The Poet (57 page)

“That it?”

Warren turned a hand upside down and nodded.

“Yeah, that’s it. Being that he’s dead and you were there, I thought you might want to know.”

I looked at him for another moment.

“Okay, man,” I said. “Thanks. I’ll see you around.”

I straightened up and closed the door, then bent down to look at Warren through the window and gave a wave. He snapped off a military-style salute and drove away.

46

In my room I connected my computer to the phone line and dialed into the Rocky’s computer. I had thirty-six E-mail messages waiting for me. I hadn’t checked in two days. Most of the in-house messages were congratulatory, although they weren’t explicitly worded as such because the senders probably hesitated to do so, wondering if it was proper to congratulate me for killing the Poet. There were two from Van Jackson asking me where I was and to call and three from Greg Glenn asking the same. The Rocky operator had also dumped my phone messages into my E-mail basket and there were several from reporters across the country and from Hollywood production companies. My mother and Riley had also called. There was no doubt I was in demand. I saved all the messages in case I wanted to call back and signed off.

Greg Glenn’s direct line rang through to the operator. She said Greg was in a story meeting and she had standing orders not to ring into the conference room. I left my name and number and hung up.

After waiting fifteen minutes for Greg to return my call and trying not to think about what Warren had told me at the end of our ride, I got impatient and left the room. I started walking down the strip and eventually stopped at Book Soup, a bookstore I had noticed earlier during the ride with Warren. I went to the mystery section and found a book I had once read which I knew was dedicated to the author’s agent. My theory was that this was at least the sign of a good agent. With the name in hand, I next went to the research section and looked up the agent in a book listing literary agencies, their addresses and phone numbers. I committed the phone number to memory, left the store and walked back to the hotel.

The red light on the phone was flashing when I got back to my room and I knew it was probably Greg, but I decided to call the agent first. It was five o’clock in New York and I didn’t know what hours he kept. He answered after two rings. I introduced myself and quickly went into my pitch.

“I wanted to see if I could talk to you about representing me in regard to a, uh, I guess it would be called a true crime book. Do you do true crime?”

“Yes,” he said. “But rather than discuss this on the phone I would really prefer that you send me a query letter telling me about yourself and the project. Then I can respond.”

“I would but I don’t think there is time. I’ve got publishers and movie people calling me and I have to make some decisions quickly.”

That set the hook. I knew it would.

“Why are they calling you? What’s it about?”

“Have you read or seen anything on TV about this killer out in L.A., the Poet?”

“Yes, of course.”

“I’m the one who, uh, shot him. I’m a writer-a reporter. My brother-“

“You’re the one?”

“I’m the one.”

Though he was interrupted often by other calls, we talked for twenty minutes about the possible book project and the interest I’d already gotten from the movie production people. He said he worked with an agent in Los Angeles who could handle the interest from that industry. In the meantime, he wanted to know how quickly I could send him a two-page proposal. I told him I’d get it to him within the hour and he gave me the number of his computer’s fax modem. He said that if the story was as good as he had seen on TV, he thought that he could have the book sold by the end of the week. I told him the story was better.

“One last thing,” he said. “How did you get my name?”

“It was in A Morning for Flamingos.”

The red light on the phone continued to wink at me but I ignored it after hanging up and went to work on my laptop writing the proposal, trying to consolidate the last two weeks into two pages. It was a difficult process, not helped by having only one usable hand, and I went long, finishing with four pages.

By the time I was done, my hand was beginning to throb even though I had tried not to use it. I took another one of the pills the hospital had given me and had gone back to the computer, proofreading my proposal, when the phone rang.

It was Greg and he was livid.

“Jack!” he cried out. “I’ve been waiting on your call! What the fuck are you doing?”

“I did call! I left a message. I’ve been sitting here an hour waiting for you to call back.”

“I did, goddamnit! You didn’t get my message?”

“No. You must’ve called when I went down the hall for a Coke. But I didn’t get any-“

“Never mind, never mind. Look, what do we have for tomorrow? I’ve got Jackson on it here and Sheedy took a plane out this morning. She’s going to a press conference at the bureau. But what can you give us that’s new? Every paper in the country is following our ass and we need to stay in front of them. What’s new? What do you have that they don’t have?”

“I don’t know,” I lied. “Not a lot’s going on. The bureau people are still tying up the details, I guess … I’m still off the story?”

“Look, Jack, I don’t see how you can write this. We went over this yesterday. You’re too involved. You can’t expect me to let-“

“Okay, okay, I was just asking. Um … uh, there’s a couple things. First, they traced this guy Gladden back to an apartment last night and they found a body there. Another victim. You can start with that. But that might be what the press conference is about. Then, also, tell Jackson to call the field office out here and ask about the computer they found.”

“The computer?”

“Yeah, Gladden had a laptop in his car. They had their computer geeks going over it all night and this morning. I don’t know, it might be worth a call. I don’t know what they found.”

“Well, what have you been doing?”

“I had to go down there and give a statement. Took all morning. They have to go to the district attorney and ask for a justifiable homicide ruling or something. I came back here when I was done.”

“They’re not telling you what’s going on?”

“No, I only overheard a couple of agents talking about the body and the thing about the computer, that’s all.”

“Okay, well that’s a start.”

I was smiling and trying to keep it out of my voice. I didn’t care about revealing the discovery of the Poet’s last victim. That was probably going to come out anyway. But someone like Jackson calling cold wouldn’t be able to even get confirmation that there was a computer, let alone what was in it. The bureau wouldn’t put that out until it was good and ready to.

