Courier Page 3
Then there were the editors in their white cotton gloves, furiously spinning the film reels on either side of their edit bench. They would grab shots they had chosen earlier from where they were hanging above a cloth-lined cart – held by pins through their sprocket holes – whip them down onto the sync block to match them up with the rest of the edits, and then pull them off and onto the splicer. Two flashing cuts with the splicer’s diagonal blades, a strip of tape to hold the ends together, and a final double slam of the side blades to trim the clear editing tape so that it was just slightly bowed in and wouldn’t jam when it went through the projector. Don had told him that real film editors only used tape splices on a working copy and sent the original film out for professional processing for a smooth final cut.There was no time for that in a newsroom.
Rick continued down the narrow hall, past the audio booth where the recording engineer sat studying for his law degree – a clear indication that the reporters weren’t ready to lay down a track yet – and then made a right turn into the back hall. On the left were the double doors with the sign that labeled them as belonging to the office of the mythical Joe Telecine. Through the small window on each door, Rick caught a glimpse of the "two-inch" videotape machines in the back – the engineers who operated them bellied up as if they were playing six-foot-tall pinball machines. That was unfamiliar territory: union engineers had no time for scruffy couriers.
Straight ahead was the film crew’s ready room, with battered lockers, equipment cages made of chain-link fencing, and at the end, his destination – film processing.
As usual, the place amazed him. A catwalk across the entire rear of the room held enormous white plastic tanks of chemicals. Alternating stacks of silvered aluminum and bright red plastic film cans covered the walls on either side, and on top were piles of shipping bags made out of a rough twine netting stamped with "Urgent Shipment Newsfilm" and the bright blue ABN logo.
Power lines and plastic pipes of all sizes ran in racks overhead and converged in the center of the room at two large machines. These were the automatic processors, which never stopped grinding away. When there was no new film to develop, yards and yards of clear junk film would be running up and down between spindles and in and out of chemical baths – the first baths covered with lightproof seals, and the later ones open.
The smaller unit to the left was for when the film needed to be darkened or lightened or have the color balance adjusted. The massive main unit on the right took up most of the room, churning out thousands of feet of sixteen-millimeter color-positive film a day. Rick could see the flickering images of developed film rolling toward the final take-up reels. The rest was clear. He knew that this meant Hadley’s story wouldn’t have to wait for another story to finish.
Two men in white jackets, looking like doctors or mad scientists, tended to the machines – checking temperatures, tapping meters, running tests on the chemical baths. One of them, a slight man with a receding hairline named George, looked up as Rick walked in.
"That’s Farr’s material?" he asked, and when Rick nodded, he sighed and said to the other technician, "Damn it, you know that Farr will have the aperture wrong."
In a thick German accent, the reply was, "Well, then run it through the B unit and correct it." Rick had never learned the other film tech’s name. The man was taciturn and forbidding when he was working and not there at all when he wasn’t.
With a dramatic sigh, George took the heavy magazine and headed toward the tiny darkroom where he would transfer the film to a lightproof covered reel that fitted to the input end of the processor. The film would then be rough-spliced into the endless reel of junk film and start its journey.
Rick pulled the Bolex out of his coat and said, "Hey, I got Moten’s ‘B-Roll’ as well."
George didn’t even turn around. "I’m not wasting my time with that goddamn windup toy; it takes forever to unload. Moten can pull the film out himself when he gets back. It’ll be good practice." He closed the door, and the red Do Not Enter sign lit up.
The other technician said, "And don’t even think of leaving that damn camera in here. Nothing gets dumped in here unless it’s going straight into the soup."
Rick shrugged and put the camera back inside his jacket. He glanced up at the inevitable clock on the wall. It was 5.10, which meant there was plenty of time for the film to make air, even if it was the lead of the broadcast. As he turned to leave, he wondered if it would make the show at all. The collapse of the Paris peace talks and the massive B-52 raids on Hanoi would probably take up most of the precious few minutes of airtime.
Hadley would be lucky if he got his story in before the second commercial and the turn to incredible medical discoveries, "slice of life" tales of everyday nobility, and perhaps a water-skiing squirrel.
CHAPTER 5
The black Chevy pulled up in front of the house in Virginia. The driver was concerned that he had missed the courier but knew he had been successful with the reporter and the news crew.
He’d just spent thirty minutes in a traffic jam on the Parkway as cars crawled past a mass of police cars and tow trucks, and drivers had craned their necks out of their windows to catch a glimpse of the circling police helicopters.
Yes, he had failed to dispose of the courier, but he’d stopped at a pay phone, made a call, and requested that the film the biker had been carrying be taken care of. He didn’t particularly like having others involved, but he knew he should use his contacts when necessary, and this would be as effective as calling in an artillery strike. The film would simply disappear.
Now it was time to deal with the talkative bookkeeper. He was certain the man was still home – lights were on in the first-floor windows and a car still sat in the driveway.
Again, he sat patiently for exactly fifteen minutes as he checked for lights in neighboring windows, evening strollers, or anyone else who might notice anything unusual happening in the small Colonial. Once, he slid down a few inches when headlights came up from behind, but the car passed and turned left without a pause.
