Standing in the middle of the room was Terrance “Buck” McConnell.
He was slightly taller than me, maybe six two, with the build of an athlete. Lean and in shape. His face was red and weathered, like someone who spent a lot of time outdoors. He had to be in his early sixties but didn’t look it. His hair was brown and short and neatly styled.
He was dressed in the gray pants of a suit, with a white shirt and a red-and-blue-striped tie that was perfectly knotted. Even his teeth were perfect. Large, white, and square.
He had the appearance of a baby boomer who had it all. Health, looks, and success.
I walked to him and extended a hand. “Sam North,” I said.
“Sam, nice to meet you,” he lied in a businesslike tone.
“You don’t have to pretend to be cordial,” I said while we were still shaking hands.
I felt his grip tighten before we stopped shaking. “I don’t know what you’re talking about, son,” he said, and you could hear the Texas in his voice.
“In case Stuart hasn’t told you, I’m picking up where Jack Steele left off.”
“Good for you. Let’s hope the weight of being a big TV star doesn’t get to you as well,” he said. “Fame can be a burden, you know.”
“So can reporting on your company,” I said.
“I’m not quite sure I know what you mean,” he said.
His eyes were hard and his face taut. I could see his jaw tightening.
“I got a stack of photos here showing one of your boys running around handing out duffel bags full of cash. Same stuff Jack was going after before fame suddenly became too much for him.”
I opened the folder and leafed through the pictures and handed the first one to him.
“That guy there, the one with the bag, which is full of cash, is Billy Hunter. He’s one of yours. Maybe you two bumped into each other at the holiday party or something.”
He looked up from the picture and gave me the stare again. “Got a pretty flip manner about you, don’t you, boy?”
“From son to boy,” I said. “I hate getting demoted.”
That got me more of the hard stare.
“What I want to know is where Hunter gets his energy from,” I said. “I mean, it’s got to be exhausting running around to these third-world countries handing out millions of dollars in bribes to thugs so IT&E can score contracts.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
I showed him the rest of the photos, and he leafed through them as I spoke.
“Is Billy Hunter an IT&E employee?” I asked.
“We got a lot of employees, more than ninety thousand.”
“But not all of them offer bribes, right?”
He handed me back the pictures. “Sorry, but I can’t help you with this,” he said.
“What’s a bribery scandal going to do to your run for the White House, Buck?” I asked.
He stepped closer. “There is no bribery scandal far as I can see,” he said.
“You know what people are going to say: If this is how he runs IT&E, how the hell will he run the country?”
“You need to be real careful here.”
“Hell, if more of this bribery stuff starts showing up on the campaign trail, you don’t make it to the first debate,” I said.
“You’re making a big mistake,” he said. “A real big mistake.”
“And hell, everyone makes it to the first debate,” I said. “There’s, like, ten guys who get invited to that one. I’ll probably get a spot before you do.”
He moved even closer, and I could smell the stale coffee and cigarette on his breath.
“This is probably where you want to stop yourself before you say something that could end your career,” he said.
“Self-control has never been a strong suit.”
“There’s a surprise.” He stared at me and gestured toward the folder I was holding. “Something you may want to know, it might mean something to your photos there,” he said. “Year or so ago a guy—some blogger or Web site guy or something—tries to blackmail us with a picture he says was of one of our employees caught doing something illegal.”
I hesitated, and Buck went for the kill.
“Turns out the idiot had pictures of a guy who was a sub-subcontractor for us trying to pay off some low-level clown of some state in India.”
He had me confused, and he knew it.
“The hot shot overplayed his hand, big-time,” he said. “We went straight to the Feds. Turns out the guy in the picture wasn’t even contracted out to us at the time of the photo. So Mr. Whistleblower had nothing except an attempted extortion charge to show for his efforts.”
“I’m not talking about then, what about this guy?” I said, gesturing with the folder. “What about Billy Hunter?”
He shook his head. “Don’t know a thing about him,” he said. “But I’d be real careful about believing all of the crap that’s said about my company, understand?”
“I only need to believe the part about your boy Hunter and his bribes.”
“I’ll tell you again. You want to be real careful here, son. Real careful.”
“You telling me not to run something?”
“I’m telling you that if you want to play games with me, you damn well better know that you’re right.”
Chapter Thirty-Four
“So does Hunter work for IT&E or not?” Freddie asked.
“I have no idea,” I said. “All I know is that McConnell wasn’t fazed by the pictures.”
We were on Seventh Avenue stopped at the light on the corner of Fiftieth Street.
“Grace under pressure,” Freddie said.
“No, it was like he knew what was coming. Ripley prepped him, and he had time to make some calls and sit down and figure out a response.”
I pounded the dashboard with a fist. “Son of a bitch,” I said.
“Hey, hey,” Freddie said, “easy on the car. And the language. I try to run a family car service here.”
“I was sure I had him. But I blew it. Gave him too much damn time to come up with a response.”
