Hard news - Jeffery Deaver [58]
Sutton smiled coldly and shook her head, exaggerating her lack of comprehension. “What witness?”
“The one who convicted Randy.”
“Oh, sure, that explains your behavior.” Sutton’s sarcasm was thick.
“No. I can prove that she didn’t see Randy Boggs.”
“How?”
“She’s a real, like, newshound.”
“A newshound? What the fuck is that?”
“She watches all the news programs every day. She didn’t give any description of Boggs until after she’d seen him arrested on TV. When the—”
Sutton’s hands raised like a martyr’s. “What exactly are you getting at?”
“Listen. When the police showed up to interview her she said, ‘I saw who did it and it was Randy Boggs.’”
Silence. Pin-resounding silence. Sutton gave a short bark of a laugh. “That’s your proof?”
“You can’t see into the courtyard clearly from her place—it’s too dark. Miss Breckman saw Randy on the news. She saw him arrested. That’s where she got the description—from TV. Otherwise, how would she know his name? She didn’t describe him first. She said, right off, ‘It was Randy Boggs.’”
Media circus…
Sutton considered this with a splinter of interest. But then she laughed. “Keep at it, honey. You’ve got a long way to go.”
“But doesn’t this prove that she’s a bad witness?”
“A piece in the puzzle. That’s all it is. Keep digging.”
“I thought—”
“That we’d go with it?”
“I guess.”
A brittle nail leveled at Rune’s face like a bright red dagger. “This is the big time. You keep forgetting that. We don’t run a story until it’s completely buttoned up.” She walked stridently through the newsroom on her clattering heels while employees moved quickly but unobtrusively as far out of her way as they could.
chapter 18
DOWNSTAIRS, IN THE LOBBY, RUNE SURVEYED THE JOB AND didn’t like what she saw.
A directory of residents, containing over a hundred names.
“Help you?” The doorman’s accent seemed to be Russian. But then Rune decided she didn’t know what a Russian accent sounded like; the man—wearing an old gray uniform shiny on the butt—might have been Czech or Romanian or Yugoslavian or even Greek or Argentine. Whatever his ethnic origin, he was big and snide and unfriendly.
“I was just looking at the directory.”
“Who you wanna see?”
“Nobody really. I was just—”
He smiled slyly as if he’d just caught on that three-card monte games were rigged. “I know. They done that before.”
“I’m a student.”
“Yeah, student.” He worked a spot on the inside of his mouth with his tongue.
“How long you worked here?” she asked.
“Six months. I just came over here. This country. Lived with my cousin for a while.”
“Who worked here before you?”
He shrugged. “I dunno. How would I know? You make good money doing it? You know what I’m saying?”
“What do you mean? I’m a student.”
“I’ve heard it all. You think I haven’t heard it?”
“I’m an art student. Architecture. I—?”
“Yeah.” The smile was staying put. The tongue foraged. “What you make?”
“Make?” Rune asked.
“How much you sell them for?”
“What?”
“The names.” He nodded. “You sell them to companies send everybody that junk mail. No junk mail in my country. Here! It’s everywhere.”
“What I’m doing is I’d like to talk to some people who live here. About the design of their apartments.”
A nod joined the smile.
There was nothing worse than being accused of something you hadn’t done—even if you were doing something you shouldn’t’ve been doing.
She rummaged for a minute in the dark recesses of her bag until she came up with a stiff bill. A twenty. Hot out of the ATM. She handed it to him.
Zip. It vanished into his pocket.
“How much you make?”
Another twenty joined its friend.
“Ah.” He walked off, pressing his hand to the pocket that held the crisp, non-reimbursable bills and Rune turned back to her task.
The smart thing would have been to find out which rows of apartments looked out over the courtyard where Lance Hopper had been shot but she didn’t know how soon the Slavic-Ruskie South American capitalist would be back to suck up another bribe.