news to myself. As I made myself comfortable at my desk, the phone rang. On the other end of the line Ballany said, "The Ford stayed with you. I didn't see it after I dropped you off." "Should I worry about it?" "Dan," Ballany said patiently. "You should worry about everything." That wasn't what I'd wanted to hear, but I didn't tell Ballany that. Instead, I said, "I'll keep my eye out for it the next time I leave the building." "You do that." After Ballany disconnected, I opened the Barket file and reread the damp photocopies. Then I reached in my desk drawer and pulled out the files on Bill Franklin and his wife, Luigi "Louie the Lip" D'Angelo, J. Standish Stevens, and Vicki Wilber. One by one I opened each file and read the entire contents, trying to piece together the niggling thoughts I had biting at the back of my mind. When I finished reading, I rubbed the back of my neck with my fingers, then stood, stretched, and went to the coffee pot. I returned to my desk with a steaming cup of coffee and began reading all of it one more time. Mostly I took notes, comparing dates and ages of people mentioned in the various files, trying to pinpoint their activities during Barket's run for power. The D'Angelo family was easy. The senior D'Angelo was already pushing his sixties when Barket tried to wrestle power away from him, and Luigi D'Angelo was in his mid-twenties, learning the ropes of the family business as the youngest child and only son. J. Standish Stevens had only recently bought out the company he was an accountant for, and the business was thriving under his leadership, posting a dramatic increase in profit. Vicki Wilber was in her early teens, probably more worried about acne than about the gangland war raging through the city. Bill Franklin had been married to Angela almost four years, and her father had recently died. Franklin was working for Intercity Transfer and it would be another two years before he ran for public office. He was by then already well-known for his union activities. Michael O'Shea had been scared by somebody on Barket's gang, and he had stopped working on the Barket story for the newspaper. Jonny Silverman had been covering City Hall and I had been a teenaged copy boy, running news stories down the steps to the composing room. I set aside the files on J. Standish Stevens and Vicki Wilber. There was nothing in either file that connected them with the others until recently. Barket seemed to be the only thing tying the others together, and then only by a distance of almost twenty-one years. Although the news stories about Barket primarily covered his criminal activities, there were snatches of the rest of his life revealed in the stories. I began to piece together what I could. Before his run-in with the D'Angelo family, Barket had been a small-time hood, a nobody who alternated between working on various loading docks and being the brawn behind a series of mom-and-pop grocery store robberies. In the late Fifties he'd discovered the possibilities of the drug world and had begun a small operation dealing heroin. One of O'Shea's stories from that period detailed the reasons why nobody believed Barket had the brains to run a drug operation, and the man had a number of strikes against him. Still, within a few years he'd built up a number of connections and had developed a loyal gang. Then he got too cocky and tried to take over the areas the D'Angelo family knew best: gambling and prostitution. When the smoke cleared, Barket was out, the D'Angelo family had a strong hold on the developing drug trade, and the Barket gang had disappeared. The brain behind Barket, whoever it had been, had disappeared. Noticing Barket's occasional jobs as a dock worker, I called Ballany at his office and asked for a complete run-down on Barket's job history. "That was a long time ago, Dan. It's probably buried in a filing cabinet in the basement." "Would you have it?" "I'm sure we would. What are you looking for?" "Did he ever work with Alderman Franklin? They would have been in the same union. There might be a connection." "I'll look." After hanging up, I stood, walked to the window on the other side of the city room, and stared down at the street. I couldn't see the tan Ford but I knew it was down there somewhere. I knew somebody was watching for me. I wondered if it was D'Angelo. Then I shook my head and went into Silverman's office. He had returned while I was reading. "O'Shea goes before a judge tomorrow," I said. "The charge has been reduced to drunk and disorderly." "Who's the judge?" "Freeman." Silverman smiled. "He'll be back by Monday." "Why so soon?" Silverman held two fingers together. I understood. I'd been tight like that with some of the people I wrote about. "He's been to a few cocktail parties at Freeman's mansion in the Central West End." Silverman shook his head. "O'Shea spends