Shoot E-Book

Kieran Crowley

• Herausgeber: Titan Books
• Kategorie: Abenteuer, Thriller, Horror
• Sprache: Englisch
• Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2016

Seitenzahl: 468

Beschreibung

F.X. Shepherd is juggling a new job as a PI, while keeping up with his popular pet column. He is hired by a congressman who has received death threats, part of the escalating war between the Republican Party and Tea Party extremists. A series of murders of gun rights politicos at a presidential convention ups the stakes, and Shepherd must fight off his liberal parents, do-anything-for-a-story reporter Jeannie Mac, and a gang of mysterious gunmen.

Leseprobe

Contents

Cover

Also by Kieran Crowley

Title Page

Copyright

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About the Author

Also Available from Titan Books

ALSO AVAILABLE FROM KIERAN CROWLEY AND TITAN BOOKS

Hack

ShootPrint edition ISBN: 9781783296514E-book edition ISBN: 9781783296521

Published by Titan BooksA division of Titan Publishing Group Ltd144 Southwark Street, London SE1 0UP

First edition: October 20161 3 5 7 9 10 8 6 4 2

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental. The publisher does not have any control over and does not assume any responsibility for author or third-party websites or their content.

Copyright © 2016 by Kieran Crowley. All rights reserved.

No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means without the prior written permission of the publisher, nor be otherwise circulated in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.

A CIP catalogue record for this title is available from the British Library.

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1

It feels like a stranger touching me lightly between my shoulder blades at the base of my neck. My muscles tighten and my head begins to turn, to look behind me and see who’s tracking me, but I’ve learned to stop the thoughtless impulse before my head can swivel visibly.

The trusted feeling of being watched was a gift that came without conscious effort. Magic. The hard part had been training myself to catch my reaction before it could betray me to a watcher. That’s why I’m not zipped-in, still alive. Basic Darwin.

You may not believe in occult lore like this but the U.S. government does. They taught me to trust the feeling and act upon it. They also instructed us combat operators not to look too long at our targets—in case they had itchy necks, too.

I was hoping a pet columnist for a New York tabloid newspaper wouldn’t need down-range skills. I took a deep breath of New York cab exhaust air. I was surrounded by hundreds of morning commuters, pedestrians, like me. Including one guy who had those Day-Glo orange sneakers you can see from space. It was no biggie that someone might look at me. But the odd thing was, I almost never got the feeling of being watched in Manhattan crowds because people almost never looked into anyone’s eyes, or even at anyone else, except to avoid collisions. It wasn’t a casual glance. The eye in the back of my neck only blinked when it felt the breath of a predator.

We all moved as one, but alone; a tight mob—a hundred fearful strangers, rushing as if we were being chased, just on the edge of desperation or breaking into a run in the warm June sunshine. Serious, striding close and fast but never touching. Most on their cellphones, some guys checking out girls’ asses, but no one spoke or acknowledged anyone else’s existence. Everyone distracted, driven, pursued, but I was probably the only one actually being followed by someone.

It occurred to me that I was away from America for ten years and by the time I came back they had all gone crazy. It took me a while to realize I was crazy, too, and for some of the same reasons. Shooting. Killing. Hating. Patriotism. I was so crazy, I promised myself I’d never take another order or fire another gun. So far, so good, considering that, since I returned home, I’d been threatened, attacked, drugged, strapped to a table, shot, locked in a flaming cab and dumped in a lake. And all for just trying to write a pet column and a few news stories for a Manhattan newspaper. I did say crazy.

After ten years in Afghanistan, Iraq, Afghanistan again and lots of other chaotic places I’m not allowed to mention, my body knows when it’s being watched. I’ve always wondered why. Maybe it’s a caveman psychic thing. You know, when the saber-toothed tiger is stalking you, you somehow sense that your image is appearing in his brain and you should run like a mother. I slowed down on a crosswalk but the thin, loping shadow also slowed down. I tried looking in store windows but I only caught glimpses of a backwards Yankees baseball cap and red sneakers, dodging through the throng with a rolling gait. Couldn’t see a face or hands; could be black, white, Hispanic, anybody.

I’ll say one thing for the crowded streets of New York: most of the people smell a hell of a lot better than I did before I came home. In those places, with the same phones but usually without running water, my body stank of the usual unpleasant odors, with the added scent of serious fear. The food helped a bit. We all ate the searing local food, with hot peppers, cumin, onion and garlic to destroy a wide range of intestinal bacteria. We washed it down with lots of arak—a high-octane booze that tasted like licorice-flavored rubbing alcohol. Eventually you sweated it all out your pores and everyone gave off the same subtle stench: a dumpster outside an Indian restaurant. And a licorice stick. In a barnyard.

But on this balmy early summer day Madison Avenue smelled more like a stampede at Bed, Bath & Beyond; a swirling vortex of spring-fresh fabrics, fruity organic shampoos, musky perfumes, soaps, toothpaste, and deodorants. I looked at my reflection in a store window: jeans, blue t-shirt, creased by black shoulder straps of the small black backpack holding my laptop—a gift from Jane—and a few other items. People rushed past behind me, protecting cardboard cylinders of expensive, sugary, hyper-caffeinated coffee milkshakes. My eyes were drawn to the three old parallel white scar lines on my left cheek, fading into my short sandy sideburns. Not my good side. You should see the rest of me.

I took out my new iPhone and held a button until a dinging double xylophone tone answered me and a silver microphone symbol appeared on the screen.

“How may I help you, Shepherd?” my phone asked me, in the familiar female voice.

“Siri, who is following me?” I asked her.

“I don’t know who your friend is, Shepherd,” Siri replied. “But you can tell me.”