Finally, he took off his hat, placed it on the seat next to him, and leaned back to pick up a white towel from the backseat. As a rule, he made a habit of staying at YMCAs in major cities whenever possible. They were cheap, anonymous, and no one counted the towels in the swimming pool area. He smiled briefly, thinking how odd it was that the Washington Y banned all bathing suits from the swimming pool – everyone went swimming naked. After that scandal with the old man in Eisenhower’s administration, you’d think they’d have learned.
He slid out of the car, careful to close the door slowly, and only released the latch after it was shut, so that it engaged with an almost inaudible chunk.
At the front door, he placed the towel over the porch railing, out of sight of the door, then patted his front pants pockets and, satisfied, rang the bell.
Marshall Reese opened the door. He was only in his early thirties, but already his hair had retreated from the crown of his head to the sides and back with only a few carefully arranged strands pasted over the top. His eyes looked weak and nervous behind a pair of thick steel-framed glasses. He was still fully dressed with his necktie snugged up tight, and his collar buttoned.
"Hello, I’m John Snyder with ABN. I’m working with Hadley. Can I come in?"
Reese didn’t reply, simply turned and walked away, leaving the door open. The agent picked up the towel, followed him in, then turned and carefully closed the door. For a moment, he continued to stand facing the door as he pulled a pair of yellow dishwashing gloves from his pocket and pulled them on.
Reese hadn’t noticed – he was walking into the kitchen. "You’re welcome to come on back and have a drink, but I can’t imagine what you could possibly want. I told that guy everything." Then he added, softly, almost to himself, "And now, I’ve got nothing. If I don’t get out of here, I’m going to lose my job or go to jail."
There was a third alternative that he clearly had never considered.
After a moment of stunned surprise, Reese began to struggle to get free and fought to draw a breath. But the pressure never ceased, and the towel remained cruelly tight. After a few moments, his body went limp.
His attacker kept the pressure on for a full five minutes longer, then released the towel. He stood up and carefully inspected the body. There were no bruises on the back, Reese’s heavy wingtip shoes had protected his furiously kicking feet from injury, and he had given the man no chance to reach back and grab or scrape him. He was pleased to see that Reese hadn’t lost control of his bladder or bowels, because cleaning that up was always the worst part of this sort of work.
He was satisfied that this had gone just as he planned. There would be no signs of an unnatural death and no evidence of a struggle.
Turning, he walked into the kitchen, cheerily decorated with avocado-green appliances and country-style curtains. From Sears, he thought, probably all bought in a single trip. He stepped to the gas stove, pulled up the knees of his trousers, and, crouching down, opened the broiler, and peered inside.
He nodded as he confirmed that the main gas line to the stove came through the rear of the broiler in a flexible metal tube and not a solid steel pipe. In the end, it wouldn’t make any difference, but it would mean a bit less work.
Straightening up, he went back to the body in the living room and, without any obvious strain, picked it up in his arms. Walking back into the kitchen, he placed it in one of the kitchen chairs, carefully crossing the arms on the table and resting the head on them. Stepping back, he checked the position from several angles and felt satisfied that it would look like Reese had fallen asleep. Noticing an open bottle of bourbon on the counter near the sink, he opened cupboards until he found glasses, and arranged the bottle and a glass in front of Reese’s hands. Paying close attention to details was a habit that had kept him out of trouble for a long time.
He returned to the living room and carefully searched for any scuffs or scrapes left by the struggle on the hardwood floor or the imitation Persian rug. Then he picked up the towel, folded it carefully, and returned to the kitchen. Pulling a jackknife from his pocket, he put the towel on the floor in front of the stove, kneeled down again, and carefully pulled out the entire broiler drawer. He placed it on the towel to avoid getting grease on the floor.
Reaching into the open space, he located the metal gas hose. With his left hand, he pressed it firmly against the rear of the stove and shoved the knife he held in his right hand against one of the flexible joints until there was a small slit in the hose and he could smell the artificial odor they added to the normally-odorless gas to warn people of leaks.
He replaced the drawer with the smell of gas fumes already wafting over him. Standing again, he reached inside his pants pocket and pulled out a device similar to the one he’d used on the reporter’s car. This one, however, was simply a small amount of C-4 explosive and a remote-control detonator. He placed it carefully on the top of one of the black metal rings on the stove where it was unlikely to leave identifying marks.
Again, not that it mattered much.
He had taken care of some problems after Dealey Plaza, and had become convinced that, even if police investigators suspected something wasn’t right, so long as they thought there was any kind of official involvement, their reports tended to attribute the incident to either accidents or natural causes. Hell, if cops could accept that a mobster with terminal cancer just happened to shoot the prime suspect, they could swallow anything.
He picked up the towel and left the house, wiping down surfaces and turning off the lights as he went. Outside, he closed the door firmly – listening for the snick of the lock as it engaged – then took off his gloves, wiped the doorbell with the towel, and walked without haste back to his car.
CHAPTER 6
The courier desk was a bad joke.
