Jason Pinter - The Guilty

Her life had taken a terrible detour when she was attacked by a man who broke her jaw during an attempted rape. Mya fought him off, but she had never been the same. Paulina attributed this to her disintegrating family and love life, her dreams vanishing in a puff of lies.

And so far James was everything she wanted in a bloodhound: loyal, dependent and weak. If reporting didn't work out, he'd make a hell of a peeping Tom. Hell, just yesterday

Paulina learned that Henry took his coffee with skim milk and three Splendas. Not exactly front-page material, but Keach was getting close.

"So, James, calling to shed light on more of Parker's dietary habits?"

"Oh, no, Miss Cole, nothing like that." He paused. "So how are you this morning?"

She rolled her eyes. "I'm just fine, James. Skip the pleasantries."

"Right. No more pleasantries. Sorry about that, I…"

"James."

"Right. Anyway, I wanted to let you know that I followed

Parker when he left his apartment this morning. He made one call, then right after that another call came in. Then he went into the Gazette and I lost him. Maybe I'll see if I can get a temp ID, get into the building…"

"That's all right, James, your daddy doesn't need you getting arrested. Who was the first call to?" Paulina chewed the swizzle stick from her coffee, wondering if snorting the

Xanax would make it take faster.

"I didn't catch everything, but the guy's first name was

Curtis. Parker said something about them meeting up later this afternoon. They sounded tight."

Lovers? Paulina wondered. That'd be a hell of a story.

"And who called him right after?"

"No last name, but at one point he called her Mya. And from the sound of it Parker didn't sound happy to hear from her. Cut her off pretty quick."

The straw fell from Paulina's mouth. A smile spread over her lips. Mya Loverne. Paulina knew that after his acquittal,

Henry had broken up with Mya for a new airhead named

Amanda Davies. Tossing aside his former love. Apparently, the goods weren't so happy to be tossed aside.

Paulina had despised Henry Parker the moment she met him. Given a cushy job by Wallace Langston despite the experience of a fetus. And to top it off, the court jester himself,

Jack O'Donnell, took the kid under his wing. Paulina had sweat blood and tears over her ink for years, and Henry was being groomed as the heir apparent. The newsman of the twenty-first century whose balls had barely dropped.

And either directly or subversively, Paulina swore to be the wrecking ball that tore it all down. And if she happened to take down the Gazette with it, hell, that wouldn't be such a bad morning.

"James, you just made my coffee taste better."

"Oh, that's swell, Miss Cole, and again I hope you know how much I appreciate your trusting me with this assignment. I'm…wait, Parker's moving. I'll call you back when I get anything new."

"You do that, Jamesy, you do that."

"Hey, Miss Cole?" James said apprehensively. "Do you think I can file expense reports for my breakfast? The bagels at this place are like three bucks each."

"Not a chance, Jamesy. Talk to you later." She hung up.

I rounded the corner and saw him standing at a street vendor, paying for coffee and a muffin and waiting for change.

"Make that two coffees," I said.

"My friend here will take his with twelve sugars," Curt

Sheffield said.

The vendor looked at me like I'd asked for a side of pork loin. "That's a lot of sugar, man."

"Three Splendas," I said. "I thought cops weren't allowed to lie."

"That's to suspects and witnesses. Not reporters. In fact, that's encouraged."

Curt took his change. I watched in awe as he inhaled the muffin in three bites.

"I think I've seen the same thing happen with boa constrictors. I bet if I look closely I can see a muffin-shaped protrusion in your uniform."

"Lay off, I haven't eaten since breakfast. You know at first

I liked the idea of being the NYPD's poster boy, but you can't catch a break on the streets. Parents introducing their kids to me like I'm walking around in a Mickey Mouse costume or something."

"If Mickey carried a loaded Glock." He licked the crumbs from his fingers. "And aren't you guys supposed to eat donuts?"

Curtis sipped his coffee, wiped some crumbs from his mouth. He nodded, said, "Let's go," through a mouthful, and led me down the block. It was a cool afternoon, the streets lined with people preparing for the commute home.

"So tell me about the note," I said.

"What, no foreplay?"

"Not when two people have been killed."

"That's our job to deal with," Sheffield said. "You write about it, remember? That shit last year don't make you Dick Tracy."

"You're right, but you also know I'm one of the few guys in this town who'll give you a fair shake."

Curt sipped his coffee. "Word is Harvey Hillerman is hard up on Wallace to raise circulation. Says the Dispatch is growing and you're shrinking worse than my old man after joining the polar bear club."

Harvey Hillerman was the owner of the Gazette, and perpetually at war with the tabloid tactics of the other papers in town. But it was hard to keep the public's interest with payroll scandals when the Dispatch could just take a shot of Athena

Paradis in a bikini, slap it on the front page and match your circulation rate.

"It's not my job to worry about Hillerman."

"It's your job to make sure you have a job, paisan. "

"You know you're black, right?"

"What, paisan is reserved for Italians? Screw that."

We walked toward Sixth Avenue.

"So what have you got?" I asked.

"Well, the ballistics report came back. I'll tell you, the pressure on Perez is unreal. Costas Paradis is watching every move he makes with a magnifying glass, and he's holding that glass up to the sun. Man's got eyes and ears from every lawmaker to every sewer grate in the city."

"His daughter was killed, what do you expect?"

"Carruthers has instituted mandatory overtime every day this week," Sheffield continued. "They have undercovers staking out every major nightclub, patrolmen inspecting every rooftop within line of sight. They have us watching any celebrity that goes anywhere after midnight. Problem is we don't know what we're looking for. Not to mention we're all watching our backs after Joe got killed."

I looked at the ground.

"Don't let it get to you. Guys in the department don't hold a grudge for the most part. And the guys that do hold grudges are all old school, the kind the department keeps on a tight leash because they might have had ties to Mike DiForio's crew. Carruthers knows Fredrickson was dirty, that he was taking money from that Tony Soprano wannabe. Until

DiForio got barbecued, that is."

"When you say guys don't hold a grudge 'for the most part,' what's that, like fifty percent? Ninety?"

Sheffield toed the cement. Then he looked at me. "Not gonna lie, bro, there's definitely some bad blood. Fredrickson might have been dirty, but he went back a long way. The bad ones always have friends and there are always other people who covered their asses. Joe Mauser, though, he was a good cop. It's just a cumulative effect of what's happened to that family."

"What do you think?" I asked.

"Me? Shit. I wouldn't be here right now if I held a grudge.

Fact is, city needs you on this story a whole lot more than it needs you digging up celebrity tampons to pad Hillerman's bottom line. Plus I like your stuff. Tired of reading news reports that read like they were written by fuckers who are stuck on typewriters and Geritol."

"I appreciate that."

"Appreciate it in private. I'm happy to give you dirt so it doesn't end up in Cole's witch cauldron. But after this, I gotta be a ghost, man."