by D. F. Bailey
“What happens if you hand over the cigarette butts and the bullet casings to the police forensics lab? And the matchbook. What if Nine has a record — which is likely — and the cops are already looking for him?”
“The tech would have to report what he found.” Her voice had acquired a precise, cold-blooded tone.
“In which case, we're —”
“Screwed. Especially if his body ever washes up on shore.” Her lips pinched together as she visualized the unforeseen implications. The concentric circles of jeopardy rippled beyond the point where Nine had plunged into the ocean and now began to lap at their feet. “It means we can't surrender the forensic evidence to the police. Not ever. It would only raise suspicions about us.”
“But Turino’s still fair game.” Finch’s eyes narrowed. “His death is on record. So are our statements to the RCMP about his last night with us.”
“Yeah, maybe we can find out what — or who — led him to us. That shouldn’t expose us to any liability. Especially if the coroner's report shows his death was accidental.”
“Right. If.” Through the glass patio door he saw a robin foraging through Eve’s herb garden. Pecking for morsels. “Okay. So anything to do with Nine stays between us. But we should hang on to the evidence bags you put together on the island. Keep them somewhere totally secure. One day we might need them.”
She nodded. “I've got a place.”
“Better not tell me. Just let me know when you've got it secured.”
“All right.” She drank the last of her espresso and pushed the little cup aside with her bruised fingertips.
“So what are we left to work with?” He braced his chin in the palm of his right hand. “Two leads. J.R., the guy I last saw over ten years ago. And a disconnected telephone number on the back of the Shotwell's matchbook. That's it.”
“I can't think of anything else.” She frowned and glanced away.
“What a train wreck.” He knew the chances of identifying the person who'd sent Nine to kill them were close to zero. “All right. Let me get on to it. Shotwell's opens at four thirty and I want to catch the manager before things get crowded. See what he can tell me about Turino. Before that, I’m going to head over to The 500 Club.”
“What’s The 500 Club?”
Finch chewed through another piece of French toast. “It’s a dive bar on Guerrero Street. J.R.’s old hangout. The last time I saw J.R. was at The 500.”
“Think he’ll remember you?” She tipped her head with a skeptical look.
“Maybe. During the five knives story I protected him as a First Amendment source. He appreciated it.” He shrugged and leaned back in the chair. Were there any other options? None. “Look, I’ve got to start somewhere.”
“I know.” She let out a long breath as if they’d already run a marathon and were about to begin another. “So I’m going to head down to the office. You want to join me? Say hello to the team?”
Finch considered it. He hadn’t filed an article with the The Post in almost two years. Back then he’d written a series of stories about Kali Rood’s infamous murder and suicide cult, Salvation Nation. Then he took an unpaid leave to work on his book about her, Death of A Second Life. However, The Post could provide the support and resources he might need as he tried to track down J.R. and whoever had murdered Turino. People like Gabe Finkleman, the in-house researcher — a genius at ferreting out arcane facts. And Fiona Page, who possessed a mind that could see the range and scope of corporate and government conspiracies as they spun their webs around the planet. And of course, Wally Gimbel, the The Post’s “editor emeritus,” who bore the battle scars from fifty years’ fighting the newspaper wars and exposing crime to the American public.
“Okay, I’ll meet you there,” he said. But he felt frustrated that they couldn’t charge ahead. Everything seemed constrained and blocked. Tied up by Nine’s death.
She finished her last slice of toast and studied him a moment. “You’re worried about the next guy, aren’t you?”
“The next guy?”
“Ten.”
“Ten?”
“The one who comes after Nine. The guy hired to finish the job.”
He let out a chuckle. She had that side to her. Gallows humor. At times like this, he had to admire it. “I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t concerned. How about you?”
“Hell, yes.” She turned her head and stared out the kitchen window. An almost imperceptible tremble rolled through her shoulders. “I’ve already given him a name, haven’t I?”
“I hate to say it, but we’re both in jeopardy.” He ate another slice of toast while he pondered their options.
