“And the note?”
“I don’t know. But maybe something will eventually explain it.”
Liz took a drink of coffee, and there was something about her demeanor that changed. I saw her stare off across the street like she was lost in thought.
“Hello?” I said.
She snapped back and looked at me.
“Solving a world problem?” I asked.
“I’m worried,” she said, looking right at me. “If she’s right, and your gut is right, then someone really did …”
Her voice drifted off and I nodded, knowing where she was going with this.
“I’ve had the same thought.”
“It could get dangerous if you start to figure it out. Someone is going to realize it and—”
“I know,” I said.
“I don’t even want to think about …” She shook her head.
I leaned forward over the table and put my hand over hers. “Liz, let’s just say she’s right. That means somebody is out there who did this. And as of now, they’ve gotten away with it.”
She nodded.
“Because no one, including the police, sees any reason to investigate this, because no one besides Robbie Steele, and possibly me, thinks anything happened here.”
“And what, you have a strong sense of justice?” she asked.
“You could say that,” I said.
She had some more of her coffee and studied me, then said, “Or, you want a story to help your career.”
I dawned on me that Liz Harrison knew me better than I realized.
Chapter Thirteen
The Show Doctor was located on a bland strip of Fifth Avenue between Thirty-first and Thirty-second Streets, a few blocks south of the Empire State Building. The company was on the third floor of a squat, ugly building five floors high. It was just before ten on Monday morning when I got there.
I rode the slow-moving elevator to the third floor and it opened into a sunny room with a battleship-gray metal desk a few feet in front of me. An attractive young woman with shoulder-length black hair that matched her black-framed librarian glasses greeted me.
“Well, hello,” she said with a wide smile.
I checked behind me, thinking maybe Brad Pitt had also stepped off the elevator. He hadn’t.
“Well, hello to you, too,” I said.
Off to my right was a small seating area with windows that looked down onto Fifth. To my left was a wall with a door that I guessed led back to the examining rooms of the Show Doctor.
The wall looked as if Jerry, or maybe a brother-in-law who was supposed to be handy, had slapped it up. It barely reached the ceiling in some spots and seemed like a good solid wind would take it out.
“I know you,” the young lady said. She was brimming with energy. “You’re on Channel Four.”
It was my guess she didn’t get many visitors during the day, and she was determined to make the most of this one.
“Oh, no I’m not,” I said.
“Channel Five?”
“Uh, no.” I extended a hand to prevent her from marching up the channel list. “Sam North, with Liberty News.”
“Oh, yes. Liberty. I’m Sherri,” she said.
“Sherri,” I said, “I don’t have an appointment, but I was hoping the Show Doctor could see me. It’s an emergency.”
She picked up a pen and had a small note pad ready to go. “Okay, and this is in reference to what show?”
“I don’t have a specific show. It’s more of a personal visit. Jerry does a lot of work for Liberty.”
“Yes, he does,” she said.
“I have something I need to talk to him about.”
She stood up and gave me a smile. “Let me see if Mr. Drake is free.”
I suspected Mr. Drake was always free when it came to Sherri. I went over to the windows that looked down onto Fifth and saw a double-decker tourist bus stopped at the light. Faces scanned the buildings like they were on safari.
“Mr. Drake is available,” Sherri said from behind me.
“Imagine that,” I said.
She led me to the door and showed me in and closed it behind me. I stepped into a windowless room that took up the rest of the floor. Drake’s desk was against the exposed brick wall to my right. There were two Chinese screens set up in the corners opposite him, with empty desks behind them.
Either everyone was at lunch at ten in the morning, or the Show Doctor was experiencing a drop-off in patients.
Drake was seated behind his desk and got up to greet me.
“Hey, Sam,” he said, “nice to see you. I’m a fan.”
He came around to me and we shook hands, and he put a hand on my arm as he did.
He was a skinny guy in wrinkled tan dress slacks and wore a blue-and-white-striped dress shirt open at the collar. There was no sign of a t-shirt, so I was treated to a view of his chest hair.
He went back behind his desk, and I took a seat on the only other place to sit, a beat-up brown leather couch to the side of his desk.
Drake caught me looking around the office.
“We’re moving. This is just a temporary office. Until the work is finished on the new place,” he said.
“Sure.”
He was attentive and fiddled with a pencil while he tried to figure out just what the hell it was that I wanted.
“So to what do I owe this visit?” he said.
He had a little smirk, like he was happy with everything.
“You know Robbie Steele?” I asked.
“No, but I’d like to,” he said.
Again, the little smirk, this time cementing the impression he was a sleaze.
“She asked me to look into the circumstances surrounding Jack’s death. You know, see what it was that drove him to—”
“Throw himself into the river?” he said.
“Yes. That.”
“Hmm,” he said, looking like he didn’t understand.
“I think it’s one of those closure things,” I said.
“Why you?” he asked.
“Lucky, I guess.”
“So what can I tell you?” he asked.
