Graveland: A Novel (2 page)

Paging Dr. Pavlov.

But what does he expect? This is a Paloma
store,
after all. The logo is everywhere. Damn thing is even sewn into the collar of his shirt.

It’s just that he associates it with …

He was going to say
defeat,
but that’d be overstating things.

He puts the unit down.

Wouldn’t it?

Maybe, whatever, yes, no.

Self-pity snapping at his heels again, Frank decides to hit the accelerator. He gets on with unpacking the units and stacking them on shelves. He makes coffee and takes a couple of Excedrin for his back.

Just before nine Lance and Greg show up.

They’re nice guys, friendly, reliable, and a lot more savvy about all the tech stuff here than he is, but at the same time there’s something about them that he doesn’t get. It’s a sort of dumb, uninquiring compliance, a lack of …

He doesn’t know, but when he was their age—

Yeah, yeah.

Walking across the main floor, Lance says, “Yo, Mr. B.”

Greg points at the LudeX display and says, “Al
right,
let’s do this.”

The launch of Paloma’s LudeX upgrade today is a big deal. But for the real action you’d have to go to their flagship store in Times Square. That’s where the hardcore gamers will have been standing in line all night, where the cash registers and card machines will be humming steadily all day, and where staff members will be under intense pressure to exceed sales quotas and push service extras.

Up here at Winterbrook Mall it’ll be a more sedate affair, and considerably shorter. Outside in the main gallery there isn’t a line exactly, though clusters of certain usual suspects are beginning to hover. When they open the doors at nine, there’ll be a rush to get in, followed by an intense flurry of activity, but by ten o’clock it’ll all be over—thanks to that jackass at corporate who saw fit to only send him a lousy fifty units on top of the pre-orders.

What kind of a sales strategy is
that
supposed to be?

Frank doesn’t care, though.

By midmorning he’s on autopilot, daydreaming again—about his previous life, about Lizzie and John, about …
whatever
really, that Asian woman who works at the Walgreens on the lower level, the four-cheese pizza at Mario’s, local cancer services even, not that he needs them or anything, but you never know.

Just after midday his attention is diverted by something he sees on TV—sees on multiple plasma screens lining the back wall of the store. It’s a Fox News report.

He stands staring at it, reading the crawl.

Happy to be distracted.

In Central Park, a jogger has been shot dead.

In cold blood.

What gives the story a little twist, though, Frank soon sees, an extra kick—what will allow perfect strangers to make eye contact with one another throughout the day and express disbelief, shock, or even a hint of schadenfreude—is that the victim has been identified as the CEO of a big investment bank down on Wall Street.

*   *   *

“Holy shit.”

Ellen Dorsey glances from the small TV screen behind the counter to the old guy sitting next to her. She shakes her head. The old guy nods in acknowledgment. Picking up his coffee cup, he says, “Too good for the bastard.”

Ellen makes a snorting sound. She then finishes her own coffee, pays, and leaves. Out on the street—Columbus at Ninety-third—she is conflicted. The plan had been to go home and get back to work, but now she’s thinking … crime scene. It’s only twenty-five blocks away and across the park, a short cab ride. By this time, of course—what is it, almost one—the whole area will be cordoned off and there won’t be anything to see, she knows that, but her instinct tells her this is going to be a big story, and nothing beats firsthand experience of a crime scene.

Besides, it’ll be in the bank. If necessary. For later.

I was there.

You can also pick up on stuff walking around, details, vibes.

But as she throws her arm out to stop a cab, Ellen remembers just how much work there is waiting for her at home, and how soon it’s due. A five-thousand-word profile of no-hoper GOP hopeful Ratt Atkinson. To be extracted from a mountain of notes, interviews, and archive material spread out all over her desk.

For Monday morning.

The cab pulls up. She hesitates, but gets in.

You always get in.

Anyway,
Ratt
Atkinson? That kills her every time she hears it, or has to write it, which today and tomorrow will be plenty.

The article is one of an informal series she’s doing for
Parallax
magazine on the degraded nature of the modern presidential bid. It started with a bang, that piece she wrote with Jimmy Gilroy a while back on the John Rundle fiasco. Since then she’s covered a couple of other crash-and-burn candidates … but really, at this stage, is the idea wearing a little thin?

