The Violence Beat

by JoAnna Carl

  “Never bushy,” the manager said. “Bushy would not be permitted. And it’s the same for men and women. Long is fine. But neat.”

  His annoyance made me wonder. If you took away the blue coveralls and the bushy hair, which could very well be a wig, what description did we have?

  A skinny nonentity. That’s what Mike and I had seen. Put a Salvation Army uniform on the guy and he’d fit the description of the disguise expert who invaded the Grantham Community Mental Health Center and slipped an Almond Joy loaded with cyanide to Bo Jenkins. Put a painter’s cap and coveralls on him, and he’d fit the description of the character who’d put the Salvation Army uniform in Mike’s trash. If he was driving a white van, he could well be the guy who chased Lee and me through the Memorial Rose Garden, since we hadn’t seen him.

  Was Jim Hammond wrong when he said Guy was the baddie?

  In about an hour Jim came over and told us we could leave. We were to call Peaches and set up appointments to make formal statements. We went to the truck, which was parked illegally in the loading zone in front of the United desk. But it hadn’t been towed. Mike thanked the security guard before he opened the door for me.

  He was frowning as he turned the ignition over. “I’d still like to know who Lee is before we write this whole thing off,” he said.

  We stopped at the next exit up the interstate and grabbed some lunch at a Mickey D’s. I wasn’t very good company. Mike had mentioned Lee. Now I kept worrying about Lee, about who she was, about why she’d run out on me in the Blue Flamingo. Where was she? Had Guy caught her?

  Hammond might be happy with Guy as the killer of Bo Jenkins and maybe of Irish. But Mike was right. We needed to know who Lee was.

  Chapter 22

  I talked Mike into taking me to the Gazette instead of home. On the way down, I mentally reviewed what we had deduced about Lee. I had a plan of action by the time Mike stopped in front of the main entrance of the Gazette.

  “Mike, I don’t need a bodyguard,” I said. “You go see if you can hang around with Hammond.”

  He had plainly been itching to get back to the airport, and I could use the Gazette’s resources to check up on Lee by myself. I didn’t need Mike to slow me down.

  But Mike frowned. “Will you stay put?”

  “Yes,” I said. “For one thing, these ribs are going to make driving uncomfortable.”

  Then Mike’s eyes focused beyond me, and he grinned. I looked out the window on my side of the pickup, and saw one of the Gazette’s daytime security guards, Bill Martin, looking in at me.

  “Bill!” Mike said. “You old buzzard!”

  I rolled my window down, and Bill Martin reached across the truck to shake Mike’s hand. They did that male bonding thing for a couple of minutes.

  I shook my head at Mike. “Do you know everybody in Grantham?”

  “I know all the old cops who were my dad’s friends when I was growing up,” Mike said. He rested his hand lightly on my shoulder. “Bill, I’m trying real hard to get this lady to be my girlfriend.”

  Well, that ended any pretense of keeping our romance quiet. Not that it was much of a secret at this point anyway.

  Bill Martin was smiling. And Bill Martin had more teeth than any man I’d ever seen smile. I swear he has a double row all around his head.

  “You got good taste,” he said.

  Mike grinned. “Yeah. Anyway, you know somebody tried to run her down with a car last night? I swore I was going to guard her personally, but now I’ve got to go someplace. Can you keep an extra close eye on her?”

  Bill smiled even more broadly and shook a finger at me. “I can watch her as long as she doesn’t try to jump out a window.”

  “I don’t feel like climbing down any fire escapes,” I said.

  Mike seemed satisfied to leave me at the Gazette, since his pal Bill was on the job and I had declared my intention to stay put. I went inside with Bill and reviewed what Mike and I had deduced about Lee’s identity.

  First, Lee was a regular reader of the Gazette who lived at least one hundred and fifty miles away. That meant a mail subscriber.

  Second, she had some connection with Guy Unitas. But we didn’t know what that link was.

