Jeffery Deaver - Hard News

"Think," Sutton snapped.

"I don't know. I'm sorry."

Maisel supplied the answer. "That another magazine or feature program'll pick up the lead and bring out the story at the same time we do. It's a news policy -we don't spend time and money on a story if there's a chance we'll be preempted."

Rune rocked forward in the chair. "It won't happen again. I promise. I'll be so skeptical you won't believe it."

"Rune -," Sutton began.

"Look, what I'll do is ask people when I interview them if anybody from any other station has been asking them questions. If they have been I'll tell you. I promise. That way you can decide if you want to go ahead with the story or not."

Maisel said, "The only weapon journalists have is their minds. You've got to start using yours."

"I will. Just like the Scarecrow."

Sutton asked, "The what?"

"You know, The Wizard of Oz. He wanted a brain and-"

"Enough." Sutton waved her hand, managing to make her face both blank and hostile at the same time. Finally she said, "All right. Keep on it. But if anybody beats us to the punch – I'm talkinganybody: a rap station, MTV, Columbia 's student station – we drop the project. Lee?"

"Okay with me," Maisel said.

Lighting another cigarette, Sutton nodded and said, "All right. But this was your last strike, babes."

"I thought you got three," Rune said, standing up, retreating to the door.

Sutton tossed the lighter onto her desk; it skidded into a crystal ashtray. "We play by my rules around here. Not the American League's."

The chameleon sat on the wall, at an angle, frozen in space, hardly breathing.

Jack Nestor lay in bed and watched it.

He liked chameleons. Not the way they changed color, which wasn't so spectacular when it came right down to it. It was more the way they were fragile and soft.

He sometimes could get up real close to them – the ones around the Miami Beach Starlite Motor Lodge were used to people. He'd pick one up and let it walk along his massive tanned forearm. He liked feeling the baby-skin of the lizard and the pleasant tickle of its feet.

Sometimes he'd plop one down on his dark blurred tattoo, hoping it would turn to that deep blue color, but it never did. They didn't change to flesh color either. What they did was they jumped the hell off his arm and scurried away like long roaches.

Nestor was forty-eight years old but looked younger. He still had a thick wavy mass of hair, which he kept in place with Vitalis and spray. It was dark blond though with some timid streaks of gray. Nestor had a squarish head and a hint of a double chin but the only thing about his body that bothered him was his belly. Nestor was fat. His legs were strong and thin and he had good shoulders but his large chest sat above a round belly that jutted out and curled over his waistband, hiding his Marine Corps belt buckle. Nestor didn't understand why he had this problem. He couldn't remember the last time he'd sat down to a proper meal, roast beef and potatoes and bread and vegetables and pie for dessert (he thought it was probably Christmas Day six years ago, when the prison cooks had laid out a really good spread). What he ate now was just Kentucky Fried and Whoppers and Big Macs. He missed Arthur Treacher's Fish 'N Chips and wondered if they were still in business anywhere. Anyway, he thought it wasn't fair that all he was eating was these fucking tiny meals and he was still gaining weight.

Nestor noticed two red-and-white-striped boxes in bed. The Colonel grinned at him. Nestor kicked the boxes onto the floor. They tumbled open and bones and coleslaw shreds scattered on the floor.

The chameleon took off.

"Ooops," Nestor said.

He pulled on his T-shirt and smoothed his hair back. He yawned and groped on the bedside table for a cigarette. The pack was empty but he found a used one, still an inch long, lit it and stacked the cheap pillows against the headboard. He sat back, yawned again, and coughed.

Flashes of sun shot off speeding car windows and burst against the wall. The room's window, as advertised, did overlook the beach; that much was true. However, the view had to get across six lanes of highway, two access roads and the hotel parking lot before it eased through the streaked window of room 258. Nestor listened to the sticky rush of the traffic for a few minutes, then reached over and squeezed the butt of the young woman lying next to him.

The third time, when he got a little rougher, she stirred.

"No," she mumbled with a thick Cuban accent.

"Rise and shine," Nestor said.

She was in her mid-thirties, with a body that looked ten years younger and a face that went ten years the other way. Her eye shadow and mascara were smeared. The lipstick, too, was a mess and it looked as if her lips had slid to the side of her face. She opened her eyes briefly, rolled over on her back and pulled a thin sheet up to her navel.

"No, not again."

"What?"

"Not again. It hurt last night."

"You didn't say nothing about it hurting."

"So? You wouldn't have stopped."

That was true but he would at least have asked if she felt better before they went to sleep.

"You all right now?"

"I just don't wanna."

Nestor didn't want to either. What he wanted was breakfast – two Egg McMuffins and a large coffee. He crushed out the cigarette and bent down and kissed her breast.

Mumbling, eyes closed, she said, "No, Jacky, I don't wanta. I have to go to the bathroom."

"Well, I gotta have either you or breakfast. So, what's it gonna be?"

After a moment: "What you want for breakfast?"

He told her and five minutes later she was in her orange spandex miniskirt struggling along the glisteningly hot sidewalk to the McDonald's up the street.

Nestor took a shower, spending most of the time rubbing his stomach with this green-handled pad with bumps on it. Somebody'd told him that if you did that, it broke up the fat cells and flushed them away. He thought he noticed a difference already even though on the scale he hadn't lost any weight yet. He kneaded the large glossy star-shaped scar six inches to the left of his navel, a memento of the time a hollow-point 7.62mm slug had made a journey through his abdomen. Nestor had never gotten used to the leathery feel of the flesh. He had a habit of squeezing and running his fingers over it.

He rinsed off, stepped out of the shower and spent a lot of time shaving then getting his hair into shape. He dressed in a dark-green, short-sleeve knit shirt and the gray pants he always wore. Dungarees. He wondered why anybody would call pants anything that started in"dung." Shitarees, Craparees. He pulled on thin black nylon socks, sheer like women's stockings, then strapped on black sandals.

He stepped out of the bathroom, which was filled with steam and hair spray mist, and smelled the food, which was resting on the TV. The woman was sitting at the chipped desk putting on her makeup. For a minute, looking at her buoyant breasts in the tight yellow sweater, Nestor's hunger for food wavered, but then the McMuffins won and he sat on the bed to eat.

He ate the first one quickly and then, with the edge off his appetite, lay back on the bed to read the paper and sip his coffee while he worked on the second one. He noticed she'd bought some insurance; a third McMuffin was also in the bag – to keep his appetites and his hands occupied. He laughed but she pretended she didn't know he'd caught on.

He'd gotten halfway through the front section of theMiami Herald, reading the national news, when he sat upright in bed. "Oh, shit."

She was curling her eyelashes. "Huh?"

But Nestor was standing up, walking to his dresser, wiping his mouth with the back of his hand. He pulled out a jumble of underwear and socks and knit shirts.