The Stolen - Jason Pinter [41]
you know what it means to me. And not just from a professional perspective."
"I know." Amanda gathered her purse and began to
walk out of the store.
"That's it?"
She looked at me, her eyes a mixture of hurt and confusion.
"That's it," she said. "For now, that's all I can take."
Then Amanda left.
I watched her until the door had closed and Amanda had
rounded the corner. It took a moment to regain focus.
I decided the next step was to call Delilah Lancaster. It
was clear she and Michelle were very close, to the point
where Delilah was contacted before any of Michelle's
school friends. I figured there was a reason for that. If the
violin was all Michelle had left, I needed to speak to the
person who probably influenced her more than any.
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I sat in the store for another few minutes, then gathered
up the folder and left. I hoped that somewhere, Daniel
Linwood and Michelle Oliveira knew two people were
going to fight for them.
13
The next morning I went to Penn Station first thing and
bought a ticket on the 148 regional Amtrak en route to
Meriden, Connecticut. Delilah Lancaster was scheduled to
meet me. I'd spent the previous night going over her
comments, trying to gain a better understanding of her
relationship with Michelle Oliveira.
I took a copy of the file on Michelle Oliveira, a copy
of that morning's Gazette and a large iced coffee that
promptly spilled all over my linen jacket when a kind man
with a Prada briefcase elbowed me in the head. I went to
the bathroom compartment on the train to clean it, and
though I was able to avoid stepping in the unidentified
brown goop on the floor, I left with a softball-size blotch
on my chest. I debated finding Prada man and throwing
him onto the tracks, but I needed my composure. Not to
mention I needed to stay out of jail.
When the train pulled out of the station, I cracked open
the Gazette and read the story Jack had written for this
edition. The piece focused on the looming gentrification
of Harlem, how real estate prices were soaring, speculative investors, many of them foreign, were snapping up
town houses and condos like they were Junior Mints. The
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average two-bedroom had nearly doubled in price over the
past decade. Foreign investors, emboldened by the weak
dollar, were monopolizing the market. The prices Jack
quoted quickly confirmed that if I ever desired to buy in
New York rather than rent, I'd either have to win the lottery
or find a sugar mama.
The reporting was solid, one of Jack's better recent
efforts. Too many of his recent articles felt slapped
together, rushed, pieces he forced past Evelyn and the copy
editors simply because he was the man. Had the stories
been written by a younger reporter who hadn't yet cut his
teeth, won major awards and written a shelfful of bestsellers, many of them would have been spiked. The old man
needed an intervention. The ink of the newsroom was still
the blood that pumped through his veins, but he was a
train slowly careening off the tracks. Without some
straightening out, the impending crash would permanently
derail his career.
The train took about an hour and forty-five minutes to
reach Meriden. I finished the Gazette and spent a good twenty
minutes staring at an advertisement featuring a man quizzically holding an empty bottle of water before realizing it was
hawking Viagra. When the train came to a stop, I noticed a
man with a friar's patch of baldness jotting down the ad's
Web site before hustling off the train. One new customer.
I disembarked the train and took in the city of Meriden.
I hadn't spent much time in Connecticut, only having
traveled here once to interview a fast-food worker who'd
witnessed a murder while on vacation in NYC. A lot of
New Yorkers commuted into the city from parts of Connecticut--Greenwich being a popular hub--in large part
due to the ever-booming Manhattan real estate market. For
just a thirty-minute train commute, a million bucks could
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Jason Pinter
buy you a home or