  I started on the second item first. I went to the library and put in an order for all the pre-computer-era files on Guy and the Amalgamated Police Brotherhood. The librarian on duty said she’d have them ready in half an hour.

  Then I went back to the first floor, where the circulation department is located, handy to the main street entrance, in case someone wanders by and wants to subscribe. That department also has a side door that opens onto the alley, as access for the guys in the vans, the people who’d saved our bacon the night before.

  I’m not sure I’d ever been in the circulation offices before. The Gazette employees are divided into departments, which might also be known as fiefdoms. First floor, logically enough, houses circulation and classified advertising, the two departments which most often deal directly with the public. Display advertising occupies the second floor, keeping its distance from classified and from the newsroom. The news department is on the third floor, with the library in the back corner. The business offices—where the salary checks are cut and the statements are sent out and the bills are paid—occupy a sanctuary on four, looking down on the rest of us. The publisher’s office is up there, which tells you something about newspaper priorities.

  People sometimes get a screwy idea that a newspaper is a public service. It’s not. It’s a private, profit-making business. Of course, like any business, the better it serves the public, the more profitable it is likely to be.

  The printing plant is in a separate building, although it’s linked to the main building on each floor. The giant press extends two stories high, taking up space from the basement through the first floor, and the pressroom crew has locker rooms in the basement. Warehouse space is in the basement and the sections of the first floor not used by the press. The computers and scanners and other gear used by the ad builders are on the second floor, adjoining the display advertising department. Our news-side page builders, who also use computers with giant screens—they can view an entire newspaper page at once—are on the same floor with the news department.

  Each of the Gazette’s 250-odd—and some are decidedly odd—employees sticks with his or her own department. Circulation was a foreign country to me. I had no more to do with them than any other subscriber would. I had to show my employee ID before I got together with the person in charge of mail subscriptions.

  Her name was Jamesetta Bay, and her elaborate cornrowed hairdo made her look like a high school kid. But she knew her equipment. Getting a printout of subscribers by area code would be the simplest thing in the world, she said.

  “I have to make a printout for the auditors every month,” she said. She didn’t mean the Gazette’s accountants. She meant the ABC, the Audit Bureau of Circulation. A newspaper’s circulation must be certified by the ABC. Advertising rates are based on it.

  “Just what zips are you interested in?” she asked.

  Luckily she had a Zip Code Directory. I read out the Oklahoma City codes, the Tulsa codes, and the Dallas-Fort Worth codes. The list of mail subscribers that came up didn’t include too many names. People read the news about the town where they live and occasionally the town where they used to live and sometimes the town where they are planning to move. Few of us read newspapers from completely strange cities. Another city’s news is usually pretty boring.

  Jamesetta was getting interested in the project. She was the one who suggested getting maps and adding more suburbs. That brought the list to sixty names. I thanked her profusely and left. I decided that walking upstairs was going to jiggle my sore ribs, so I took the elevator to the third floor and went back to my desk with her computer printout.

  The police reporters’ desks were empty, in
cluding the one Ace had been using. Somehow I didn’t expect Ace to show up that afternoon.

  I began to study the printout of mail subscribers. The first thing I noticed was that in the entire list of fifty or sixty names, not one first name was “Lee.” Or “Leigh.” Or “Lea.” Or “Li.” Or any other variation of Lee I could imagine. There were only a dozen that had an initial “L.” Which meant nothing. “Lee” could be a nickname. It could be an alias.

  Obviously these subscription lists would have to be checked out by guys with badges and the authority to ask questions.

  I sat, stared at the computer printout, and sulked. Was this list going to help? Was I getting anywhere at all?

  I scrawled a few notes on the blank edge of the computer paper.

  We had eliminated the IRS 1099 form and the possibility that Irish Svenson had been involved in a payoff as a factor. Or I had. It would still have to be checked out, but I—myself, Nell Matthews, girl reporter—was convinced that Guy Unitas had foisted a fake form on Ace Anderson.

  Why did I believe that? First, because I knew how easy Ace was to fool.

