As the last page was coming through, the fax machine made a high-pitched squealing sound and stopped working.

“What’s wrong with it?” I called to Lydia. Among the people who happened to be in the newsroom at that moment, she was the only one I trusted.

She came over, pressed a button that shut off the squealing sound-much to everyone’s relief-and said, “It needs a new cartridge.”

“A toner cartridge?”

“No,” she said, opening the lid of the machine. “This is a plain paper fax. Doesn’t work like the old ones.” She looked over to see Dorothy Bliss edging closer. “Buzz off, Dorothy. Irene gets it.”

Dorothy left sputtering, while I wondered what on earth Lydia was talking about. As I held my faxes close, Lydia pulled a gray object out of the machine.

“Hold this,” she said. “Don’t give it to anyone. It’s the printing cartridge.”

It looked like a square, gray, plastic frame; two long, enclosed spools were braced together at each end by thinner side pieces. Stretched between the spools was a thin film, shiny black on one side, dull black on the other.

Lydia glanced over, saw me examining it. “That’s the ribbon,” she said.

On the ribbon, there was a perfect negative image of the page I had just received. I suddenly understood why Lydia was giving it to me. I held it while she found a replacement cartridge and inserted the new one in the machine.

I went to my desk and sat on the fax pages. Now that I had both hands free, I examined the cartridge more closely. Somewhat like a film cartridge, one of its spools was made to hold unused ribbon, while the other acted as a take-up spool after exposure. I started to pull on the take-up spool. Out came a length of images, black and white reversed. The thin ribbon crackled, but was stronger than it looked. It reminded me of the carbon ribbon in an electric typewriter, but it was much wider. When I had all my pages, I took out a pair of scissors and cut them from the film. I got an envelope from my desk, and put the ribbon clipping in it, then placed the actual pages in a second envelope. Keeping hold of both envelopes, I took the cartridge back to Lydia.

“Thanks,” I said. “I never knew that the machine held a second copy of everything that was faxed here. Kind of dangerous, when you think about it.”

“People fax things all the time without knowing about that. Think about what happens at businesses,” Lydia said. “Someone does what you just did; stands by the fax and picks up a confidential memo, not knowing that anyone else in the office could open up the fax and read the image in negative. Or obtain signatures and credit card numbers and all the other sorts of things that people fax in ‘confidence.’”

She stopped talking, then said, “You’re pulling on your lower lip.”

“Thanks, Lydia,” I said numbly and went back to my desk. I wanted to read the faxes, but what Lydia had said about the machine stirred a memory.

I called Charlotte Brady.

“Charlotte, it’s Irene. Couple of things. First of all, I don’t think you need to worry about Allan coming back.”

I waited for her to stop cheering, then asked, “Was his fax machine a plain paper fax?”

“Yes,” she said. “With the volume of material we receive in this office, that saves a lot of time. Why?”

With my fingers crossed, I asked, “Has the printing cartridge been replaced since Allan left?”

“No…oh. Uh-oh.”

It took me about fifteen minutes to cajole her into even handing the phone over to Ray, since she wasn’t going to consider just giving me the cartridge. Ray was a hard sell, but eventually I got him to agree to let Charlotte unravel the spool and clip out any pages Allan Moffett had received from Ben Watterson on the day Ben killed himself. I told him I had at least one page of it, and was bound to get any others from other sources, but time was of the essence, and I’d appreciate his help. Maybe not entirely true, but good enough to get Ray to bend a little.

He decided I could see the fax ribbon under three conditions. First, I would see it only if it was not confidential accounting information-Allan’s or the city’s. Second, Ray would get to look at it first, and could withhold it, if it was something that might make the city look bad. Third, I swore not to reveal my sources.

Although I could live with the third one, I didn’t like the first one much and the second one not at all. But he wasn’t going to budge, so I took the best I could get. Charlotte asked me to stop by in an hour.

I went back to the faxes Ivy had sent to me.

It was totally illegal for a college employee to give me access to Nadine’s transcripts, of course, and I was very protective of any sources (in this case, Ivy and her friend) who took this kind of risk. I was sparing in my requests of such sources, having once-in younger days-cost someone their job over information that didn’t seem so important after all. There were other reporters in that newsroom who would have loved to learn who my source at the college was, how I got my hands on protected records. Most understood I’d never let them know, and that was that. They might be envious, but they’d live with it. In a few of my more aggressive, competitive colleagues, it inspired a near-rabid desire to turn their investigative talents on me. It gets tiresome. I’ve learned a few tricks for avoiding them when they are in that sort of mood.

That’s why, when Lydia came to tell me I had a call, I was sitting-fully clothed-on a toilet in a closed stall of the women’s room, going over Nadine’s transcripts and registration records.

“Keene Dage is on the phone,” she said.

32

IFOLDED THE FAXESand stuffed them into the same big manila envelope that held Ben’s calendar pages before unlatching the stall door. When I got to my desk, I kept my elbows on top of the envelope while I talked to Keene.

The connection was noisy, with the sound of a motor in the background.

“I just picked up your message from my machine,” he said. “I’m here in Las Piernas. I had to come up here today.”

“So you want to get together and talk?” I asked.

Silence.

“I’m learning more about this every day, Keene. I now know enough to have a pretty good idea about what has been going on.”

“So you say.”

“You think I’m bluffing? Okay, fine. I’m picturing a boat with a group of men on it. You’re one of them. There’s a young woman named Nadine Preston.”

“Shit.” Afraid, not angry.

I pressed my advantage. “Oddly enough, this isn’t about fishing. It’s about buildings. And about a man being cheated out of his future. And other things. It hasn’t been easy on you to be a part of it, has it Keene?”

“No! It hasn’t!” He paused. “I’m surprised you still think enough of me to figure that out.”

“I do have faith in you, Keene, or I wouldn’t be trying to get you to tell me your side of the story. Sooner or later, someone is going to talk to me. It can be you, or it can be someone else. But the first one to get this off his chest has the best chance to tell it his way. You want one of the others to give me his version instead?”

“No.”

“You want to talk to me, Keene?”

Even over the noisy connection, I could hear his sigh. “Believe it or not, yes, I do. This has gone far enough. Moffett just called me a few minutes ago. Madder than a wet hen. Bastard thinks I’ve already talked to you.”

I thought of how quickly word seemed to pass between the members of this group. “Are you on a cellular phone?” I asked, wondering if I was acting a little paranoid.

“Yes, I’m in the car. Are you having trouble hearing me?”

“No, and I’m afraid someone else might not be having any trouble hearing us. Cellular phones aren’t very secure.”

“Oh, I see what you mean. But the odds-”

“Too many people around here have been unlucky lately.”