Hard News

by Mark T Sullivan

  “Robert S. Carlton III. Died the twenty-fourth, same night the checks were written. He wrote one, too.”

  “Jesus Christ! I thought it was a heart attack playing tennis?”

  “That’s the official story,” McCarthy said, pulling a piece of paper from a folder he had on his lap. “I pulled his autopsy report. The coroner found semen and vaginal fluids in his pubic hair.”

  Lawlor picked up the report, read it, and tossed it back on the desk top. He took his seat, leaning his cane against the credenza. “So what do you think happened?”

  The hum of the good story. The exhilarating buzz of breakthrough knowledge. McCarthy could see Lawlor sizzling on it as he laid out the rest of his booty, the investments by Portillo and Leslie in the raw acreage on Lake Mead and the mysterious real estate limited partnerships in Texas, all with links to Max L. Crisp.

  Lawlor flipped back a page on his legal pad. “That’s the Las Vegas attorney you said controls the five limited partnerships …”

  “That make up Burkhardt’s Blue Coast Partners,” McCarthy jumped in.

  Lawlor was silent for a long moment. “All right, interpret it. Frame the story for me. Better yet, frame it for our readers.”

  “Starting as far back as the end of the Jennings administration thirty years ago, Leslie, Portillo, and Coughlin Burkhardt formed an alliance for political purposes.”

  Lawlor nodded. “Coughlin was Portillo’s first big-name supporter.”

  “Right. And Leslie and Portillo worked the Jennings corruption probe, during which I figure they made their contact with Coughlin. Yes?”

  Lawlor’s nod was noncommittal. “Maybe yes, maybe no. Coughlin was a big fish back then. Leslie and Ricardo were on the periphery of the investigation. Mostly gofers.”

  “But they were involved.”

  Lawlor scratched his chin. “Yeah, but they weren’t central players.”

  “The point is that they formed relations with the old man. Now jump forward twenty-five years. Leslie’s long since strengthened his ties to Coughlin by making sure a sex crime case against his son gets buried. Coughlin dies. Sloan’s on his own, looking to build the kind of signature project that will allow him to escape his father’s shadow.”

  “And Portillo’s in a position to help him get the land to build the project?”

  McCarthy held a finger in the air for emphasis. “Yes, at the same time the mayor is in a position of need. He has dreams of being governor. Sloan, through his business contacts, can raise loads of money. To make the relationship even tighter, Sloan makes sure Ricardo and Leslie benefit financially.”

  “You’re losing me.”

  McCarthy tore through the documents on his lap until he found the ones he wanted. He handed them across the desk. “Five years ago the mayor was comfortable, but hardly well-off. Today he has land in Nevada and serious cash in a Texas real estate partnership that I believe is linked to Cote D’Azure through Crisp. Leslie was cut into Cote D’Azure for past favors. And if my gut is right, Carlton got a chunk, too. Probably in violation of fiduciary rules governing lenders.”

  Lawlor hesitated, then pointed to LaFontaine’s diagram of Blue Coast Partners. “You’ve accounted for only three of the partners. Who’s the fourth?”

  “I don’t know,” McCarthy said. “Maybe Burkhardt threw in a legitimate investor as a wild card.”

  Lawlor leaned back in his chair again and looked at the ceiling. “What about Gentry?”

  “I’m winging it here,” McCarthy admitted. “My guess is when Carlton croaked there was a telephone call from Burkhardt to somebody powerful, probably Leslie. Gentry picked up the phone in another room and taped it. Leslie comes out to fix things and Carlton’s body is conveniently found on the court at the country club. Everything’s hunky-dory until Gentry calls Burkhardt or Leslie or whoever and plays her tape. She blackmails until they decide she’s too much of a risk.”

  “And they kill her.”

  “And dump her out in the desert to make her look like another of the working girls done in by our serial murder.”

  “Who’s the killer?”

  “Take your pick.”

  The clerk, pale as a flounder, knocked on the door again. Lawlor gritted his teeth, looked at his watch. “Give me five minutes to take care of this.”

