Watching You
The lunchtime crowd in the Union League’s elegant dining room had been gossiping about the improbable couple long before the yelling started. He was Chris Faber, the local news TV anchorman, and in his usual Armani suit, white shirt and striped tie, he might have otherwise gone unnoticed in the surrounding herd of bankers, politicians and lawyers. His blond hair sported a razor-line part and topped a gaunt, boyish face that was beginning to betray the first lines of middle age. Set before him was a hard roll, a half-finished salad and an empty highball glass. Chris hadn’t been seen at the club for months (not surprising, given his top billing on the Delinquent Accounts list posted in the lobby), but what was really buzzing the room was his companion. She wasn’t another of the post-divorce bimbos that he’d paraded in and out of the club with depressing regularity. This one had strutted into the century-old main dining room like she owned it, a short, beach-ball shaped woman dressed in a stained khaki blazer and blue polyester slacks. No one could place her, despite her pocked, moonscape face and graying hair that stuck-out from her head like a chemical warfare injury. A nearby Philadelphia City Councilman opined that while it was too bad Chris had hit a rough patch, couldn’t he take his tacky new friends somewhere else to eat?
“Why not talk about my contract?” Chris asked.
His guest looked around at the other tables, conscious of the growing attention. “Do we have to do this here? Now?”
“Here?” he said mimicking her, his voice starting to carry. “Now?”
“Why are you upset?”
“Upset! What the hell makes you think that?”
As if on cue, their white haired waiter appeared at Chris’s side. “May I interrupt—” he began.
“No.”
“Sir, there’s a call for you.”
“Take a message,” Chris growled, eyes fixed on his guest.
“The caller’s insistent. Perhaps if you were—”
Chris glanced up. “If I have to talk to the club manager, your next job’s going to be at the McDonald’s down the street.”
“I’m sure the manager will be delighted to speak with you, particularly about your past due account.” The waiter swallowed a smirk. “I’ll tell the caller you’re unavailable.”
Chris turned back to his guest. “What’s your answer?”
Jeannie Stanley sat back in her chair. A newcomer to Philadelphia, she’d been WDLV’s news director for almost six months. Hired to turnaround the TV station’s perennially last-ranked news operation, she’d jumped at Chris’s unexpected invitation to meet her for lunch at the city’s most venerable watering hole. What she hadn’t expected was for the meal to turn into a negotiation.
“I want to talk about something else first.” She pointed at his empty glass. “That’s your third vodka-and-tonic, isn’t it?”
“Since lunch?” He picked it up and looked at it. “I think it’s my fourth.”
“Not funny.” She leaned forward and lowered her voice. “Before I hired you, you said your drinking problems were over.”
“They are.”
“You’ve been on-board four months. Name one day that you’ve showed up for work on time and stone sober.”
“I’d have to look back at my calendar.”
“Cut the crap. You said you’d give me the kind of investigative reporting that once put three Emmys on your shelf. What I’ve gotten is just another meat-puppet. I’ll grant you—you read the news better than most. But your stand-up reports have been near-catatonic and you’ve yet to write one line of copy, let alone work a lead.” She stopped and frowned. “I’m sorry. I really am.”
“Bitch!” Chris hammered the tabletop with his fist. “You’re like all the other news directors in this goddamn town. Hire me, get the ratings up and then dump me. Well, fuck that!”
Jeannie sat motionless, grim-faced. The room had hushed. Water dripped from a water goblet that had fallen over and broken against a plate. All around heads were turned, the grazing herd startled by the violence erupting in their midst.
“Chris,” she whispered. “I’m going to pretend I didn’t hear that. Just this once. So listen to me. Your contract’s up in sixty days. Station general management doesn’t know anything about the booze, so they’re going to ask me what I want to do with you. If you want the contract extended, get some help, get sober and show me the kind of reporter you really are.”
She got up from the table. “Thanks for lunch. I’ll see you back at the office.”
Sometime after she left, the waiter reappeared and placed a message slip on the table. Chris snatched it up:
Watching You
“What the hell is this?”"The caller wouldn’t leave his name, just that message,” the waiter offered apologetically. He paused to survey the broken glass and soaking-wet tablecloth. “Would you care for some more water, sir?”
“No.” Chris stuffed the message in his shirt pocket and lifted his vodka-and-tonic glass. “Get me another one of these.”