“And you know that means we’re in this together.” She waited until he glanced at her. “You understand what I’m saying, right?”
“Yes. I know what you mean.” He drank some coffee and slipped the last slice of toast onto his fork and into his mouth.
She blinked. “So tell me. I need to hear you say you’re not going to charge off and try to fix this on your own. That happened before and things really went off the rails.”
“Don’t worry. I won’t.” He pushed his plate away. “We’re in this together. Absolutely together.”
※
In many ways, The Post was like every other newsroom in the world: Reporters tapping at their keyboards. Reporters murmuring into their headsets as they rolled through dozens of phone interviews. Reporters huddled together in pairs to nail down story lines and sources. All of it was a buzzing hive of curiosity — the sting that had infected Finch after his discharge from the army. He’d caught the journalism bug and it never let him go. And he loved it. Loved the hunt and chase. Loved the writing. The research. The people. The smell of the place. Even the always-on, overhead fluorescent lights seemed to fuel the relentless pursuit of the truth.
And like every other paper in the world, all the recent changes to the profession of journalism had been engineered — not in the newsroom — but in the boardroom. Sitting around their boardroom desks, the owners and directors played their diminishing assets as if they were pieces on a chess board arrayed in an endless war of attrition.
Things were no different at The Post. Since 2007, when Finch started as a relief reporter filling a maternity leave — at a time when the paper was published seven days a week and promptly delivered every day to over 180,000 subscribers — the company had almost collapsed. The Post no longer created physical papers of any kind. It had no presses, no delivery staff. No pressmen, no trucks, no drivers. Then last year, the storied building on the corner of Mission and Fifth was sold to a Taiwanese syndicate with a lease-back deal that allowed The Post to rent the third floor of the building for the next five years. All that remained of the media empire was the online version of the San Francisco Post, renamed the eXpress. Cast adrift, the eXpress became little more than a digital ghost hosted by a deck of computer servers which Finch had never seen, located somewhere outside Waco, Texas.
But Eve had seen the servers. Linda Star, the founder and CEO of StarRack Servers had toured Eve through the desert compound that housed over 10,000 servers stored in liquid coolant. A marvel of technology, Eve thought. More important, she’d been impressed by Linda and they way that she’d embraced their relationship. After meeting for three days, the two women struck a deal. Once she purchased majority control of The Post, Eve would transfer the site hosting to StarRack. In return, Linda offered a rock-bottom fee that would only escalate after two years — but at a price that she promised would always be discounted to the bottom twenty percent of her competitors.
They shook hands on the deal and Eve returned to San Francisco and triggered her buyout option with Parson Media. Within one week, she gained majority control of the company. Her first act as the new CEO was to change the legal name of the digital media outlet back to century-old standard, The San Francisco Post. To insiders, the revived company was called The Post. Simple, clean. She then contracted a team of coders to rebuild the w
ebsite using The Guardian as their model. Next, she restructured the news team following the methods pioneered at Huffington Post. Soon word got out that anyone could write for The Post, however, remuneration depended on the number of people who clicked on each story. And to dissuade click-bait journalism, Eve reinforced The Post’s journalistic mandate enshrined in the homepage banner: “FACTS • REASON • ANALYSIS.” Writers who failed to address that mandate in every story, never made it to first base. The top ten who attracted the most readers — the Tier One Team (TOTs) — were offered a desk in the writers’ pool. Finally, she secured annual block funding from three civic foundations that supported her cause. The Mavis & Jolie Wilson Foundation, The Center for American Justice, and the Evonne Hutton Institute. The new sponsors added immediate credibility to the company and all of them were identified in bold text next to the homepage banner.
After a year of twelve-hour days and seven-day weeks, Eve realized that her labor had achieved … not so very much. All of her course corrections had averted certain disaster. Circulation had tripled and the demographic and geographic reach had grown substantially. On the other hand, ad revenue was flat — but that was mitigated by the gains from the foundation grants. After the fiscal year-end she reviewed the books with her accountants, and her nineteen million dollar investment had returned a four percent loss. However, the reporters had broken open two corruption scandals in California and one in Washington. In its first year under Eve Noon’s guidance, The Post won the Teresa Collins Award for Online Reporting and the Dave Salle Prize for Investigative Journalism.
