Bloodland: A Novel (43 page)

This Zambelli woman was on the level, she was a
bona fide
PR princess with a pair of stones on her that would put any man to shame.

She’d nabbed
him
, for Christ’s sake.

Look at him.

Holed up in a fucking executive suite, waiting for a deluxe cheeseburger he ordered and watching himself on TV, while out there, in the other room, some grand strategy is being devised, tomorrow’s assault on the world’s media.

He stops at the window and looks out at the shimmering lights of Manhattan’s upper east side.

What’s he doing here? What’s
his
strategy?

He doesn’t know.

It felt weird bailing on Jimmy Gilroy and Ellen Dorsey like that, but then, what does he owe
them
? He did their interview, gave them their scoop.

He turns away from the window.

What does he owe anyone for that matter? What does he owe the various people who’ve been trying to contact him since early afternoon apparently, looking to hook up with him? So-called friends, family members – and obscure ones, too.

His ex-brother-in-law?

Jesus Christ
.

He doesn’t owe them anything.

He looks over at the end of the bed.

He still has his gun. It’s in the pocket of his leather jacket there.

He could …

What?

Flip?
Work himself up to it? An improvised frenzy, right here in the bedroom maybe? Or how about downstairs in the lobby? Or live on-air in some TV studio? Take his new movie-star girlfriend with him and go out in a blaze of glory?

Yeah.

He wishes he were that insane. It’d be a lot easier.

On Fox now they’re showing clips of Paris, the Eiffel Tower, some big hotel, streets, traffic.

The special correspondents, it would seem, are on the case, arriving into the city in their droves. It won’t be long before they start arriving in Congo as well, and chartering small private planes to take them as near to the remote village of Buenke as they can get.

And it won’t be long before everything Tom Szymanski said in his interview is checked and verified – Ray Kroner going postal and killing all those people, then Senator Rundle getting his hand crushed in the door of an SUV.

That
chiefly.

But it won’t stop there, it occurs to him, the coverage, the attention, not by a long shot – and it’s going to take all his reserves of sanity to get through it.

All his reserves of energy.

Speaking of which.

He looks over at the door.

Where’s that fucking cheeseburger he ordered?

*   *   *

Over on the west side, standing at a window of his apartment on the fifty-seventh floor, glass in hand, Clark Rundle gazes down at the jewel-encrusted city spread out below like a vast, magnificent cache of pirate’s booty.

After a while, and abruptly, he shifts focus and gazes into his glass.

Single malt Scotch whisky. This is the fourth or fifth one he’s had, he
thinks
. He’s not a big drinker, but he knows that he’s reached a tipping point here, the sensation in his stomach – this little red-hot coal of euphoria, burning steadily now for maybe the last twenty minutes – is due to subside, and fade.

Inevitably.

Leaving him with the dying embers of …

Oh
please
.

There. You see?

It’s gone.

He drains his glass and turns away from the window.

The room before him is enormous, like a downtown loft space – furnished in a minimalist style, with wide, pine floorboards, a couple of bare leather couches, a tinted glass coffee table and two large, modernist canvases hung on walls at either end.

That’s it.

Is it any wonder no-one ever comes in here?

He goes over to the coffee table and puts his glass down beside the bottle of smoky Laphroaig.

Outside, the phone rings.

Again.

Eve is under instructions to screen all calls.

His own cell is turned off.

He looks down at the bottle.

Does he pour himself another one? He’s not sure he can relive – as he will inevitably have to, again and again – those final few moments in the car today beside Don Ribcoff … without
some
form of … of fortification. Especially that final moment, that very,
very
final moment, when he picked up his laptop and swung it sideways straight into Ribcoff’s forehead … withdrew it and swung it back, even harder this time, aiming better, the right angle of its corner ramming directly into the centre of Ribcoff’s now-turned and very startled face.

The bridge of his nose?

Definitely the bridge of his nose the
next
time, going by the sound, and no question about it the time after that, cartilage, sinew, muscle.

Blood
.

Spurting, spraying … everywhere.