Siri was my wingman. Wingwoman. She was great for finding restaurants, nearby cabs and data on most people. I had gotten into the habit of asking her things a phone shouldn’t know because I loved her smoky voice and, sometimes, her funny answers. I got hooked. I know her clever replies are the result of the late Steve Jobs and his computer gremlins programming pre-packaged answers to make her wicked cool. But I was an optimist and I hoped Siri would one day rise to my challenge. Of course, I couldn’t tell Siri who was lurking behind me unless I found that out first. I didn’t have time for this. I was already late and I didn’t want to drag some jerk to my actual destination.

“I thought you knew everything, Siri,” I scolded her.

“Let me check on that,” she said politely. “Here is some information on that.”

Siri displayed a dictionary entry for the word “everything.”

Now she was just screwing with me. I once asked my sexy phone voice what her name meant and she answered: “‘Siri’ has many subtle, metaphorical, and, frankly, contradictory meanings—none of which I am at liberty to discuss, Shepherd. Sorry about that.”

I put the phone in my pocket and did a one-eighty on the pavement. I barged against the flowing crowd, right toward the watcher. People complained and cursed me out, as I slightly inconvenienced them by going upstream. Some stepped aside without comment, protecting their scalding Starbucks. Some played chicken with anger on their faces, slowing me down. Ten heads back, the crowd broke and surged, cursed, bumped, and blocked. He was good. And fast. And gone. The flash of blue clothing on the vanishing back made me certain it wasn’t Ginny McElhone trying to steal another newspaper exclusive from me. She had followed me before but I’d know her body shape and movements anywhere. I walked around the block and ducked into a Sushi Bagel joint and confirmed I’d shaken my tail. My triscar pulsed gently on my temple, usually an indicator of a change in the weather. Next time, I would do a better job of meeting my new admirer.

It wasn’t just idle curiosity. The “Hacker” serial killer was behind bars but I still had a vindictive billionaire out there, my former boss Trevor Todd. He was probably the one who ordered his minions to kill me but he left the country before cops could question him. So far, the investigation had not resulted in his arrest and I wasn’t holding my breath because he would like nothing better than for me to stop breathing. So, old friends, new friends, I needed to find out.

And then ask Siri.

2

I crossed the huge lobby of the New York Daily Press, with its giant, rotating globe, covered with a very outdated map that still showed the Soviet Union in red. Germany was divided in half by the “Iron Curtain.”

In the elevator, I thought about the events of the last month. Most of the bad guys I had met were now cavorting in the Happy Hunting Grounds. That would include two of my former editors at the tabloid New York Mail, two charming members of the Mail’s Human Resources team and four rich victims—reality TV show stars. Even if you won’t admit to reading an infamous tabloid like the Mail, I’m sure you heard about it. I was pretty famous for a while. Front-page intrepid investigative reporter on the track of the serial killer, whatever. All before my thirtieth birthday. If you didn’t hear about it, you should know I only killed one of those four bad guys. He was about to shoot me. Just because I gave up guns doesn’t mean I have a death wish. The good news is that moving to New York wasn’t all bad news. I met a great woman, Jane. A vet, as in veterinarian. I’m a vet, but not a pet doc, just a former member of the armed forces, keeping America safe. You’re welcome. I was also adopted by my best buddy, Skippy, a Siberian Husky and a hell of a pooch, whose master was murdered. Now that the whole mess is over, I just want to write my pet column. I like doing the column, which is from the point of view of the pet, not the owner. The investigative reporter thing was fun but I’m not sure it’s for me. I did like working with the cops, especially Detective Lieutenant Izzy Negron, and catching the bad guys. But no one is offering me a detective’s job.

I worked first at the New York Mail but found the competition with other reporters totally crazy. Like Ginny McElhone—who was at the Daily Press then—who would literally do anything for a story and is mad crazy. She also seduced me and sort of saved my life but doesn’t play well with others. When I left the Mail, I got my current job at the New York Daily Press. I write my column but I haven’t come up with any front pages on the Hacker case in weeks, which, I assume, is why my editor called me in this morning for a meeting.

My new boss, City Editor Mel Greenbaum, made me wait before summoning me into his office. He was a weird guy and a chat with him was always entertaining. The newspaper business, like my former trade, was filled with gentlemen, and ladies, who wanted to be macho. They cursed a lot. Mel was different, I had been told, because he had lost several lawsuits filed by staffers, mostly women, who said he had sexually harassed them by using filthy language. These tough guys and broads were suddenly freaked out by profanity, which, they claimed, demeaned, humiliated and degraded them. Juries agreed when they heard the recordings and it cost the paper a fortune. Some tough guys. After Mel lost the third lawsuit, he was ordered to attend charm school—sensitivity training. But he was a hard case and still couldn’t control his profanity. He was forced to undergo hypno-aversion therapy—with homonyms—or lose his job. He agreed and, technically, Mel never cursed at an underling again. It made his chats unique and no one could ever prove profanity.

I wondered if he was angry at me for being late but he pumped my hand, slapped me on the back and spent ten minutes praising me for my many exclusives on the Hacker for his enemy—the New York Mail. He also lauded me for switching to the good guys, beating the Mail and catching the Hacker on the front page of the Press.

“That was the best fuggin’ job I’ve ever seen, you breaking that mother-loving Hacker case,” Mel told me, beaming with pride, flashing some crooked teeth.

“So I’m getting a raise?” I asked.

Mel’s smile vanished. His watery eyes became hard and then softened.

“You just got a freaking raise,” he said, in a wounded voice.

“So, why am I here, Mel?”

“I just want to shoot the breeze. We should get to know one another.”

Mel never shot the breeze. Mel had to be twice my age and I doubted we had anything in common besides the newspaper. I looked around his office, the photos of the wife and kids and pets and vacations. I asked him about them and he told me. He asked about me. No wife, but Mel already knew about Jane, my hot and brilliant girlfriend, because she had also been in his newspaper and many others during the Hacker case. And Mel already knew all about Skippy, because Skippy was, if anything, more famous than me. After ten minutes of pretending to be fascinated with each other, Mel said he would buy me a drink soon. At last, a good idea. It looked like ten minutes was the limit of Mel’s social charm.