A few hours later Chris made his first appearance of the day at the City Line Avenue studios of WDLV. His office was a stark, window-less box, the walls bare and white except for a clock facing the desk. Copy for tonight’s ‘News at Six’ broadcast waited in the otherwise empty in-bin, but with only ten minutes before make-up, he’d spread out the newspaper and was immersed in last night’s Phillies doubleheader.The ringing telephone startled him. Since joining WDLV he’d gotten few calls, especially now that his creditors preferred to track him down in person. Could it be Jeannie?”Hello?” he said.
“Chris Faber?”
“Speaking.”
“There you are. Can we talk?” The voice was high pitched, but unmistakably masculine.
Chris looked down at his newspaper. “Sure, go ahead.”
“Not on the phone. It’s not safe.”
“Why?”
“They might be listening.”
“I don’t know who you are,” Chris said turning to hang-up, “but I’ve got better things to do. Good bye.”
“Wait! It’s about Carolyn Ford.”
Chris stopped. Carolyn Ford had been WDLV’s lead news story for over a month. The attractive coed had been the salutatorian of her undergraduate class at Harvard and accepted at the University of Pennsylvania’s medical school—a kind of fairy tale story for a black, god-fearing girl from a broken home in the Kensington section of the city. But shortly after moving into a West Philadelphia apartment, she was found tortured to death by an unknown assailant.
Jeannie had looked at the bloody crime scene footage and seen a ratings bonanza. “From now on we’re going to be all Carolyn Ford, all the time,” she’d proclaimed. A relentless flurry of bulletins, stand-up reports, live police press conferences and interviews with grieving family members followed. And when there had been no news, they’d made their own: Two weeks after the murder, Chris led-off ‘News at Six’ with the announcement that WDLV and Penn were posting a fifty thousand-dollar reward for the killer’s capture. One local TV critic had called WDLV’s coverage ‘pandering barbarism,’ but so far the campaign had spiked the station’s ratings almost four points.
“Is this about the reward?” Chris began—
“Carolyn wasn’t the sweet little girl you talked about on the news. She was a slut. A whore.”
Chris swallowed. Big stories always attract their share of harmless cranks. But this whining voice and its sing-song lilt was making the hairs on the back of his neck stand on end. It stirred almost-forgotten instincts, even as he wished he had a drink.
“Hello?” The voice sounded annoyed at Chris’s silence.
“Can you hold?” Chris opened a drawer and found a pen. Then he pulled out the message slip from the Union League and spread it face-side down on the desk. “Your name, sir?”
“Not so fast. I want to tell my story on TV.”
“Surprise me,” Chris said, surprised by the bitterness in his own voice. “What makes your story so damn good?”
“I know…I know what he was thinking when he killed her.”
“That’s it?”
“There’s more,” he said, the voice growing faint. “About me. About everything.”
“How do I know that you’re not some kind of nut?”
“Let me think.” He paused for a moment. “Okay, okay. You didn’t say anything in the news about her nails.”
“What about them?”
“He ripped out her fingernails. And ate them. One by one.”
Chris put the pen down, the back of his throat filling with something hot and acid. “I’ll have to check this,” he said, swallowing.
“Okay.” The voice sounded disappointed. “I’ll be in touch.”
The line went dead.
Chris hung up the phone and started tapping his pen on the desk, debating whether he should open his desk drawer and get out his backup fifth—a plastic water bottle full of Stolinoycha vodka. It was his usual fallback at moments like this, but for the first time in a long while, the drawer stayed closed.
The call was probably a hoax. But what if that creepy voice knew something? Any new tidbit about the murder would help feed WDLV’s ratings. And if this guy’s story was juicy enough, it might even mean another Emmy nomination. Jeannie would crawl back to him on her hands and knees.
There was a picture on his empty credenza, a sensitive looking boy maybe twelve or thirteen years old standing at attention in his Valley Forge Military Academy uniform. It had been months since Chris had seen his son, even though the boarding school was only twenty-minutes away. And how many times in the past year had he’d started to pick up the phone and call his ex-wife? Right now Emma and the boy were in Maine for the summer. When this was all over, he thought, maybe I should go and see them.
