"Yes?" she asked, her arms folded.
I smiled. "When last we spoke, you told me to inform you whenever I left my house."
"And?"
"I wanted to let you know that I left my house about fifteen minutes ago."
She slowly nodded. "I see. And where did you go?"
"In the parking lot across the street. To see the space shuttle go overhead."
Clem started muttering some curses involving me and my intelligence, ancestry and sexual habits, but Reeves just nodded again. "Very good. Is that all?"
"For now," I said.
"Then I'm going back to bed. Clem, be so kind as to show Mr. Cole the door."
So now I was back to being Mr. Cole. Oh well. "Don't bother," I said. "I know the way. Talk to you soon."
But I was talking to a closed door. Clem was also getting up, and I managed to sneak one more look at the documents on the table as I left the room. I whistled softly as I went back down on the elevator and out into the cool April night, thinking about what I had seen in the room. Besides seeing two grumpy and sleepy federal agents, I had also figured out the language on those documents.
German. Not really the language of choice for drug cartels from Colombia.
I was still whistling when I got home, and before I went to bed I disconnected my telephone, just in case Reeves or her boys had an idea of getting me up with the sun.
Maybe I wasn't playing fair, but who were they to complain?
Some hours after my nocturnal visit to Reeves and her crew I was at the police department in Porter, New Hampshire, one of the few cities in our state and also the state's only major port to the Atlantic. The police station is on a hill near the center of town, in a former hospital that had been closed some years earlier. The city hall and the police department and a few other city agencies shared the large quarters, and I knew that Diane and other police officers up and down the seacoast could barely hide their envy at the relatively luxurious quarters the Porter police enjoyed.
While Diane and other local departments had to make do with concrete buildings that flooded out in the spring, or the basement of the town hall where the ceilings leaked, the Porter police had a building large enough to contain an exercise room, a shooting range in the basement, and private offices for their detectives.
The detective I was meeting today was Joe Stevens, who looked to be in his late twenties. He was a bit shorter than I but his dress shirt and pants barely concealed a well-muscled young man who seemed confident in being a detective in what passed for a big city in the region. His black hair already sprinkled with gray was cut short, about a quarter inch away from being a crew cut, and his nose was a slight pug, as if it had been broken at an early age.
Unlike Diane's office, with its files stored in cardboard boxes and the concrete walls painted a Sickly green, this one had neat file cabinets and wide windows that overlooked the old brick buildings of Porter. I took a seat next to his desk as he sat back, a coffee cup in his hand. On the wall behind him was a monthly calendar from Smith & Wesson, a few photos of him in SWAT gear, and one of him with an attractive brown-haired woman who looked to be his wife.
"So," Joe said. "Diane Woods gave me a ring yesterday, asking me to give you some time, Mr. Cole. Since I owe her a couple of favors, ask away. What can I do for you?"
“I’m a writer for
Shoreline
magazine, out of Boston," I said. “I’m considering doing a story about the local drug activity on the seacoast.”
"
Shoreline
, eh? Not a bad magazine. I gave a subscription last year to my mom. What kind of articles do you write?"
"I do a monthly column about New Hampshire, called 'Granite Shores.'''
He shrugged. "Sorry. Can't say that I've ever seen it. Mom likes the magazine, but I don't have time to read it."
"I hear that a lot," I said, my reporter's notebook unopened in my hands.
"So, a column about drug activity. Anything in particular?"
"I was thinking of starting my way north here in Porter and working my way south, comparing and contrasting what's going on in the different communities."
"And you want to start in Porter, is that it?"
"Actually," I said, "I wanted to start a bit farther north, but Diane wasn't able to set something up for me. At the shipyard."
The Porter detective looked incredulous. "Our shipyard?
The Porter Naval Shipyard?"
"That's right."
He laughed, took a sip from his coffee, put the cup down. It was black with red lettering, the red letters spelling out D.A.R.E. "No offense, Mr. Cole, but in the day-to-day business, that shipyard is in its own little universe. We have no jurisdiction over there, the good people in Kittery, Maine, think it belongs to them anyway, and I think I've been to the shipyard maybe twice in my career. And both times it was because the shipyard had some surplus blankets and office equipment to donate to us, and both times I met a shipyard official in a parking lot to transfer the gear. The shipyard's not a place we deal with that much."
"Why's that?"
"Because it belongs to the Department of Defense and the Navy, that's why, and they like running things their own way. Look, for a time that place built a hell of a lot of submarines, subs that sank a lot of Jap freight back during World War Two. Do you know what they do now?"
“Overhauls and refits,” I said. “Mostly of Los Angeles-class attack submarines.”
“Right you are,” he said, smiling. “Most people have their heads up their butts when it comes to the shipyard. Okay. That's their job, overhauling and refitting attack submarines. You seem to be an intelligent guy for a reporter, and you come recommended from Diane. Anything special about those subs?"
"Besides the fact they're powered by nuclear reactors, and no doubt most of them carry nuclear warheads of one kind or another?"
Stevens smiled. "This is the most fun I've ever had on an interview. Most reporters I know couldn't find their ass with both hands and a road map. Yep, nuclear materials, all around. So you're the Department of the Defense and you're the Navy. Care to think how much tolerance you'd have for drug dealing and drug use around nuclear reactors and nuclear weapons?"
"None," I said.
A quick nod. "A number of companies around here now have programs to counteract drug abuse. Random searches of offices, urine-sample analyses, that sort of thing. Well, that's kindergarten compared to what I hear they do over at the shipyard. Not to piss all over your story idea, Mr. Cole, but if you're planning to do an article on drug use in the seacoast and you're going to start with the shipyard, it'll be a mighty small part of the story."
I turned the notebook over in my hands a couple of times.