“It’s time to stop fracking around, Shepherd. You haven’t filed a cop-socking story in two weeks,” Mel said, in a fatherly, curse-free tone.

At last, the real reason for the meeting. Should I tell him I already had a dad?

“I was taking some medical leave. I was wounded in the line of duty, boss.”

“Abso-honking-lutely. Sure, you deserved some time off,” Mel replied, sounding dubious and using the past tense.

“I was knocked unconscious, shot, basically set on fire and dumped in a lake,” I pointed out.

“I’m just saying that you have to get back on the fuggin’ horse, buddy—unless you’re some kind of deuce-bag goof-off?”

“No, Mel, I’m not a deuce-bag goof-off. I like doing the column but I’m not sure this reporting gig is for me.”

He jumped out of his black leather executive chair faster than I thought possible.

“Are you freaking kidding me? You are the best bun-forking investigative reporter I’ve ever seen.”

“Thanks. I didn’t say I wasn’t good at it, Mel. It’s fun but I just don’t think I want to do it for the rest of my life. I really liked working with Izzy Negron and the cops, though. I could do that, be a homicide detective.”

“You’re too old for that, you stupid son on a beach.”

“Actually, I’m not. The NYPD cutoff is age thirty-five. I checked. I’ll be thirty in July. Besides, with my military credits, I could join up to age forty-one.”

“Bull-pit!”

“No. It’s true.”

“You’ll have to qualify, go through the academy, be a uniform for years… You might never make detective, much less a homicide investigator. You just need to drop your cockleshell and get your back to work.” Mel settled back into his seat. “You have any ideas about the next story you want to work on?”

“You bet. Dog poop.”

It got very quiet in the office. Then Mel laughed loudly, his pink jowls wattling. When he saw I wasn’t laughing too, he stopped. I explained that there had been a study which found that dogs did their business while orienting themselves in a north–south direction. In short, Shar-Peis practiced feng shui.

“I don’t believe the study without my own scientific proof, so we’ll experiment—me and Skippy. I’ll let the chips fall where they may,” I assured him.

He glared at me and then, slowly, he smirked.

“Horse-split! This is not how to get another raise, Shepherd.”

I told him I wasn’t really angling for another bump and was ready to start work on this new column idea.

“Your pet thing is cute as a kumquat but I’m only interested in hard news and you have a father-mucking contract with us.”

“Yes, I do,” I agreed. “Have you read it?”

Mel blinked. He hadn’t. I told him. He didn’t believe that his predecessor had signed a contract letter that only required me to write one pet column a week and also to report “any breaking news I uncover.”

He called for a copy of my agreement and read it over and over, looking for a way out.

“In our business, everyone gets assigned stories and then they uncover stuff,” Mel tried. “That’s the way it works, mukluk.”

“Not if they have a contract that says what mine says,” I countered.

“C’mon, don’t be an ace-hole. I have something just up your alley right now. You’ll love it!”

“What?”

“Senator Hard-On! What else? You are going to break it wide open!” Mel declared, holding up today’s front page:

SEN. HARD-ON SEX PILLS

Viagra in Niagara Falls

Both tabloids and every news outlet in town were hot on the story of our horny Democratic U.S. Senator, Ron Hardstein, now renamed Senator Hard-On for his online monkey business involving dozens of women, his smart phone and his penis. My colleagues were at that moment stalking the honorable gentleman, trying to uncover the names of all the women he had had sex with. Everyone in the country was on the story and it all seemed very predictable. The only thing more boring to me than someone else’s sex life was politics.

“You’ve got to be kidding, Mel.”

“Why is the biggest story in town not good enough for you?”

“Because I don’t care what Hardstein does with his equipment. His sex life is between him, his wife and the women. It’s no one else’s business because it had nothing to do with his job. It’s not a story.”

Mel chuckled. “You’re a beginner in this business, Shepherd. I’m the judge of what is and what isn’t a story.”

To me, his reasoning seemed circular, a self-licking ice-cream cone. If he was the guy who decided what stories went in the newspaper, then all of his choices became news—proving his news judgment was one hundred per cent correct. When I continued to disagree, he threatened me with legal action.

“Okay,” I responded.

We sat looking at each other for a while, until Mel thought better of his threat and took a different tack. “Would you at least be open to fugging suggestions?”

“Fine. But I don’t have to follow them.”

“You’ve only been working for newspapers for a month or two. You don’t know how the news biz works.” He started listing ideas for stories, topics for me to dig up scoops on, mostly involving sex and celebrities.

“The next big story will find me,” I told him.

“You’re really kissing me off. What are you freaking talking about?”

“News happens,” I explained, already walking through the door. “You can’t go out and create it.”

Mel was still laughing uproariously when I left his office, his belly bouncing like a beach ball of Jell-O against his desk.

3

As soon as I hit the street, I took out my phone.

“Is Mel an asshole?” I asked Siri.

“There’s no need for profanity, Shepherd,” Siri chided me.

Siri is a lady. I apologized. I asked her to FaceTime Jane. As I waited for the call to connect, I got that feeling again, the one that had kept me alive this far. Someone’s eyes were on me.

Once the call connected I didn’t bother with preamble.

“Mel Greenbaum called me in for a chat.”

“What did he want?” Jane asked, her face concerned. She was wearing her pink Dr. Jane lab coat, her stethoscope around her neck, and looked like a blonde movie actress playing a veterinarian. I could see her kitchen in the background.

“Well, he shook my hand, patted me on the back, told me about his family, asked about you and Skippy, and then told me to get back to work.”

“Then what?”

“I told him the reporter gig may not be for me. He freaked. He tried to convince me I was wrong. Then he threatened to sue me but backed off when I said let the games begin.”

“So?”

“So, we’re still friends, I’m working on my dog-poop scoop and keeping an eye out for the Next Big Thing.”

