The agents showed their shields to the guard in the lobby, who called up to the city desk to announce their presence and directed them to an elevator. They stepped off on the sixth floor a minute later and were immediately set upon by a giant of a man.
“Art, you old rascal,” Managing Editor Bill Sturgess bellowed, his hands coming down on the six-foot-two agent’s shoulders.
“Bill, damn good to see you again.” Art gestured to his partner. “Frankie Aguirre.”
Sturgess offered his hand in a much gentler greeting. “Hell of a lot prettier than Toronassi. How is he doing, by the way?”
“Working his way up at the Academy,” Art explained. “He’s supervising the OC Section there now.”
“That old mob stuff of yours rubbed off on him, huh? Come on, my office doesn’t smell as bad as this place.”
A chorus of mock protests erupted from the newsroom near the elevator. Bill Sturgess, all six foot nine of him, was an editor from the old school of journalism, where facts superseded conjecture and glitz. It was a code he lived by, and one he insisted his people adhere to, though his reach extended only as far as the borders of the city. The national and international correspondents were run by another group of men and women, people whose education had stressed business and sales above ethics and accuracy, resulting in a slant that not all observers and critics agreed with. Sturgess was an internal critic with a loud voice, one booming enough to keep his people from stumbling over their own desire for the story. Find it, check it, confirm it, write it, confirm it, edit it, confirm it, print it. Those were his instructions, and God help the reporter who was foolish enough not to follow them.
“Sorry about your loss yesterday.”
“Thanks,” Art said. “Good kid. Anyway, I’m sure you guessed why we’re here.”
“What can I do for you?” Sturgess asked, closing the door to his glass-walled office and taking a half-sitting position against his desk.
“The hit on Melrose yesterday,” Art began, knowing that his friend of more than ten years hated preliminaries when there was a main event to be seen. “The victim had a card on him with the city desk’s number penciled on the back. Did you have anybody set to meet with someone in that area?”
The managing editor’s eyes looked briefly at the floor before meeting Art’s again. “You have an I.D. on him?”
Art knew there was no reason to hide that fact. “Portero, Francisco. But you can’t print that just yet.”
“No problem. Yeah, I had a guy who was supposed to meet with him. Good reporter, lots of potential, but he has a problem with his mouth.”
“His mouth?” Frankie asked.
“Yeah. It tends to open too frequently when there’s a bottle around. Too bad. It looks like he might have had a story out of this one.” Sturgess shook his head with true regret at the loss, and at his reporter’s bleak future. “Wasted talent.”
“Is he here?” Art inquired.
“Haven’t seen him since yesterday before it all went down. Told me he had an eleven-forty-five lunch set up with this Portero.”
“I’m a little surprised he gave you his name,” Art admitted.
“I told him we’d have to confirm his background before I committed someone to listen to him. He claimed to be a translator at the UN and said he was an assistant to Castro’s Russian-language translator in the early sixties. I verified the first claim, but the stuff in the sixties was pretty much a wash.”
Well, CNN had proved that the media was sometimes the preferred method of gathering and presenting intelligence quickly. Art figured print shouldn’t be much different on the gathering end of it. “We knew about the UN stuff, but I’ll admit that the other is news to us. Interesting.”
“I presume he didn’t give up this story or whatever he had to you,” Frankie surmised.
“If he had, I couldn’t tell you, but, off the record, he didn’t give us anything but enough bait to keep me interested. Sullivan was supposed to get the whole spiel from him yesterday.”
Frankie took out her notebook. “Sullivan…two L’s.”
“Right. First name George.”
“You say eleven forty-five?” Art probed, the timing jogging his memory.
“Yep.”
“What kind of car does Sullivan drive?”
“Damn, let me think. It’s some old bronze or tan-colored thing. Dodge, think. Why?”
Art started his own notes. “He may have almost taken my foot off bugging out of there. You say he hasn’t come in or called?”
Sturgess checked the time. “Well, it’s early still, but I get the distinct impression that he’s not going to show. Gut hunch based on past performance.” Again his expression was one of regret. “I had to put someone else on the story.” The big man paused for second. “I don’t know if I can keep him on much longer. He had the same problem in New York, but he wouldn’t own up to it there either. Just said he preferred warmer weather and came out here with the same baggage. Guess I’m a soft heart.”
“We need to know where he lives,” Frankie said. “He could be in danger.” And he might know something, she silently hoped.
“He’s always been in danger, young lady.” Sturgess walked around his desk and flipped through his Rolodex, pulling the card out and handing it to Frankie. “If you see him, tell him to give me a call.”
“Sure will, Bill.” Art stood, shaking his old friend’s hand before heading back to the elevator with his partner.
“Nice guy,” Frankie commented in the solitude of the elevator. “How’d you two meet?”
“I had my gun in his ear one night,” Art said calmly. “Had to talk him out of blowing the head off the guy who raped and murdered his wife.”
“Jesus, I didn’t know.”
Art turned to his partner. “Neither does anyone else. How do you blame a man for wanting to do that?”
You don’t, Frankie answered silently, her world having suddenly changed to allow an intimate empathy for the desire.
“You should have seen it. Bill with this big old cannon of a handgun pressed up into this guy’s mouth, and me with my old Colt shoved in Bill’s ear. Took me half an hour, but I got him to let it go. The perp screamed and moaned as soon as I got him out of there, telling everyone what Bill had done. Kidnapping, assault with intent. All kinds of good stuff.”
“Sturgess didn’t do any time?”
Art’s head shook as the 3 lit up above them. “Never happened, Frankie.”
Her lips parted slightly with shock. “You mean you…”
“Lied? Yes, I did that. I lied to keep a man who was damn near destroyed from going over the falls because some lowlife took his world away from him. Have I ever done it again or before? No. Would I?” Art paused momentarily, the door opening to their front, and the answer to the self-inquiry hanging somewhere inside his conscience.
“I’ll drive,” Frankie said. She’d never have expected it of her partner. He was the finest and most human cop she had ever known, and he would do that! The motivation was easy to understand, on both sides of what had happened. Art didn’t want to destroy a man, and that man wanted desperately to avenge a loss. One, though, was much stronger for her.
Art’s hand retrieved the Chevy’s keys and something else from his pocket. He handed the keys to Frankie as they stepped into the sun and placed a dollar in the hand of the old beggar.
“Let’s go find Sullivan.”
“Sure thing,” Frankie said, seeing something new in her partner that she hadn’t expected to and feeling something new in herself that, despite its source, was strangely satisfying.