She’s just not sure.

The cab turns left at Ninetieth and heads for the park.

The point is, Ratt Atkinson, rock-solid middle-aged white-guy former governor of Ohio, hasn’t crashed or burned yet, and Ellen figures he won’t have to bother. His name will do it for him. Sooner or later. It’ll have to.

Campaigns have stumbled on less.

But is there a
story
in it?

The cab cruises through the park, comes out at Seventy-ninth, and heads down Fifth. Ellen gets out at Sixty-eighth.

As expected, the crime scene is a disappointment, yellow tape and surly cops blocking access at every approach. But also as expected, there is a mild carnival atmosphere on the periphery, as joggers, passersby, and tourists congregate in small improvised groups to stare and make comments—and more often than not out loud, some of them cranky, others smart-alecky, little vocal tweets posted on the thickening early afternoon air. There are a couple of OBU trucks lined along Fifth, and one camera crew can be seen wandering aimlessly around, looking—Ellen supposes—for a decent vantage point.

They’re too late, of course.

Ellen wanders aimlessly herself for a bit. She takes out her phone and does a quick check. A lot of actual tweets are being posted about Jeff Gale. This isn’t surprising, though. A murder in Central Park would be pretty unusual in itself these days, but add in a high-profile victim and you’ve got yourself an instant trend. Ellen thinks about it. The only information out there is that Gale was jogging, and that he was shot.

She looks around.

But why would anyone shoot a jogger? Not for their iPod. Not even for their wallet. Not in Central Park. Not these days.

Not
shoot
them.

So who did do it, and why?

Unless there’s a quick explanation forthcoming, this is a story that’s going to burn up a serious amount of media space in the next few days. There’ll be intense speculation about it, because Northwood Leffingwell is a Wall Street behemoth, one of the Too Big to Fail brigade. But even if it turns out that where Jeff Gale worked had nothing to do with why he got killed, it’s inevitable that where he worked will form a significant part of the narrative.

Anyway.

It already has.

Ellen checks the time on her phone.

Ratt fucking Atkinson.

It just annoys her that
this
feels like a real story, and that she’s right here, where it happened, but that for all she can do about it she might as well be one of those French tourists over there. Ellen’s not a beat reporter, and hasn’t been for many years. What she specializes in these days is longer, slow-burn investigative pieces, and mainly for
Parallax
. She’s also quite well known, and has a bit of a reputation, built up over years, as a polemical, potty-mouthed, uncooperative
bitch
. So even if she wanted to report on this, it’s unlikely that anyone—cop, city official, fellow hack—would talk to her.

But anyway, report on what? The story’s over. She’s wasting her time. Even that camera crew there seem resigned to it and are setting up a generic shot now—East Drive in the background, steady stream of joggers, fine, but not one of them laid out dead on the asphalt.

Ellen looks at her phone again. She could make it over to Central Park West, pick up a cab, and be home in fifteen, twenty minutes.

She glances around one last time, then starts walking. But at about the five-yard point someone calls out, “Hey, wait up.”

She turns back.

“Ellen?”

A guy is walking toward her, early thirties, overcoat, shades, mop of curly hair. Could be anyone. She’s actually pretty bad on people—faces, names—unless it’s someone directly related to whatever she’s working on at the time.

“Yeah?”

The guy arrives, hand extended. “Ellen, how are you?” Sensing her hesitation, he adds, “Val Brady.”

Oh.

Yeah.

The reason she didn’t recognize him immediately, apart from the fact that they haven’t met in a while, is that he’s one of the few journalists she hasn’t ended up fighting with—this guy, and Jimmy Gilroy, and maybe one or two others. It’s the ones she doesn’t get along with that she tends to remember.

“Val. What’s up?”

He nods his head back in the direction of the cordoned-off area. “Just another day at the office. You?”

“No. I’m … I’m just passing. I heard, though.”

“Pretty wild, isn’t it?”