“Which is what?” she asked.

“I have no clue. I think he’ll pester me with suggestions. Listen, I think I’ll stop by and pick up Skippy for a walk.”

I heard a familiar bark. Skippy had heard my voice.

“What’s up?” Jane asked.

“Nothing,” I lied.

“You’re lying,” Jane observed.

I should not have done this on FaceTime.

“Only a little,” I admitted.

“We agreed about this,” Jane pointed out. “No bull.”

“Sorry. Someone is following me.”

“Ginny Mac again?”

“Not her. Someone else, I think.”

“Who?”

“I don’t know.”

“Then how do you know they’re following you?”

“I’m good at that.”

“Maybe Ginny Mac has someone else following you?”

“That’s possible. I’ll see you soon.”

I hit the phone camera app and reversed the angle. I held it up above my shoulder so I could see behind me. No Yankees cap, no red sneakers, no visible face. I put the phone away but I still had the warning itch between my shoulder blades, the urgent urge to seek cover, turn, aim and fire. I fought to resist my fight-or-flight instinct. On the other hand, I was on a sunny street in America. What could happen?

* * *

Jane’s five-story Upper East Side brownstone townhouse in the fancy Carnegie Hill neighborhood near Central Park is worth major money. When I asked her if she got the cash from her practice, her dead husband, or was she rich, she looked at me like I was a complete jerk.

“All three, if it matters,” Jane told me.

I was very new in New York then and didn’t know I wasn’t supposed to ask people openly about money. Instead, after asking your name—to see if they had ever seen it in bold type in a gossip column—sophisticated Manhattanites just asked where you lived. Their New Yorker Real Estate Radar instantly told them if you were rich, poor or pathetic. If they were still interested in a conversation with you after that, they asked what you did for a living, which was just another disguised money question. I had become used to women asking me the three questions at parties and watching them retreat to the bar after I answered “Shepherd,” “Broome Street” and “newspaper reporter.” I have my own small apartment downtown, a tiny walk-up sub-let. I couldn’t afford to buy it because Manhattan was quickly becoming a millionaires-only spot. Lately, Skippy and I had been spending most of our time with Jane in her fancy townhouse, even though neither one of us had made any actual decision to live together.

I let myself in with my key. The alarm was off, blinking green. I called her and she answered from the kitchen. So did Skippy. I heard his distinctive yip and his trimmed toenails galloping across the expensive hardwood floors toward me, big as a wolf. I went on one knee to avoid being bowled over by the huge blue-eyed husky, who skidded into me and began licking.

“Hey, buddy, I was only gone a couple hours,” I told him, scratching his large head where black fur made a symmetrical black cap on his mostly white fur, with two parallel lines descending toward the intelligent bright eyes, the mark of a thoroughbred. I laughed and he leaned into my petting with delight, his tail slamming the floor.

I met Skippy in a bloody kitchen, a murder scene where one of his masters had been butchered, the first victim of the Hacker. It was like we had always been friends, even before we met. We rescued each other. Skippy had helped me investigate that case and protected me. I was sure he liked it when the game was afoot. One of Skippy’s fuzzy ears twitched. He turned toward the front door and cocked his head.

Jane was also glad to see me. She gave me a kiss and a hug, her stethoscope and her plastic DOCTOR JANE nameplate scrunched between us.

“I’m beginning to wonder if you like his kisses better than mine,” she smirked.

“I would never say that… to your face,” I smiled.

“Skippy and I just got back from a second walk,” Jane told me. “Don’t let him con you.”

“That’s okay. I need him for something.”

“Really?” Jane asked, brushing some blonde hair behind one ear. “What?”

I changed the subject and asked her about her day. She sighed, as if she was going to tell me about the death of someone’s pet, then burst into laughter.

“What?” I asked, smiling.

“Today, I saved a dachshund who was choking to death,” Jane said, still laughing.

“That’s funny?”

“I shouldn’t laugh but I can’t help it,” she giggled. “This married couple brought the dog in because he was… Here, I’ll show you.”

Jane opened up the EyeBall security program on her laptop and started scrolling around. After Jane and I were almost killed, she sprung for an expensive, wall-to-wall video surveillance system with sound that covered every inch of her office and home 24–7 and was accessible from anywhere, with automatic intruder alerts and security monitoring.

“Here it is. This happened a few hours ago. Wait, it was later… there. Watch.”

The camera footage had a slight fish-eye distortion to it and showed a stainless steel examination table, cabinets, and four people moving around a reddish-brown dog on the table; Jane and an assistant as well as a middle-aged man and a younger woman, obviously the owners of the hacking hot dog on the table.

“Did you see what he ate, Mr. Corcoran?” Jane asked the husband. “You have to watch them—they’ll gobble up anything off the street.”

“My wife was home alone but Timmy only goes out in his dog walk in our back yard,” the husband said. “We don’t take him onto the street.”

“I have no idea what happened,” his pretty blonde wife whimpered. “One second he was fine, and the next he was choking. Please help him!”

“I got home and my wife was hysterical,” the guy explained. “I put ’em both in the car and rushed over.”

“This is where I injected Apomorphine to induce vomiting,” Jane explained to me, as I saw her give the dog a shot, while her assistant held the animal still, a basin at the ready.

The dog puked violently. The wife began crying, as her husband held her. Jane used a pair of forceps to remove an object from the basin. It was what New Yorkers called a Coney Island whitefish. A rubber.

“What the hell?” the husband asked.

“A condom,” Jane explained. “That was the problem. It was blocking Timmy’s airway. He’s breathing fine now.”

The grateful dachshund tried to lick Jane, who backed off.

“Oh, my God,” said the wife, grabbing her husband’s elbow and shoving him toward the door. “Michael. I’ll take care of this.”

“Wait… what?” the husband sputtered, looking at his wife, the dog, the condom.

