The Mockingbird Drive (An Alex Vane Media Thriller, Book 3)

by A. C. Fuller

  Then there was the space itself, which I'd designed with Greta when I'd moved The Barker here ten years earlier, before Greta and I began our long, slow, drift apart.

  We had a full floor in the Puget Tower overlooking Pioneer Square, with windows on all sides. Four-foot window after four-foot window, each separated by six feet of wall space. We weren't into walls at The Barker, so we'd mounted high-definition flat-screens to cover the blank space. But we weren't showing Netflix. The flat-screens were streaming live video from wide-angle cameras mounted on the outside of the building. As you scanned the room, the windows blurred into the screens and the screens blurred into the windows, creating a panoramic view from the Space Needle and the San Juan Islands in the northwest, all the way to Mount Rainier in the southeast. We even had screens along the western wall showing Pike Place Market and the ferries coming and going in the port. You could practically smell the flying fish.

  I soaked it in for a full minute before walking to the other side of the room and into the office of my number two, Wesley Byrd. He was the only person I could tell about the email.

  "Morning, Bird."

  He didn't look up, so he didn't notice my ridiculous grin. He was typing fast. Even faster than usual.

  "Um, sir, may I speak with you about an important matter concerning our shared business venture, The Barker?"

  No response. He knew he could get away with ignoring me.

  I'd promoted Bird to the senior editor job three years earlier, and hadn't regretted it for a second. He'd started as an intern just three years before that, and had worked like a madman ever since, making the site better and smarter without losing sight of the bottom line. And he's a great counterweight to me.

  Bird's a millennial, I'm a Gen Xer. He came from a tech background, I came from journalism. He grew up in the South, I grew up in the Pacific Northwest. He's short, gay, and black. I'm tall, straight, and white. I call him Bird, because his name is Byrd, and he looks like a bird. He's small and lightweight, with angular features and a way of darting around—with his eyes if he's sitting, or his whole body if he's not—that reminds me of a hummingbird. I've been told I look like a bear—once a svelte grizzly bear, now one of those out-of-shape pandas at the zoo. Anyway, he's almost as good as I am at figuring out what stories people want to read, but much better than I am at figuring out how to get them to read them. He knows keywords, search algorithms, metadata, and social media like I know how to read sources. We make a perfect team.

  He stopped typing, scanned the screen for a minute, and tapped one more time. The laptop let out a whoosh, the departure of an email.

  Looking up, he said, "Morning."

  "What was that email?"

  "Guess."

  "Just tell me."

  "I thought you could read me, boss."

  "I can, but I need to talk to you."

  "Oh c'mon, Alex."

  "I really need to—"

  "Guess!"

  "Okay," I said, studying his face, which he was trying to make as blank as possible.

  I stared at Bird until he couldn't hold his blank expression anymore, and his face broke out in a devious smile. I said, "You were serious while writing the email. Focused, but not worried. So, it was something important but not something difficult. Not something personal, because you'd do that by text. Unless it was to your dad, but you emailed him last week."

  "How'd you know that?" Bird asked.

  "Psychic powers."

  "Really. How'd you know?"

  "You ate three donuts last Friday. You only do that when you're stressed about Kevin or your dad. You only stress about your dad when you email him, and things with Kevin are good, from what you've been saying."

  Bird gave me his screw-you-for-being-right look.

  "The email wasn't to anyone here," I continued. "You'd relay that message in person just to have an excuse to walk around the office and burn a dozen calories. You were typing fast, for a full minute after I came in, but judging by how long it took you to scan the email when you finished typing, you'd written a few grafs before I got here. You wouldn't have written a response that long just to accept or reject a pitch. So, it was something important. Something we've been working on for a while."

  Bird took a long swig from a can of Red Bull, then smiled.

  I knew I'd been right. "Movie Buzz?"

