Джозеф Хеллер - Maximum Impact

Wister watched Pace for the next hour with a mixture of contempt and pity. He’d seen other reporters unravel under pressure, and he thought he saw signs of it in Pace now. He believed journalists should be tougher than ordinary people, and he had little use for those who couldn’t be. It was one thing for Pace to rage over the murder of a friend the night before; it was quite another to jeopardize his story, his job, and his newspaper in a fit of drunken frustration later. Wister felt almost smug in his confidence that he wouldn’t have reacted the same way. Yet he couldn’t help but feel a twinge of sorrow as he watched Pace now, spinning his emotional wheels on his own personal ice patch, trying to deal with the results of his self-indulgence.

He stood before Pace’s desk. “The editorial meeting’s in an hour, Steve. What have you got for tomorrow?”

The reporter’s head jerked up. His eyes were dazed, his forehead furrowed.

“You can’t leave the story hanging,” Wister said. “We’ve need more tomorrow. Metro and suburban aren’t touching it. Everybody figures, after last night, this is all yours.”

Pace glanced at his computer terminal as if it were a mortal enemy. He shook his head. “I-I hadn’t even thought about it, Paul. This hasn’t exactly been my best day.”

“It isn’t going to get any better, either, unless you start producing,” Wister said.

“Produce what?”

“That’s your problem. Call your cop sources. See if they’ve found any links between the two deaths. I don’t care what you do, but do something. And do it damned fast.”

Reluctantly, Pace spun his Rolodex to Clay Helm’s new card and dialed the number. He identified himself to the desk sergeant.

“He’s on ’nother line,” the sergeant said, dropping syllables that took up too much of a busy cop’s time. “There a message or you wanna hold?”

“I’ll hold for a few minutes,” Pace replied.

“Your nickel, but if the lines jam up, I’ll hafta cutcha loose.”

“I assume you’ll come back and take a message first?”

“Yeah, probly, if I got time,” the sergeant replied. The line went on silent hold.

Pace smiled. What was it about cops and reporters? Even when they didn’t know each other, never had a single dealing good or bad, they were instant adversaries.

“If you’re trying to get yourself killed, too, your story this morning is a pretty good start,” Helm said without preliminaries when he punched up Pace’s call.

“What?”

“Jesus, Steve, you’ve as much as told the killers you’re onto them.”

“That’s the idea,” Pace said. “I push until I hit a sore spot and somebody pushes back. When I see who it is, I know who I’m looking for.”

“Great plan, except when these people push back, somebody winds up dead.”

“Reporters never get killed, except in war.”

“I remember somebody in Arizona back in the seventies,” Helm said.

“He’s the exception.”

“There’s always a chance.”

“Don’t be depressing,” Pace said. “You had any luck connecting the two murders?”

“That’s confidential police business,” Helm said formally.

“I thought we agreed we were going to cooperate on this.”

“We did and we can. But not to the point of impropriety on my part. I can’t open my files for you. Ask me specific questions and I’ll give you specific answers, unless you get into an area that’s confidential.”

A flood of deja vu hit Pace. Mike McGill had said almost exactly the same thing at lunch, when was it? It seemed a year ago.

“What can you tell me?” he asked in exasperation. “Are you working with the District police? Are you making any progress?”

“Yes to the last two questions,” Helm replied.

“Who are you working with downtown?”

“Detective Lieutenant Martin Lanier. I understand the two of you met last night. He didn’t like you very much.”

“Figures. You have any leads?”

“Yes.”

“Like what?”

“You’ve got enough for a story now. I can’t tell you any more.”

“What story? You haven’t told me shit!” Exasperation was nearing despair. “Can I say state police and D.C. cops have leads linking the two murders?”

“No. Say we’re exploring leads that might link the two deaths,” Helm corrected. “We still don’t have proof the first one was murder. Or the second one was anything more than it appeared to be. Lanier has serious doubts the drugstore was a setup to get McGill. But there is eyewitness testimony that could provide a link. And I stress could. ”

Pace sat up in his chair, his interest renewed. “What eyewitness testimony? There was an eyewitness to the Antravanian accident?”

“No.”

“Goddamn it, quit talking in circles!”

“Look, Steve, there is something I’d like to tell you, but as a friend, not as a reporter. If it appeared in the newspaper, we could lose potential suspects.”

“Then why tell me at all?”

“For your own protection,” Helm said softly. “So when you look in your rearview mirror, you’ll know what you’re looking for.”

“So tell me.”

“I have to have your word. Everything I say from here on is off the record.”

Pace scowled and rocked back in his chair. He hated decisions like this. Once he agreed to go off the record, he could never use the information, whatever it was, unless Helm released him from the promise. “Go ahead,” he said reluctantly. “You have my word.”

“We’re looking for a late-model, light-blue Ford van with a bashed-in right front side. The police and firemen at the Antravanian accident recall seeing it at the scene with two guys, one of them shooting videotape. Witnesses outside the drugstore last night say the two gunmen escaped in a late-model Ford van, either blue or green, with a bashed-in right front side. In both cases, the witnesses said they saw streaks of another color paint in the area of the van’s damage, either yellow or white. Mark Antravanian’s rental car was yellow. That good enough?”

Pace whistled softly.

“You see why it can’t appear in the paper?” Helm continued. “The truck would be too easy to get rid of or repair. We can’t let these guys know we made their transportation.”

“I have a vague recollection of seeing that truck on Georgetown Pike, too,” Pace said.

“You do?”

“Mike and I were there, yeah. When our source didn’t show that night and we saw the cops scream by, we followed them.”

“What do you remember about the van?”

“Not a hell of a lot. Mike and I were standing on the shoulder of the road on the side where the car went off. The van was behind us on the other side of the road. I think I only turned around once or twice.”

“Then the left side of the truck was facing you?”

Pace thought for a second. “Yeah, the driver’s side. The truck was on the shoulder beside the southeast-bound lane.”

“That jibes with our reports. Our guys saw the damage when the van made a U-turn and headed northwest after the excitement was over. Can you describe the two men?”

“No,” Pace said. “I don’t even have a general impression of what they looked like. I think I remember seeing the camera, though. I probably figured them for TV people.”

“So did the men at the scene,” Helm said. “But no local TV stations have footage of the accident. I checked.”

“What do you make of that?”

“Still off the record, right?”

“Right,” Pace confirmed.

“It’s only speculation, but if it was a contract kill, they might have been shooting proof for whoever hired them. That would be consistent with the theory we developed at dinner in Reston.”