Cold Open, A Sam North Mystery (16 page)

Chapter Thirty-Nine

“I don’t know if I can take this anymore,” Liz said.

It was a little after six and we were standing in the kitchen of my place. I had just told her about the two guys at Herman’s house. It may not have been my smartest move.

“Can I make you some tea maybe, something for the nerves?” I asked.

“I’m serious, Sam,” she said. “This is getting crazy, with people chasing you and trying to … to …”

“Believe me, I’m not thrilled with any of this either.”

I moved to her and put my arms around her waist and went to pull her close but she backed away.

“Was that interview with this Hunter guy that valuable to someone?” she asked. Her face was flushed and her eyes soft with a tear or two. “So valuable that they’d try and …”

“Must have been,” I said. “Someone sent two guys to get it, and to try to shut us up in the process”

She edged even farther away and at this rate she’d be in the living room in a minute.

“Do you think it was McConnell?” she asked.

“Don’t know. What I do know is that every time we dig deeper and get closer to Buck McConnell, we get shot at. First Herman, now Hunter. Every time we get a little closer, someone gets pissed.”

“So he, or whoever, wanted the interview with this Hunter guy so you couldn’t put it on the air?” she said.

“One would think so.”

“And they got it?” she asked.

“They did. But I scribbled down every detail and quote I could remember from Hunter.”

“Is it enough to put on the air?” she asked.

“Don’t know. I’m going to have to sell Daniels on it, and the lawyers, probably.”

She stepped back and crossed her arms.

“I can put an end to this, you know,” I said.

She didn’t respond.

“I can go to Pep and tell him everything. I’m sure he’d be happy to take over,” I said.

The offer was met by another moment of silence before she spoke up. “Can you?”

“Sure,” I said.

“No, I don’t think you can,” she said. “Things are already in motion, Sam. You provoked this guy, now he’s reacting. You’re in the middle of this.”

“I’m sure Pep could have someone keep an eye on me. Maybe it’ll make you feel better,” I said.

Her back stiffened and she glared at me.

“Let’s not pretend this is about me,” she said, with an edge to her voice.

“You’re right,” I said.

“This is about you and your career and your needing to get this guy to make a name for yourself,” she said.

“You say that like it’s a bad thing.”

“It is if it gets you killed,” she said.

The exchange was sharp and probably would have become sharper if it weren’t for the buzzer from the front desk sounding. I looked at her and thought it best to keep my mouth shut. I went and answered the buzzer and was told a “Mr. Freddie” was here for me. I gave permission for him to be sent up.

“I’m close,” I said, while we waited. “Real close.”

“How do you know?” she asked.

“I think there’s something else behind, or underneath, this bribery story. If I can get on the air with this one, then I can dig out the bigger one. And if I keep pushing, he’ll make a mistake. I know it. I just need to get on the air with this one.”

Liz had softened just a bit, but she wasn’t entirely with me, at least not yet.

“It’s not as easy, or as safe, as you make it sound,” she said. “Especially when people are trying to shoot you.”

“I know.”

“And if you keep closing in on him, or them, they’re only going to come after you harder,” she said.

“Which is why I have Freddie,” I said.

There was a knock at the door and Freddie strolled in.

“Ah, right on cue,” I said.

He walked in with a black backpack in one hand and looked at Liz, then at me, then back to her. Then he shook his head.

“How the hell?” he said. “I mean, this gorgeous young lady with … you?”

I looked at Liz.

“My wit, right?”

“Maybe,” she said, actually smiling.

“Let me introduce you two,” I said.

“Boggles the mind,” Freddie said as he took Liz’s hand. “You have my sympathy. You have to put up with him more than I do.”

“And thank you for keeping an eye on him,” she said, looking in my direction.

“Lord knows he needs all the help he can get,” he said.

“Yes, he does,” she said.

“Hello,” I said, “I’m standing here, you know. I’m in the room. A little respect, maybe?”

Liz was less angry and tense than a few moments ago. It was like meeting Freddie reassured her that someone did indeed have my back.

“This story salvageable?” Freddie asked. “Even without the interview?”

“Don’t know. Going to be up to Daniels,” I said. “But I still got the pictures, the ones from Herm. That’s something.”

“But is it enough to get the green light?” Liz asked.

“Hard to say. Daniels is going to want to go through legal, I’m sure.”

“That always speeds things up,” Liz said.

“Pretty and a sense of humor,” Freddie said.

Liz smiled at him. “On that note, I’m leaving,” she said.

“Always leave them wanting more,” Freddie said.

“Unfortunately, I have a meeting,” she said.

She turned to Freddie and expressed her delight in meeting him and thanked him for taking care of her significant other, and then I walked her to the door. We kissed, and she placed her hands on my chest and spoke in a whisper.

“Be careful,” she said.

“I have Mr. Freddie watching out over me.”

“Sounds like a gun-toting, cameraman hairdresser,” Liz said.

“A whole new meaning to the term
shooter
,” I said. “I’ll be fine.”

“That’s not going to stop me from worrying.”

“I know.”

We kissed again, and I watched her walk to the elevator. I went back into apartment and Freddie was in the living room with the backpack on the coffee table.

