Bad Guys (24 page)

I went inside and bought a small bag of ice, got back into the car and pressed the bag of cubes against the left side of my face. I wasn’t sure which hurt more, the punch, the ice, or my pride, but it was all I could do not to scream as I held the bag against the bruise.

I hoped Cam wasn’t the one Angie was thinking of spending her life with. This was not the best way to kick off a relationship with a future son-in-law.

Maybe, if I could keep the side of my face from swelling up too severely, Angie wouldn’t even notice it the next time she saw me, which now probably wouldn’t be until the next morning. I could go home, turn off the lights, and get into bed, an ice bag on my pillow. By morning, the swelling would be gone, although there was a good chance I might have a terminal case of freezer burn.

But if the bruise was still there, Angie would put it all together the moment she saw me. And there’d be so much explaining to do. Maybe it was better to come clean now, to wait up for her, to admit that I was an asshole, but that sometimes fathers worried about their daughters so much that they simply couldn’t avoid being assholes. We’re hardwired that way and—

“Fuck.” I was suddenly taken by the image of a black Chevy rumbling past the 7-Eleven, heading in the direction of the McDonald’s.

I hadn’t caught a good look at the driver, but the car was pretty unmistakable. Black, rusting out around the wheel wells, sitting low in the back.

I turned the key, reached down to the shift to put the car into reverse and back out of the spot. But I couldn’t will my foot to move from the brake to the accelerator. Part of me was not prepared to continue the chase.

The fact was, I’d not been doing a very good job of this. My surveillance skills were rotten. I’d been busted three times. Twice by Angie—the first time at the mall, the second time when she phoned me while I was tailing her. And then, again, at the McDonald’s. By Angie’s friend Cam.

I was not cut out for this kind of work.

It occurred to me that Angie would probably be fine as long as she had Cam with her. The guy was a better bodyguard than I. Maybe it would actually be a good thing if Trevor found Angie. Then he’d have to deal with Cam, whose powers of intimidation might exceed mine.

I pulled the ice away from my face, looked in the mirror. We’re talking horror show.

I decided to swing by the paper on the way home.

I had to find out more about Stan Wannaker. There was this growing sense of connectedness between the events of the last forty-eight hours. Stan was dead. Stan had had a run-in with Bullock at the auction, which Lawrence and I had also attended. Lawrence was in the hospital, victim of a savage attack. There seemed to be these threads connecting one event to another, but I couldn’t quite make them out, couldn’t see how they joined.

The moment I stepped into the newsroom, I could feel the grief. There was none of the usual banter, people calling to one another across the desks asking if they wanted a coffee or to go across the street for an after-shift drink. Even though there were probably forty or more people in the room, it was hushed, only the sounds of computer keys being tapped to break the silence. There were small huddles of people, two over in this corner, three over here, talking in hushed tones.

Some people were crying.

I stopped at my desk, signed in on my computer to see whether I had any important messages, which I did not, then clicked over to the news basket where all the cityside stories were submitted and edited.

I was able to find the story the paper was running on Stan, in the next day’s edition, on the front page above the fold, under the byline of Dick Colby:

Stan Wannaker, the
Metropolitan
’s award-winning photographer who faced danger in nearly every world hot spot, was found murdered in the newspaper’s parking lot yesterday.

“It is a terrible loss,” said Bertrand Magnuson, the paper’s managing editor. “He was a wonderful, talented individual who embodied everything that the
Metropolitan
stands for.”

Wannaker, 44, started at the paper 27 years ago as a copy boy. Senior photo editor Ted Baines remembers how Wannaker spent a lot of time, as a kid, hanging around the photo desk. “He wanted to be a shooter from the moment he walked through the doors. He was a natural from the beginning.”

In recent years, Wannaker had covered the fall of the Berlin Wall, the war in Yugoslavia, the U.S. invasion of Afghanistan, and the war in Iraq.

“It’s unbelievable,” said Mr. Magnuson, “that, after all he’s been through, Stan would be a victim of violence outside our very building.”

Police say Wannaker’s attacker, or attackers, did not appear to have been motivated by robbery. None of his cameras had been taken, and he still had his wallet and credit cards on him, as well as a sum of cash.

