A text came in from Harold: “Meet me at the house at four. They have some fundraiser to attend. We’ll have a couple hours to rummage.”
I replied, “I’ll be there.”
I didn’t relish discussing Kendal with Pickering, but why worry? I knew nothing. I’d say Junior’s presence must have been a coincidence. Pickering probably didn’t even know Kendal was working the kid or Francine.
Robin Givens threw me the twittering-finger wave as I edged past her desk and tapped on Pickering’s doorframe. He held up a finger, then dismissed a young reporter with a clap on the shoulder. Pickering’s scalp had a spattering of growth, something I’d never seen. He was really letting himself go.
“Hey, Boise.” He pumped my hand once and gave me a tired nod. “Mind closing the door?”
It would be one of those conversations.
I shut the door and sat. “What’s up?”
“If Dana weren’t on assignment, I’d have her in here with us. As it is, she’s swamped over in Tortola.”
“What’s she doing?” I asked.
He shot me a don’t-change-the-subject stare.
“Do you see my people out there?” His open palm extended to the cracked horizontal blinds behind me. Bags under his eyes and the deeper grooves across his cheeks had aged him noticeably in less than twenty-four hours.
My back cracked as I swiveled. Seven reporters milled about. They all had forlorn faces, except one guy talking on the phone whose hands moved wildly as he spoke. I turned back to Pickering.
“They’re my family. You understand?”
When I didn’t say anything, he repeated the question, an edge in his voice and a menacing lean over his desk. “Do you understand?”
“Yes, Walter. I understand.”
He leaned back. “Good. I want you to write out a statement about what happened.”
“The cops have my statement, and I don’t work for you. Writing is not what I do, otherwise I’d be a reporter.”
“I have a copy of that. I want another one. More details. More about that kid who was with you.”
“Sorry, he’s a client. I’m not telling you about him.”
“I’m not asking, just being polite,” Pickering said, plopping a yellow legal pad in front of me. “In fact, it’s not formal at all, I want you to stream of consciousness anything you know onto this pad.”
“Look, I’m happy to ... ”
Pickering stood. His chair rolled backwards and thudded against the wall. “Get a fucking waiver from your client! I want to know everything about everyone in that room.”
“What’s in it for me?” I asked.
“You do realize a man was murdered in your office. A man who worked for me. We are reporters, not cops. Dying is not part of this job.”
“Yes, but again, just because your man came into my office and died, does not make me beholden to you or your newspaper. I’m an independent operator who rents space in the same building.”
“Free advertising for one month. Eighth section.” He sounded like he was giving up his first born. “That’s the best I can do.”
I’d been working on my codependency. I wanted to appease Pickering. The guy had some father-figure thing going on with me, but I resisted the urge. Instead, I did what Henry “Batey” Bateup, the guy who’d trained me in Los Angeles, had told me worked better than anything in the world both when negotiating and questioning people: I waited in silence.
Pickering rummaged through a file drawer in his desk. He placed a legal waiver on top of the pad. “Fine, a quarter-page. You happy? You know the newspaper business is suffering. I need that ad space for paying clients.”
I picked up a blue pen he’d placed on top of the legal pad and clicked it a couple times.
“That’s the form, but I’m happy to shoot an email version over to your client. You know his address?”
I texted Junior, who responded immediately. He agreed to sign the waiver and for me to detail our investigation, so long as I left out the identity of the missing person.
Pickering grudgingly nodded. “I’ll get it out of him myself. Give me your version of events. Call the missing person Ramona.”
“Ramona? Why not John Doe like everyone else?”
“Call them Ramona.”
“Fine, I’ll call them Ramona,” I said.
I started writing, then paused. “Hey, when’s the funeral?”
“Not for a while. Autopsy. They have to send him to Puerto Rico for some reason. Probably not for a month. But, we’ll have a memorial service at Kendal’s favorite watering hole on Saturday. Informal, but we’ll all be there as will his family.”
“Can I come?”
“Why? You two didn’t exactly hit it off.”
“Still, he was someone I knew. I mean, we worked together in a sense. Same building and all.”
Pickering lifted his jacket off a hook and draped it over his arm. “Fine, it’s informal, I doubt anyone will care. But you have to dress decently.” He looked me up and down like I was a rodent with rabies. I wore my usual t-shirt and shorts ensemble with a straw fedora.
“What? This is a new t-shirt,” I said, tugging at the thin material.
He picked something out of his teeth, flicking it into the wastebasket beside his desk, and tightened his tie knot in a fold-up mirror propped on his desk. After replacing the mirror in a drawer, he huffed on his sunglasses and rubbed them with a cloth.
“Okay, okay, I have something nice,” I conceded.
When I’d first returned to St. Thomas, Aunt Glor, my deceased friend’s grandmother, had made me get something presentable to attend a mass at the local cathedral. She was a religious firecracker of a woman, who liked to ply me with peanut butter and jelly sandwiches and a glass of milk.
“I’m going to let you stay in my office for one hour. Stay and write whatever comes to mind. I’ll be back.”
It felt good to spill the events onto a sheet of paper. Like