the entire day with crooks and cops and winds up friends with a judge. I can't figure it." I told Silverman about Angela Franklin's arrest. "Anything in it?" he asked. "Not according to Ballany," I said. "But I'll have something about it for you before deadline. I'll try to write some sort of a wrap-up story." Silverman nodded. "The police got Franklin's killer. That the end of the story?" I shook my head. "It deadends. Ballany says he can't go any further with what he's got." "I'll have to put you back on the election," Silverman said. "Our coverage has slipped since Franklin's death." "Anything in particular?" "There's a tight race in the ninth ward you might be able to turn in a good story. And check in with J. Standish Stevens. He's got his ward locked-up, but you might see if he's changed his strategy any, and see if the Democrats are getting anywhere with a possible write-in replacement for Bill Franklin." I returned to my desk, closed the folders I had spread across the top, and slid them back into a drawer. Then I turned to the VDT, opened a file and wrapped up the Franklin story with the news of his wife's arrest for interference with a police investigation. Then I turned to the phone and dialed the number for Stevens' campaign headquarters. The girl at the other end of the line informed me that Stevens was out to lunch, so I gave her my name and promised I'd call again later. My stomach reminded me of the hour, so I pulled my coat on and was about to leave the city room when another reporter called me over and handed me his phone. "Dan Fox," I said. "This is Ballany. I got the information you wanted. Barket worked at the following companies on various occasions." I pulled my notebook from my pocket and took down the names as Ballany read them off to me. "Ajax Trucking, Interstate Delivery, Richardson Tool and Die, Boston Fabricating, Snick's Grocery, and Fresh Produce, Inc.," he said. "That help any?" "Not really," I told him. "Franklin only held two jobs before he ran for the Board of Aldermen: Intercity Transfer and Del Rio Trucking. There's no connection." "Best I could do," Ballany said. I dropped the phone handset into its cradle and headed across the street to deComposing Room. -------- *Chapter 18* Lunch consisted of a hot corned beef sandwich and a cold soda. I returned to the city room twenty minutes later without ever seeing the tan Ford. I dropped into my chair, dialed the number for Stevens' campaign headquarters, and was quickly connected to the candidate himself. "I haven't heard from you recently," Stevens said after I identified myself. "I've been busy." "I've read the stories." "I need to talk to you," I said. "You got half an hour free this afternoon?" "About what?" "The campaign. The Franklin story is dead. The editor's put me back on election coverage." He asked me to wait. I heard only silence for a moment, then Stevens came back on the line. "Two o'clock. Can you make it?" I glanced at my watch. "I'll be there." I arrived almost five minutes early. I'd spent the time between doing phone interviews with the two candidates from the ninth ward. When I arrived, Stevens' receptionist ushered me straight into his office. Stevens wasn't there so I found a comfortable chair and dropped into it. Before I had my notebook out and arranged on my knee, Stevens came through the door. It was three minutes before two. "Prompt," he said. "I like that." I didn't respond, didn't stand to shake his hand. Stevens moved around the desk and sat in his chair looking at me. "The campaign's going well," I said. "Of course." Stevens leaned forward in his chair and folded his hand on his desk. "The Democrats have announced a write-in candidate." "Of no consequence." He was right, of course, but the Democratic machine couldn't let Stevens be elected without at least some token resistance. Something gnawed at the back of my mind while I sat there, something I should remember, but couldn't. I flipped open my notebook, finally. "What now?" I asked. "Have you changed your campaign strategy any since Franklin's death?" "I've spent quite a bit of time with my campaign manager," he said. "Of course, there will be certain changes in our policy, but I can foresee no major changes." "Name some of the minor ones, then." Stevens cleared his throat. "There's no longer any reason to campaign against Franklin's voting record. Instead, we will be emphasizing our distinct advantages over the Democratic party line." "And you feel this is the best course of action?" "At this time. We have every reason to believe we have the election locked up, even though the Democrats are attempting to field a write-in candidate." "You've picked up quite a few supporters," I said. I'd studied the polls during the past hour. "You've got sixty percent of the registered voters in your ward and most of the rest remain undecided -- undecided about even voting." "I'm not predicting a landslide," Stevens said. He smiled. "That would be foolish, even for me." "You've stayed out of the limelight these past few days," I said. "Why? Most of the other candidates have been calling for increased police protection. Aren't you afraid of the increase in violent activity within the city?" "I have reason to believe that it will all blow over." "You have some special connections?" "Let's just say that I keep my ear to the ground." "Okay," I said. "Let's just say that. What have you heard?" Stevens unfolded his hands. "Only that the police are on top of the situation and are working hard to rectify the problem. I have faith in their ability to do the job." "Some of the other candidates aren't so confident." Stevens shrugged. "One is calling for a special investigation into the alderman's death." "I've heard of it." "Would you support such a proposal if you were elected?" "That's a bit in the future," he said. "And I'd have to hear all of the details before I could make a decision." "You're evading the question." "Not really, I just prefer to have all the information available to me before I make a decision. I think that provides for a sound decision, and I feel the Board of Aldermen as a whole might function more efficiently if all the Aldermen felt this way." "So you're saying the Board of Aldermen is inefficient." "On the whole. I think a number of things about the way the board works could be streamlined." "Like what?" Stevens went into detail about a number of changes he wanted to see made in the way the board operated. Most of the changes were sound. I kept notes for later. We were interrupted after twenty minutes by the buzz of his intercom. Stevens reached for it, pressed a well-manicured finger on one of the buttons, said, "Yes?" "Call on line three," said the receptionist. "Who is it?" Stevens asked. "He won't give his name, but he says it's urgent." Stevens released the intercom button and reached for the phone. "Hello," he said as he placed the phone to his ear. He listened for a moment, the smile he'd been wearing for my benefit slowly slid away. Then he cupped his hand over the mouthpiece and said to me, "Will you excuse me for a minute?" I closed my notebook and stood. I left the office and pulled the door firmly closed behind me. The only people in the outer office were Stevens' receptionist and myself. "Must be important," I said to her, jerking my thumb over my shoulder toward Stevens' office door. "I suppose so," she said with bored efficiency. "Does he get many calls like that?" She gave me a quizzical look, as if she didn't understand the question. "Calls where the caller won't give his name," I explained. "A few." "Does he always take them?" She nodded, distractedly. "Most of the time." I made a sound which wasn't a word. The receptionist returned to her work, whatever it had been. Stevens came out of his office a moment later. "I'm sorry," he said, the artificial smile almost, but not quite, back on his face. "The interview is over. I trust you have enough?" I held my notebook up. "It's all in here." After a quick nod, Stevens slipped back into his office and closed the door. I waited a moment, staring at the door's blank face. Then I turned and left the building. I turned right at the sidewalk. At the end of the block I came to a halt, then ducked into a drugstore. Playing a hunch, I stood and waited. I didn't have to wait long. Only a few minutes passed before Stevens came out of his campaign headquarters. He turned right, then came up the sidewalk toward me. He wasn't paying attention to what was happening around him and he passed by the drugstore without looking at me. When he'd crossed the street, I stepped out of the drugstore and followed him. We didn't go far. In the middle of the next block Stevens entered a parking garage, walked up the first ramp a half dozen stalls and climbed into a silver Mercedes. I watched him back out, drive down the ramp and pull onto the street. I tried to flag a cab, but the first two passed by without noticing me. The third pulled to the curb. I climbed into the back seat, pulled a twenty out of my wallet, and said, "Can you follow the Mercedes?" "You a cop?" "Reporter." The cabby took the twenty from my hand and turned the meter on. "Good enough," he said, then pulled back into the flow of traffic. He looked back over the seat at me. "Which Mercedes?" I pointed over his shoulder at Stevens' car, now almost two blocks ahead of us. "The silver one, up there." The driver accelerated, pulled around a slow-moving MG, and narrowed the distance between us to just under a block. We hung back, following as the Mercedes went left at one intersection, then right at the next. "I watch all them old cop movies," the cabby said over his shoulder. "Love them chase scenes. You think this guy's gonna