deadline.
He put the papers down on top of a copy of the morning
edition of the Dispatch. Wallace had it delivered every day,
though I couldn’t remember him ever reading it.
The headline read, HEIRESS WHACKED: Police Search
For Sex Symbol Shooter. It was actually one of their more
subtle headlines.
“I give them ten points for alliteration,” I said. “‘Search For
Sex Symbol Shooter.’ Almost poetic.”
“Take off several thousand for subtlety,” another voiced
chimed in. I turned around.
Jack O’Donnell walked into the room, half a dozen newspapers under his arm. He looked well rested, energized.
“Least someone around here caught forty winks,” I said.
“I think I caught forty winks total my first five years on
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Jason Pinter
the job, don’t complain to me about sleep.” He took the papers
from under his arm, and I recognized the running heads of
what looked like the morning edition of every major paper in
the metropolitan area, as well as a few nationals. He tossed
them on Wallace’s desk one at a time, giving us a chance to
read each headline.
I wasn’t aware newspaper fonts could run that big.
“You have no idea how much it cost us to dump our page
one and get the Paradis story in there,” Wallace said. “None
of them report anything substantial. That’ll come tomorrow.
With any luck we’ll sell enough papers today to make up for
the printing and shipping delays.”
“Even in death Athena breaks the bank,” Jack said. “You
know some asshole found a highball glass from last night that
still has Athena Paradis’s lipstick on it? Bidding on eBay is
up to ten grand. I’m thinking of joining the fray, resell the
glass during the trial and retire.”
“This case will never go to trial,” I said, a sick feeling in
my stomach.
“And why not?” asked Wallace.
“Fools with a cause don’t go quietly. They don’t put their
hands behind their back, and they don’t care about their
Miranda rights. This guy’s in it until the end.”
“Let’s hope you’re wrong,” Wallace replied. “Right now
all we can do is our job. So let’s talk.”
Jack flicked my ear as he walked by. “What, no iPod
today?”
I sighed, played along.
“I usually take it off when I get to the office.”
“Hard to concentrate when listening to Bee-yonk, right?”
I didn’t correct him, frankly would have felt like an idiot
telling him the correct pronunciation was Beyoncé. A few
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43
months ago, I made the careless mistake of going to the
bathroom and leaving my iPod on my desk. The mistake
wasn’t leaving it out in the open, but trusting someone like
Jack to act like an adult. By the time I got back to my desk,
Jack had scrolled through my entire playlist and taken votes
from the entire newsroom as to which artists I should delete
from the hard drive permanently. The results were tabulated,
and for a week after that he would ask for the player to see if
I’d complied. Finally I removed the offending songs, just to
shut him up. According to Jack, any music created after 1986
should never be heard through my (or any other) speakers
again. He said if not for the Dylan and Springsteen, he would
have thrown the entire thing in the garbage.
“Henry,” Jack said, his voice now without any condescension. “If you don’t think this case will go to trial you’re an
idiot. Someone’s getting prosecuted, even if it takes a few
cases to get the right suspect. Costas Paradis’s private jet is
on its way to the city as we speak, and I can promise that he’s
bringing hellfire and brimstone and a savings account large
enough to be a continent unto itself. Whether it’s Shawn
Kensbrook, the security staff at the Kitten Club, the killer
himself, or Lord Zeus up on high, somebody’s getting locked
away while the key is thrown in the ocean. Half a dozen
tabloid hacks are writing first drafts of quickie books that will
be on sale in your local grocery store within the week.”
“Cynical much?” I said.
Jack dismissed the question. “If you want to last in this
business as long as I have, you’ll have the cynical alarm on
High 24/7. Question everything. You wouldn’t be here right
now if you hadn’t done that last year.”
“So why did a line I wrote end up at a crime scene?” I
asked. “That’s my question.”
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Jason Pinter
“Let’s hope it’s an eerie coincidence,” Wallace said. “That
it doesn’t have some sort of meaning that plays into why
Athena was killed.”
“If this goes to trial,” Jack added with a smile, “we can always
claim libel, say the killer used Henry’s quote out of context.”
I absently scratched my ribs.
“Now the question for you both is,” Wallace said, “where
do we go from here? We’ve got the killer’s message. Jack,
you check with the NYPD, see if Chief Carruthers has any
suspects or leads.”
“I want to talk to the ballistics department,” I said. “Jack,
do you know anyone there you can hook me up with?”
“Why ballistics?” Wallace asked.
“Athena was killed by a high-powered rifle shot from a
rooftop three blocks away, and the killer left a message he
wanted to be found. This is as premeditated as it gets, and was
executed with careful consideration. No doubt the murder
weapon will fit into that. Then we can run a check on the gun,
find the store he bought it at, go from there.”
