The Whisper: Chapter 1
The Phantom Wiseguy
Getting shot at ain’t like the movies. There’s no “bang bang bang” of a bad guy’s gun, followed by some gent in a bloodless suit grabbing his chest and falling to the ground. No, when someone unloads a firearm at you, if you’re lucky you hear a pop like firecrackers off in the distance: a nice little note from your guardian angel that, “Hey, that guy who wants you dead just missed your ass!”
What I heard that miserable Friday evening while weaving my eight-year-old two-door Packard through the Potomac fog was the crash of my rearview flying off, the smash of my back window caving in, the ping of a neat little hole popping into existence two inches to the right of my reflection in the windscreen.
“Son of a bitch.” The voice of my passenger was like static on the radio. That didn’t unnerve me nearly as much as the fact that my eyes said there was no one but me in the car. “Take a hard right at the next corner. Don’t slow down.”
A staccato rhythm like popping corn announced itself from my trunk. I gripped the too-close steering wheel with white knuckles, waiting for one of the tires to blow. Somewhere ahead was U.S. 29 and the Key Bridge back to Georgetown, and I had it in my head that if I could just get across like Ichabod Crane, all this crazy would fade out behind me. Another poke hole knocked itself out of the windshield, and the glass went chink chink chink as crystal fault lines spidered outward, just like my mind was about to crack if one more thing went nuts.
That’s right: speeding through the dark at who knows how many miles per hour with one god damn headlight and zero visibility, bullets flying around my head, the Invisible Man shouting orders, and part of me goes, “Oh look, a metaphor!”
“You missed the turn,” my passenger said. I didn’t even see the turn, and I goddamn told him. “Enough of this crap. Cover your ears.”
“With what?” My throat burned like I’d been screaming, though I don’t remember doing that. Then thunder louder than God erupted by my head. For the span of a firefly, bright flashes illumined a white jacket, white hat, and black gloves, but no face. My companion turned around, his back against the dash, and emptied a handgun the size of a Mack truck at our assailants. Tires squealed behind me, and my partner disappeared again.
“Is that it?” I said. “Did you get ‘em?”
“Shit, slow down.”
I could barely hear through the ringing. “What do you mean slow down?”
The biggest tanker truck I’ve ever seen filled the beam of my headlight, lunging forward at 60, 70, 80 mph. A black glove grabbed the wheel and yanked it out of my hands, hard to the right, and I screamed for true as my whole world whipped round into a swirling mass of pavement, tires, and fog.
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Look, let me start over. The whole mess really started that morning, just before lunch. I was at The Washington Street, in my editor George Farnsworth’s office, and he wasn’t buying what I was trying to sell.
“For crying out loud, Allan,” he said, “I asked for a story on the Transportation Commission, not this tabloid crap.” He slapped my notes on his overcrowded desk and leaned back in his chair as if to distance himself from them. Farnsworth had a paunch that kept pulling his shirt out of his trousers and a face that looked like a peeled potato, but his rolled-up sleeves showed massive forearms that could break an upstart reporter in half.
“What do you mean, crap?” I said. “I’ve got evidence of congressional ethics violations. If half of these reports of payouts to Representative Crawthorn are true, it could tip the election next month.”
“One.” Farnsworth rose from his chair and pointed at me. “You don’t have evidence, you have anecdotes and hearsay. That may have been good enough for that L.A. scandal rag you used to hack for, but it won’t cut it in this town, not unless your last name is McCarthy. And two, it won’t do squat to his career. Crawthorn’s a ten year incumbent, a war hero, and his opponent is an anti-segregationist on the wrong side of the Mason-Dixon line. You’d have to catch him in flagrante delicto with an underage prostitute to put a dent in his reelection, and you’d need photographs to back it up. Besides, his constituents don’t read our magazine anyway.”
I winced at the mention of my previous employer. I’d tried my best to keep my work as a celebrity gossip monger a secret after I’d moved east. As far as most of my coworkers knew, all I had on my resume was some freelance work and a tour of duty writing for Stars and Stripes.
“What are you saying, we’re going to keep this under wraps?” I kept my eyes on those giant ham hocks he used for fists, but I plowed on. “I thought it was our job to let people know the truth.”
“Sweet baby Jesus.” Farnsworth’s face actually paled and his eyes grew wide as if the boogie-man had just popped out at a horror show. “How can you…? Seriously? Here. Sit down.” He shoved me into a chair and pulled an unlabeled bottle off of a shelf. I waited quietly as he poured himself a drink, but instead he handed it to me.
“Um, no thanks.”
“Drink or you’re fired.”
I poured the tumbler down my throat, then gasped as a grenade went off in my head. When I stopped coughing, Farnsworth sat on the edge of his desk and held the latest issue of the Street in front of my face.
“You want to know what our job is?” He opened the magazine to the inside back cover, where a model in a two-piece swimsuit and high heels leaned against a hot red convertible. “Selling cars.” He flipped to another page. “Perfume.” And another. “Toaster ovens. You and I are salesmen for toaster ovens. That’s what pays the bills. That’s what keeps the lights on. Magazines, newspapers, radio, television, it’s all just there to trick people into looking at advertising. That’s the job. Now, all these stories, editorials, what have you, that’s just a carny act. It’s the mermaid, the fire eater, the bearded lady. It’s to get Mr. and Mrs. Joe Public to look in our direction so we can make the sale. But you’ve got to give them what they want or they’ll look somewhere else.
“Now right at this moment, Mr. and Mrs. Joe Public in Washington don’t give two shits for some corrupt Southern politician, but they do care about whether or not the DC trolley lines might be extended to their shiny new subdivisions. So what you’re going to do is take these all these notes on Crawthorn and plant them in the bottom of your filing drawer. Then you’re going to sit yourself down and give me five thousand words on the Transportation Commission’s expansion plans by four o’clock. Agreed?”
I sighed. “Yes, but—”
“That was rhetorical. Now get out.”
I slunk out of his office feeling like a whipped schoolboy. Tim Leslie, the magazine’s star photographer, leaned across the hall, grinning like an idiot.
“Say, I’m in the market for a toaster oven,” he said. “Heard about any good deals?”
“Shut up.”
“Leslie?” roared Farnsworth. “Where are those glamour shots I asked for?”
“Right here, Georgie,” he said. “See you ‘round, Jones.”
