Steve Martini: The Enemy Inside

“What?” says Harry.

“Not without an OK from my editor.”

“An OK from your editor?” says Harry. “Do you understand what you’re facing here? If the cops get wind of any involvement between you and the victim, they are going to start turning over rocks looking for evidence of intentional homicide. Depending on what they find, you won’t be looking at manslaughter any longer but murder. Was there any bad blood between you and her?”

“Not on my part. It was just a story. Nothing personal,” says Ives.

“What is this story about?”

“You don’t really think I killed her on purpose?”

“For my part, I don’t. But I can’t vouch for the D.A.,” says Harry. “So why don’t you fill us in.”

“It’s big. It’s a very big story. At this point there are a lot of leads. What we need is confirmation.”

“Confirmation of what?” Harry is getting hot.

“That’s what I can’t tell you,” says Ives. “It’s not my story. I don’t have any personal stake in it. That’s what I’m saying. I didn’t have any reason to harm Serna. I never met her. She was a name. That’s all.”

“But she was involved?” I ask.

“Her name kept popping up during the investigation,” says Ives.

Alex is what passes for an investigative reporter in the age of digital news. The changing tech world has dislocated everything from journalism to jukeboxes. It has untethered us from the world we thought we knew and left us to swim in a sea of uncertainty. Like primitive natives, we are constantly dazzled by shiny new stuff, smartphones that respond to voice commands and mobile hot spots the size of a thimble that connect us to the universe. But like the native jungles of the New World, the industries in which we work may disappear tomorrow, victims of the shiny new stuff, the treasures that have seduced us. Where newspapers once existed, now there are blog sites. More nimble, faster, some of them blunt-edged partisan weapons for dismantling a republic. Alex works for one of these, a blog site headquartered in Washington. He is their West Coast correspondent.

“I’m not sure how much I can tell you. We’ve been working on it for about a year now. Mostly in D.C., but also out here on the coast. It’s the reason I know her name.”

“If you want us to represent you,” says Harry, “you’re going to have to trust us.”

“I do. But you have to understand the story is not mine, it belongs to the Gravesite .” Ives is talking about the Washington Gravesite, the digitized scandal sheet owned by Tory Graves, Ives’s boss and the purveyor of the hottest political dirt since the days of Drew Pearson and Jack Anderson. What TMZ is to celebrity news and entertainment gossip, the Washington Gravesite is to those who work in politics. It parcels out breaking news to the various cable stations, which feed upon it depending on their particular partisan political bias. It is unclear how Graves makes his money, whether he gets paid for exclusive stories or is funded by various interest groups with an ax to grind. Either way he seems to be surviving in what is by any measure a political snake pit of Olympian proportions.

“Did you ever talk to Serna, interview her, have any direct contact with her at all?” asks Harry.

Ives is shaking his head.

“Did you communicate with her in any way?” I ask.

“No. And I can’t tell you anything beyond that, not until I talk to my editor.”

Harry and I look at each other. I give Ives a big sigh, shrug my shoulders, and slowly shake my head. “We’re just trying to help you.”

“I know you are and I appreciate it,” says Ives. “But I can’t talk about my work. That’s confidential. It’s off-limits.”

“Let’s hope the court agrees,” says Harry. “But I can tell you it won’t.”

“Let’s leave it for the moment,” I tell him. “I assume your parents are good for the bail bond?”

“I think so. How much do you think it’ll be?”

“No way to be certain until we get in front of the judge. It’s a bailable offense, at least at the moment. But the D.A. will probably try to up the ante. Make it expensive. Have you done any recent international travel?”

“For work,” he says.

“How long ago and how often?”

“Europe, twice in the last year.”

“Where?” says Harry.

“I went to Switzerland with my boss, Tory Graves.”

“We can assume Serna wasn’t into chocolates,” says Harry. “Watches? Rolexes?” He looks at Ives. “Banking!”

The kid’s face flushes. He looks up at Harry.

“Bingo. Well, we can’t put him on the stand,” says Harry. “They won’t need a lie detector to test his veracity. Just measure the movement of his Adam’s apple. I hope you don’t play poker, son. If you ever take it up, try to sit under the table.”

“You can be sure they will want your passport until this is over,” I tell him. “As for bail, you have a job and contacts in the community. That’s a plus. Superior Court bail schedule says a hundred-thousand-dollar bond for a death case involving DUI. That means you or your parents have to put up ten percent, ten grand.”

Ives shakes his head, looks down at the table. “I suspect my parents can raise it. But I’ll want to pay them back.”

“Of course.”

“And your fees,” he says.

“Let’s not worry about that right now.” Harry gives me a dirty look.

“What about the girl, the one you say you met who invited you to the party? What can you tell us about her?”

“Not much,” he says. “Only met her the one time.”

“How did you meet her?” says Harry.

“Let me think. I guess it was about noon. I was out in the plaza in front of my office trying to figure where to go to grab a bite. This girl came up to me, real cute, you know, and she asked me for directions.”

“To where?”

“I don’t remember exactly.”

“Go on,” I tell him.

“It must have been somewhere close. I mean, she didn’t come out of a car at the curb or anything. Not that I saw anyway. So I assume she was on foot.”

“Was she alone?” I ask.

“As far as I could tell, she was.”

“But you don’t know where she was going?” says Harry.

Alex shakes his head.

“And then what?” I ask.

“We got to talking. She had a great smile. Said there was a party at some rich guy’s house that night. She said she was gonna be there. It might be fun. Said she was allowed to invite some friends. Would I like to go? What could I say? Beautiful girl. I had nothing going on that night. I said sure. She gave me the information. .”

“How?” I ask. “How did she give you the information?”

“A note,” he says. “It had the address and a phone number. The address was the location of the party. She said the number was her cell phone in case I got lost. It wouldn’t have mattered. I went to call her when she didn’t show and my phone was dead.”

That means we can’t subpoena the cell carrier to try and triangulate the location of the house where the party took place.

“All I can remember is it was someplace up near Del Mar. Big house in a ritzy neighborhood. I remember it had a big pool, great big oval thing. I might recognize it if I saw it again. The problem is, you use this high-tech stuff, GPS, you tend to rely on it and you don’t remember anything because you don’t have to.”

Alex is right. How many of us can remember telephone numbers for friends or family? We push a button and it replaces our brains.

“I loaded the address into the GPS in the car and I didn’t pay any attention. I just followed the verbal directions. It took me right to the front door,” he says.