“Jack?” Wallace said. Jack scratched his beard. It looked
a little darker than it had the last few days, the brown a little
more, er, not gray. With our coverage of the Paradis murder,
we were going to sell a lot of papers. Jack wanted to look his
best in case there were any photo ops or interviews. And who
was I to question the omnipotence of Just For Men?
There was a beep alerting Wallace to an incoming e-mail.
He clicked the mouse, eyes narrowing as he read.
“Mayor Perez called a news conference for noon today.
Costas Paradis will be in attendance.”
I looked at Jack, who was staring at the screen, thinking.
The fire was just starting to burn, and I felt it, too.
“I want you both there,” Wallace said. “And I don’t care
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45
what you do or how you do it, get something different to run
with tomorrow. I need angles here that won’t be covered by
the other papers.”
“Angle is my middle name,” Jack said.
“Yesterday you told me it was Glenfiddich,” replied Wallace.
“Mine is Shane,” I said proudly. They both looked at me.
I wasn’t proud anymore. “I mean it’s Angle, too.”
Jack shook his head. “Wine cooler. That’s your middle
name. Get a good story and I’ll promote you to Zima.”
“And Henry,” Wallace said, “if anyone asks about the quote
the killer used, you have your ‘no comments’ at the ready. Am
I correct in assuming you’re not hiding anything? That you have
no reason to think this is anything but an awful coincidence?”
“I swear I have no idea,” I said honestly. “Trust me, after last
year I’d just as soon stay out of the spotlight as much as
possible.”
“Then let’s keep it that way. We have to assume the suspect
used it simply because the quote was relevant, or that he has
some serious bats flying around in his belfry.”
“That might work better than a ‘no comment,’” Jack said.
“Now get a move on,” Wallace continued. “I have no doubt
there’ll be some fireworks at this conference. You won’t want
to watch from the back row.”
6
Paulina Cole sat at her desk, holding a warm cup in her
hands. She took a sip. Coffee and Xanax. Better than toast and
a runny omelet. She’d squeezed Dr. Shepberg’s name into an
article naming the best psychiatrists in NYC and ever since
then the prescriptions arrived in her mailbox once a month.
Behind Paulina’s desk were half a dozen picture frames
containing front pages pulled from the New York Dispatch.
Stories she’d broken, papers so hot they’d sold out their print
runs and been dissected on blogs around the world. Since
she’d joined the Dispatch, the paper’s circulation had grown
1.5 percent, a number many tried to attribute to a new marketing campaign, but those in the know knew it was solely
because of her. Ted Allen, the Dispatch’ s publisher, had said
as much during the last shareholders meeting, and promptly
given her a ten percent raise. He said Paulina Cole represented
the bold new direction the Dispatch would be taking into the
twenty-first century, that despite all the perils facing the print
industry, technology simply couldn’t compete with an oldfashioned nose for news. According to Allen, the Dispatch
was tired of being the number two newspaper in New York.
And come hell or high water (possibly both) they would even- The Guilty
47
tually best their number one enemy. Even if it meant simply
hiring away their top reporters.
That’s how he phrased it. Their enemy. This wasn’t business, this was war. The longer you stayed satisfied being
number two the more likely you’d fall out of the race completely. Nobody remembered the guy who lost the election,
the ex before meeting your soul mate. The second-best were
forgotten, pulped. If you weren’t willing to kill to grab the
lead, you deserved to get trampled.
That was Paulina’s job; to do the trampling, to sell newspapers.
And for all the battles waged between the two newspapers,
the coverage of Athena Paradis’s murder could be the Dis-
patch’ s Gettysburg. Athena was the most recognizable
woman in the world, more than the president’s wife, more
than Princess Diana (hell, most of Athena’s fans were too
young to have even heard of Lady Di), even more than that
lucky gal who scribbled the words Harry Potter on a notepad.
The battles lines had been drawn. More newspapers were
going to be moved during the Paradis investigation than any
event save a terrorist attack. Of course Paulina could argue
that more people had seen Athena’s reality show than had
voted in the last election, so by sheer volume alone this was
the biggest news story of the decade. Besides, the Lindbergh
baby had never posed on the cover of her self-titled album
wearing stockings and wrapped in a fire hose.
Until three o’clock this morning, Paulina had been digging
into the personal life of David Loverne, congressional candidate, philanthropist, father of Henry Parker’s ex-girlfriend
Mya, and alleged keeper of somewhere in the vicinity of four
mistresses. It was a cover story in the making. David was
beloved. Tall, handsome, the kind of man other men looked
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Jason Pinter
up to and women wanted to look down upon. She was going
to blow the whole thing wide open, expose the creep for who
he really was. His fans and supporters would be demoralized.