Tim was all right, but he was Farnsworth’s golden boy and he knew it. As such, he could get away with murder and the rest of us would have to dispose of the bodies. I trudged down to the newsroom, where my desk and five thousand words of tedium awaited. There were half a dozen other hacks typing away on assignments, but most everyone else was out chasing leads, attending press conferences, or (more likely) having their first drinks of the day in one of the many seedy dives that lubricated the gears of the District of Columbia. Whatever that liquid fireball was that Farnsworth had poured down my throat was still making my nose burn. I almost looked forward to my hard, oak chair and barely functional typewriter.
A loud pop of bubblegum stopped me short.
“Gave you a chewing out, did he?”
Roxy Brandt ran the office switchboard from a desk about twice the size of mine. She was young enough that no one asked why she wasn’t married, the question was still when. From what I’d heard, she’d shot down offers of dinner dates from every eligible man in the office. She wasn’t a Hollywood stunner, but her short brown hair framed her perfect, round cheeks in a way that made me want to bundle her off to an amusement park, win her a teddy bear, and buy her a mountain of cotton candy.
“Christ,” I said. “Did he broadcast it over the intercom?”
Roxy tapped one of the plugs on her board. “There’s a short in his phone so his receiver never turns off. I can hear everything that goes on in there.”
That gave me pause. “Does Farnsworth know?”
“Not unless you tell him, cutie.” The words were playful, but her eyes somehow reminded me of a sniper I once interviewed in Korea. I mimed closing a zipper over my lips.
“Oh well, then,” I said. “Off to the salt mines.”
“Say, Jones,” she added between smacks of her gum. “You know anybody named Smithee?”
A chill ran over my scalp. I should have said no. I knew I should have said no. But I didn’t.
“Who’s asking?”
“Some guy called and left a number. Didn’t give me his name. Started off asking for ‘Allan Smithee’ then told me to tell you to call him.”
That’s all I needed: some ghost from out west to crash my new life and spread stories of my “good old days” at the L.A. Whisper. There were about a dozen people I could think of who called me “Smithee,” and not one of them I wanted to put in the same room with the Washington press. On the spot I formed a plan to find this bozo and shuffle him off to greener pastures… like Pittsburgh. I sank into my desk chair and asked Roxy to patch me through.
The phone rang six times before someone picked up. “Hello?” said a voice I didn’t recognize.
“Who is this?” I said.
“You called me, asshole.” There was noise in the background, like a restaurant or a bar. “You go first.”
“This is Allan Jones.”
“Smithee!” He shouted, then hushed himself all at once. He went on with a tone of palpable relief. “My god, it’s good to hear you.”
“Who is this?” I said again.
“It’s me. Hugo.”
I relaxed. Hugo Harvey wasn’t press, he was a lawyer, and despite that fact he wasn’t on my list of people to avoid. He sounded odd, though, and not like himself.
“Hugo! How’s it going? What are you doing in D.C.?”
“Oh, nothing much. Hiding out, on the lamb, you know. Angry clients.”
I could hear the nerves behind his levity. Something wasn’t right. “Is everything okay?”
“Oh sure, everything’s great.” It was a reflexive answer. “No, not really. Look, I’ve got some information I need off my chest. There’s no one back in L.A. I can trust. Hell, there’s no one anywhere I can trust, not except you.”
“Sounds heavy,” I said. “What is it?”
“A story, Smithee. A story that needs to get out. Bigger than that last piece I gave you. Bigger than anything you’ve ever handled.”
I was sitting up straight now, pen and paper in hand. “I’m listening.”
“Not over the phone.”
“Fine, I’ll come to you.” Screw Farnsworth and his Transportation Commission.
“I’m still on the move. Getting a little paranoid here in unfamiliar territory. I’ve got some things I need to see to, then I’ll hook up with you later. Can I call you at the magazine around six?”
“Sure,” I said. “Hey Hugo, how’d you know where to find me? I didn’t exactly leave a forwarding address.”
Hugo chuckled. “You wouldn’t believe it. Let’s just say an invisible little bird told me. See you around, Smithee.”
The line clicked. What the hell was I supposed to make of that? Hugo Harvey was a “bluff artist,” a lawyer who specialized in keeping celebrities’ indiscretions out of the paper. I knew him because whenever his clients let slip some juicy tidbits about movie stars who weren’t on his dance card, he’d make some extra cash by passing them on to people like me. Because of his need to cover his ass, Hugo was never the most forthcoming of people, but he’d never been so downright cryptic before.
“So why does he call you Smithee?” yelled Roxy from across the room.
“God damn it! That was a private conversation.”
“I didn’t listen much. A girl can’t help but be curious, especially about Mr. ‘mysterious past’ Jones.”
I groaned and walked over so I could talk more quietly.
“It’s a Hollywood thing. If a director doesn’t like something a studio does to one of his pictures, so much that he doesn’t even want his name on it, he’ll have them put ‘Directed by Allan Smithee’ in the credits instead.”
Roxy furrowed her eyebrows. “So you’re a big shot movie director now?”
“No, but the editor I used to work for would twist my stories out of shape so bad that I stopped using my byline entirely.”
“So that’s why your resume’s so thin,” she said. “And here I was hoping it was something more romantic, like spending five years in a Turkish prison.”
I looked at her sideways. “You think Turkish prisons are romantic? No wonder you don’t have a boyfriend.”
“Still got my eyes open,” she said with a smirk, then nodded at my desk. “Better get typing, movie boy. Those toaster ovens won’t sell themselves.”
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Hugo didn’t call at 6:00. I waited. I didn’t start to worry until 7:00. The other writers had come back from their morning binges- hyphen -press junkets, typed their stories, sent them to the copy editors, and gone home to their favorite bars. Roxy clocked out at 6:30 and let me take her place at the switchboard with the injunction that I not swear at anyone who called after hours. Farnsworth left the office at 8:00. He nodded at me as he passed through the newsroom. I’d made his four o’clock deadline, so whatever debt I owed the furtherance of American advertising was currently in the clear.
At 9:00, the phone rang for the eighth time since Roxy relinquished the board to me. The first call had been from a sweet old lady in Mr. Pleasant who wanted to complain about the school board allowing “commie Chinese” students into her grandson’s classroom. Three were hang-ups, one was from an upscale laundry service looking for ad space, and two were wrong numbers for Sonny’s Late Nite Grill. The last caller tried to place an order for a medium rare steak even after I told him he’d dialed a news magazine, so I told him to go to hell. When the phone rang again ten seconds later, I was sure it was the same asshole calling to tell me he wanted his potatoes au gratin.
