Courier (2 page)

As soon as his hands had warmed up enough to regain flexibility, he unzipped the chest pocket on the worn and cracked leather jacket, pulled out a pack of Winstons, and then dug into his jeans for a battered steel Zippo. It was so worn that the engraving on the front and back was almost invisible. He snapped the lighter down and then back up against his thigh, flipping back the top on the downstroke and spinning the wheel to light the wick on the way up. It was a trick that showed years of practice.

Lighting his cigarette, he inhaled deeply, almost hungrily, and then pulled a paperback copy of
Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas
out of the back pocket of his jeans. Settling backwards on the motorcycle seat with his back resting against his helmet and his Frye boots up on the metal radio bolted over the rear wheel, he began to read.

Rick had only finished a couple of pages before the front door opened, and Joe Hadley came out and stood silhouetted in the light fanning out from the living room behind him. A small, neat man in a dark suit with a fat polyester tie and carefully combed hair, Hadley was the Associated Broadcast Network's best investigative reporter. He was the best because he was always on the move, walking at a pace that kept taller men almost jogging to keep up, breaking off conversations to make a phone call whenever he passed a pay phone, or to consult the narrow reporter's notebooks he carried in his coat pockets.

Now, Hadley was writing furiously in one of those notebooks, face impassive as he worked. Suddenly, he jumped and spun around with a curse.

"Damn it. I hate when you do that, Ed!"

"Well, if you'd get out of the damn way, it wouldn't happen." Ed Farr, the cameraman who had just goosed him, was a tall, thin, balding man in slacks and a dark blazer. He moved smoothly past Hadley and headed for the courier, carrying an enormous film magazine that looked like a pair of steel Mickey Mouse ears. Rick reluctantly turned over a corner of a page in his book to keep his place, returned it to his pocket, and swung his long legs off the bike.

"That had better not be a twelve-hundred-foot mag," he said as the cameraman approached. "You know we're not supposed to carry them anymore after Art got one caught in his rear wheel and damn near killed himself on the Beltway."

"It's twelve hundred feet of pure artistry, and if you think I'm going to get out the damn light bag and spend thirty minutes canning it for you, you're dumber than the rest of the cycle monkeys." Trying not to show the effort, Farr tossed the magazine to Rick, who caught it with one hand as if it were made of plastic instead of at least thirty pounds of metal. Farr looked impressed.

"Looks like you're keeping up with the weights, kid."

"Yeah, well, it's that or let the North Vietnamese win. The doctors in Japan said I'd never use this arm again." As he spoke, Rick put his right hand at the center point between the magazine's two round drums, balanced it, and then lifted it up and down in slow, lazy bicep curls. "But I'm still not sticking this monster in my bag. Are you trying to kill me?"

"Fucking right I am, and even if I wasn't, we don't have the time. This guy wouldn't stop talking, and you'll have to hustle to hit the soup by the deadline."

Tempting as it was to get into an argument with a cameraman, Rick knew Farr was right. One of the fixed facts about television news was that it took forty-two minutes for sixteen-millimeter color positive film to pass through "the soup" – the automatic film processor back at the bureau that developed, fixed, rinsed, dried, and spun the film onto edit reels.

Checking his watch, Rick realized that he was indeed going to have to hurry if this story was going to make the first network broadcast at 6 o'clock. That was OK, since pushing his bike to the limits for a legitimate reason was even better than just dancing for fun.

"All right, I'll do it this time because I like you. Remember what happened to Walt last week? Next time it could be you."

Ed's face flushed with anger. "Listen, you stupid bastard. I find that you've ever screwed with one of my magazines, I'll kick your ass! Simmons should have had that courier fired for that stunt."

Rick reflected that the courier actually had been fired, but that it didn't seem to bother him much. Evidently, taping the end of the raw, unexposed film to a stop sign and letting all twelve hundred feet spill out behind him to be irretrievably ruined by sunlight as he drove away was a sufficiently satisfying statement of how he felt about cameramen and their bullying ways. Good couriers could always get another job, anyway.