“It appears,” said a police spokesperson, “that he was targeted for who he was, not what he might happen to be carrying.”

Police say Wannaker evidently was forced down onto his knees, then his car door was slammed on his head.

I looked up from the story, feeling as though I might be sick. Nancy, who was clearly putting in a very long day, was standing there.

“Hey,” she said. Her eyes were red.

“Hi,” I said. “Sarah called me. She heard about it before I did. She’s coming back tonight.”

Nancy nodded.

“They got any idea who did it?” I asked.

Nancy shook her head no. “Colby’s still making calls. He’s out with the cops now. They think he was targeted, but it might still be just one of those crazy random things. Maybe some kids, high on something, they spotted him and went berserk.”

“I suppose.”

“I mean, it’s not like some guy in Iraq or Afghanistan is going to come over here to settle some grudge.”

“Maybe it was someone closer to home,” I offered. Briefly, I told her about Stan’s fight with the guy at the car auction the day before, and how Sarah was supposed to pass on what I’d told her to Colby.

“She did, I think. Colby said he might be giving you a call later.” She shook her head. Her chin quivered. “A bunch of us are going across the street after the edition closes. Hoist a few to the memory of Stan. You want to come?”

“Yeah,” I said. “I’d like to do that. Let me get a couple of other things out of the way.” I turned a bit in my chair, and it was then that Nancy noticed the side of my face. She reached out tentatively, like she was going to touch it, but stopped.

“What happened to you?” she asked.

“Wrong place at the wrong time,” I said.

I phoned Mercy General to see how Lawrence Jones was doing. Still critical, but he hadn’t lost any ground. Even managed to say a couple of words, the nurse told me unofficially. I asked her to tell him Zack was asking about him, and that I would come by and see him tomorrow if they had him out of intensive care.

My story on Lawrence was in the Metro section. They’d cut about a third out of it. While it seemed like a big deal to me, Lawrence Jones was no household name. Maybe if he’d still been a cop, and had been hurt while on duty, the story would have gotten better play. The thing was, at this point, I didn’t give a rat’s ass what they did with the story.

Eleven o’clock rolled around, and reporters and editors started slipping on their coats, moving almost in slow motion, as if they were off to Stan’s funeral and not just a booze-up to remember him.

Someone called over to me. “Zack, you joining us?”

I nodded, and was slipping my own jacket on when the cell phone in my pocket started ringing.

“Hey, Dad,” Angie said.

“Sweetheart,” I said. “You okay?”

“Well, yeah, I’m fine, but the car isn’t.”

“What’s wrong?”

“I just dropped off my friend? We swung by the house, and I got this book, and then I had to go over to Eastland? To drop off my friend?”

“Okay, you said that.”

“And when I came back out to the car, it wouldn’t start. You said to call if I had a problem.”

“Why did you have to turn off the car, if you were just dropping your friend off?” I asked.

A short pause. “I just went up, just for a second, to my friend’s apartment. And when I came back, it wouldn’t start. It went kind of
ning, ning
but nothing happened after that.”

Nice going, Otto.

“Hang on a sec,” I said. I called over to Nancy, who was heading to the elevator, and told her I wouldn’t be able to make it, that my daughter had car trouble. I was on my feet now, still talking to Angie, but headed for the back stairs, which would get me out to the car faster since they opened out onto the parking lot.

“I might fade in and out a bit,” I said, going down the concrete stairwell.

“You what?” Static, Angie’s voice breaking up.

“Just hang on, I’ll be out in the parking lot in a second.”

“The what? I can’t hear you, Dad. You’re breaking up.”

I went down the steps two at a time, burst through the metal door at the bottom and out into the lot.

“Hear me better now?” I said.

“Yeah, that’s good.”

“So, where are you?”

“I’m on Eastland, a couple blocks up from that Dairy Queen? You know the one, where we’d stop sometimes after I had ballet lessons?”

I had an instant image of her, maybe ten years before, at one of her recitals, in pink tights and leotard, dancing across the stage. It had been a few years since Angie had taken ballet, but I knew the place where we would often stop for an ice cream or a chocolate shake on our way home.

“Okay, I think I know,” I said, getting out my keys and getting into the Camry. “So, how far up?”

