mumbled, “I tried. We can talk in the morning.”
“No, come on, I’m up now. Let’s talk.”
“No, let’s sleep instead.” I said.
She continued shaking me. “You can sleep all day if you want.” She said. “I’ll be gone by the time you get up. Just talk to me now.”
I took a deep breath and got ready to argue with her about it, but then realized I was awake anyway, so I might as well just hear what she had to say. “Not very considerate.” I said, looking at the clock. It was five minutes to five.
“Listen,” she said, “that article Amanda Porgett wrote about that Extended Families place in Port Sound? It was supposed to be the first of a series. She died four days before they were going to print the second one, so it never came out. Sounds pretty convenient huh?”
“Yeah, we’ve been over this.” I said. “The place was only taking white babies to boost their numbers, and you think that second article was going to show that maybe they were getting government money.”
“Yeah, something like that.” She said. “I called the paper and asked when they were going to run the rest of Amanda’s series, but the person I talked to said she didn’t think it would ever run because Amanda had only finished the one article before her death. I asked if they’d assigned the story to another reporter, and she said they hadn’t. So I asked her what the rest of the articles were going to be about, and she said the only person who had that information was Amanda’s editor -but that she was unavailable.”
“You should be careful.” I said. “If we start asking a bunch of questions it might get back to Reyes and Borgano.”
“I was going to be cool about it.” She said. “But it’s useless anyway, because check it out.” She got out of bed and ran into the living room. She was wearing an old Grateful Dead T-shirt and gray underwear that clung to her ass appealingly. She came back with photocopies of two of the Shoreston Crier’s front pages. She pointed at the staff list. “Look –Editor In Chief: Gretchen Salle, then two days after Amanda’s murder, Editor In Chief: Robert Foneto. And look…” She flipped through some of the pages until she got to the obituary page that had Amanda Porgett’s memorial. “See? Gretchen Salle was one of the people who eulogized Amanda.”
“So? Her boss eulogized her.” I said. “What’s the big deal?”
“That’s not all, look.” She flipped to the pages about the awards ceremony for the Giggles article. There were two pictures, one of Amanda with the chopsticks in her hair accepting the award, and another on a different page of Amanda sitting at a table with a man on one side of her and a woman on the other. The man was taking a bite of spaghetti and the woman and Amanda seemed to be laughing about something. The glass obelisk prize Amanda had won was beside her on the table. “Look at the caption.” She said. “That’s Gretchen Salle.”
“Okay, she took her boss to the award dinner with her, what? They were friends.” I said.
“You think like a man.” She said. “Look at the body language there.” She pointed at the picture. “And Gretchen’s hair is pretty short don’t you think? Pretty butch- and look at Amanda in that dress. She doesn’t look too comfortable does she?”
I laughed. “Okay so they’ve got your gaydar beeping, so what?” I said. “This is what I’m awake at five o-clock in the morning for?”
“We have to talk to this woman.” Jessie said. “She can tell us what Amanda was working on. If Amanda had strong enough evidence against Junior Pierson, that could be enough to get David off.”
“It still doesn’t explain why he would kill his wife.” I pointed out as I picked up the phone beside the bed and dialed information. I asked for the number for Gretchen Salle and wrote it down. “We’ll call her tomorrow.” I said. I put my head down and pulled up the covers. Jessie cursed me and left me alone.
NINE
A couple of hours later I was dimly aware of the phone ringing, and then Jessie was shaking me. “Wake up.” She said. I groaned my annoyance. “It’s David, wake up.”
I took a deep breath as Jessie handed me the phone. She sat next to me on the bed and listened. “What’s going on?” I asked.
“I need to get out of here, I think I’m about to get caught.” He said.
“What? Why?”
“There was some guy asking about me at the front desk.” He said.
“You’re at a hotel?”
“I was.” He said.
“Where are you now?”
“I’m at a Denny’s in Cleveland. This morning I got a call from the front desk and the lady said there was a guy there who wanted to ask me some questions about my credit card, so I just took off. I bailed out a side door and came here.”
“Did you get a look at the guy?” I asked thinking it might’ve been Borgano.
“No way, I stayed clear of the lobby.” He said.