“The mouth again. Watch the mouth,” Freddie said.
“Should have played it differently,” I said.
“And maybe check out Herman the blackmailer before taking his word,” he said.
“That could be a problem,” I said.
“Could be?”
“We don’t know if Herman was blackmailing him. We don’t know if anyone was blackmailing him, or IT&E,” I said.
“Made it up to confuse your ass,” he said.
“Possibly, or to slow me down.”
We drove down Seventh, heading into Times Square.
“You ask him why he had someone shoot my car?” Freddie said.
“I forgot.”
“Always thinking of yourself.”
“Plus, we don’t know it was him,” I said.
“What the hell do we know at this point?” he asked.
“We know that Steele died a couple of weeks ago. We know he was chasing this story on IT&E. We know he was supposed to meet Herman Bindagi, but Herman got nervous and canceled. We know that IT&E was aware of Jack’s desire to nail them. We know that as soon as I picked up the ball and started asking people about what was going on in Jack’s life, someone got worried. We know the guy who told me to back off gets paid by IT&E,” I said.
“Don’t forget the car,” he said.
“Yes, we know someone shot your car.”
“Makes it sound like the car was the intended target.”
“Okay, we know that, thanks to your skillful, evasive driving skills, someone shot your Grand Cherokee when otherwise it could have been you or me. How’s that?” I asked.
“Much better.”
We stopped at the light at Forty-sixth, and a sea of people crossed in front of us.
“He was calm and cool and scripted when I showed him the pictures. He handed them back and just flat-out said he had no idea about any
of it. It was like the pictures of one his employees handing out bribes didn’t even bother him,” I said.
“Maybe wasn’t one of his employees,” he said.
“I thought of that. But I checked Hunter out as best I could. He works there. Or worked there, at least.”
“Then maybe wasn’t bribes he was handing out.”
“Yes, it was probably tips, for jobs well done. Or maybe they were bonuses.”
“Never know.”
We were moving again, slowly, through Times Square.
“Only time McConnell came close to losing control was when I got in his face and said it was a good story. Said if he ran for president and this came out, people would question whether he should be running the country. That really pissed him off.”
“Tweak me off, too, you come into my presidential suite and start pissing on my presidential dreams,” Freddie said.
“So he handles the question about the pictures easily, but gets nasty when I bring up the idea of this hurting a possible presidential bid. What does all this tell us?”
“That you can be annoying?”
“Keep in mind that you are easily replaceable. Lots of shooters looking for wonderful freelance opportunities like this,” I said.
“Not like fortysomething male reporters are in short supply, either,” he said.
We were stuck in traffic at the light at Forty-second now. To my right a couple of cops on horseback were in the street in front of the Reuters Building, talking to the tourists and posing for pictures.
“This tells me you need a hell of lot more if you want to bust Buck McConnell,” Freddie said.
“Yes, it does. But there has to be something we’re missing here,” I said.
“Maybe old Buck was expecting something a lot worse,” he said.
Traffic opened up a bit, and we cruised down Seventh toward Madison Square Garden.
I looked over at Freddie and said, “You may be onto something.”
“Don’t need to sound so surprised,” he said.
Chapter Thirty-Five
Susan’s desk outside Daniels’s office was empty. The gatekeeper had been given a reprieve for the night, or so I thought.
“Don’t even think of trying to go in there without going through me,” she said from behind me.
I turned to see her approaching with a coffee mug.
“Don’t you ever go home?” I asked.
“No. Not until the boss man dismisses me,” she said.
I looked at the mug.
“Green tea,” she said. “He’s concerned about his health all of a sudden.”
“It’s stressful being the king.”
“Please tell me you came over to shoot the breeze with me, you good-looking pain in the ass.”
“If only.”
“Damn. I knew it. It’s always Cal, Cal, Cal with everyone. I’m just the pretty face at the door.”
“Eye candy, as they say in the biz,” I said.
It was almost seven, and I was delivering on a promise to Daniels. I was to fill him in on what happened with McConnell.
“What do I have to do to get an audience?” I asked.
“Thought you’d never ask,” she said.
She winked, went to the door, and poked her head in.
“Prince Charming is here, shall I send him in?” She turned back to me and said, “Enter at your own risk.”
I walked in, and Daniels was staring at the wall of monitors, watching Liberty and all the cable competition.
“I saw McConnell,” I said as I sat down.
“I know.”
“He dismissed the photos.”
Daniels eyes finally left the TVs and landed on me.
“I got a call,” he said, taking a drink of his green tea.
The evening sky in the windows behind him was a brown haze, one of those unhealthy mixes of humidity and stagnant air.
“From McConnell?” I asked.
“No.”
“Ripley?”
He shook his head.
“How many more guesses do I get?” I asked.
“Try the Feds,” he said.
“My tax dollars at work.”
“I wish I could have a sense of humor about it,” he said.
