Hack (15 page)

“Who are you working for?” he said in an almost normal voice.

“I work for you. I’m Shepherd,” I answered. “Your pet columnist. Also a reporter now. We’ve met.”

The Editor smiled but it turned into a snarl as he lifted out of his big executive chair. His boozy blue eyes bulged. His entire body tensed, like he was going to vault over his desk and bite my face. Then he relaxed and settled back.

“Badger,” he said, back in control.

Donald Badger turned to me and took the point.

“The Editor wants an explanation. In short, what are you doing with that prosecutor? Also, are you a baby killer?”

“No,” I replied. “I am not a baby killer and neither were my men and women.”

“That’s not what it says in the
Press
,” Badger countered.

“The authority of the printed word? Really?”

“I need details.”

“Sorry. Classified.”

“What about the fed? What are you up to with her?” Badger continued, with a smirk.

“Obviously we were walking my dog.”

“You mean Aubrey Forsythe’s dog, don’t you?”

“You’ve got me there, Don.”

“What are you up to with the prosecutor?” Badger demanded. “Don’t tell me she’s a source because you don’t have any.”

“I’m not going to tell you anything because it’s none of your business,” I said.

Edgar growled. Badger made a fake laughing noise.

“You failed to mention this massacre business on your résumé, or on your employment application,” Badger actually said.

I made an actual laughing noise. If only Mary Catherine were here.

“I didn’t see any box for ‘never committed war crimes.’ Did I miss it?” I asked.

Badger and Edgar exchanged glances. They were obviously not used to resistance. Edgar nodded encouragement. My guess was they had a signal system to manage the grillings.

“Your employment with this newspaper is hanging by a thread,” Badger warned.

“Why?”

“Why what?”

“Why is it hanging by a thread? What did I do to get fired?”

“Killing children would certainly be grounds for termination,” Badger said importantly.

“I already told you that was not true. Neither is any of that cover-up bullshit.”

“Prove it,” Badger demanded.

“I don’t think it works that way,” I pointed out. “You are supposed to prove it.”

“We don’t have to prove shit, mate,” Edgar interjected.

“Okay. Am I fired now? Can I leave?”

“Do you have a sexual relationship with Mary Catherine Donovan?” Badger asked.

“Again, none of your business.”

“I beg to differ. If you, as a reporter, are intimate with a possible law enforcement source, that would constitute unethical behavior.”

“You just told me I didn’t have any sources. And, ethics at the
New York Mail
? Seriously?”

“It’s okay to fuck an elephant but not if you cover the circus,” Edgar sneered.

“I’m not fucking the elephant while covering the circus. Why? What is it you’re worried about?”

They said nothing but made faces at each other, apparently more signals. They were not happy.

“Somebody hired you because of some dog blog you did?” Edgar snapped in a suspicious tone, looking at printouts in front of him. “You pretended to be a dog online?”

“I wrote in the voice of a dog, yes, through her eyes.”

“Why?” he demanded.

“Why not? I wanted to see if she could make more sense of the thing than I could. In a way, she did.”

“What thing? Who did?” Badger asked.

“Fatimah. My dog,” I explained. “The blog was called ‘Fatimah’s Breakfast.’”

“Why?” Edgar asked. “And don’t fucking say ‘why not.’”

“Something one of our British buddies said once. He said Afghanistan was a dog’s breakfast. It means a big mess, a—”

“I know what it fucking means,” Edgar cut me off. “So you’re a leftie? A peacenik?”

“Sorry, I don’t know what those words mean.”

Edgar cursed and then muttered a word, possibly a name. Badger seemed surprised but he quickly suppressed it.

“You are on probation until Human Resources completes its investigation of this incident,” Badger declared. “They will contact you. If you don’t cooperate fully with HR, you will be summarily dismissed. Is that clear?”

“Yup. Human Resources. Got it.”

We sat there for a while. They looked at me, then at each other, then back at me.

“We’re done,” Badger said. “Get back to work.”

“Okay. Great,” I replied, standing up. “Have a nice day. Oh, meanwhile, I’m going to investigate another story, an exclusive.”

“What exclusive?” Badger asked.

“A follow-up story, really,” I told him. “You did a lot of front pages two years ago about a cop named Sean Joyce. He accidentally killed a kid who pointed a toy gun at him.”