  A week earlier, a Stanford student had found a full-resolution screener of International Family Media's next big kids' movie on a bar stool. The student then sold it to Movie Grind, a site we owned down in the Bay Area. The movie was being marketed as Finding Nemo set in the world of plants, so, of course, we wanted to have some fun with it. It would be illegal to release the film, and we had no intention of doing that. Instead, we'd planned to do a Mystery Science Theater 3000 thing. We'd have our snarkiest staff members watch the movie while doing a running commentary, then upload it to YouTube with most of the copyrighted material blurred out. Skirt the law without breaking it. Right in line with our general policy at The Barker.

  "Big news," he said. "We agreed to give the movie back in exchange for an exclusive with their CEO."

  "Dewey Gunstott? On the record?"

  "Deep background."

  "We're giving up the screener for a deep background interview?"

  "With the CEO."

  "I get that, but—"

  "Alex, you always say that journalism is about tradeoffs. A chat with a guy like that could fill out all sorts of stories for the guys at Movie Buzz, point them in a hundred directions that will pay off later. They're flying up Monday for the interview."

  I was going to object, but I was trying to dial back my micromanaging, and Bird knew what he was doing. "Fine," I said.

  "You look happy, too."

  "I am. And that's why I came in here. Let's see if you can read me."

  He usually could. One of the things Greta used to like about me is that I'm pretty transparent. "As good as you are at reading people," she'd say, "you're exactly as bad at hiding things." Bird knew me as well as anyone other than Greta, but he wasn't gonna figure out about the email I'd just received.

  He put his elbows on the desk, cradled his chin in his hands, and pressed his fingers to his temple like he was activating his psychic powers. "You won the Seahawks season ticket lottery?"

  "Nope." I'd been on that damn list for two years.

  "We got an offer?"

  "Not that." I had no intention of selling The Barker, but I didn't mind the fact that we got offers. Every time a major media company tried to buy us out, we'd leak the story to the business blogs and get a spike in traffic.

  "You got a story?"

  "Ding-ding-ding. Can you guess from where?"

  "Well, all our best sources come to me, these days, so—"

  "That stings."

  "Who?" he asked.

  I smiled.

  "Who?"

  "Innerva. She said James has a story for me."

  He paused a beat, checking to see if I was serious, then leapt up and clapped his hands together once with controlled, violent joy. He sat back down. "I thought he'd ghosted you."

  "He had ghosted me. Until fifteen minutes ago."

  Bird was the only person at The Barker who knew that "I.S." was Innerva Shah. Other than Greta, he was the only person I'd told about NUM. And he was the only person who knew my history with James.

  We'd met when James was an intern at The New York Standard, where I'd been an ambitious court reporter. I broke some big stories back then. The kind that got me on TV and now have their own Wikipedia pages. But that's like saying I was an up-and-coming deckhand on the Titanic. James and I knew the newspaper model was sinking, and we were looking for a life raft.

  In 2002, we'd founded News Scoop out of the rubble of the dotcom bust. We were the first investigative journalism site on the Internet, but we only investigated one thing. The media.

  We knew about all the behind-the-scenes wrangling that shapes the news America consumes.
When an international media company tried to stack the FCC to take control of the broadband Internet market, we were the first to know. When The New York Times buried a story on the dangerous side effects of a well-known blood pressure medication, we had sources who told us. When the editor of a national magazine got caught charging shareholders for wild nights at a strip club, we heard about that, too. I was on a first-name basis with half the journalists in New York, and one degree of separation away from the rest. We did real stories. Good stories. And for a couple of years, it was great.

  But despite our early successes at News Scoop, James had bigger plans than playing Internet journalist with me. In 2004, he teamed up with Innerva and took off. These days, an email from James or Innerva was like God tapping me on the shoulder and whispering, "Hey, I've got a scoop for you."

  Not that you've ever heard of them. People like James and Innerva don't take victory laps on CNN when they break a story. Strictly speaking, they don't even break stories. If the wrong people knew who they were, they'd be in jail. Or dead. That's why they leave the breaking—and the victory laps—to guys like me. In the early days, they called me to Vegas several times a year to feed me stories. But I hadn't heard from them in a year.

  Until fifteen minutes ago.

  Bird said, "What did she say? I mean, did she tell you anything about the story?"

