Drive Time (22 page)

“Need help with those?” I say. My words come out brittle. My back is stiffening and my insides are hollow. I’m—angry. And I’m enjoying it. “Or with anything else? Or, let’s see now, would you like to handle it all on your own?”

“Let’s just talk, all right, Charlotte?” Franklin sets the tapes and logs back onto Kevin’s desk, and turns to me. His eyes are wide behind his glasses, imploring. He slides his flat palms down the sides of his khakis, then stuffs his fists into his pockets.

“Talk?” I say. I still don’t sound like me. “You must have already done a lot of talking.”

Franklin drops his head, staring at the floor, then takes a deep breath.

“Charlotte, I wanted to discuss this with you. But you were never around.”

“Oh, I get it,” I reply. “It’s my fault.”

“Listen. Let me tell you the whole thing and then you can be angry. Whatever. You know Kevin is going to New York. He asked me to come with him, produce for the in
vestigative team. He said he asked you, too. He told me not to tell you I knew about it.”

“But, I—” I interrupt. I need to explain that I was going to turn the offer down.

“Let me finish.” Franklin holds up a hand. “You’ve been distant. And distracted. You know you have. Wedding-planner meetings at fancy hotels. Taking Penny to school. The ‘dentist’?
Please.
‘Forgetting’ our plans? I must tell you, Charlotte, I was convinced you were out of here. You have to admit, it makes sense.”

“But, I—”

He looks at me earnestly. “You’re getting married. You’ll have Josh, and Penny, and a whole new deal. I thought you were, you know, easing your way into that. And away from TV.”

“But, I—” Now I need to explain I’m still learning to be two places at once, but I’ll definitely be able to pull it off.

Franklin shakes his head, stopping me again.

“I’m almost finished. When Kevin offered me New York, the network, the job I’d always dreamed of, I had to consider it. As it happens, Stephen’s office was thrilled to have him relocate there. I’ve been talking with the New York Bureau staff for two weeks now. I thought for sure you’d get suspicious of all my texting. And when I didn’t show up for the first stakeout. I wasn’t there because I had a meeting.”

He gives a soft smile, remembering. “And when I kept clicking my computer monitor closed so you couldn’t read our e-mails. The guy at the Longmore with me on stakeout night? He was from New York. The new exec producer. You didn’t care.”

“But, I—” I had noticed, I just hadn’t pursued it. I was too busy with my own deceptions. Now I need to explain some other things. That a moment ago, I wasn’t really angry, but terrified. And that now, my fear is dissolving
into pure sorrow. That I understand change is necessary. And inevitable. And that change is the only thing that keeps our heads and our hearts alive.

“When you didn’t say anything…” Franklin pauses. “It was proof for me that you had completely tuned out. You were leaving, too. You’d be Charlie the married lady. You wouldn’t miss me. Or us. You’d be happy, Charlotte. As you deserve to be.”

Now I’m unabashedly crying, tears streaming down my cheeks. I give a watery sniff and pat my pockets for a tissue. No pockets.

“It was hard to keep a secret from you,” he says. “Like I said, Kevin told me he’d offered you a New York gig. He was sure you’d jump at it. But I know you. And I know you’ll turn him down. Your life is changing, girlfriend.”

He pauses. “And mine is, too.”

We stare at each other in the flickering silence. Outside in the newsroom, the lunch bunch is returning. The newsroom is bustling back to life, exactly the way it was before lunch.

But for me, and for Franklin, things will never be the same.

“Congratulations, Franko,” I say, taking a deep breath. “Let’s go out in style.”

I throw one arm across Franklin’s shoulders, giving him a brief, newsroom-appropriate hug.

“Get those tapes, Mr. New York producer. You’ve still got to knock ’em dead in Boston one last time. Let’s do some good. Stop some bad guys. And we’ll hope for one more Emmy while we’re at it. You’re the best, Franko.”

“You’re the best, Charlotte,” Franklin says, scooping up the stack of cassettes. “You’ll find a new producer.”

“We’ll see,” I say.

I pull open the office door and the two of us step forward into our new reality.

Head down and almost running, J.T. crashes through the double doors into the newsroom, narrowly avoiding smashing into us. We all stop, regrouping. Franklin picks up the cassettes that tumbled onto the worn once-blue carpeting.

“Sorry, dudes,” J.T. says. He eyes us. “Guess you talked about New York, huh?”

“You know about this?” My voice rises. Never a dull moment. “What, are you leaving, too?”