“That story is dead,” Edgar said, with the finality of a man who decided what was news and what was not.

“So is Sean Joyce,” Badger chuckled.

That pissed me off.

“Yes he is. He killed himself after someone illegally hacked his phones and blackmailed him, my source told me.”

“Source?” Edgar asked. “What source?”

“You know, a Deep Throat kind of source? Top secret. He said Sean was blackmailed by people who hacked his phones, took pictures of his kids and threatened to publish them in the middle of a racial witch-hunt if he didn’t do what they wanted. They used his kids to screw him. He did what they wanted for his kids but he lost it. You know his wife also had a mental breakdown and tried to kill herself? The kids are still with their grandparents. Sad story. Somebody should answer for that.”

“That story is dead,” Edgar repeated. “It will never see the light of day.”

“In the
Mail
, maybe,” I replied. “I’m sure I can get big bucks for it, freelance. The
Daily Press
would love it.”

“Your employment contract forbids working for anyone else,” Badger said quickly.

“Not if you fire me. Or I quit.”

“Get the fuck out!” Edgar bellowed, his face hot red, his fists clenched white.

As I walked out, Edgar’s eyes followed me every step of the way out of his snake tank office and across the City Room. Badger’s mouth was moving, obviously talking about me to his boss. Edgar’s stare tracked me out of sight. I knew that look well. It was hard to turn my back on it.

After my little chat with Lucky Tal and Badger I did as I was told. I got back to work. At my desk in Features, I roughed out a column on designer dogs and cats.

I admitted it was definitely cool to own a dog that looks like a wolf and very artistic to have a cat that looks like a little leopard. But the Frankenstein fashion trend was not necessarily a good thing for the actual animal.

“I don’t know that I look like a cheetah and I don’t care,” I had one notional designer cat say. “But I do know I have trouble breathing and I have genetic problems that make me sick and will probably make me die young.”

It was a very profitable business, for the people hawking the fancy animals. Same deal for puppy mills and kitten factories. Meanwhile, millions of abandoned non-designer cats and dogs languished in shelters without homes or love—if they were lucky.

When I was done I went out for lunch and kept going. I went home, took Skippy for an early unscheduled walk and we both fell asleep on the couch. Life was good.

* * *

Skippy and I woke with a bark. His, not mine. Someone was at the door. Not the doorbell. It sounded like someone was fiddling with the lock. Skippy rocketed off the couch, barking loudly at the door. The fiddling stopped. I followed and flipped the tiny door porthole aside. Two white guys in dark suits were right outside. The tall one with slick, shiny black hair was shoving something in his jacket pocket. The other one, shorter, husky, sandy-haired, with bad skin, was looking down the hall, like a lookout, a manila folder in one hand.

I pulled open the door a foot, my leg holding a snarling Skippy back, but just barely.

“You guys lost?” I asked loudly.

The short one started and stepped back. The lean one didn’t flinch. He smiled and stood his ground. In the quiet that followed, I inhaled the mothball and chicken soup scent of the hallway. It looked like the guys’ suits came from the same store. They weren’t suits, I realized, but matching navy blazers with fake gold buttons and charcoal gray pants. Instead of dress shoes or loafers, they wore identical black sneaker-like footwear that looked sturdy and waterproof. Cop shoes. They also had cop eyes. I looked at the line of their blazers. Bulges on the right hips.

“Not sure,” the slim dude finally said, his fake smile still glued on, like he was lost. “Are you Francis Xavier Shepherd?”

“I’ll know when you tell me who you are,” I fake-smiled back.

“Oh, sure. I’m Jack Leslie and this is Matt Molloy. We’re from the
Mail.
We’re here for the interview.”

“What interview?”

“Human Resources,” the little guy said, recovering, as if it was obvious.

I couldn’t help laughing. It made them wary, as if they expected a very different reaction from me. Skippy continued growling at them. I wondered how many brothers Ginny McElhone had, even though there seemed to be no resemblance.

“Didn’t they tell you we would be talking, Mr. Shepherd?” Leslie asked, his eyes darting to Skippy.

“Actually, they did. IDs please.”

