The Violence Beat

by JoAnna Carl

  “What is this?” I said. “My ribs hurt, and my professional pride is in shreds. And you’re bullying me! Is this another act like the one you pulled on your mother? Are you pretending to be angry so you can manipulate me for some reason?”

  Mike and I stared at each other angrily. And to my dismay, I discovered I wanted to kiss him. I understood why he was upset. I wanted to put my arms around him. I wanted to tell him everything would be all right. He wouldn’t lose his job. He would find out what happened to his father.

  And I wanted him to put his arms around me. I wanted him to tell me that we would find Lee and that she’d come clean and the whole mess would go away. We would discover a logical explanation for the IRS form Mike hadn’t seen yet—an explanation which would show that Irish Svenson was not a crook.

  But I couldn’t say all those things. I was angry. I was hurt. I was afraid to trust him.

  I turned over on my least painful side, and I tried to speak quietly and coldly. “Just go away and leave me alone.”

  He went.

  I lay there trying not to shiver. I’d never been in a room that felt so cold. It was as if Mike had left his icy anger behind, emotions straight from the Arctic tundra. The heat of my own anger couldn’t keep me warm, not for even a minute.

  I pulled the hospital’s inadequate blanket over my head, but I didn’t cry. I simply curled up in the fetal position I’d always assumed when things really got to me.

  It must have been the position that took me back, back to the year I was eight. My parents’ quarrels had become worse that year, and I’d spent a lot of time under my covers, curled into a ball. Finally, one night my daddy had come in. I remember that he had a suitcase with him. He put it down inside the door, and he sat down on the edge of my bed.

  “Nellie,” he’d said softly, “your mother and I keep fighting. We think it would be better if I moved out for a while.”

  I knew about divorce. I knew what was coming. I was so angry and so upset—I think my heart broke. I sat bolt upright in bed, and I yelled at him. “Go away and leave me alone!”

  He got up and left without another word. So I never saw him again.

  When my mother was killed a few weeks later, I thought he would come back and take me away. But he didn’t. He took his suitcase that night and disappeared from my life forever. I told him to go, and he went.

  Go away and leave me alone.

  For twenty years I’d been telling that to the men in my life. First to my father. Then to my grandfather. He loved me, and he wanted to be a real father to me, but I pushed him away. And then he died, and I felt guilty. I told it to my college boyfriends, even Professor Tenure. I’d told them all to go, in one phrase or another. They’d all gone.

  Now I’d told Mike to go. And he’d turned without a word and walked out the door, out of my life.

  But no matter what I’d said, no matter how unreasonable Mike had been, no matter how manipulative and sneaky he could be, I didn’t want him to go. If I had any shred of honesty left, I had to admit that to myself.

  The key moments in life take longer to tell about than they do to happen. I don’t think Mike had been gone for more than a minute and a half when I pushed myself to a sitting position, grabbed my ribs and groaned, then slid off the edge of the bed. I yanked the thin hospital spread off the mattress and pulled it around me. Then, barefoot and wrapped up Indian-style, I went out into the hall and walked toward a grove of fake fig trees that masked the elevators.

  Maybe I could catch up with Mike before he walked out of my life.

  But when I turned the corner and saw the elevators, no one was waiting for a door to open. The down arrow wasn’t lighted. The hall was empty.

  I leaned my head against the wall between the elevator doors and pounded my fist against the print of a soothing winter landscape that hung there. I was too late. Mike had already left. I had missed him. Our affair was over before I figured out if it was love or lust.

  “What are you doing?”

  The voice came from behind me, and I whirled around.

  “Mike!”

  He was getting out of an easy chair in a tiny waiting area that had been hidden behind the fake foliage.

  “You didn’t go away!”

  “Well, I went fifty or sixty feet. I thought we both needed that much cooling-off space. Are you okay?”

  “I’m wonderful.”

  We put our arms around each other, right there in the hall. I almost dropped my bedspread, and I could hear some aides snickering. I didn’t care.

