The Last Thing I Saw - Stevenson Richard (книги без регистрации .txt) 📗

“I have indeed. I admit I changed to another station on the car radio.”

“But not before you made your pledge, I hope.”

“Sorry, but I’m one of those people who steal it.”

She looked as if she wasn’t sure if I was kidding, so I told her I was. “My partner Timothy Callahan takes care of that. He tithes for both of us.”

“Thank you.”

“Don’t you get tired of saying thank you to each of your gazillion contributors?”

“No, never. We’d go out and wash their feet if that’s what it took to keep public radio going.”

“This sounds like Wenske family-style missionary zeal. Where have I heard this before?”

She laughed. In her mid-forties, Fogle was rangy and a little bit stooped in a black pants suit and lemon yellow blouse. She had the beginnings of a wrinkled neck, a lot of sandy hair like her brother, and the same sly smile.

She said, “Yes, we’re all fanatics, I guess. Dad going after the Wall Street crooks, Eddie exposing the ethically challenged and socially misguided. And me keeping the world safe for All Things Considered. Mom used to take the world more or less as it was until she opened The Party’s on Us and became a mushrooms-and-cheese-in-puff-pastry zealot. Now she’s crazed and over-scheduled just like my brother and me.”

I almost asked her if she had a second brother, then realized who she meant. “I take it you agreed with your mother’s decision to hire me to search for Eddie.”

“You bet I did. I almost looked into hiring a private investigator myself. I got as far as the Yellow Pages. But to tell you the truth, my savings are not what I’d planned on at my age, this house is underwater and can’t be re-mortgaged until late in the century, and Bond, my ex, is out of work and almost no help at all. So for financial reasons I never made the call. Thank God, Mom has a little money from her mother, and you are what she’s spending it on.”

I felt a twinge of guilt, but only briefly, for I planned on earning my fee, even if it meant delivering bad news to the Wenskes. I said, “Bond. Did he trade in…you know?”

“No. If only. Bond re-strings tennis rackets. And he’s working on his novel.”

“I was an English major, and that could have been me.”

“He’s great with Becca and Lisa though. You might meet them. Bond will be dropping them off in about an hour. I know they’re pleased that you’re in the picture. They’re very fond of Eddie, and I know they’d be even more upset about his being missing if they didn’t have so much else on their minds. Though they couldn’t possibly be any more of a mess than I am. I wake up at night thinking about Eddie, and if I think about him long enough, I come down with a perfect bitch of a migraine.”

Fogle had laid out plates and flatware on the kitchen table and spread out the Panera good eats, and we helped ourselves.

“I know you’ve been in touch with the police,” I said.

“Oh, I’ve been more than in touch. I’ve been a total pain in the ass.”

“That’s necessary sometimes. Police detectives are busy people.”

“At first, I just thought Eddie wasn’t reachable because he was up to here in something he was working on. He could be like that, focused to the point of driving everybody else crazy who wasn’t in on his current mania. But when Bryan got worried, he called me and then I began to worry too. And now…with what’s happened to Bryan…I can’t…” Her voice broke and she shook her head. “I know I should be really upset about poor Bryan, but all I can think about is: What if the same thing happened to Eddie? And his body is…somewhere. Oh Jesus. Oh crap.”

“I know. It’s worrisome,” was my lame response.

“Donald, what do the police know about Bryan’s death? Anything at all? You said you were in touch with them.”

“They have no leads, as far as I know. The detective in charge is aware of Bryan’s connection with Eddie, and I expect you’ll hear from him, a guy named Marsden Davis who seems competent.”

“Good.”

“Does your mother know about Bryan? I’ll call her tonight.”

“I spoke to her. She reacted the same way I did. All she can think about is Eddie. She feels a little guilty—just like I do—because we were never that crazy about Bryan in the first place.”

“He sounded like a lot of work.”

“Yes, but Eddie said the one thing you could count on with Bryan was his professional integrity, and that meant a lot to Eddie. If Bryan had been as faithful to Eddie as he had been to Channel Six News, everything would have gone a lot more smoothly.”

“Faithful?”

“I don’t mean sexually. I have no idea what their arrangements were in that regard. Gay men have their mysterious ways. I know that. I mean emotionally faithful. And of course physically present. Bryan just seemed incapable of committing, and he had a history of jumping into relationships with guys and then panicking and jumping out again. But the two of them just seemed to hit it off in so many ways, and I know there was a strong physical attraction. In fact, I got a little tired of hearing about Bryan’s satiny muscular butt. I do know they were trying to make a go of it the second time around.”

The prosciutto and chevre panini were excellent, as was the big fresh green salad with walnuts and cranberries. The beer was helpful, too, though I thought better of asking for a second bottle.

I said, “I’m guessing there’s a connection between Bryan’s murder and your brother’s disappearance, though of course they could be coincidental. I understand that Bryan was helping Eddie with the gay media book he was researching. Your mother said Bryan knew people at Hey Look TV, and they were turning out to be good sources for the critical story he was writing about the network and its bad labor practices and general sleaziness. Do you happen to know who any of those people at the network are?”

“No, but I know who might know. Luke Pearlman was a classmate of Bryan’s at NYU, and he’s in TV news in New York, a producer at Channel Four. He got the girls in to meet Lady Gaga at NBC one time. I know Luke is part of that gay Tisch Broadcasting School-NYU crowd, so I wouldn’t be surprised if he was one of Eddie’s sources.”

I made a note of this. “Who,” I asked, “is Paul Delaney? Weed Wars is dedicated to him.”

“Oh, Paul is one of Eddie’s heroes. He was his first editor at the Globe, and Eddie says he learned nearly everything he knows about journalism from Paul. It’s sad about Paul, though. He got a top job at The L.A. Times, and then the paper was sold to a no-news-background idiot—an all too common story in journalism today—and Paul got canned. He’s working at some small weekly out there now, and I think he’s struggling. He called when he heard Eddie was missing, and he was very concerned.”

“I’ll look him up if I get to L.A.”

“You might go there? Looking for Eddie?”

“Los Angeles is the headquarters for Hey Look Media. So, who knows.”

“The police seem to think a drug cartel did something to Eddie. You don’t think so?”

“It’s a possibility, I’m sorry to say. But the police are only guessing. Their own sources say they know of no revenge killing of a journalist.”

“But you’ll do your own digging? I assumed you would. Mother assumes that too.”

The Wenskes were probably wondering if they might not be taken for a ride by me, business class to L.A., a suite at the Beverly Hilton. Despite my pretty good professional reputation around Albany they had no way of knowing I had over the years absorbed the parsimonious ways of Timothy Callahan, who had learned expense-account budgeting during his vow-of-poverty two years in the Peace Corps.

I told Fogle I would follow every possible path, including the Weed Wars connection, to finding out what had become of her brother. Then I said, “Your mother told me that you were concerned about some—not to be too melodramatic about it, I hope—secret life you thought Eddie might be living. She even used the term dark side. What made you think this?”