The Tin Man

by Nina Mason

  Returning to the moment, she realized with a start that she was already to Washington Square. Shit, she had missed her stop. By the time she hopped off and doubled back, cursing herself the whole way for wasting valuable time, it was after one o’clock. Now she had under an hour to scope out the crime scene, talk to the cops, find Buchanan, say her piece, and get the story filed.

  Rounding the corner onto Bleeker Street, she saw a throng gathered on the sidewalk about halfway down the block. Parked in the street were a couple of ambulances, a paramedics truck, half a dozen police cruisers, and the medical examiner’s wagon—all with their lights flashing like a July 4th fireworks display—but still no news vans, thankfully. Once the hordes descended, she’ never be able to talk to him alone.

  Nudging her way through the throng, she caught glimpses of yellow crime-scene tape and a uniformed officer posted outside the entrance. Mid-fifties, double chin, potbelly, bulging buttons.

  “The News,” she called out as she approached, holding up her press badge. “Who’s in charge?”

  “Homicide. Detective Bradshaw. He’s upstairs.”

  “Any chance I can talk to him?”

  “You’d have to ask him,” the officer replied with a tight smile.

  “What about Alex Buchanan?”

  A gray eyebrow disappeared under the visor of his cap.

  “The guy who found the bodies.” She wasn’t surprised he was out of the loop. “Is he still here?”

  He shrugged. “I haven’t seen him leave.”

  “Thanks.”

  Thea ducked under the tape and pushed through the door into the lobby, which was crawling with uniformed cops and other personnel investigating the homicides. As she glanced around for the paper’s photographer, an enticing bouquet teased her nose. Pumpkin Spice Latte. Yummy. She glanced longingly toward the Starbucks, eyes sweeping over the small cafe seating area. Her blood pressure spiked when her gaze fell on Alex Buchanan sitting alone, his focus consumed by whatever he was doing on the laptop in front of him. His hair was grayer and he’d lost a little weight, but otherwise looked the same as the last time she’d seen him, which was what?—eight long years ago? Regret gnawed on her heart as she stood there, paralyzed, trying to remember why she was there.

  Chapter 3

  The minute the cops told Buchanan he was free to go, the journalist stowed the Glock in the waistband of his trousers and got to his feet. The detective in charge had asked if he wanted protection. He did, but pride made him say otherwise. For some reason, being babysat by the cops felt as unmanly as cracking under torture.

  Or the unpredictable bouts of E.D.

  He shrugged on his sports coat, packed up his briefcase, and headed for the door. He didn’t know where he was going or what he planned to do, only that he’d been stuck here too long—a fact that became painfully obvious the minute they started wheeling out the body bags.

  He limped toward the lobby, pulling up when he found a woman blocking his way. He gave her only a cursory glance—just enough to tell him she was a willowy brunette in dark slacks and a light-colored top.

  “Excuse me,” he semi-grunted, but, to his vexation, she did not step aside. He shifted back and forth for an awkward moment, trying to get around her, downcast gaze fixed on her blouse. Still, she didn’t budge. The blouse was silk and semi-sheer and her nipples were hard.

  “Take a picture,” she said with an edge. “It’ll last longer.”

  His heart jolted when he saw it was Dorothea Hamilton, a.k.a. “the ball buster.”

  “Got a minute?”

  “I was, erm, just leaving, actually,” he stammered, face tingling. She looked the same. A little older, sure, but otherwise the same.

  “Mind if I walk with you for a ways? I’m on a tight deadline.”

  She was here to cover the shootings? How odd. Last he’d heard, she’d been moved to the investigative desk. Not that he kept up with what she was doing. He honestly didn’t give a rat’s arse about Dorothea Hamilton. But journalists were a gossipy lot, so word got around.

  “Are you covering crime again?” he asked.

  “No,” she said, shrugging, “the media murders.”

  Buchanan stiffened. He hadn’t until that moment considered there might be a connection between this and Malcolm Connolly’s murder.

  “I’m sorry about your—well, what happened.”

  “Right.” He swallowed hard. “Me, too.”

