piece of gum and curled it into my mouth. “Where do you think we’re going to find her? Go over to the stadium and ask if they busted any middle-aged black women last night?”
John smiled, then he swiveled around to pick up his leatherbound notebook from his desk. Opening the cover, he pulled a white engraved card out of the inside pocket and extended it to me. “Funny you should ask …”
I took the card from his hand and looked at it. It was a press invitation to a private reception at some company called the Tiptree Corporation, to be held at noon today. I turned the card over between my fingertips. “Here?”
“Here,” he said. “She works for them.”
Coincidence City.
“But you don’t know her name …” He shook his head. I turned the card over and noticed that it was addressed personally to him. “Wonder why she didn’t just tell me she’d meet you at this reception.”
“There’s good reasons,” he replied. “Besides, she probably didn’t even know I was going to be there. The company probably sent a few dozen out to reporters in the city-”
“And I didn’t get one?” I felt mildly snubbed, even though I was fully aware that it was only senior reporters who got invited to things like this.
“It’s just one of those brie and white wine sort of things …”
“But I love cheese and wine.”
“Yeah, nothing gets between you and cheese.” I gave him a stern look, and he met it with a wide grin. Friendship means that you don’t deck someone for making asshole remarks like that. “Anyway, another one was sent to Jah. Apparently they want a photographer on hand. If you can finagle the other invitation from him …”
“I’m on it.” I stood up, heading for the back staircase leading to the basement. “When are you leaving?”
John glanced at his watch. “Soon as you get back up here. It’s out in west county somewhere, so we’ll have to drive. Don’t stop for coffee.”
“Not even for tea. I’ll see you out front in fifteen minutes.” John gave me the thumbs-up and I went straight for the stairs.
Pearl didn’t glance up from his desk as I slipped past his cubicle; for a moment I had the guilty notion that I should drop by, knock on the door, and tell him where I was headed. But if I did, he would probably insist that I stay put in the office until I had met the deadline for my column, even if it was more than twenty-four hours away. The notion, along with the guilt, quickly evaporated. My column could wait; for the first time in months, I had a real story to pursue, even if it was John’s byline that would appear on the final product.
I wanted a hot story.
For my sins both past and future, I was given one. When it was all over and done, I would never want to tag along on another assignment again.
6
Craig Bailey’s darkroom was in the basement, down where a microbrewery would eventually have been located had his father been successful in opening a saloon on the ground floor. I found Jah slouched in front of his VR editor, wearing an oversized HMD helmet as his hands wandered over a keyboard, manipulating various pieces of videotape and computer-generated imagery into his latest work of interactive cinema.
Working for his dad as the
I had no problem getting the extra press invitation from Jah; he was involved with his latest project and really didn’t want to go out to west city just to take pictures of business types swilling martinis. He loaned me one of the paper’s Nikons, loading a disc into the camera for me and reprogramming the thing to full-auto so that I wouldn’t have to futz around with the viewfinder menu, and gave me a spare necktie from the pile next to the disk processor, thus making the disguise complete. A tie with a washed-out denim shirt would look a little strange where I was going, but formal wear for news photographers usually means that they changed their jeans today.
“Got a minute to look at this?” he asked when we were done. He held up the VR helmet. “Sort of a documentary … you might like it.”
I shook my head as I pulled the camera strap over my shoulder. “Catch me in the next episode, okay? I gotta book outta here before your pop finds I’m missing.”
He looked disappointed but nodded his head. “I hope you’re not fucking with him. He’s kinda pissed at you these days.” He glanced at the door as if expecting to see the elder Bailey’s shadow lurking in the stairwell. “Fact, man. He’s been talking about making some changes ’round here, if you know what I mean.”
I didn’t like the sound of that, but neither did I have time to further inquire what Bailey and son discussed over the dinner table. “Believe me, I’m not trying to fuck with your dad. I’m just trying to-”
“Hey, that’s cool.” Jah held up his hands, keeping his distance from the bad vibes between his father and me. “So long as you come back with some shots for next week, we’re solid.”
“Sold for a dollar.” We elbow-bumped, then he headed back to his workbench as I made for the basement door, avoiding taking the stairs back to the office.
John was waiting for me across the street from the office, leaning against the hood of his Deimos. “I don’t think Pearl missed you,” he said in reply to my unasked question as he dug a remote out of his pocket; the Pontiac’s front doors unlocked and pivoted upward. “He’s busy editing the arts page for next week.”
“Fine with me.” I walked around to the passenger side and slid into the seat as John took the driver’s seat. “I just talked to Jah, though. He says Pearl’s thinking about making some staff changes.”
“I wouldn’t worry about it.” John pressed his thumb against the ignition plate as the doors closed; the car started up as the seat harnesses wrapped themselves around our bodies. “Pearl’s always talked that way,” he said, opening the steering column keypad and tapping in the street address for the Tiptree Corporation. “When he had his band, he used to say the same thing whenever he had an off night. Y’know … ‘That drummer sucks, I gotta get a new drummer before the next gig.’ That sort of thing.”
“Uh-huh.” A map of metro St. Louis appeared on the dashboard screen, a bright red line designating the shortest course between us and our destination. “How many drummers did the Howlers have?”
“Umm … I think I lost count,” he murmured as he eased away from the curb. “But that doesn’t mean it’s the same thing-”
“Yeah. Okay.” John was trying to be candid and comforting at the same time, yet I couldn’t refrain from glancing up at the second-floor windows as we headed down Geyer toward Broadway. I couldn’t see Pearl, but nonetheless I could feel his angry presence.
Something had better come out of this field trip, or I was screwed.
The main office of the Tiptree Corporation was located on the western outskirts of St. Louis in Ballwin, not far from the Missouri River. We took Route 40/I-64 until downtown faded far behind us, then got off on the I-270 outer belt and followed it until we found the Clayton Road exit. By now we were in the gentrified suburbs, where subdivisions and shopping plazas had replaced farms in the latter part of the last century. The quake had destroyed most of the flimsier tract homes and cookie-cutter malls that had been thrown up during the building boom of the eighties; bulldozers and backhoes could be seen from the highway, completing the demolition of homes and stores that had been initiated by New Madrid. Architectural Darwinism: quakes kill buildings, but only the sick and feeble ones.
John briefed me on Tiptree along the way. The company was a relative newcomer in the computer industry, one of the many that had been started during the late nineties as a result of the seventh-generation cybernetic revolution. Unlike other companies, though, Tiptree had not gone after the burgeoning consumer market for
