The Last Thing I Saw - Stevenson Richard - Страница 7

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Of whom there were many, including dozens of Pulitzer Prize winners. That included Eddie Wenske, who appeared in a number of the award-ceremony group photos behind Fino’s cluttered desk. Two other men were intent at their computers in the digitalized calm, and an editor sat looking thoughtful behind a glass partition. Fino, neatly turned out but tieless, had a black scraggly beard, an impressive Roman snoot and large patient black eyes behind a pair of narrow spectacles.

“Donald,” he said, “I was glad to hear that you’re working on Eddie’s disappearance. The cops seem to have lost interest, and here at the paper we haven’t been any help at all—not that we haven’t tried. So, good for you and good for Susan Wenske for hiring you.”

“You must have your own sources in Boston’s seamier circles. I figured you would have exploited them as well as you could trying to find Eddie.”

“Oh, we did. But our non-law-enforcement sources tend to be criminals or acquaintances of criminals of a higher-toned sort than the types that might actually make somebody physically disappear. They’re business people and public officials and people on the periphery of businessmen and public officials, and of course most of our sources have been developed around particular stories we’ve worked on or are working on. We don’t have an army of snitches and undercover types at our disposal the way the police do. But we did try to determine if Eddie’s disappearance might have had something to do with the marijuana stories he did for the paper and then the book he wrote using some of the same material. Have you read Weed Wars?”

“I have. It’s unnerving.”

“Pot is such a nice drug—so much easier on the digestive system than Flying Dog pale ale—but its production and marketing can be ugly, and a lot of bad people are involved in the trade. There was a straight line between our stories and a number of prosecutions, and there were even more prosecutions, especially of higher ups, triggered by Weed Wars. So naturally when Eddie disappeared, we all thought, oh shit. We’ve made a lot of people mad over the years—the federal and state prisons are well populated with miscreants the paper first exposed—but up until now none of these people or their friends has ever come after a Globe reporter physically. Lots of threats of lawsuits and lots of curses and rude names, but that’s all.”

“And you thought Eddie might be the first reporter to be…I hate to use the word killed.”

Fino nodded and looked grim. “That occurred to us all. Killed, yeah. Especially after a month or so. At first we thought he’d eventually turn up safe and sound. Eddie always liked undercover work. He told me once that it comes naturally to gay people, who in their early lives—or throughout their lives in many cases—spend a lot of time pretending to be something they aren’t. They develop a knack for camouflage.”

“I know about this,” I said, “from personal experience.”

If Fino made a mental note of this, he didn’t let on. “Eddie said that if he hadn’t been a writer, he might have been a spy working under deep cover somewhere. The problem with that was, he said, he’d have trouble deciding which intelligence service to work for in which country. I don’t think he approved of any of them.”

“This was journalism’s gain.”

“It was. Eddie was…I hate to keep saying was. He was or is a talented, principled, thoughtful, and indefatigable ferret of a reporter.”

“You must have been disappointed when he left the paper.”

“We all were. But he felt hemmed in here, and he really wanted to write books. And when the company went through one of its periodic cost-cutting spasms and offered buyouts to employees with contracts, Eddie saw it as an opportunity and went his own way. He was the youngest Globe reporter to take a buyout, and the higher-ups wondered if they hadn’t made a mistake in offering deals to people who were in the prime of their careers. Of course, a lot of people weren’t offered anything at all. They were just shit-canned and told to clean out their desks and turn in their BlackBerries. The journalism schools these days, if they were connected to the real world, would offer a course called Turn-in-Your-BlackBerry 101.”

“By now, I guess, you don’t think Eddie has just gone undercover.”

“Not after nearly two months, no. He would have informed certain people of what he was doing—or at least let them know he’d be out of touch. He’d tell his mother, his friend Bryan, his agent, a number of other people. And he’d tell me. After he left the paper, Eddie and I talked on the phone at least once a week, and we tried to meet for dinner or drinks every month or so. But after the end of January, nothing. No word. I called around and it just got weirder and weirder that nobody knew where Eddie was or what had become of him. That’s when I suggested to Bryan that he call the cops, and he did.”

“And they took the disappearance seriously?”

“It was pro forma at first, but when at my suggestion they looked at his reporting history—especially his drug pieces here and then Weed Wars—after that they decided, oh yeah, maybe somebody needs to take a closer look at this. I know both city and DEA people, and I accept their word that they tried to find out if some psycho pot dealer had done a revenge killing on a reporter. They didn’t turn up anything at all—though of course they admit that they can’t know everything that goes on in that murky world.”

“So Bryan Kim filed the original missing-person report. I take it you know Bryan.”

“Oh sure. My wife Lorna and I went to concerts and plays at the ART with Eddie and Bryan. I know they had their ups and downs, but I’ve always liked Bryan despite the way he drove Eddie crazy sometimes.”

“Crazy in what way?”

“Professionally the guy is solid. When Channel Six does any original reporting at all on matters of substance, you can bet Bryan is behind it. But personally he’s unreliable. It’s as if he has two personalities. He once walked out on Eddie for no reason at all—or none he was willing to talk about. Eddie was just flummoxed and it really hurt him. Then he found out that Bryan had a history of abrupt boyfriend dumping down in Providence. They’d been gradually getting back together before Eddie went missing, but Eddie was taking it a step at a time, and I didn’t encourage him to re-connect with Bryan. Why risk getting fucked over in that painful way a second time?”

“It does sound as if Wenske could have done better than Bryan Kim.”

“That’s what Lorna always said. For somebody as decent and honest as Eddie, why Bryan? Eddie had had some other boyfriends over the years that seemed less fucked up, but with at least two of those that I know of it was Eddie who was the problem. He told me that, and I suppose it was true. He’d get into some story he was working on, and that was where his mind would be for weeks at a time. Or he’d go undercover the way he did with Weed Wars and be out of touch for days or weeks. After a young dancer broke up with Eddie and told him he needed somebody a lot more available than Eddie was, Eddie told me he knew he was not good boyfriend material and this was always going to be true and he was afraid there was nothing he could do about it. It’s a shame, because Eddie is such a good friend that it’s hard to imagine him not being a good companion and lover. Bryan never had any complaints about Eddie’s demanding work life. His life at Channel Six made for its own complications. I’m biased, of course, but my take on all this is, Eddie is possibly a little too dedicated to his profession, yes, but Bryan was just a prick.”

I said, “Susan Wenske said she thought Eddie might have some kind of secret life. Some dark side, was the way she put it. That sounds melodramatic, but do you have any idea what she might have been talking about?”

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