Cheating at Solitaire(45)

The young woman who had taken his order for coffee had come back with his cup. She put it down on the table just as the front door opened and the man Carl was sure he was supposed to meet came in from outside. The blast of cold that came in with him made Carl’s spine creak. The storm had been over for days, but it often felt as if it were still with them. The weather in California got better after storms. Out here, it just seemed to get worse.

The man was very young, so young Carl wondered for a moment if he was even of legal age. He seemed to know the waitress, which was not surprising. He came down the long line of booths and stopped next to Carl with his parka hood still pulled up over his head.

“Mr. Frank?” he said.

“Mr. Bullard?” Carl said.

Jack Bullard pulled back the parka hood, unzipped the parka, and sat down. Everything about him was not only big but outsized. His feet were too big for the slenderness of his legs. His head was too big for his torso. He had to be six foot five.

The waitress came back with another cup of coffee and put it on the table. She went away without speaking, even though Jack Bullard thanked her in a voice loud enough to be heard outside on the street. Then Jack pulled over the sugar and the cream and began to load up as if he were making a milk shake.

Carl found himself wishing he still smoked cigarettes. It would at least give him something to do with his hands.

Jack Bullard had big hands, too. He finished with the cream and sugar and pushed them away. Then he shrugged the parka all the way off.

“So,” he said.

“So,” Carl said.

“Here’s the thing,” Jack said. “I’m a reporter. I may be a reporter for a little pissant paper, but I’m still a reporter. I don’t get paid to withhold information.”

“I understand that,” Carl said. “I don’t want you to withhold information. I thought you said it was your editor who doesn’t want you to print any stories about the case.”

“Oh, we’re printing stuff about the case,” Jack said. “You can’t avoid it, really, it’s the biggest thing to hit the Harbor in decades. She doesn’t like printing stories on movie stars.”

“Unusual, in this day and age.”

“Yeah, well. It’s the Harbor. The people here aren’t much interested, if you know what I mean. The people who are usually here. But anything she doesn’t want to print, I’m allowed to sell elsewhere. So.”

“So.” Carl looked out the window again. When he looked back, he had made up his mind for the first time since this mess had started. “I’m not asking you to withhold information. You can sell anything you’ve got to anybody you’ve got. All I’m asking is that you tell me first.”

“And for that you’re willing to pay me some ridiculous amount of money a week.”

“A thousand dollars.”

“A thousand dollars,” Jack said. “It’s a ridiculous amount of money. If you don’t want me to withhold information, what do you want?”

“I want you to tell me before you give the information to the world so I can get a head start on spinning it. It’s what I do, Mr. Bullard. I spin. That’s what they pay me for.”

“I don’t see that there’s much of anything to spin here,” Jack said. “She shot him. They’ve arrested her. There’s going to be a trial. Isn’t that what usually happens?”

“Absolutely. That’s what usually happens. But it occurs to me you might have heard something, or seen something, on the day in question, or since the filming has been going on here. Something somebody said, or did, or something like that. Your editor may not like to run stories about movie stars, but you’ve been taking pictures of them. I’ve seen you.”

“It’s like I said,” Jack said. “She lets me sell what she doesn’t want. I offered to cut her in on it, but she doesn’t want the money.”

“She’s an interesting woman, your editor.”

“She owns the paper,” Jack said. “She’s okay.”

“One of the things you could do is let me see the pictures,” Carl said. “Before you sell them, I mean.”

“I don’t take the really nasty kinds of pictures,” Jack said. “I don’t have pictures of people naked, or that kind of thing.”

“You’ve got a picture of Marcey Mandret on the day of the murder, don’t you? In that bar, fairly drunk off her ass.”

“Sure. But I wasn’t the only one. Those guys from New York and Los Angeles have been in and out for weeks. And I didn’t take the kind of picture you have to fuzz parts out of before you print.”