“Sorry that’s all I’ve got, Greg,” I said. “Tell Jackson I’m sorry. So what’s Sheedy going to do besides the press conference?”

Sheedy was an up-and-comer. She had recently been appointed to the go team-reporters who have packed suitcases in their car trunks and are ready to hit the road within minutes of any calamity, disaster or other breaking news story outside of Denver. I had been a go team reporter once. But after covering my third airline crash and talking to people whose loved ones had been reduced to crispy critters or found in small parts, the job got old and I went back to the cop beat.

“I don’t know,” Glenn said. “She’ll hunt around. When are you coming back?”

“They want me to stay around in case the district attorney’s office wants to interview me. I think by tomorrow I’ll be done.”

“Okay, well, if you hear anything let me know right away. And give them shit down at the front desk for not giving you my message. I’ll pass this computer thing on to Jackson. I’ll see ya, Jack.”

“Okay. Oh, and Greg? My hand’s okay.”

“What?”

“I knew you were concerned. But it’s feeling a lot better. It will probably be fine.”

“Jack, I’m sorry. It’s been one of those days.”

“Yeah. I know. I’ll see you.”

47

The pain pill I had taken was beginning to kick in. The discomfort in my hand was subsiding and a calm current of relaxation was overtaking me. After I hung up with Glenn I connected the phone line back into my computer, engaged the fax program and transmitted the book proposal to the number the literary agent had given me. As I listened to the braying sound of the computers coupling, a thought hit me like a bolt. The calls I had made on the flight out to L.A.

I had been so concerned about proving and exposing Thorson as the leak to Warren, I had paid only passing attention to the other calls on his hotel bill, the calls I had repeated myself on the plane to L.A. One of them had been answered by the high-pitched tone of a computer in Florida, possibly at UCI in Raiford.

I grabbed my computer satchel off the bed, pulled out my notebooks and flipped through both of them but found no notes on the calls I had made on the plane. I remembered then that I had not written notes or the phone numbers down because I had not expected someone to steal the hotel bills from my room.

Clearing my mind of everything else, I tried to review the exact course of events on the plane. The main concern I’d had at the time was the record of the call to Warren that was on Thorson’s bill. That had confirmed for me that Thorson was Warren’s source. The other calls made from his room-though made within minutes of each other-had held little interest to me at the time.

I had not seen the number that Clearmountain had said was called the most often from Gladden’s computer. I thought about calling him and asking for the number but I doubted that he would hand it over to a reporter without seeking approval from Rachel or Backus. And that would tip my hand, something that an instinct told me not to do yet.

I slid my Visa card out of my wallet and turned it over. After reconnecting the phone I dialed the 800 number on the credit card and told the operator I had a billing inquiry. After three minutes of Muzak, another operator came on the line and I asked if it was possible to check on charges added to my credit account as recently as three days earlier. After verifying my identity through my social security number and other details, she said she could check my records on the computer to see if the charges had been posted and I told her what I was looking for.

The calls had just been posted on the Visa billing computer. And the phone numbers I had called were also part of the billing record. In five minutes I had copied all the numbers I had called on the plane into my notebook, thanked the operator and hung up.

Once again I plugged the phone line into my computer. I opened the terminal window, typed in the phone number that had been called from Thorson’s room and ran the program. I looked at the bedside clock. It was three here, six in Florida. There was one ring and then a connection. I heard the familiar squeal of computers meeting and then mating. My screen went blank and then a template printed across it.

_________________________

WELCOME TO THE PTL CLUB

_________________________

I exhaled, leaned back and felt a surge of electricity go through me. After a few seconds the screen moved up and there was a coded prompt for a user’s password. I typed in EDGAR, noticing that my good hand was shaking as I did this. Edgar was approved and followed by a prompt for a second password. I typed in EDGAR PERRY. In a moment this, too, was approved and followed by a warning template.

_________________________

PRAISE THE LORD!

_________________________

RULES OF THE ROAD

1. NEVER EVER USE A REAL NAME

2. NEVER PROVIDE SYSTEMS NUMBERS TO ACQUAINTANCES

3. NEVER AGREE TO MEET ANOTHER USER

4. BE AWARE THAT OTHER USERS MAY BE FOREIGN BODIES

5. SYSOP RESERVES THE RIGHT TO DELETE ANY USER

6. MESSAGE BOARDS MAY NOT BE USED FOR DISCUSSION OF ANY ILLEGAL ACTIVITIES-THIS IS FORBIDDEN!

7. PTL NETWORK IS NOT RESPONSIBLE FOR CONTENT

8. PRESS ANY KEY TO CONTINUE

_________________________

I hit RETURN and got a table of contents for the various message boards available to users. These were, as Clearmountain had said, a cornucopia of subjects catering to the modern pedophile. I hit the escape key and the computer asked if I wanted to exit PLT. I hit the yes prompt and disconnected. I wasn’t interested in exploring the PTL Network at the moment. I was more interested in the fact that Thorson, or whoever had made that call early Sunday morning, knew about the PTL Network and even had access to it at least four days ago.

The call to the PTL board had been placed from Thorson’s room so it seemed obvious that he had made the call. But I carefully considered other factors. The call to the PTL board had been made, as I recalled, within minutes of the call from the same room to Warren in Los Angeles. Thorson had vehemently denied being Warren’s source on at least three occasions. Warren twice denied it as well, including after Thorson was dead and it didn’t matter anymore if he had been the source. The seed planted by Warren during that second denial just a few hours before weighed on me now. It was blossoming in my mind into a flower of doubt I could not put aside.