Tony Hillerman - The Fly on the Wall Read online

  On the way down in the elevator Cotton thought that it might be somebody fairly big. At least it would most likely be somebody in state government. A tourist wouldn't be in the capitol at night and there must be more convenient places for an intended suicide to do his jumping. It would be somebody in government, probably not a run-of-the-mill clerk. Probably somebody with enough responsibilities to keep him working in his office at night. Or maybe some legislator. Suicide of anyone on the public payroll raised interesting possibilities. Might be worth a two-column head, or one column above the fold.

  Cotton pulled the door of the antique elevator open on the first floor and trotted toward the lobby floor of the rotunda. The feeling was familiar, a knotting in his stomach, a tightness in his chest. When he had been a police reporter, he had felt it often-this approach to violent death-without getting used to it. They always looked surprised. No matter the circumstances. The suicide gassed in his garage, the motel night clerk with a robber's bullet through his neck, the middle-aged woman pinned beneath her car. The details were different but the eyes were the same. The intellect believed in death but the animal in man thought it was immortal. The eyes were always glossy with outraged surprise.

  Four men stood by the body now, talking quietly. Cotton recognized the clerk from the fifth floor, and the custodian, and the man in the hat. The fourth man was fat, a Game and Fish Department employee, but Cotton didn't know his name.

  And then he looked downward. He saw it would not be a big one for the night city editor of the Capitol-Press. Not a play story. Probably a one-column head below the fold at best. Maybe no better than page two. The surprised eyes staring sightlessly up at the capitol dome six floors above were those of Merrill McDaniels.

  2

  House speaker Bruce Ulrich pounded twice with his gavel. "Chair recognizes Sergeant at Arms."

  "Mr. Speaker, a message from the Governor."

  "The house will receive a message from the Governor."

  Alan Wingerd, the Governor's press secretary, came down the aisle from the double doors, paused briefly to say something to the Majority Leader at the front-row aisle desk, laughed, and then handed the Clerk of the House a folded paper.

  "The Clerk will read the message from the Governor," Ulrich said. Ulrich put down the gavel and returned his attention to the newspaper on his desk. Cotton had noticed earlier, with some satisfaction, that Ulrich was reading the first edition of the Tribune. The banner said roark asking for $150 million road fund.

  The Clerk of the House was reading in his clear, prissy voice.

  "Honorable Members of the House of Representatives of the 77th General Assembly,

  "I am hereby asking the Majority Floor Leader to submit for your consideration three bills, the passage of which I feel is essential to the safety and convenience of the people of this commonwealth.

  "The first of these bills would adjust the road-users' tax in certain categories to increase revenues an estimated seventeen million dollars per annum. The second of these bills would authorize issuance of bonds against this revenue...."

  Cotton yawned and glanced down the press table. At his right, Leroy Hall was reading his way through the stack of bills introduced in the morning session. The AP and UPI chairs were vacant. The wire-service men were in the pressroom filing new leads. In the next chair Volney Bowles of the Journal was working a Double-Crostic in a Saturday Review. Beyond him, in the last chair, sat Junior Garcia. Garcia seemed to be asleep.

  Hall jabbed Cotton with his elbow. He was a skinny man, in his fifties, his gray haircut in a bristling burr. "Cousin John," he said, "you see that Capitol-Press story on McDaniels's inquest. You think it was an accident?"

  "What else?" Cotton said. "You knew Merrill. He didn't jump."

  "You said he was drinking," Hall said. "You'd have to be pretty drunk to fall over that balustrade."

  "He was stiff."

  Hall was looking at him questioningly. "Mac didn't hardly ever drink much?" It came out as another question, irritating Cotton.

  "You think somebody pushed him? Like who? You're sounding like a beginning police reporter."

  "I guess I just feel bad about it," Hall said. He was looking down, drawing doodles on his note pad-elaborate daggers with jeweled hilts. "Did you know we used to work together on the Portland Oregonian before it folded? He was general assignment and I was covering the county building."