  “Are you up to answering a few questions?”

  “Honestly, Thea”—he stepped past her into the lobby—“there’s not much to tell.”

  “Still.” She stayed hard on his heels, pen and notepad at the ready. “I need a couple of quotes.”

  He shrugged. “Like I told the police, I popped out for a few to get a coffee. When I returned, I found them all dead.”

  “Were they marked? Like the others?”

  They hadn’t been, but it was possible the gunman didn’t have time. “Not that I noticed.”

  “My editor says you had a run-in with the gunman. What happened? Can you describe him?”

  “Medium height, medium build, black clothes, black shoes, black ski mask.” He forced a grin. “No need to call in a sketch artist, eh?”

  As she was writing all this down, he pushed through the exterior door, hoping she wouldn’t follow. But she did, damn her. When she was halfway through, he rounded on her. He didn’t need her following him like a stray dog. He wanted to be alone, to have a few drinks and lick his wounds.

  She held out her card. “If you think of anything, will you call me?”

  “Sure thing.”

  Forcing another smile, he plucked the card from her fingers before lifting his gaze to her face. Their eyes met, quickening his pulse. Damn, but she was beautiful. The kind of beautiful that took a man’s breath away. Too bad she was such a ball buster. Looking away, he stuffed the card in his pocket without the slightest intention of using it.

  “Listen, Buchanan,” she started, “about that night—I might have come on a little strong.”

  “Aye, well.” He shifted uneasily. “It’s all water under the bridge now, eh?”

  “Sure,” she said, still holding the door. “And again, I just want to say—”

  “Look, Thea,” he said, cutting her off. “Do you mind? I’m still a bit shaken up by all of this—on top of which, I’m dying for a smoke.” He coughed a bitter laugh. “And I’m well aware of your views on that subject.”

  She flinched. Good. She deserved to have her self-righteousness thrown back in her face.

  “I’m really sorry,” she said. “About the way I acted. That’s all I wanted to say.”

  “Apology accepted,” he grumbled. “Now can I go?”

  An awkward few moments of silence followed before she withdrew her arm and stepped back. The door closed between them. He spun around, set his free hand on the grip of his Glock, and hobbled off in the direction of his regular watering hole.

  * * * *

  Three miles away, two armed men in a black Lincoln Town Car were cruising a subterranean parking garage, arguing over what kind of vehicle to commandeer next. Ibrahim Sahid, the driver, wanted a generic sedan that would not attract notice, while Khalid Al-Jaafari favored something with serious horsepower under the hood, having long been a fan of American muscle cars.

  “Remember that Pontiac Firebird I drove when we were at Princeton?”

  Al-Jaafari winced in pain. Thanks to a run-in with a coat rack, it hurt him to speak. And to breathe. He was certain at least one of his ribs was cracked.

  “Of course I remember,” Sahid replied, shooting a glance his way. “Whatever became of it?”

  Feeling the bite of an old resentment, Al-Jaafari bit out through clenched teeth, “Do you not recall? My parsimonious father forced me to sell it when he refused to pay to ship it back to Riyadh.”

  * * * *

  Milo Osbourne leaned back in his leather captain’s chair just far enough to block from view the me
ssage he was texting on his silenced cell phone. As the Global Media CEO hit the send key, he looked left at Ben Dogan, his chief legal counsel, then right toward Carl Jackson, his second in command. Both were looking down the long mahogany conference table at Duncan Gibson, who was giving a PowerPoint presentation outlining the strategies for resisting a hostile takeover.

  Though Gibson was a masterful jouster, he was, as a presenter, about as scintillating as soggy toast. Anxiously awaiting a reply to his text, Osbourne glowered down the table at the attorney. “What do we know about this punk, anyway?”

  “Quite a bit, actually.” Gibson switched to the next slide.

  The projection screen displayed a head shot of a fortyish man with movie-star good looks. Dark hair, chiseled face, cleft chin, penetrating blue eyes. Oddly, something about the man’s appearance struck Osbourne as familiar. Had they met somewhere before? Despite the niggling feeling of recognition, he didn’t think so. Even at his advanced age, he was adept at remembering faces. He looked into the eyes, which appeared cold and hard. Reptilian, one might say. There was a cruel edge to the thin mouth as well.