“Smithee,” said the person on the phone.
“Hugo. Where the hell are you?”
“Across the river, at a bar near Arlington. Happy Jack’s. You know it?”
“No, but I can find it. What the hell is going on?”
“I’ll tell you when you get here. And Smithee, you got a gun?”
That shut me up for a moment. “What? No, I don’t have a gun. Hugo, what the hell is going on?”
“Get a gun. Bring it. I… I gotta go.”
The line went dead. It didn’t sound like a hang-up, it sounded like the line went dead. I dug the phone book out from under Roxy’s desk and thumbed the pages to Happy Jack’s Beer and Spirits in Rosslyn. I jotted down the address, then called the number.
“Happy Jack’s,” a woman answered with a thick Southern drawl. She pronounced it Jay-ucks. I hung up without speaking and headed for my car. I didn’t own a gun, and I wasn’t going to stop at a pawn shop and get a gun in the middle of the night. Hugo would just have to deal with it.
Happy Jack’s was actually a little past Rosslyn, a couple blocks off of Lee Highway. An October fog had rolled off the Potomac, framing the few streetlights in eerie halos. The bar was nothing but a blur of orange and green until I got close enough to make out the neon writing through the haze. It looked open, but the parking was behind the building. I drove to the end of the street and parked on the curb instead. That decision probably saved my life.
I adjusted my hat and buried my hands in my pockets against the cold. Every other store nearby was closed, and it wasn’t entirely clear whether they would open again in the future. It seemed awful quiet for a Friday night. Where were the teenagers who should have been joyriding? Where was the laughter, or the sound of a brawl, that should have been coming from the bar ahead? Something snapped across the road to my left, then a voice from the shadows on my right whispered, “Hey buddy, you got a light?”
I stopped and looked. There was no one there.
“Who the f—”
A weight slammed into me and threw me to the ground. I struggled for an instant until I heard an unmistakable noise from my days in Korea: that of a bullet ricochet.
“Shhh,” said the voice. I felt someone’s weight on my back, but when I looked over my shoulder all I saw was a streetlight.
“What the hell is—”
“Shut up.” The voice was no more substantial than the fog. “Scramble. Down the alley. Keep low. Now.”
I scrambled. The alley was dark. I banged into a trash can and startled a cat.
“Keep quiet.”
“I’m trying.” And I’m talking to myself. “Who are you? Where are you?”
“You came here to meet a man named Hugo Harvey.”
“That’s right.” I didn’t like this at all. Hugo had been scared to death, and I was starting to see why.
“Hugo Harvey’s in a black bag, and you’re about to be next.”
“If that’s some kind of threat…”
“It’s a warning, sweetheart. And you’re welcome. Now don’t move. I’ll see if it’s clear.”
This was nuts. There was no one there! I’d never heard voices in my head before. Was this how it started? It was five years too late for a Section 8 to do me any good. Then Hugo’s words came back: that “an invisible little bird” had told him where to find me.
He was right. I wouldn’t have believed him.
The only light was from the gap at the end of the alley. There, in the glow of the streetlamp, a shape appeared for the briefest moment of a thin figure. White slacks. White coat. White hat. Black gloves. I didn’t see a face. Scratch that: I didn’t see a head, just a hat floating on air. The apparition vanished and the voice returned.
“Can’t go that way. Head out the back. Hopefully we can circle around.”
“Where are we going?”
“Your car, sweet cheeks.”
“My car? What—”
Gunfire cut me off. Not a single shot, as from a rifle, but a fast blatt as from something meaner. Multiple chinks and pops echoed through the alley as metal collided with brick, and I didn’t argue with my invisible ally any further. Somehow we made it to my car, I got turned around, and we headed back down the gauntlet with only a headlight shot out before the chase really started.
***
And that’s how I ended up leading God knew how many killers on a night run for the Virginia – D.C. border. That’s how my car ended up looking like a Bonnie and Clyde castoff, and how I learned up close and personal what a giant tanker truck looks like head on while doing well over the speed limit.
My companion gripped the wheel and we spun. The gas truck seemed to fly around us like a great, white comet, and I swear two or three of my tires left the ground. I diverted some of the energy from my screaming into my leg and slammed on the brake, too little too late I was sure.
They say your life flashes, blah blah blah. All I saw was an obituary:
Allan “Smithee” Jones, 1930 – 1958, parents dead, no accomplishments, no history you’d care about. Spent most of his service in Korea behind a comfortable desk while his friends were getting killed. Wasted five years trailing B-list Hollywood wannabes for gossip rags no one admits to reading. Came to D.C. to be a big shot. Ended up a grease stain on the highway. No funeral. Don’t bother sending flowers.
We came to the halt in the middle of the road. I had no idea which way the car was pointing. A Cadillac swerved around us and honked. Another car stopped about fifty yards away, its headlights beaming into my eyes. The cab filled with light from the other direction. We were boxed in.
I heard my friend reload. “Keep your head down. Drive forward slowly, then floor it when you get past that car.”
“Whatever you say, chief.” My voice cracked like it hadn’t since puberty.
I inched forward. A shot banged through the windshield. If I hadn’t been hunched, it would have taken my head off. I cringed even lower, so I couldn’t even see. I felt my companion tug on the wheel. Two more shots blew through the air. They were close. One tore through the car’s roof, while the other must have impacted the engine. I heard a whine that could only have been steam from the radiator.
“That’s it. That’s it. Now go.”
I floored the gas and sat up. I hoped one of the bastards was standing in the road so I could run him over, but there was nothing ahead but highway and just enough light to guess where the lanes were.
“They’re still behind us.”
“I know. I’m going to change my frame of reference. Don’t stop ‘til you get to D.C. And it might be good to lay low for a while.”
“You’re doing what?” I turned my head to see my passenger flicker toward solidity. Under his coat was something like a black bandolier. He twisted a knob like a dial, and then flew out the back of the car. Not out the window, but out of the car itself, like a ghost walking through walls. It was as if he’d set his feet down on the road and let me travel on without him.
I turned to look over my shoulders, and saw flashes of light from the cab of the car behind me, accompanied by pops of distant violence. The vehicle swerved, then tumbled off the highway into a ditch. I faced forward, wary of any more tanker trucks, and rode the pedal all the way over the bridge back to Washington.
