Read Online Drive Time by Hank Phillippi Ryan - Free Book Online Page A

of unrecognizably blurry figures waiting at elevators and walking down the institutional hallways of the Park Plaza state office building. As the three of us approach, the guard reluctantly puts down the greasy-looking paperback he’s reading. He’s curled the cover around to the back to hide the title.
    “We’re going to the Mass Pike offices, room 1504,” I say, filling my voice with confidence. I don’t tell him we have an appointment with Massachusetts Turnpike mogul David Chernin. Because that’s not true. We have no appointment at all. We’re just attempting to insinuate ourselves upstairs. If we fail, we’ll be escorted to the down escalator and out into the overpriced food court.
    An hour ago, Gabe showed us a tiny blue Mustang. Here’s where we might track down the real one. We’ve got to at least try.
    “Synneer,” the guard says. His plastic name tag says Bill Bevan. With a stubby finger, Bevan spins one of the notebooks in our general direction. “Idees.”
    “Sure, of course.” I give the guys a surreptitious thumbs-up, and flash my driver’s license instead of my station ID. If this guy is the slacker he seems, we may be able to keep people from confirming we were here. I sign on the next available line, although I write Tina Marie Turner instead of my real name. Franklin, nodding his understanding, signs Don Ameche. J.T. signs an illegible scrawl, keeping his camera low and out of sight.
    Bevan “analyzes” our signatures without a blink. So much for security.
    Just as I’m certain we’re in the clear, the guard, whose pinkish scalp is attempting to burst through his invisible hair and whose neck flab is encroaching on the collar of his blue uniform, narrows his eyes at me. Unfortunately, I then get to see his teeth.
    “You that TV girl,” Bevan says. The smile evaporates and he begins to reach for an enormous phone console covered with push buttons. “Maybe I should call.”
    “Hey, man, cool setup,” J.T. interrupts. He unzips his black parka, hoists his camera onto the desk, then points toward the monitors. “You got surveillance video there? You got tape, or digital? How many eyes? Is it a VTR-54B? How do you recon the scenes?”
    Apparently, the security guard isn’t much of a multitasker. He abandons the phone and focuses on J.T. My photographer, I’m willing to bet, is talking complete nonsense.
    But J.T.’s suddenly a team player.
    “Show me your setup, dude,” J.T. says. As the guardturns back to his monitors, J.T. cocks his head at us. In the direction of the elevators. “Go,” he mouths.
     
     
    David Chernin owes me big and he knows it. When he and his wife got some horrible stomach bug on their tenth-anniversary cruise a few years ago, he called me to do a refund battle with their uncooperative travel agency. Companies get very nervous when they hear “This is Charlie McNally from Channel 3.” I managed to get all their money back. Although I never expect a quid pro quo for just doing my job, that fact places Franklin and me in a very nice negotiating position.
    When he’s not on a cruise, Chernin is the computer guru of the Mass Turnpike’s toll enforcement division. After we promised not to tell where we got the info, he agreed to show us photos he probably shouldn’t.
    “Nope,” Chernin says, pointing. “Nope. Nope.”
    We’re watching black-and-white images flicker by on Chernin’s flat-screen monitor. We’re hoping to see a Mustang, just like the Matchbox car Gabriel Ross showed us, though of course we won’t be able to tell if it’s blue. Each photo, snapped automatically by the surveillance cameras mounted at all three tollbooths, displays the license plate of a car that blew through the tolls without paying around the time of the accident. If the driver we’re looking for paid the toll, in cash or with an electronic transponder, there won’t be a picture. But I’m predicting he was too freaked out and driving too fast to pay cash.
    “Nope.