  Cotton was only half listening. The clerk's voice was droning on: "... recognize the reluctance of this distinguished body to increase the burden of taxation on the motor-carrier industry. However, this industry will benefit disproportionately from the expeditious construction of a safe network of highways and..." This call by the Governor for a road-users tax increase, a bond issue and a crash program in highway construction had come as a surprise-a rarity in a gossipy statehouse where almost everything leaked. That meant little time for reaction to develop. Cotton was watching the floor. The Minority Floor Leader was leaning over the desk of the Majority Whip. The conversation might be casual, since the two men were long-time friends. Or, since the Majority Whip was a Gene Clark Democrat, it might be negotiations for a Republican-Clark Democrat coalition to kill Roark's road plan. Cotton signaled for a page boy and started jotting a note to the Minority Leader. Hall was still talking.

  "He'd always wanted to be a political writer," Hall was saying, "and he would have been good at it. D'you know he had a leak in the Governor's office?"

  "How do you know?" The note asked the Republican Floor Leader if he would try to stall Roark's road bills by asking to have them referred to two committees, if he had any substantial Democratic support and if he had enough votes for the double referral.

  "He knew about this Roark road-fund bond-issue scheme before we did," Hall said. "He made some crack about it last week-joking about it."

  "Why didn't he write it?" Cotton handed the note to the page.

  "I've been wondering," Hall said. "I didn't think anything about it. Thought it was just some crap he'd picked up from the motor carriers' lobbyist. But, when Wingerd gave us the advance press release this morning, I knew Mac must have had some early word, and it must have come from one of Roark's people." He laughed. "It damned sure didn't come from Jason Flowers." The Highway Commission chairman's animosity toward the Capitol-Press and all associated with it was widely known.

  "Other people in the Highway Department had to know about it, too," Cotton said. He started to tell Hall what McDaniels had said about the big story he was going to break, but checked the impulse. Suddenly he wanted to do some careful thinking about those drunken confidences and about McDaniels.

  "I didn't know him all that well," Cotton said. "I thought maybe he was still green on political reporting. You know-hearing some tip and getting excited before he checked it." McDaniels had to be green. Why else tell Cotton about his hot story? Why risk it? Because the booze made him friendly? Because in his drunkenness he was reaching out to touch someone-reaching with the only thing he had to offer? Cotton found the thought uncomfortable.

  "No," Hall said. "Merrill was a pro. A good digger."

  Cotton noticed that Hall, without seeming to do so, was also watching comings and goings on the House floor. "You think they're going to pull something?"

  Hall looked surprised. "What do you mean?"

  Cotton laughed. "You bastard. You know what I mean. You're just hoping it won't happen on my time."

  "It's already an A.M.'s story. But relax. Nothing's going to happen."

  The clerk's singsong voice worked its way through the final page of Roark's message. "... highways which are a disgrace to this great state and an increasing danger to the motoring public." The page boy handed Cotton a folded slip of paper. It read:

  Not for quote:

  1. We'll move for a double referral.

  2. The Clark people aren't playing.

  3. Probably not.

  Cotton looked at his watch. Nineteen minutes before his three-star-edition
deadline. He got up.

  "Just out of curiosity," Hall said, still drawing daggers, "are you screwing me out of my lead for tomorrow?"

  "Those are my intentions," Cotton said. "To do unto Leroy Hall what Leroy Hall has so often done to me."

  In the pressroom, Cotton didn't take time for the typewriter and editing. He punched the information directly into teletype tape and filed it.

  INSERT IN ROARK ROAD-FUND STORY, SUBS FOR SECOND PARAGRAPH. WHEN THE MAJORITY LEADER INTRODUCED THE GOVERNOR’S THREE-BILL PACKAGE, REPUBLICAN MEMBERS TRIED TO DELAY THE PLAN WITH A MOTION TO REFER THE BILLS TO WAYS AND MEANS COMMITTEE AS WELL AS THE TRANSPORTATION COMMITTEE.