“I’m trying to see what Jack’s state of mind was. I know the show had been causing a lot of angst.”
“That ain’t the half of it,” he said.
“Marty Glover said all the changes and new strategy hadn’t really paid off.”
He slapped his desk and shook his head. “Oh, that’s rich. That is so fucking rich. Sounds like something Marty would say.”
“Why?”
“Why? Because he screws up the show and I try to clean up his mess, and now he’s criticizing me?”
“Is he wrong?”
“You got to understand something, Sam, guys like Marty hate guys like me.”
“Interlopers.”
“Exactly. But the thing you got to remember is that I’m only being called into a shop because guys like Marty aren’t doing their job,” he said. “There has to be a patient before the Show Doctor is called.”
“Ain’t that the truth.”
He shook his head and sighed, like the experience was a painful memory. “There was just so much resistance to change on that show,” he said.
“From Marty?”
“Not just him. But from Jack’s asshole agent, Ron Marshall,” he said.
“So you got Glover, who doesn’t want you meddling with his anchor. And Ron Marshall, who doesn’t want you meddling with his prized client. Sounds like a no-win situation.”
“It wasn’t one my finer moments,” he said. “You remember that Times article?”
“I do.”
The Times had written a page-one story with a nice big color photo of Jack with the headline “Man of Steele’s Ratings Drop Worries Liberty.”
“Unfortunately,” Drake said, “the reporter failed to mention that Glover and Marshall were blocking me and keeping the show from being fixed.”
Drake knew the article well enough to have it memoriz
ed.
“The article said, ‘Even the hiring of outside consultants failed to slow the defection of viewers. TV consultant Jerry Drake was brought in to help, but his strategy of targeting Corporate America has thus far failed to produce a rise in the ratings,’” he said. He sat back in his chair and looked hurt.
“Not something you’ll use in your promotional materials,” I said.
“It wasn’t a good day, Sam. I can tell you that,” he said. “And if really affected office morale.”
Drake shot forward and slapped the desk and I jumped, thinking I might have to defend myself.
“But,” he said, “and it’s a big but, notice how the reporter said ‘thus far.’ Right?”
“If you say so,” I said, hoping he would stay calm.
“Has thus far failed to produce a rise in the ratings,” he said.
“Got it.”
“Meaning it was about to turn around,” he said. “See what I’m saying?”
“You were on the brink,” I said.
“Damn straight, big fella.”
He bolted from his chair and raced back to an old metal file cabinet and pulled open the top drawer. He reached in and yanked out a folder then came back over and thrust it toward me.
“Get a load of this shit, Sam,” he said.
I opened the folder to see printouts of e-mails. I read the To and From lines and saw [email protected] and [email protected].
“Those are the e-mails from Operation Outrage,” Drake said.
“Which was?”
“That was the code name for my strategy of attacking the fat cats,” he said. “I wanted to brand the segments with that name, but Marty didn’t go for it. He kept saying, ‘Let’s see how it goes first.’ Mr. Take It Slow and Easy.”
“Not your style.”
“Freaking Rome is burning, my friend. The numbers are sliding, and he’s worried about slow and easy. Slow and easy got them in the mess in the first place.”
There had to be at least twenty e-mails in the folder. Across the tab of the folder there was scrawled in ink, “Op. Outrage—July.”
“These are just the e-mails from July?” I asked.
“Oh, yeah. Got a file for August, too,” he said. “We were ramping it up, Sam.”
“Who’s Ripley?”
“The corporate communications weenie for IT&E,” Drake said.
“Interesting title,” I said.
“This guy is Mr. Protective. Anybody says a word about IT&E or Buck McConnell, and he hits the roof.”
International Technology & Energy was a Fortune 500 company, one of the largest oil and exploration companies in the country, which also happened to manufacture equipment used for oil and natural gas production and a mess of other industrial purposes.
I read the first e-mail in the file. It was dated July 11 and was from Ripley to Steele.
Your report on the Iran story is completely false and absent of facts. There are at least six outright lies in your story, and you have done irreparable damage to our CEO, Buck McConnell, and the IT&E brand. That you would, on national TV, accuse Mr. McConnell and our company of selling equipment in Iran, and imply selling equipment to the Syrians, is simply outrageous and reckless. IT&E legal counsel is exploring what options we have available, and you can expect to hear from us shortly.
I looked up at Drake, who was smiling like he was a kid showing off a test with a good grade.
“Pretty good, huh?” he said.
“He does sound like a weenie.”
“Big time putz, Sam,” he said, pointing at the e-mail. “And that was just the beginning. That e-mail was from the first report Jack did on IT&E. And there were other companies right smack in the middle of our crosshairs.”
“But you never got to pull the trigger?”
He shook his head.
“Nope. Marty was always right there with the stop sign. Then Jack would go to Marshall for advice, and he’d side with Marty, and Operation Outrage would get shelved for a week or two. Marty would say, ‘We need more proof if we’re going to go after these companies.’ Then I’d see a report about IT&E on a Web site or blog or somewhere, tell Jack, and he’d start screaming, ‘Why aren’t we covering this?’ So we would get it in the show and get a little traction, but then it would go nowhere again. I was always fighting an uphill battle with Marty.”
