Read Online Every Brilliant Eye by Loren D. Estleman - Free Book Online Page A
Authors: Loren D. Estleman
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Barry’s typescript. Paged through it, stopping here and there to read.
I am sitting in a hollow bunker with an ARVN who has spent two tours here. We are not talking, conserving ourselves in the heat, when one of the new Cobras clatters overhead at treetop level, thorny with machine guns and rocket launchers, raising dust and dead leaves. Particles fly into our eyes and tears join the sweat on our chins.
“I always did hate choppers,” says the ARVN, thumbing off the safety on his M-16.
The M-16’s muzzle velocity is not great. In the echo of the sloppy action’s rattle we hear distinctly the clanking of the bullets striking the Cobra’s armor plate.
The helicopter hovers, seeming to shudder, more from surprise than from pain. The blades change pitch, the tail rotates, and the machine’s squat nose, splotched brown and green, swings around, its cannon and Gatlings trained on our little bunker.
For a time the earth ceases to turn. The great steel dragonfly floats on air as thick as bath water, swaying a little, not enough to hinder its aim. We remain unmoving.
After a minute—it seems much longer—the Cobra turns and resumes its flight. The beating of the blades recedes into a steady thrum, and long seconds pass before we know we are hearing it no longer.
We breathe.
My fingers were making the sheet crackle. I laid it down gently and moved my cigarette over to the tray on the desk and broke off a column of ash reaching clear back to the filter tip. Then I got up and cracked the window. September air trailed cool fingers into the office. I burned some fresh tobacco and watched the traffic flashing past down West River through the little gap between the comer of my building and the gravel-strewn roof of the lower one next door. I watched the cars until they looked like cars and not like armed helicopters. Then I sat down again and drew out the copied newspaper clippings and dialed Barry’s number at the News. The telephone rang seven times before Dutt speared it.
“Still think the place is going to blow up without music?” I asked.
“No, I just can’t work around a mess I didn’t make personally. Anyway, the Detroit bomb squad swung through and chased the goblins out from under the bed and Spengler took away the stack.”
“I hope you wished him luck with it.”
“He should rupture himself lugging the stuff over to the City-County Building. What’s keeping me from another column about yet another black playwright whose titles won’t fit on any marquee in the city?”
“Your byline is on one of those pieces about body drops at Metro and on that feature thing about the labor leader, whatsizname, Kindnagel,” I said. “Any of the others yours?”
“No, those were strictly blotter. Kids come in fresh from journalism school and a viewing of All the President’s Men and the editor hands them a rape in a student parking lot at Wayne State. I’ve got my notes on those two I wrote right here. What do you need?”
I paused. “That cop thing again?”
“Reporter’s instinct. They pass it out at the graduation ceremony in the obituary department, or they used to. I figured you’d call after you had a chance to look at the stuff.”
“What’s the tariff?”
“Same as before. An exclusive if anything comes of it, or I collect another time.”
“Eminently fair. They ever identify that John Doe at the airport?”
“About a week later. It was a hot news day, my follow-up got bumped. Woman named Pearl Cochran from Lathrup Village positived him at the county cold room.” Paper rustled on his end. “Philip Anthony Niles. Her brother. Ran a body shop in Royal Oak, along with a tab with one of the friendly finance boys downtown, a Cuban named—I like this—Amigo Fuentes. Police took him down and cut him loose after forty-eight hours. He was out of town that week.”
“He still in business?”
“You’re asking me, Entertainment? All I know is he was managing a junkyard at Fourteenth and
I am sitting in a hollow bunker with an ARVN who has spent two tours here. We are not talking, conserving ourselves in the heat, when one of the new Cobras clatters overhead at treetop level, thorny with machine guns and rocket launchers, raising dust and dead leaves. Particles fly into our eyes and tears join the sweat on our chins.
“I always did hate choppers,” says the ARVN, thumbing off the safety on his M-16.
The M-16’s muzzle velocity is not great. In the echo of the sloppy action’s rattle we hear distinctly the clanking of the bullets striking the Cobra’s armor plate.
The helicopter hovers, seeming to shudder, more from surprise than from pain. The blades change pitch, the tail rotates, and the machine’s squat nose, splotched brown and green, swings around, its cannon and Gatlings trained on our little bunker.
For a time the earth ceases to turn. The great steel dragonfly floats on air as thick as bath water, swaying a little, not enough to hinder its aim. We remain unmoving.
After a minute—it seems much longer—the Cobra turns and resumes its flight. The beating of the blades recedes into a steady thrum, and long seconds pass before we know we are hearing it no longer.
We breathe.
My fingers were making the sheet crackle. I laid it down gently and moved my cigarette over to the tray on the desk and broke off a column of ash reaching clear back to the filter tip. Then I got up and cracked the window. September air trailed cool fingers into the office. I burned some fresh tobacco and watched the traffic flashing past down West River through the little gap between the comer of my building and the gravel-strewn roof of the lower one next door. I watched the cars until they looked like cars and not like armed helicopters. Then I sat down again and drew out the copied newspaper clippings and dialed Barry’s number at the News. The telephone rang seven times before Dutt speared it.
“Still think the place is going to blow up without music?” I asked.
“No, I just can’t work around a mess I didn’t make personally. Anyway, the Detroit bomb squad swung through and chased the goblins out from under the bed and Spengler took away the stack.”
“I hope you wished him luck with it.”
“He should rupture himself lugging the stuff over to the City-County Building. What’s keeping me from another column about yet another black playwright whose titles won’t fit on any marquee in the city?”
“Your byline is on one of those pieces about body drops at Metro and on that feature thing about the labor leader, whatsizname, Kindnagel,” I said. “Any of the others yours?”
“No, those were strictly blotter. Kids come in fresh from journalism school and a viewing of All the President’s Men and the editor hands them a rape in a student parking lot at Wayne State. I’ve got my notes on those two I wrote right here. What do you need?”
I paused. “That cop thing again?”
“Reporter’s instinct. They pass it out at the graduation ceremony in the obituary department, or they used to. I figured you’d call after you had a chance to look at the stuff.”
“What’s the tariff?”
“Same as before. An exclusive if anything comes of it, or I collect another time.”
“Eminently fair. They ever identify that John Doe at the airport?”
“About a week later. It was a hot news day, my follow-up got bumped. Woman named Pearl Cochran from Lathrup Village positived him at the county cold room.” Paper rustled on his end. “Philip Anthony Niles. Her brother. Ran a body shop in Royal Oak, along with a tab with one of the friendly finance boys downtown, a Cuban named—I like this—Amigo Fuentes. Police took him down and cut him loose after forty-eight hours. He was out of town that week.”
“He still in business?”
“You’re asking me, Entertainment? All I know is he was managing a junkyard at Fourteenth and
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