Andrew Klavan - True Crime

“Yeah, yeah, yeah.”

“I mean it, Alan. I gave Steve very specific instructions on this. I wanted a human interest sidebar, that’s it, that’s all. The paper made promises to Plunkitt …”

“The guy’s innocent!” I said, jabbing the cigarette at him.

“Oh …” Smirking, Bob rolled his eyes. He turned his back on me.

I felt my blood go hot. “He is!” I said to his back. “Bob. It’s not a human interest sidebar! It’s a cruci-fucking-fiction, man! What did you want me to say to him, ‘How’s the weather up there, Mr. Christ?’ ” I pulled a notebook out of my back pocket. I tossed it onto Alan’s desk. “Look, I got all that personal … crap you wanted. He believes in God. He’s going to heaven. He’s happy as a pig in shit, all right? He can’t wait to be juiced. It’s all in there. You can use that in the sidebar.”

Bob bowed his head as if sadly. “That’s not the point.”

“You bet it’s not the point.”

“Well,” Alan said to him, “look. We’ll take Everett off the execution. Okay? Everett, you’re off the execution. We’ll put Harvey on the execution. That’s what you wanted in the first place, isn’t it”

“Yes,” said Bob, “but that’s still not the point.”

“Yeah, well, we all know what the point is,” Alan said.

Bob spun back around. The flush had come up into his cheeks again, but the dark depths of his eyes were shut away. There were only the surfaces showing, flat and hard. He spoke deliberately now, without a trace of passion, without a sign of any feeling at all. “The only point,” he said slowly, “is that I can’t work with you anymore, Steve. We’ve had this problem from the start, but it’s just gotten to be too much. Maybe you’re a good reporter sometimes. Everyone says so. But there are other good reporters and they don’t have your attitude and they follow instructions. I can’t work with you.” He looked at Alan. He looked at me again. That was all he said.

A silence followed. Alan let out a low moan. I drew on my cigarette, studying the floor. I could feel the seconds pass. Bob gazed at me coolly, not moving. He had made his play. He had said what he had to. If he really forced Alan to choose between us, I was out of a job for sure.

My stomach guttered blackly. What a mess this was turning out to be, I thought. What a mess I’d gone and made of it. And what time was it anyway? Almost quarter of seven by the clock on Alan’s desk. Cecilia Nussbaum would be having her meetings now, probably with the governor’s people at some hotel somewhere or at the Wainwright Building. Then, I guessed, they’d all drive down to the prison together. At the prison, Plunkitt would be asking Mrs. Beachum to leave the Deathwatch cell and there’d be great weeping and gnashing of teeth. The cook would be preparing the condemned man’s final meal. Jesus, I thought, what a mess.

“Alan …” I said.

But Bob cut me off. “No. No. I think we have to deal with this. It’s a simple situation. I can’t work with you, Steve. I can’t work with you anymore.”

I gritted my teeth. I stuck my chin out at him, letting the smoke roll out of my mouth and nose. “Why don’t you just hit me?” I asked him. “Why don’t you just punch me out, god damn it? I deserve it, man. I’ll fall down. I’ll bleed. You’ll love it. It’ll be great.” I should have shut up then, but I couldn’t stop myself. “Then you can go home and hit your wife too,” I muttered. “She likes it.”

I saw his head go back a little at that, absorbing the blow. For a second, I thought he really would take a swing at me. I half hoped he would anyway. But his lip only curled slightly and his eyes remained flat and icy.

“I guess …” he said quietly. “I guess we can’t all live in the world of your imagination, Steve. I’m not going to hit anybody, no matter what they want. If Patricia needs some other kind of relationship, she’ll have to go find that. If she wants to work with me to keep us together, then I’m willing to work. But whatever happens, my marriage isn’t any of your goddamned business. The only thing you need to know about me right now is that I think you’re a tawdry, sexist, thoughtless, mentally unbalanced man. And I can’t work with you anymore.”

Alan moaned again, covering his eyes with his hand.

I turned to him desperately, leaned toward him, pressing my fists down on his desk. Why didn’t it ever occur to me how much I needed a job until I was about to lose it?

“Alan, listen,” I said. “I’ve got the shooter.”

He lowered his hand. “You what?”

Bob made that gesture he favored, that stay-calm motion with his hand. He lapsed into his schoolmarm style of instruction. “I don’t think we should confuse two different issues …”

I cut him off. “I know who he is.”

“Who?” said Alan.

“The guy, the real guy. Who shot Amy Wilson.”

“You got the shooter?”

“Look, even if he knows who killed Kennedy …” said Bob.

“Shut up, Bob,” said Alan. He considered me, frowning. “How got him have you got?”

I straightened away from his desk. I raised my cigarette to my lips. Gripped in my fist, it had split near the filter. I had to draw hard to make the smoke come through.

“I know who he is,” I said.

“All right. Who is he?”

“Huh?”

“The shooter. Who is he?”

“He’s … he’s a guy. A guy who was there.”

Holding his breath, Alan pinched his nose in the web of his hand. He closed his eyes, opened them. “You’re telling me the shooter was a guy who was there? Well. Well. Good work, Steve. But let’s not jump to any conclusions. I want that confirmed by two unnamed sources before I hold the front page or anything.”

“I’m telling you!” I said, throwing my arms around. “The CA has his name. She just won’t give it to me.”

“What about the defense?”

“This is ridiculous,” said Bob.

“No,” I said. “It’s not in their files.”

“The cops?”

“They don’t remember. Or they’re sitting on it.”

“Have you tried the Yellow Pages under S?” said Bob.

I made a noise that astonished even me. A throaty growl, like a cornered animal. I moved to the wall and crushed my busted cigarette against the side of the wastebasket. I stood with my back to them, staring at an Associated Press plaque for journalistic excellence. Things did not look good for our hero, or at least for my hero.

Behind me, Bob let out a weary, mournful sigh. “Alan,” he said, “I’m sorry. Really. I know this is causing problems for everybody. But I want to be clear about this. I’m ready to leave. I owe you a lot and I love this paper, but I’m not going to spend my life in an environment that’s become intolerable.”

Alan moaned.

Whereupon, suddenly, inspiration struck. I was running my hand up through my hair at the moment. I was feeling the sweat come away, cling to my palm. I was thinking about Barbara and what I would say to her when I came home with no job again. I was wondering how long it would be before she figured out the truth. Five minutes? Ten? I could see her standing in the doorway, pointing sternly into the distance. And me with all my belongings wrapped in a handkerchief tied to a stick, hefting the stick to my shoulder as I trudged off miserably into the snow. It was ninety-five degrees outside, but the way my luck was running, the snow was a dead cert.

And then it came to me. Just like that. Like a hallelujah. Bells pealed. Choirs sang. The federal budget balanced. A glorious sun rose heavenward to the east and showered its beneficient rays on this great land of ours. Oh ho, I thought. Oh ho ho. What end is dead, what door is closed, what road has no turning to a man piss-desperate to hold on to his job?