try to give us the slip?" "I don't think he expects to be followed." I leaned back in the seat. "Too bad," the cabby said. He shook his head. "Too bad." We followed the silver Mercedes a while longer. Then the cab driver said, "Your twenty's just about up, buddy. You buying any more miles?" I searched my wallet for another twenty, found it, and handed it to him. By the time it was half used, Stevens had pulled into a parking lot and brought his car to a halt. The cabby pulled to the curb three quarters of a block away. "Wait till he goes inside," I said. "Then drive slowly past." We watched as Stevens left his car, crossed the parking lot, then ascended a short flight of concrete steps two at a time. As the door eased to a close behind Stevens, the cabby pulled away from the curb and drove past the parking lot entrance. I saw a faded sign bolted to the chain link fence. When I read the company name on the sign, I began to put the pieces together. -------- *Chapter 19* I gave the cabby the newspaper's address. "We done followin' this guy?" "We're done." He swung the cab around the next corner and drove directly to the newspaper building. By the time we arrived, the second twenty had been chewed up and spit out, leaving only a handful of change. I gave the cabby a five from my wallet, thanked him, went into the building while he pulled back into the flow of traffic, and went upstairs to the city room. It was late in the afternoon, almost evening, and the three star edition was already being delivered. Most of the day-side reporters had already gone home, or they were milling about preparing to leave. Jonny Silverman's office was empty and his jacket gone. I returned to my desk and glanced at a copy of the three star final that lay open on my blotter. Nobody had been killed while I was out, nobody had been assaulted. It had been a quiet day, too quiet. Luigi D'Angelo should have been on a rampage. He had an image to protect, yet he'd done nothing. That worried me. That worried me a lot. Sitting at my desk, I watched the other reporters slowly disappear through the stairwell and the elevator doors until there were only three of us left in the room, the other two reporters working intently on their own stories, oblivious to what happened around them. I pulled out my file folder on Stevens and read through it again while my fingers worried a ball-point pen. Finally I wrote "Richardson Tool and Die" on my blotter. Then I underlined it. Twice. I'd followed J. Standish Stevens' Mercedes to the Richardson Tool and Die parking lot, and had watched him leave the car and go inside the plant. Stevens had built his financial empire from his start at the company, buying it from the owner only two years after he'd started working there as an accountant. And Barket had worked there for a short time, putting in his hours on the loading dock while Stevens played with the accounting books inside the office. A fine pair they might have made. Stevens had brains and ambition, Barket had had brawn. But Barket had been out of the picture for a long time, erased by his own greed for greater glory. I thought about it for a while and considered calling Detective Ballany. The longer I thought about it, though, the less I knew I had to tell him. What I had, really, was nothing -- nothing for Ballany and nothing for the newspaper; nothing that would tie Stevens to anything that had happened during the past few days. I thought about that. I'd been doing a lot of thinking since I'd gotten back to the office, but none it led me anywhere I wanted to go. Finally, I gathered my things and left. I'd put in a full day for the newspaper, too many full days in a row, in fact, and I needed fresh air and a drink. I got the fresh air as I crossed the street from the newspaper building to deComposing Room, and I got the drink inside. It was bourbon, neat, from a bottle with a label that really meant something. I tossed it back and a few minutes later I knocked back a second one. It wasn't making my thinking any more clear, but my inhibitions were disappearing. I sat for awhile, letting my body slowly absorb the alcohol, then I had the bartender call me a cab. He was a wise-guy about it, said, "Okay, you're a cab." I gave him a nasty look. I wasn't in the mood for jokes. He grumbled something under his breath as he reached for the phone under the bar. A few minutes later I stood outside on the curb as a battered orange cab pulled to a halt before me. A young black man with tightly curled hair cropped close to his scalp poked his face toward the open passenger window. "You call for a cab?" I climbed into the back seat and gave him Stevens' home address on the south side. The driver glanced in his rearview mirror at me. "You be drinkin', man. You smart to call a cab." I didn't respond. Instead, I curled against the door on the passenger side and