  Something about the takeover artist’s expression reminded Osbourne of himself at that age, which scared him some. If this man was half as unscrupulous as he’d been, Golden Age Media was in serious trouble.

  “He’s a handsome bugger,” Dogan inserted. “I’ll give him that.”

  “But also a real S.O.B., I’d be willing to wager,” Osbourne added.

  “A ruthless predator, by all accounts,” Gibson confirmed with a nod.

  “And his dossier?” Jackson asked.

  Gibson, clearing his throat, set his hands on the table and leaned closer, looking from face to face. “He attended the London School of Economics, then did a couple of years of med school, oddly enough, before taking a job as a stockbroker. Paternoster Square, you know. The London Stock Exchange, not Wall Street. He specialized in options and did well enough to buy himself a seat on the exchange. Olympus Enterprises is the name of his firm. Last year, he acquired a seat on the New York exchange as well.”

  “And his name?” Osbourne wanted to know.

  “Robert Sterling,” Gibson replied.

  Osbourne shifted in his chair, still studying the face of his black knight. That nagging feeling of familiarity refused to let go. “Where did he grow up? Who were his parents?”

  Standing taller, Gibson crossed his arms over his gray double-breasted suit coat. “He was raised by a single mother—a schoolteacher—in a rural village up near Yorkshire. She was a real religious fanatic, apparently. She died in a house fire, just about the time the lad came of age. Burned to death while in bed with a lover, according to the news archives.”

  “And the father?”

  “Nobody knows.” The barrister shrugged. “And we haven’t yet been able to track down a birth certificate.”

  No record of his birth? That probably meant the punk was illegitimate. Born at home to protect the father’s identity, he’d wager, which probably meant the surname was a cover as well.

  “And what prompted the little bastard to become a corporate raider?” Osbourne inquired.

  Gibson cleared his throat again. “It seems he acquired a taste for it after doubling his money on some undervalued stock he acquired quite by happenstance. After that, he bought into a handful of Sleeping Beauties, then negotiated himself extremely lucrative offers to walk away. A couple of years back, though, to everybody’s surprise, he actually took control of an engineering firm with some reconstruction contracts in Iraq. The stock had plummeted during that scandal—you remember the one—that KLM business over bogus contracts and shoddy work. Anyway, the kid went over there, took charge, and, by all accounts, turned things around rather miraculously.” The attorney licked his lips, still holding Osbourne’s gaze. “Last year, he sold the firm to United Power for what can only be described as a staggering sum. And now, it seems, he’s in the U.S.—and coming after you.”

  Desperation laced with outrage surged through Osbourne’s bloodstream. “Can’t we buy him off?”

  “We’ve tried that,” Gibson said. “But no go.”

  Osbourne, blood pressure shooting up, gripped the edge of the table. “But why? What is he after? What is his motive? Any theories?”

  “Simple greed is my guess,” Dogan interjected, “like most of these takeover artists.”

  It seemed like more than greed to Osbourne. Robert Sterling behaved as if he had a score to settle. But why? And why did the man seem so familiar? Had he worked for one of the papers acquired by Golden Age? Had he been laid off like that pain in his backside Alex Buchanan?

  Taking a breath, the CEO checked his phone again. Still no bloody answer, damn it all.

  Chapter 4

  Inside a silver Honda Civic parked across the street from the target’s building, Al-Jaafari seethed with rage—toward himself, the journalist, and his partner, who was playing with something making a lot of annoying bleeps and blips. Turning a heated glare on the man behind the wheel, he asked, “What in the name of Allah is that infernal contraption?”

  “It is a Game Boy,” Sahid replied with a shrug. “For my grandson back home.”

  Al-Jaafari, who had no grandchildren of his own, vehemently disapproved of such frivolities. As far as he was concerned, they encouraged “western” ways and led to sloth and idiocy. Sahid should know better than to expose his grandson to such spiritual corruptions.