  Second, because Wilda Svenson said she had gone through three years of IRS audits, and everything had checked out and that Irish had had no consulting income. This wouldn’t have been true if the IRS had gotten a 1099 from Balew Brothers. At least I didn’t think it would. I made a note to check on this with an accountant.

  In fact, Wilda had told Mike that instead of having unexplained income, Irish had lost money. Money was missing from his retirement account. Reading between the lines, I deduced that she had quizzed him about this. His explanation had led her to the conclusion that Irish had given money to another woman. Or spent it on her. I wrote “blackmail?” on my computer printout. The quarrel over the missing money had ended with Irish admitting he had had, or was having, an affair. He told Wilda he wouldn’t stop seeing the other woman. And Wilda told him to move out.

  In addition, Bear Bennington had seen Ace and Guy with their heads together in the back booth at the Grantham Plaza Hotel.

  Yes, I was convinced that Guy Unitas had deliberately led Ace Anderson astray with the fabled form 1099. A 1099 which had conveniently disappeared almost as soon as it appeared.

  But why? What had Guy had to gain from this?

  I had no idea. I wrote that question out and surrounded it with big question marks. What had the episode of the 1099 actually accomplished? It had kept me from dropping the crime beat, and it had forced me to keep my affair with Mike semiquiet. It had forced me to work with Ace Anderson. It had distracted me from trying to help Mike figure out what was going on with Bo Jenkins’s death and what that had to do with his father’s death.

  So what? How could anyone have even known that I was interested in Irish Svenson’s death? What had they been doing? Tapping my phone?

  I threw down my ballpoint in disgust. The whole thing was ridiculous. Tapping my phone, indeed. Who was I? The Mafia? It was silly.

  But—I mulled it over. Until Lee and I had our wild rendezvous in the Memorial Rose Garden, only way we had communicated was on the telephone, and she had called me at home. She seemed pretty certain that “they”—the bad guys, whoever they were—hadn’t known where she was until she got in touch with me.

  Could they have tapped my phone?

  It was too dumb. The thought made me feel as if I should check into the Grantham Community Mental Health Center—Paranoia Wing.

  But maybe I could ask Mike, quietly and privately, if he knew how to check that sort of thing. If he’d promise not to tell a soul. Or to laugh.

  A tremor of dread ran through me. If my phone was tapped, I was going to feel guilty. Lee had turned to me for help. Instead, a tapped phone would have led the crooks right to her.

  But she hadn’t let me help her. We’d gotten away from the van that chased us. We’d been waiting for Mike to come. But Lee hadn’t trusted Mike and me. She had fled. Wearing my rain coat.

  The thought of Lee put me on a new track. I picked up my ball point and scrawled some more notes on that printout. Irish had been about to break a big scandal, she’d said. Something that involved the Grantham PD. “The highest levels,” she said.

  Mike had talked to his dad shortly before Irish’s death, and his dad had hinted at problems, but told him nothing specific. Irish apparently hadn’t told Wilda either—or had he? I wrote that down with a question mark. Wilda might still be keeping something back.

  But Lee had said the scandal involved high-level cops. Or did she say that? Had she said, “You’d be surprised at who’s involved,” or something like that? Would Guy Unitas and the APB qualify?

  Despite Hammond’s certainty about Guy’s guilt, I wasn’t sure. I couldn’t picture Irish Svenson getting too bent out of shape over a scandal in the police officers’ union. As chief, he’d almost been an adversary to the union. He was management, and the APB was labor. He’d have been more worried if one or more of his department heads or assistant chiefs had been linked to something scandalous.

  Well, who among the powers-that-be in the Grantham Police Department had benefited from Irish’s death? I scrawled some names down. Jameson, of course. He’d moved from division commander to chief. The other two division commanders and the Traffic Bureau commander had been in place before Irish died. Had he been about to fire one of them? I didn’t know. I wrote their names down.