The few times after that? You’re talking fucking …
serious
laundry bills.

He picks up the bottle, hesitates, then pours himself another measure, a generous one.

He remembers getting out of the car somewhere down around Twenty-third Street and being met – taken in hand, transferred to another car – by some of
his
people. Luckily, the driver of the original car was one of his, too, and not a Gideon driver – well, he’s
assuming
luckily – because you never know.

And then?

And then it was busy.

All day.

He’s been busy … all day.

Talking
.

To this one and that one.

Rationalising, explaining, making calls, responding. Earlier on, there was that very long shower he had to take, and then later – he’s a little muddled about the sequence of things at the moment – yeah,
later
, watching TV and checking news websites.

Because, Jesus Christ …

J.J.

His big brother.

All day he’s had to watch the poor bastard being crucified.

Vilified, ridiculed.

While knowing at the same time, that somehow – and sooner rather than later –
he’s
next in line.

For the hammer and nails.

And the cheap cracks.

He lifts the glass to his lips, well beyond that tipping point now. No euphoria anymore, just …

Oh Jesus.

He was so
angry
in the car today, about Nora … and
with
Ribcoff – for delaying, for maintaining that stupid pretence of military precision, when it was clear what they had to do.

Despite the enormous risks.

Just go in there and
 …

Because two or three minutes earlier and everything would have been different.

Everything would be different now.

Yeah.

He throws his head back and drains the glass, though this time feeling a little sick as he does so.

Like he’s had enough.

He stares at the plain wall in front of him, and then down at the floorboards.

How many messages did he leave today for Jimmy Vaughan? A lot. And
that’s
what makes him the sickest, that’s what –

Rundle looks up. The door is opening.

It’s Eve, looking gaunt and exhausted. She remains standing in the doorway.

‘Clark.’ She whispers it. ‘There are two police detectives downstairs. They want to speak with you.’

Rundle swallows. ‘OK.’ He shrugs. ‘Send them up.’

Shit. This is about Don Ribcoff, isn’t it? That driver today, he’s sure of it. Or one of the others maybe, one of the Gideon contractors. There were so many of them around the place, it was sometimes hard to tell who was with who, and –

Their loyalties would be with Ribcoff, wouldn’t they?

Clearly.

He shakes his head.

All they’d need is the laptop. Which of course he doesn’t remember taking with him from the car, and that’s because he
didn’t
take it with him, he left it there.

Do these detectives have it now? This choice piece of evidence?

Definitive, case-busting?

Rundle turns around and does something he’s been threatening to do all day. He steps forward, heaves loudly and throws up – all over one of the leather couches.

Half a pint of whisky.

The sum total of what he’s got.

And when he’s finished, he wipes his mouth with the sleeve of his jacket.

Standing there, facing the window, he takes a few deep breaths.

A moment later, from outside, he hears the door opening, and voices.

*   *   *

A little after eleven o’clock the next morning Ellen Dorsey takes Jimmy to the offices of
Parallax
magazine on Forty-first Street. She introduces him to the editor, Max Daitch, an intense guy in his mid-thirties who sits behind a mahogany desk piled high with papers and books.

Within about twenty seconds he has offered Jimmy two things – coffee and a job.

When Jimmy doesn’t respond immediately to either offer, Daitch says, ‘OK, I can’t tell you much more about the coffee, it’s coffee, what do you want, but the job…’ He leans forward on the desk and clicks his tongue. ‘Or maybe, I don’t know, does the word
job
make you nervous? Would you prefer if I said
commission
?’

Jimmy smiles and says, ‘No, no, coffee’s fine, thanks. An espresso. Please.’

Daitch looks at him, waits, then says, ‘Oh, what are we, playing hardball here?’ He turns to Dorsey. ‘Ellen, help me out with this guy, Jesus.’

‘Shut up, Max,’ she says. ‘Do you have any idea what he’s been through in the last twenty-four hours?’

Jimmy has barely been able to process this himself.