  When the cell in Al-Jaafari’s pocket beeped, dread tied his intestines in a knot. He knew who was calling and could not, in good conscience, put off answering any longer. Fishing out his phone, he took a few minute to type the most judicious reply he could come up with: Our sincerest apologies, but unforeseen circumstances have forced a slight delay.

  * * * *

  Buchanan emerged from the bar, surprised to find the sky a luminous shade of charcoal. Jesus, how long had he been in there? It was twilight—the gloaming, they called it back home. Launching himself up Sixth Street toward his flat, he started singing under his breath: “In the gloaming, oh my darling, when the lights are soft and low…”

  The whisky had both taken the edge off his anguish and warmed his blood, but it was still damn cold out. Shivering, he hurried along, yearning for the overcoat he’d bought two Christmases ago in Edinburgh. He could smell frost in the air. Had there been snow in the morning forecast? He could not recall. This morning felt like eons ago.

  “When the trees are sobbing faintly with a gentle unknown woe, will you think of me and love me, as you did once long ago?”

  The song, one his mother used to sing at the piano, was making him feel sappily nostalgic. People in groups of two and three squeezed past him on the sidewalk, some in street clothes, others in costumes—“guise” as they called it in Scotland. In all the furor, he’d completely forgotten it was Halloween. All at once, he missed Edinburgh fiercely, missed his mum, missed the “guisers,” the wee ones trick-or-treating door to door, and missed “dooking fir aiples.”

  The next moment, he was a lad again, running down Raeburn Street toward the shops: The bakers on the corner with their cases full of mouth-watering French fancies, cream buns, and meringues; the News Agent and Sweetshop where he’d buy Highland Toffee and Parma Violets for his father—to mask the smell of alcohol on his breath (so his mum wouldn’t give the old man any Shite about it); the Evening News offices where he and Kenny would go late on Saturday afternoons to pick up The Pink, a special edition listing all the football scores; and, of course, the model shop.

  He and Kenny used to save their pennies for weeks to buy an airplane kit, then spend hours and hours gluing the wee plastic bits together. Thinking back on it now, he could almost smell the glue. It was a wonder they didn’t both develop brain damage from all the fumes they’d inhaled.

  As Edinburgh faded, fear began to claw at his insides. He badly craved a cigarette, but couldn’t bring himself to let go of the Glock long enough to light one. The assassins
could be anywhere, damn it. Watching. Waiting. Preparing to strike.

  He trundled on, images from earlier flashing through his mind like machine-gun fire. Baghdad. Kelsey. Bodies. The gunman. He should have felt outraged, aggrieved, devastated, but he only felt like an empty biscuit tin. As per usual.

  “In the gloaming, oh my darling, think not bitterly of me…”

  When his mobile started buzzing, he gave up singing and popped the device out of the holster on his belt. Squinting down at the wee screen, he checked the caller ID, but didn’t recognize the number. With considerable trepidation, he accepted the call.

  “So, did you mean what you said? Or, were you just handing me a line?”

  It was a female voice with a youthful cadence.

  “Who’s this?”

  “Who do you think?”

  He took a breath and spewed it in a white cloud of frosty vapor. He was so not in the mood to play guessing games.

  “Gosh, I’m deeply flattered, Alex. Not.”

  His mind dialed up a coltish young woman with long blond hair and big blue eyes—the co-ed who’d tried to seduce him the night before.

  “Forgive me, Mackenzie,” he said. “It’s just that I’ve had a bit of a rough day.”

  “No shit,” she said. “I saw it on the news. Are you okay?”

  “That depends on your definition.”

  Mackenzie started prattling on about something meaningless. As he walked, half-listening, he scanned the parked cars lining both sides of the street for anything suspicious while scenes from the night before replayed inside his brain.

  After his speech, he’d hung around for a couple of hours talking to some of the student editors about the best way to break into journalism. He tried to be encouraging, despite his own creeping cynicism brought on by so many professional disappointments. In this age of profit-driven corporate media ownership, he knew what those new to the profession would be up against, knew that any idealistic young reporter who dreamed of making a difference was in for a rude awakening.