  In the Detective Bureau, Hammond had hopped over two people to become a senior detective—six months after Irish died. Would he have gotten the job if Irish had still been around? The gossip was that he got along with Jameson a lot better than he had with Irish Svenson. I wrote his name down.

  I really couldn’t think of anybody else at the Grantham PD who might have benefited from Irish’s death. So I tackled it from the other angle. Who might have had it in for him?

  Well, Guy Unitas for starts. Obviously. Irish had squeezed him out of his job as public information officer and installed his own cohort, Coy, in the office. He might not have killed Irish out of pure anger, but if Irish had been threatening him, friendly feelings would not have been present to hold Guy back.

  Guy hadn’t seemed to be popular with the upper echelon at the Grantham PD. He kept open house at the APB office and at the Main Street Grill for union members, but supervisors are not union members. It had seemed to me that the department heads shunned Guy. At least, I could remember sitting with the breakfast crowd at the Main Street when Coy walked in, gave our table a casual wave, and took a booth at the back of the room. Guy hadn’t invited him to sit down, and Coy hadn’t stopped to talk.

  Who could I ask about this? I needed a long-time cop who didn’t mind gossiping. A guy like Bill Martin.

  I picked up my phone and called the main security desk. Bill answered, and I identified myself.

  “Bill, you obviously know a lot of cops,” I said. “Did Mike say you’re a former member of the force?”

  “Yeah. I quit after fifteen.”

  “After fifteen? Why didn’t you go for twenty? For retirement?”

  “I was one of the ones who thought Mickey O’Sullivan got a raw deal from Chief Svenson. Mickey—he didn’t complain. The two of them even got to be friends again. But at the time, several of us quit.”

  “I see.”

  “You’ll never convince me that Mickey O’Sullivan stole a pistol from the evidence room and planted it on a guy.” Bill’s voice was forceful. “Never! I worked under Mickey. He was a straight cop.”

  “He certainly seems like a nice guy.”

  “Nice isn’t the point! A real crook can be a fun guy to hang out with. A lot of them are characters, real interesting to be around.”

  “‘Heaven for climate, hell for company,’” I quoted.

  “Right. Who said that?” He mulled over his own question for a minute, then spoke again. “But Mickey didn’t take that pistol
. And the worst of it was, Chief Svenson didn’t think he’d taken it. He knew Mickey hadn’t done it, but he couldn’t prove it one way or the other. So he asked Mickey to resign. Mickey was supposedly his best friend, but Svenson didn’t back him up.

  “I quit, and I told Chief Svenson why. Right to his face.”

  I let his indignation settle a minute before I asked a new question. “What about Guy Unitas? He left about the same time. Did he quit for the same reason?”

  Bill laughed. “Nah. Guy never quit over somebody else’s problems. That’s not the way Guy works.”

  “I’ve had the impression that Irish Svenson bounced Guy so Coy could have his job.”

  “I don’t think so.” Bill dropped his voice slightly. “I always thought Guy might be involved in that gun deal somehow. He was so sharp he could cut himself, you know. I guess that’s a good quality for a union exec.”

  “He’s a former department head for the Grantham PD—”

  “If you can call public relations a department.”

  I was a little surprised by Bill’s reply. “It’s a department on the organizational chart. Coy gets department manager’s pay. I’ve seen the list.”

  “Yeah. What a crock. He doesn’t do diddly. Shoot his mouth off when he shouldn’t.”

  Interesting. Even though Bill was now an employee of the Grantham Gazette, he still had the standard cop attitude about public information. Don’t tell the press—or the public—any more than you have to. Of course, it’s not exclusively a cop attitude. I recalled that the director of the Grantham Community Mental Health Center had expressed a very similar opinion two days earlier.

  I thanked Bill and hung up. I kept staring at my printout. Okay, I had a list of people who benefited by Irish’s death. I had a list of people who might have had it in for him—whoops!

  The personal side of Irish’s life was omitted from that list. Lee had been convinced that someone in the department was involved, and Bo Jenkins’s final words made that seem likely. Irish might have been killed by someone in the department, but for personal reasons.