sucked in the fresh air blowing into my face through the open window. "You don' wanna talk, man, that's okay by me," the cabby said. He concentrated on his driving. Within minutes we were cruising down the street Stevens lived on. The cab slowed as the driver tried to read the house numbers. "Drive past it," I said. "Stop at the end of the block." "You're the boss." He brought the cab to a halt near the end of the block. I climbed out and handed him a wad of ones. He took them and said, "You want me to wait for you?" I shook my head. The neighborhood grew quiet as the cab pulled away. I could hear leaves in the trees rustling in the steady breeze. At the far end of the block a car pulled to the curb and the headlights snapped off. I didn't think anything of it. As I walked down the block toward Stevens' house, I looked at it the way a thief might, looking for any windows that might give me easy access to the inside. I saw nothing unusual. Stevens lived in a large three-story home, long established in the neighborhood, and only a part of this ward by accident. While most of the ward consisted of blue-collar workers living in two-bedroom brick ranch-style houses and in apartments, a tiny corner of the ward consisted of an old neighborhood, one that dated back to the earliest history of the city. At one time the neighborhood had disintegrated into slum tenements. Now it was being rejuvenated by the daring and the rich. The old, two and three-story homes had been gutted and rebuilt from the inside out, retaining their heritage but offering all the latest conveniences inside. It was a neighborhood in which only the wealthy could afford to live. I walked up to the porch and reached for the door bell. At eye-level, stuck to the glass of the door, was a tiny red sticker that notified the literate that the house was protected by an alarm system. Most of the houses in this neighborhood were. They had to be. I finished the movement of my hand and pressed the doorbell. Faintly, from somewhere deep inside, I heard chimes. Then silence. A moment later the curtain on the door's window was swept back, a face appeared briefly in the glass, and then the door was pulled open. "Isn't it a bit late?" Stevens asked. "We were cut short this afternoon," I said. "Couldn't you wait until tomorrow?" "Maybe, but I was on my way home and just happened to be passing by." It was a lie, but I didn't expect Stevens to know where I lived. He stepped back, out of my way. "Come in, then." I stepped into the foyer. As Stevens closed the door behind me, he glanced out to the street. "I don't see your car." "I came in a cab," I said. "I'll have to call one when I leave." He closed the door firmly, bolted it shut with the efficient absent-mindedness of a man who'd spent his entire life in the city. "If you must talk to me," Stevens said, "you can talk to me in my office. I have something to attend to in there." I followed Stevens up the staircase to the second floor. As we crossed the landing to his home office, I asked, "How long have you had the alarm system?" "About a year," he said. Then he look back at me. "Why?" "Put it in after the robbery?" "A week or so after." "A little late, don't you think?" "It's easy to have accurate hindsight," Stevens said. He motioned me into an uncomfortable chair. "Is that what you wanted to talk to me about? It doesn't seem worth the trip." "My editor complained when I turned in my story this afternoon," I said. "He wants me to write a feature piece about you. He says we've had too much hard news lately." Stevens lifted a book from his desk and replaced it in an opening on his book shelf. Then he picked up a second book and did the same. With the two books returned to their proper places, his desk was clean and neat. He seated himself in the brown leather chair behind the desk and pressed his fingertips together. I squirmed in my seat. "He says the readers want to get to know more about you, more about your family life, your everyday activities, your background and the like." "How so?" "Let's start with your childhood," I said. "The official bio says you were born and raised right here in the city. That makes you a hometown boy and the readers love that stuff. You know, hometown boy grows up and does well for himself." I looked at the office around me, in a manner that he knew was for his benefit. "And you've obviously done well for yourself." "You have a very 'round-about way of making your point this evening," Stevens said. He was becoming noticeably irritated with me. "What is it?" I mentally flipped a coin. I don't know if I won or lost, but I said, "How did a punk kid like you grow up to be a society darling?" "I worked hard," he said in a tight, hard-edged little voice. "There's a theory that says some people never change." "So?" "So how well did you know Barket?" "I've heard the name." "He