Chris felt exhilarated as the elevator creaked upwards. It’d been years since he’d been in the Roundhouse, the squat circle of concrete that was Philadelphia Police headquarters. But even at eight in the evening, all it still took to get past the cop in the lobby (”Hey, aren’t you Chris Faber?”) was a casual wave of his long-expired press pass. Riding alone up to the third floor, carefully standing away from a pool of urine in one corner of the car, he already felt right at home.At this time of evening, the homicide unit’s squad room was almost deserted. Chris paused inside, but the half-dozen men and woman on duty were all on the phone or buried in paperwork, oblivious to his arrival. Private offices lined the far side of the room, and Chris headed for the one in the corner.The name plate on the open door read ‘Lt. John McGarrity.’ Inside, a man leaned over a conference table, his gaze riveted to an open three ring binder. He was a bear: tall, broad, his skin a mocha-brown that glistened under the room’s wan fluorescent lights. A pair of wire rim glasses perched low on his nose.”John?” Chris began. “How long has it been?”
The man looked up, surprised. “Who let you in?”
“My sources say you’ve got the Carolyn Ford murder?”
“Where the hell is your escort from Media Relations?”
“I’ll take that as a yes. I need to talk to you about the case, on background, not for attribution or publication.”
“Close the door on your way out.”
“Listen—”
“Do I have to call an officer?”
“I got an anonymous phone call this afternoon about the case. Did the killer tear her fingernails off?”
McGarrity’s eyes widened. “When was this call? And where?”
“Five-thirty this afternoon. At WDLV.”
“A male caller?”
Chris smiled. It hadn’t taken long to draw McGarrity out. “Male.”
“What exactly did he say?”
“That the killer tore off Carolyn Ford’s fingernails and ate them.”
McGarrity stood up a little straighter, at first his face expressionless, then as he picked up a file off the corner of the conference table and started leafing through it, a grim smile slowly appearing. When he found what he wanted, glossy 8 X 10, he looked at Chris, lips pursed, the photo limp in his hand above the table.
“This is on background?” McGarrity asked softly, as if suddenly aware of the officers outside. “Not for attribution or publication?”
“Come on, we’ve done this before.”
“The last time I talked to you on background it took about two hours for my comments to end up being read on a live news bulletin.”
Chris cocked his head, surprised. “I don’t remember that.”
“I do. You took me out to lunch. I had a burger and a beer. You had a pitcher of martinis.” McGarrity sighed. “You still drinking?”
“I quit.”
“Since when?”
“Since three o’clock this afternoon.”
McGarrity laughed. “I must be completely insane.”
Still grinning, he handed over the 8 X 10. It was a medical examiner’s photo of a woman’s hands. Chris looked at the image and once more hot, sour gorge surged in his throat.
“There’s a lot of blood, here,” Chris said.
“She was alive when he pulled her nails off.”
Chris dropped the picture back on the table, but couldn’t take his eyes from it.
“When is this guy calling you back?” McGarrity said.
“I don’t know.”
“Don’t bullshit me.”
“He didn’t say.” Chris lifted his eyes. “You don’t have any suspects, do you?”
“You’re screwing around with someone incredibly dangerous.”
“What? An anonymous phone call?”
McGarrity went around to the other side of his desk and picked up a notebook. “I’ve got some more questions for you.” He turned his hand up and made a come-to-me gesture, a predator’s invitation. “Sit down. Stay a while.”
Chris expected McGarrity’s interrogation would charbroil him, but to his surprise the detective seemed interested in little more than eliciting a what-when-where recitation of fact. The McGarrity of years depended more on hard back chairs and hot lights. But Chris’s curiosity about this out-of-character turn quickly faded, and by the time he returned to his car he was rehearsing his Emmy acceptance speech.He’d parked his six-year-old Mercedes in an Inspector’s reserved slot, so he wasn’t surprised to find a piece of paper stuck under the windshield wiper. But instead of a ticket, it was a handwritten note:
Bring a cameraman or no interview.
Watching You
Chris stared at the signature, his heart pounding in his ears. Trying to be nonchalant, he glanced up. The half-empty lot was deserted, the parked cars glaring row after row under the bright streetlights. He reached into his shirt pocket and pulled out the message slip from the Union League. What he hoped was that the boozy lunch was playing tricks with his memory, but he knew that his worse fears would be realized when he looked at the waiter’s neat script.My God, he’s been following me all day!
Chris leaned over the car’s fender, bent over by nausea. Why me? Why me? He wanted to run back inside and throw himself at McGarrity’s feet. He wanted to go back to his apartment, lock the doors and crawl into bed. He wanted a drink.
