I just looked at him and nodded. I was afraid if I said anything he'd change his mind and go home.
On the way to the foundation in his car, he added a few more ground rules.
"I am not to be a named source in your story, okay?"
"Okay."
"And any information from me cannot be attributed to a 'foundation source,' either. Just a 'source familiar with the investigation,' okay? That gives me some cover."
"Okay."
"What you're looking for here are names that might be connected to your guy. If you find them, fine, but later on you don't have to report on how you got them. Do you understand?"
"Yeah, we've been over this. You're safe, Mike, I don't give up sources. Ever. All I'll do is use what we get here to get other confirmation. It'll be the blueprint. It's no problem."
He was quiet for a few moments before doubts must have crept into his mind.
"He's going to know it's me, anyway."
"Then why don't we stop? I don't want to jeopardize your job. I'll just wait for the bureau."
I didn't want to do that but I had to give him the option. I wasn't that far gone yet that I'd talk a guy into losing his job just to get information for a story. I didn't want that on my conscience. There was enough there already.
"You can forget the FBI as long as it's Walling's case."
"You know her? She tough?"
"Yeah, one of those as hard as nails with fingernail polish on. I tried shooting the shit with her once. She just shut me down. From what I hear from Oline, she got divorced or something a while back. I guess she's still in her 'men are pigs' mode and it's looking permanent to me."
I held up saying anything. Warren had to make a decision and I couldn't help.
"Don't worry about Ford," he finally said. "He may think it's me but he won't be able to do anything about it. I'll deny. So, unless you break the agreement, he'll have nothing but his suspicions."
"You've got nothing to worry about with me."
He found a spot on Constitution a half block from the foundation and parked. Our breath was coming out in thick clouds when we got out. I was nervous, whether or not he thought his job was in danger. I think we both were.
There was no guard to be fooled. No staff members working overtime to surprise us. We got in the front door with Warren's key and he knew right where we were going.
The file storage room was about the size of a double-wide garage and was taken up by rows of eight-foot steel shelves stacked with manila files with different colored tabs.
"How're we going to do this?" I whispered.
He took the folded printout from his pocket.
"There's a section on the suicide study. We look up these names, take the protocols to my office and copy the pages we need. I left the copier on when I left. Won't even have to warm it up. And you don't have to whisper. There's nobody here."
I noticed he said "we" one too many times but I didn't say anything about it. He led me down one of the aisles, his finger out and pointing as he read the program headings printed on the shelves. Eventually, he found the heading for the suicide study. The files had red tabs on them.
"These here," Warren said, raising his hand to point.
The files were thin, yet they took up three complete shelves. Oline Fredrick had been right, there were hundreds. Each red tag protruding from a file was a death. There was a lot of misery on the shelves. Now I had to hope that a few of them didn't belong there. Warren handed me the printout and I scanned the thirteen names.
"Out of all of these files only thirteen were homicide cops?"
"Yeah. The project has accumulated data on over sixteen hundred suicides. About three hundred a year. But most are street cops. Homicide dicks see the bodies but I guess for them the misery is over by the time they get there. They're usually the best and the brightest and the toughest. Seems like less of them eat the gun than the cops out on the beat. So I only came up with thirteen. Your brother and Brooks in Chicago also came up but I figured you have that stuff."
I just nodded.
"They should be alphabetical," he said. "Read me the names on the list and I'll pull the files. And give me your notebook."
It took less than five minutes to pull the files. Warren tore blank pages from my notebook and marked the spots in the stacks so they could be slipped back in quickly when we were done. It was intense work. It wasn't meeting a source like Deep Throat in a parking garage to help take down a president but my adrenaline was flowing anyway.
Still, the same rules applied. A source, no matter what his information is, has a reason, a motive, for putting himself on the line for you. I looked at Warren and couldn't see the true motive. It was a good story but it wasn't his story. He got nothing from helping other than knowing he had helped. Was that enough? I didn't know but I decided that at the same time that we were entering this sacred bond of reporter and secret source, I had to keep him at arm's length. Until I knew the true motive.
Files in hand, we walked quickly down two hallways until we got to room 303. Warren suddenly stopped and I almost rammed into him from behind. The door to his office was open two inches. He pointed to it and shook his head, signaling that he hadn't left it that way. I raised and dropped my shoulders, signaling back that it was his call. He leaned an ear toward the crack and listened. I heard something, too. It sounded like the crunching of papers, then a swishing sound. I felt a cold finger moving over my scalp. Warren turned back to me with a curious look on his face when suddenly the door swung inward and open.
It was like dominoes. Warren made a startled move, followed by me and then the small Asian man who stood there in the doorway with a feather duster in one hand and a trash bag in the other. We all took a moment to get our normal breathing going again.
"Sorry, mister," the Asian man said. "I clean your office."
"Oh, yeah," Warren said, smiling. "That's fine. That's good."
"You left copy machine on."
With that, he carried his goods down the hallway and used a key attached by a chain to his belt to get into the next office down. I looked at Warren and smiled.
"You're right, you're no Deep Throat."
"You're no Robert Redford. Let's go."
He told me to close the door, then turned the compact photocopy machine back on and moved around behind his desk, files in hand. I sat in the same chair I had been in earlier in the day.
"Okay," he said. "Let's start going through them. There should be a synopsis section in each protocol. Any kind of note or other significant detail should be there. If you think it fits, copy it."
We started going through the files. As much as I liked him, I didn't like the idea of letting him decide in half of the cases if they fit into my theory. I wanted to look at all of them.
"Remember," I said, "we're looking for any kind of flowery language that might sound like literature or a poem or whatever."
He closed the file he was looking at and dropped it on the stack.
"What?"
"You don't trust me to do this."
"No. I just… I want to make sure we're both on the same wavelength about this, that's all."
"Look, this is ridiculous," he said. "Let's just copy them all and get out of here. You can take them to your hotel and go through them there. It's quicker and safer. You don't need me."
I nodded and realized it was the way we should have done it all along. For the next fifteen minutes he operated the copier while I took the protocols from the files and replaced them after they were copied. It was a slow machine, not made for heavy use.
When we were done he turned off the machine and told me to wait in the office.
"I forgot about the cleaners. It might be better if I just take these back to storage, then come get you."
"Okay."
I started looking through the copied protocols while he was gone but was too nervous to concentrate on them. I felt like running out the door with the copies and getting away before anything could go wrong. I looked around his office to try to pass the time. I picked up the photo of Warren's family. A pretty, petite wife and two kids, a boy and a girl. Both of preschool age in the photo. The door opened while the frame was still in my hand. It was Warren and I felt embarrassed. He paid no notice.