Impulse Read Free

you?”
    “Sure thing. Remember the reporters in Chicagowho ran that sting operation with a bar they opened themselves without telling the cops? That was a real beauty, and…” He paused, a light of wistfulness in his eyes. “In any case, just maybe you’ll find something. Think about how good it’ll make you feel. Remember how you felt when you cracked that group of neo-Nazis for the Wallingford
Daily News
?”
    It
had
felt good, no doubt about that. “Yeah, I was pleased that I was still alive and the jerks hadn’t shoved their swastika armbands down my throat.” Then, “All right, Al, you win. I’ll go see the guy and talk to him. I’ll try to make him promise he won’t tell anyone, including his lawyer, about me. Maybe no one will know. I’ll even try to keep it from being public knowledge down in classified. Does your infamous nose have any concrete information for me to go on?”
    Al always lied cleanly, to his mother, to his women, and to his reporters, so he shook his head promptly, his expression guileless.
    Five minutes later, still grumbling, Rafaella Holland stuffed her oversize canvas bag with notebook, sharpened pencils, and umbrella, waved good-bye to Buzz Adams, the
Tribune
’s other investigative reporter, and left for the lockup to interview a twenty-three-year-old man named Freddy Pithoe, who, in a fit of rage—cause unknown—had wiped out nearly his entire family. His very inexperienced lawyer was going to plead temporary insanity—not very bright. Even Rafaella knew that old Freddy had purchased that ax two days before he did his family in. Premeditation, all the way. He wasn’t crazy, at least in the sense his lawyer was claiming. Freddy Pithoe was just waiting to get them all together, tell them what he thought of them, and ax them. That’s what the cops said, what the D.A. said, what the news media said. It was certainly the take on it that Logan Mansfield, bright and upcoming assistant D.A., shared. He’d made that perfectly clearat great length during a spate of foreplay that had left Rafaella boiling—but not with sexual yearnings.
    Al watched Rafaella wind her way through the desks and reporters and assistants to the wide glass doors of the
Trib
’s newsroom. She was nearly stomping, her London Fog raincoat flapping. He pushed himself back in his swivel chair, leaned his head against the ratty brown leather cushion that he’d refused to let Mr. Danforth, owner of the Boston
Tribune
, replace for five years now, and closed his eyes. He knew that if the anonymous tip he’d gotten from that old woman—she’d refused to identify herself—had any merit, Rafaella would discover it. He’d joked about her Pulitzer, but the job she’d done in ferreting out that den of neo-Nazis had been damned impressive and Mr. Danforth had called Al immediately after her Pulitzer had been announced. She’d taken a job with the
Trib
a month later. Imagine that vicious bunch using a candy store in a shopping mall in Delaware as a front.
Heil
Mr. Lazarus Smith. God, what a story that had made, for months. Rafe didn’t even have a sweet tooth for all he knew.
    Oh, yes, if there was anything to this thing, she’d find out what it was. She was tenacious and, more important, had the talent to adapt her style, her approach, even her look, to each situation, to each person, no matter how disparate, no matter how weird. She’d find out why Freddy had almost decapitated his old man, struck his mother a good three blows in the chest, and very nearly hacked the uncle’s two arms off.
    Al just had to wait until Rafe made the decision that she
wanted
to know. He’d really gotten her goat, and she’d have to work that through for a couple of hours, most of those hours wanting to punch him out. Then, he guessed, she’d be down at the jail by eleven this morning. She was good, and under his tutelage she’d get better. And she’d keep everything under wraps. No one would get in trouble over a