“Charlotte, he—”

“Listen, dudes, we can deal with that later. In Kevin’s office? That was a call from ENG Joanna. They were taking in a live feed from Liz Whittemore. Joanna said I might want to see it. And she was right.”

“What was it?” Franklin asks.

“Another car fire?” My mind races. If another car has been destroyed, we’re totally on the wrong track. Our Explorer is safely stowed in the station garage. No doubt about that.
Uh-oh.
“Was there another murder?”

“Nope. Nope. The feed was from downtown, from inside some parking garage,” J.T. says. “The cops found it. They found the carjacked Explorer. It’s red.”

“Y
ou have to slow down. So you can take a ticket.” Franklin points to the black-and-white ticket-dispensing machine, all that’s standing between us and the cops. And, we hope, between us and a lovely close-up VIN view of the carjacked red Explorer. “Push the green button, Charlotte.”

“I know how parking garages work, I’m going to take a darn ticket,” I say. I am almost too impatient to wait for an automatic gate. I hit the brake grudgingly, lean out the window and punch the flashing green dome. It spits out a magnetic striped ticket and the long metal arm slowly, agonizingly slowly, lifts to allow us in.

The Garage at Fifty-Five Friend Street is a multi-storied, poorly lighted, perfect place to hide a car, because it’s where all the other cars are. We could never have found the stolen Explorer. The cops did. According to the faxed news release from HQ that’s now safely in my coat pocket, the license plates had been removed, but unfortunately for the bad guys, remnants of a telltale beach-access parking decal were still in place on the rear window.

“They’re having a news conference, can you believe it?” I say. The car barely clears the gate as I drive through and go up the ramp to the fifth floor, where the police have notified the media they’ll display their find.

“The cops are going to show off this car, trying to
prove they’re cracking down on the carjacking situation. But it’s the key to our story. The solution to our where’s the-car dilemma. And it’s right here, served up nicely by Boston’s finest. You’ve got to love it.”

“If it actually is the clone of our Explorer,” Franklin says. He pauses, pulls a tiny spiral notebook from the side pocket of his suede jacket and starts flipping pages. “There are—let’s see—5,600 Explorers in Boston. Possibly fifteen percent of them are red. Plus, if No-Hat, as you’ve now indelibly dubbed him in my head, didn’t get a chance to have his buddies transform the stolen car into a clone, it’ll be a total bust. I mean, it’ll be just another red Explorer.”

“Eeyore,” I say. “You’re always Eeyore. How long can it take to slap on three VIN plates? So I’ll distract the cops while you get a nice shot of No-Hat’s nefarious handiwork with that lovely hidden camera you’ve got. We’ll use the wide shots from Liz and her photog, since they’re covering the news conference.”

I sneak a quick look at Franklin as we hit the straightaway of the second floor.

“Cheer up, partner. We’ve done the hard part, getting video of them stealing our VIN. And now we’re about to be presented a perfect view of the result. I’ll bet you ten thousand dollars it’s the clone of our car.”

Franklin and I always bet ten thousand dollars. Sometimes one or the other of us is down a hundred thousand or so, but it always, eventually, evens out. I ease the car up around the corner, noticing a black-and-red sign indicating we’re on Two Left. With a chill of sadness I realize there might not be time for any new big money bets to even out.

“Where’d they say it was again?” I ask. Changing the subject.

“Left side, space number one, according to the news release.” Franklin says. “And I suppose it’s in the best
interest of the cloners to change the car’s identity as quickly as possible. So, we’ll see. All we have to do is get to the VIN number.”

Third floor.

“And since the cops will impound this baby anyway,” I say, “we won’t have to worry about anyone messing with it. They’re actually protecting it for us. Nice. We are having one big fat lucky day.”

I look at Franklin as we head around the curves of the fourth floor, remembering. “Except that you’ve announced you’re leaving me, of course.”

The red Explorer is cordoned off with black-and-yellow plastic tape. Crime Scene, Do Not Cross, it announces in black letters, over and over. Although this is not technically the scene of the crime. There’s no way for us to get close enough to see the VIN. Yet.

Between us and the car, I count six television crews arranged in a semicircle. Six reporters, creating a rainbow of multi-colored parkas, hover next to six photographers. Six cameras with battery-powered lights mounted on top are at the ready on tripods. There’s no power to plug in big portable lights, so the area stays dim, fluorescent tubes across the concrete ceiling struggling to make it approach daylight. The newspaper reporters keep to themselves in a pack to one side. Their parkas, aggressively rumpled, a dimmer rainbow of gray to tan, telegraph their disdain for their on-air competitors.

