The Tin Man (8 page)

Ben knew of what he spoke.

On top of everything else, corruption was pervasive inside the department. And most of it went unreported, undetected, and—thanks to internal politics and limited manpower—escaped investigation and prosecution. It was getting harder to tell the bad guys from the good ones and nearly impossible to get anything done. Most days, he felt like a rat running a maze.

That partnership, that corner office
—even those piles of paperwork and the endless client hiney-kissing—were starting to look pretty fucking good. After all, if he was going to be a corporate lapdog, why not pull down the big bucks instead of a chintzy government salary?

He released a deep sigh
as he shook his head. An image popped into his mind of the founding fathers spinning inside their tombs like spools on a loom. Right-wing fundamentalism had systematically eroded the pillars of democracy: freedom of speech, freedom of religion, freedom of the press, separation of church and state, trial by jury. It was a clear-cut case of the tyranny of the majority and the Spiral of Silence—the theory that someone with a minority opinion would keep quiet out of fear of reprisal or isolation.

He sucked in a breath and turned his attention back to his tel
ephone. He needed a way to warn the journalists. After all, if a techno-impaired bureaucrat like himself could find them in under a minute, so could the guys who wanted Buchanan dead. 

Buchanan, stewing inside, stared out at the passing scenery. Not that there was much worth looking at—just a straight, flat freeway and the occasional chain motel or monolithic industrial structure. Thea needn’t have worried. Even without the blindfold, he had no bloody clue where they were.

To fill the
prickly silence, Thea had tuned to a classic rock station broadcasting from someplace called Mechanicsburg-—not that he knew where that was, either. On the radio, Bob Seger was crooning. Buchanan started softly to sing along unawares.

“You have a nice voice,” she
remarked, both startling and embarrassing him.

He grunted
in contradiction and abruptly stopped singing.

They
rode without speaking for another twenty minutes before he spotted the billboard for Starbucks. By now, his nicotine craving was so bad his skin crawled.

“Take the next exit,” he
barked at her. “And make a right.”

“Will you at least let me buy you a cup of coffee
—as a peace offering?”

He glare
d at her with contempt. “Before or after you buy me another packet of ciggies?”

She looked aghast, which further frosted him.
“You can’t be serious.”

“And yet I am,
” he returned with frozen acid on his tongue.

When they reached the Starbucks, she pulled in and parked near the entrance. Before climbing out, she grabbed the briefcase he presumed held her laptop. He checked his
Glock, making sure it was secure, before climbing out himself. He slammed the door and looked around. Seeing a gas station across the parking lot, he motioned toward it.

“You can get the
ciggies over there,” he told her, then nodded toward Starbucks. “I’ll be waiting for you inside.”

He held out his hand for the briefcase
, but she just stood there looking insolent. “You’re seriously going to make me go all the way over there and buy you a fucking pack of cigarettes?”

By now,
he was fed up with her imperious attitude. “And you seriously thought I wouldn’t? And why would that be, eh? Because you’re a woman? Or perhaps you’re just a sanctimonious ball-buster who thinks she can do as she bloody well pleases because, through some fluke of genetics, she happens to be easy on the eyes.”

“F
rankly,” she returned, eyes narrowing, “I’m astonished you noticed.”

“Noticed what?”

“That I’m not the second coming of Medusa.” Both her tone and her eyes were full of venom.

“It was an observation, not a compliment.”
He stood there for a moment, fixing her with a steely gaze. Christ, she really was beautiful. “You’re attractive, all right? But so fucking what? The minute you open your mouth, the packaging goes to hell.”

She stammered wordlessly for a moment, before
spitting the words “Fuck you” like they were rusty nails, after which she turned on her heel and stalked off toward the gas station, grumbling what sounded to him like colorful expletives.

He watch
ed her, anger simmering, fighting to regain his composure. She was a self-righteous shrew all right, but he was saddled with her for now. Did he really want to spend that time bickering like an old married couple?

Hell, no.

Lifting his voice, he called after her, “Do you fancy a coffee?”

She
rounded on him. “That’s mighty white of you, Scotty.”

H
is jaw tensed. He loathed being referred to as that wanking engineer from Star Trek even more than he despised being called “Shrek,” but he suspected she knew that. Through clenched teeth, he asked, “Do you want one or not?”

“
Only if you’re buying.”

He shook his head.
“What’ll you have then?”

“
A grande raspberry mocha frap with extra whip.”

“
Bloody hell,” he muttered, rolling his eyes as he pivoted toward the entrance. “I hope I can remember all that.”

I
nside, he ordered the drinks, praying he got hers right. As he paid the barista—

a
peelie-wally lad with shaggy brown hair—he asked, “And just where the bloody hell are we, eh?”

“Lancaster County
.”

Buchanan squinted at the lad
, uncomprehending. “And where the devil might that be?”

The
young man grinned like a bloody lunatic. “Amish country, dude.”

* * * *

Ten minutes later, Thea came through the door, still looking put out, and tossed the cigarettes on the table. Plopping in the chair opposite Buchanan’s, she said, “Cancer sticks are ridiculously expensive.”

“Another reason not to go chucking them out of windows,
aye?” He kept his focus on the screen, where he’d been scanning the many comments on this morning’s editorial.