worked at Richardson Tool and Die when you bought the place." "So did a lot of other people." "You have a nice way of avoiding the question," I said. "How did you get the money to buy Richardson Tool and Die?" "I saved." "Very capitalistic of you." "That's what makes America great," Stevens said. "Even the punk kids can grow up to be useful, taxpaying citizens." "So I've heard. Did Barket help you save?" Stevens coughed gently into the back of his fist, then leaned back in the leather chair. "You're trying to bait me, Mr. Fox. Why?" "A man I knew and respected is dead. I think you had something to do with it." "You mean Franklin." It was a statement, not a question, so I didn't respond. Stevens smiled. His eyes twinkled in the dim light from his desk lamp. He was verbally fencing with me and I think he was warming to the task. "Why all these questions about Barket? He's been dead a long time. Why don't you just ask me what I was doing the afternoon Bill Franklin was killed?" "I know what you were doing. You were having lunch with Judge Freeman in his chambers," I said. "A convenient alibi. Freeman's highly regarded in this town." "I know." The smile stayed in place. "Besides, the cops already have Franklin's killer," I continued. "A goon from New York, went by the name of John Anderson. That's enough for them to wrap up the case and close the file. Everybody goes home happy." "Except you." "I don't have to be happy with the way things turn out. I just have to write about them the way they are." "So why come here?" "I have a personal stake in the story," I said. I hadn't even admitted that to myself until just then. "I found Franklin's body after Anderson killed him. I could have left it at that, written my two-bit obituary for the paper, and followed the police around for awhile as they investigated. But I didn't seem to have any choice in the matter. Because I'm a reporter, everybody seemed to have things to tell me, things that they'd have been better off keeping to themselves." Stevens leaned forward, listening. "What really bothered me, though, was Michael O'Shea. I was working his beat by accident, working the police beat because Franklin had been killed, and O'Shea let me have the story. He hasn't acted like that since Barket firebombed his house. I read through O'Shea's old stories. He thought there was someone behind Barket, someone smart. But O'Shea shut up when his wife and daughter were threatened." "Sounds like he had good reason to be afraid." "Franklin was smart, and he was in the same union as Barket. But I couldn't find any real connection between the two, especially since Franklin and the D'Angelo family have been friendly for a long time. The connection I found was you." "Because we both worked for the same company." "Because Barket had a street gang when he was a teenager. He came from your old neighborhood, and he wasn't more than five years older than you. You were arrested three times for petty theft. How did you get those charges dropped?" Stevens laughed then. It was a sickening sound because I could tell he'd found something truly amusing in what I'd said. After a moment, he said, "Do you think I was in Barket's gang? That's the most ludicrous thing I've ever heard." "Perhaps." I wanted to back-pedal a little, try to find the right track again. "Perhaps that's stretching plausibility a bit thin." "If it was a rubber band, it would have broken," Stevens said. He was still trying to catch his breath. Finally he said, "You're not taking notes." He was right. My notebook remained in my pocket. "You haven't said anything quotable." "You should be prepared just in case." I reached around to my hip pocket and pulled out the battered reporter's notebook. Then I reached into my jacket pocket and found a pen. "Okay," I said, "I'm ready." "Write this down," Stevens instructed. "Reporter Dan Fox recently returned from a fishing expedition. He didn't catch anything." "Cute." "You were expecting a confession?" "Not from you. That would have been too easy." Stevens smiled. "Franklin is dead. The police are ready to wrap up the case. Why don't you just leave it at that? You could save yourself a lot of unnecessary grief." I lied to him then, saying the first thing I could think of. "John Anderson mentioned your name before he died." That received Stevens' undivided attention. He sat upright in the chair. The smile disappeared. "I wanted to find out why." "Maybe I was to be his next target." I continued as if Stevens hadn't spoken. "He'd been shot. He said you'd regret it." "That bastard," Stevens said under his breath. He leaned forward, pulled open a desk drawer, and came up with a .38. He pointed it at me. I'd spent a lot of time the previous few days staring up the barrels of various weapons. Somehow familiarity hadn't yet bred contempt. I said, "I thought you were in favor of gun control." "I