26

I TRIED TO AVOID HIS FIST, but it came through the window so quickly, I didn’t have time to react. And when you’re sitting in a car, seatbelted in, you don’t have a whole lot of room to bob and weave. So Angie’s boyfriend was able to strike the side of my cheek, just below the temple, bouncing my head sideways a foot or so, and it was like a rocket had exploded in front of my eyes.

He was still yelling at me, I’m not sure what, exactly. I heard “pervert” in there somewhere, and “fucking asshole,” I believe, and somewhere off in the distance, a more familiar voice, screaming, “Cam! What are you doing? Stop it!”

I figured the odds were that Angie had no inkling who her boyfriend Cam was punching out, and I now preferred to keep it that way, which precluded jumping out of the car and attempting to beat the shit out of Cam, who was probably twenty or more years younger than I and in a hell of a lot better shape, and would probably have beat the shit out of me, anyway.

So I hit the gas and swerved right, narrowly missing the bumper of the car in front of me, squeezed between it and a fence, and hung a hard right out of the parking lot, nearly cutting off a Corvette, whose driver had to slam on the brakes to avoid rear-ending me. The resulting squeal was no doubt heard a couple of blocks away.

I floored it. I wanted to put as much distance between me and that McDonald’s as quickly as I could. So intent was I on making a fast getaway that I had yet to notice how much the side of my face was smarting.

My heart was doing a fair bit of pounding, too. Once I’d put a few blocks between myself and that McDonald’s, I pulled into the parking lot of a 7-Eleven, swinging the car around so that I was facing the street, and turned off the ignition. I switched on the interior light and adjusted the mirror so I could get a look at the side of my face. It was already turning blue and puffing out.

I went inside and bought a small bag of ice, got back into the car and pressed the bag of cubes against the left side of my face. I wasn’t sure which hurt more, the punch, the ice, or my pride, but it was all I could do not to scream as I held the bag against the bruise.

I hoped Cam wasn’t the one Angie was thinking of spending her life with. This was not the best way to kick off a relationship with a future son-in-law.

Maybe, if I could keep the side of my face from swelling up too severely, Angie wouldn’t even notice it the next time she saw me, which now probably wouldn’t be until the next morning. I could go home, turn off the lights, and get into bed, an ice bag on my pillow. By morning, the swelling would be gone, although there was a good chance I might have a terminal case of freezer burn.

But if the bruise was still there, Angie would put it all together the moment she saw me. And there’d be so much explaining to do. Maybe it was better to come clean now, to wait up for her, to admit that I was an asshole, but that sometimes fathers worried about their daughters so much that they simply couldn’t avoid being assholes. We’re hardwired that way and-

“Fuck.” I was suddenly taken by the image of a black Chevy rumbling past the 7-Eleven, heading in the direction of the McDonald’s.

I hadn’t caught a good look at the driver, but the car was pretty unmistakable. Black, rusting out around the wheel wells, sitting low in the back.

I turned the key, reached down to the shift to put the car into reverse and back out of the spot. But I couldn’t will my foot to move from the brake to the accelerator. Part of me was not prepared to continue the chase.

The fact was, I’d not been doing a very good job of this. My surveillance skills were rotten. I’d been busted three times. Twice by Angie-the first time at the mall, the second time when she phoned me while I was tailing her. And then, again, at the McDonald’s. By Angie’s friend Cam.

I was not cut out for this kind of work.

It occurred to me that Angie would probably be fine as long as she had Cam with her. The guy was a better bodyguard than I. Maybe it would actually be a good thing if Trevor found Angie. Then he’d have to deal with Cam, whose powers of intimidation might exceed mine.

I pulled the ice away from my face, looked in the mirror. We’re talking horror show.

I decided to swing by the paper on the way home.

I had to find out more about Stan Wannaker. There was this growing sense of connectedness between the events of the last forty-eight hours. Stan was dead. Stan had had a run-in with Bullock at the auction, which Lawrence and I had also attended. Lawrence was in the hospital, victim of a savage attack. There seemed to be these threads connecting one event to another, but I couldn’t quite make them out, couldn’t see how they joined.

The moment I stepped into the newsroom, I could feel the grief. There was none of the usual banter, people calling to one another across the desks asking if they wanted a coffee or to go across the street for an after-shift drink. Even though there were probably forty or more people in the room, it was hushed, only the sounds of computer keys being tapped to break the silence. There were small huddles of people, two over in this corner, three over here, talking in hushed tones.

Some people were crying.

I stopped at my desk, signed in on my computer to see whether I had any important messages, which I did not, then clicked over to the news basket where all the cityside stories were submitted and edited.

I was able to find the story the paper was running on Stan, in the next day’s edition, on the front page above the fold, under the byline of Dick Colby:

Stan Wannaker, the Metropolitan’s award-winning photographer who faced danger in nearly every world hot spot, was found murdered in the newspaper’s parking lot yesterday.

“It is a terrible loss,” said Bertrand Magnuson, the paper’s managing editor. “He was a wonderful, talented individual who embodied everything that the Metropolitan stands for.”

Wannaker, 44, started at the paper 27 years ago as a copy boy. Senior photo editor Ted Baines remembers how Wannaker spent a lot of time, as a kid, hanging around the photo desk. “He wanted to be a shooter from the moment he walked through the doors. He was a natural from the beginning.”

In recent years, Wannaker had covered the fall of the Berlin Wall, the war in Yugoslavia, the U.S. invasion of Afghanistan, and the war in Iraq.

“It’s unbelievable,” said Mr. Magnuson, “that, after all he’s been through, Stan would be a victim of violence outside our very building.”

Police say Wannaker’s attacker, or attackers, did not appear to have been motivated by robbery. None of his cameras had been taken, and he still had his wallet and credit cards on him, as well as a sum of cash.

“It appears,” said a police spokesperson, “that he was targeted for who he was, not what he might happen to be carrying.”

Police say Wannaker evidently was forced down onto his knees, then his car door was slammed on his head.

I looked up from the story, feeling as though I might be sick. Nancy, who was clearly putting in a very long day, was standing there.

“Hey,” she said. Her eyes were red.

“Hi,” I said. “Sarah called me. She heard about it before I did. She’s coming back tonight.”

Nancy nodded.

“They got any idea who did it?” I asked.

Nancy shook her head no. “Colby’s still making calls. He’s out with the cops now. They think he was targeted, but it might still be just one of those crazy random things. Maybe some kids, high on something, they spotted him and went berserk.”

“I suppose.”

“I mean, it’s not like some guy in Iraq or Afghanistan is going to come over here to settle some grudge.”

“Maybe it was someone closer to home,” I offered. Briefly, I told her about Stan’s fight with the guy at the car auction the day before, and how Sarah was supposed to pass on what I’d told her to Colby.