About what I had expected, but still, I had to go to the best source I could and find that out firsthand. "One more thing, and then I'll be out of your hair," I said.
"Go ahead."
"This might be a bit delicate, but in the course of my research, a name came up of someone that might be playing a key part in the drug trade around here. Somebody who's connected with the shipyard."
His voice seemed a bit flat. "And you'd like me to check out his name?"
“Purely on background,” I said. “Not for attribution or for use. Just to help me in my research. And, I’m sorry to say, it’s not a full name. Just a nickname. Whizzer.”
“Whizzer?” he asked.
"Whizzer," I said.
He smiled and wrote something down on a scrap of paper.
"Okay, I'll give it a shot, but don't hold your breath."
"I don't intend to hold anything right now," I said, standing up. I held out my hand and he shook it, and I said, "This favor that Diane Woods did for you, it must have been a good one."
'That it was," he said, his voice now quiet. "Last year one of our senior patrolmen found out he had cancer. Incurable and inoperable. He decided to end it all, and did it in a motel room at Tyler Beach. Diane helped us a lot, helped us keep it out of the papers. We still owe her big."
"So do I," I said. "So do I."
When I saw her later that day, Paula Quinn was not having a good time of it. I had parked my Ford in the rear lot of the newspaper as always, and as I started heading toward the rear entrance of the newspaper, I stopped, looking at the closed door that led into the circulation department and from there into the newsroom. Some battles are worth fighting for, every minute of the day, and others deserved to wait. I decided to wait, and swung around and went to the front of the paper.
The receptionist was a young woman with dyed-blond hair and an earring through her left eyebrow --- I was wondering if they were now called brow rings, if that's where they were placed --- and she was studiously working on a crossword-puzzle book It took her two tries with the phone system before she contacted Paula, and then she smiled up at me and said, "You can go right in. Do you need to know where her desk is?"
''I'll make a wild guess and stop at the one where she's sitting at," I said, giving her my best
Chronicle
customer smile and walking into the newsroom. The place was empty save for Paula, who was at her desk, which looked as if it had been attacked by a roving gang of junk dealers. She had on a light gray UNH sweatshirt and blue jeans, and her hair had been pulled back from around her face by a thin black bandana. The two chairs near her desk was piled high with folders and newspaper clippings, but I found a spare chair and dragged it over. The desk of her editor, Rollie Grandmaison, was empty, as was the desk of the new guy, Rupert Holman. The front pages from the
Chronicle
's competition still hung from the ceiling, complete with fake blood and plastic dagger.
"It looks like you're the one who got left behind at the junior prom," I said, and she looked up at me, her eyes sharp like crystal, and said, "It's been a sucky day, so please don't start."
"All right, apologies," I said, looking around the place.
"Where the hell is everybody?"
"Out having a lengthy victory lunch, that's where," she said.
"Latest circulation report came in and we exceeded our new weekly goal by three. Can you believe that? Three newspapers purchased at a newsstand, and we beat quota. Rupert was so thrilled that he took the whole cast and crew of this little adventure out to a nice long lunch to celebrate. Three strangers within five miles of this newspaper office, they decide to buy a
Tyler Chronicle
because of a story or a photo on the front page, or because they need something to wrap their dead fish in, and because of those three strangers, here I am, alone in the newsroom."
I looked at her and her desk, at the mess of papers, files and other debris that accompanies being a daily newspaper reporter. "Okay, so you won't ask the question; I'll still answer it," she said. "The reason I'm not at the lunch is because I've been remiss in meeting one of our newsroom goals. Goal number four, if I recall, to have an orderly and clean working space. According to Rupert's anal compulsive mind, I had not even begun to meet the goal, let alone achieve it. So here I sit, while my fellow workers go out and enjoy a free meal."
"Must be heartwarming, to see how many of your coworkers stood up for you."
She wiped a strand of hair from her eyes. "Around here, Lewis, standing up just makes you a bigger target. This place is usually either somebody's first job or last job. In any event, it's a job they don't want to jeopardize. And I hate to admit, that means me right about this point. Which is why I’m here, hungry and angry, cleaning out my desk and file drawers.” She reached over to a filing cabinet, pulled out a cardboard box full of pencils, pens, buttons and bumper stickers, which she threw down on the desktop.
She continued. "You know, you'd think he'd appreciate the fact that I'm his best reporter, that I always meet deadlines, and that I haven't made that much of a fuss in doing those kinds of stories he's been asking for. Speaking of making a fuss, friend, why in hell aren't you returning my phone calls?"
"Excuse me?"
Out at the receptionist area, the phone started ringing. It rang six times before it was picked up. Paula looked at me, another strand of hair across her face, but this time she didn't bother to move it. "You heard me. I called you yesterday and left a message. No reply. I called you this morning, same thing. Something going on?"
I thought of the four messages I had erased yesterday without listening to them, and how I had gone out of the house this morning without checking messages after my morning shower. Damn. I tried to make light of it. "Sometimes I just forget, that's all. I'm sorry, I haven't checked messages in a while."
Paula didn't seem to be in the mood for light. "Well, sometimes... sometimes I need to talk to you, especially when the day's not going well and I'm beginning to doubt my own journalistic skills. And I'm not being whiny or needy or greedy or any damn thing, but I sure could have used a talk last night."
I slowly nodded, looked over at her. "Apologies again. Look, can I help you sort through this mess? Clean some of this stuff out to the rear dumpster?"
She managed a smile. "No, that's okay. For one thing, this is my mess and I only trust my own eyes for deciding what stays and what goes. Plus, I'm enjoying sitting here, stewing and plotting revenge on Rupert when his time comes up. Tell you what --- you can buy me a drink later, if you'd like, 'cause I'm sure I'll be in the mood for one."