Rick smiled at the memory of Walt Simmons's reaction – he'd screamed and smashed things in the crew room for over an hour.

Then, Rick nodded agreement to the cameraman and turned to pack the magazine securely into the battered canvas bag strung alongside the right rear wheel in an improvised web of bungee cords. The tough newspaper delivery bags a couple of the other couriers had swiped a few weeks ago would do the job, even if the bright red
Washington Star
logo looked a bit tacky.

"Take good care of this." Hadley was scurrying over from the front porch. "This is a goddamn big story. It'll make those jerks at the
Post
look like idiots and Watergate look like a cop taking an apple off a fruit stand."

"Well, I was planning to drop it in the Potomac, but now that you've told me how important it is, I'll try to restrain myself." Rick finished strapping the magazine down tight. "Now, if you gentlemen will stop bothering me, I'll be on my way."

"Wait!"

Pete Moten, a young black man who was the sound tech and apprentice cameraman on the crew, ran out of the house carrying a small camera and a metal film canister with red adhesive tape around the edge.

"Take the ‘B-roll' with you. There's some still in the camera, so take the Bolex, too." The Bolex was a small hand-wound camera used to record "B-roll", silent cutaway shots and exteriors that would be combined in the edit room with the "A-roll", the film with an optical audio track, which had been shot with the primary camera.

"Shit," said the reporter, "I almost forgot about that. I don't know if we need to send it in. This guy gave us the whole story in the interview."

"Are you kidding? Talking is one thing." Pete patted the Bolex. "I got the real deal right in here. When you see what I shot while you were trying to get a straight answer out of that number cruncher, you're going to make me a real shooter. I'm telling you, man, I've saved your ass. Remember how Smithson caved to the White House on your last piece? Well, this time we've got the goods."

Paul Smithson was ABN's Washington bureau chief and – like many other senior press executives in this "company town" – had first worked in politics. He had risen to senior counselor to the Vice-President and then capped it off with a stint as White House Press Secretary before cashing in with a well-paid job with the networks. He didn't have to do much work, and the network got better access to the administration. It was a good deal for all concerned.

Usually, he had almost nothing to do with actual news – leaving it to the producers and desk editors – but two weeks ago, he'd ripped into Hadley over a report on questionable campaign contributions. The reporter hadn't been able to document everything – too many anonymous sources – and, eventually, he'd had to make a painful public apology.

Investigative reporters were always caught between stories that weren't big enough to be interesting and stories that – like the money story – weren't solid enough to stand up to the inevitable attack from those accused of wrongdoing. Hadley knew his days as a network correspondent were numbered if he blew another story.

It didn't mean he was grateful for Moten's careless reminder.

"Listen,
boy
. You're only here because someone decided we had to hire some tokens after '68. It sure as hell doesn't give you the right to tell me how to do my–"

Rick cut the reporter off. "Give it to me, Pete."

He liked Pete. As a group, network cameramen were nasty to everyone, but they really took their venom out on the one black guy with the audacity to try being a shooter. It took guts to put up with it, and, anyway, Hadley reminded him a little too much of some jumped-up lieutenants he'd had to serve under in the army.

He took the can, stashed it deep into the bag underneath the heavy film magazine, and grabbed the camera. He unzipped his jacket, tucked the camera on his chest, pulled the zipper back up, and patted the bulge.

"OK, safe as a baby. Now, can I please get out of here?"

The reporter swore again and walked stiffly back toward the house. Rick pushed the bike off the stand, jumped on the kick-starter with all his weight, waited an instant, and then smiled as the twin cylinders caught with a rumble. He glanced both ways, waved over his shoulder, and headed off the way he'd come in.