***
My faithful old Packard held on long enough to die in the “No Parking” space by the fire hydrant in front of the Street building. There were other cars, all black and official, taking up the rest of the curb, and every light in the building was on as if we were open for business.
This was unusual.
Not to say that the magazine staff never pulled all-nighters, but usually we had several days’ notice and an impending deadline. I could only conclude that something else in addition to my own little escapade was going on tonight. All I had to do was get out of the car to find out.
All I had to do. Was get out of the car.
C’mon, asshole, get out of the car!
I took my hands off the wheel. They were shaking. I let my feet off the brake and the clutch. The muscles in my soles cramped. I pulled the key out of the ignition, slowly so as not to make a sound. I inched the door open, keeping my head low.
No one shot me.
I stumbled out to the sidewalk and looked back at my death-wagon. From the passenger side, it almost looked respectable. From the back it looked like a target from a weapons test range. From the front it was clear that someone would probably call the police the moment they saw it. I fished a pack of Oakwoods out of my pocket, lit one up, and took the short steps to the front door. It was unlocked, and there was a government man inside.
“Hold it, buddy,” he said. “What’s your business?”
“I work here. Something wrong with that?”
“Name?”
“The Washington Street.”
“Wise up, smartass.” He pulled out a badge that said NSA. “State your name and why you’re here.”
“Allan Jones. I work the political beat. I write words, okay?”
“You’re Jones? Go on in. You’re wanted inside.”
On second thought, just let me go back to a pay phone and call a tow truck. I had a feeling something bad would have happened had I said that out loud. Instead I swallowed and stepped around the Suit With a Badge.
The newsroom was crawling with NSA. Most of them were clustered around my desk. It occurred to me that I might need a lawyer. It also occurred that the only one I could think of was dead.
“Jones?” Farnsworth yelled from across the room. “My office. Now.”
All heads turned and tracked me as I crossed the newsroom. I tried not to stare back, but I kept watch from the corner of my eye to see if anyone reached for a gun, ready to drop under a desk for cover at an instant.
An NSA agent held Farnsworth’s door open for us. This one had a relaxed smile, and unlike the others his coat wasn’t buttoned. Maybe he was trying to put us at ease, but if this was the one agent who didn’t feel the need to impress with his authority, then this was the one I should be afraid of the most.
He shut the door behind us.
“Mr. Jones,” he said. “I’m Agent Tyler. First off, I want to apologize for this intrusion. Believe me, I wouldn’t have dragged your editor away from his dinner if it wasn’t a matter of utmost importance.”
“Am I in some kind of trouble?” A cliché, but the question had to be asked.
“Should you be?” Tyler’s smirk didn’t extend to his eyes.
“Don’t answer that,” said Farnsworth. No shit.
“Mr. Jones,” said Tyler, “did you receive a telephone call from a Mr. Hugo Harvey this afternoon?”
That was the opening move, but it wasn’t the question on my mind. That question was exactly how far I should go in cooperating with these goons. I had no reason to trust them – newshounds know better than to trust anything the government tells you that isn’t supplied by a court order – but on the other hand, despite violating a few traffic laws I hadn’t actually done anything wrong. I figured the best course was to lead with openness, not secrecy.
“He called me twice,” I said. “Once around noon, and once about an hour ago.”
“And what were the nature of these calls?”
“I used to know Hugo back in Los Angeles. He dropped me a line on a story now and then.”
“Did he drop you a line on a story tonight?”
“He hinted at something like that.” I was feeling on safer ground, or maybe that was the shock kicking in. I took a drag on my cigarette, which I’d ignored ever since I lit it outside. Farnsworth pushed an ashtray across his desk.
“I don’t really know. He wouldn’t talk over the phone, and I never got to meet up with him.”
“So you did go to meet him?”
Maybe I shouldn’t have said that. “Yeah, but… Well, he wasn’t where he said he’d be, so I came back.”
There was a knock on the door. Tyler leaned his head out, and another agent whispered in his ear. When Tyler came back, he said, “Mr. Jones, is that your car outside?”
Oh, Christ. “Yeah, what of it?”
“It sounds like you had a little trouble.”
I shrugged. “Some punks started shooting at me, so I high-tailed it back here. I’ll take it down to the garage tomorrow. What, you think I ought to call the cops?”
“That’s up to you, but I wouldn’t worry yourself about having it towed. I’ll call somebody to look after it. One more question.” Agent Tyler was grinning now. “Do you expect to hear from Mr. Harvey again?”
I looked that son of a bitch in the eye and said, “No. Somehow I don’t think I will.”
“Thank you for your candor, Mr. Jones.” Tyler passed me a business card. “Just in case you do, give me a call. Mr. Harvey’s become a person of interest, and any story he might put you on to… well, let’s just say you might want to run it by me first. There could be national security issues at stake. Mr. Farnsworth, thank you for your time. We’ll be out of your hair shortly. Good evening, gentlemen.”
Tyler let himself out, and Farnsworth turned to me. “Jones, what the hell is going on?”
“I wish to hell I knew. I’m always after the hot scoop, but this is bigger than I want to deal with. Let me tell you…” I was about ready to pop with the full confession, and that’s what an editor-in-chief is for, right? A tap on the door cut me off.
“What?” Farnsworth shouted. Tim Leslie slipped in and shut the door behind him. His camera was slung under one shoulder, and a satchel under the other.
“Busy night, chief?”
“Wiseass. Grab down that scotch or you’re fired.”
He did as instructed. While Farnsworth poured himself a double with no rocks, Leslie gave me a look of concern that didn’t really fit on his face.
“You okay, Jones? What the hell happened to your car?”
“Sit down,” I said. “I was about to tell.”
“Oh, by the way,” he said. “I snuck this past the goons.” He pulled a flat package out of his satchel and handed it over. “You know anybody named Smithee?”
I almost didn’t take the package. “Who the hell gave you this?”
“Friend of a friend who knows a guy. Said I should get it to you in case things got crazy tonight. I think this qualifies,” he said, thumbing in the direction of the newsroom.
“Jones,” said Farnsworth, “I’ll ask you for the last goddamn time. What the hell is going on?”
The package had the name “Smithee” written across it. I flipped it over, and a tiny “H.H.” was inscribed over the seal.
I had a feeling we were about to find out.
