“I can keep hoping, though.”
I braked as a stoplight turned red and pedestrians poured into the crosswalk. I forced myself to put aside all the horrors of the day and kept my voice light. “Hope and four bucks will get you a latte at Starbucks.”
“Ha! Does that mean I can buy you a coffee?”
“I’m not that kind of girl, either.”
When Tom interviewed me more than a year and a half ago, he’d caught me when I still carried a burning need to tell Americans what was happening on the other side of the world. I hadn’t told Tom everything, of course. But, for me, I’d been pretty talkative. It had worked out great for Tom; he got a national journalism award. But for me, not so much. My grandmother read it and said that turning the contents of your heart into a headline was not something a Parnell did.
No one can shame you like family.
At the moment, of course, all of that was beside the point. I needed Tom.
“So we talking trade, Sydney?” he asked. “Hold on. Don’t answer that. Back in a sec.”
“Wait—”
But he was gone. Elevator music piped drearily in my ear.
Rain pelted the roof, and I turned up the speaker volume. Clyde’s window was completely fogged and now he was working on the windshield. I shook my head at him and hit the defroster. Thanks to Clyde’s work in Iraq, my partner hated thunder even more than most dogs. But he loved the rain.
The traffic light turned green and I nudged the truck forward.
The music stopped and Tom said, “I’m back. So what’s our deal?”
“We’ll keep it simple,” I said. “You’re going to tell me everything you know. And in exchange, I will let you live.”
“You always were a sweet-talker.”
“Sweet talk is the only kind of bullshit Marines don’t have to do. So tell me about MoMA.”
“What makes you think I know anything about it?”
“You’re Tom O’Hara.”
“Well played. But c’mon, Sydney. You’re killing me. You are cognizant of the fact that I’m off features and on crime, right? I know this is about the Davenport case. I saw you on media footage from that old cement factory. Talking it up with the Feds and the police. Give me something before my boss switches me to international and sends me to Nigeria.”
I tried to remember if I’d heard a helicopter overhead. “There was media footage?”
“At least promise that you’ll give me an exclusive when they’re ready to let something go to the press. Denver PD’s playing hardball on this one. They didn’t even go through me with that sketch.”
I was starting to feel like the last kid picked for the team. “What sketch?”
“Ha! You, either.”
“Tell me.”
“See, now you want me. Some dead guy they found at the cement factory. They’re trying to use the media to get an ID on him.”
I gave a satisfied nod—Cohen had jumped on the photo I’d taken. Power of the press. Maybe they’d shake something loose.
“Tell me about Ben Davenport,” I said. “Did he contact you?”
Silence.
“Have I ever let you down, Tom?”
“There was that time we were in bed . . . no, wait. That was a dream.” Neither of us laughed. “I am still waiting on that follow-up, Sydney. Now that our women are home from the war, people want to know how they’re doing, what life is like after witnessing all that death and destruction. You remember that one?”
“You remember that I gave you my story last spring? The one about the skinheads and all the dead people?”
“So we’re even for the moment. Just say those three little words I’m dying to hear and our journey will continue. Three little words. Quid pro quo.”
“We’re talking about a little girl.”
“Quid. Pro. Quo.”
I made a left-hand turn onto 13th Avenue. A gust of wind slapped the rain against the windshield, and for a moment water ran so thickly over the glass that it looked like the world had fallen into the sea. “Fine. Quid pro quo. You’ll get your exclusive. But with your full awareness that all I am is a railroad cop, bound by the legalities of working for a private company. And I don’t know who the Denver PD brass will talk to.”
“What I hear is that you got some influence with someone in the Major Crimes unit.”
“Now you’re a gossip columnist? How the mighty have fallen. Look, you know you’re going to get this. You’re pretty much the only guy around who knows his ass from his elbow. So help me out here. What’s at stake”—I dropped into my do-not-fuck-with-me Marine voice—“is a little girl’s life. Do not make me waste time hunting you down.”
“You know you scare me sometimes, right?”
“That’s what I count on.”
“Okay, fine. Ben Davenport called me two months ago, around the middle of May. He asked if I knew anything about a new museum going up in Thornton near the South Platte. Wanted to know if I’d be willing to do a puff piece on it—folks bringing culture to the Wild West. Told him it wasn’t my bailiwick anymore. But then he called back a couple of weeks after that, asked if I’d be more interested in MoMA if there was something illegal going on. Of course, I told him yes.”
“And?”
“And, that’s it. He said he’d get the ball rolling, but then I didn’t hear anything more. Mention of the land popped up with all the talk of a bullet train—apparently that acreage has got great right-of-way. So I looked at the public records—title and deed of transfer. Denver Pacific donated a nice chunk of that parcel to the museum. But when I tried to dig deeper into things like the tax records and appraisals, they shut me down. I pleaded the Open Records Act, and they said that releasing that information was under the discretion of the custodian. But the custodian claimed there was an ongoing investigation. When I couldn’t find anything about that, either, I called Davenport back a few times. But he never took my calls. You’re thinking the Davenport murders are about a piece of land?” He paused. “Is this about the bullet train?”
I pulled to a stop in front of Denver PD headquarters and squeezed into a space that others had avoided—right next to a fire hydrant. I figured I had bigger problems.
“I’m not connecting anything at the moment,” I said. “And if you print what we talked about, I will roast your cojones. Davenport had a copy of the deed in his office, with your business card clipped to it. That’s as much as I know. If he found anything illegal, he didn’t leave any paperwork that I could find.”
Sometimes, especially when talking to the press, it’s okay to lie. Quid pro quo.
“Therefore,” Tom said, “it’s time for me to work my journalistic superpowers.” I could almost feel his smile—he would relish the battle now that he knew there was something to fight for. And despite our banter, I knew he was as worried about Lucy as the rest of us.
“Make it good,” I said. “You owe me. And don’t tell anyone what you’re working on.”
“What kind of journalist do you think I am?”
“A good one. Let me know what you find.”
“Then maybe I’ll be the man of your dreams?”
I shut off the engine. “You don’t want to be the man of my dreams, Tom. Trust me.”