  LACKING SUPPORT OF THE ANTI-ROARK DEMOCRATS IN THE HOUSE, THE MOTION SEEMED CERTAIN OF DEFEAT.

  Cotton signed the insert with the time and his initials and hurried back to the House chamber. He had put his neck out a mile. If things went as the Minority Leader said, the Tribune would have this development a cycle ahead of the Morning Journal-a fact which Managing Editor Ernie Danilov would remember about twenty-four hours. If something went awry, if for some reason the Republicans switched signals at the last moment, nobody would ever forget he had been wrong. The nervousness Cotton felt as he hurried down the corridor was a totally familiar feeling. Cotton and most of the other newsmen for the afternoon papers lived with it-took such calculated risks routinely, two or three times a week, during the high-pressure days of the legislative session. They wrote in the past tense at 1 P.M. of things that would happen at 3 P.M. The game demanded cool nerves, a savvy of the situation and an accurate judgment of news sources. But, if you didn't play it, the morning papers broke all the stories.

  The red light was shining on the KLAB-TV television camera in the balcony now and the Minority Leader had the floor mike. A young man with a thin face and long sideburns was in McDaniels's chair. Cotton didn't know him. "... an act of extreme discourtesy," the Minority Leader was saying. "This request is a reasonable request. If the Ways and Means Committee is to make sensible decisions on the financing of state programs it must have full information about all such programs. I do not say the refusal of Mr. Speaker to submit these bills to Ways and Means was made in bad faith. But I do commend to the honorable members of this house the thought that Mr. Speaker has acted without mature consideration." The rich sound of the Minority Leader's voice faltered and there were shouts of "Call the question" from a half-dozen scattered desks. The Minority Leader, Cotton noticed, was very much aware that the television camera was on and was reluctant to surrender the mike. Ulrich pounded once with his gavel.

  "I urge this honorable House to vote no on the motion," the Minority Leader said. He sat down.

  "Question to close debate been moved and seconded," Ulrich said. "All in favor. Opposed. Carried." He banged once with the gavel. "Motion's now to table the motion. All in..."

  "Explain the vote," the Majority Leader said.

  "Yes vote means we leave the bill only in the Highways Committee. No means we double-refer it," Ulrich said. "In favor say Aye."

  There was a roar of Ayes.

  "All opposed Nay."

  There was a roar of No's from the Republican side of the aisle. Cotton noticed the Clark Democrats didn't join the chorus. He wondered why not.

  "Ayes have it," Ulrich said. "Motion's tabled."

  Cotton looked at the Minority Leader, wondering if he would risk a roll call. The Minority Leader appeared engrossed in something he was reading. There would be no test of strength today. Again Cotton wondered why the Clark people had missed this opportunity.

  "Did you do it to me, Cousin John?" Hall asked.

  "Cousin Roy, I didn't leave you a crumb. You'll have to rewrite me."

  Ulrich was settling the House down to a long, routine afternoon of working its way through inconsequential bills waiting their fate on the calendar. Cotton moved down the table and sat in the AP chair next to the man with sideburns.

  "My name's Cotton. I guess you're replacing Merrill."

  "George Cherry," the man with sideburns said. "They pulled me off of general assignment until they can get a political man out here."

  "It was too bad about Merrill."

  "I hardly knew him," Cherry said. "Just saw him in the office now and then."

  Cotton stared out across the House floor. A representative was trying to explain a floor amendment he was proposing to some sort of insurance bill-a fat man with a fat, rusty voice. Across the immense, rococo shabbiness of the room, a swarm of grade-school children were being herded into the spectators' gallery by two teachers. Cotton was surprised at himself, and shocked. He was considering whether he should lie. If he did, it would be a professional lie, told to a fellow member of the brotherhood for professional reasons. It would therefore be a violation of taboo. Nothing was written about it in the pressroom rules, and nothing was said about it, ever. But it wasn't done. Reporters screwed one another when they could. The P.M.'s warred among themselves, and collectively against the morning-paper reporters; the AP-UPI vendetta resumed each day; and the name of the game was cutthroat. But the game had its rules. One evaded. One was secretive. One covered his tracks. But one didn't lie to another newsman. In a profession which risked a hundred mistakes in a working day, and published them on rotary presses, and saw years of being right destroyed by being wrong in one edition, the lie was too dangerous for tolerance.

