He was trying, God knew he was trying. Bill had basically tried to camp out in the vicinity of Vice, going there at all sorts of odd hours, but he still hadn’t dug up any dirt on Alex Markov. At least nothing that hadn’t been heard before.
It didn’t help that Markov’s security team was on to him. He’d tried to sneak in a couple of times over the past two days but had been escorted out promptly. They knew his face too well. There were days when he imagined they had his picture pinned up in the security office. Wade Kennedy and his fellow goons probably threw darts at it on their breaks.
He needed to step up his game.
He knocked on Leon’s open door. “You wanted to see me, boss?”
Leon barely glanced up from his laptop. “Come in. Shut the door.”
Bill shut it. This couldn’t be good. Leon always kept the door open.
“Take a seat, Bill.”
As he pulled up a chair, it squeaked on the floor, making him wince.
The editor made a steeple of his hands and hit him with his laser glare of death. “You promised me a story on Markov. Where is it?”
“I’m working on it.”
“You’ve been working on it for months, but all you’ve brought me is photos of the man walking through Vice, and not even good ones at that. Not exactly incriminating evidence.”
“This is the sort of story that takes time. I’m building up a relationship of trust between me and a couple of the employees.”
“Bullshit. I hear you can’t even get through the door anymore.”
Bill hung his head. He had no real explanations for why this wasn’t clicking. It never used to be this way. When he was a younger man, his journalistic exploits were legendary in this town. He was the one who’d discovered the actress Eleanor Fisher was cheating on her doctor husband with a male stripper. The woman was a Hollywood outcast now thanks to his photos, and rightly so. If you were going to flaunt your ass all over the Strip, you deserved every moment of shame that followed. He didn’t take her to that nudie bar. He wasn’t the one who told her to get plastered. He just took the pictures.
And what about that time he outed Dr. Mike Flanagan, the respected Vegas plastic surgeon? The LGBTQ community had been up in arms about him outing the man. Tell that to his long-suffering wife of thirty years.
Bill was good at his job and it was for one basic reason. He understood that every person who walked the planet was dirty. Scratch anyone’s polished veneer and you’d see the pile of ugly secrets underneath. Everyone had a story, and most of them were vile.
“Are you seriously wasting my time by daydreaming in my office?”
His editor’s reprimand brought him back to harsh awareness.
“I need you to give up this ridiculous idea that Markov is hiding bodies somewhere in his luxury hotel and get me a real story.”
“But it is a real story. I’ve been in touch with the Dean family numerous times. They said—”
“The Dean family needs to move on and so do you. If you do talk to them, maybe suggest some grief counseling or anger management. I don’t know and I don’t care. I’m not in the business of fixing people here.”
“But—”
Leon silenced him with a hand and then opened one of his desk drawers. He pulled out a familiar bottle of vodka.
As a terrible thirst made Bill’s tongue sweat, he dragged his eyes from the bottle and played dumb. “We having a drink?”
“Bill, this was found in your desk.”
“What? No. Not my desk.”
“I found it myself.”
When perspiration erupted on Bill’s forehead, he realized playing dumb might not be the best tactic. He mustered up some righteous indignation. “You went through my stuff?”
“Oh. Did you expect privacy here? Shame. I guess you thought you were working forThe Washington Postor something.”
“Give it back.”