  McCarthy gathered up the various documents from Lawlor’s desk and put them back into his folder. This was the second time today he’d been through every facet of the conspiracy. He was drained by the exercise, a fatigue amplified by the fact that during the afternoon he’d listed the acreage at the back of his property with a realtor.

  The woman, smelling quick cash in the air when he mentioned that the property abutted The Ranch, had fallen all over herself trying to set up a time to come out and appraise the property. When he’d told her he already had an asking price in mind and wrote it down for her, she almost cried. At a phone booth outside the realtor’s office, he’d made a quick call to Crawford’s office, instructing the judge’s husband to wait twenty-four hours before contacting the woman.

  The foot race of circumstance and twist in the plots of his personal and professional lives were taking their toll. He was exhausted. He wondered if he had the stamina for the final sprint of reporting just prior to publication of a major investigation.

  Lawlor hobbled in behind him and shut the door. He went to the window and looked over at The Beacon. “You think Prentice got onto this and got himself killed?”

  “I think it’s a distinct possibility.”

  “What did he know?”

  “Everything I did up until the stuff about Leslie and Portillo’s real estate holdings. But we were out of contact for almost a day before he died. I think he figured it out some other way.”

  Behind the editor’s back one hand kneaded the other. The quiet went on and on, and McCarthy’s attention wavered and once again he found his gaze drawn to the Pulitzer. He studied every etched line, torn in two directions by the knowledge that even as he poised on the verge of reporting triumph he was embroiled in a bribery scheme.

  “It’s within your reach,” Lawlor said, pointing to the plaque.

  “I know.”

  “You’ve got a lot of work to do.”

  “I know.”

  “This could be the story that saves The Post, kills The Beacon, and ends this war.”

  “I know.”

  “Are you up to it?” Lawlor was watching him closely now.

  McCarthy remembered News sprawled on the bedroom rug. “Yes, but this has to stay between you and me. As I said, I think there’s a leak inside the newsroom.”

  “Who?”

  McCarthy shifted uncomfortably in his chair. This was not going to be easy. “Maybe it would be better if I described two incidents that took place after News’s death.”

  He laid out the conversations with Ed Tower at the Slotman’s during LaFontaine’s wake and then again after his jailhouse interview with Perkins. He took a deep breath and told Lawlor about his belief about News’s computer and hard files being sanitized.

  “Someone inside had to have done it,” McCarthy concluded.

  Lawlor’s mouth hung slightly open. He stared at the reporter for a long time, then down at the pad of paper. He glanced over at Tower’s empty office. “I don’t believe it.”

  “I’m not saying it is Ed,” McCarthy said. “It could be anybody in here with a working knowledge of the computers. The point is that this story is as volatile as I’ve ever seen and someone in here is very interested in what News and I were working on.”

  Lawlor’s attention again shot to Tower’s empty office and back. “What’s his motivation?”

  “He’s big on the social circuit, a member of Burkhardt’s Lollipop Kids—I know you are, too—but he’s in there tight. And it’s no secret that he’s a big fan of the mayor,” McCarthy said. “But to be honest, I haven’t wholly figured out his angle.”

  Lawlor bristled. “You’re asking me to withhold a st
ory like this from a man I’ve known and trusted for more than three decades?”

  McCarthy swallowed, regaining confidence, now that the worst of it was told. “It’s not something I do lightly. But for the sake of the story, yes, I am.”

  Lawlor remained quiet for a long time, rubbing his thumb across his eyebrow. “Okay,” he said finally. “Because of your suspicions, which I do not believe, this story will stay between the two of us until we are ready to print.”

  McCarthy nodded.

  Lawlor went on, “Now. I’m going to advise you to do something against the conventional wisdom. Under ordinary circumstances I’d tell you to hit the peripheral players first, Burkhardt, this Tressor woman, the medical equipment entrepreneur. You know how it works, they begin to panic, the players get nervous, waiting for your call. Ordinarily, a sound strategy. But the stakes are too high here. If you make those kinds of calls, the story will begin to echo, and you could lose it.”

  McCarthy saw the logic in what the editor was saying. “So who do I go to first?”