Not so bad, she told herself. Not bad at all.
※
When he found Gabe Finkleman stacking sheets of paper next to the photocopier Finch had to pause. Finkleman’s tall, lanky stature routinely caught Finch by surprise. He stood six-foot ten and looked thin as a lamppost. The man always appeared ready to topple over. The leaning tower of Pisa in human form. Finch let out a laugh when he saw him and shook his hand.
“Mr. Finch. Good to see you again.”
Mr. Finch. Finkleman hadn't changed much either, Finch thought. Polite to the point of becoming obsequious. Yet somehow this formal touch was charming. Like him or not, though, everyone prized his dogged attitude to research. No one more than Finch.
“Hey, you know better than that, Gabe. Call me Will. You're the only guy here still doing the Mr. and Ms. thing.”
“Hmmm.” His cheeks flushed as if he'd been called out for a flaw he'd never noticed on his own. “I guess you're right. Will,” he added.
“I know I am.” Finch inched closer. “Look, I need your help. But like always, I can't talk about it here. Can we meet for ten or twenty minutes?”
Finkleman glanced at the wall clock. Eleven thirty. “Maybe in half an hour.”
Finch nodded. “Same old place?”
“It's still there.”
“Good. See you at noon.”
Finch turned and made his way over to the receptionist, Dixie Lindstrom. Knowing that she’d once talked to Tony Turino, he knew he had to be cautious. After exchanging a few awkward words with her, he asked, “Is Fiona free?”
She glanced at her online calendar and then checked the telephone console. “She's on a call right now. Plus she has an eleven-forty five with Eve and then” — a light on her telephone deck blinked and she interrupted herself — “Oh, she just hung up. If you sneak in you might get her before she calls someone else.”
Finch gave her a two-fingered salute and slipped along the hallway to the editor's office. He tapped on the door and turned the handle before Fiona could respond. He swung his head past the door frame and smiled.
“It's me. Got a moment?”
“Will Finch!” Her hand was perched above the phone as if she were about the make another call. She dropped the handset onto the base and stood up. “Hug?”
He stood beside her and they drew one another into a soft embrace. He appreciated how she clung to him and then released him, squeezing his biceps in her fingers as her hands ran along his arms. Then another smile lit up her face. At one time they'd shared bylines when they were frontline reporters working side-by-side in “the bog” — the reporter pool where staff writers slogged through one story after another. A few years ago, Fiona had been kidnapped and raped by one of the criminals they'd been tracking. Finch had been partly responsible for getting her into trouble. And partly responsible for helping her recover her sanity once she'd escaped Justin Whitelaw’s makeshift dungeon in The Mission.
“So I haven't seen you in months.” She paused to calculate how long it had been. “Like six months before you went up north.”
“It's a while.” He tipped his head to one side and smiled again. She looked good. He was glad to see it. “So the sign says Managing Editor on your door. You liking it?”
“Yes.” She returned to her chair and sat. “It's busier than I thought it would be. And I knew it would be very busy. Look, I've got to meet Eve in five minutes. Can we do lunch?”
He stood behind the guest chair and set his hands on top of the backrest. “Sorry. I've got stuff to track down.”
A mock frown crossed her face. “Okay, Sherlock, what's up?”
Sherlock. Their old code for when they were stymied by leads that had turned cold. The solution was always the same: dig deeper.
He paused a second, unsure what he could disclose to her. Or to anyone. “There's no breaking news. Not yet.” He glanced away. “But there might be. In which case I want to know if I can bring it to you.”
“Of course. In what? A week? A month?”
“You know how it is.” He shrugged.
“Sadly.”
“In the meantime, can I get a new Post press card?”
“Sure. I’ll tell Dixie to issue you one.”