“You were using a stolen credit card?” I asked.
“No,” he said, “well, sort of. It’s a safe card, it used to belong to a dead guy. You know Mr. Gill who works at the morgue?”
“No.” I said.
“Well my uncle hooked me up with him. I bought this guy’s ID and credit cards a year ago and I’ve been using ‘em ever since.”
“For a year?” I asked. “And they’re just now catching up to you?”
“This card is different, I make the payments every month. I called the card company and did an address change to the motor lodge, and I’ve been paying it off. This dead guy had shitty credit when I started, but now he’s up to a two thousand dollar limit because of me.” He said.
“Wait a minute,” I said, “Were they asking about you, David Telano, or about the guy on the card?”
“I don’t know,” he said, “I assume they still thought I was Ray. I can’t go back there though, and I can’t be Ray Denardo anymore either.”
“What are you gonna do?” Jessie asked.
“I have no fucking idea.” He said. “You don’t happen to know of a Unabomber shack in the woods, do you?”
“No man, sorry.”
“Well, I’m fucked here.” He said. “I got nowhere to go and I got no cash. I know this isn’t your problem, but I need help man please. My fucking life depends on it.”
“We’ll come get you.” Jessie said, taking the phone from me. I put my hand up to my face and rubbed my eyes. “You’re at the Denny’s downtown? The one on Fifth?”
“Yeah.” He said. “You really gonna come pick me up? You’re not gonna call the cops?”
“The cops?” Jessie said. “We’re your friends.”
“Ben?”
“No one’s calling the cops.” I said, taking the phone back. “And hey, go to an ATM and take a cash advance for as much as you can, then ditch that card. Be sure to keep your face covered or block the little camera, just in case they don’t know the guy using Ray Denardo’s card is you. They could just be investigating a stolen credit card. We should be there in a half hour or so.”
“I’ll be here.” He said.
I hung up the phone and exhaled. “He’s not staying here.” I said to Jessie. “There’s no fucking way. He was on America’s Most Wanted. If we put him up, we’ll be committing a felony. I’m not going to jail for him. He’s not staying here and I’m serious.”
“Oh, this isn’t half my house too?” She said. “I don’t get a say?”
“Well, let me put it another way. If he stays here, I’m moving out. I’m willing to give him the benefit of the doubt and assume he’s mostly innocent, but aiding and abetting a fugitive is something I can’t get into.”
“Aiding and abetting a fugitive.” She said. “Listen to yourself. Big security agent, with the official cop jargon. We’re talking about David here. He’s not Bin Laden.”
“He’s not staying here.” I said. “It wouldn’t make sense anyway. The cops have already been here once asking questions. They’re keeping an eye on us.”
“Come on, let’s go.” She said. “He’s waiting.”
&nbs
p; “I’m not leaving until we know where we’re taking him.” I said. “If we don’t decide now, we’ll just end up taking him back here.” I grabbed her hands and looked at her. “Listen, Jess, I know you want to help him. It’s really great and noble and all, but come on. David only cares about himself,” -she shook her head no, but I continued- “he already got his cousin killed over this, you think he’d worry about getting us in trouble with the law? No. He’ll take the path of least resistance right over our necks if we let him.”
“What about one of the empty places in Lakeveiw?” She asked, perking up. “That would be perfect.”
I immediately thought of the Relna place. They were in California and wouldn’t be back to Lakeview until the spring. “I don’t know.” I said.
“Come on, it’s perfect.” She said. “You could sneak him in and get into one of the empty houses in there. They practically leave the doors wide open.”
“Not anymore.” I said. “Anyway, if they found him they’d know I helped him get in.”
“Not necessarily. After all, he snuck in once before right? He could’ve done it again, sometimes the best place to hide is right under everyone’s nose.”
I sighed and got my keys off of the dresser. “Come on.” I said. “Let’s go transport a fugitive.”
David looked ridiculous with blonde hair. It looked like he’d dyed it with bleach in a gas station bathroom. To see him on the street you might think he was a happy-go-lucky gay guy, but only if you didn’t notice the deep lines under his eyes, or his tattoos. I sat with him in our living