  "Just that they had something for me."

  "No details?"

  "No."

  "When are you meeting her?"

  "I need a flight. Can you call Mia in?"

  Bird texted Mia from his laptop, then gave me his thin, conspiratorial smile, exposing just the bright white bottoms of his top row of teeth. "Best guess. What's the scoop?"

  He followed me with his eyes as I made a slow lap around his desk, which was situated in the center of his office. "Maybe they finally cracked the shadow banks in the Caymans," I said. "Last time I saw him, James was talking about that. Said it would be like the Panama Papers times ten."

  "They wouldn't give that to us, though."

  "Probably not." I paused a beat. "They were getting pretty good at hacking the iCloud accounts of corrupt politicians, and it's the kind of thing they don't like to give the big papers. Could be one of those."

  "Maybe," Bird said.

  Mia Rhodes appeared in the doorway behind us, holding a stack of paper in one hand and an iPad in the other.

  "I like the new hair," Bird said. "Looks like a horse's tail, but in a good way."

  Mia changed her hair every week or two. Today it was a black ponytail that hung over her right shoulder and didn't stop until it hit her hip, which wasn't actually all that far, because she was barely five feet tall. But what she lacked in height, she made up for in every other way. She was efficient and smart, sure, but most of all, she was trustworthy.

  And she was always in a hurry. "What's up?" she asked quickly.

  "Vegas," I said. "I need to get to Vegas. Fast."

  She tapped at her iPad for a few seconds, then said, "There's an eleven-thirty-five, but you're not gonna make that. I'll get you on the four-forty."

  "Nothing before that?"

  "Not on Alaska."

  "Can't we use another airline?"

  Mia sighed and gave me her don't-make-me-go-there look. It was a look she used whenever I tried to do something to upset the immaculate systems that kept the office running smoothly. "Do I need to explain again why we went exclusive with Alaska?"

  She didn't. It was something about upgrades, frequent flyer bonus points, and a special reservation system. My policy with Mia was to push a little bit when I wanted something, and if she pushed back, just give in. I'd never told her this, but I lived in constant fear that she'd realize she was too good for this place, and quit. "Okay, four-forty."

  "When do you want to come back?"

  "Tomorrow, noonish?"

  "Okay," she said. "And I'll book you your room at the Wynn."

  "Not gonna stay and eat for a few days?" Bird asked. "A few more tasting menus and they'll give you your own cage at the zoo."

  I ignored him and nodded to Mia. "Before you go, what's up with Dexter Park?"

  "I emailed you about that."

  "Must've missed it," I said.

  Half the time I asked Mia about something, she'd already handled it, checked it off her list, and emailed me about it. She sighed and walked to the window. "I've booked his flight for Saturday night. Flight seven out of JFK."

  "Is that on United?" Bird asked. "Maybe Delta or JetBlue?"

  Mia gave him a look. "Park will be staying in a suite at The Bryant. That's assuming, of course, that he's willing to do it."

  "He hasn't confirmed yet?" I asked.

  "No, but I'll let you know when I hear back."

  "It's T-minus five days," I said. "And everything hinges on him."

  Dexter Park was a major piece of my plan to surprise Greta on our anniversary, which was on Sunday, five days away. We'd been separated for eight months, and had barely spoken over the last three. Despite my best efforts, the relationship felt like it was slipping away. Like there was a thin thread of love that still connected us, but it could snap at any moment. This plan was a Hail Mary at the end of the fourth quarter.

  "Is that all?" Mia asked.

  "Just one more thing," I said. "Honest opinion from both of you. Is this going to work?"

  Mia looked at Bird, who looked at the floor. Each was waiting for the other to speak first. "Well," Mia said. "I mean—"

  "Hard to say," Bird chimed in, not looking up from the floor.

  "Maybe it's an age-gap thing," Mia said, "but I just don't think women respond to grand gestures anymore, if they ever did."

  "What should I do instead? Hit her up on Snapchat? Bling her on Insta-Booty?"

  "A grand surprise anniversary thing is a little old-fashioned," Bird said. "It's like, what's next? Show up at her house with a boom box playing Peter Gabriel?"