  We were still standing there when the elevator bell dinged and the doors gave a gentle whoosh. I heard a couple of hesitant footfalls.

  Then Mike sighed deeply and spoke. “Hi, Mom.”

  I clutched my spread and turned around. Wilda Svenson’s face was a study. Dismay. Concern. Amusement. Then she began to laugh.

  I began to laugh. Mike began to laugh.

  “Mrs. Svenson,” I said, “I really don’t spend my whole life standing around semiclothed, hugging your son.”

  She held up a newspaper. “So I see. Now and then you stop hugging him long enough to save his life.”

  “Let’s not overreact,” I said. “Whatever I did, I did out of pure panic. Come on down to the room.”

  I led the way up the hall with one end of the bedspread thrown over my shoulder like a toga and the other trailing like a bridal train. I ignored the snickers of the hospital staff. My dignified progress ended in anticlimax; I couldn’t remember my room number. Mike and Wilda told me in unison. We also had to brush aside an embarrassed security guard. Apparently, when Mike went into my room, the guard had felt secure enough to go to the men’s room. He seemed to think he’d be fired if Mickey found out he’d left his post for a minute.

  The three of us went into the room, Mike helped me into the bed, and Wilda smiled at me. She was dressed for her office, in a dark brown wool-crepe suit, with a silk shirt, and heavy gold jewelry. A gold, brown, and ivory scarf was draped artistically around her collar.

  “I just dropped by to check on how you’re doing,” she said. “And to thank you for keeping my son in one piece.”

  “That was just lucky,” I said. “When I came out and looked over toward our cars, I could hardly miss the bad guy creeping up behind him. If I’d been a few seconds earlier or later—” I stopped. It was the first time I’d allowed myself to think that something had almost happened to Mike. I gulped and went on. “Which reminds me—how come I’m the one with a bodyguard? Mike, you were the one who was attacked.”

  “Just call me cautious,” he said. “Mom, I was planning to call you about something. Why does the name ‘San Simeon Beach’ ring a bell with me?”

  “San Simeon Beach?” Wilda looked puzzled, then her eyes widened, and she laughed. “San Simeon? Come on, Mike! What are you up to? An honest cop doesn’t make enough money to need an offshore account.”

  “Offshore account?” Mike looked confused.

  “Yes, Mike. San Simeon Beach is the place that got Jack Simons in so much trouble. He was flying down there with a load of cash and dropped his attaché case in the VIP lounge at DFW. It fell open right in front of God and Ellen Hilger.” She turned toward me. “Ellen’s the worst gossip at the Grantham Heights Country Club. The news that Jack was taking a trip to the Caribbean with an attaché case full of cash was all over town in a flash. The IRS just loved hearing about it.”

  “Oh, Mike!” I said. “An offshore bank account! That’s what Lee was trying to tell me. Guy Unitas has an offshore account in San Simeon Beach!”

  Mike was grinning. “I’ll bet that’s it! And the string of figures she wrote underneath must be the account number. But what does PUPID mean?”

  “That’s easy,” Wilda said. “If you’re talking finance, it means ‘Pay upon proper identification.’”

  I gr
abbed my ribs before I gasped that time. “She wrote ‘president,’ and she underlined it. That means only the president of the APB can get the money—not Guy!”

  “Right!” Mike sounded excited.

  Wilda frowned. “You’re not talking about Guy Unitas having an offshore account, are you? The whole idea’s ridiculous. Guy doesn’t have any money. His ex-wife got the house in the divorce settlement—even though she was moving away from Grantham—because he couldn’t afford to pay her for her share of the equity. I know because somebody in our office sold the house. Guy moved into a rattrap in Central Highlands.”

  “Guy may not have money of his own, but he handles a lot,” Mike said.

  “Union funds? Their dues income barely covers expenses,” Wilda said. “They have to finance that office, Guy’s salary, the bookkeeper, the lawyer’s retainer. It’s a low-rent operation.”

