He was furious with the man, but, yes, Peter Tile absolutely did. It was his job to make sure that nothing — even murder — was going to derail the career of the man standing before him: John C. Heller, governor of the state of New York, and the man virtually guaranteed to lead his party to victory in the presidential election in November.
IV
July 15, present day
16
At eight a.m., Dottie Wyandotte walked into the Examiner newsroom and could see something was terribly wrong.
Police were in Gerry Bradford’s office and the editor in chief’s face was stricken. He’d misbuttoned his shirt. Five staffers were standing together, their arms crossed or dangling at their sides, their faces dismayed. Pam Gibbons, Dottie’s assistant, had been crying.
Bradford looked toward her and rose, saying something to the police. He stepped outside and walked to her.
“What?” she blurted. “Tell me.”
“It’s Fitz. He was killed last night.”
“Oh, God. No, no!” Dottie’s hands were shaking. She set down her Starbucks tea, sloughed her computer bag, let it slide to the floor. Tears welled.
Gibbons noticed her boss and made a beeline. They embraced.
“Pam.”
The women separated and, lassoing the emotions, Dottie said in a low voice, “What happened?”
Bradford nodded to the police. “They said it was meth cookers. That story he was working on? They shot him... And then burned his house down, destroyed all his files, notes, contacts. They found meth on the front doorknob and stair railing. A fentanyl patch by the curb. I mean, they’ll investigate, but we knew those tweakers were dangerous. He was...” Bradford’s thought caught. “Fitz was dead before the fire. You want to sit down?”
“No.”
“Fuck. I can’t believe it.”
The first time the pristine editor in chief had ever used an obscenity, to her knowledge.
“He has family,” she said.
“A son. They called him, the police did. He and his wife’re on their way here.”
Dottie had noted a picture of Fitz, his wife and an athletic-looking teenage boy. It was in the center of the wall behind his desk here. She could turn and look at it now. She didn’t.
“Dottie?” Bradford asked.
She looked up from the floor.
“Did you know that he had cancer?”
“Fitz?”
“Yeah.”
“I didn’t. But the coughing. And the lozenges. I should have guessed.”
“No, that was pollen. He was allergic. It’s pancreatic. It’d spread. I just thought I’d tell you. Not that it makes any difference.”
“Not a bit of difference,” Dottie said angrily.
Bradford nodded. “I better go back. They have some more questions. They’ll want to talk to you too, the police.”
“Sure. Of course.”
“I’ll come up with an obit. We don’t have anything in the morgue on him.”
The “morgue” — the file cabinet, or digital folder, containing obituaries written about individuals while they were still alive. Upon their deaths, the articles would be updated and dropped into the paper.
She nodded, numb, and started back to her cubicle.
Bradford said, “Oh, Dottie?”
After a moment, she looked up.
“Corporate wants a piece on influencer animals.”
“Animals?” she asked, not comprehending.
“They liked your last piece, on the body painting. You know Christiana, the supermodel, LA?”
Fitz was dead. A man she’d just been talking to last night. Sipping chamomile and whiskey.
Just not together...
“Dottie?”
Her attention returned. “Animals?”
“She’s got a cat. He’s got his own blog and YouTube channel. Christiana does the voice-overs but the cat’s in the video with the products and people she’s promoting. Millions of hits. And millions of dollars. There’ll be others out there.”
“Influencer animals?”
“Right. Chet Grant wants you to do a series.”
Head of OOMC at the company. Not the boss of bosses but close.
“And they need the first piece ASAP. Chet’s worried about losing the exclusive. Apparently the subject’s trending.”
“All right,” Dottie said. “I’ll get on it.” Numb, she turned toward her computer.
Bradford started back to his office. He paused. “It’s not trivial.”
She gazed at him quizzically.
“What we do,” he continued. “The pieces aren’t trivial. They make people smile. Millions of people. Nothing wrong with that.”
“No. Nothing wrong at all.”
17
In his Albany hotel room, Peter Tile poured a drink for himself and for Eddie Von, the swarthy, blunt triggerman who had shot Edward Fitzhugh to death last night.
The hour was early but they were sipping scotches. Because why the fuck not?
The two men, collectively, were the Gravedigger. The bigger of the two, the stronger, an ex-soldier, Von was the actual kidnapper. Tile was the tactician, had come up with the clues about where the victims were held, and, as the anonymous witness, convinced the world that the Gravedigger was over six feet tall, pale, a full head of blond hair, and left-handed — virtually the opposite of Von.
The man now asked, “You going to need me for any more of these jobs?”
“No. Nothing like this is ever going to happen again.”
“Oh” was Von’s disappointed response. His accent was flat, midwestern. Tile recalled he’d been in the National Guard in Indiana or Illinois. He’d been dishonorably discharged.
The television news was on. The big story on the local station was last night’s raging fire in a suburban neighborhood of Garner. It had been at the home of a veteran reporter with the Fairview Daily Examiner, Edward Fitzhugh, whose body had been discovered inside. No one knew at this point what the cause was.
A knock sounded on the door. Tile and Von eyed each other. Von’s hand went to his back waistband, where his gun resided. Tile looked out the peephole and shook his head. Von stood down.
Tile opened the door and let John Heller inside. He nodded to the two men. Then he strode to the minibar, fixed a vodka and diet Sprite and drank it down fast. He noted the story on the TV. He said to them, “Good job.”
Governor Heller had a problem.
Himself.
Married and a father of two, Heller had a roving eye. When he was on the road, he might spot a young woman at a rally or a hotel bar, buy her drinks — plenty of drinks — and “help” her back to her room, with his bodyguards making certain no one was around to see.
Infidelity and public office were hardly an uncommon occurrence but this politician was running for president. Peter Tile, Heller’s minder and fixer in chief, couldn’t care less about the morality of it all; he was, however, determined to end up in the West Wing, with a real job title and a fat salary; his boss’s bad behavior simply could not make the news and derail their mutual ambitions. He spent a good portion of his time tactically planning these liaisons.
Then, disaster.
Drunk and apparently irritated at her rejection, Heller had snapped and beaten Elly Morgan to death in Maryland.
Full crisis mode.
Eddie Von had staged her death to look like a mugging gone bad and dumped the body elsewhere. He’d pitched the bloody rock into a deep river nearby. This wasn’t enough, however. Not for Tile. The debate was being held in a small and largely crime-free college town outside Baltimore, and Tile knew the press would jump all over the story. It was on the record too that Elly was a guest at the motel where the governor was staying. Also known was the fact that the governor himself had had past “incidents” with women — and a legendary temper.