Henry Townsend was thirty-five and rangy, with a hawk's nose and a mortician's smile. His eyes were dark and knowing, his hair parted in the middle. He wore running shoes, khaki pants, and a T-shirt that said, 'Reporters Do It with Any Type.' He sat, drinking a margarita in the boss's polyurethane-lacquered deck chair, as if he owned the place.
Symington Foote wore gold boxer-style swim trunks and a matching terrycloth jacket with pockets. His white hair was wet and his forehead speckled from too much sun.
We exchanged pleasantries and I asked Townsend whether he was looking into the activities of our esteemed state attorney.
'I don't talk about investigative pieces,' he said, with journalistic self-righteousness.
Symington Foote cleared his throat. 'Hank, treat Jake as you would your publisher.'
'That's what I'm doing,' Townsend replied, then sipped at his green drink.
Reporters are like that. Professional cynics who play pinochle in the courthouse press room and crack wise in the middle of rape trials and executions. A bunch of gunslingers who love spitting tobacco in the boss's eye. Get fired, just pack up the portable-computer, these days-and mosey on to the next town.
'Think of this as prepublication libel review,' I told Townsend.
'Fine. When I've got a first draft, I'll call you.'
'Maybe if you had last time, I could've swung a defense verdict.'
His tongue was flicking the salt off the rim of the glass. 'The editors chopped the story to shit.'
Reporters are like that, too. Every fuck-up is blamed on the editors.
'As I recall the discovery,' I said, 'the editing took out the most serious allegations. The paper would have been hit harder if they'd printed your stuff. What was it, alleged ties between Fox and major drug dealers?'
'Drug money financed his campaigns. We only published the details of technical campaign law violations, and we substantiated them. Plus there was one unattributed reference to a cash contribution that was drug-related. I couldn't get the source to come forward, so we got nailed.'
'Who was the source?'
He dismissed me with the wave of a hand. 'Forget it. I gave my pledge of confidentiality.'
I was ready to give him my pledge of a broken face, but I decided to stick with the nice-guy routine. 'What else did the source tell you?'
Townsend looked toward Foote, who nodded. 'Lots that I couldn't use without backup documents or a second source. Dynamite stuff. I needed corroboration up the kazoo and didn't have anything. If I had, the headline would have said, 'State Attorney Tool of Medellin Drug Cartel.''
'An attention grabber,' I conceded. 'What's behind it?'
Townsend must have felt he'd already made his point about keeping secrets. Now, he was practically squirming to tell what he knew. 'It goes like this. A thousand years ago, Fox was a low-level heroin courier in Vietnam. He comes home and makes some interesting connections as a street cop. By the time he runs for state attorney, he's an ass-kissing buddy of the first-team All-Pro Colombia cocaine kingpins. Lehder, Ochoa, Escobar-you name 'em, he played footsie with 'em. They finance his campaign, plus deliver cash to him on the side. We're talking a few million, walking-around money for them, but a fortune for a guy on the public payroll. He's a good soldier. He keeps the little house and plays the role of the hardworking civil servant. He bides his time. They give him inside information on rival drug dealers so he can make some cases, get his picture taken standing on a boatload of contraband.'
'Phony hero,' I said, stirring up memories.
'Yeah. It's part of a long-range plan. Build Fox up. Along the way he has to return some favors. If someone close to the cartel gets busted, he'll give them something that can tank the case. Maybe the identity of an informant who then meets with an unfortunate accident, that sort of thing. Mostly, he trades in information. He keeps in touch with the feds. Anything he learns from Customs, Strike Force, or DEA, he delivers to the cartel. You can't buy information like that.'
'Sure you can.'
'Right. Well, anyway, the long-range plan was to keep Fox in the public eye, win some cases as the crusading, drug-busting prosecutor, get him elected governor. Then, who knows, president someday.'
' The Manchurian Candidate, ' I said, remembering my earliest thoughts about Nick.
'Yeah, bizarre, isn't it? Create an image exactly opposite of reality.'
'Truth and illusion. Distinguishing the two is your job, Townsend, and mine.'
'Well, I was still working on my source, trying to get him to go on the record. He claimed to have documents, cables in code, bank accounts in the Caymans and Panama in Nick's name.'
It was all starting to fit together. 'When's the last time you talked to the source?'
'A week ago. Said he would think about it. Then…'
'Then what?'
'I can't say.'
'I can. Then he got shot, right? Somebody took him out. Does your pledge of confidentiality survive his death?'
He looked a question at the publisher, didn't get an answer, and said, 'Even if your supposition is correct, I could not confirm-'
While he was busy not confirming, I came out of my chair and grabbed him by his T-shirt. I yanked him to his feet and drew his face close to mine.
'Jake!' Symington Foote was profoundly unhappy with his legal representation. 'I hardly think this is necessary…'
I ignored him and tightened my grip on Townsend. 'Tell me his name! Tell me, you sanctimonious son of a bitch or I'll give you a headline: 'Reporter Drowns in Publisher's Pool.''
His eyes showed fear, but he shook his head. I dragged him across the patio toward the deep end of Foote's splendid twenty-five-meter pool. Foote let out a yelp. I hoisted Townsend over a shoulder, then dangled him by the ankles, dunking his head. He thrashed around and I hauled him up, sputtering, and he called me several names they don't print in a family newspaper. I lowered him again.
'Now see here, Jake,' Foote was saying from behind me.
I saw very clearly. I saw my six-figure retainer slipping away and didn't care.
I let Townsend stay under long enough to consider a career change, then pulled him out, choking and gagging. I dropped him into a chaise lounge, where he burped up a couple of jiggers of chlorinated water, and then I asked again. 'Who is he?'
He hawked and coughed and wheezed and finally said, 'You know. You already know, you bastard.'
I knew I knew. I had to hear the name. 'Say it!'
'Alejandro Rodriguez.'
'Why did he talk to you? What was his motive?'
He drank in some air. 'I don't know. That's not my department.'
'Then how do you know Rodriguez was telling the truth?'
The sound was half gag, half laugh. 'We never know that. We just print what people tell us. It's not our job to tell the public what to believe. We just give them choices.'
Sunday. A breeze from the east tickled the leaves of the live-oak trees. Just a breath of air, but it makes a difference. I called the weekend crew at the state attorney's office every hour like a guy on house arrest. I thought a lot about Nick Fox. I needed to trip him up, to bait him and trap him. I couldn't call Metro because there was no telling who was loyal to him, and the feds would take too long. I thought of the logistics and came up with a plan. But it would take two of us, and one had to be somebody Fox wouldn't recognize. That left out Charlie Riggs, the only person I trusted completely other than my granny. So where did that leave me?
I lay in the hammock again and thought about Marsha Diamond. TV Gal, I've let you down. Been too wrapped up in saving my own semiprecious hide. I walked into the house, pulled out three cardboard boxes, my copies of the Diamond file. I reread the printouts. Bobbie Blinderman had chatted with Marsha, pitching crude woo, but got shot down. A short time later, Marsha gets strangled. I read the rest of them-Oral Robert, Bush Whacker, and the other cheap-thrill hackers.
I found the photos Dr. Whitson had taken of the scene. There was Marsha, head jammed into the monitor.
