Читать книгу Cut And Run - Carla Neggers, Carla Neggers - Страница 12

Matthew arrived in the newsroom early Monday morning, too damn early, and drank two cups of coffee even before Feldie showed up. He wasn’t doing any work. He just sat at his desk, staring at the Plexiglas partition above it where he’d hung the poster of the movie that had been based on his book, LZ. They’d kept the title. The movie had won lots of awards—so had the book—and now was available on tape for VCR; the book was required reading in college courses on the Vietnam War. He used to have some of the reviews stuck up on the partition next to the poster, but he’d pulled them down about a year ago. No reason. Just tired of looking at them, he supposed. A few months ago, Time had done a piece on whatever happened to Matthew Stark, the helicopter pilot who’d been awarded a Distinguished Flying Cross and survived two tours in the central highlands, only to return to Vietnam one more time as a freelance journalist, publishing articles with The New Yorker, Atlantic Monthly, Harper’s. When he finally came home he wrote his book and joined the Washington Post. He was the tarnished hero, the Vietnam vet people could dare to like.

Then he got sick of it all or ran out of things to say—something. He’d quit caring about what had brought on the change of heart. He’d resigned from the Post, done nothing for a while, then, still with a reputation left, showed up at the Gazette to do a tabloid’s version of investigative reporting.

He sipped some coffee and admitted he felt better. Nothing like a newsroom to help him forget a long Sunday of nightmares that had haunted him, awake and asleep. He called them nightmares, although they weren’t. They were memories.

“Asshole!”

Alice Feldon stomped over to his desk, the front page of the New York Times crushed in one hand, her glasses down on the end of her big nose. “Goddamn you,” she said. “I stick my neck out for you, I call in a few chips to get you a ticket to a sold-out concert at Lincoln Center, I trust you, you son of a bitch, and how the hell do you repay me?”

“Relax, Feldie. It was a dead end, all right? No story.”

“Bullshit.” She flung the Times at him. “There, read. A woman slipped and fell outside Lincoln Center after the concert Saturday night. Died. Her body wasn’t discovered until yesterday afternoon.”

“Great story, Feldie. I’ll get right on it.”

“I don’t need your sarcasm. The woman’s name was Rachel Stein. Mean anything to you?”

“No.”

“She was with one Senator Samuel Ryder at the concert—your old pal.”

Matthew rubbed his forehead. “Jesus Christ.”

The story started on the lower half of the front page. Rachel Stein had been a prominent Hollywood agent; she had recently retired to Palm Beach. A quote from Ryder’s office said she had become a prominent supporter of the senator’s and he was deeply grieved by her death.

“This guy Weasel—he a friend of Ryder’s, too? Is that why you were at Lincoln Center, because Ryder was there? They say Stein’s death was accidental. You have any other ideas?”

Stark let Feldie rant. The world’s largest uncut diamond, Ryder’s troubles, Weasel’s dumb urge to help him. Now this.

“Look, Stark, goddamnit, I don’t feel sorry for you. You could quit this job and still make more money on royalties and interest than I do putting in a sixty-hour week. I could fire you, you’d make out fine, which is probably the biggest reason I don’t.” She pushed her glasses up on top of her head. “People used to say you gave a damn.”

No one talked to him like that except Alice Feldon. No one else dared. Matthew liked it that he didn’t scare her. “Maybe I never did.”

“I don’t believe that.” Her voice had softened, and she let out a heavy sigh. “Was this Otis Raymond character in Vietnam with you and Ryder?”

“Weaze is a burned-out Vietnam vet. Country’s bored with them, Feldie. About all I get from him is bullshit. If there’s a story in this, you’ll get it. I promise.”

“All right, Stark. You’re a journalist. Follow up.”

Muttering that she ought to give up on the lazy shit, Alice stalked back to her desk. Matthew drank some more coffee and read the piece on Rachel Stein’s death. She could easily have slipped. He remembered how tiny she was, how wrinkled and old-looking, even if the article said she was only sixty-five. She wasn’t used to snow and ice. So maybe she slipped and maybe she didn’t—did it make any difference? He went back to the beginning and reread the piece.

And there it was. Rachel Stein had emigrated from Amsterdam in 1945, having spent the last months of the war in a Nazi concentration camp. She was a Dutch Jew.

A Dutch Jew.

And the man Ryder was supposed to have met, Hendrik de Geer, was also Dutch.

Stark looked up at the LZ poster, not seeing it. Something else was stirring around in his head, but he couldn’t pin it down. He pulled out the program he’d saved from the concert, just in case Feldie wanted proof he’d attended, just in case he felt like cutting out the picture of Juliana Fall and sticking it on his partition.