“What’d they want?”
He sat back and glanced at the TVs. One of our junior flamethrowers, a Jack Steele in training, was opening his show. Rick Applebaum was no more than forty and well on his way to cable-news stardom, or at least he thought so. He had the thick, it-might-be-fake it-might-be-real hair and a very strong sense of self-importance. Both were big pluses in the business.
Daniels looked back at me. “Where are the pictures?” he asked.
“I have them.”
“Yes, I assumed as much. Where?”
“Why?”
“How about, being that I’m your boss, you answer my question.” he said. He was sitting forward now, leaning over the desk.
“I’m a little nervous.”
“You should be,” he said.
“Why do you want the pictures?”
He gave me the stare that was essentially asking me to reconsider my answer and save myself. It was a nice gesture, but one I ignored.
“Cal, I have only one copy of these things. As far as I know they are the only copies, at least according to my source.”
“Your source is a goddamned extortionist,” he yelled.
“One, we don’t know that for sure. And two, he’d probably prefer entrepreneur.”
Daniels took a slug of green tea, looked at me, and shook his head. “You got some balls. I want those pictures in here,” he said, taping his desk, “on this desk, in thirty minutes.”
The pictures were resting securely in a locked drawer in my desk downstairs in the newsroom.
“Why do you need them?” I asked.
“Because I do.”
“You want to turn them over to the Feds?”
“I do,” he said.
“Then I’m not giving them up,” I said.
“Then they’ll issue a subpoena for them. Following that, I’ll fire you.”
“I dug to find them. I get to keep them. If the Feds were so vigilant and so concerned, how come they didn’t find them?”
He said nothing for a few moments, and I used the time to come up with some semblance of a game plan.
“Give me a day to verify them. If I do, I get to go on the air with the story. If I don’t, I hand them to you, and you give them to the Feds.”
“You’re mistaking this for a negotiation; it’s not. I issued you an order,” he said.
“And I defied it.”
“You realize I can throw your ass out the door right now and have you escorted from the building for good,” he said.
“I do. But you won’t.”
“No?”
“I’ll take the photos and walk into CNBC, CNN, or some other newsroom, and they’ll be on the air in a few hours.”
He sipped his tea and looked at me with a face that was flushed red but gave no hint of emotion. After a few seconds he was ready.
“Here is my one and only offer,” he said. “You have twenty-four hours from right now, seven ten p.m., to verify that yes, the guy in the pictures is or was an IT&E employee.”
I was about to speak but he kept going.
“With an admission that yes, he was bribing some foreign official on behalf of IT&E,” he said.
“I can live with that,” I said.
“You get to go on the air, use the photos, and break the story,” he said.
“So long as we agree that I give you the pictures only after I’m off the air,” I said.
“And if you don’t pin it down by this time tomorrow night, you hand me the photos,” he said.
“I’ll confirm it,” I said.
Chapter Thirty-Six
“Let me introduce you to William S. Hunter, better known as Billy,” Rinaldi said, sliding a sheet of paper across a desk in a dreary, gray offic
e in the back of the Thirteenth Precinct. It was nine thirty Wednesday morning. I now had about nine and a half hours left to verify Hunter and confirm the bribe photos.
“Last known address 137 Ridgeview Lane, New Paltz, New York,” Rinaldi said.
“And you’re sure this is the Billy Hunter I’m looking for?” I asked.
“You forget I do this for a living,” Rinaldi said, gesturing to the gunmetal-gray desk and battered gray filing cabinets along the wall. “Or you think maybe I just like to come in here to take advantage of the luxurious office space?”
“What’s a world traveler doing in a little upstate college town?”
“Tending bar, apparently,” he said. “He’s lived all over: Tucson … Austin, Texas. Was born in Newburgh, New York, so maybe this is his idea of returning home to settle down.”
“Maybe his work is done for IT&E,” I said.
I looked at the sheet and saw the line for present employment. P&G’s, Main Street, New Paltz, New York. “How long has he been back in the good old U. S. of A.?”
“Passport hasn’t been stamped since April. Looks like he came home then and hasn’t left since. Maybe he’s pursuing a degree at that fine academic institution up there,” he said.
“Yes, international studies,” I said.
“You going to tell me why you need this information now?” he asked.
“Can’t. It’s top secret. Part of a special investigative series,” I said.
“I see. Is it anything the authorities should be aware of?” he asked.
“Not at all.”
“Why don’t I believe any of this?”
“Because you’ve known me for thirty-some-odd years?”
“Yes, that’s it,” he said. “You’ve never been a good liar.”
“I’ll try to improve.”
“You’ll keep me informed if this gets a little tricky?” he asked.
“I will,” I said.
“Is this little investigation a solo effort?”
“No, I have a very competent and able cameraman, enforcer, and a regular man-about-town looking after me.”
“That makes me feel better.”
Cold Open, A Sam North Mystery Page 15