After a while the queasiness subsided. Chris stood up and slowly surveyed the parking lot in all directions. It felt pointless, there were hundreds of hiding places—under cars, behind shrubs, even in the shadows of Police Headquarters—from which to stalk him out here in the open. Finally, knowing what he had to do next, Chris got back into his car and minutes later was on the Schuykill Expressway, safe, another anonymous set of headlights lost in the stream of evening traffic.
“Run this by me again?”Chris was standing in front of Jeannie’s paper strewn desk, feeling like a schoolboy come to beg a favor from the principal. The aftermath of their lunch earlier that day lingered in the air between them.”I’ve got a witness that says someone came out of Carolyn Ford’s apartment around the time of the murder.”Her eyes crinkled. “This guy wants to meet you there at one in the morning?”
“I don’t like it either. But I need a camera crew.”
“The problem is that I just sent the chopper and both night shift crews to a paint warehouse fire in north Philadelphia.”
“That’ll be good footage,” he admitted.
“Good? If we play it right, it’ll be a newsgasm.” She paused, then rustled under a pile and pulled out a notebook. “Still, we need a fresh Carolyn Ford piece. I just signed-up a new freelance cameraman. Let’s see if he likes the nightshift.”
After she made the call, an awkward silence followed.
“You know,” Chris said, speaking first, “after a lunch like the one we had today, I usually get fired.”
“Well, I thought about it. But you need to know a couple of things. The happiest day of my life was when my dad stopped drinking.”
“He was an alcoholic?”
She nodded.
“What’s the second thing I need to know?”
“I haven’t hired your replacement yet.”
“This’ll be c-c-close! H-h-hang on.”Chris’s felt himself jerk upwards as the van hit the rise at Market Street. He was on the passenger side, his seat belt fastened and both hands above his head wrapped around the grip handle. The truck roared through the intersection, braked hard and lurched down a side street.”That was a red light,” Chris observed.”W-w-we’re almost there, d-d-don’t worry.”
Chris fell back in his seat.
The scrawny kid behind the wheel had shown up at the station a little after midnight. At first Chris thought the stutter was just nervousness at being brought into the presence of the Emmy-winning news anchor. But as Paulie Sporkin kept talking and talking it became painfully obvious that this was a full-blown speech impediment. But if his words were halting, his driving wasn’t. Chris had given Paulie no more than the address and the meeting time and the kid got behind the wheel and went berserk, careening down the Schuykill at ninety miles an hour and finding shortcuts up and down obscure back alleys.
“Th-th-this is it.” The truck suddenly slowed, then swerved to the right.
“Park over there, near the fire hydrant.”
The truck pulled in and jerked to a halt. Chris sat there a moment, collecting himself before he spoke.
“Okay, bring the camera, tripod, lights and a boom mike.”
“We’re interviewing s-s-someone?”
Chris ignored him and got out into the warm night air. They were on a side street just off of Locust near 44th. Carolyn Ford’s apartment was a few steps down the broken sidewalk. He’d done stand-up reports here, but then the street had been alive with news crews, cops and onlookers. Now, at night and with a boy-cameraman who would probably swoon at the first hint of trouble, he wondered if this was such a brilliant idea after all.
Looming rowhouses lined the narrow strip of pavement, each a small island of porches and tall windows, post-war artifacts that had long ago been chopped up into student apartments. The harsh orange of a single streetlight struggled not to be lost in the branches of a nearby tree that swayed gently in the late summer breeze. Except for a car passing by the cross street behind them, they might have been entirely alone. Chris turned a circle, trying to see something, anything in the shadows.
He took a deep breath, annoyed that he’d left the back-up fifth back in his desk. Had it been almost twelve hours since he’d had a drink? He was starting to feel shaky, even a little sick.
“Do we really n-n-need all this g-g-gear?” Paulie asked, his voice jarring in the nighttime hush.
“Bring it all.”
Chris started down the walk, drawn to a small, two-story apartment house, a 1970s-circa block of soulless brick standing apart from its older, more homey neighbors. Once eight people had lived here, but after the murder the other tenants had fled.
“Hey,” Paulie called from down the street. “That g-girl got hacked up here, didn’t she?”
Chris ascended the stairs onto the narrow porch. It was hard to see, but the yellow and black police tape that had crisscrossed the front door had been torn down, its remnants curled across the narrow porch like the shed skin of an enormous snake. He looked closely at the front door, then put his hand up and gently pushed it open. The dim streetlight pushed against the gloom, but he could make out almost nothing of the hallway on the other side.