“Mr. Corcoran, you have to dispose of these… items properly, so Timmy doesn’t get hold of them.”

“I… I don’t use them,” he said, vaguely. “I don’t need ’em. I got a vasectomy. We…”

“Michael…” his wife pleaded, running out of words.

“I don’t use ’em.” He glared at her. “Somebody else musta left it there! Tell it to the guy who used it! Ask my wife!”

Jane and her assistant looked at each other.

“Who is he? You did this in front of Timmy?” he demanded.

“I’ll give you folks a few minutes alone,” Jane said diplomatically, beating a hasty retreat.

The video continued, with yelling and tears and the husband storming out. Jane stopped the recording.

“Why am I laughing? This is sad,” Jane said. “I’m a terrible person.”

“So am I,” I told her. “Totally twisted.”

We both broke down; two terrible people, laughing.

4

“I had no idea,” Jane insisted, her laughter fading. “I feel terrible. How was I to know?”

“You couldn’t,” I said. “You were trying to save a dog, not end a marriage. I wonder who’ll get custody of Timmy?”

We laughed some more, setting Skippy barking. It took me a few seconds to realize Skippy was barking at the front door. Someone was knocking.

“Be cool, Skippy,” I told him, patting his head.

He obeyed, but his snowy seventy-pound body tensed, eyes on the door, his blue eyes cold, ready. I opened the door and found a chubby housewife with stringy brown hair, dressed in a loose yellow sundress and red Crocs, waving some papers and babbling breathlessly in a tearful, semi-hysterical voice about how Dr. Strangelove was missing. Her eyes were red. She lifted a shopping bag and wiped one eye with an elbow.

“I beg your pardon?” Jane said. “Who is missing?”

“My little baby, Dr. Strangelove. There’s a reward. Here’s his picture,” she managed.

She handed us each a Xerox copy of a cute little blonde dog with a wavy coat, some of which was blue, and a pink tongue. One eye was blue, the other white. It looked like a pooch assembled by Dr. Frankenstein. MISSING, $50 REWARD.

“He’s a cockapoo-shih-tzu-pug mix?” Jane asked.

“Yes,” the woman answered, surprised. “You know dogs?”

Jane told her she was a vet. By this time the woman was inside and Skippy was sniffing her shoes with interest. She began petting Skippy and baby-talking him. Skippy loved it, a new pal.

“You live nearby?” I asked her.

“Yes, we’ve only been here a month. That’s why I’m so worried. Doc doesn’t know the neighborhood yet. I’m afraid he’ll try to go back to Queens.”

“Why Dr. Strangelove?” Jane asked.

“It’s a funny character in an old movie.” That didn’t really answer the question.

“You moved into this block?” I pressed.

“No, around the corner. Have you seen him? I’m terrified he’ll get hit by a car.” She turned to Jane. “Where’s your office?”

Jane told her and was about to continue when I interrupted.

“If we see him, where would we bring him?” I asked. “I don’t see your address on the sheet, just your cell number.”

“That’s the best way to get me. I’m never home,” she said. Then she pointed at me, her mouth open. “Wait a second. I know you, your face. You’re famous, aren’t you? You’re that newspaper guy. The one who caught the serial killer!”

“Yes, he is,” Jane chuckled.

“I knew you looked familiar,” she gushed, shaking my hand with a firm grip. “Wow. That is amazing. I am talking to a celebrity. Oh! Wait!”

She produced a cellphone and hugged me around the shoulders with the other arm in a selfie grip. The flash blinded me. Skippy jumped and yipped. She thanked me and asked me my name.

“Shepherd,” Jane told her. “F.X. Shepherd. I’m Jane Arthur.”

She thanked us, petted her new friend Skippy, shook our hands and left to knock on other doors down the block. I watched her for a while. After I shut the door, I followed Jane to the kitchen table, inside a semi-greenhouse that overlooked her enclosed garden.

“Did you find anything weird about all that?” I asked Jane.

“All what?”

“I don’t know,” I shrugged. “I just got strange vibes from her.”

“Skippy seemed to like her,” Jane pointed out.

I went back to the door, opened it and looked down the block. She was gone.

“What was weird?” Jane asked.

“She gave us no name, no address. Just the name of the dog. She has been in your home, knows our names, what kind of alarm system you have and has my picture.”

“There’s a phone number on the sheet,” Jane pointed out.

I suggested she call it. She dialed and listened, before smiling and hanging up.

“It’s the Manhattan Humane Society. You think she’s the one following you?”

“That thought occurred to me. What else did she touch?” I asked.

“Just Skippy. And you.”

I crouched down and felt Skippy’s collar. Then I felt in between his collar and his neck. There was a lump. I scraped it off. It was a small, flat black plastic disc, sticky on one side. I checked my pockets. In my left pants pocket was a thin plastic rectangle. I pulled it out. It was clear, with only one word, AMI, followed by a phone number and an email. I showed it to Jane, and dialed the number. It rang once.

“Hello, AMI. How may I help you?”

It was a different voice.

“Dr. Strangelove, please,” I asked, as Jane made a funny face.

“I’m sorry, the doctor is not in. How may we serve you?”

“If you work for the government, I’m hanging up,” I told her.

There was a pause.

“We are a private firm. We never work for government.”

“You’re the one who’s been following me? You’re a private detective?”

“I prefer the term confidential investigator. May we do this in person, please?”

“Why didn’t you do it when you were here? Why all the bullshit of planting an RFID chip inside Skippy’s collar and slipping your card into my pocket?”

“You were not alone, so I couldn’t talk. I like to stay in practice, so I couldn’t resist the plant. I wanted to see if you would notice. And you did.”

“Just come back and I’ll listen, if you promise no more bullshit.”

“The proposal is for you alone. This is a highly confidential position.”

“Nope. No deal. I tell Jane everything. Also, Skippy.”

More silence. I waited.

“I’m hanging up now,” I said.

“Ten minutes.”

