Don’t Blink

“Does that mean you’ll take the job?” she asked as we came up for air.

“Absolutely not,” I said.

Courtney rolled those beautiful blue eyes of hers. “Why not, Nick? Because you don’t think we can work and sleep together?”

“No, that’s not it at all. I’m just not the executive editor type. I write stories, that’s what I do – and the kind I write you can’t find sitting in a corner office.”

Courtney smiled and I knew she understood, which warmed the cockles of my heart. “All right. I guess I’ll just have to lower my standards and sleep with a regular staff writer instead.”

“Correction, missy. Your highest-paid staff writer.”

“We’ll see about that, Nick. Just remember, I didn’t get to be editor in chief for nothing.”

We were about to kiss again when we both realized that someone was suddenly standing next to us. Speak of the devil – it was none other than Brenda.

“Sorry to interrupt,” she said, coming very close to blushing. I didn’t know she had it in her. “I saw you both here. I wanted to give Nick something.”

She handed me a slender rectangular box – gift wrapped, with a red bow on top.

“What’s this?” I asked, genuinely surprised.

“A make-good,” she said. “Something I’ve owed you.”

I was about to open it when she stopped me. “No, not here,” she said. “Open it later, Nick. And Courtney – good luck with this one. He’s actually a pretty decent guy.”

With that, she turned and walked away. No good-bye or anything. I didn’t even have a chance to say thank you.

“Decent guy”? All right, I could live with that. I think she even meant it.

Chapter 106

A LITTLE MORE than a week passed. I was on my first assignment for New York magazine, and it was definitely cover material.

“Thanks for doing this, David,” I said. “This will be a great story – I promise you.”

Sorren leaned back in the chair behind his desk. We were in his office downtown at One Hogan Place and David was a man clearly at peace with himself.

“Are you kidding? Thank you,” he said. “I know being pushy is the first rule of politics, but given everything you’ve been through, the last thing you needed was my hitting you up for an article so fast. I didn’t want to exploit our friendship that way.”

“No problem at all. It’s the least I could do. After all, you did save my life.”

“Just dumb luck,” he said with an aw-shucks wave. “Of course, that’s the second rule of politics, isn’t it? Dumb luck.”

“It’s pretty high up there for journalism, too.”

“That’s you and me, a couple of lucky guys. If we’re not careful, we may wind up getting everything we want in life,” he said with a wink.

I reached for my beat-up leather bag on the floor, pulling it up to my lap. “Let’s get started, then, okay?”

“Sure thing,” Sorren said. “By the way, what did Courtney say when you proposed this article? I mean, it’s her first issue at New York. She have any doubts?”

“Doubts? Are you kidding me? I haven’t written a word yet and she’s already guaranteed us the cover.”

Sorren smiled widely as I pulled out a notepad. It was followed by my tape recorder. Immediately, his smile soured.

“Shit, Nick, I’m sorry. I should’ve said something on the phone when you called. I’ve got no problem with your taking notes but I can’t let you record me. It’s policy here in the DA’s office,” he explained. “Of course, the mayor’s office has no such policy.”

“That’s okay,” I said, placing the recorder on his desk. “Actually, this isn’t to record you. I wanted to play you something. If I may? That okay?”

“Sure,” said Sorren. “What is it?”

I hit the play button and turned up the volume. I didn’t want Sorren to miss a single word of Ian LaGrange’s voice.

Or his own.

Chapter 107

WHAT WOULD YOU do if you found a flash drive, with blood on it, in your boyfriend’s favorite hiding spot in his apartment? In his secret, secret place?

I now knew what Brenda Evans would do. She was a reporter, after all, with a sensitive – some would say suspicious – nose for stories. She couldn’t help it – the blood had bothered her.

Not nearly as much, though, as what she had discovered on that flash drive.

Derrick Phalen had uncovered it all, and he’d put it on the drive for me to see. Or, rather, for me to hear. There were no pictures, no pilfered secret documents – only an MP3 voice file. And while I may be a purist with my vinyl LP collection, this little digital recording trumped everything I’d ever listened to.

Why had Derrick decided to bug his boss’s office? Sadly, I’ll never have the chance to ask him. But I’ll never forget how he had looked that day he saw Ian LaGrange come walking toward us by the elevator at the OCTF.

“Holy shit,” I thought I had heard Derrick say. Like he couldn’t believe something.

Soon after that, he had his smoking gun – a conversation between LaGrange and none other than David Sorren.

Blinded by his own political ambition, Sorren was willing to forsake the law he had sworn to uphold. He’d built his reputation battling organized crime, but in a world of hotshot defense attorneys and legal loopholes, guilty verdicts against the mob were tough to come by. There had to be a better way, right?

At least that’s what Sorren’s twisted mind had been thinking. What he needed were results. He didn’t care how he got them, or for that matter who paid the price. Because results equaled votes. Today, city hall. Tomorrow, the governor’s office. Then one day, maybe, the White House.

A modern-day Machiavelli of the worst order.

So Sorren had recruited LaGrange and made the ultimate backroom deal. They chose sides in the organized crime underworld. They backed Joseph D’zorio and set up Eddie Pinero after his criminal usury conviction.

There was just one problem. Me.

I stared at Sorren across his desk as he listened to the recording, the flash drive people had died for. Suddenly, his face was as pale as the ceiling tiles of his office.

“I don’t like it,” said a nervous-sounding LaGrange. “If Daniels is actually talking to one of my prosecutors, then he knows something.”

“You worry too much, Ian,” said Sorren.

“No, I worry just enough. You should, too. He’s already thinking that his being at Lombardo’s was more than a coincidence.”

“We can take care of it.”

“How?” asked LaGrange.

“Leave it to me, Ian. I’ll talk to the manager at Lombardo’s, erase Marcozza’s name from the reservations on that Thursday, figure out everything. Just consider it done.”

There was more on the tape, but Sorren had heard enough. He grabbed the recorder and stopped the playback. Then, of all crazy things, he started to laugh out loud.

“You haven’t heard the rest of it,” I said.

“I don’t need to. I was there. I know what I said. But no one else will. Do you know why?”

I shrugged. “Tell me.”

“You should’ve gone to law school,” he said, shaking his head. “This was illegally obtained. It’s inadmissible.”

Jesus, he was pirouetting through his own legal loophole. I guess it figured.

But it was my turn to shake my head. “How could you do it, David?”

“Do what?” he said.

“At least explain one thing to me,” I said. “Why did you kill LaGrange?”

“Because he was trying to kill you. I saved your life,” he said. “How soon we forget.”

“I’m that stupid?” I asked him.

“Do you think I am?”

“No, what I think is that somewhere along the way you completely forgot the difference between right and wrong, Sorren. You got as cynical as they come, and I’ve seen cynical, believe me. Maybe you actually wanted great things for the city. But for sure you wanted even better things for yourself.”

“So now you’re a shrink?”

“No, I’m still a journalist. A pretty decent one, I think,” I said. “But you? You’re a criminal.”