Val Brady is a reporter for the
New York Times,
and a fairly reliable one. A couple of years ago they shared information on a story, some big-pharma-related thing, as she remembers. He was scrupulous about it, careful, didn’t let his ego bleed into the proceedings.

She liked him.

“Yeah. Any clue about what happened?”

Brady takes off his shades. He looks around, then looks back at Ellen. “He was shot at point-blank range, in the forehead. They didn’t take his wallet, which apparently had a couple of hundred bucks in it, or his iPod. And no witnesses.” He points up at the apartment buildings on Fifth. “The cops are going to check over there, the high floors, see if anyone was looking out of their window. But given the angle and stuff it’s a long shot.”

Ellen considers this. “Surveillance cameras?”

Brady shakes his head. “There are a few in the park, but not back there, and they’re mainly used for detecting after-hours activity.”

“What about the bigger picture, is there anything known to be going on, I mean with Northwood, or…?” She laughs. “Jesus, listen to me. I sound like your editor. Sorry.”

“You’re fine. It’s an obvious question. And to answer it, no, not that I’m aware of, not yet, anyway.” He pauses, and fiddles for a bit with his shades. “So, Ellen, what are
you
up to these days?”

She explains. Presidential candidates and why so many of them tend to implode.

“Okay, yeah. I read that piece you did on John Rundle a while back, the whole Congo thing, the stuff with his brother. It was amazing.”

Ellen grunts. “It was pretty spectacular material, you have to admit. Though I kind of feel like I’m scraping the bottom of the barrel now with Ratt Atkinson.”

Brady laughs. “
Ratt
. Jesus.”

“I know.” Ellen pauses. “I actually came down here because it felt like there might be some … action. Is that pathetic?”

“No, but are you sure you’re remembering what it’s like to be a news reporter? Real action is pretty hard to come by. It’s usually like this.” He indicates behind him. “The afters, yellow tape, endless waiting around.”

Ellen nods. “Sure. Of course. I remember.” But still. “Sometimes it’s about instinct. You get a hard-on for a story and … I don’t know.”

Brady smiles. “A hard-on, huh? Nice. Well, let me look into it, ask around, and if anything interesting shows up, why don’t I give you a call?”

Is he hitting on her? She doesn’t think so. And she’s hardly his type. Small and lean, with shortish dark hair, Ellen doesn’t really think of herself as anyone’s
type
. But as if to clarify matters, he holds up his hands. “Look, Ellen, I’m a big admirer of yours, have been for years. All those pieces for
Rolling Stone
and
Wired
and
The Nation,
and then your stuff for
Parallax
? I mean … shit.”

It’s easy for Ellen to forget that her reputation isn’t all bad, that it can sometimes extend to beyond a roll call of character defects, that she
has
a body of work behind her, and stuff that someone like Val Brady here might actually hold in high regard.

“Okay,” she says, going with it, “thanks.”

In the cab a while later, she tries to do a little rearranging in her head. Ratt Atkinson she can dispose of today, at a push. It’s not a complicated story, all the details have already been fact-checked, and it’ll tell itself, really.

That’ll give her time tomorrow to read up on Jeff Gale.

And on Northwood Leffingwell.

She looks out the window of the cab, Amsterdam Avenue flickering past, and realizes something.

It’s been a while, but she’s excited.

2

“S
O, HOW
IS
THE OLD MAN?”

Craig Howley watches John Kemp wince a little as he says this, but there’s really no other way for him to put it.

They both know what he’s asking.

Howley looks around, surveys the room. At least they’re not talking about Jeff Gale anymore. “He’s fine, you know. Not as young as he used to be. It’s nothing specific, just a gradual…” He pauses, catching himself here. “He’s fine.”

“Yeah.”

James Vaughan. Chairman of the Oberon Capital Group. Eighty-four years old, born a week before the Crash. Which turned out to be a good omen actually, at least as far as his old man was concerned, because later that very week the same William J. Vaughan shorted a pool of stocks on a downtick and cleared over a hundred million dollars.

All these years later and what’s changed?

“He hasn’t stopped working or anything,” Howley says.

“Oh sure, of course.” Kemp has a knowing look on his face. “Guess he wants to go out with his boots on.”