Paulie bumped into him from behind. “W-what’s the matter?”
“This door’s supposed to be locked.”
“Someone expecting us?”
Chris turned. Paulie had the camera hoisted up to one shoulder and over the other he had a large accessories bag.
“Give me lights. Start rolling.”
“I’ll need both hands.”
Chris eased the equipment bag off Paulie’s shoulder and put it up on his own. As he turned away the portable light erupted, a flare of electric-blue radiance that cast harsh, jerking shadows into the hallway.
“We’re rolling, Mr. Faber.”
Conscious now of the lens, Chris squatted down. He ran his hands over the smooth, unbroken doorjamb and then spoke for the camera. “It doesn’t appear that the door was forced.”
“Maybe he had a key.”
Chris glanced up into the glare. Bad enough his cameraman was a chatterbox, his inane comments could be edited out. What was it about Paulie’s voice? He almost said something, but instead got up and led them down the narrow hallway that he knew from previous visits led to Carolyn Ford’s apartment. He paused at a light switch and clicked it uselessly and forth.
“He must have pulled the bulb,” Paulie said.
Chris’s feet were moving, taking him towards the wide-open door to the apartment, but they felt far away, as if they belonged to someone else. Sheer inertia carried him past the dread and the dawning realization, but it wasn’t until they were in the apartment’s tiny living room that he found the courage to turn around.
“Just who the hell are you?” he said.
“I was wondering when you’d figure it out.”
That voice, that familiar voice coming from behind the glare. For a moment Chris wondered if someone else had jumped in behind the camera while his back was turned.
“Where’s your stutter, Paulie?”
“Paulie stutters. I don’t. My name is Paul. And I’ve been watching you on ‘News at Six’ from the start.”
Chris fell back, the nausea that had been circling round him for hours hammering him square in the stomach. The accessory bag fell from his shoulder and crashed to the floor, but it registered against his racing thoughts as little more than a distant bump.
I’ve got to keep him talking.
“Okay. Paul. Why do you like the show so much?”
“After I, I mean—” Paulie stopped, as if catching his breath. “After Carolyn died, you were the only reporter that stayed with the story. Every night, you never let go, always something new. I started taping your reports to make sure I didn’t miss anything. And then, when you announced the reward, I knew. You were different. Not like the others. You really wanted to find me, didn’t you?”
“Well, maybe not this badly.” Chris nodded at the camera. “Know how to use that thing?”
“I’ve got twelve credits to go for my broadcasting degree.”
“You’re a student? Is that how you met Carolyn Ford?”
The light, growing more unbearable by the moment, dipped a bit. “No. I first saw her, uh, on the street. She looked so much like someone I once knew…”
Chris spoke into the lengthening silence. “How long have you been freelance at the station?”
“Since last week. I wanted to meet you.” The voice behind the camera paused. “That warehouse fire in north Philadelphia? All it took was a jug of gas to start it. I had to do something to tie up the regular camera crews, didn’t I?”
Chris shook his head against the nausea, smiling.
“What’s so funny?”
“It just occurred to me that none of this would have happened if I hadn’t decided to stop drinking.”
Chris turned away. The room had been carefully prepared. A hard-backed wooden chair had been pushed over in front of a bookcase, the end table next to it thoughtfully set with a carafe of water and a glass. About three steps away from the chair there were a series of taped Xs on the hardwood floor, blocking marks where to set-up the tripod. The curtains had been drawn and sealed with tape.
From behind the camera, a series of sharp metallic clicks: a tripod’s legs being extended and the camera being mounted. Chris turned around, the light still blinding him. “You want me to interview you here?”
“Change in plans.” Paulie’s voice seemed to be coming from farther back, near the door. “You’re the one that’s going on camera.”
“That’s not a good idea.”
More metal-on-metal clicks: the door being shut, the deadbolt turned.
Chris started coming around the other side of the tripod. “Paulie, listen to me, I think—”
“NO! NO! NO!”
Something hard cracked across the side of Chris’s head, an explosion of sparks behind his eyes that slammed him sprawling to the floor.
“IT’S PAUL, DO YOU UNDERSTAND! PAUL! PAULIE’S DEAD!”
Chris felt himself being dragged, as if the blow from out of nowhere had now fully separated him from his body.
“I told her. I’m telling you,” Paulie said, his words coming in sing-song clips. “Don’t think. I just want you to love me. That’s all. That’s all!”
