The Beat was housed in a three-story, 62-year-old brick building on Curtis Street that was an affront to every building code known to man. It was still standing but not by much. Everything was there-the offices, the printing presses, the distribution hub, the vans, everything. Except for the areas where the ink permeated the air, the place smelled like a bad cigar. Most of that could be attributed to Shelby Tilt, the owner, who was everywhere all the time and never without his nasty little habit in his nasty little mouth.
His office was on the second floor, cantilevered over the presses. The wall on the press side wasn’t actually a wall, it was a opening where a wall once stood, together with a guardrail to keep dumb asses from falling off.
The noise of the presses, when they ran, was deafening.
Tilt liked it that way.
They were the sound of money.
Right now they weren’t running.
The space wasn’t big. What it lacked in volume was made up for in clutter. Tilt’s desk probably had a surface but no one had ever seen it.
Waverly sat in a worn chair in front of the desk.
Tilt mashed the stub of a cigar in the ashtray and lit another. His forehead-the gateway to a bald top- wrinkled up.
“I’m going to pose a situation to you that you can either accept or decline,” he said. “Whatever you decide, there are no repercussions. I want you to be clear on that, there are absolutely no repercussions whatsoever. That means you can say no, you’re not interested, and nothing is going to happen to you. Do you understand?”
“Okay, then,
Then she smiled and came back.
“Had you going.”
He took a deep puff and blew a ring.
“Keep this on the down-low, but we’re in serious financial trouble around here,” he said.
“I thought we were doing good.”
“We are, for the time we’ve been at it,” he said. “The problem is we’re running out of time. The paper’s been losing money since it started. At the rate our circulation is growing, we’ll be profitable in six months. The problem is that I can’t keep making up the difference for that long. We need to get our circulation numbers up and get ’em up now, otherwise we’re a done dog.”
“Ouch.”
Right.
Ouch.
“Keep it confidential,” he said.
Sure.
No problem.
“I don’t get why you’re telling me this,” she said.
“Here’s the reason,” he said. “Before I propose what I’m about to propose, remember that you can say no.”
She tilted her head.
“You’re like a vibrator on slow speed,” she said.
He got up, walked to the railing and looked at the presses. “I love that junk down there,” he said. “I really do. We need some big stories. That’s how we can get our circulation up.”
Waverly nodded.
“Like what?”
“Like getting out in front of the news instead of just reporting it,” he said. “There was a woman who ended up taking a dive off a building Friday night, just two blocks up the street. The word is that she was wearing a short red dress. Did you hear about her?”
Waverly nodded.
She had.
“The police don’t know if it was a suicide or she got pushed off or what,” he said. “I have reason to believe she was dangled over the side and then dropped.”
Waverly wrinkled her face.
“Why do you say that?”
Tilt lowered his voice.
“I’m going to tell you something but I don’t want you to repeat it. Before I came to Denver and started the Beat, I worked for a paper in San Francisco.”
Right.
Waverly knew that.
“About three years ago, I got assigned to cover a small matter,” he said. “It was a woman in a short red dress who ended up taking a dive off a building, same as we have here.”
He stopped talking and waited for Waverly to process the information.
The implications hit her.
“So what are you saying, that this is some kind of a serial thing?”
He nodded.
“Exactly. That’s why it will be such a big story if we can break it.”
“Wow.”
Right.
Wow.
“Now,” he said, “my offer to you is to find out who’s doing it. That’s your assignment if you want it. Be clear, though, it’s risky. If you start snooping around and closing in on the guy, and he finds out, well, you do the math. That’s why you can say no and there won’t be any repercussions. In fact, my advice to you is to say no. My advice is to say,
She exhaled.
“Can I think about it until tomorrow?”
“Of course.”
She smiled.
“Just kidding,” she said. “Of course I want it.”
He studied her.
“Okay,” he said. “But don’t go and get yourself killed. I don’t want to spend the rest of my life hating myself.”
“Why not? Everyone else does.”
“Not funny,” he said.
Then he laughed.
6
River parked the Indian two blocks from the Down Towner and swung over on foot to see what his little target Alexa Blank looked like. No waitresses matching her description came into view after two