  "I already tried that."

  "Really?" Bird asked.

  "No."

  Mia said, "Have you tried just talking with her?"

  "We talked for the first few months, then she went quiet."

  "Is she dating?" Mia asked.

  "I think so."

  "Are you dating?"

  "No."

  "Not at all since the separation?"

  I nodded toward Bird. "Not unless you count my codependent relationship with this guy."

  Mia ignored my joke. "You still love her?"

  I said nothing and Mia stared at the floor. Up until that moment, the tone of the conversation had been light. A serious topic kept at bay by humor. But I think she knew she'd crossed an invisible line. Not that it was her fault. I'd started the conversation, and I was the one who wasn't comfortable talking about how I felt. It was like another thing Greta used to say: "You're good at many things, Alex, but facing your emotions isn't one of them."

  Bird said, "He loves her more than anything."

  He was right, but I couldn't say it out loud.

  We just stood there, until Mia gave Bird a do-something-to-break-the-silence look.

  Bird took a quick sip of his Red Bull, then looked at me awkwardly, flashed a cheesy grin, and said, "Innerva, amirite? Get your butt to Vegas and get us that story!"

  Chapter 3

  The flight into Vegas at sunset is the stuff of dreams. You cross mile after mile of black desert, anticipation building as you flip through magazines, play Sudoku, or watch a movie on your iPad. Then, bang.

  The city appears out of nowhere. A concentrated radiance like nothing else on earth. The sun dips behind the mountains and casts a gold glow over the valley that somehow makes the millions of sparkling lights even more beautiful. The descent into McCarran Airport at twilight makes you feel like you're about to win money, or have a great meal, or fall in love. It's a blank screen on which to project your dreams.

  Other than getting Greta back, I had just one dream. To land a story that would break the Internet
.

  I took an Uber to the back entrance of The Wynn and stepped into the solarium. My rolling suitcase clicked on the mosaic floor as I dragged it past the koi pond and through the gold door into the private registration area for the Tower Suites. After checking in, I had my bags sent up to my room and took a seat in a red velvet booth in the circular bar near the lobby.

  When you're the CEO, people tend to wait for you, not the other way around. But I didn't mind waiting for James and Innerva. I'd emailed Innerva when the plane landed, but I knew they'd show up whenever they felt like it. They always did. And I had a big night planned so I figured I'd ingest some caffeine and do a little people-watching while I waited.

  I ordered a double espresso and scanned the TVs mounted over the bar. Half of them were on sports channels, the rest on news. One of the news channels was local, and was covering something about a shooting in Las Vegas. But I didn't pay any attention to it because I was taking in the scene.

  Until a few years ago, I hated Vegas. But that was because I didn't know what it was really like. I had an outdated view borrowed from books, movies, and probably some anti-gambling after-school-special I'd seen as a kid. If you haven't been to Vegas in a while, close your eyes and picture it. What do you see first? The Rat Pack, Bugsy Siegel, fat Elvis? Or maybe showgirls, cheap buffets, and cheesy slot machines? Don't get me wrong, you can still see some of those things. But now there's much more.

  In 1957, Vegas made 70% of its revenue from gambling. In 1987, it was 65%. Today, it's only 30%. But Vegas is booming, so where does all the money come from? Shows, clubs, shopping, food, booze, and rooms. And now that gambling is just one of Vegas's many attractions, you'll find a more diverse class of tourists in high-end resorts like The Wynn. To my left, a table of Asian men in nice suits talked loudly on cellphones. In front of me, a beautiful young couple watched soccer on an iPad while trying to corral a sticky toddler. To my right, three men with matching biceps ate burgers and talked MMA. Behind me, a table of gorgeous young women glanced at each new man as he walked in, looking for someone to buy them drinks. A bro in flip flops was doing shots at the bar, about to become that someone. And then there was me. Another forty-something guy whose business-casual attire got nicer over the years as his belly got softer, eyes dancing from TV to TV, praying that the magic of Vegas would make him cool again. At least for a night.