Her phone buzzed, she touched a button on the base, and Dixie’s voice streamed through the intercom. “Eve's ready for you.”
“Great. By the way, Will meeds to get a press pass. Punch one out for him ASAP, okay.” Fiona released the phone button and looked at Finch. “I've got to go.” She stood up and smoothed the pleating on her skirt. “The queen awaits!”
“The queen? Do you call her that?” His hand swung from side to side. A gesture questioning if everyone in the office had decided on a nickname for Eve.
“No. Of course not.” She laughed, a throaty chuckle that suggested she held a secret on him. She grabbed her laptop and swept past him out the door. As she left, she let out a another laugh and added, “Do you?”
※
Finch knew he’d taken too long to pick up his Post press pass from Dixie. First she had to reconfirm his standing with the San Francisco Police Department and the Pacific Media Workers Guild. Then she insisted on getting Fiona to sign the pass and laminating the authorized card. All very meticulous. And time consuming.
He checked his watch. Damn, ten minutes late. The Starbucks at the corner of Fourth and Mission was crammed with fast-food customers trying to grab a bite and a beverage before they trooped back to their office towers. As soon as he entered the premises, Finch regretted setting up a noon hour meeting with Finkleman in one of the busiest hubs in the city. Perhaps you’ve spent too many months living alone on an island, he told himself. Easy to forget this madness.
“Mr. Finch!” Gabe Finkleman said, unable to drop the formality.
He turned and saw Finkleman gesture to him from a corner next to the window. Finch waved a hand and sat on an empty stool that Finkleman had reserved for him.
“Thanks.”
“You want me to wait while you get a coffee?”
Finch glanced at the lineup. “No. I’ll grab something later.” He nodded at Finkleman’s drink topped with a pyramid of whipped cream and some kind of sprinkled flavoring. “What did you order?”
“Frappuccino.” He sucked on his straw and set the plastic cup on the narrow service bar.
Finch smiled again and leaned a little closer to his colleague. “Listen,
Gabe, I’ve got another one of these under-wrap stories brewing up and I wonder if you can help me. Have they made you a full-timer yet?”
“Since September. Double the hours, four times the work load.”
“Funny how that happens, huh?” Finch ignored the hint that Finkleman might be too busy to help him. He pressed on. “I’m looking for background info on an Iraq war vet from the 9th Engineer Battalion. Tony Turino. T-U-R-I-N-O.”
Finkleman began to type the letters into his phone. “Do you know which army group he was attached to?”
“Just the battalion. But here’s the thing. I don’t want you to mention this to anyone, okay? He died last Sunday. On Mayne Island, up in Canada.”
“Died.” Finkleman looked up from his phone. “Wow, sorry to hear that. Did you know him well?”
“No. Not at all, actually.” Finch glanced out the window and again wondered if he’d briefly encountered Turino when they were both in Iraq. Maybe. He shrugged off the idea and turned back to Finkleman. “I’m pretty sure that the Canadian coroner will publish his report in the next week or so. Can you track that, too?”
“So you want the coroner report and a detailed profile of Turino, right?”
“Make sure it includes a head-shot of him. Okay, that’s the first thing. The second is about a man named Jeremiah Rickets. Everyone calls him J.R. Also an Iraq vet. He was with the Military Police stationed in Baghdad from 2003 until he returned to the city here in 2007. I need you to find him. Address, phone number, email, next of kin — all of it. Plus a mug-shot of him, too.”
“Okay, like a missing-person profile, right?”
“Exactly.” Finch wondered if he needed any more info about J.R. and Turino. Maybe later, but not right now. “Gabe, the pictures of these two guys will be important. Once you dig them out, can you text them to me ASAP?”
“I might be able to get the head shots to you today or tomorrow. But the profiles?…” Finkleman shook his head and glanced away. “That won’t be until the weekend. At the earliest.”
“I get it. Like everyone else in here” — his hand swept across the room — “you’re busy treading water just to stay afloat.”