my way toward a newsroom full of people I would either hate or despise. I would view the tape and try to get a line on Gibbons’ killer before the cops dumped the whole mess. I figured that was more than enough for someone I hadn’t seen in four years before yesterday. I was doing my best. And if Lisa Bange happened along the way, so be it.
She was sitting in a cubicle at the end of the hall, drinking what looked like coffee and smoking what looked like a cigarette.
She was five feet eight and great-looking in that newsroom sort of way. Picture long sweaters and jeans that hang pretty well. Long-limbed and athletic, with loose brown hair and Irish skin the color of cream. She was worth getting out of bed for. She also wasn’t Lisa Bange.
“Down there,” she pointed.
“You’re not Lisa Bange, are you?”
“Down there.” She spoke without taking her eyes off the newspaper. Tribune crossword.
“Seven down,” I said. “Five-letter word for nonsense. Try hooey.”
She lifted her blues from the accursed ink. “Hooey, huh?”
I nodded. She scribbled.
“It fits.”
“What can I say? I’m good with words.”
She pointed again. “See how good you are down the hall.” At least this time she smiled.
Down the hall was the Channel 6 newsroom. For four o’clock on a Sunday morning, it had the action thing down pretty well. I was directed to a long row of gray cubicles. Inside the last one I found a thin set of shoulders, hunched over a TV monitor, stopwatch in hand.
“Lisa Bange,” I said.
A large pair of 1950s cat-eye glasses appeared over the top of the TV. Directly underneath said glasses was a pallid face twisted into a silent shriek, masquerading as a smile. How pleasant it all sometimes seems. Until you get out of bed, that is.
“Yes,” she breathed.
I introduced myself. With a pencil Lisa vaguely pointed to a corner set of cubicles. They were green. I assumed that set them apart.
“Over there. Diane wants to speak to you.”
I guess I was supposed to know who Diane was. Not being an avid fan of Channel 6 Action News, I was at a loss. Still, I figured she was the star of this little drama. And she had to be a sight better than Lisa.
“Diane?” I said.
Three heads huddled around a desk turned in perfect sync. They fixed me with a single look, one of practiced disdain. Inside the newsroom Cerberus sat the fatted calf. The pot of gold, if you will, at the end of the Action 6 News rainbow. Also known as the anchorwoman.
“You mean Ms. Lindsay,” said one of the heads.
“I guess so,” I replied.
Quick, like the detective I am, I reached in and spun Her Highness around by the chair. Diane Lindsay gave a bit of a gasp. She had headphones plugged into a small TV set and had not heard a word we said. Across the screen rolled a stretcher. I noted a soft felt hat at the end of the gurney. Two EMTs loaded John Gibbons into an ambulance. Then the tape cut to a single shell casing, cold in the Chicago night.
Ms. Lindsay removed the headset, looked at me, and back at the tape. Then she shut the machine down.
“Mr. Kelly.”
She was good-looking. In a redheaded, cold, clinical sort of way. The kind of person you’d think was attractive if you were into guilt and relentless remorse. I didn’t have a hankering for either. And Ms. Lindsay didn’t seem to take a liking to me anyway. Still, it was four in the morning and I didn’t much give a damn.
“You called me down here,” I said. “I’d like to see the rest of the tape.”
Diane’s acolytes had moved around me in a loose sort of triangle. Two took notes. The other sized me up for the boneyard.
“I believe Ms. Bange told you we could talk about that,” Diane said.
“Yeah, okay. Listen, we don’t talk about anything until we get rid of the audience.”
Diane gave the trio a look, and they loped off to a solitary corner of the newsroom.
“Now, Mr. Kelly. Let’s chat.”
I unclipped the Beretta I’d snuck past the receptionist who, if there was a God in heaven, would have been Lisa Bange. I put the piece on the desk and sat down. Diane took a fresh pencil from the red hive atop her head. Her eyes fastened on the gun as she rammed the wooden end of her number two into an electric sharpener. She brandished the polished lead and pointed to a stack of legal documents that had surfaced at my elbow.
“You’ll have to sign all of these before we can let you view any tape shot by Channel 6.”
“You mean Channel 6 Action News,” I said.
She smiled. I signed.
“There you go. Channel 6 Action News wants to sue me, they get into that long line heading down the Action News corridor.”
I pointed toward the hall. Diane just looked at me.
“Now, Mr. Kelly, how do you know Mr. Gibbons?”
“You mean how did I know Mr. Gibbons? I mean he’s dead, right?”
Diane confirmed with the slightest of nods. John Gibbons was now officially dead.
“He was my partner a while back. On the force.”
“Any idea what he was doing down by the pier?”
“None.”
“He had your card in his pocket.”
“He was a friend.”
“He was shot with a nine-millimeter semiautomatic.” Diane looked across the desk at my piece. I shrugged.
“You’re a private investigator now,” she said.
I gave her a nod. This was getting boring.
“Let me see if I can speed this up for you, Diane. No, we were not working together. And yes, Diane, I might be lying. If we were working together on something, I sure as hell wouldn’t tell you. Not without getting something in return. Now are you going to roll that tape or do I get to take it home with me?”
“Why do you want the video?” she said.
“The cops tipped you to me, right?”
Now it was her turn to demur.
“Either they think I’m good for the murder,” I said, “which is insane, and therefore probably what you suspect. Or they want to know what Gibbons was working on and they think I might know.”
“What was he working on?”
I studied a piece of green cubicle just above Diane’s head and to the left.
“Look, Kelly,” she said. “You’re right. The cops did tip me. They do want to talk to you.”
The slightest of pauses, and then she continued.
“Now, why would that be?”
I shrugged.
“Here’s the deal,” I said. “I get anything I think you can use, I’ll let you know. If I can, I’ll do it before I go to the cops. But it’s a two-way street. You screw me and…”
I shrugged again.
“Just don’t screw me.”
“Deal.” Diane stuck out her hand. I held it longer than I wanted.
“Now, how about the tape,” I said.
She pulled a VHS cassette off the desk.
“This is a dub of the footage we shot tonight. You can take it home. With one additional condition.”
“And what might that be?” I said.