Concentrating on building up speed, Rick didn't notice as the black Chevy pulled out and drove at a conservative pace down the street behind him. Passing the crew, now stacking camera cases into the rear of the Jeep, the driver pressed a button on a remote control on the seat next to him, saw the glow of the remote's green light reflect off the dashboard, and followed the taillight of the motorcycle into the dusk.

 

Rick took a different route back to the bureau – crossing Chain Bridge and pushing hard down the long curves of Canal Road. He was caught up once again in the dance, but this time, it wasn't just speed that occupied his mind. Increasing darkness and a slight mist were making it difficult to tell if the road ahead of him was wet or just shadowed. After months of driving the massive bike at its limits, he'd developed a visceral reaction to the parts of a road with poor traction. They would literally make his stomach hurt.

Since he was moving against the outward flow of commuter traffic, he still made good time as he cut back over Whitehurst and ripped down K Street. He was certain to beat the deadline with ten minutes to spare – time for the editor to make at least a couple of quick cuts before it was raced down the hall to the projectors. Hadley would have to read into the live microphone in the studio and match the pictures by watching his edited film roll on a monitor in the control room, but it would come together.

It always did.

As he picked up speed on the downhill slope of 18th Street – a block from ABN – Rick smiled as he remembered his early days at the bureau. Practical jokes were a constant. The assistant directors in particular had lots of free time and inventive minds. Several times, they'd told him to deliver the film to Joe Telecine – at least until Rick worked out that the room with the "Telecine" sign was just the transfer room where television was made from cinema.

Suddenly, the part of his mind that never stopped screening traffic demanded all his attention. He had long ago realized that the only way to stay alive on a motorcycle was to make it a rule that any accident would be his fault, because he'd sure as hell pay the penalty. That way he was always ready for drivers who would squeeze him into a line of parked cars without a glance or decide to make a left turn directly in front of him.

A black car coming along L Street on his left wasn't slowing as it neared the intersection at 18th. Rick rechecked – the light was still showing him a clear green. His eyes switched back to the car and saw that the driver's head – outlined in the store lights behind him – was turned so that he stared directly at the big motorcycle.

The black car blew the red and entered the intersection only yards ahead of Rick.

Time slowed.

Rick slammed down on both brakes, and both front and rear wheels began to skid. It felt like the side of the car in front of him was crawling by, stretching out longer and longer to fill all possible avenues of escape.

As his wheels screamed on the pavement, Rick knew that he was losing steering control and forced his right hand to loosen up on the front brake lever while keeping a full lock on the foot pedal that controlled the rear brake. He was bringing his speed down fast, but that damn black car was still blocking the road in front of him.

That son of a bitch must have slowed in the intersection!

He could feel the rear tire begin to skip and knew he was losing precious traction every microsecond that it spent in the air. He needed to get the back wheel down and in solid contact with the road – fast. He slammed his body back and actually came right off the seat to sit on top of the radio, throwing all his weight directly over the rear tire.

He felt the tire grab the road as the tread caught, and the stuttering of the rubber treads became a steady scream. He was still going too fast to go anywhere but straight ahead and that damn car was simply not moving fast enough to get out of his way, so he tensed for a jump. Getting his body up in the air and flying over the car's trunk would mean some nasty scrapes on the other side, but it was either that or turn into a red smear on the rear fender.

He fingered just a bit of tension back into the front brake, and that made the difference. He flashed past the car, and time jerked back to normal. His right leg couldn't have been more than a half-inch from the wicked-looking steel bar that topped the rear bumper.

He unlocked the rear wheel and slowly, carefully, pulled over to the curb and stopped. His hands were so clenched that he had to force them to relax finger by finger. After he released his death-grip on the handlebars, he held his gloved hands out in front of him and just watched them shake for a long moment.

The right hand – the brake hand – felt strained as if it were still grabbing for more stopping power. He looked down the right side of the BMW. The rear brake pedal was bent, almost broken. Calmly, he thought: going,
Going
to have to stop by the garage and get that fixed.