To Be Continued
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Table of Contents
The Whisper © 2013 Jared Millet
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Getting shot at ain’t like the movies. There’s no “bang bang bang” of a bad guy’s gun, followed by some gent in a bloodless suit grabbing his chest and falling to the ground. No, when someone unloads a firearm at you, if you’re lucky you hear a pop like firecrackers off in the distance: a nice little note from your guardian angel that, “Hey, that guy who wants you dead just missed your ass!”
What I heard that miserable Friday evening while weaving my eight-year-old two-door Packard through the Potomac fog was the crash of my rearview flying off, the smash of my back window caving in, the ping of a neat little hole popping into existence two inches to the right of my reflection in the windscreen.
“Son of a bitch.” The voice of my passenger was like static on the radio. That didn’t unnerve me nearly as much as the fact that my eyes said there was no one but me in the car. “Take a hard right at the next corner. Don’t slow down.”
A staccato rhythm like popping corn announced itself from my trunk. I gripped the too-close steering wheel with white knuckles, waiting for one of the tires to blow. Somewhere ahead was U.S. 29 and the Key Bridge back to Georgetown, and I had it in my head that if I could just get across like Ichabod Crane, all this crazy would fade out behind me. Another poke hole knocked itself out of the windshield, and the glass went chink chink chink as crystal fault lines spidered outward, just like my mind was about to crack if one more thing went nuts.
That’s right: speeding through the dark at who knows how many miles per hour with one god damn headlight and zero visibility, bullets flying around my head, the Invisible Man shouting orders, and part of me goes, “Oh look, a metaphor!”
“You missed the turn,” my passenger said. I didn’t even see the turn, and I goddamn told him. “Enough of this crap. Cover your ears.”
“With what?” My throat burned like I’d been screaming, though I don’t remember doing that. Then thunder louder than God erupted by my head. For the span of a firefly, bright flashes illumined a white jacket, white hat, and black gloves, but no face. My companion turned around, his back against the dash, and emptied a handgun the size of a Mack truck at our assailants. Tires squealed behind me, and my partner disappeared again.
“Is that it?” I said. “Did you get ‘em?”
“Shit, slow down.”
I could barely hear through the ringing. “What do you mean slow down?”
The biggest tanker truck I’ve ever seen filled the beam of my headlight, lunging forward at 60, 70, 80 mph. A black glove grabbed the wheel and yanked it out of my hands, hard to the right, and I screamed for true as my whole world whipped round into a swirling mass of pavement, tires, and fog.
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Look, let me start over. The whole mess really started that morning, just before lunch. I was at The Washington Street, in my editor George Farnsworth’s office, and he wasn’t buying what I was trying to sell.
“For crying out loud, Allan,” he said, “I asked for a story on the Transportation Commission, not this tabloid crap.” He slapped my notes on his overcrowded desk and leaned back in his chair as if to distance himself from them. Farnsworth had a paunch that kept pulling his shirt out of his trousers and a face that looked like a peeled potato, but his rolled-up sleeves showed massive forearms that could break an upstart reporter in half.
“What do you mean, crap?” I said. “I’ve got evidence of congressional ethics violations. If half of these reports of payouts to Representative Crawthorn are true, it could tip the election next month.”
“One.” Farnsworth rose from his chair and pointed at me. “You don’t have evidence, you have anecdotes and hearsay. That may have been good enough for that L.A. scandal rag you used to hack for, but it won’t cut it in this town, not unless your last name is McCarthy. And two, it won’t do squat to his career. Crawthorn’s a ten year incumbent, a war hero, and his opponent is an anti-segregationist on the wrong side of the Mason-Dixon line. You’d have to catch him in flagrante delicto with an underage prostitute to put a dent in his reelection, and you’d need photographs to back it up. Besides, his constituents don’t read our magazine anyway.”
I winced at the mention of my previous employer. I’d tried my best to keep my work as a celebrity gossip monger a secret after I’d moved east. As far as most of my coworkers knew, all I had on my resume was some freelance work and a tour of duty writing for Stars and Stripes.
“What are you saying, we’re going to keep this under wraps?” I kept my eyes on those giant ham hocks he used for fists, but I plowed on. “I thought it was our job to let people know the truth.”
“Sweet baby Jesus.” Farnsworth’s face actually paled and his eyes grew wide as if the boogie-man had just popped out at a horror show. “How can you…? Seriously? Here. Sit down.” He shoved me into a chair and pulled an unlabeled bottle off of a shelf. I waited quietly as he poured himself a drink, but instead he handed it to me.
“Um, no thanks.”
“Drink or you’re fired.”
I poured the tumbler down my throat, then gasped as a grenade went off in my head. When I stopped coughing, Farnsworth sat on the edge of his desk and held the latest issue of the Street in front of my face.
“You want to know what our job is?” He opened the magazine to the inside back cover, where a model in a two-piece swimsuit and high heels leaned against a hot red convertible. “Selling cars.” He flipped to another page. “Perfume.” And another. “Toaster ovens. You and I are salesmen for toaster ovens. That’s what pays the bills. That’s what keeps the lights on. Magazines, newspapers, radio, television, it’s all just there to trick people into looking at advertising. That’s the job. Now, all these stories, editorials, what have you, that’s just a carny act. It’s the mermaid, the fire eater, the bearded lady. It’s to get Mr. and Mrs. Joe Public to look in our direction so we can make the sale. But you’ve got to give them what they want or they’ll look somewhere else.
“Now right at this moment, Mr. and Mrs. Joe Public in Washington don’t give two shits for some corrupt Southern politician, but they do care about whether or not the DC trolley lines might be extended to their shiny new subdivisions. So what you’re going to do is take these all these notes on Crawthorn and plant them in the bottom of your filing drawer. Then you’re going to sit yourself down and give me five thousand words on the Transportation Commission’s expansion plans by four o’clock. Agreed?”
I sighed. “Yes, but—”
“That was rhetorical. Now get out.”
I slunk out of his office feeling like a whipped schoolboy. Tim Leslie, the magazine’s star photographer, leaned across the hall, grinning like an idiot.
“Say, I’m in the market for a toaster oven,” he said. “Heard about any good deals?”
“Shut up.”
“Leslie?” roared Farnsworth. “Where are those glamour shots I asked for?”
“Right here, Georgie,” he said. “See you ‘round, Jones.”