5

I opened the door to a svelte, fifty-ish blonde in a slinky black pants suit, high heels and dark shades, an expensive black leather Coach bag hanging from her shoulder.

“Yeah?” I asked her.

“Sorry I’m late,” she said, not sounding sorry at all.

She brushed by me, past Jane—whose mouth was hanging open—straight to the kitchen table. I followed her. I was sure it couldn’t be the same person but when she took off the shades and spoke, her eyes and voice settled the issue. As the chubby housewife, she had a higher, fluttery voice, seemed fifty pounds heavier and even walked differently.

“I can’t believe it,” Jane said. “That was you?”

She looked at Jane like she was kidding. I pretended I wasn’t gut-punched by how different she looked. I remembered that this sexy chameleon also looked like a third person, and maybe a fourth, while she was following me on the street.

“People talk to The Housewife, especially if she’s looking for her puppy,” she said.

“From the top,” I said. “Who the hell are you, lady?”

“First, you have to agree to keep anything I say completely confidential.”

“Not until you tell me your name and what this is about,” I insisted.

“I’m Amy Massi. A.M.I. Amy Massi Investigations. I’m a licensed private detective and I work for well-known people who expect me to keep their secrets.”

“Like who?” Jane asked.

“Movie stars, musicians, rich people who can afford me. One thing I can guarantee, if you work for me, you won’t be bored,” she said.

When I first came to New York, I thought I wanted a good writing job and peace and quiet. But during the Hacker case, I realized a decade of war had twisted me for life. I didn’t ever want to be bored. That was enough for me.

“So the missing dog was just a scam?” Jane asked.

“You bet,” Amy admitted. “But Dr. Strangelove really is my dog. He’s at home with the housekeeper right now.”

“What kind of cases do you do?” I asked.

“I work for defense lawyers to prove people didn’t kill somebody. I used to do verification and divorce work but not anymore. Right now, I have a priority security investigation, credible death threats.”

“Why did you follow me?” I asked her.

“I read about you and the whole Hacker thing and decided you would be perfect for my new case. I have a changing roster of people I use and I like to check people out, test them, kick the tires first. You knew I was on your tail, didn’t you?”

“Yes.”

“How? I couldn’t figure out how I screwed up.”

“I don’t know,” I told her truthfully. “Why do people get that feeling that someone is watching them?”

“But I saw you checking window reflections, backtracking,” she protested. “That’s not just a feeling.”

“So I act on the feeling, what of it?”

“I can follow most people for weeks. They’re clueless.”

“So am I. Enlighten me. Who is your client?” I asked.

“Not until you agree to keep it secret.”

“It’s not government?” I asked.

“I told you, we’re private, non-governmental.”

“Yeah, well, so is Blackwater and hundreds of other scumbags who do bad things,” I told her. “All of them hand puppets for Uncle Sam.”

“We are a private civilian firm and don’t accept government contract work. We’re actually quite small, a boutique. A non-traditional P.I. agency licensed in New York. We’d like to make you an offer of employment.”

“To do what?”

“Investigate these death threats, what you’re good at. As a no-strings freelance investigator. Starting now. At this salary.”

She took out a notebook and silver pen and wrote numbers down, sliding it toward me. It was bigger than my reporter salary. A lot bigger. Jane peeked at the number.

“Perhaps it could be fun?” Jane said.

Amy turned to Jane. “And I’m happy for you to help him out, if you keep your mouth shut. It goes without saying I’m not paying you, Doc. One more thing, Shepherd. I always win. I expect the same thing from you.”

“Sounds like I’m going to be busy. Can I keep my current boss happy by filing stories?”

“Yes. If we agree that it will help the case,” Amy said. “Your press contacts are part of why I want you. ‘The pen is mightier than the sword’ and all that.”

“As if,” I laughed.

“You’re a reporter and you don’t think the pen is mightier than the sword?”

“Nope. I had an instructor who gave a whole lesson on that. He said, ‘Even if it’s mightier than the sword, it don’t do shit against an AK-47.’ We had to show him how a pen could beat a gas-powered fully-auto assault rifle. A couple of us came close, but in combat, we would have died. He always said anyone might be a threat, anyone might be a target, and everything is a weapon.”

I didn’t mention that a few weeks earlier I had successfully used a fax machine as a defensive weapon.

“Okay,” I asked. “Who’s getting death threats?”

“Are you in?” Amy asked.

“Who is it?”

“Does it matter?”

“Yes. I’m not helping to get any killers, drug dealers or child molesters off.”

“Worse. A member of Congress.”

“I’m in.”

“Wait, that’s government,” Jane said.

“No. Private,” Amy answered. “I’ve been hired by the Republican National Committee to find out who is threatening to kill Speaker of the House, Congressman Percy Chesterfield, the guy they are about to give their presidential nomination to.”

“Isn’t that the creep who tried to shut down the government last year and almost destroyed the economy?” Jane asked.

“That’s the guy,” Amy admitted. “Half the country wants him dead for almost destroying the government and all of the Tea Party people consider him a traitor for not destroying the government. He has to appear in public for the Republican National Convention this week to accept their nomination for president.”

“Which, for some odd reason, is being held right here in Manhattan, at the new Knickerbocker Convention Center,” Jane added.

“Right,” Amy agreed. “We… I mean Shepherd and I… have a meeting with Chesterfield and his security team at eight tomorrow morning. We have to keep him alive and find out who is threatening to kill him.”

“Shouldn’t the FBI or the Secret Service be investigating this—at taxpayer expense?” Jane asked.

“Chesterfield is protected by an Executive Protection Service team as large as the president’s. The FBI is on the case but the client doesn’t trust them to do anything in a timely way,” Amy said. “He’s had experience with the Bureau before and he’s afraid he’ll be dead a year before they get off their asses.”

“Sounds like Chesterfield isn’t as dumb as he acts,” I observed. “But it also sounds like you’d have a lot of suspects.”