Chris was awed by the Zen-like calm that had enveloped him, wrapping him up in a soft, reassuring blanket even as his limp body was pulled up into the armchair. Head rolling, eyes unable to focus, something wet dripping down the side of his chin, Chris felt first his chest, then his forearms being strapped tight to the chair. The cracking noise was familiar, but it took a moment to recognize it: duct tape.
“We’re the only people in the word that really cared about Carolyn,” Paulie continued. “This is for her, remember that.”
Sometime later (seconds? minutes? hours?) Chris raised his head, the fog lifting, the pain across the side of his head nearing an impossible crescendo. He couldn’t move. The loops of tape binding him to the chair cut into his arms like steel cables. Blood dripped down the left side of his head onto his shirt. A single table lamp had been switched on, giving shape to a collection of used furniture and faded wallpaper.
Paulie was close now, his attention on the end table as he laid out his tools. Each was carefully removed from the equipment bag, examined as if being inspected for the most microscopic of flaws and then placed on the end table. First, a Philips head screwdriver; next, a curved linoleum knife; and, last, a gleaming set of needle nose pliers.
“Please,” Chris whispered.
“Don’t be afraid.”
“I thought you were going to tell me what the killer was thinking?”
“I changed my mind. This is what I really want to do.”
Paulie stepped back from the end table and then, with the arching grace of a stretching cat, carefully peeled off his tee shirt and let it drop to the floor. He knelt down next to the end table, gaze fixed on his implements, sweat gleaming off his ribs. When he stood, he had something in his hand.
“There’s a picture of Carolyn with her family up on the bookcase behind you, did you notice? The camera will catch it over your right shoulder.” He paused, disappointed that his stagecraft was unappreciated. “I mean, the station needs a fresh story on Carolyn Ford, doesn’t it?”
Chris started laughing, the throbbing in his head almost unbearable. “You sound just like a news director I know.”
“A news director?” Paulie held up the needle nose pliers. “I guess I am a kind of news director, aren’t I?”
Face blank, he bent over and slapped a strip of duct tape over Chris’s mouth.
Chris looked away, fear eviscerating any last hope of escape. The waves of guilt and regret that followed were so vivid, so searing that he found himself grinding his teeth, eyes screwed up, every muscle in his body thrown back against his bonds. The first cold touch of the pliers being placed against the tip of his thumb almost didn’t even register.
The pain came—grinding, tearing, like liquid fire, white light exploding behind his still clenched eyelids.
“Omphh,” he moaned, the sound muffled by the tape across his lips.
He could feel warm blood running across the back of his hand, even as he strained against the tape binding his wrist against the arm of the chair. He opened his eyes. Forced himself to look down at his right hand. There wasn’t much to see—lots of blood, and where his thumbnail should have been, a raw bleeding hole. Funny, it didn’t look at all like the picture McGarrity had shown him.
“Rest up,” Paulie said from behind the lights. It sounded like he was chewing something. “This is going take a while.”
Chris was never sure whether it was at that moment or sometime later that he heard the voices outside. Of course, it had to have been later. Five more fingernails didn’t decide by themselves to take leave of his fingertips.
What he remembered was muffled voices, a tremendous CRACK as the apartment door burst open, locks ripped from the wall. Then the TV lights fell over, bulbs popping in a blinding flash. Someone was yelling, unintelligible shouts against a wall of pain. It seemed better to simply close his eyes against it.
“NO, NO, I’M NOT FINISHED!”
Then, a few moments later, a familiar voice, very close.
“Oh my God.”
The tape ripped across his mouth and Chris found himself gazing up, wondering how it could possibly get any worse.
It was McGarrity, face ashen, bloodstains on his white shirt. He had the strip of duct tape in one hand, a small pocketknife in the other. Behind him, the room seemed to be full with cops. A knot of them of them were struggling to pull someone to his feet near the broken doorway.
“Chris, I’m sorry,” the cop whispered. He bent down and started cutting Chris out of the chair. “When we lost you at Market Street we had to track down your news director and find out where you were going.”
“Wh-what are talking about?” Chris said hoarsely.
McGarrity didn’t look up. “Your chat with Carolyn Ford’s killer was the first break we got on this case. Did you think that I was going to let you out of my sight? We’ve been tailing you ever since you left the Roundhouse.”
