“It could mean the cover-up of cover-ups.”
David stopped for the light at L Street. “You say this as if you think it sounds reasonable.” He felt way too exposed out here in the commuting crowd, but between the cold-weather gear and the prevailing lack of eye contact among city dwellers, he might as well have been invisible.
Cantrell looked straight ahead as he said, “Not to patronize, but a few more years in this job will teach you not to make sense of a story as you’re collecting information. Once you have the facts assembled, they will make sense out of themselves.”
The light changed, and they stepped off the curb together. “You
are
patronizing,” David said, “and in this case, not well. We’re making assumptions based upon third-party rumors. That’s not the same as chasing facts.”
“Don’t believe it then,” Cantrell said. “I’m just passing along information. Out of the goodness of my heart, I hasten to add. And there’s more if you’d like to hear it.”
David waited for it, and then realized that Cantrell actually wanted an answer. “Of course.”
Cantrell gave a satisfied smirk. “All of the witnesses to the shooting last night spoke of a third big SUV as the vehicle containing the shooters. According to my nephew’s friend—the bartender—the guys in the shooting vehicle grabbed a homeless guy who looked to be dead and threw him in the back of their vehicle and then tore off with him.”
David scoured his memory. “I don’t remember a report of a dead homeless guy.”
Cantrell shot him with a gloved finger-gun. “Bingo.”
“What bingo? What are you trying to tell me?”
“That whoever these guys are, whatever they’re doing, they’re also covering up a murder.”
“Did anyone else see this dead homeless guy?”
“I’m sure they did,” Cantrell said. “I just need to find them. Problem is, from what I can tell, of the people the cops interviewed after it was over—the few that were left after they all ran the other way—none of them mentioned the homeless man.”
“Maybe because he wasn’t there?”
Cantrell smacked the back of David’s head. “Get in the spirit of things, will you? You’ve got dead Secret Service agents, you’ve got a government-looking van, a vanished dead guy, and the likelihood that the First Lady was there. I don’t scream ‘conspiracy’ very often, but I’m screaming it now. And then there’s the not insignificant detail that the person who wanted to talk to a reporter about it ends up murdered, with the reporter he was going to talk to framed for his killing.”
David had to stop. They stood just outside the Mayflower Hotel, amid the morning taxi-catching scrum. Hearing Grayson Cantrell sum it all up like that made things seem suddenly hopeless. David had never been much of a fighter—he talked a good game, but for the most part just rolled over when the going got too tough—and he had no idea how to take on the federal government, if that was what it was coming to.
“Maybe the homeless guy was the target of the hit,” David said. It felt like a random comment under the circumstances.
“Maybe,” Cantrell agreed. He lightly grasped David’s arm at the elbow and urged him forward. “Let’s keep moving. But if that were the case, it would mean that the rest was all coincidence—that the Secret Service just happened to be there, and that the corresponding likelihood of the First Lady being present was just one of those things.”
David gave a wry chuckle. “If the alternative is some great national conspiracy, I think I prefer the coincidence.”
“As you wish.”
They walked in silence for the half block that took them to the complicated intersection where Connecticut Avenue met M Street and Rhode Island Avenue. David didn’t like where his head went without talking. “I really do thank you for this, Grayson.”
“You’re very welcome.”
“And what’s the quid pro quo?”
Cantrell recoiled, clearly feigning insult. “I’m shocked, young man.
Shocked
I tell you. Isn’t it possible that I am merely feeling altruistic?”
“Never occurred to me.”
Cantrell laughed. “See? You really do have reporter’s instincts. But this time, contrary to character, I truly am acting merely out of the goodness of my heart.”
David’s gut tightened. “Um, why?”
Cantrell laughed harder at whatever he saw in David’s face. “Good God. Is it really my reputation to be such a prick?”
“I’m actually not sure what you want the answer to be,” David said.
“No answer is necessary. Perhaps when all of this settles out, you’ll be able to set the record straight and tell all who will listen that Grayson Cantrell is willing to lend a helping hand to a needy colleague.”
