Allen Steele - Jericho Iteration

“A murder?” I asked. “What’s this got to do with-”

“Forget it.” John reached up to switch off the CTV as he finally found room to pass the BMW. I caught a glimpse of the driver as we moved around the clunker: a redneck wearing a baseball cap, a cigar clamped between his teeth. “That’s all I’m giving you,” he continued, “and I shouldn’t have told you that much. Your turn.”

“Beryl Hinckley,” I said. “Her badge listed her as a research scientist. If you want, I’ll get Jah to print you a copy of her photo so you can recognize her when you meet her at Clancy’s tonight.”

John nodded. “I’d appreciate it.”

We fell silent for the next few miles as the suburbs thinned out and the towers of the uptown business district of Clayton hove into view. Clayton had come through the crisis pretty well: new office buildings, rich homes, not many indications that a 7.5 earthquake had socked this part of the city. Of course, much of the federal disaster relief funds had been channeled in this direction. The government had been fully aware of who was wealthy enough to be able to repay the loans, and everyone in St. Louis knew where the influential voters resided.

“Stay out of it,” John said after a while.

“Excuse me?”

“Stay out of it,” he repeated. “I know you’re looking for a good story, and I know you’re nervous about your job, but … just let me handle this one by myself, okay? If I need help, I’ll call you in and we can share the byline-”

“C’mon. You know that’s not what it’s about …”

He looked askance at me and my voice trailed off. It was a lie and John knew it. No, I wasn’t nervous; I was desperate. If I didn’t deliver something impressive PDQ, Pearl was going to find a new staff writer and I’d be back on the street. At best, I’d be some poor schmo freelancer, peddling video reviews to the Big Muddy for nickel-and-dime checks while living in a homeless shelter.

I didn’t want to encroach on my friend’s rightful territory, but this bit with Tiptree and Beryl Hinckley and Ruby Fulcrum was a hot potato I couldn’t afford not to catch.

“C’mon, man,” I said, “you can’t-”

“I know.” John kept his eyes locked on the highway ahead. “Look, you’ve got to trust me on this one. This is serious business, and not a little bit dangerous. Just … y’know, let me handle this by myself. All right?”

“All right.” I raised my hands. “Okay … whatever you say.”

John didn’t have my problems. He still had everything I had lost. A nice car, a house in the ’burbs, a wife who didn’t despise him, a job that was secure. A kid who was still alive. I envied him, sure …

For a moment, despite our long friendship, I caught myself hating him. He must have read my mind, because he nervously cleared his throat. “Look, if you want my advice,” he began, “you’re going to have to put some things behind you.”

He hesitated. “I mean, your situation’s tough and all that, but … well, Jamie’s gone and you’re just going to have to-”

“Right. Jamie’s gone and I’m going to have to live with that. I know. Time to get a life.” Out of impulse, I switched on the CTV again. “I think it’s time for Batman. You know what channel it’s on?”

John shut up. I found the station showing the favorite cartoon show of my misspent youth. The theme song swelled to fill the car as we sailed the rest of the way downtown: one man with a firm grip on reality, the other trying to avoid it at all costs.

Get a life. Sure, John. I had a life.

And boy, did it suck.

(Thursday, 12:45 P.M.)

I dropped off the camera with Jah after we got back to the office; he promised to process the disk and give me a contact sheet before the end of the day. He also informed me that his father had found out about my surreptitious exit and was-in Jah’s words-“livid pissed.”

That meant sneaking up the stairs to the second floor. I had rather hoped Pearl had gone out for lunch for once, but the odor of fried brains assaulted me as I tiptoed past Bailey’s door. Fried brains, that most obnoxious of St. Louis delicacies, was Pearl’s favorite food; he brought a take-out deli plate of them to the office every day and consumed them in full view of the staff. Bailey didn’t look up from his brains as I scurried to my desk, but I knew that he would eventually catch up with me.

I figured that the best thing for me to do was to look busy so that, at very least, he couldn’t accuse me of goldbricking. I sat down at my desk and began work on my column for next week’s paper. The subject was the ERA raid on the Muny last night; the morning Post-Dispatch gave me such clinical facts as the number of people who had been busted, but what came out in my column was a more subjective eyewitness account.

I was halfway through composing the article, in the middle of describing the arrival of the ERA troopers, when I caught a glimpse of Bailey as a reflection on my screen. I ignored him and went on writing; for a few moments he hovered just outside my cubicle as if trying to decide whether to say something, then he walked away. I glanced over at John; he was on the phone at his desk, but he grinned back at me. My job was still safe-for today, at any rate.

Yet I couldn’t get the events at Tiptree out of my mind. Sure, it wasn’t my story, but nonetheless my journalistic curiosity was itching, and I needed a good scratch. After I finished the rough draft of my story and saved it, I switched the computer to modem and made a call to the city election commissioner’s office.

Steve Estes’ campaign contributions were a matter of public record; all I had to do was ask the right questions and the skeletons danced out of the closet and onto my screen. Estes had been a busy little political hack: his war chest listed contributions from hundreds of private individuals, among them many of the city’s wealthiest and most powerful citizens. The list also included local corporate and PAC donations to Citizens to Re-Elect Steve Estes, and right smack in the middle of the list was $10,000 from the Tiptree Corporation.

Of course, that in itself didn’t mean shit to a tree: everyone from the Republican National Committee to the National Rifle Association had written checks to Estes. It still meant that there was a subtle connection between Estes and Tiptree.

I made a hard copy of the file, circled the Tiptree item in red ink, and was about to pass it to John when I got a better idea. Almost on impulse, I picked up the phone and called Estes’ office.

Estes was a senior partner in a downtown law firm; the switchboard operator passed the buck to Estes’ private secretary, a hard-eyed young woman who looked as if she could have been a model for a 1947 Sears Roebuck catalog. Her bee-stung lips made a slight downturn when I identified myself as a Big Muddy reporter. “Just a moment, please,” she said. “I’ll see if he’s in.”

She put me on hold, and I was treated to a computer-generated lily field and the theme for The Sound of Music for a couple of minutes. My gag reflex was kicking in when the flowers and Julie Andrews abruptly vanished, to be replaced by Steve Estes’ face.

“Good afternoon, Gerry,” he said, beaming at the camera. “How can I help you?”

We had never met or talked before, so I ignored the first-name familiarity. It was par for the political course. “Good afternoon, Mr. Estes,” I said, touching the Record button on my phone. “I’m working on a story for my paper, regarding last night’s raid by ERA troops on the Muny, and I was hoping I could get a response from you.”