“Why?”
He shrugged. “He’s a baby, Sam. He’s not like you and me. He’s not a man of action. He was afraid it was going to backfire and the ratings would slide even more. And he was afraid he was going to get shit-canned if that happened.”
“Why’d Marshall push back?”
“Because he’s an ass. I told Jack he should dump him. Get a younger agent—someone in tune with a hipper audience,” he said.
“And?”
“Nothing. Jack would give it some thought, but at the end of the day, he wasn’t going to make a radical move. Not unless everything really fell apart,” he said.
“Guys like Marshall have a lot of influence,” I said.
“Don’t you know it,” he said, shaking his head and sighing. “We were so close, Sam. The public wants this stuff. Mr. and Mrs. Front Porch are tired of seeing fat cat CEOs and their mansions and million-dollar yachts.”
“I know I am.”
“And the idiots at these companies like Ripley aren’t used to having a guy like Jack attack them,” he said. “The business reporters don’t ask any tough questions, No one says, ‘Hey, so why is your equipment showing up in Iran?’”
“But you wanted to,” I said.
“I did. But I’m only one man, Sam. There was only so much I could do,” he said.
I opened the folder and thumbed through the e-mails. “You think I can get copies of all the e-mails you have from Operation Outrage?”
“Sure, Sherri can take care of that for you,” he said.
I stood up and thanked him and we shook hands, and he caught me looking around the office.
“Like I said, these are temporary quarters, Sam. While the new place is being finished. You’ll have to come by sometime,” he said.
“I can’t wait.”
Chapter Fourteen
I stopped in the big Starbucks on the corner of Thirty-third and Fifth for a cup of coffee. The place was quiet, with tourists sitting at tables going over subway and street maps and figuring out what sight to see.
I waited to order my coffee and didn’t think much of the guy behind me, until he bumped into me. A minute later, I was at the little station by the door where you add your milk and sugar when he came up to me.
“So what are you finding out?” he asked.
I was adding a pack of raw sugar and stopped in midmotion and looked at him. He was on the short side and built like a beer keg, with a barrel chest and thick arms, and wearing white slacks and a short-sleeved, navy-blue shirt. The outfit was topped off with a straw fedora. His face was reddened like he had seen too much sun over the years and there were deep creases at the corners of his blue eyes. A goatee of silver hair matched the ring of hair under the fedora.
“You got a thing with personal space, huh?” I asked.
He gave a little snort like a laugh and shook his head.
“Yeah. Ever since I was a kid. Been an issue of mine. I like to get close to people. What can I say?” He looked at my coffee. “You going to drink that black? Must be awfully bitter,” he said.
“You get used to it.”
“I suppose,” he said.
I took a half step back and tried to find a little space. I had my coffee in one hand and the file with the e-mails from Drake in the other, and I found myself wishing I had a free hand.
“What’s in the file?” he asked.
“None of your business,” I said.
He smiled and it highlighted the creases around his eyes.
“So rude. Civility really is a lost art these days,” he said. “I merely take an interest in you, and bang, you react with
such hostility.”
“Maybe you should take an interest in someone else,” I said.
“Again, the hostility,” he said.
“You going to tell me who the hell you are?”
“I’m an interested party,” he said.
“Interested in what?”
“Interested in whatever it is you’re finding out in your little investigation.”
A woman moved in behind me to grab a packet of sweetener and forced me to edge closer to him. He stared at me, and I had an uneasy feeling that he was enjoying this.
“You’ve been asking a lot of questions about your late colleague,” he said.
The woman moved on and I took a step back.
“I’m a nosy guy.”
He smiled and nodded. “And that’s fine, unless it bothers people.”
“Who’s it bothering?”
I got the smile and nod again, like he was trying to be patient.
“Here’s a piece of unsolicited advice,” he said. “You need to be very careful with this. You’re asking people questions about something you don’t know anything about.”
“Hopefully, the more I ask, the more I’ll learn. That’s generally how it works.”
“I was hoping you’d be more flexible,” he said.
“Got to give a little, to get a little,” I said.
“So, we’re back to that?”
“We are,” I said. “You want to know what I’m finding out, I want to know why you need to know.”
“A stalemate,” he said.
“Just like Congress,” I said.
“Sometimes even they reach a compromise,” he said.
“Or sometimes one side just walks away,” I said.
I turned and walked out, and was on the sidewalk of Fifth Avenue when I heard him again.
“It’s extremely rude to walk away from someone like that.”
I turned around, and he was in my face. “I wasn’t done talking to you,” he said.
We were standing in the middle of the sidewalk.
“Listen,” I said, “I don’t know who you are or what you’re after, but—”
“I’m not after anything,” he said.
“Good, then leave me alone.”
Cold Open, A Sam North Mystery Page 6