Posted by Jefferson Junkie (2 hours ago)

Thomas Jefferson wrote: “The basis of our government being the opinion of the people, the very first object should be to keep that right; and were it left to me to decide whether we should have a government without newspapers or newspapers without a government, I should not hesitate a moment to prefer the latter. But I should mean that every man should receive those papers and be capable of reading them.”

Buchanan
was familiar with the quote and understood what Jefferson was trying to say. Namely, that two things were essential to the survival of a free, self-governing society: the first was a literate, educated, and enlightened citizenry; the second, a press that was free to investigate and criticize the government.

Sadly, the United States no longer could claim either of those things.
More and more, American newspapers were becoming like the state-run propaganda mills of non-democratic nations—countries where journalists who dared to report outside the party line were often intimidated—through threats, abduction, torture, and/or assassination.

Perhaps the
intimidation tactics here weren’t quite so drastic, but there were other, subtler forms of censorship, weren’t there? Discrimination in hiring, fear of reprisal, pressure to comply with company policies. In other words, everyday life inside the shark-tank atmosphere of corporate-run newsrooms. Not exactly a model conducive to press freedoms, eh?

He looked up, meeting
Thea’s scorching gaze, which he’d felt on his face all the while he was reading. “Did you know that the U.S. has fallen to fortieth place on the World Press Freedom Index?”

The index was a global ranking released annually by the NGO Reporters
without Borders.

Thea
nodded, but offered no comment.

“I’m just saying
,” he continued with rising ire. “If we supposedly believe in freedom of the press, how can we justify such an abysmal ranking?”

“I
totally agree,” she said. “And it infuriates me, too. No end. But what can we do?”

“We can keep fighting
the tyrants. That’s what we can do.”

H
e returned to the comments, his heart flaring with alarm when he saw the message from Lapdog:
Big Brother is watching. Fly under the radar.

He looked at
Thea, who was now using the straw to eat the whipped cream floating on her drink. The sight of it made his groin tingle with interest—a surprising sensation he didn’t welcome under the circumstances.

“
My source says we’re being watched,” he said, squirming in the hard chair, “and that we need to lay low. We should probably replace the SIM cards in our phones with a couple of pre-paid ones we don’t have to register.”

He
’d done that in the airport when he first arrived in New York—to avoid the astronomical international roaming charges.

“And where are we supposed to get
new SIM cards?” she asked, frowning at him.

“Any number of places,”
he said with a shrug. “Best Buy, Radio Shack, AT&T. You can even buy them on E-bay—not that we have time for that.” He twisted around to face the barista. “Would there be a Radio Shack anywhere hereabouts?”

“There’s one up in Clover,” the kid said
, pointing northwest. “That’s not too far.”

“Can you draw me a map?”

“Why not use the GPS?” Thea put in.

“Because,” he said,
turning back to her, “not unlike our phones, it’s a bloody tracking device.”

* * * *

Clover, Buchanan observed while riding shotgun in his own SUV, had all the trappings of the quintessential small town in Middle America: a Dairy Queen, an old-fashioned movie theatre with a lighted marquee, a farmer’s market, a grange, a VFW, and a Hampton Inn & Suites.

Using the kid’s map,
they located the Radio Shack and, while Thea waited in the car, he scored what he needed. Back in the passenger seat, he popped in the new cards and lit a cigarette while considering what to do with the old ones. He was reasonably certain no one could trace a SIM card that wasn’t installed, but he wasn’t positive. Still, he hated to lose all his stored contacts and messages. Deciding to take his chances, he stuck the old card inside the cellophane wrapper on his cigarette box and tossed it on the dash.

“Aren’t you the least bit afraid of getting lung cancer?”

Irritation narrowed his eyes as he hit the gas and steered toward the driveway on the main road. “We’ve all got to go sometime.”

“Well, if you’re not afraid, you should be
,” she said with a huff. “Because more people died last year from lung cancer than from all other forms of cancer combined.”

Jesus wept. What was she, a
paid spokesperson for the American Fucking Lung Association? “And you know this because…?”

“Let’s just say I
make it my business to keep tabs on the sins of Big Tobacco,” she replied.

He
snorted with derision. “If you’re not careful, that could turn into a full-time job.”

“And yet
,” she scoffed, “you support their malfeasance by smoking.”

He shook his head in dismay.
“I thought we agreed you weren’t going to hassle me about that.”

She
snorted with amusement. “You said you didn’t want any
shite
, but I never agreed not to give it to you.”

H
e muttered under his breath as he pulled out onto the main drag, heading back the way they came. Within a few minutes, they were out of Clover and barreling through the countryside, which, except for a few scattered farms and trees, was flat and empty.

“What is it with you, anyway?
” he asked, shooting her a look. “Why are you so bloody militant when it comes to smoking?”

“
Well, if you must know,” she said, licking her lips, “my mother died last year from lung cancer.”

Jesus wept. Now
he felt like a real prick.

“I’m sorry to be such a shrew,” she
offered, her voice thick with emotion, “but I can’t just sit by and watch you kill yourself.”

“I’m touched,” he said,
puzzled as to why she should care, “but the way things are going, I won’t be around long enough to worry about cancer.”

She
shot him a reproachful glare. “How can you be so glib about it? Eight people are dead—people you knew. People who worked for you. And
you
—that is to say,
we
—may well be next. And yet, you act as if—”