  “Here’s how it’s going to work,” Lawlor said. “You’re going to check out a laptop computer to begin framing the story. I don’t want it on the main system. An hour from now, when the newsroom calms down and clears out, you’re going to get Leslie’s and Portillo’s private phone numbers from Kent Jackson’s Rolodex. You’re going to set up a meeting in a public place tomorrow, preferably late afternoon. You tell them we’re about to publish a story of grave consequence to the campaign that requires their comment and you tell them that I’m the editor. You tell them nothing more than that.”

  “What if they balk?”

  “If you’re right and LaFontaine was onto this earlier, they won’t. They’ll try to see what you know, especially because they’ll know that I know what you know.”

  “Photographer? Do I take Croon with me?”

  Lawlor shook his head. “If you request him, you’ll start a paper trail in here. And if there is a leak, that could be enough to tip them off.”

  “What if I just have him tag along free-lance, no formal, documented request that would leave a paper trail in here?”

  Lawlor thought a moment. “Okay, do it. But have him shoot from somewhere far away with telephoto. I don’t want his presence to louse up the ambush. And do not tell him what this is all about.”

  “Done.”

  “Good. Go get the laptop and start writing.”

  On Deep Background …

  THE NEXT MORNING MCCARTHY sat at his kitchen table with the phone in front of him. The hairs on his arms tingled as if narrow-bodied, delicate winged insects were slapping him, and he realized that this was déjà vu; on a summer vacation in Oregon several years earlier, McCarthy had been surrounded and touched by clouds of orange monarch butterflies migrating over the Mt. Hood glacier.

  While certain entomologists would have thought the memory sensual, the tingling only served to increase McCarthy’s anxiety. Croon was scheduled to meet him at 3:00 P.M. in The Post parking lot. McCarthy had assured the photographer he’d be done by 6:00 P.M. so he and Blitzer could make their flight to Philadelphia for vacation.

  Estelle was at the grocery store. Carlos and Miriam at school.

  He’d talked to the mayor a half hour ago. Reluctantly Portillo had agreed to meet at a picnic area near the Alta Bay Marina at three-thirty. Chief Leslie proved more difficult. His phone had been busy for nearly fifteen minutes, leading McCarthy to believe Portillo had called him immediately. When he reached the chief, Leslie had demanded to know the thrust of the story before agreeing to the interview. But McCarthy held firm to Lawlor’s instructions and in the end Leslie had agreed to same time, same place.

  The odds stood in McCarthy’s favor. But he could not quell the jitters, the tunnel vision, and the cotton mouth, wondering if he had the stuff to take them all down.

  He listened to the quiet of the house. McCarthy remembered this stillness from long ago, from before Tina, a stillness he’d grown to hate. He got up and wandered, finding himself in front of her portrait on his dresser. He hadn’t allowed himself to pore over her features—the almond eyes, the strong cheekbones, the intelligent smile—in many weeks. He did so now and was frightened to find that he didn’t have the normal urge to cry.

  “I thought it would never happen, but I guess I’m losing you,” he whispered.

  And at that an awareness of motivation swept through him and he confessed: “I’ve been invoking your memory a lot lately to do things I’m not very proud of. I’ve done this more for myself than anyone else, even the kids. I guess I have this idea that I can make the world understandable if I just make it right for me.”

  The admission took him to a deeper level of confusion. Better to dwell on pragmatic concerns. Four and a half hours until the interviews. Lawlor would wait at the office for the remaining pieces of the puzzle.

  The phone rang. It was his Realtor, informing him of interest in his property. A well-connected developer. They’d come to inspect the property during the early afternoon. McCarthy agreed and hung up. The phone rang again. This time it was Isabel Perez. Arlene Troy had called her, fishing for information on what he was meeting Portillo about.

  “As chief political reporter, even though I’m a short-timer, I’d like to know what’s going on,” Perez demanded.

  Goddamn it, McCarthy mouthed. It’s out. How did these things always seem to find the sieve hole? He stalled, then saw one possible escape route.

  “It’s personal.”

  “Personal?”

  “And I can’t say any more than that.” He hung up.

  The air in the room seemed to condense and squeeze his chest. The phone rang again. He needed to get out of here, to move, before this story swallowed him whole.

