Signwave (23 page)

No response. So I poured a little more oil over the water I'd disturbed.

“It's not just that you don't take advertising—and I bet you get offers all the time. It's that you're all actually reporters, not shills who print press releases. You investigate, you check out who's doing what, and you could prove anything you put up online if anyone ever challenged it.”

She didn't move her hands, but her eyes sought mine, as if to examine my soul. Good luck with that. All she'd see would be the greenish contact lenses with black iris centers. Empty ones.

“Rhonda Jayne Johnson works for you,” I went on. “Or
with
you, I guess you'd probably say, since your paper is supposedly run by a collective.

“For all I know, that might even be true. Different people come and go, but not you, never you. You started this a long time ago.

“I know two things about you: you're a journalist that stepped in to fill a vacuum, and you knew that gaining the people's trust would be a long, hard road to walk even before you started.

“That's a life investment, all that. So I figured if you knew a member of your collective was leaking info to outsiders—info
like the identity of folks who use your system to tip you off—you wouldn't let it slide. That would be against everything you stand for.

“Every time a tip comes in, you check it out. Double-source and fact-check. All the old-school stuff. You've built so much, why would you risk your credibility by trusting
anyone
blind?

“If people ever stop trusting that their tips will be kept confidential—off the record, or however you say it—you're done. The way you have it set up now, everyone for miles around is working for
Undercurrents
, right? They feel safe. Secure. That's what I came to tell you: everything you worked for, it's
all
in danger now.”

“How do
you
know this?”

“Because I know that Rhonda Jayne Johnson has a relationship with a hedge-fund guy. I don't know what
his
game is, but it's got to be about money. Making a monster score.”

“Relationship?”

“Enough of one for her to tell this guy the identity of some of your confidential sources. Enough of one for her to own ten grand's worth of shares in his fund.”

“That's what you meant when you said…‘traitor'?”

“Yes. A traitor to everything
Undercurrents
stands for.”

“She'd never…”

“Yeah, she would. She already has, like I just told you.”

“And like I just
asked
you, why would you—whoever you are—why would you care about that?”

“All I want is your word that Rhonda Jayne Johnson gets kicked out. You've done that with other people before, although I don't know the reasons, so you can do it again. Just shut her out. That's all.”

“No,” she said, slowly getting to her feet. “No, it's not.”

—

W
ithout another word, she walked past me and out the door.

I followed her. Close enough to stop her if she tried to run, but not so close that she could whirl around and jump at me.

Two doors down, she turned left, hit a wall switch, and lit up what I guessed was the living room. I should have been suspicious of
any
switch she hit, but there was a kind of honesty to the way she was moving that reached out to me.

She sat down in an armchair that was covered with some brocaded material, gestured toward its mate, placed within a few feet of the one she'd picked. Between the two chairs was a brass stand, with an amber ashtray set into its top.

“You don't mind…?” she said, taking a pack of cigarettes out of the padded vest she was wearing over a bright-red T-shirt. Then she interrupted herself with a semi-laugh. “That's cute, huh? I'm being polite to a man who walks into my house pointing a gun at me.”

“I came to bring you something of value,” I answered her, “something I thought you'd want to have. The pistol was just because I didn't know how many people would be here, and I wanted to be able to deliver my message without any interruptions.”

“And your message was…?”

“What I already told you.”

“Fair enough. And the mask?”

“I'm a confidential source. From what I just told you, from what you know must be true. Because there'd be no other way
I
could know. The mask is more proof of that—I don't have any reason to trust that what I told you will
stay
confidential.”

She lit a cigarette. Crossed her legs. Leaned back as she exhaled the first drag. A symmetrical face made her a good-looking woman by most standards, but there was nothing that stood out especially. I couldn't guess her age, but she was in
good shape. She took another deep drag, pushing her breasts against the fabric of the red T-shirt hard enough so I could see she wasn't wearing a bra.

Wasn't being seductive, either. Just centering herself.

I waited.

“Rhonda Jayne Johnson,” she finally said. “What you said wouldn't be so easy….Well, it wouldn't be easy at all.”

I waited.

“Finding this place, that wouldn't be easy, either. So what do you want to know?”

“I didn't come here to ask questions. I don't need any answers. I had a message to deliver, and I did that. I'm still here because it feels like you want to tell me something. If I'm wrong about that, I'll go. If not, I'll listen.”

“I love her,” the woman said, like she was saying it gets dark at night. “And she loves me.”

“She betrayed you. Doesn't that change things?”

“Not…I don't know. I won't let her do that anymore. But I couldn't just kick her off the roster. That would hurt her terribly, and I…I don't know if I could do that.”

“Why?”

“That's how we
met
. That was our first real
connection
. RJ is a journalist in her soul. Like me. If I cut her out of
Undercurrents
, it would be like punishing her for something she didn't do.”

“
Didn't
do? Isn't leaking info about a confidential source as unethical as it gets for a journalist? People like you have gone to jail for refusing to do just that. All over the world. Some of them have been tortured. Some killed. I thought keeping anything they were told in confidence was something they were morally bound to do. A sacred oath.”

“It
is
,” she said. “But…look, what she did was wrong, I'm not arguing about that. She's never going to get a look at anything
that comes in again. And she'll
learn
from this. There's no reason why she can't dig up stuff on her own. That's how she got…in with us. In the first place, I mean. The info she brought in, that was checked by people she never met. Never
will
meet. She
worked
her way in. Years of work. People make mistakes….”