am," he said. "I've got the gun and I'm in control." I didn't argue. "So what do you plan to do if I admit to being involved in Franklin's death?" "Go to the police," I said. When he didn't react to that, I added, "Or tell Louie the Lip." "It's too late to do that," Stevens said. The gun didn't waver. "He already knows what happened." I slowly closed my notebook and clicked the pen closed. "Who else did Anderson talk to?" "Nobody," I said. "He didn't have a chance." Stevens considered that for a moment. "Who else have you told?" "Nobody. What proof did I have?" "That's good," he said slowly. "Very good." I didn't respond. After a moment of silence, Stevens pulled back the gun's hammer and it clicked into place. "I'm going to make a phone call," he said, "and then you'll be going for a little ride." I licked my lips. They were dry and chapped. I felt sweat rolling down my ribcage, felt the fine sheen of perspiration standing out on my forehead. I reached up to wipe at it with the tips of my fingers. They came away wet. Stevens reached for his desk phone with one hand, picked up the handset and held it while he punched in seven digits. Then he held the phone to his ear and waited. I waited with him. "Mr. D'Angelo, please," he said. There was another moment of waiting before Stevens spoke into the phone again. Stevens held the phone tightly to his ear so no sound escaped from the receiver, so I couldn't tell if he'd really called anyone. I presumed he was talking to D'Angelo. Stevens carefully explained the situation, then said, "The back door. Have them come through the alley and meet me at the back door. We'll be waiting." Then he replaced the handset on the hook, disconnecting the line. I considered throwing something at Stevens then, hoping to distract him long enough to escape. The only thing I had was the notebook in my hand. There was nothing else within reach. I considered, then realized Stevens could drill a hole through my chest before the notebook ever reached him. I stopped considering and waited. "Now what?" "You're a smart boy," Stevens said. "You figure it out." I grunted. It wasn't hard to figure. We waited like that for three or four minutes, Stevens sitting calmly behind his desk, the gun pointed directly at my chest. Then Stevens said, "It's time to go downstairs." He waved the barrel of the gun just a smidgen of an inch upward. I got the message. I stood. Stevens stood. I slipped the pen and the notebook into my pockets. "Downstairs," Stevens commanded. I turned and moved to the office door as Stevens came around the end of his desk. I saw my chance then. I ducked out of the office and slammed the heavy door closed. Stevens swore as I flattened against the wall. The door jerked open and Stevens came through it. I grabbed his arm and swung him around. The gun exploded only inches from my arm, searing my jacket. The window at the end of the hall shattered and the alarm began clanging. I slammed Stevens' wrist against the stair rail. He kicked my shins, swung his free hand at my face, glancing a fist off the side of my head. I slammed his wrist into the stair rail again and the revolver clattered down the stairway below us. Stevens twisted away from me and planted a solid fist in my gut. He had once been street tough, but time had worn away at him. The blow hurt but it didn't take my breath away. I spun him around, grabbed the back of his head, and introduced his face to the plaster wall. His nose broke, sending a shower of blood over the white plaster and the faded-rose shag carpet. Below us glass shattered and the front door slammed open. I slammed Stevens' face into the wall a second time. Everything had been building up inside me, all the frustration, the fear, the anger, and I was going to take it all out on Stevens. I pulled his head back to do it again. Two pairs of footsteps clumped heavily up the stairs and suddenly a pair of bruisers in off-the-rack suits faced us. They held revolvers in their beefy fists. The bigger one, a blond man whose face looked like it had been hit too hard too many times, grabbed my arm and spun me around, slamming me up against the wall beside Stevens' crumpled form. The aldermanic candidate lay on the floor at my feet and moaned. The blond behind me jerked my hands behind my back and snapped a pair of handcuffs on my wrists. "Police," he said. Then he took his partner's handcuffs and did the same to Stevens. He read us our Miranda rights. A few minutes later, the two cops led us outside. I didn't mind. "How'd you get here so fast?" I asked the blond. "Been following you," he said as we stopped before a tan Ford. "We just ain't been told why." The dark-haired cop was behind me, holding Stevens upright and forcing him along. Stevens hadn't spoken since the two cops had pulled us apart. A car slid around the corner at the end of the block, then