Simple Justice by John Morgan Wilson

Author:John Morgan Wilson [Wilson, John Morgan]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781602824454
Publisher: Bold Strokes Books, Inc.
Published: 2008-08-10T04:00:00+00:00

Chapter Twenty-Two

Early Friday morning, I was jolted awake by someone pounding on my door.

At first, half asleep, I thought it might be Jefferson Bellworthy, back to get me after all. Or Luis Albundo, ready to finish what he’d started on the street in Echo Park. Whoever it was banged again, harder.

“Open the fucking door, Benjamin!”

It was Harry.

I nudged an empty wine bottle under the bed with my foot, slipped into some pants, and opened the door to the shock of sunlight and the sound of Harry’s raspy cough.

He barged in past me.

“Where the fuck do you get off giving Templeton an assignment?”

“If you’re going to visit so early, Harry, the least you could do is bring coffee.

He followed me to the kitchen, where I turned on the tap and flooded my face with cold water.

“Paul Masterman is a U.S. senator!”

“You woke me up to tell me that?”

“Don’t get cute, Benjamin. I’m not in the mood.”

I dried my face with a dish towel that was borderline filthy. I was flat broke, and my dirty laundry was piling up. I made a mental note to call Kevin at the agency and ask about my sixty dollars.

“First of all, Harry, I didn’t give an assignment to anyone, least of all Alexandra Templeton.”

“That’s not the way she tells it.”

“Templeton doesn’t take orders from me. We work together. We mutually agreed that hanging out with Masterman’s campaign for a couple days might be a good idea.”

“Did you, now?”

Harry fumbled for a cigarette, found an empty package in a pocket, crumpled it, and threw it angrily in the direction of an overflowing trash can.

I went back into the other room to find a shirt, searching through a pile of soiled clothes.

“Masterman used the scene of Billy Lusk’s murder as a location in one of his TV spots.”

“Tell me something I don’t know,” Harry said.

“We figured a story on Masterman, framed around that particular TV ad, might make an interesting follow-up piece in Templeton’s series on Billy Lusk, or at least give us a hook for one.”

“I’d say that’s reaching for material,” Harry said.

“At the very least, Harry, you’ll get a timely feature out of it on the Masterman campaign.”

“Templeton’s a crime reporter. I’ll catch hell on this from the guys on the political beat.”

“You can tough it out, Harry.”

“Don’t tell me what I can or cannot fucking do. That’s not how this works.”

I found a T-shirt that didn’t look too bad, and sniffed the armpits. “You wanted me to get involved, Harry. It was your idea, not mine.”

“I wanted you to write a sidebar. Work with Templeton on the Billy Lusk story. Not go after a U.S. senator for reasons that seem to be known only to yourself.”

“Give me some leash on this, Harry. I’d like to pursue some leads.”

“The Albundo kid signed a confession, Ben. It’s been three days since Lusk was murdered. I should have had a story from Templeton by now.”

“A couple more days, that’s all we need.” I slipped into the T-shirt, tucked it into my faded jeans.

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