Astride a Pink Horse (39 page)

“Doesn’t really matter,” said Cozy. “Like Bernadette said, it won’t make much difference in the end. Colbain, Kimiko, and Rivers are going to end up rowing the same life-sentence boat downstream.
Who knows, since any three of Giles’s five stab wounds could have killed him, maybe they all got in a fatal lick.”

“Not if it were up to me,” said Freddy. “I’d fry every one of their asses.”

“Yeah, we know,” said Cozy, “and that’s why you’re not the one meting out the justice here, my man.”

Freddy flashed his best friend a confident, all-knowing smile. It was the smile of someone who knew that, all else aside, and in most ways that mattered, he would always have the upper hand. “But I am still at the helm of Digital Registry News, and I’ll be the one in charge at
High Plains Insight
three weeks from now when it debuts. That is, if a couple of employees of mine whom I care about and respect dearly ever deliver the magazine’s centerpiece story to me.”

“We’ll have the story to you,” Bernadette said, smiling at Freddy reassuringly.

“Yeah,” said Cozy. “Get off your worry stick, would you? I’m just hoping this new venture of yours keeps us all in a job. Regional news and entertainment magazines have been tried before, and believe it or not, Freddy, they’ve always folded. Remember what they say about millionaire cattle barons.”

Freddy laughed. “Yeah, that they all started off as billionaire cattle barons. But then again, that’s pretty much what folks said when Dick Durrell and Matthew Maynard launched
People
magazine back in 1974. And no matter what anyone thinks, I’m betting there’s still room out there for a slick, in-your-face, tell-everything-to-everybody, people-oriented regional magazine. Something specific to the Rocky Mountain West that characterizes the people
here who cause the news, defines those who’ve been caught up in or dragged into it, or shines a spotlight on folks who try their best to tiptoe their way around or away from it.”

Offering himself a single, self-congratulatory nod, Freddy said, “So that’s what my little regional tabloid’s going to do—spotlight those people and their stories. Like my daddy’s always said, screw the folks on either coast and give me the good, proud folks in the muddled middle.” Grinning, Freddy asked, “Wanna see the first cover?”

“Sure do,” Bernadette said, locking hands with Cozy and walking over to Freddy’s desk to have a peek at the inaugural cover of
High Plains Insight
.

“Voilà,” said Freddy, slipping a linen cloth from over the seventeen-by-twenty-two-inch proof sheet that featured a two-column-wide color photograph of a motorcycle carrying two riders. Their faces could barely be seen, but they were clearly intended to be Cozy and Bernadette, disappearing into a white mushroom-shaped fog as, overhead, the nose of an A-10 Warthog pierced the fog’s leading edge. A third column was a horizontal half split. The top panel featured a grainy-looking black-and-white photo of a map of Wyoming peppered with red dots depicting the locations of the state’s once active seventy-six nuclear-missile sites. The much more sharply focused bottom panel showed a close-up photo of a cyclone fence surrounding a missile site. A small black-and-white sign reading, “Warning, Tango-11, Restricted Area—Deadly Force Authorized,” was attached at eye level to the fence. In the background, the partially raised hatch of a silo personnel-access tube was clearly visible.

After giving Cozy and Bernadette time to study the cover, Freddy expectantly asked, “So, whatta you think?”

After a brief silence, Bernadette said, “There was never an A-10 involved at Los Alamos.”

“Creative license, Bernadette. Creative license. You’ll learn all about it if you stick around this business long enough.”

Realizing that Cozy still hadn’t looked up from the cover and that his eyes remained locked on the motorcycle and the fog, Freddy said, “I haven’t decided on the cover copy yet, but it’ll be easy enough to drop in. Right now I’m thinking ‘Doomsday Disarmed.’ ” Aware of what Cozy must be thinking, Freddy draped an arm over his best friend’s shoulders. “But, what the hell, I’m open to suggestions. Que sera, sera.”