“Some things I’m never, I mean never, going to understand,” he said.

“Math, right? The advanced stuff. With all the equations. Those things always killed me, too.”

“Talking about her with you,” he said as he unzipped the backpack.

He reached in and pulled out a small black handgun, and I threw my hands in the air.

“Please, take whatever you want, just leave the flat-screen TV.”

Freddie ignored the remark and offered me the gun.

“This is yours, starting now. It needs to stay on you.”

I shook my head. “Actually, it needs to stay in your backpack,” I said.

“We can get you a shoulder or ankle holster,” he said.

“Nope,” I said. “Put it back in the bag.”

“You’re not going to like being dead,” he said.

I started to say something, stopped, then started again. “I don’t even know where to go with that one,” I said.

He again offered the gun. “Don’t be stubborn,” he said.

“But it comes so easily.”

Freddie exhaled and shook his head. “You got a good reason for not wanting to protect yourself?” he asked.

“Guns attract bullets,” I said. “Now put it away.”

“You seem to be doing just fine in that department even without a gun.”

“Then think of how much worse it will be with a gun,” I said.

He stared at me, and I stared back at him.

“I’m not touching it,” I said.

Chapter Forty

I was alone in Daniels’s office, staring at the monitors on the wall, specifically the one in the center. It was tuned to Liberty, and right now, at seven o’clock, there was a very attractive blonde woman reading the headlines at the news desk in the studio a floor below.

She looked as though she had just come straight from her high school class to work at the TV network.

“She’s a looker, huh?” Daniels asked as he walked in and closed the door behind him.

He was carrying a coffee mug, which I liked to think was filled with coffee, but knowing him, there was a good possibility it was something else.

“She probably wasn’t even born when I had my first TV job,” I said.

“Yeah, but look at her now.”

“Probably in, like, eighth grade when I started here.”

She had shiny blonde hair that Mary Anne down in makeup had blown out so she’d look like all the other blondes we had on the air. I sat down in one of the guest chairs in front of his desk, knowing without stories like IT&E, my days were numbered in this business.

“Script,” Daniels said, wagging his fingers at the papers I was holding.

“I’m fifteen minutes ahead of schedule. That should buy me some goodwill,” I said.

“It doesn’t,” he said.

“Give me a deadline, and I meet it easily.” I looked over at the blonde. “I bet she can’t do that.”

“Look like that, who cares?” he said.

“My point exactly.”

“You got reaction from IT&E? The Feds?”

“Like I said, I’m a professional.”

“I don’t want to waste my time reading something that I’m going to have to hold,” he said.

“You’re not going to want to hold this,” I said.

He slipped on a pair of reading glasses and started reading. I scanned my copy of the script, pretty damn proud of how I had pulled it all together, despite the boneheaded move of letting the Hunter interview get stolen.

I looked at the words and knew I had McConnell nailed. And once he was nailed I knew he was going to strike back, and that’s when I’d discover something else that would tie him to Steele’s death.

I read the script to myself while Daniels read his copy and worked on what words I wanted to emphasize.

Tonight … evidence of a culture of corruption at energy giant IT&E. Proof that CEO and rumored presidential candidate Buck McConnell personally okayed hundreds of thousands of dollars in bribes to dangerous foreign governments to win contracts.

Bribes that are believed to be breaking U.S. laws under the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act and punishable by massive fines.

One of McConnell’s former executives, Billy Hunter, has come clean about the scheme, saying he personally delivered hundreds of thousands of dollars, in cash, to operatives of the governments in Nigeria, Brazil, and Yemen. In return, IT&E was awarded lucrative contracts to build energy plants and supply oil- and gas-drilling equipment to those countries.

In photos obtained exclusively by Liberty News, Hunter is seen hand delivering the cash, so much money that on one occasion he had to stuff the currency into the backseat of a Mercedes and deliver it to a government operative in Nigeria.

There was a lot more, including reaction from Stuart Ripley, saying everything was false and IT&E would vigorously defend itself and legally punish anyone spreading these malicious rumors. In some neighborhoods they would just say, “We’ll sue your ass.”

I had called the SEC and the FBI to get the usual no comment. But I had gotten a nice sentence from the FBI, saying they take every instance of corporate corruption, here or overseas, very, very seriously.

Daniels tossed my soon-to-be-award-winning script on his desk, ripped off his reading glasses, and tossed them on top. I took all this to mean that he was not happy.

“You’re fucking kidding me, right?” he asked.

That was confirmation of my gut feeling, and I again complimented myself on my instincts.

“So you’re good with it? I should get on the set?”

“You take all this time and hand me this pile of stinking horseshit you call a script?”

“I’m okay with criticism,” I said.

“Where are the sound bites from the interview with this bagman Hunter?”

“About that,” I said.

“I thought you found this clown.”

“I did.”

“And you interviewed him?”

“You’re two for two.”

“Then where on earth are the sound bites? What are you waiting for, your own special?”

“Not a bad idea.”

He grabbed his mug a bit too fast, and the liquid sloshed over the lip and onto my script. “Son of a bitch,” he said.