A cubicle in the back hall, barely large enough to hold a single desk and three chairs, it was usually jammed with two or three couriers and all their helmets, jackets, dripping rain gear, radios, paperbacks, and biker magazines. Cigarette smoke had painted the walls a smudged greenish-yellow – the tar so thick in places that it had begun to drip – and the floor was cracked linoleum turned the color of ground-in dirt, and littered with ground-out butts. The battered phone in the center of the desk had no dial – it was a direct connection to the Assignment Desk and only rang when there was work to be done.
Luckily, Rick had it all to himself for now and sat happily in the number one chair. This was the chair that gave the best view of the affiliate service edit room across the hall and, consequently, of Shelley, the stunning young woman in brown corduroy hot pants and a sheer nylon shirt who worked there. Rick was sure that Shelley would never do anything as uncool as talk to a courier, but that was OK. He wasn’t interested in much more than an occasional glimpse. He could enjoy it later.
In this, Rick’s photographic memory was a blessing – most times, it was a curse. If he relaxed his guard, stepped out of the world of the immediate for even a second, he was back in the Ia Drang Valley.
In the tall grass.
The searing heat of a tropic sun, the drag of the thick dust on his boots as he struggles to keep up with his unit, almost hidden by the windblast from the choppers scrambling out after the drop-off.
Artillery explodes to his left, and he ducks. He notices that none of the men in front of him do. They’ve been hammered for three days already and just stand there, smoking cigarettes and watching the treeline with wide-eyed, unblinking stares.
Suddenly, on the left, assault weapons begin their deafening rattle. As he turns, he sees a wave of Viet Cong running towards him.
Shit, those aren’t Cong. They have real uniforms and good weapons. Those are North Vietnamese regulars – real fucking soldiers, not half-trained farmers.
Then, it seems as if every weapon in the First Battalion goes off at once. Two Skyraiders scream in, strafing and dropping napalm insanely, incredibly close.
Without even deciding to move, he is down on his knees, scrambling for cover. He can’t hear; he can’t see through the smoke. A face appears to his right – Asian features. Shit, he’s raising his fucking AK – and he pushes his rifle out with one hand and just squeezes the trigger blindly. The face is blown apart, and the body falls back into the smoke.
"Rick?"
He jerked in his chair. The pretty production assistant was looking down at him. "I’m sorry. Did I disturb you?"
"No problem. Must have drifted off."
"I’m looking for the Hadley film. Did you drop it off?"
Rick glanced up at the clock over the courier desk. "Sure. Over an hour ago."
"Darn." Shelley sounded disappointed as she held up a plastic film can. "I’ve got the can, but there’s nothing in it, and Moretti says it was empty when he picked it up. Hadley still hasn’t shown up, so they knocked it out of the Global Report, but we still need to cut it for the affiliates." She headed towards the crew room in her usual headlong rush. "Well, it’s got to be somewhere. Thanks!"
"No problem." Rick said to her retreating back. Then he remembered. "Hey, the Hadley crew’s not back yet?"
Shelley turned around but kept walking backward. "Not yet."
"I’ve still got Pete’s Bolex."
"Just keep it. If you leave it in the lounge, it’ll get lost. Or one of those bigoted jerks will swipe it just to make him look incompetent." She spun on one high-heeled boot and waved as she turned the corner. "Got to go. See ya."
Rick stuck the small camera into one of the desk drawers, then sat back and rubbed his hands over his face. Well, he thought, she was willing to talk to a courier after all. The problem, he suspected, might be ev
er getting her to stop.
The moment of simple enjoyment faded as he remembered the dream. It had been bad enough to live through his tour in Vietnam once. Reliving it was just unfair. He felt a dull ache spread through his right arm and down his side – the places that had been ripped apart, the places that still had bits of steel, lead, and other people’s bones buried deep inside.
He reached up to where his jacket hung on the edge of the partition and pulled a small pink rubber sphere – about the size of a tennis ball – out of a pocket. Holding it in his right hand, he began the familiar ritual of slow squeeze, hold, and slow release. The first time he tried it back in the hospital in Japan, even a single repetition was agony, and the ball kept dropping from his numbed fingers. Now he could do it for hours, a small part of the endless labor required just to keep his body functioning.
OK, that took care of the physical; now he needed something to occupy his mind.
He reached into the desk, pulled out a small, thin box, then got up and wandered through the halls to the back door, where a young black security guard stood, looking official in his short-sleeved uniform shirt and dark pants. Briefly, Rick thought that there were worse jobs for a returning vet than riding a motorcycle.
"Hey, Larry, you ready to get your butt kicked?" He wiggled the box over his head.
"Bring it on, man."
Rick looked around. "It’s too busy out here, and I need to hear the phone. Can you come on back to the courier desk?"
"Sure," Larry laughed. "It’s not like there aren’t three other doors into this building that aren’t guarded. I don’t know why they even have me stand around looking like a damn fool. I don’t check ID, and for minimum wage, I’m not about to get physical with someone who wants to get in. Let’s go. I’ll give you white and two free moves and still kick your butt."