“So you’ll help me with the story?”
“I thought that’s what I’m doing now,” Cantrell said. A veil of sadness edged out some of the twinkle in his eye.
“Well, you are,” David said. “But now that everyone’s looking for me, I thought that maybe—”
Cantrell shook his head slowly. “I can’t do shoe-leather work for you,” he said. “More precisely—more
honestly
—I
won’t
do shoe-leather work for you.”
David’s stomach fell. It’s precisely what he was going to ask, and while he recognized that it was an outrageous favor, the disappointment tasted bitter. “Okay,” he said.
Cantrell sighed. “Look, David. I’m an old man. The job that I used to love bears little resemblance today to what it was like back when I loved it. In a year or two, when I retire, I want to be remembered for my decades of hard work as a journeyman reporter.”
“But this—”
“Hear me out. I’ve lost my taste for the big kill. I don’t want the big story anymore. I can’t afford the risk.”
David scowled.
“You’re young. You can swing for the fences and take big chances. If you get the story wrong, you have years to recover. If I go for the big one and blow it, that’s all I’ll be remembered for. The rest of it—all those years—won’t mean anything. It’s as if I would never have existed. I can’t live with that.”
The emotion on Cantrell’s face looked a lot like shame. David didn’t begin to understand the rationale behind the older man’s words, but he recognized finality when he heard it.
“Well, thanks then,” David said. “I think.”
“You think I’m a coward,” Cantrell said. “And that’s okay. Perhaps I am.”
“You don’t have to explain anything to me.”
“Now who’s patronizing?”
David felt his ears turn red. “I’m sorry,” he said. “You’re right. That’s not my place. I’m just feeling very alone right now.”
“Reporters are about getting the story. We’re not used to
being
the story. It’s a lonely place to be.”
Lonely and crushing and soul stealing. Panic inducing. David didn’t know how he was going to breathe through the encroaching panic attack.
“Are you interested in a suggestion from a cowardly old man?” Cantrell asked.
“Right now, I’m just interested in conversation. Human contact.” A beat. “I’d love to hear whatever you have to tell me.
“Your blog,” Cantrell said. “I believe it’s called
Kirk Nation
, right?”
“You mean you don’t read it?”
“I don’t partake of the medium that will soon kill the medium that pays my bills. But I understand that many people do read it.”
“About a hundred twenty thousand hits a day,” David said.
“That’s nice. Barely ten percent of what our readership used to be.”
“But nearly a quarter of what it is now,” David countered.
“Indeed. I was thinking that you might do well to write a piece that posits exactly the scenario you outlined to me this morning.”
“But I don’t have the facts.”
“It’s the Internet, David. When did hard facts become a requisite for writing a story?”
“
Kirk Nation
is not like that.” David hated it when these Stone Age paper guys took shots at the future that they feared to enter.
“Hear the rest,” Cantrell said. “And I meant no harm. The point of writing the piece would not be to report the facts, per se, but rather to float out a bit of bait. Given that you are the focus of an international manhunt, what you posit by way of this incident will get a lot of attention.”
“From the very people I’m trying to avoid.”
“From
everyone
. If you put it out there, people will start asking questions. If your theory is right, it should trigger a panic somewhere. When people panic, they make mistakes.”
“They also start shooting people.”
Cantrell’s eyes flashed. “Well, there’s that, yes. But that’s more of a constant in your personal equation than a variable, is it not? The important fact is that people will start pressing for more details. The universe can support only a finite number of lies. With enough people searching for the truth, the cover-up will collapse. At least it should.”
David let the words bounce around his head for a while. “That’s a pretty aggressive strategy,” he said. “It’s a little putting on a Speedo to go out and kick a hornet’s nest.”
“Imagery that I neither want nor need,” Cantrell said. “From where I sit—and remember, I’m the coward among us—a passive approach largely guarantees you a grave or a jail cell. If the hornets are going to sting you anyway, why not make a game of it?”
