She chuckled. “Yeah, that might hold weight if he’d purchased the home after returning from the city. I did some research into when the house sold and spoke to the realtor, of course under the guise that I was interested in buying a property like that. Anyway, she was more than willing to tell me when Jack purchased it, and how much he paid, what she didn’t or wouldn’t disclose was whether he paid in cash or not. He bought it before his trip to San Francisco.” She took a deep breath. “Anyway, it raises a few questions. What is this guy’s background? What is his tie to Dana? When did he meet her? What does he do for a living? We need to know these things, Zach, before we release an article on the guy.”
Zach laughed. “Make it up. We’re the media. We twist things all the time. Who cares?”
“I care. This is a man’s life.”
“Yeah, and we’ll make him famous.”
She leaned back in her seat. “What if he doesn’t want to be famous?”
“Second rule of being a good reporter — don’t grow a conscience, that is a fast track to failure. Armstrong, this is about landing the big story, a hefty bonus and a possible promotion. Not to mention we might actually save the paper.”
She rolled her eyes. “I want to know the truth.”
“There is no truth, Armstrong. There is what happened, what didn’t and what we write in-between.”
She took another sip. “Maybe that works for you but this will be the first time my name is on this and—”
“Ah…” he cut her off.
“What?” she asked.
“Well… I was going to tell you. I just forgot to get around to it. Don’t take offense but Johnson wants my name on it.”
His words hung out there, echoing in her brain.
“What?”
“Readers are more familiar with my work for the paper. They know what to expect. We’d be taking a risk having an unknown put it out there. It all comes down to trust, you see.”
Kelly closed her eyes and shook her head. She understood that veteran journalists often gained a following, but this was meant to be her break. Of course she wasn’t writing the story alone but…
“But hey, I’m sure I can convince Johnson to mention your name in the investigative aspect, you know, a credit at the end. It’s not much but—”
“Bullshit. You are trying to steal this out from underneath me just like you were trying to backtrack when I walked in on you pitching my idea to him.”
Zach chuckled. “Armstrong, you are paranoid.”
“And you’re an asshole. If you think for one minute…”
“I’m not trying to steal your thunder. Ease up. It’s called seniority.”
“Oh so now you’re changing the story.”
He blew out his cheeks. “Listen, unless you can sweet talk that officer down at the station into handing over a shot from their surveillance footage, I’m thinking we should either wait on the computer company to see if they can get anything off that notebook I found or look into where Winchester was when this fire happened.”
“What?”
“He wasn’t here, right? So where was he? If he spoke with the station, they would have questioned him about his whereabouts, no doubt they would have wanted to follow up with anyone he was in contact with to firm up his alibi. All we need is that contact and maybe then we’ll have the answers to those questions of yours. And who knows, maybe even a mug shot.”
She shook her head. “If we can’t get anyone in this town to speak to us, do you honestly think we’d have luck anywhere else?”
“Fourth rule of being a reporter. We make our luck.”
“Yeah? And you know what the fifth rule is…?”
Before he could reply she said, “You’re full of shit. I’m off to speak with the officer.”
“Ah, don’t worry about her. My ma gets salty over the craziest shit. I’ll talk to her this evening,” Tyson said as they made their way towards Cosmo’s after finishing breakfast at a different café far from the Plaza. “After this I have to run another errand. It shouldn’t take too long and then we can follow up with whatever Cosmo found.”
“Tyson, what are you delivering?”
“Huh?” He took a hard pull on his cigarette.
“Well you run a lot of errands that could probably be handled in the mail.”
“They could but Mr. Pope created this job for me.”
“Well what’s in them?”
He shrugged looking in store windows as they strode along the sidewalk.
“I don’t look.”
“And you’ve been doing these errands for how long?”
“Just over a year.”
“And you haven’t looked once?”
“They’re sealed. And what’s it to me? As long as I get paid.”
“Where do you take them?”
“To an advertising business on the far side of town.”
“To the same guy?”
He nodded.
“You know it could be illegal.”
He laughed. “Jack. Everything I have my hand in besides cleaning homes is illegal. These fights are too. I figure its payment for advertising services.”
“You ever bring anything back?”
“Occasionally.”
Jack was all too familiar with illegal operations in cities. Gafino had lived under the nose of the law. They monitored him closely as they did many of the other crime families in town. Jeremiah Pope was no exception. There might have been dirty cops in the city, but that didn’t mean they all were. It wasn’t a matter of if Pope would be caught, only when, and when he did go down, it was possible that Tyson would too.
“Look, Jack, Pope might be a dick but he runs things in this city. He’s helped me out. If it weren’t for him there would have been nights we didn’t have food on the table. You understand?”
“Completely.”
He thought back to when Gafino took him in. His home life was shit. There were days he didn’t eat
