Джозеф Хеллер - Maximum Impact

“What about the other members of the original team on the engine? Would they have anything to say?”

“Comchech and Teller? I tried them a couple of times. Their offices refer me to the Justice Department. Both changed their home numbers. The new numbers are unlisted.”

“How about the Sexton guy, the one who saw the engine right after the crash?”

“Dave Terrell, right,” Pace said. “Same thing. I begged Whitney Warner to get me an interview with him, but he’s been put under wraps by DOJ, too. I’ve got his home phone, but when I call, the only people who ever answer are his wife or a teenage kid, and when they find out who wants to talk to him, they inform me very politely he has nothing to say.”

“They’ve closed off most of your avenues, haven’t they?” Schaeffer said glumly.

“I guess that’s what grand-jury investigations do,” said Pace. “But I’m going to keep—” He was interrupted by his phone. If he let it ring, it would kick back to a clerk who would take a message. Pace didn’t know whether Schaeffer wanted him to ignore it or not.

“Take it,” the editor said. “It could be a lot more important than this conversation.”

“National desk. Steve Pace.”

“I have some information.”

The look of surprise on Pace’s face alerted Schaeffer.

“Who is this?” the reporter asked.

“You don’t care. All you need to know is what I know.”

Pace started taking notes, trying to get both sides of the conversation. He knew the voice, but he asked anyway. “If I don’t know who you are, how can I evaluate what you?”

“Just listen. You can check it out.”

“Go ahead,” Pace urged.

“You know Chapman Davis?”

“Sure.”

“He drives a silver-gray Thunderbird. Brand new.”

Pace went cold. “So do a lot of people.”

“True. But it’s an interesting coincidence, isn’t it?”

“Is he the one who picked up Elliott Parkhall last Monday night?”

“No idea. That’s what investigative reporters are for, to find out those things?”

“I suppose so. Thanks.”

“I could surprise you and call again. There’s something even bigger in the works.”

“Anything you can tell me?”

“Not now.”

“You have my home phone?”

“Yeah. Don’t worry. I’ll find you if I need you.”

The line went dead. Pace expelled a long, low whistle as he finished his notes, and Schaeffer waited impatiently to learn what the conversation had been about. Pace didn’t waste words getting to the point.

“The head of the minority staff of the Senate Transportation Committee, a Marshall appointee, drives a brand-new silver-gray Thunderbird.”

“Holy shit!”

The two men stared at each other for a long moment.

“Who was that?” Schaeffer asked, nodding toward the phone.

“He wouldn’t say, but I recognized the voice. George Ridley.”

For a second the name didn’t mean anything to Schaeffer; then he pointed his finger at Pace in realization. “He’s the one who told you Marshall was pressing the NTSB.”

“Right,” said Pace. “He’s the majority chief of staff on the same committee.”

“Do I gather they don’t like each other?” Schaeffer asked.

“Not necessarily,” said Pace. “Oh, they’re totally different types. Ridley’s white, solidly middle-class, blustering, profane, and out of shape. The only exercise he gets is flapping his lips, bending his elbow, and chewing. Chappy’s almost the exact opposite: black, from a blue-collar family, an ex-college basketball player who still runs every day. I like him, a lot more than I like George Ridley, as a matter of fact.”

“A black Republican?”

Pace shrugged. “It happens.”

“Did whoever that was know if it was Davis who picked up Elliott Parkhall?”

“He said he didn’t, which kind of leaves me up a creek, with an interesting clue but no smoking gun.”

Schaeffer laughed. “That’s a maimed metaphor if I ever heard one.”

Pace laughed, too. “Nobody’s perfect.”

“Where’d you hear that?” Clay Helm asked without surprise. Pace expected surprise. It’s not every day a reporter gives a cop a tip that could break open a case of multiple homicide.

“I can’t tell you where I heard it,” Pace said.

“What if I told you I had to know?”

“I still couldn’t tell you. I couldn’t tell you if you swore me in and put me on the witness stand. The caller wouldn’t give his name.”

Pace could almost hear Helm thinking it over. “You recognized the voice, though, didn’t you?” Helm asked.

“What makes you think so?”

“You’re taking it as serious information without checking it out. That’s not like you. If you didn’t have a fair idea who your tipster was, you’d have checked it out and then called me.”

“I do think I recognized the voice,” Pace conceded. “But I’m not absolutely certain, and if I were, I still couldn’t tell you. You know that. Did you already know about Davis?”

“No, I didn’t,” Helm said. “And I’m sure Marty Lanier doesn’t know either, or he’d have called me. Did you tell him?”

“He doesn’t return my calls.”

“Smart man. The less he says to the media, the less chance he’ll get his butt kicked by the redoubtable Stanley Eastman Travis.”

“The third.”

“The third. I wonder what the first two were like.”

“One of them was the real Darth Vader.”

Helm laughed. “He does sound a little like that, doesn’t he? George Lucas should sue. So anyhow, what are you going to do with the T-Bird info?”

“I don’t know, to be honest,” Pace said. “It’s not something I can write.”

“If it were me, I’d get a court order and search the car for evidence. Obviously, you can’t do that. You could try asking.”

“Oh, right, the direct approach,” Pace scoffed. “ ‘Chappy, how’d you like to implicate yourself in a felony murder?’”

“You’re off base right away,” Helm chided. “We don’t know there’s been a commission of a felony, or even a misdemeanor, for that matter. Elliott Parkhall simply can’t be found at the moment. Maybe he felt the need to get away for a while. He wasn’t under orders not to leave town. Even if I got my court order and found Parkhall’s fingerprints in Davis’s car, that would only prove that at some time or other, Parkhall was in the car. Not that he was driven to his death in the car, or even that he was in the car on the night of his disappearance.”

“Are you going to look at the car?”

“You bet. I’m going to get that subpoena as soon as I get you off the telephone.”

“But you said that wouldn’t prove anything.”

“Not on the face of it, but if we find evidence Parkhall was ever in Davis’s car, we’ll sweat the hell out of Davis and break him.”

“Break him on the basis of evidence you yourself called circumstantial?”

“I might have a little something more up my sleeve.”

“Want to share? I just gave you something good,” Pace said.

“Not for publication.”

“I won’t quote you.”

“I don’t mean not for attribution. I mean not for publication. At all. Ever.”

“What?”

“Well, maybe sometime. But not until I say specifically it’s all right. We don’t have many ways left to go with this, Steve. Off the record, I think Parkhall’s probably dead, and I think his death likely came at the hand of whoever drove him away from his apartment last Monday night. But if you report that, or if you report we’ve got a lead on the suspect, the suspect will go to ground, and his car probably will, too.”