“Yeah, that’s a problem,” Amy admitted. “Forget the liberals. The worst thing they would do is send a strong letter to The New York Times. It’s the Tea Party psychos we need to worry about. Fifty thousand of them emailed Chesterfield threats—and every single one owns a gun.”

6

Skippy and I took a walk west, over to Fifth Avenue, and crossed when the downtown traffic was stopped by a light. We walked uptown, with the road on the right and Central Park to the left. The husky, nose in the air, scoping out every pedestrian, yanked on the leash, pulling me forward. At one point he dragged me into the park for a pit stop. I took careful note of how he positioned himself on a patch of dead grass. I pulled out my iPhone and hit the compass app, which informed me that Skippy was pointing more or less southwest. I produced a plastic bag from my backpack and threw Skippy’s leavings into a nearby trashcan. He was not pointing north–south, I noticed. But it was close. Hmm.

We returned to the street and headed back uptown. This was prime RWP territory, as the editors at the newspapers called it. Rich White People. I could see the stakeout in front of Senator Ron Hardstein’s home from a block away, a luxury condo building overlooking the park. Cop cars outside, blue wooden barricades on the sidewalk penning in the press reporters and photographers, parked TV news vans, their giraffe microwave masts telescoped vertically, poised to relay to their stations and the world any sudden breaking news about a powerful person’s penis. Boring.

“Foof!” Skippy said, as we crossed Fifth Avenue and joined the press corps in their sidewalk pen.

“I know, Skippy. I feel the same way,” I told him, as I waved to Daily Press cameraman Sparky Starke. He and the other photographers had their cameras up and ready. Next to Sparky was another Daily Press reporter. He shot me a dagger glance, obviously afraid I was there to steal his story.

“What’s up, Sparky?” I asked him.

“Hard-on should be here soon,” Sparky said, without looking away. “You on this one now?”

“No, I just wanted to tell you something but it can wait. I’m going on another job but it might involve pictures or video, if you’re interested?”

“Sure, we’ll talk later.”

Sparky’s three black bulky cameras with long telephoto lenses were hung from his neck. One he held up ready. He was dressed for the warm weather, in denim shorts and a black sleeveless Megadeth tank shirt. He worked as many as seven days a week for the Daily Press, but he was a freelancer on paper, without sick days, vacations, health insurance, life insurance or pension, because the paper saved a lot of money that way.

In less than a minute, a black limousine pulled up to the curb, as shouts of “Heads up!” rippled through the media mob. The vehicle sat there for several minutes, the occupants invisible behind tinted windows. A uniformed doorman walked out the front door of the residence and stood protectively by the rear door.

The car door opened and senior United States Senator Richard Hardstein, crisply clad in his usual dark Italian suit, emerged calmly from the limo and strode toward his building. The silver-haired politician walked leisurely, as if he had just won an election, the camera flashes sparkling in his blue eyes. The reporters all yelled at once, shouting each other down.

“Senator Hardstein, why do you call your penis ‘Fred’?”

“Senator, how many women did you send photos of your junk?”

“Senator Hard-on, did you also send pictures of your dick to your wife?”

“Is your mom proud of you?”

“How many women have you had sex with?”

Skippy barked until I told him to stop. The rest of the smarmy questions, as the dignified target ran the gauntlet, merged into one loud, lewd bellow. For some reason, it made me think of dusty pigeons shitting on a bronze statue of a hero. Every day, the Daily Press and the New York Mail featured front page, dueling dick puns in bold headlines. Just when I was getting to like the newspaper business, I realized I was working for junior high school dorks.

There was no angry response from the senator, only cool detachment. It was as if the sex scandal, in which he was caught in dozens of affairs with willing women he met online, was about another Senator Richard Hardstein.

Up the block another limo had stopped at the curb while we were all focused on the senator’s limo. The sound of a closing door had made me turn. Two young women in bright pastel miniskirts had emerged from that car and were hot-footing it down the sidewalk. It was tough to do quietly in stiletto heels but they were good at it—toward an alley marked SERVICE, like they knew their way around the place.

I smiled and waved. The black girl waved and smiled back but the Latina girl snapped at her and they ducked into the service entrance. I turned back to my colleagues. Not a single one had noticed the ladies’ stealthy arrival.

Before the besieged senator could enter his domicile, I saw a bright flash of red curls. I moved closer and, sure enough, Ginny Mac was blocking the politician’s path, her large breasts on display in a revealing halter dress she had thrust against Hardstein’s chest. It almost worked. The honorable gentleman eyed his constituent’s cleavage and genuinely smiled as Ginny gave a spiel I couldn’t hear—no doubt a plea for an exclusive.

“Sorry, I have another pressing appointment,” Hardstein told Ginny, one eyebrow arching upwards.

He was saved by the doorman, who thrust his gold-braided shoulder between them and hustled Hardstein inside. Everybody got the shot of Ginny and her boobs pressed up against him. Ginny was ecstatic. For her, scamming a story was foreplay, an exclusive better than sex. She was laughing, her job done for the day. Her photographer was showing Ginny his frames on the digital camera screen— Senator Hard-on ogling her goodies. It would be on the Mail website within the hour and on the front page in the morning. Ginny would be famous.

“Ginny, these are great!” her camerawoman gushed. “They will fucking love this. Look at his eyes—they’re right on your tits.”

“I’ve got a headline,” Ginny announced. “How about this? ‘MY EYES ARE UP HERE, SENATOR.’”

They started laughing and shouting competing headlines.

“MAKE A CLEAN BREAST OF IT, SENATOR!”

“DON’T BE A BOOB, HARD-ON!”

“YES, TWO SCOOPS, PLEASE!”

But my fellow reporter from the Daily Press, rookie Orlando Rodriguez, was not amused. A tabloid newspaper couldn’t put a reporter from the competing rag on the front page. Orlando’s cellphone rang. He looked at the screen in horror.