Tim was all right, but he was Farnsworth’s golden boy and he knew it. As such, he could get away with murder and the rest of us would have to dispose of the bodies. I trudged down to the newsroom, where my desk and five thousand words of tedium awaited. There were half a dozen other hacks typing away on assignments, but most everyone else was out chasing leads, attending press conferences, or (more likely) having their first drinks of the day in one of the many seedy dives that lubricated the gears of the District of Columbia. Whatever that liquid fireball was that Farnsworth had poured down my throat was still making my nose burn. I almost looked forward to my hard, oak chair and barely functional typewriter.
A loud pop of bubblegum stopped me short.
“Gave you a chewing out, did he?”
Roxy Brandt ran the office switchboard from a desk about twice the size of mine. She was young enough that no one asked why she wasn’t married, the question was still when. From what I’d heard, she’d shot down offers of dinner dates from every eligible man in the office. She wasn’t a Hollywood stunner, but her short brown hair framed her perfect, round cheeks in a way that made me want to bundle her off to an amusement park, win her a teddy bear, and buy her a mountain of cotton candy.
“Christ,” I said. “Did he broadcast it over the intercom?”
Roxy tapped one of the plugs on her board. “There’s a short in his phone so his receiver never turns off. I can hear everything that goes on in there.”
That gave me pause. “Does Farnsworth know?”
“Not unless you tell him, cutie.” The words were playful, but her eyes somehow reminded me of a sniper I once interviewed in Korea. I mimed closing a zipper over my lips.
“Oh well, then,” I said. “Off to the salt mines.”
“Say, Jones,” she added between smacks of her gum. “You know anybody named Smithee?”
A chill ran over my scalp. I should have said no. I knew I should have said no. But I didn’t.
“Who’s asking?”
“Some guy called and left a number. Didn’t give me his name. Started off asking for ‘Allan Smithee’ then told me to tell you to call him.”
That’s all I needed: some ghost from out west to crash my new life and spread stories of my “good old days” at the L.A. Whisper. There were about a dozen people I could think of who called me “Smithee,” and not one of them I wanted to put in the same room with the Washington press. On the spot I formed a plan to find this bozo and shuffle him off to greener pastures… like Pittsburgh. I sank into my desk chair and asked Roxy to patch me through.
The phone rang six times before someone picked up. “Hello?” said a voice I didn’t recognize.
“Who is this?” I said.
“You called me, asshole.” There was noise in the background, like a restaurant or a bar. “You go first.”
“This is Allan Jones.”
“Smithee!” He shouted, then hushed himself all at once. He went on with a tone of palpable relief. “My god, it’s good to hear you.”
“Who is this?” I said again.
“It’s me. Hugo.”
I relaxed. Hugo Harvey wasn’t press, he was a lawyer, and despite that fact he wasn’t on my list of people to avoid. He sounded odd, though, and not like himself.
“Hugo! How’s it going? What are you doing in D.C.?”
“Oh, nothing much. Hiding out, on the lamb, you know. Angry clients.”
I could hear the nerves behind his levity. Something wasn’t right. “Is everything okay?”
“Oh sure, everything’s great.” It was a reflexive answer. “No, not really. Look, I’ve got some information I need off my chest. There’s no one back in L.A. I can trust. Hell, there’s no one anywhere I can trust, not except you.”
“Sounds heavy,” I said. “What is it?”
“A story, Smithee. A story that needs to get out. Bigger than that last piece I gave you. Bigger than anything you’ve ever handled.”
I was sitting up straight now, pen and paper in hand. “I’m listening.”
“Not over the phone.”
“Fine, I’ll come to you.” Screw Farnsworth and his Transportation Commission.
“I’m still on the move. Getting a little paranoid here in unfamiliar territory. I’ve got some things I need to see to, then I’ll hook up with you later. Can I call you at the magazine around six?”
“Sure,” I said. “Hey Hugo, how’d you know where to find me? I didn’t exactly leave a forwarding address.”
Hugo chuckled. “You wouldn’t believe it. Let’s just say an invisible little bird told me. See you around, Smithee.”
The line clicked. What the hell was I supposed to make of that? Hugo Harvey was a “bluff artist,” a lawyer who specialized in keeping celebrities’ indiscretions out of the paper. I knew him because whenever his clients let slip some juicy tidbits about movie stars who weren’t on his dance card, he’d make some extra cash by passing them on to people like me. Because of his need to cover his ass, Hugo was never the most forthcoming of people, but he’d never been so downright cryptic before.
“So why does he call you Smithee?” yelled Roxy from across the room.
“God damn it! That was a private conversation.”
“I didn’t listen much. A girl can’t help but be curious, especially about Mr. ‘mysterious past’ Jones.”
I groaned and walked over so I could talk more quietly.
“It’s a Hollywood thing. If a director doesn’t like something a studio does to one of his pictures, so much that he doesn’t even want his name on it, he’ll have them put ‘Directed by Allan Smithee’ in the credits instead.”
Roxy furrowed her eyebrows. “So you’re a big shot movie director now?”
“No, but the editor I used to work for would twist my stories out of shape so bad that I stopped using my byline entirely.”
“So that’s why your resume’s so thin,” she said. “And here I was hoping it was something more romantic, like spending five years in a Turkish prison.”
I looked at her sideways. “You think Turkish prisons are romantic? No wonder you don’t have a boyfriend.”
“Still got my eyes open,” she said with a smirk, then nodded at my desk. “Better get typing, movie boy. Those toaster ovens won’t sell themselves.”
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Hugo didn’t call at 6:00. I waited. I didn’t start to worry until 7:00. The other writers had come back from their morning binges- hyphen -press junkets, typed their stories, sent them to the copy editors, and gone home to their favorite bars. Roxy clocked out at 6:30 and let me take her place at the switchboard with the injunction that I not swear at anyone who called after hours. Farnsworth left the office at 8:00. He nodded at me as he passed through the newsroom. I’d made his four o’clock deadline, so whatever debt I owed the furtherance of American advertising was currently in the clear.
At 9:00, the phone rang for the eighth time since Roxy relinquished the board to me. The first call had been from a sweet old lady in Mr. Pleasant who wanted to complain about the school board allowing “commie Chinese” students into her grandson’s classroom. Three were hang-ups, one was from an upscale laundry service looking for ad space, and two were wrong numbers for Sonny’s Late Nite Grill. The last caller tried to place an order for a medium rare steak even after I told him he’d dialed a news magazine, so I told him to go to hell. When the phone rang again ten seconds later, I was sure it was the same asshole calling to tell me he wanted his potatoes au gratin.
