Part 36 (1/2)
Chapter 14
_Tuesday, April 7
11:35 A.M.
_Stone Aimes was in his cubicle, staring at the phone when it rang.
He prayed this was the call he'd been waiting for. As a gamble, a long shot, he'd requested that Jane Tully, his former live-in lover and the Sentinel's part-time corporate counsel, do him a small favor. After he hacked the NIH Web site, he'd asked her to pa.s.s along just one question concerning Gerex to Winston Bartlett's corporate attorneys: Why had a patient been abruptly and mysteriously terminated, without explanation, from the clinical trials now under way by the Gerex Corporation? If that wouldn't get a rise out of Bartlett, he didn't know what would. It was the only part of the corporation's encrypted NIH file that seemed irregular. But would Bartlett take the bait?
He reached for the phone.
”Aimes here.” Around him came the clatter of computer keys and muted laughter from the direction of the water cooler. Everybody had watched a Tivo of the latest Sunday night and they were still critiquing the shows. Mondays were everybody's day off, so Tuesdays were the first chance to catch up. The staff was also starting to rev up again for the coming week's edition, everybody with the hope that their particular a.s.signment would have legs and make its author a household name. Stone, however, felt like this was either the first day of the rest of his life or the last day of a career built on dealing to inside straights.
This cannot go on much longer, he kept telling himself; it was an unstable condition. His soul was already over the fence, keeping company with that wild, free ox he liked to muse about.
”Stone,” came a husky female voice, strained and yet strong. Just as he'd hoped, it was Jane, whose office was down on the third floor. ”Can you come down? Right now.”
”Did you hear back from--”
”Stone,” she admonished her voice growing urgent, ”just come down. Do it now, all right?”
”Sure.” He paused a moment, wondering. Why did she sound so upset? Had his plan somehow backfired? ”I'm on my way.”
He glanced up at the fluorescent light over his head like a pitiless hovering s.p.a.ces.h.i.+p, and wondered if this was going to be the break he had been praying for. There was a nervousness in Jane's voice that indicated something major was afoot. Something was about to change.
He switched off his Compaq laptop and reached for his brown corduroy jacket, which was hanging from a hook on the side of the gla.s.s-walled cubicle. He straightened his brown knit tie as he stepped on the elevator, and for some reason he found himself thinking of his daughter, Amy.
He mimed a toast. Here's looking at you, kid.
She was in the fifth grade and lived with her mother, Joyce, in a small condominium nestled in the hills near El Cerrito, where his ex-wife grew up. Joyce was a television producer who had left him to go back out there, where she got work as a garden designer. When he got over the shock, he finally concluded she loved California more than she loved him. Maybe not an unreasonable choice. But then she got custody of Amy, based solely on the fact that his income was inadequate to send her to private school in New York and the public schools were out of the question. But Joyce had agreed that if he ever had the money, she could live with him some of the time. This book, he hoped, would make that happen.
He still didn't know why he and Joyce couldn't have made a go of it. It had occurred to him that there was the real possibility she had fallen in love with the idea of a das.h.i.+ng investigative reporter, not the grueling reality. These days she had Amy all the time except for three weeks in July, and he had so many things to regret he scarcely knew where to start.
He kept a year-old photograph of Amy on his desk, in a frame far too expensive for a snapshot of a young girl on a black horse named Zena.
But it was Zena that his $1,500 a month in child support had helped to pay for, and he felt it somehow bonded them.
Hi, Dad, from me and Zena, went the inscription.
Why was he thinking about her now? he wondered. The answer was, because he wanted her world to be different from the one he had known as a child. He hadn't had a father around, and that had left him with a lot of anger. He didn't want the same fate for her.
Amy's world, he knew, was going to be very different, no matter what he did. To be young like her and starting out was a daunting prospect these days. He wanted to make everything easier for her, but the only thing he could give her now was a measly $1,500 every month and his unshakable love.
Even so, that was more than his mother, Karen, got for child support-- from a natural father he had never actually seen in the flesh until he was eleven. And that was a chance encounter....