“Oh, shit, it’s Mel,” Orlando whined.

“Dude, the TV people went live with it,” Sparky pointed out, scratching Skippy on the head. “The bosses saw the whole thing on the tube.”

Orlando had to take the call. Mel was already shouting loudly—so loud, we could hear him without speakerphone. There was a lot of profanity and threats.

“Mel, how was I supposed to stop her? I should have done it first? How could I… I don’t have boobs! You’re kidding. What? Seriously? Wait, Mel, I…”

The shouting and threats stopped and Orlando was staring at his silent phone.

“Oh, shit. They’re sending some new reporter with big boobs. I have to interview Ginny Mac,” Orlando moaned, clearly humiliated. “Now. For the online edition.”

“For real?” Sparky asked.

“Mel said if I was a good reporter, I would have propositioned Hard-On before Ginny did. Right now, he says The Wood is ‘BETWEEN A SLUT AND A HARD-ON.’” The Wood was a newspaper term for the big bold front-page headline. He reached for a notebook and pen and turned toward the jubilant Ginny.

“Mel says I have to ask her why she is an unethical, anti-feminist slut.”

“I wouldn’t do that, man,” Sparky warned. “That will really piss her off.”

7

While Orlando was interviewing Ginny Mac, I told Sparky about the two pastel ladies. He became very sparky.

“Calm down,” I warned him. “Don’t draw any attention.”

“Sorry,” Sparky said, gulping a pill and washing it down with Evian water.

As he drank, some new freelance shooter, a young skinny kid with a backwards baseball cap, was backing up without looking and banged into Sparky—who spilled water down his t-shirt.

“Hey! Fuckin’ watch where you’re going, newbie!” Sparky snapped at the guy.

The inexperienced photographer snarled an automatic “fuck you” at Sparky over his shoulder.

Uh-oh.

Then the skinny kid looked around. He saw Sparky’s arm muscles, tattoos and the look in his eyes. Sparky’s face began squirming. The twitching spread to his neck, his chest. The new guy froze. He may have guessed from his appearance that Sparky was a bodybuilder and martial arts competitor but maybe not that he suffered from Tourette’s syndrome.

“What did you say to me, dick shit-bird motherfucker?” Sparky demanded, his whole scalp and his black, spiky moussed hair now twitching threateningly like a cranky cockatoo. “You wanna fuck with me, mouse balls?”

“Uh… no… sorry, man, I didn’t see you,” the freelancer mumbled, edging away. “Sorry.”

The meds Sparky took to suppress the effects of the condition worked but he tried to keep the dosage low because they came with a cost—bad side effects.

We turned at the sound of Ginny Mac cursing Orlando out. Ginny was aroused by exclusives but her temper was also legendary. She bribed sources, slashed tires, had competitors beaten up, and the rumor was she once rammed a TV truck with her Honda. Orlando retreated. Ginny followed him back to us, shouting so everyone could hear.

“Hey, Orlando, get off your ass and get your own story. Why don’t you ask Shepherd there to get one for you? What is he—retired?”

“No, I’m not retired, Ginny,” I replied. “But I don’t like this story, so I’m not on it.”

“Afraid to compete with me?” she taunted. “I don’t blame you.”

“That’s it, Ginny. I’m afraid of you.”

“Is this what you’re afraid of?”

She pressed up against me, exactly as she had with the senator. He had a hard time ignoring her and so did I. She grabbed my hips and pulled us close. Damn. I fought to keep my eyes away from her chest. She was hard to resist and I wondered if she felt the same way. I tried not to remember our time alone together. At least we weren’t being filmed. A flash went off. Ginny’s photographer caught us.

“No, Ginny, I’m not afraid of your boobs. Don’t you remember? We had sex a few weeks ago—when it was me you wanted information from.”

“Oooooo” our colleagues cooed in an ooh-la-la tone from grade school.

They were all watching and listening. More cameras came up.

Ginny’s eyes hardened but for some reason she disengaged.

“I think I’ll send a copy to your new girlfriend,” Ginny threatened. “She might like to see what you do at work.”

“Please do,” I said. “She thinks I have it easy.”

“Oh snap!” Sparky giggled, his mood improving.

Ginny moved away, steam coming off her pink cheeks.

“You’re F.X. Shepherd?” the new guy cut in. “The pet columnist at the New York Mail who caught the Hacker?”

“Yeah. Right. Now I’m with the Daily Press. I also do my pet column there now.”

He pumped my hand and told me his name and how amazing I was. I agreed with him until he coasted to a stop. It was easier that way. I was going to be thirty in a few days and probably had less experience than he did but I didn’t interrupt my fan.

“He’s not the fucking hero, I’m the hero of that story,” Ginny McElhone broke in. “I saved his ass.”

Actually, that was almost true. That was the problem with Ginny. Her stories were always almost true. And she would do anything for a story. Anything. She was a good reporter but if she didn’t have the story, she would create, beg, borrow or steal it. As usual, she was dressed to kill, in a flouncy turquoise halter dress thing that only came to mid-thigh, the top open to distract every man in sight— including the senator. In fact, I suspected she was dressing for him these days but, so far, he had declined to be lured to further doom. From what I saw of the two young ladies who slipped into the trade entrance, Ginny was way too uptown for Hardstein’s downtown tastes.

“So, Shepherd, how’s your veterinarian?” Ginny asked in a flirty voice, petting Skippy, who annoyed me by enjoying it.

“Jane is fine, thanks. Why did you jump to the Mail—just when we were on the same side?”

“We’ll never be on the same side,” Ginny said, confirming my suspicion that she changed papers because she was more comfortable competing with me than playing second fiddle at the same paper. Even when we were both at the Daily Press, Ginny spied on me, followed me and stabbed me in the back. If you’re going to do that anyway, I guess it looks better if you’re on opposite sides of the “newspaper war” in New York.