They’re all waiting for the huddle of blue uniforms to come to a bank of microphones precariously rigged up with gaffer’s tape and retractable metal stands.

Franklin and I stay behind them all. Waiting for our chance.

“Strange, though, that they’d carjack, you know? Why not just steal a car? This is so—out there.”

“Stop fidgeting, Charlotte,” Franklin whispers. “Here
they come. They’ll talk, the gang will ask questions, they’ll all leave. Then we can try to get closer.”

“We only need one shot,” I say. I’m calculating the ways we could manage it.

All at once, the garage goes bright. In the instant heat and flare of six battery-powered spotlights, a parade of uniforms approaches the microphones.

“I’m Lieutenant Henry Zavala, Z-A-V-A-L-A, head of the Auto Theft Unit.” A lanky forty-something with a bristling cop-issue mustache and matching eyebrows steps forward. The lights glint on his silver badge. “We are pleased to announce today we’ve recovered…”

“Yeah, yeah, you found the car, big deal,” I mutter as Zavala continues. “So who took it? You know
that?
That’d be worth a news conference.”

“Shush,” Franklin says. “Maybe they do know.”

The news conference sputters along, a series of self-congratulatory back-pats by the police officers, followed by solemn warnings to citizens to be watchful and keep their car doors locked, followed by fake-aggressive questions from reporters who have no idea they’re on the edges of a real story.

No suspects, the cops finally admit. Victim barely saw the carjackers, can’t describe them. The victims want to be anonymous. Won’t do interviews. Fingerprinting to come. A cop had spied the car on a routine patrol. They confirmed it by the beach decal and a key the owners had hidden under the left front wheel well in a magnetic tin box.

“They haven’t checked the VIN,” I whisper. “Yay.”

Franklin knows the stakes as well as I do. If this car is a clone, the cops could be on to the scam as soon as they try to confirm the VIN. As long as they don’t, it’s clear sailing for us.

I see Liz Whittemore’s hand go up. She doesn’t wait to be called on.

“Lieutenant? Is this carjacking related to the blue Mustang incident? Or do you think this one is a separate incident?”

I jab Franklin with an elbow. “Damn. That’s the sixty-four-thousand-dollar question. I was going to ask it myself. But not in front of everyone during the news conference.”

Zavala takes a step back from the microphones, confers behind his hand with a plainclothes colleague and comes back into the lights.

“That’s under investigation,” he says.

“Yay,” I whisper. “They’ve got nothing.”

“The perps carjack so they snag the keys, right?” A tough-guy
Globe
reporter points to the front with his pen, attempting to demonstrate his cop-speak cred. “But why would the skels dump the Ex in a garage?”

I see a few officers trying to hold back sneers.

“We don’t know what’s in the minds of the perpetrators,” Zavala says.

“Hope not,” I whisper.

“Shush,” Franklin says.

There’s a rustle of notebooks and clicking of ballpoints as reporters look at each other, wondering if someone else has thought of a question they should be asking.

“Anyone else?” Zavala surveys the pack in front of him. No one speaks. A few photographers, knowing the end’s in sight, unfasten their cameras from the tripods.

“If not,” Zavala says, adjusting his cap, “we’re done here. Thank you all for coming.”

No one seems to care about any of it. Except Franklin and me.

“Okay, okay, let’s do it.” I can barely hold myself back. Some of the photographers roll off a few desultory shots of the recovered car, one go-getter even bothering to come up closer to the crime-scene tape. To them, this is as routine as it comes. There’s no suspect, there’s no
excitement. It’s just the police proving their Auto Theft Unit can find a stolen car from time to time, a public relations move to prove they’re on the job.

Unless there’s a body in the trunk, which there can’t be because there’s no trunk, this video will go straight to the newsroom “hold” stacks and only make it on the air if the cops eventually blow the lid off a huge and dangerous carjacking ring.

Which they won’t. Because we’re going to break an even bigger story. First.

Reporters and photographers toting their bags of gear click open their cars, electronic beeps from key rings echoing against the concrete walls. A few colleagues wave a hand in salute, off to their next assignment. Franklin makes his way oh-so-casually toward the crime-scene tape. I’m standing by. We’re playing this by ear.

“How’d you draw the short straw on this piece of crap, McNally?” A familiar voice, speaking close to my ear. I hear one sentence, but a million memories return.

I turn, smiling, to greet an old pal.