“Smithee,” said the person on the phone.
“Hugo. Where the hell are you?”
“Across the river, at a bar near Arlington. Happy Jack’s. You know it?”
“No, but I can find it. What the hell is going on?”
“I’ll tell you when you get here. And Smithee, you got a gun?”
That shut me up for a moment. “What? No, I don’t have a gun. Hugo, what the hell is going on?”
“Get a gun. Bring it. I… I gotta go.”
The line went dead. It didn’t sound like a hang-up, it sounded like the line went dead. I dug the phone book out from under Roxy’s desk and thumbed the pages to Happy Jack’s Beer and Spirits in Rosslyn. I jotted down the address, then called the number.
“Happy Jack’s,” a woman answered with a thick Southern drawl. She pronounced it Jay-ucks. I hung up without speaking and headed for my car. I didn’t own a gun, and I wasn’t going to stop at a pawn shop and get a gun in the middle of the night. Hugo would just have to deal with it.
Happy Jack’s was actually a little past Rosslyn, a couple blocks off of Lee Highway. An October fog had rolled off the Potomac, framing the few streetlights in eerie halos. The bar was nothing but a blur of orange and green until I got close enough to make out the neon writing through the haze. It looked open, but the parking was behind the building. I drove to the end of the street and parked on the curb instead. That decision probably saved my life.
I adjusted my hat and buried my hands in my pockets against the cold. Every other store nearby was closed, and it wasn’t entirely clear whether they would open again in the future. It seemed awful quiet for a Friday night. Where were the teenagers who should have been joyriding? Where was the laughter, or the sound of a brawl, that should have been coming from the bar ahead? Something snapped across the road to my left, then a voice from the shadows on my right whispered, “Hey buddy, you got a light?”
I stopped and looked. There was no one there.
“Who the f—”
A weight slammed into me and threw me to the ground. I struggled for an instant until I heard an unmistakable noise from my days in Korea: that of a bullet ricochet.
“Shhh,” said the voice. I felt someone’s weight on my back, but when I looked over my shoulder all I saw was a streetlight.
“What the hell is—”
“Shut up.” The voice was no more substantial than the fog. “Scramble. Down the alley. Keep low. Now.”
I scrambled. The alley was dark. I banged into a trash can and startled a cat.
“Keep quiet.”
“I’m trying.” And I’m talking to myself. “Who are you? Where are you?”
“You came here to meet a man named Hugo Harvey.”
“That’s right.” I didn’t like this at all. Hugo had been scared to death, and I was starting to see why.
“Hugo Harvey’s in a black bag, and you’re about to be next.”
“If that’s some kind of threat…”
“It’s a warning, sweetheart. And you’re welcome. Now don’t move. I’ll see if it’s clear.”
This was nuts. There was no one there! I’d never heard voices in my head before. Was this how it started? It was five years too late for a Section 8 to do me any good. Then Hugo’s words came back: that “an invisible little bird” had told him where to find me.
He was right. I wouldn’t have believed him.
The only light was from the gap at the end of the alley. There, in the glow of the streetlamp, a shape appeared for the briefest moment of a thin figure. White slacks. White coat. White hat. Black gloves. I didn’t see a face. Scratch that: I didn’t see a head, just a hat floating on air. The apparition vanished and the voice returned.
“Can’t go that way. Head out the back. Hopefully we can circle around.”
“Where are we going?”
“Your car, sweet cheeks.”
“My car? What—”
Gunfire cut me off. Not a single shot, as from a rifle, but a fast blatt as from something meaner. Multiple chinks and pops echoed through the alley as metal collided with brick, and I didn’t argue with my invisible ally any further. Somehow we made it to my car, I got turned around, and we headed back down the gauntlet with only a headlight shot out before the chase really started.
***
And that’s how I ended up leading God knew how many killers on a night run for the Virginia – D.C. border. That’s how my car ended up looking like a Bonnie and Clyde castoff, and how I learned up close and personal what a giant tanker truck looks like head on while doing well over the speed limit.
My companion gripped the wheel and we spun. The gas truck seemed to fly around us like a great, white comet, and I swear two or three of my tires left the ground. I diverted some of the energy from my screaming into my leg and slammed on the brake, too little too late I was sure.
They say your life flashes, blah blah blah. All I saw was an obituary:
Allan “Smithee” Jones, 1930 – 1958, parents dead, no accomplishments, no history you’d care about. Spent most of his service in Korea behind a comfortable desk while his friends were getting killed. Wasted five years trailing B-list Hollywood wannabes for gossip rags no one admits to reading. Came to D.C. to be a big shot. Ended up a grease stain on the highway. No funeral. Don’t bother sending flowers.
We came to the halt in the middle of the road. I had no idea which way the car was pointing. A Cadillac swerved around us and honked. Another car stopped about fifty yards away, its headlights beaming into my eyes. The cab filled with light from the other direction. We were boxed in.
I heard my friend reload. “Keep your head down. Drive forward slowly, then floor it when you get past that car.”
“Whatever you say, chief.” My voice cracked like it hadn’t since puberty.
I inched forward. A shot banged through the windshield. If I hadn’t been hunched, it would have taken my head off. I cringed even lower, so I couldn’t even see. I felt my companion tug on the wheel. Two more shots blew through the air. They were close. One tore through the car’s roof, while the other must have impacted the engine. I heard a whine that could only have been steam from the radiator.
“That’s it. That’s it. Now go.”
I floored the gas and sat up. I hoped one of the bastards was standing in the road so I could run him over, but there was nothing ahead but highway and just enough light to guess where the lanes were.
“They’re still behind us.”
“I know. I’m going to change my frame of reference. Don’t stop ‘til you get to D.C. And it might be good to lay low for a while.”
“You’re doing what?” I turned my head to see my passenger flicker toward solidity. Under his coat was something like a black bandolier. He twisted a knob like a dial, and then flew out the back of the car. Not out the window, but out of the car itself, like a ghost walking through walls. It was as if he’d set his feet down on the road and let me travel on without him.
I turned to look over my shoulders, and saw flashes of light from the cab of the car behind me, accompanied by pops of distant violence. The vehicle swerved, then tumbled off the highway into a ditch. I faced forward, wary of any more tanker trucks, and rode the pedal all the way over the bridge back to Washington.
