Cantrell gave a satisfied smirk. “All of the witnesses to the shooting last night spoke of a third big SUV as the vehicle containing the shooters. According to my nephew’s friend — the bartender — the guys in the shooting vehicle grabbed a homeless guy who looked to be dead and threw him in the back of their vehicle and then tore off with him.”
David scoured his memory. “I don’t remember a report of a dead homeless guy.”
Cantrell shot him with a gloved finger-gun. “Bingo.”
“What bingo? What are you trying to tell me?”
“That whoever these guys are, whatever they’re doing, they’re also covering up a murder.”
“Did anyone else see this dead homeless guy?”
“I’m sure they did,” Cantrell said. “I just need to find them. Problem is, from what I can tell, of the people the cops interviewed after it was over — the few that were left after they all ran the other way — none of them mentioned the homeless man.”
“Maybe because he wasn’t there?”
Cantrell smacked the back of David’s head. “Get in the spirit of things, will you? You’ve got dead Secret Service agents, you’ve got a government-looking van, a vanished dead guy, and the likelihood that the First Lady was there. I don’t scream ‘conspiracy’ very often, but I’m screaming it now. And then there’s the not insignificant detail that the person who wanted to talk to a reporter about it ends up murdered, with the reporter he was going to talk to framed for his killing.”
David had to stop. They stood just outside the Mayflower Hotel, amid the morning taxi-catching scrum. Hearing Grayson Cantrell sum it all up like that made things seem suddenly hopeless. David had never been much of a fighter — he talked a good game, but for the most part just rolled over when the going got too tough — and he had no idea how to take on the federal government, if that was what it was coming to.
“Maybe the homeless guy was the target of the hit,” David said. It felt like a random comment under the circumstances.
“Maybe,” Cantrell agreed. He lightly grasped David’s arm at the elbow and urged him forward. “Let’s keep moving. But if that were the case, it would mean that the rest was all coincidence — that the Secret Service just happened to be there, and that the corresponding likelihood of the First Lady being present was just one of those things.”
David gave a wry chuckle. “If the alternative is some great national conspiracy, I think I prefer the coincidence.”
“As you wish.”
They walked in silence for the half block that took them to the complicated intersection where Connecticut Avenue met M Street and Rhode Island Avenue. David didn’t like where his head went without talking. “I really do thank you for this, Grayson.”
“You’re very welcome.”
“And what’s the quid pro quo?”
Cantrell recoiled, clearly feigning insult. “I’m shocked, young man. Shocked I tell you. Isn’t it possible that I am merely feeling altruistic?”
“Never occurred to me.”
Cantrell laughed. “See? You really do have reporter’s instincts. But this time, contrary to character, I truly am acting merely out of the goodness of my heart.”
David’s gut tightened. “Um, why?”
Cantrell laughed harder at whatever he saw in David’s face. “Good God. Is it really my reputation to be such a prick?”
“I’m actually not sure what you want the answer to be,” David said.
“No answer is necessary. Perhaps when all of this settles out, you’ll be able to set the record straight and tell all who will listen that Grayson Cantrell is willing to lend a helping hand to a needy colleague.”
“So you’ll help me with the story?”
“I thought that’s what I’m doing now,” Cantrell said. A veil of sadness edged out some of the twinkle in his eye.
“Well, you are,” David said. “But now that everyone’s looking for me, I thought that maybe—”
Cantrell shook his head slowly. “I can’t do shoe-leather work for you,” he said. “More precisely — more honestly—I won’t do shoe-leather work for you.”
David’s stomach fell. It’s precisely what he was going to ask, and while he recognized that it was an outrageous favor, the disappointment tasted bitter. “Okay,” he said.
Cantrell sighed. “Look, David. I’m an old man. The job that I used to love bears little resemblance today to what it was like back when I loved it. In a year or two, when I retire, I want to be remembered for my decades of hard work as a journeyman reporter.”
“But this—”
“Hear me out. I’ve lost my taste for the big kill. I don’t want the big story anymore. I can’t afford the risk.”
David scowled.
“You’re young. You can swing for the fences and take big chances. If you get the story wrong, you have years to recover. If I go for the big one and blow it, that’s all I’ll be remembered for. The rest of it — all those years — won’t mean anything. It’s as if I would never have existed. I can’t live with that.”
The emotion on Cantrell’s face looked a lot like shame. David didn’t begin to understand the rationale behind the older man’s words, but he recognized finality when he heard it.
“Well, thanks then,” David said. “I think.”
“You think I’m a coward,” Cantrell said. “And that’s okay. Perhaps I am.”
“You don’t have to explain anything to me.”
“Now who’s patronizing?”
David felt his ears turn red. “I’m sorry,” he said. “You’re right. That’s not my place. I’m just feeling very alone right now.”
“Reporters are about getting the story. We’re not used to being the story. It’s a lonely place to be.”
Lonely and crushing and soul stealing. Panic inducing. David didn’t know how he was going to breathe through the encroaching panic attack.
“Are you interested in a suggestion from a cowardly old man?” Cantrell asked.
“Right now, I’m just interested in conversation. Human contact.” A beat. “I’d love to hear whatever you have to tell me.
“Your blog,” Cantrell said. “I believe it’s called Kirk Nation, right?”
“You mean you don’t read it?”
“I don’t partake of the medium that will soon kill the medium that pays my bills. But I understand that many people do read it.”
“About a hundred twenty thousand hits a day,” David said.
“That’s nice. Barely ten percent of what our readership used to be.”
“But nearly a quarter of what it is now,” David countered.
“Indeed. I was thinking that you might do well to write a piece that posits exactly the scenario you outlined to me this morning.”
“But I don’t have the facts.”
“It’s the Internet, David. When did hard facts become a requisite for writing a story?”
“Kirk Nation is not like that.” David hated it when these Stone Age paper guys took shots at the future that they feared to enter.
“Hear the rest,” Cantrell said. “And I meant no harm. The point of writing the piece would not be to report the facts, per se, but rather to float out a bit of bait. Given that you are the focus of an international manhunt, what you posit by way of this incident will get a lot of attention.”
“From the very people I’m trying to avoid.”
“From everyone. If you put it out there, people will start asking questions. If your theory is right, it should trigger a panic somewhere. When people panic, they make mistakes.”
“They also start shooting people.”
Cantrell’s eyes flashed. “Well, there’s that, yes. But that’s more of a constant in your personal equation than a variable, is it not? The important fact is that people will start pressing for more details. The universe can support only a finite number of lies. With enough people searching for the truth, the cover-up will collapse. At least it should.”