  Mike frowned. “The traditional crime associated with unions is looting the pension fund.”

  “I hardly see how,” Wilda said. “They have to have an outside audit. But—well, I will admit I had quite a time getting Irish’s money out of that fund. It took nearly a year and three letters from my lawyer. I thought it was because Irish hadn’t been a member for more than fifteen years before he died.”

  Mike turned to me. “Listen, Nell, this has gone too far. We’ve got to talk to somebody with some authority to act. Do you want it to be Hammond? Or Jameson?”

  “What are you talking about?” Wilda said.

  Right at that moment someone rapped on the door, and the burly guard put his head in. “Man to see you, Miss. Says he’s your boss.”

  Jake walked in. I introduced him to Mike and Wilda. I wasn’t surprised to learn he and Wilda already knew each other.

  Mike didn’t waste time with chitchat, and neither did Jake. They began talking at the same time.

  “How did that stuff about the poison get in Nell’s story?” Mike said to Jake.

  “Did you take that 1099 on Irish Svenson from Ace’s desk?” Jake said to me.

  Then they stared at each other and started over.

  “Didn’t you add the information about the poison?” Jake asked me.

  “What 1099 is he talking about?” Mike asked me.

  “Wait a minute!” I took a deep breath, then grabbed my ribs. “Both of you sit down, and let’s talk about one thing at a time. No, Jake. I did not add the information about the poison to the story. I don’t know how it got in. What does Ruth say about it?”

  “I haven’t asked her, since it’s kind of early to call somebody who doesn’t get off work until after one A.M. I was very surprised to see it, because it hadn’t been there when I read the story early in the afternoon.”

  I turned to Mike. “See?”

  “I believed you already.”

  Wilda made a commanding gesture. “But what’s this about some tax form of Irish’s?”

  Jake looked at me narrowly. “You hadn’t told them?”

  “No!” I probably sounded pretty self-righteous.

  “Well, when they said the two of you were coming out of the Gazette building when you were attacked last night, I figured—” Jake sounded apologetic.

  I took pity on him. “Actually, Jake, I looked in Ace’s desk because I was planning to show the form to Mike. I mean, that seemed like the next logical step.”

  Wilda leaned between us. “What are you two talking about?”

  I waved her aside. “Just a minute. Jake, the form was not in Ace’s desk at eleven o’clock last night. I assumed that Ace had taken it home with him. Are you saying it’s gone?”

  “That’s what Ace says. I never saw it.”

  Mike spoke again, his voice sharp. “What form?” And Wilda added to the verbal confusion. “What are you talking about? And why would one of Irish’s tax forms be any of your business?”

  Jake and I looked at each other. Jake shrugged. “I never saw the form,” he repeated.

  I sighed and turned to Mike and Wilda. “For the last two days Ace Anderson—one of the Associated Press reporters”—Mike nodded to indicate that he knew who I was talking about, and Wilda looked stony—“well, Ace has claimed that a source he trusts has been telling him that payoffs were involved in the contracts for renovating the old Central High School building into the Central Police Station. And he’s claimed your dad got one.”

  “Bullshit!” Mike snorted it out.

  “That was pretty much my opinion,” I said. “Ace never had anything to prove it. Then yesterday afternoon this unnamed source gave him a tax form which shows that Balew Brothers paid your dad a major sum as a consultant. This supposedly happened the year the construction contract was awarded.”

  “Absolutely not!” Wilda said.

  “Why didn’t you tell me about this?” Mike was pretty close to yelling.

  “I didn’t see the form until late yesterday afternoon!” I came close to yelling back. “Since then we’ve been pretty busy, between going to meetings of the C-Club, searching the back files of the Gazette and almost getting killed!”

  We stared at each other angrily.

  Jake cleared his throat. “Also, Mike, we probably should have approached your mother first.” He turned to Wilda. “I assume you handled your husband’s estate.”

  “Yes, I did,” Wilda said. “And I think I can clear this up right away. What year was this supposed payment made?”