“What’s this bullshit!” Chris tossed the newspaper towards the foot of his hospital bed.Stepping out of harms way, Jeannie frowned and crossed her arms. A manila envelope dangled from her fingers.”Maybe you—”
“McGarrity set me up,” Chris interrupted. “He didn’t shove a fishhook through my head, but the result was the same. He sent me out of his office as bait. Now the papers are saying that I was in on it from the start, that I agreed to be followed. Who gave them that story?”
Jeannie didn’t reply. Four days earlier McGarrity’s frantic call to the station had been her first inkling that Chris had been off on more than a wild goose chase. He should have been out of bed by now, but instead her anchorman was a bed-ridden shambles. His always-perfect hair was matted off to one side where they had taped a gauze bandage high on his forehead. There were dark circles under his eyes and the stubble on his chin glistened with perspiration. Two IVs were set up, one saline, the other running antibiotics. His right hand was wrapped in a yellow-stained bandage, an ugly drain tube sticking out from between the folds. Every so often his left hand, only the thumb bandaged, began twitching uncontrollably.
“You picked a great time to sober up,” she said.
“Why not now?” he rasped. “No one’s going to ask why I’m spending a few days in the hospital. And this damn infection isn’t going away by itself. Now are you going to answer my question?”
“What would you have done?” she said. “I talked to McGarrity at the scene. He was planning a press conference where he was going to paint you as a lying, self-destructive alcoholic. So I asked him how he’d like to be sued by WDLV for recklessly endangering your sorry ass. We talked it over and decided the better story for both the police department and WDLV was the one where you were the hero.”
Chris took a breath, trying hard not to vomit up the quarter cup of ice chips that he’d consumed in the past hour. More than being sicker than he’d ever been in his entire life, he was angry, angry at McGarrity, at Jeannie, at himself, at the condescending doctors and nurses who shared his secret. And he was afraid, not of Paulie Sporkin, who was under round-the-clock guard in a forensic psychiatric unit, but afraid that he would be unable to hold together the torn-up pieces that were all that was left of his life.
“Any reports in the press about my, uh, condition.”
“About the detox? Not a word. It’s helped that you had the phone pulled out of your room. But the cops are annoyed that you refuse to let them question you.”
He shook his head. “I’m not ready for them, yet. So what’s so important that you had to see me?”
She held up the manila envelope, face stoic. “This is a one year contract renewal. There’s a signing bonus and a thirty percent salary increase.”
He smiled against the nausea. “What’s the catch?”
“There is no catch. Sign it and you’ve got another year as the anchor of ‘News at Six.’”
“Wait a minute,” he said. “General management put you up to this, didn’t they? I nail the big story, I’m in the hospital recovering and they tell you to re-sign me before the competition starts knocking on my door.”
“Interpret it any way you want. Just understand one thing—I’m not going to cut you any more slack. There’s a new moral turpitude clause in this contract. Read it. It’s going to be my new best friend. Fall off the wagon after this, and there won’t be a convenient cover story to keep the delicate facts from becoming public.”
She tossed the envelope on the bed.
“Emma called me this morning,” she continued. “She and your son have come back from Maine, they want to see you. You should give them a call.”
“I can’t let them see me—”
“Oh, come on,” she said softly. “Do you think they’ll be surprised about what’s really going in here?”
He looked away.
“I’m going now, but tomorrow afternoon I’m bringing a camera crew in to interview you.”
“I don’t know if I can do it.”
“What, the interview?”
“Any of this.”
“It’s showtime, Chris,” she said without sympathy. “First day of the rest of your life and all that, and if you’ve got any questions, consult your little twelve step manual. You’ll do fine. And make just make sure that before we come here tomorrow, you talk to the police. McGarrity will lead the questioning. You’ll have no problems.”
After she left he sat motionless. The envelope on the bed beckoned to be opened, the crisp white pages contained within the talismans of his victory. Or he could drag in the duty nurse and they could argue about whether it was time to give him another pill for the constant pain that seared his ruined fingertips like an open flame. Or he could call Emma, the number for her new Bucks County horse farm long memorized, but rarely used. It took a long while to decide, but finally he reached over with his good hand and awkwardly pressed the call button.
The nurse came immediately, an enormous, no-nonsense black woman in green scrubs. She looked at him warily.
“What do you need, Mr. Faber?”
“How about a vodka-and-tonic?”
She lowered her chin, eyes narrowed.
“Never mind,” he continued. “I want you to bring the phone back in. I need to take some calls.”