“You're making one, right now.”

“Maybe I am. But that's my decision, not yours. She didn't ‘betray' our newspaper; she screwed up.”

“You said you love her?”

“I do,” she said, her eyes steady on mine, cigarette smoke drifting from her hand.

“And she loves you?”

“Oh, yes.”

“If you believe that, then it wasn't just
Undercurrents
she betrayed.”

She lit a new smoke with the burning end of her first one, just before she stubbed that one out in the big amber dish. Then she closed her eyes, as if to show me that she'd listen, but she was done talking.

“
Undercurrents
, that's your baby. I get that. You're the boss; you call the shots. You say she didn't betray what you started, what you stand for, I guess that's your call. But once you opened that other door—that you love her, I mean—I see how she betrayed you, too. You, the person; not you, the paper.”

“You're saying she has some kind of…relationship with whoever she disclosed the identity of that source to? Didn't you say she was making money from that, somehow? The same person who runs the hedge fund that she owns shares in? That doesn't mean—”

“She's a whore,” I said, in the same tone I'd say, “The public library is just down the street.”

“You have no right to judge her! You don't know—”

“I'm not judging her. I'm just telling you the truth. She's a whore, and she's been working you like a trick.”

She sat bolt upright, slashes of red flaring across her cheekbones. “That's talk. Words. You know what I do. So let me ask
you
. Where's the proof?”

“You haven't even wondered how I knew who you were, and where to find you?”

“I did. And it scared me. But that's not what—”

“Yeah, it is. The people who hired me have some kind of computer department—they tried to explain it to me, but it sounded like they were speaking a foreign language. There's nothing they can't trace. Including Rhonda Jayne Johnson.”

“The people who
hired
you told you…?”

“Next time she drives her little blue Audi over here for a visit, ask her how much money her magic wand makes her.”

“I don't understand what you're saying.”

“I think that's probably true. So I'll spell it out. She's a working prostitute. Her game is ‘white witch' magic. The customer says what he wants, and she turns herself into whatever that might be. Try ‘Harness the Power.' Or ‘Spoiled Brat.' Or ‘Private School,' ” I said—I wasn't going to give this one a URL she could check out in ten seconds. “The people who hired me, they said there's dozens of…roles she can play.”

“Men?”

“You're like a rat in a cement box, aren't you? You're going to find a way out even if you have to work your teeth and claws down to bleeding nubs to make an opening you can slip through. But there
is
no way out of this.

“She's a whore. She does things for money. I don't have her little black book; they didn't give that to me, because all they wanted was to stop her from getting information out of
you
.”

The cigarette was still burning slowly in her hand—the hand that never went near her mouth.

“You care about her?” I said, very softly.

“I told you,” she answered, just as softly, but with no tone in her voice. “I love her.”

“It's only your love that's keeping her alive.”

“What?!?”

“She's a blackmailer. And a couple of her regulars talked way too much. That part's not a problem, but if she found out that the age—” I bit my tongue on that last word, knowing any journalist on her level would auto-complete “agency” on their own. “Look, I was supposed to just turn off the faucet. Kill her,” I added, to take any ambiguity out of the room. “But when they found out she was connected to you, they got…twitchy.”

“I—”

“They couldn't've known about you and her, or they would have told me. But they knew this: If any member of
Undercurrents
disappeared, you'd never rest until you found out the truth.

“Nobody wants
you
dead. It's not
you
who says she'll blow the whistle on her…clients. Not what you think. It's not like she'd tell their wives or something like that. The whistle
she'd
blow, she'd blow it loud enough for the other side to hear. That can't happen. They can't know if she'd really do it, but they aren't going to take a chance.”

“I don't—”

“Yeah, you do. In another four, five weeks, the…the people who hired me won't have anything to worry about. Nothing she knows, nothing she overheard will mean a thing. She could ‘blow the whistle' all she wanted; it'd be a sour note by then. But those blackmail threats make her look like a honey trap. So if she makes a move now, you'd both have to go. If she waits,
neither
of you do…if you play it straight.”

“Meaning…?”

“Meaning this: You keep quiet for, say, a couple of months,
just to be safe. Let everything go on as it is now, except don't let her in on anything any other member of your crew turns up. And don't let her know what
you
know. About her, I mean.”

“And then?”

“And then you do what you want. You could confront her with what you know, and kick her out of your life. You could prove that you
saved
her life, too. And maybe, just maybe, that would be enough for her to see what true love is, I don't know.”

“You want me to just go on—”

“I don't care what you do. If you tell her what I told you, she's dead. Her life, it's in your hands. Whatever choice you make, we'll know soon enough.”

Her cigarette had burned down to her fingers all on its own, but if she felt the heat, she didn't show it.

I backed out of the room, then out of the house.

—

W
hen I was close enough, I popped the flash.

By the time I got to the truck, the netting was off and the driver's door was standing open. MaryLou and Franklin were outside.

“Get behind the wheel,” MaryLou said. “We'll push this down the road a little bit, so nobody in that house hears the motor start.”

It would have taken too long to explain why that wasn't needed. I climbed behind the wheel, shifted into neutral, and keyed the ignition so the power steering would kick in.

The truck started rolling. I knew Franklin was a bull, and MaryLou had real power in her legs, but I almost looked at the speedometer—the damn truck had to be moving as fast as the two of them could run carrying a pillow.

One last shove and the truck was moving on its own. As it finally floated to a stop, MaryLou caught up to my open window.

“Move over,” she said. “All the way over.”