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, no,” she said and headed for the door.
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, Screw you, Tilt. Are you crazy?”
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
Day One
July 21, 1952
Monday Morning
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 passes. A third pass would be risky. Going inside was out of the question. He headed back to the Indian and drove south out of the city.
He needed a place to keep her.
It needed to be secluded.
The miles clicked off.
The city gave way to less city which gave way to no city.
An abandoned barn or structure would work. Sunshine was everywhere, pure and uncompromised. Yellow-winged butterflies dotted the sides of the road. The air was warm.
A narrow dirt road appeared up ahead.
River stopped at the base and gave it a look.
It was choked with weeds.
Whatever it had been used for, it wasn’t used for it anymore.
The world had abandoned it.
He turned in and drove far enough to get the Indian out of sight. Then he shut it down and continued on foot. If it turned out to be useful, he didn’t want to fill it up with motorcycle tracks.
The topography rolled, a prelude to the foothills three miles to the west.
In typical Colorado prairie style, trees were almost non-existent except for the occasional scraggly pinion pine. Tall grasses and rabbit brush ruled, dotted with sharp pointed yucca and small hidden cactuses. Rattlesnakes were at home here.
River loved the city.
He loved the noise and smoke and buzz, the danger, the anxiety and desperation, the beauty and opportunity, the night neon and the early morning shadows.
He was equally at home out here.
This is where the real men met the world.
It was raw and unforgiving, there for the taming.
Back in the day, River could have been one of those tamers. He could have been one of the persons who boarded a wooden ship and headed for the horizon, not knowing if anything was out there except a slow descent into starvation.
It was in his genes.
The present assignment was going to be tricky. River was supposed to take the target-Alexa Blank-but not kill or harm her until and unless given orders. That conceivably meant that he might be told to release her at some point. He couldn’t do that if she saw his face. That was the tricky part, staying anonymous.
He could wear a mask but that would only partially solve the problem.
There was still the issue of his body, both the warrior physique and the height.
Baggy clothes, he’d need those for sure.
Also, there was his voice. How could he disguise that? The only positive way to do it would be to never speak. That would be impossible. He’d need to give the woman orders.
Complicated, that’s what it was.