Molloy started to protest but Leslie touched his elbow. They both produced laminated photo ID cards with their names on them.

They
looked
just like my ID card, although mine said
FEATURES DEPARTMENT
. Their smiling photographs seemed much nicer than they were in person. I nodded and they put them away.

“Why would you come to my apartment during business hours without contacting me?” I asked.

“Hold on, pal,” Molloy said, pointing his finger at me. His pudgy red hands were dry, rough, the nails dark.

Again, the calmer Leslie stayed his partner’s hand.

“We couldn’t find you at your desk during business hours, Mr. Shepherd, so we thought we would stop by and maybe catch you in,” Leslie said, a smooth reproach. “We thought you might be upset after your conference with the Editor.”

“No. I was done for the day and I needed a nap.”

“Okay. May we come in and talk about the issues that have been raised by your superiors?”

“No. My dog wants to attack you. Let’s do this in the office. Later.”

“We need to know what the hell you’re doing with that fed cunt,” Molloy said.

“Watch your mouth, asshole,” I told him.

One leg moved back and he balled a fist, ready to rumble. Leslie edged quickly between us.

“You have to answer these charges of unethical behavior, Mr. Shepherd,” Leslie told me. “Now or later. What is it that you’re concealing about her?”

“Why do you guys care so much about her? I thought the problem was that the
Daily Press
called me a baby killer. How come you’re not asking about that?”

“Hey, pal, we’re just doing our job,” Molloy chimed in. “And if you don’t do yours, you’re—”

“And what is your job? Breaking and entering? Show me what you’ve got in that pocket, Mr. Leslie. Prove me wrong.”

Leslie smiled for real this time. Game on.

“We can do this easy or rough, buddy,” Molloy warned. “Don’t screw with us.”

“Where were you guys on the job?” I asked. “NYPD? Somewhere else, maybe? Blackwater in the Sandbox?”

“I think we got our answer,” Leslie said. “We’re done here. For now. We’ll see you soon. Have a nice day, Mr. Shepherd.”

Leslie was already on his way to the creaky elevator before Molloy realized and tagged along. I closed the door.

“Foof,” Skippy huffed to me after the door was closed.

“No, Skippy. This is good,” I said, petting his mane and scratching his head. “We have conferenced with Human Resources executives from the
New York Mail.
Things are moving along.”

I grabbed my cell phone and dialed Mary Catherine to tell her about my new friends.

“Foof,” Skippy insisted.

Mary Catherine got back to me before dinner, after running the Human Resources executives through the federal government’s Big Brother machine.

“This guy Jack Leslie is an ex-cop from New Jersey,” she said. “You’ll never guess where.”

I told her I could never guess.

“Crooke Harbor,” she said triumphantly.

“Really? Crook Harbor?”

“Crooke with an E on the end. You haven’t heard about it,” she said, disappointed with my lack of reaction.

“Nope. Been away, remember?”

“Me, too. But I read. Okay, it’s a mob town. Famous. In all the papers. The wiseguys there did not bribe the cops. They
hired
the cops. The FBI came down on them years ago. Lots of cops busted, wiseguys too. There was a shootout. A few bodies turned up, some people disappeared.”

“So Mr. Leslie is an ex-dirty cop?”

“Nope,” she said. “Leslie was a lieutenant who retired and took his full pension before they could do anything to him. Never charged with a crime. He’s one of the smart ones.”

“How smart could he be?” I asked. “A cop working for mobsters?”

“College degree in Criminal Justice, a Master’s degree in Public Administration.”

“What about his buddy? What’ve you got on him?”

“That’s the thing. Nothing.”

“Nothing.”

“Correct. Matt or Matthew Molloy is indeed an employee of the
New York Mail
, or rather, its parent company, Todd Enterprises Unlimited. He is paid a salary. He has a social security number and pays his taxes. That’s it. No credit cards, no credit history, no social history, no licenses, arrests, property—nothing.”

“So he pays cash. How much does he make a year?”

“You won’t like it. He and Leslie each make $250,000 a year. In round numbers. No wonder they make house calls. There are no credit union deductions. The money is paid into their bank accounts at a branch in the
Mail
building and all they do is take out cash. All of it. The money goes in and right out within a day. Each account usually has a balance under $1,000.”