Deadline Man

Eleven eleven.

Chapter Seven

“You were good back there. Very calm and self-assured. Is that what they teach you in columnist school? I always wanted to end up as a columnist after a long and distinguished career. I don’t mean you’re washed up or anything. You know what I mean. Anyway, wow. My arm still hurts from where you grabbed me and threw me into the closet. You were so cool. Then you just lost it after we were safe in the stairwell. People are so odd.”

I let Amber talk. So I was good at concealing my terror. I don’t tell her why I lost it in the stairwell. I have my reasons. Afterward, we spent an hour with the cops. My new friend, Sgt. Mazolli, is less chatty about the financial markets, probably wondering why I keep showing up at suicides. But Amber knows him and he likes her. Who wouldn’t? Now I am halfway through my third martini and my calm, self-assured side decides I’d better eat something. I pull over the bar menu and am surprised that “eleven/eleven” isn’t printed inside. Hell, I’m seeing it everywhere else.

I’m not going nuts. I almost say it aloud.

“You’re like me,” Amber continues. “You’re a news junkie. You need the rush of something new every day.”

“Today was a little

too much rush.”

“Sorry we didn’t get the report on this Hardesty dude. Did you know him well?”

“No, just a source,” I say.

“So tell me about you. Are you from Seattle? Not married, or you don’t wear a ring and you can be out at a bar after work with a nosy female co-worker. What about your family?”

“I’m an orphan.”

She gently elbows me. The bar is crowded so we’re standing very close. “Liar. I can tell when people are lying.”

“What was that about back there?” I interrupt early into her life story.

“The boyfriend? Suicide. You heard the cops say he left a note on top of his desk. Hey, I wish he had written a note saying he’d killed Megan…”

“That’s just it,” I say. “I didn’t see anything on the top of his desk but the iPod and the speakers. Nothing else. Not a note. Not a computer. Whoever heard of somebody his age without a computer?”

Amber looks at me straight on and curses under her breath. “I think you might be right. I didn’t see a note, either.”

“Did you see the tattoo on his calf?”

“No.” She frowned into her drink. “Why would the cops be lying? Not that they need a reason to lie to the press.”

A cup of chowder arrives. I ignore it. “And the dogs. The cops couldn’t find them. I didn’t see any evidence Ryan owned dogs. No bowls on the floor. The place was tiny.”

“Yeah, but in a neighborhood like that? They’re the favorite pets of gang-bangers. So maybe these were strays looking for dinner. What are you saying?”

I make myself eat a spoonful. Everything right that moment lacks taste except the liquor. I say, “What if somebody wanted us out of that apartment or worse?”

Amber studies me and lays a hand on my arm. “Maybe that’s a little paranoid.”

Chapter Eight

Saturday, October 16

I am outside, just to walk the night streets, watching the rain dance against the pavement. Loud bars around Pioneer Square give way to bleak streets of empty buildings on the edge of the International District. The news racks are empty. Those piles of debris every few yards are really homeless people who couldn’t find a doorway for shelter. What am I doing about it? The homeless had been a big cause for Jill. So were prisoners. She was also convinced one of them would kill her. If I am a little paranoid, I come by it honestly.

Now that the crisis has passed I can’t stop thinking about the young man hanging from the bed frame, looking impossibly fragile in death. His skin blue and thin as parchment. The dogs, snarling and lunging. I keep looking behind me, as if they will be there on the sidewalk, as if we’re still in the hallway and can’t quite make it to the stairs. The feelings almost, but can’t quite, mute the sound of Troy Hardesty falling into the street right in front of me. The sense of menace from the federal agents who staked out my lover’s house and followed me. And all the feelings, all the events, flow into the big bay of “eleven/eleven.” Don’t they? Then I am on a dark street I’ve never walked down, then I am down looking up. I sense the figure looming over me, then I see it and I hear my scream before I am conscious of screaming.

“Baby, it’s all right.”

The figure sheds its fedora and trench coat and slides into my bed next to me. She is warm and soft-skinned, and almost nude.

“I didn’t mean to scare you,” Pam says.