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He hesitated. “I mean, your situation’s tough and all that, but … well, Jamie’s gone and you’re just going to have to-”

“Right. Jamie’s gone and I’m going to have to live with that. I know. Time to get a life.” Out of impulse, I switched on the CTV again. “I think it’s time for Batman. You know what channel it’s on?”

John shut up. I found the station showing the favorite cartoon show of my misspent youth. The theme song swelled to fill the car as we sailed the rest of the way downtown: one man with a firm grip on reality, the other trying to avoid it at all costs.

Get a life. Sure, John. I had a life.

And boy, did it suck.

8

(Thursday, 12:45 P.M.)

I dropped off the camera with Jah after we got back to the office; he promised to process the disk and give me a contact sheet before the end of the day. He also informed me that his father had found out about my surreptitious exit and was-in Jah’s words-“livid pissed.”

That meant sneaking up the stairs to the second floor. I had rather hoped Pearl had gone out for lunch for once, but the odor of fried brains assaulted me as I tiptoed past Bailey’s door. Fried brains, that most obnoxious of St. Louis delicacies, was Pearl’s favorite food; he brought a take-out deli plate of them to the office every day and consumed them in full view of the staff. Bailey didn’t look up from his brains as I scurried to my desk, but I knew that he would eventually catch up with me.

I figured that the best thing for me to do was to look busy so that, at very least, he couldn’t accuse me of goldbricking. I sat down at my desk and began work on my column for next week’s paper. The subject was the ERA raid on the Muny last night; the morning Post-Dispatch gave me such clinical facts as the number of people who had been busted, but what came out in my column was a more subjective eyewitness account.

I was halfway through composing the article, in the middle of describing the arrival of the ERA troopers, when I caught a glimpse of Bailey as a reflection on my screen. I ignored him and went on writing; for a few moments he hovered just outside my cubicle as if trying to decide whether to say something, then he walked away. I glanced over at John; he was on the phone at his desk, but he grinned back at me. My job was still safe-for today, at any rate.

Yet I couldn’t get the events at Tiptree out of my mind. Sure, it wasn’t my story, but nonetheless my journalistic curiosity was itching, and I needed a good scratch. After I finished the rough draft of my story and saved it, I switched the computer to modem and made a call to the city election commissioner’s office.

Steve Estes’ campaign contributions were a matter of public record; all I had to do was ask the right questions and the skeletons danced out of the closet and onto my screen. Estes had been a busy little political hack: his war chest listed contributions from hundreds of private individuals, among them many of the city’s wealthiest and most powerful citizens. The list also included local corporate and PAC donations to Citizens to Re-Elect Steve Estes, and right smack in the middle of the list was $10,000 from the Tiptree Corporation.

Of course, that in itself didn’t mean shit to a tree: everyone from the Republican National Committee to the National Rifle Association had written checks to Estes. It still meant that there was a subtle connection between Estes and Tiptree.

I made a hard copy of the file, circled the Tiptree item in red ink, and was about to pass it to John when I got a better idea. Almost on impulse, I picked up the phone and called Estes’ office.

Estes was a senior partner in a downtown law firm; the switchboard operator passed the buck to Estes’ private secretary, a hard-eyed young woman who looked as if she could have been a model for a 1947 Sears Roebuck catalog. Her bee-stung lips made a slight downturn when I identified myself as a Big Muddy reporter. “Just a moment, please,” she said. “I’ll see if he’s in.”

She put me on hold, and I was treated to a computer-generated lily field and the theme for The Sound of Music for a couple of minutes. My gag reflex was kicking in when the flowers and Julie Andrews abruptly vanished, to be replaced by Steve Estes’ face.

“Good afternoon, Gerry,” he said, beaming at the camera. “How can I help you?”

We had never met or talked before, so I ignored the first-name familiarity. It was par for the political course. “Good afternoon, Mr. Estes,” I said, touching the Record button on my phone. “I’m working on a story for my paper, regarding last night’s raid by ERA troops on the Muny, and I was hoping I could get a response from you.”

Estes didn’t even blink. “I’d be happy to give you a response,” he said, “but I’m afraid I don’t know much more than what I’ve read in this morning’s paper.”

He was already disavowing any connection. “Well, sir,” I went on, “it’s interesting to hear you say that, considering that you’ve gone on record to urge ERA to force the homeless population out of the park. Are you saying that you had nothing to do with the raid?”

He settled back in his chair, still smiling at me. “For one thing, I’m not sure if ‘raid’ is the appropriate word,” he replied, switching hands on the receiver. “‘Peaceful police action’ is probably the right term. And although I’ve asked Colonel Barris to step up his enforcement of the indigent population in Forest Park, I can’t say that I’ve directly requested him to … um, conduct any ‘raids,’ so to speak, on the park or the Muny in particular.”

Clever son of a bitch. Until Estes saw how public reaction toward the raid swung, he was carefully avoiding any credit for it, while simultaneously making sure that his name was still associated with the “peaceful police action” if it turned out that the majority of voters were in favor of what had happened last night.

“Do you believe ERA should conduct any further … ah, police actions in the park?” I asked.

I believe ERA should enforce the law and be responsible for the safety of all St. Louis citizens,” he replied.

Another neutral answer. Estes might rave in the city council chamber about “taking the streets back,” knowing that the TV news reporters would extract only a few seconds’ worth of sound bite from his diatribe, but when confronted by a columnist for the local muckraker who might print his remarks in their complete context, he would play it much more safely. I had to hand it to Estes; he was a professional politician in every sense of the term. He couldn’t be fooled by the loaded do-you-beat-your-wife queries that might foul up another politico.

“One more question,” I said. “I was at the private reception held at the Tiptree Corporation this morning-”

“You were?” All innocence and light. “Why, so was I. That was a beautiful shuttle launch, wasn’t it?”

“I wish I could have seen it,” I said, “but my colleague and I were forcibly removed from the room …”

He raised a wary eyebrow. “Really …”

“Really. In fact, the Tiptree official who forced us out claimed that you minded the fact that I took a picture of you, and that’s the reason why we were asked to leave.”

Despite his polished self-possession, Estes looked flustered for a couple of moments. He glanced away from the camera for an instant, as if listening to someone just outside the phone’s range of vision, then he looked directly back at me again. “I’m sorry to hear that was you, Gerry,” he said. “My apologies … I thought you were someone else.”