“There’s a big apartment building, and some angled parking out front, and I’m pulled into one of those spots. On the right side, as you’re coming up?”

“Okay. It should take me ten minutes, maybe, tops. You okay there?”

“I guess.”

“You all alone?”

“Yeah.”

“Just sit tight then, lock the doors. I’ll be able to find you, and if I can’t, I’ll call you back. And if I can’t get the car started, we’ll call the auto club, get it towed to Otto’s so he can have another look at it.”

“Okay. Can you still talk to me, Dad? Can you keep talking to me while you drive up?”

“Sure, sweetheart.”

“This person, that I gave a lift to?”

“Yeah?”

“Well, it was a guy.”

“You’re kidding,” I said. “I don’t think I ever would have guessed.” I was out of the
Metropolitan
lot now, heading west. “Someone from class?”

“Yeah, we’ve got a couple lectures together.”

“He got a name?”

“Cam. Cameron.”

“That’s a pretty weird name. Cam Cameron.”

“Stop teasing, Dad. It’s Cam, short for Cameron.”

“Oh. Okay. Nice guy?”

“I think so. This really weird thing happened, tonight. Like, he wanted to protect me.”

The side of my face throbbed. Did I really want to ask about this? It would seem strange for me not to. “What happened?” I sounded very concerned, and realized, very shortly, I was going to have to explain the bruise on the side of my face.

“You know when I called earlier, and thought I was being followed by somebody, and then the car turned down another street?”

“Sure.”

“So Cam and I, we went into this McDonald’s, and he sees the car go by the window, and he like freaks out, goes out after the guy.”

“You’re kidding. You sure it was the same car?”

“I didn’t even see it go by, but Cam, he’s positive, he knows cars way better than I do, I can’t tell one from another, and he goes out there and starts screaming at this guy, and hauls off and punches him right in the head.”

“Did you get a look at the guy?” I asked Angie. Not that it was going to matter for very much longer.

“No. I was just running outside when the car took off. But how many guys would do that for you. Huh? I mean, I couldn’t believe he did that for me.”

“Sounds like an amazing guy.” Neither of us spoke for a moment as I sped down the road. “You know, Angie, I think I should probably tell you—”

“Oh God, you’re not going to believe this.”

“What?”

“It’s him.”

I held my breath. “Who? Who is it?”

Angie’s voice became more distant. She was talking to someone else, not to me. “Hey, Trevor. What are you doing here?”

“Hey,” I could hear him say. “I was going by, saw you, thought I’d say hi. What are you doing way out here? You out here all alone? Because you shouldn’t be out here at night all alone.”

“Just a sec, I’m talking to my dad. Dad, you hear that?”

“Trevor’s there,” I said, getting a very large knot in the center of my chest.

“Yeah. Pretty amazing, huh? Hang on, I think he wants to talk to you.”

“Why does he want to talk to—”

There was some rustling as the cell phone changed hands. Trevor said, “Hello, Mr. Walker. How are you doing this evening?”

“Trevor, what are you doing there?” I eased my foot down a little harder down on the accelerator.

“I saw Angie, out here all alone, and thought I should stop. It’s not good for her to be out here all alone.”

“I’m on my way there right now, Trevor. So you don’t have to worry about a thing.”

“I’ll stay here with her until you get here.”

“Sure, Trevor. Give the phone back to Angie.”

More rustling. “Hey, Dad.”

“You okay? He acting weird or anything? He’s not threatening you or anything like that?”

“God no. He’s just . . . hang on. Trevor, I have to talk to my dad.” There was a distant humming sound. “I just put the window up. How does he fucking find me everywhere? He’s so creepy, Dad. I’ve had it. Maybe you’re right. Maybe we need to do something to keep him away from me. He’s really freaking me out.”

“I know. I think we have to do something about him, honey. This kind of thing can’t go on.”

“It’s so, it’s just so, I don’t know. What the . . . Did you already call the auto club or something?”

“No. Why?”

“Some big truck or something’s stopped behind me. He’s got me boxed in. Well, not exactly. I mean, if the car doesn’t work, I guess I can’t really go anyplace.”

I swallowed hard. “What kind of truck? Is it a tow truck or something?”