In the Company of Killers, Bryan Christy [love story books to read .txt] 📗

This one was clean, brightly lit, cool. A padded strap held his arm to his side. His wound had been dressed and bandaged. A tall woman stood beside his bed listening to his heart with a stethoscope. She gave him a bright smile, and ticked off his vitals to a nurse. “You are very, very lucky, Mr. Klay,” she said. “You will be fine. Able to fight for our elephants again . . .” The strap was for his wound, she told him. He had been dreaming. “Throwing your arms every which way.”

On his return home, Klay had gone to Georgetown University Hospital for a follow-up. The doctor who examined him said there was nothing more he could do for his injuries. “Your Kenyan surgeon was excellent,” he said.

Had all of that been courtesy of Ras Botha?

And what cage?

THE PUBLIC HAS AN INTEREST

Washington, DC, and Shepherdstown, West Virginia

It was Saturday at the Pigeon. Klay was typing up his notes on the priest, sketching a story. Phil the Economist was reading a newspaper. A couple of French tourists were sitting at a table behind Klay. He could see them in the bar’s back mirror. The French newspaper Le Figaro had recently done a feature on the decline of American journalism, and had included a mention of the Gray Pigeon. The story had inspired a few tourists to visit over the past month. Billy asked one for a translation. “You are like Popeye,” the tourist explained, and made a muscle. Billy smiled, but the tourist continued, “Like Popeye with no ship to sail.”

Next to Klay’s laptop was a tuna fish sandwich and a bag of chips he’d bought at the bodega next door. He was drinking cranberry and seltzer in a pint glass. “You want an umbrella with that?” Billy had asked.

His cell phone rang. It was Porfle.

“You did it again, I see.”

Klay ate a potato chip and typed in another search. “What’s that?”

“Went over my head for your assignment.”

“I assumed Vance cleared it with you.”

“Nope. Didn’t.”

Klay plucked a corner of the plastic wrap around his sandwich and tried to shake it free. “Okay, sorry,” he said.

He wished he’d been able to steal the priest’s photo of the peace negotiations dinner, but Martelino had scooped all of the photos up and returned them to his desk drawer.

“What are you working on?” Porfle asked. “Botha again?”

“I’ll tell you when I get back to the office.”

“The thrill is gone from this relationship, Mr. Klay,” Porfle said.

“What do you want from me, Alex?” It was a mistake to engage the passive-aggressive Porfle, but Klay was tired, and the smell of the priest and his sadistic crimes still lingered in his nostrils.

“I want you to follow procedure,” Porfle said. “I want you to discuss story ideas with me in advance! I want you to write up the formal proposals we’ve agreed on and submit them for consideration at our pitch meetings—with projected word counts and budgets included. I want you to get your expense reports in.”

Klay pictured his editor sitting pencil-straight in a home-office desk chair, eyes watering, hand trembling as he gripped the phone. “Our essential Brit,” Eady would say, followed by a caution: “We need him in place, Tom.” Klay understood Eady’s desire to have a malleable and obedient deputy, but it didn’t make working for Porfle any easier.

“When you get back, I want your expenses turned in promptly,” Porfle continued, his voice rising. “The next day.”

Klay didn’t have the heart to tell Porfle he was already home. Eady had been clear: “You are to endure Porfle. It took me years to find him . . .”

Klay gritted his teeth. “Of course. I apologize, Alex. It came up suddenly. I’ll get them to Accounting right away.”

“You’re not the only wildlife crime investigator in this city, you know.”

“Tell that to Vance,” Klay said, and instantly regretted it.

“Uncle Vance won’t be around here to protect you forever. You should keep that in mind.”

“You know something I don’t?”

“Humph,” Porfle said, and hung up.

“Everything okay?” Billy asked, wiping down the bar.

Klay shook his head. “Just the usual, Bill.” He munched another chip, unwrapped his sandwich, and thought about his peculiar double life.

•   •   •

He had been with the magazine five years when one bright February afternoon Sally had phoned from upstairs to say that Vance and Ruth Eady had an extra ticket to the Kennedy Center. Schubert’s Trout Quintet. Would he like to join them? A dinner party invitation followed a week later at the couple’s Watergate apartment. “Bring a date if you like.” Klay was with Erin at the time, against office policy, so he went alone. A few weeks after the Eadys’ dinner party, Vance appeared in his doorway. “Do you fly-fish, Tom?”

The Eadys owned a big old house in Virginia horse country about sixty miles west of DC. Standing on the grassy banks of his trout pond, Eady had handed Klay a fly rod and a Bible. “Hold the book tight in your armpit. Keep your movement ten and one. Wrist straight, hard stops.” Klay followed Eady’s instructions while Eady went on about tippets and dry flies. He was finally getting the hang of it when Eady deftly turned the conversation to a topic Klay knew well: old-school boxing—Jack Johnson, Harry Greb, Ali, the Hitman, Marvelous Marvin. All of it a fishing expedition, Klay realized later. Eady letting out line, biding his time, monitoring Klay’s response to each upstream twitch.

“You used to be pretty good in the ring yourself, they tell me,” Eady said casually as he packed up their gear. Ruth Eady was standing at the top of the hill, calling them to supper.

“Who tells you?” Klay asked.

“People.”

Klay shrugged. “I was South Broad good. Not North Broad good. There’s a big difference in Philadelphia.”

Klay told Eady what it had been like boxing as a teenager, working the bag in a rowhouse basement gym off Ninth Street in the Italian Market, the soppressata and capocollo drying on strings, swinging to the beat. Bap. Bap. Bap.