  I told her.

  She nodded firmly. “That was one of the years the IRS audited. I can have the forms on your desk this afternoon. Irish had no income from Balew Brothers during those years. He had no large sums of income of any kind from sources outside the Grantham PD.

  “In fact, he had taken money out of his retirement account. Money I couldn’t trace. We had to pay tax on it. When I asked him about it—”

  Wilda stopped and seemed to consider her answer. She glanced at Jake, then turned toward Mike. “Well, his explanation led into the problems I told you about Monday night.”

  She turned back to Jake. “But you’re obviously not interested in money that went out, just sums coming in. And according to the Internal Revenue Service and our accountant, Irish didn’t receive any money from Balew Brothers or anybody else.”

  “Well, a 1099 looks pretty official,” Jake said.

  “It’s not.” Wilda’s voice was firm. “As a former bookkeeper, let me tell you. You can walk into any government office and pick one off a stack laid out on a table. You can type it up and put in any information you want to. It only becomes official when it’s filed with the Internal Revenue Service. And I can’t believe that I went through that hellish audit, and the IRS missed something like that.”

  “Is it possible somebody deliberately led Ace Anderson astray?” Mike said.

  I snickered, and Jake rolled his eyes. “Leading Ace astray wouldn’t be that hard to do,” Jake said. “Especially now that the form’s disappeared.”

  “You’re not going to print anything?” Mike sounded suspicious.

  “No way!” I must have sounded scandalized.

  “Absolutely not!” Jake said. He launched into a short dissertation on journalistic ethics and the need to be able to back stories up. I had the feeling he was practicing for the lecture Ace was going to get.

  My doctor, Dr. Bea, came in then. She ordered Mike and Jake out. Wilda left, too, still promising to have three-years worth of audited tax returns on Jake’s desk that very afternoon. Jake was telling her that wouldn’t be necessary.

  Dr. Bea told me to go home, and the nurse with her thrust release forms at me. They left, and I started dressing. As soon as I was halfway covered, I put my head out the door, but the brown-shirted character had disappeared. I asked a passing LPN where he had gone.

  “He said he was leaving,” she said. “That other young man is still here. He’s down by the
elevators talking to a policeman.”

  Chapter 21

  A policeman? Mike had said he wanted to talk to either Hammond or Jameson. But to a layman, a “policeman” probably indicated a uniformed officer. And a uniformed officer didn’t sound like either of those people.

  I decided to assume that Mike wouldn’t leave me stranded, now that I was being dismissed from the hospital. I put on my shoes and gathered up the hospital’s tissues, lotion, soap, and plastic pitcher and put them in the hospital’s plastic bag. They make you pay for that stuff, so I was certainly taking it with me. I was dumping my dirty clothes in on top when I heard a rap at the door, and Mike came in. He didn’t look happy.

  “I understand my bodyguard is gone,” I said.

  “I told him I’d take the duty.”

  “I guess I need a ride,” I said.

  “You got it. But I’ll have to drop you off. Jim Hammond wants me on his carpet at eleven a.m. I think he’s sharpening his ass-chewing teeth.”

  Mike had a good reason to look serious, I realized. The goof-up which had allowed the source of the poison to get in that morning’s Gazette could have him in a lot of trouble. And, though I suspected Ace was responsible, I had no way of proving he was the guilty party, and I had no proof of how he could have gotten hold of the information in the first place.

  “Mike,” I said, “I did not put that stuff about the poison coming from the evidence room in the story, and I did not tell anybody about it. I really, truly don’t know how it got there.”

  Mike almost smiled. He put his arms around me, gently enough to leave my ribs undisturbed, and rested his cheek against the top of my head. “I believe you,” he said. “You’re Honest Nell.”

  “Don’t laugh at me. I know I’m not always honest.”

  “You try. That’s one reason I love you.”

  He loved me? I rested my head on his shoulder. Tears came to my eyes, and I had to blink hard to keep them from getting away from me.