‘That interview he did was broadcast all over the world, it was
the
lead news story everywhere and it totally burned up the blogosphere, but people want more, some kind of a follow-up, so
he
spent most of yesterday fighting off offers from editors and booking agents and people like Liz Zambelli. Who by the way appears to have more or less kidnapped Tom Szymanski, because no one knows where he is. But anyway, there’s a lot of interest out there, a lot of competition, network producers are salivating, and yet
this guy
, as you call him, chooses to come here.’

Daitch considers what she’s said, then nods. ‘OK. Fine. An espresso it is.’ He buzzes out to his assistant. Then he looks at Jimmy. ‘Great interview, I have to say. Really. It was. Every question, every answer, not an ounce of fat.’

Jimmy nods back. ‘Thanks. We were under a certain amount of pressure.’

‘No shit. But Ellen here tells me that you’ve got more, a whole back story to go with this. Is that right?’

‘Yes. What I’ve got, I
think
, is the story of how BRX got involved in this thing in the first place. I want to draw a direct line from that right up to yesterday. Right up to
last night
.’ He exhales and bobs his head from side to side, as though weighing it all up. ‘So, I don’t know, a ten-minute segment on a some news show…’

‘Couldn’t possibly do the story justice?’

‘Right.’

‘OK, but you only
think
you’ve got it?’

‘Well, I know what happened, but I need to work on it. There are a lot of gaps to fill in. I need to go to London to check out some CCTV footage. I need to go back to Italy. Ideally, I should go to Congo.’ He pauses. ‘Actually, I
have
to go to Congo.’

‘Sure.’

‘It’s murky stuff, and it goes pretty deep.’

‘Indeed. But you’ll need
time
. For travelling. And lots of money as well, presumably. For expenses.’

‘I suppose.’ Jimmy pauses again. ‘Look, I realise –’

‘No, no,’ Daitch interrupts, holding a hand up, ‘it’s fine. I get it. Time and money. That’s what you want. The two things we’ve notoriously run out of in this industry.’

Jimmy exhales. ‘So I keep hearing.’

Daitch stands up and moves out from behind his desk. He walks around to the front and then leans back against it. He folds his arms. ‘That’s the conventional wisdom these days, isn’t it? News has to be fast and cheap. It has to ride the clickstream to survive. So anything with the word “investigative” attached to it doesn’t have a prayer. Why? Because it’s expensive, it ties up resources, and more often than not it invites litigation.’ He shrugs. ‘It’s just the wrong model for the digital age.’ He leans forward. ‘Well, you know what? Screw that. Screw the conventional wisdom. When’s the last time anyone in this room paid attention to the conventional wisdom?’ He turns to Ellen Dorsey. ‘Am I right?’ Then back to Jimmy. ‘Look, my point is,
Parallax
is a national magazine, print edition comes out once a month, online edition we do what we can, and ad revenues are a constant struggle, a constant pain in the ass, but in the last couple of years you know what stories have made the most impact, where we’ve seen actual spikes in circulation? That’s right, longer, investigative pieces that we put time and resources into. Ask
her
. It’s pretty much what she does full time.’

Dorsey nods in agreement. ‘He’s right. The technology demands concision, the news reduced to a tweet, but people actually want more,
enough
people want more.’

Daitch stands up straight. ‘So, Jimmy, here’s the deal, if you have what you say you have, I’m prepared to let you run with it. We can at least talk terms and see where we stand, right?’

‘Sure,’ Jimmy says, ‘absolutely.’

He looks behind him. An assistant is coming through the door with a tray of espressos.

‘Besides,’ Daitch continues, walking over and taking the tray from the assistant, ‘this isn’t just some tawdry story about John Rundle getting caught out in a lie that we’ll all have forgotten about in a week. With Clark now up on a murder charge, it’s a lot more serious than that. It’s game on.’ He holds the tray out to Jimmy. ‘I think we’re in for the long haul on this one, don’t you?’

*   *   *

Later on, after he parts ways with Ellen Dorsey – temporarily, they’re meeting for dinner at a place called Quaranta – Jimmy takes a cab downtown.