“Is that cop talk for ‘hello, great to see you’?” I haven’t seen Joe Cipriani for more than a year. Detective Joe Cipriani, in his usual rough-knit fisherman’s sweater and leather jacket, is the heartthrob of the Boston PD. I give him a quick peck on the cheek, appropriate for what we went through together a couple of stories ago, when he arrived just in time to rescue me from the gun-wielding sociopath I’d proved was mastermind of an insider-trading scheme. His curly hair has gone a little grayer, but he’s still wearing that same cologne. This time, he hasn’t arrived to save my life.

I smile as I pull away, changing my mind. Perhaps he has.

“Great to see you, too,” I continue. “And I happened to be in the neighborhood. You know me, can’t stay away
from watching the good guys in blue win. What’s your excuse, Detective? They bust you down to the auto squad?”

Over Joe’s shoulder I see Franklin’s now standing right next to the Explorer. A uniformed cop is pantomiming “this is as far as you get, buddy.” He’s not close enough for the camera to get a usable shot.

“Brass wanted a big show,” Joe says. “You heard Henry Z. S’posed to remind the public to be vigilant, you know the drill. Plus, looks good they found the car. Driver wasn’t hurt. Case closed.”

I can barely keep from smiling. And I feel a bit guilty about what I’m about to attempt. But all’s fair in TV, pretty much. And we can always get an authorized picture of the VIN later.

“Yup, that’s a good outcome,” I say. “And nice work about the wheel-well thing.”

“Well, it’s part hard work. And part luck.”

Couldn’t have put it better myself. And here comes a little of each. I pretend to be annoyed, even performing a little foot stamp with my boot. “Rats.”

“What?” Joe says.

“Oh, Liz and her cameraman are gone,” I gesture vaguely behind me, my voice laden with concern. “I never saw them get a close-up of that wheel well. The exec producer is going to nail her for that. Could I—”

I stop midsentence. Oh. Rats. And this time I mean it. Franklin has a camera, but I totally forgot it’s the hidden camera. So I can’t ask if we can get a picture with it. Putting both hands on my knees, I pretend to have a brief coughing fit, giving myself some time to think.

“You okay?” Joe says.

I hold up a palm, standing back upright. “Fine. All this car exhaust, I bet. Anyway, as I was saying. Could I take of picture of the wheel well for Liz? With my cell-phone camera?”

If he lets us get right up to the car, I’ll snap a photo of the wheel well with my cell to distract the cops while Franklin gets the VIN on his hidden camera.

Joe looks back at the car. The black-and-yellow tape is being taken down. Franklin is chatting earnestly about who-knows-what with a crime-scene tech. I know Franko’s stalling. Or strategizing. Most of the other uniforms have gone. A BPD flatbed tow truck that had been parked to one side is being waved into place. The Explorer won’t be here for long.

“Sure,” Joe says. “For you? I can make that happen.”

“I’m driving. You know I can’t look at the video,” Franklin says. “But I got it, right? It’s our VIN? Every number and letter shows up? The first few numbers are going to be the same on every Explorer of the same year.”

“Duh.” I’ve got the hidden camera on my lap, the flip-screen open, and I’m pressing Rewind. I watch the jaggedy video spin by, backward, once again. “Let me rewind again, check it, to be sure,” I say. “But I think it’s fine. Great job.”

We’re winding back down the twisting ramps of the parking garage, heading back to the station. If the VINs match, and I’m confident they do, our story is about to accelerate into high gear.

“I suppose,” I say as the humming tape continues to rewind, “we could go on the air without knowing who’s behind this, you know? Just show that cars are being hijacked and cloned, and that Michael Borum was a possible casualty of this potentially far-reaching, dangerous and—”

“And lucrative,” Franklin puts in.

“And lucrative scheme,” I finish. The camera clicks, signaling the tape is at the beginning again. “So let’s check with Kevin. See if we can go with what we’ve got.
I mean, let’s say we do find the mastermind. What am I supposed to do, go confront him? Then say, hang on, sir, we’re putting this all on TV next week?”

“Or ma’am,” Franklin says, pulling up to the cashier’s exit booth. “You have the ticket?”

“In the sun visor.” I point to the flap. And then push Fast-Forward on the camera.

“I know I’m right,” I continue, my eyes glued to the tiny screen. “We don’t have to know who’s behind it. We’re not the cops. Let Jeremiah Soroff and his crew go after some real bad guys for once. Once they see our story, they’ll—”

“Twenty-four dollars?” Franklin’s voice, directed out his open window, is incredulous.