“The Hunter interview was stolen,” I said.

He swallowed and looked at me. I kept going to save him the trouble of telling me to.

“Right out of the car. That was before the two men came after my cameraman and me and tried to either do us bodily harm or ask for the time. I’m not sure which. But considering they had guns drawn, I think bodily harm was probably the goal,” I said.

“You mean to tell me you track down and find this guy, your so-called smoking gun, and the interview gets stolen?”

“Yes.”

He picked up the script and dropped it back on the desk for emphasis.

“And that’s why I get you paraphrasing him in here.”

“Yes.”

“You know you can’t go on the air with this,” he said.

“We’ve put less on.”

“Don’t insult me,” he said.

“I have pictures. I have confirmation from the man in the pictures as to his illegal activity,” I said.

“You don’t have shit without him on camera admitting that,” he said.

“He did admit it.”

“But you lost it,” he said.

“Someone took it. There’s a difference.”

“Whatever. You can’t go on the air and say, trust me, I talked to this guy,” he said.

“But I did talk to him.”

“Can’t you interview him again? Get him in here and interview him on the set?” he asked.

“He’s not exactly close by,” I said. I didn’t mention the fact that Hunter hadn’t returned the three calls I had placed to him since I discovered the recording of the interview had been stolen.

“Cal,” I said, “let’s talk bigger picture. We go on with this, and it serves two purposes. One, we get ourselves a nice scoop and Liberty looks great. We got the CEO of a major company—the guy who some think is going to run for president and save the country—breaking the laws of the country he’s supposed to save. Ironic, no?”

“If you had the story locked down, it would be. Yes,” he said.

“The second purpose relates to the bigger picture of trying to figure out who killed Jack.”

“Oh, please.”

“Every time I tweak McConnell, bad things happen. I start asking about Jack’s death, and a guy tells me to stop asking about it. I keep up with it and find this guy in Jersey with pictures implicating McConnell, and someone takes a shot at me.”

“What?” he asked.

“I’ll explain in a minute. Then I find the guy in the pictures who confirms the illegal activity, and someone steals the interview. Every time I get a little closer the heat gets turned up. Mere coincidence?”

“Or conspiracy theory,” he said.

“Not all conspiracy theories are wrong.”

“Only one I’m concerned about is this one,” he said.

“You got to let me get on the air with this, Cal.”

“I can’t.”

“It’s accurate.”

“I need more than your word. This blows up on us and guess who’s going to get nailed?”

“I’m willing to take that risk,” I said.

“I’m not talking about you, Sam. I’m the president of Liberty, I got a bit more to lose. You know how long and hard I worked to build this place?” He put his reading glasses on and looked at the script again. “At the very least, legal is going to need to look at this,” he said.

“Well, that should take no more than, what, six months maybe?”

“They’re not that bad,” he said.

“They are.”

“We need to cover ourselves.”

“We’re covered,” I said. “Have I ever steered you wrong?”

“How much time do we have?” he asked.

“Funny. Kind of,” I said. “Look, who put his balls on the line and put up his own money to get you the footage of Jack being pulled out of the East River?”

“I paid you back.”

“You did. But imagine if that had shown up on Fox or CNN or somewhere else that morning. How stupid would we look?”

He looked at me with no trace of emotion, which told me I had scored a point.

“I got pretty good instincts,” I said.

“No one says otherwise,” he said.

“Cal,” I said. “Think about this. I take a call from Robbie Steele. My gut tells me maybe she’s got something. I start sniffing around, and people start shooting at me. What’s that tell you?”

“That you’re an easy guy to dislike,” he said.

“All I’m asking is for you to trust me.”

“Not with this script, I can’t,” he said. He looked away, toward the monitors. It was twenty after seven, and we were in commercial. Getting on the air tonight was now a long shot.

“You don’t have this pinned down,” he said.

I looked around his office at all the shelves of awards and celebrity photos and other crap and felt my patience slipping away.

“You know,” I said, “You sit up here surrounded by all this … this shit. Making your decisions and covering you ass.”

I looked across the desk and saw his cheeks redden.

“You probably want to stop right there,” he said.

“No, I don’t, Cal. You know I got something on Buck McConnell, but you won’t pull the trigger.”

“You don’t have shit,” he said, picking up the script and dropping it on his desk. “You have a bunch of accusations with nothing to back them up.”

“That’s not the problem,” I yelled, “And you know it.”

“You need to shut up, Sam,” he yelled back.

“You don’t have the balls to go after Buck McConnell.”

His eyes narrowed, and his face was a deep red. “Who the fuck do you think—”

The phone rang and he glanced at the incoming number, leaned forward, and punched the Speaker button hard enough to dent it.

“Daniels,” he said. His tone was loud and sharp.

A man spoke on the other end and sounded like he was on speakerphone also.

“This is Drew Bradshaw, senior VP and corporate counsel for IT&E. I have Stuart Ripley, vice president of corporate communications, here with me.”

I looked at Daniels, and he was looking at me. I wondered if my face gave away the fact that I felt like I was going to throw up.

“We have something you may want to know,” Bradshaw said.