screamed down the street, its headlights silhouetting us against the darkness. At the last moment I realized who was in the car. I dropped to the ground, landing roughing on my face because my hands were bound behind my back. The blond cop swore at me. Gunfire erupted from the open window of the speeding car. Stevens dropped to the sidewalk, his body riddled with holes. The cop beside him spun around, swearing. Blood oozed from a hole in his sleeve and stained his jacket. By then the car was gone, its taillights disappearing around the next corner before either of the cops could react. -------- *Chapter 20* I rode to police headquarters in the tan Ford. J. Standish Stevens rode to the morgue in an ambulance. An hour after I arrived, Detective Ballany had me out of the holding cell and in his office. I rubbed my wrists. They were sore from the handcuffs. "We found a gun on Stevens' staircase," Ballany said. "Ballistics says it was the gun used to kill John Anderson. The only prints on it are Stevens'." I leaned back in the chair, listening. "We've got nothing that connects him directly to Franklin's death. I think he was responsible, but I can't prove it." Ballany used a stubby fingertip to shift papers around on his desk. "Stevens hired Anderson. Anderson killed Franklin. Then Stevens killed Anderson. Why?" "Power," I said. "Stevens wanted more." "Why Franklin?" Ballany asked. "What did it accomplish?" "D'Angelo began to take him seriously," I said. "Until then, Stevens was just another smart hood, nibbling away at D'Angelo's empire. D'Angelo could have squashed him anytime. By killing Franklin, D'Angelo's authority was undermined. People would doubt D'Angelo's ability to protect his own people. It would be easier for Stevens to move in on the rest of D'Angelo's territory." Ballany continued moving the papers around. "Stevens went to see D'Angelo the other night. That's why Anderson made me drive out there. I think Stevens and D'Angelo came to some kind of agreement that night. The bloodshed stopped." "Until you showed up at Stevens' house." "I've had a bad habit of doing that lately." Ballany picked up a pen and doodled on a sheet of note paper. "Why was he running for Board of Aldermen? That doesn't make sense. Stevens seemed to have enough power." "Respectability. I think he was torn between the two worlds. He'd become well-known for his behind-the-scenes political activity. Maybe he thought it was a good time to gain a better foothold in city politics." I paused, licked my lips, continued. "Besides, if he was going to have Franklin killed anyhow, why not be ready to take over his job?" Ballany stopped doodling. "There's nothing here we can use," he said. "It's all conjecture. Hearsay." He slapped the palm of his hand against the desk top. "It's all bullshit." "That's all it is," I agreed. "None of it will go into my report," he said. "What about you?" "There's nothing I can use. I just write the facts." "Yeah," Ballany said. "Ain't life a bitch." When I left Ballany's office a few minutes later, we'd solved nothing, and I had no way to wrap up the story for the newspaper. But some stories are like that -- some stories just move from the front page to the inside and are slowly forgotten. I stopped at a pay phone in the lobby and dialed Ballany's home number. His wife answered and put Janet on the line. I told her what had happened. "Is it over?" "Yeah." I longed to hold her in my arms, to smother her with kisses, to lay in bed with her curled in my arm, but I knew I couldn't, not quite yet. "Are you coming home?" "Soon," I told her. "I'll meet you there in a few hours." "I'll be waiting." There was a sense of resignation in her voice and I knew why. The deadline came first. The deadline always came first. Before she hung up, as her hand must have been moving toward the switchhook, I called out her name. A moment of silence, then, "Yes?" "I love you," I said. I didn't say it often enough. "I'll see you at home," she said. * * * * From police headquarters I returned to the newspaper building and wearily dropped into the chair behind my desk. I loosened the knot of my tie, took a swallow of cold coffee from a Styrofoam cup on my desk, and stared at the VDT screen. The cursor sat in the upper left corner and blinked impatiently at me. A lot had happened the past few days and my mind raced quickly through all the events. I still didn't know who Alderman Franklin's first visitor had been on Friday, and I still wasn't sure what the connection between Michael O'Shea and J. Standish Stevens had been, but I had a deadline to meet and a story to write. I glanced at my watch, then opened a new file on the computer and began typing. A newspaper thrives on deadlines and I was about to miss mine. ----------------------- Visit www.WildsidePress.com for information on additional titles by this and other authors.