Tom asked, “These certain people-are they local drug dealers?”
“No. They’re serious organized crime. International.”
“So this is dangerous,” said Tom. He stood up straight, like brave.
“Very. You still interested?” Garrison watched with dubious eyes.
“Absolutely. Is there any other press on to this?”
“Nope,” said Garrison. “Just you.”
“Keep it like that and you have a deal,” said Tom. He extended his hand. Garrison shook it.
“Look,” said Tom, “I don’t mean to be rude, but I haven’t cleaned up yet and I have to get to work.”
Garrison worried the inside of his cheek with his tongue.
He tossed two more business cards on the table.
“I’m always in touch with that number,” he said. “I can get back to you in ten minutes any time day or night. Let us know the second you connect with her.”
“I understand,” said Tom.
“Do you?” speculated Garrison. “There’s some real nasty people mixed up in this. If Caren Angland knows something and is willing to talk, she doesn’t want to be on the street.
You might impress that on her.”
“I hear you.” Like a hole card, he held his knowledge of Caren’s alleged beating by her husband close to his chest.
“I sure hope so,” said Lorn Garrison.
Tom took his time. Leisurely, he slow danced in the shower with The Dream Story that could whisk him to the Pulitzer mezzanine where the suits were all tailored and the elevators were marked Washington Post, Los Angeles Times, or the New York Times.
Tom understood that, beneath their trappings of arrogance, law enforcement and journalism were privileged systems of barter and gossip. To catch a big story or a big crook, somebody had to squeal on someone.
So who tipped him.
Maybe some disgruntled cop who’d worked with Angland.
A black cop, maybe, angered by Angland’s outrageous remarks. Maybe Garrison himself, grabbing at straws.
His doughy image in the steamed mirror was an argument for a haircut, for exercise. He saw himself, ten pounds lighter, with a razor cut. He removed his glasses. Contacts maybe.
Yeah.
The problem was how to control the story. The Minneapolis Star Tribune, unlike the anorexic St. Paul paper, would throw money and bodies at something like this. The TV stations would hold high carnival. Twenty minutes later, Tom floated into the newsroom, more buoyant than he’d been in years. He smiled so broadly at Ida Rain she barely contained a blush. He sat down at his desk. Barb Luct wasn’t in yet. Magnanimously, Tom slipped two twenties from his Mystic Lake winnings into her bottom drawer.
13
Outside, another dark, snowless Scandinavian day tapped on the sixth-floor newsroom windows and invited suicides to jump. Inside, Tom struggled to keep from grinning. Call Rush Limbaugh and spread the word. Another overforty, not-quite-dead white male was getting a second wind.
He imagined Caren Angland in a black dress. A tight black dress. With blond hair and wet red lipstick. A Raymond Chandler fantasy. Very much in trouble. Coming to him.
In real life, Tom had to read his e-mail. Sometimes he read Ida’s e-mail. Figuring out passwords was a little game he played.
First message. From Ida Rain, being fussy and vertical on the job. Much different from horizontal Ida. Real earth-shaking stuff. Re: yesterday’s school lunch program story, which you missed. I never got anyone out to cover it so make a call and do it on the phone.
Another great assignment. Out to lunch by Tom James, staff writer. He disliked his name. Tom and James. Like two first names, as if he didn’t have a proper last name. His middle name was Shelle, no help there. He’d changed his byline to his initials, T.S. James, for a while.
His colleagues started calling him “Tough Shit James,” so he tried Thomas, but it sounded stuffy. Tommy came off weak.
So he was back to Tom.
He checked his wristwatch again. She’d be out front in about half an hour. His briefcase was ready to go. Pads.
Pens, tape recorder, and cell phone all charged up.
Look busy. No distractions, then, just get up and make his move. The only reason to be in the office was in case she called with a change. Ida’s back was to him, perfect as a page out of Vanity Fair; herringbone belted jacket over black slacks. She’d kill him if she knew. God. The FBI. International crime ring.
Keep busy. He drummed his fingers on his desk and turned to his keyboard. His cursor pecked through the files and selected the one titled Names. He scrolled through notes and pages, revisiting old lists of outlaws. His eyes strained the words for textures. The power of the sounds we call each other.
Take Jesse James…if his name had been Tom, he’d probably have been a bank clerk. But Jesse-see, it all changed.
William Bonney.
Ma Barker.
Clyde Barrow.
John Dillinger.
Cole Younger.
Pretty Boy Floyd.
Those people knew from childhood they would lead dangerous lives. Just the sound of their names was like hearing a dare and a taunt.
And what about Charles Starkweather. No office job kiss-ing politically correct ass for that bad boy. That name had big wrists and big shoulders and was plain scary as an ax handle stained with blood and left out on the frozen prairie.
Starkweather would cut Ida Rain in half and throw the top away. Tom paused. He conjured the image of Caren Angland’s top on Ida’s bottom. Ouch.
After outlaws came monsters. He put the name Donner at the head of this list: a place, a family, a particularly evoc-ative American moment. He’d never met anyone named Donner. Just as he’d never met anyone named Hitler.
But Bundy was a common enough name.
The monsters didn’t have the statuesque phonetics of the outlaws. Ted Bundy sounded normal. Dillinger sounded like bare knuckles.
Charles Manson.
The monsters did not answer to their names. Their directions came from a chat room on the moon.
He’d studied his lists of names until he created one for a fictional hero and alter ego: Danny Storey; gambler, lover.
Private eye. He whispered it out loud. The sound fit magically in between the outlaws and the monsters. It sounded decisive.
A good name for today. That’s when the shadow blocked the overhead fluorescent light, fell across the screen, and a violent kick jarred his chair.
14
A sour blast of whiskey breath announced Keith Angland, who bristled over Tom, big as the FBI man, Garrison. But no smooth manner, no manicure. Angland was dressed in dirty blue jeans, scuffed running shoes and a thick charcoal wool sweater under a long dark wool overcoat. His cheeks were flushed and gritty with bronze stubble. Uncombed hair.
Wraparound sunglasses hid his eyes, doubling his menace in the December gloom.
A photo dropped from Angland’s hand into Tom’s lap.
Jesus. More Tom and Caren among the Christmas trees. Tom experienced the disturbing sensation that his spine had turned to ice and was going to slide out his bottom. But this was his ground and Angland was the invader. He struggled up from his chair, licked dry lips, pushed his glasses up on his nose and challenged in a cracked voice:
“Are you being investigated by the FBI?” In his peripheral vision, Tom caught general motion-reporters’ heads jerking up like alerted deer.
Angland’s lips curled in contempt. He sneered and heaved Tom into his computer, a chair clattered over. “Stay away from my wife, you fucking hamster.”
Shocked stares crisscrossed on them from all over the office.
Ida Rain was quick, out of her chair, moving to con front Angland. But Molly Korne was quicker, appearing out of nowhere. She placed her knuckles where her hips should be if she had hips and announced, “You can’t come in here and treat my reporters like this.”