  He gathered up all his files and the laptop. He threw the lot in the passenger seat of the Escort, came around, and climbed in the driver’s side. The Justice Department report fell to the floor. A direction out of the aimless nervous energy that had enveloped him. He picked up the document, flipped it over, and found the address LaFontaine had scrawled on the back.

  One-eleven Carbine Drive was a long, low building at the back of a cul-de-sac hard by the Mexican border. A brass plaque on the door read “Aztec Import/Export.” McCarthy entered into an air-conditioned reception area. Expensive photographs of the Mexican pyramids hung on the wall. He introduced himself to the receptionist. He didn’t have an appointment, but he’d appreciate ten minutes of Mr. Ramirez’s time.

  No argument. A pleasant “Be Seated.” He couldn’t sit. Movement was the only thing that kept the jitters away.

  “Mr. McCarthy?” a velvety tenor voice called to him. To any audience, Pablo Ramirez would have been the star. Tall, a smooth, handsome face, steel gray hair slicked back at the temples. An expensively cut navy suit, freshly pressed white cotton shirt, red tie. A guileless smile. A firm handshake.

  “It isn’t so often I receive two reporters in one month,” Ramirez said. He put his hand on McCarthy’s shoulder and pressed him back through the door into a hallway with deep green carpets and beyond to an office tastefully decorated in heavy wooden pieces.

  “Prentice LaFontaine came to see you a couple of weeks ago?” McCarthy began.

  “I assumed you were he when the receptionist said a reporter was here to see me.”

  Ramirez was smiling. He didn’t know.

  McCarthy cleared his throat. “Mr. Ramirez, Prentice was murdered the evening after he talked with you.”

  The smile dissolved. There was a slow collapse in Ramirez’s posture. “I was leaving for Mexico City the afternoon after we spoke. I just got back. I didn’t know. I’m so sorry. Have they caught …?”

  “There’s been an arrest. His lover.”

  “I’m sorry,” he said again. The vibrant man who had greeted McCarthy in the hall was gone. “I am always confused in the presence of violent death. My brother, Jamie, who raised me, committed suicide. But, of course, you know that.”r />
  “Uh, no, sir. Why would I?”

  “That’s why Prentice came to see me. Among other things.”

  “If you don’t mind me asking, Mr. Ramirez, what exactly did you two talk about?”

  At that, the vigorous intelligence returned to Ramirez’s face. “Do you think our conversation is somehow? … I thought you said they arrested his lover?”

  “I did. But there’s a lot of unanswered questions. He was my friend and I’m trying to tie up some loose ends by figuring out what he was doing that day.”

  “I can tell you he spent noon to two o’clock here in this office, talking about my brother and our current mayor.”

  “I need to hear it, too.”

  Ramirez nodded. “The greater community, Latino and otherwise, treat Ricardo Portillo like a savior. I know better. He’s an opportunistic, ruthless bastard. He’s as corrupt as anything you saw thirty years ago in this town. Only he’s smart. He uses attorneys and bankers and other business connections instead of thugs and bagmen.”

  “You have proof?”

  “Let’s say I had reason to make Ricardo Portillo a personal project. Every time he made a move or made a personal financial disclosure I made sure I got a copy and followed it up. He’s had his hand in several shaky deals over the years.”

  “You knew about his land in Lake Mead and the investment in Texas?”

  “Then you found the papers I gave LaFontaine?”

  “No, sir, I didn’t. They’ve disappeared. I found that connection on my own.”

  Ramirez seemed surprised at that. “Some of it I didn’t understand, but your friend saw a name …”

  “Max Crisp, I’ll bet.”

  “Yes, LaFontaine said he was an attorney in Las Vegas who was connected to Sloan Burkhardt, another mud crawler.”

  McCarthy sat back, stunned. News had it all. What he had done with it to get him killed? “You said there were other shaky deals.”

  “At least a half dozen,” Ramirez said.

  “Why didn’t you expose him, call the papers with what you had?”

  The older man’s lips turned beaklike. “I wanted Ricardo to rise up so high that when I pushed no one would be able to save him.”