“Pretty damn high stakes,” David thought aloud. Then, to Cantrell: “This is the First Lady we’re talking about. This could have tentacles that reach to the White House. I’m just one guy. I don’t have any White House sources. I don’t have a single layer of protection.”
Cantrell put a hand on David’s shoulder. “It’s your life, son. You’ve got to live it the way you want. Do you own a gun?”
“A
gun
! Who the hell am I going to shoot?”
“Yourself, I’d think,” Cantrell said. “If it comes to that. Die or live. Run or live. Hide or live. Go to prison or live. Each is the opposite of living, as far as I’m concerned. It’s just a matter of choosing your method.”
Suddenly this entire meeting felt like a terrible mistake. David felt his world collapsing into a dark, dense void. Cantrell was right, of course. Not about the suicide—he’d never be able to do that—but about the need to be aggressive.
“Are you sure you don’t want to come along for the ride?” David asked.
“I’ve never been surer of anything in my life. And I’m sorry it’s that way.” As he looked down at his feet, the slate-gray sky gave up a few flakes of snow. Not enough to accumulate, but more than enough to start snarling traffic in Washington.
“I guess that’s it, then,” David said. “Thank you, Grayson.”
“Billy Zanger,” Cantrell said.
“Excuse me?”
“Billy Zanger. He’s a deputy assistant press secretary at the White House. Maybe a deputy deputy. He’s junior, but he was appointed by President Darmond. You might even be older than he. He’s a child. No offense.”
David was well beyond being sensitive to insult. “What about him?”
“He’s a source,” Cantrell said. “He’s an unnamed knowledgeable insider. If you need to sweat someone, he’s the one.”
David pulled up short. “Why would he help me? He doesn’t know me from Adam.”
Grayson shrugged. “It’s what confidential sources do. They talk.”
“Only when they trust you.”
Grayson donned the condescending smile that suited him so well. “David, my boy, there are only three reasons why sources talk to reporters, and none of them are rooted in trust.” He counted them off with his fingers, starting off with his thumb. “One: They leak information that their bosses want them to leak—the policy statement that comes with full deniability. Two: They realize that their careers aren’t going the way they want them to, and they see opportunity in betrayal. The common denominator there is the advancement of their own careers. We journalists are merely their vectors.”
David felt anger brewing in his gut. “Wow, you really are the cynic, aren’t you?”
“I prefer the term ‘realist.’ And we listen to them for the same reason. Their betrayals give us the stories that make our careers. And as a class, I have to say that we reporters are not all that incentivized to determine whether the underlying facts behind the leaks are truth or fiction. The fact that an important person said it is itself newsworthy.”
David shook his head, a rattling motion to make the loose pieces fall into place. “Why are we having this conversation?”
“Because you asked about motivation, and you made a speech about getting the facts right. You’re wading into deep, deep waters, and I wanted you to know how much different the rules of the game are from what you think they are.”
“Because I’m naïve.”
“I was going to say idealistic, but naïve works, too. This is Washington, David. There are no legitimate high horses to mount, and all houses are made of glass. Never forget that. Leave the speech making and the lofty phrases to the politicians. They deliver them better, and no one believes them anyway.”
“What does this have to do with this Zaney guy?”
“It’s Zanger. William Henry Zanger of Concordia, Kansas, via Northwestern University. He lives in Lake Ridge, Virginia, with his public school teacher wife, Barbie, and baby daughter, Hope. Lake Ridge isn’t quite the end of the world, but you can see it from there.”
“This is important?”
“Damned straight it’s important. Billy still owes eighty-seven thousand dollars to Northwestern for his English literature degree. On top of that, they’ve got a two hundred ten thousand dollar mortgage on their tiny little townhouse. That’s almost three hundred thousand dollars in debt to be paid for from combined incomes of under a hundred-fifty-K a year. Do the math.”
“How’d he qualify for that kind of mortgage in this kind of market?” Even as he asked the question, he realized that he’d locked on to the wrong detail.
Cantrell saw it, too, and laughed. “Lending institutions have done very well by currying favor with this administration. But this brings us to the third and most powerful motivation to talk to a reporter.”