***
My faithful old Packard held on long enough to die in the “No Parking” space by the fire hydrant in front of the Street building. There were other cars, all black and official, taking up the rest of the curb, and every light in the building was on as if we were open for business.
This was unusual.
Not to say that the magazine staff never pulled all-nighters, but usually we had several days’ notice and an impending deadline. I could only conclude that something else in addition to my own little escapade was going on tonight. All I had to do was get out of the car to find out.
All I had to do. Was get out of the car.
C’mon, asshole, get out of the car!
I took my hands off the wheel. They were shaking. I let my feet off the brake and the clutch. The muscles in my soles cramped. I pulled the key out of the ignition, slowly so as not to make a sound. I inched the door open, keeping my head low.
No one shot me.
I stumbled out to the sidewalk and looked back at my death-wagon. From the passenger side, it almost looked respectable. From the back it looked like a target from a weapons test range. From the front it was clear that someone would probably call the police the moment they saw it. I fished a pack of Oakwoods out of my pocket, lit one up, and took the short steps to the front door. It was unlocked, and there was a government man inside.
“Hold it, buddy,” he said. “What’s your business?”
“I work here. Something wrong with that?”
“Name?”
“The Washington Street.”
“Wise up, smartass.” He pulled out a badge that said NSA. “State your name and why you’re here.”
“Allan Jones. I work the political beat. I write words, okay?”
“You’re Jones? Go on in. You’re wanted inside.”
On second thought, just let me go back to a pay phone and call a tow truck. I had a feeling something bad would have happened had I said that out loud. Instead I swallowed and stepped around the Suit With a Badge.
The newsroom was crawling with NSA. Most of them were clustered around my desk. It occurred to me that I might need a lawyer. It also occurred that the only one I could think of was dead.
“Jones?” Farnsworth yelled from across the room. “My office. Now.”
All heads turned and tracked me as I crossed the newsroom. I tried not to stare back, but I kept watch from the corner of my eye to see if anyone reached for a gun, ready to drop under a desk for cover at an instant.
An NSA agent held Farnsworth’s door open for us. This one had a relaxed smile, and unlike the others his coat wasn’t buttoned. Maybe he was trying to put us at ease, but if this was the one agent who didn’t feel the need to impress with his authority, then this was the one I should be afraid of the most.
He shut the door behind us.
“Mr. Jones,” he said. “I’m Agent Tyler. First off, I want to apologize for this intrusion. Believe me, I wouldn’t have dragged your editor away from his dinner if it wasn’t a matter of utmost importance.”
“Am I in some kind of trouble?” A cliché, but the question had to be asked.
“Should you be?” Tyler’s smirk didn’t extend to his eyes.
“Don’t answer that,” said Farnsworth. No shit.
“Mr. Jones,” said Tyler, “did you receive a telephone call from a Mr. Hugo Harvey this afternoon?”
That was the opening move, but it wasn’t the question on my mind. That question was exactly how far I should go in cooperating with these goons. I had no reason to trust them – newshounds know better than to trust anything the government tells you that isn’t supplied by a court order – but on the other hand, despite violating a few traffic laws I hadn’t actually done anything wrong. I figured the best course was to lead with openness, not secrecy.
“He called me twice,” I said. “Once around noon, and once about an hour ago.”
“And what were the nature of these calls?”
“I used to know Hugo back in Los Angeles. He dropped me a line on a story now and then.”
“Did he drop you a line on a story tonight?”
“He hinted at something like that.” I was feeling on safer ground, or maybe that was the shock kicking in. I took a drag on my cigarette, which I’d ignored ever since I lit it outside. Farnsworth pushed an ashtray across his desk.
“I don’t really know. He wouldn’t talk over the phone, and I never got to meet up with him.”
“So you did go to meet him?”
Maybe I shouldn’t have said that. “Yeah, but… Well, he wasn’t where he said he’d be, so I came back.”
There was a knock on the door. Tyler leaned his head out, and another agent whispered in his ear. When Tyler came back, he said, “Mr. Jones, is that your car outside?”
Oh, Christ. “Yeah, what of it?”
“It sounds like you had a little trouble.”
I shrugged. “Some punks started shooting at me, so I high-tailed it back here. I’ll take it down to the garage tomorrow. What, you think I ought to call the cops?”
“That’s up to you, but I wouldn’t worry yourself about having it towed. I’ll call somebody to look after it. One more question.” Agent Tyler was grinning now. “Do you expect to hear from Mr. Harvey again?”
I looked that son of a bitch in the eye and said, “No. Somehow I don’t think I will.”
“Thank you for your candor, Mr. Jones.” Tyler passed me a business card. “Just in case you do, give me a call. Mr. Harvey’s become a person of interest, and any story he might put you on to… well, let’s just say you might want to run it by me first. There could be national security issues at stake. Mr. Farnsworth, thank you for your time. We’ll be out of your hair shortly. Good evening, gentlemen.”
Tyler let himself out, and Farnsworth turned to me. “Jones, what the hell is going on?”
“I wish to hell I knew. I’m always after the hot scoop, but this is bigger than I want to deal with. Let me tell you…” I was about ready to pop with the full confession, and that’s what an editor-in-chief is for, right? A tap on the door cut me off.
“What?” Farnsworth shouted. Tim Leslie slipped in and shut the door behind him. His camera was slung under one shoulder, and a satchel under the other.
“Busy night, chief?”
“Wiseass. Grab down that scotch or you’re fired.”
He did as instructed. While Farnsworth poured himself a double with no rocks, Leslie gave me a look of concern that didn’t really fit on his face.
“You okay, Jones? What the hell happened to your car?”
“Sit down,” I said. “I was about to tell.”
“Oh, by the way,” he said. “I snuck this past the goons.” He pulled a flat package out of his satchel and handed it over. “You know anybody named Smithee?”
I almost didn’t take the package. “Who the hell gave you this?”
“Friend of a friend who knows a guy. Said I should get it to you in case things got crazy tonight. I think this qualifies,” he said, thumbing in the direction of the newsroom.
“Jones,” said Farnsworth, “I’ll ask you for the last goddamn time. What the hell is going on?”
The package had the name “Smithee” written across it. I flipped it over, and a tiny “H.H.” was inscribed over the seal.
I had a feeling we were about to find out.
To Be Continued
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The Whisper © 2013 Jared Millet
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