His detractors (yes, there were some) would eat it for breakfast. And every one of them would fork over their fifty cents
to read it.
Over the past week, Paulina had interviewed two women
who claimed to have slept with Loverne, both within the past
year. One dalliance occurred in a limousine after a stump
speech, the other in an airplane flying to Dubai. Taking
Loverne down would sell papers. Getting in another dig at
someone close to Henry Parker was just icing on the cake.
There was a knock on her door.
“Come in,” she said. In walked Terrence Bynes, the
Dispatch’ s Metro editor. Paulina’s direct boss. The fact that
he would lick between the subway railings if Paulina asked
him to was implicit in their relationship.
Bynes was wearing suit pants with cuffs an inch too long,
and a blue work shirt that looked like it had been fermented
with starch. His eyeglasses were too big, not to mention
unnecessary, considering Paulina knew his last eye exam
produced 20/19 vision. And she’d be willing to bet there was
a rolled sock (or two) down his trousers as well.
“I assume you read the Gazette this morning,” Bynes said.
“Fucking online edition,” Paulina said, taking another sip,
feeling that delicious warm tingle. “Read only by cheapos and
kids without the attention span to click the ‘Next Page’ button.
Their print edition didn’t have anything we didn’t, that’s all
we should be concerned about.”
“Tell that to Ted Allen,” Bynes continued. “The man is pissed.
He thinks we got scooped, and he’s looking to point the finger.”
“We did get scooped,” Paulina said. “But that’s like saying
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49
we got stabbed by a toothpick at the start of a knife fight. What
Henry Parker wrote this morning won’t be a blip on the radar
tomorrow after Perez’s press conference. So tell him if that
finger goes anywhere near me I’m cutting it off.”
Bynes smirked. “Why don’t you tell him that?”
“Well, it’s your job, but I’d be happy to. I’ll e-mail him
right now.” She pulled out her keyboard and began typing.
Bynes placed his hand over the keys.
“That was a hypothetical question,” he said.
She stopped typing. “Don’t ever ask me a hypothetical
question again, or I’ll hypothetically strangle you with your
shoelace. I call every bluff I see. Remember that.”
Bynes swallowed, flicked his eyes down to his wingtips.
“So what do I tell Ted Allen? He’s pissed this Parker kid got
to the cops before we could.”
Paulina leaned back in her chair. She closed her eyes. This
Parker kid. This Parker kid.
Her eyelids flew open.
“This Parker kid is a good reporter. Give me pages four
through
seven tomorrow for coverage of the murder.”
“That’s a lot of copy. Are you sure you’ll have enough to
fill that space?”
“Don’t ask me that again. I could give a rat’s ass what you
do with pages eight, nine and sixty-nine. Oh, and get Tamara
Finnerman to do a write-up of David Loverne’s speech at the
Alzheimer’s event last night. When my story runs, I don’t
want people thinking we’ve had it in for him. Tell her to use
prose so syrupy and purple I’ll be able to see the Crayola logo.
Tell Allen that between these two stories, the Gazette will be
limping within weeks.”
Bynes laughed, then wiped a loose dribble of saliva from
his mouth.
50
Jason Pinter
“I’m not going to tell him that. What, you think covering
a story we’ve already been scooped on will suddenly have
Wallace Langston quaking in his Doc Martens?”
Paulina smiled at him, crossed her legs.
“Every war begins with an opening volley. Parker’s scoop
this morning was the Gazette’ s opening volley. I’m not simply
returning fire, I’m coming back with a Howitzer up their ass.
You know my ex-husband was a state prosecutor. One thing
I learned from him, other than that men are as useful as dirty
bathwater, is that nobody remembers how you won, they
remember if you won. We simply take what Parker has, know
what he’s going to know, and make it our own. Henry’s a great
reporter, but after last year he’s nervous, twitchy, and doesn’t
want to rattle the cage any more than he already has. I have
someone who’ll shadow him closer than his beard stubble,
and I’ll be waiting to lay down the copy.”
Bynes smiled. “I thought you said Finnerman was the one
who wrote purple prose.”
“Trust me,” Paulina said. “It’ll look better on paper.”
7
I was walking toward city hall alongside Jack O’Donnell,
nearly having to sprint to keep up. And his legs had an extra
thirty years of mileage. I dialed Amanda, figured I’d say hi
before radio silence. She picked up on the second ring. “Hey,
hon, can’t talk for long, just wanted to say hi. I’m heading to
the press conference with Jack. Think I can smell the mayor’s
cologne a mile away,” I said into the cell phone.
“Hey, babe. No problem,” she said. “I’m about to go into
the library and I think they’ve starting arming the cell phone
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