  But now Cotton found himself considering it. It would be a small lie. Harmless and impossible to detect. Its purpose was not even entirely serious-a simple yen to satisfy curiosity. Cotton made no decision. A lie might not be necessary, or it might be fruitless.

  He would see.

  "Did you find Merrill's notebook?"

  "There were three or four in all that junk on his desk," Cherry said. "Which one?"

  "He would have had it with him when he fell. That night when he left, he forgot it and he sent some guy to get it for him."

  "I don't know anything about it," Cherry said. He looked at Cotton, his eyes neither friendly nor hostile. "Why?"

  The lie didn't form. Instead there was the acceptable mild evasion.

  "Merrill said he had some information he was going to give me for my column. Something he didn't want for a story. I figured it would be in his notebook."

  "What about?"

  "He didn't say," Cotton said. Either McDaniels had been working with his desk on the story or he had kept it to himself until he had a string around it. In the first case, Cherry would know all about it and would be interested in knowing if Cotton knew anything. In the second case, Cherry would know nothing at all and Cotton had no intention of alerting him.

  "Maybe our police reporter has it," Cherry said. "He picked up all of Merrill's stuff at the morgue. Billfold and all that. Gave it to Merrill's widow, I guess."

  "It's probably old stuff now, whatever it was," Cotton said. And then he changed the subject.

  3

  The Capitol-Press police reporter was a very young man named Addington with a sandy mustache and sandy eyebrows and pale blue eyes. "I don't think so," he said. "Let's see." He ticked the items off on his fingers.

  "A billfold, a bunch of keys in a key case, some coins, eighty-seven cents I think it was, glasses and a case for them, a handkerchief, two ballpoint pens, a comb." Addington's voice stopped. He thought. "A cigarette lighter, part of a pack of cigarettes, a pair of dice and a couple of those discs you get in one of those gas-station contests. There wasn't any notebook."

  "No notebook," Cotton said.

  "They didn't give me one."

  Cotton had found Addington sitting at a table in the central station interrogation room, working his way through the day's log of complaint calls. "I'll go ask the records sergeant," Addington said.

  Cotton stared at the half-finished pack of cigarettes Addington had left on the table. Eighteen days now since he had smoked, going on nineteen. Two of the cigarettes were half out of the pack. Cotton felt saliva forming in his mouth. He had matches in
his pocket. When Addington returned he would say, "I bummed one of your cigarettes," and Addington would think nothing of it. But then Cotton would be back on two and a half packs a day by tomorrow. And eighteen days of misery would be wasted. He looked away from the cigarettes. In a few minutes Addington would be back almost certainly with confirmation that there had been no notebook on McDaniels' body. Cotton would think about that when the time came. Now he thought about police-station interrogation rooms, which came in various shapes, colors and furnishings but which all managed, somehow, to look depressingly like this one.

  The light through the barred windows on the back wall changed suddenly from the gray of twilight to garish yellow as the lights over the police only parking lot went on. From somewhere down a corridor came the sudden clanging of a steel door closing. And then the faint animal smell, the universal odor of all jails. And with the smell the old, sore memory was with him again. The juvenile division officer saying: "Were you trying to kill him, John? Were you?" And his own voice repeating, "No, no. No. He was my friend." The interrogation room at Santa Fe had been about like this one-like all of them, everywhere. Grimly impersonal, devoid of comfort. Wooden chairs and the heavy table covered with vinyl cold under the forearms, and Charley Graff in St. Vincent's with a concussion and a broken jaw and his own knuckles cut and aching and his mind trying to find an answer to satisfy the officer.