The Panic Zone Part 4

"I'm sorry, have we met?" he asked her.

The tanned woman was in her early thirties, wearing a print shirt and white slacks. She had short blond hair and a cool hand when Gannon shook it.

"Sally Turner, Caracas Bureau. The grump on the phone is Hugh Porter from our Buenos Aires Bureau."

Porter extended his hand while remaining on his call. Gannon shook it then saw the second TV cut back to news.

"Jack," Archer said, "are you aware of the WPA policy about reporters granting interviews to other reporters?"

Gannon shook his head, keeping his attention on the TV screens.

"We don't comment on the news," Archer said.

"Well, now we are the news, Frank. I didn't say anything wrong. Besides, my instructions from you were to go to the scene and press the lead investigators for information and that's what I did."

"What did you get from Estralla?" Porter asked after finishing his call.

"Att.i.tude."

"Anything to contribute to our story?" Archer asked.

Gannon didn't answer. He was watching the news reports on the TV screens, footage of him talking with the detectives. Archer turned on the sound and Gannon heard his English dubbed into Portuguese. Then he saw his name in the graphic at the bottom, Journalista de Jack Gannon, Alianca da Imprensa do Mundo.

Gannon scrutinized the TV images. He was missing something.

"Jack," Archer said, "anything for the story? We have to file to New York."

"No."

"I didn't expect anything." Archer turned to the others. "Porter?"

"My source in Bogota says one of the victims is Angella Roho-Ruiz, daughter of Paulo Roho-Ruiz, a high-ranking member of a powerful Colombian cartel."

"That fits with what I'm picking up," Turner said. "This is a retaliatory hit arising from a debt or vendetta with a gang from one of the favelas."

"Angella Roho-Ruiz had to be Gabriela's source," Porter said.

"You know that for a fact?" Gannon asked.

"Not yet."

"Do you know for certain that Gabriela even met this Angella?"

"What is this, Gannon?"

"You've ruled out other possibilities, like this source Gabriela was supposed to meet, or didn't meet."

"What do you know about anything?" Porter said. "You've been here all of what, a few hours?"

"Hold off, Hugh." Archer turned to Gannon. "Jack, we talked about this. Gabriela was not lured to the cafe. She chose it, which is our practice when meeting sources. It's possible that Angella Roho-Ruiz was followed and targeted at her meeting with Gabriela."

"You're making a.s.sumptions. You haven't confirmed if Gabriela met her source or who her source is, or was. You're a.s.suming that since Angella Roho-Ruiz is among the dead, then she must have been the source and this was a narco hit."

"Listen, Jack, right now, everything points to narco terrorists," Archer said. "Angella Roho-Ruiz comes from a mighty cartel. At this level, this kind of bombing is their signature."

"Is it?" Gannon asked.

"It is," Porter said. "But you wouldn't know that, coming from Buffalo."

"f.u.c.k you."

"Hey!" Archer said. "Everybody, dial it down. We're all p.i.s.sed off and on edge over Gabriela and Marcelo, so let's just dial it down and work."

Archer gave Gannon names and phone numbers of employees at businesses near the bombing. Most were still operating. Then Archer and the others went back to concentrate on the story.

With Luiz's help, Gannon spent the rest of the day mining the list for a break. Other than hearing the explosion and seeing the chaotic response, no one had witnessed anything unusual, leaving Gannon to figure Archer just wanted him out of the way.

After they'd filed, Archer, Porter and Turner left to interview security officials and other sources for new information. They returned at the end of the day and filed another update. Then they invited Gannon to an early dinner in Santa Teresa. The restaurant was in a colonial building on a narrow, curving palm-lined street. They monitored their cell phones and BlackBerries while they ate. After the meal, they all drank, except for Gannon.

He wasn't a drinker.

"Are you curious," Porter turned to Gannon after his fourth beer "as to why everyone's giving you a hard time?"

Gannon shrugged.

"Down here, we bleed for our stories. We've all stared down the barrel of a gun. We've all faced jail, abduction, threats, intimidation and beatings."

"The thing is," Turner said, "we know about your hiring and the bit of stink around your situation at your former rag, the Buffalo Sentinel."

"Is that right?"

Turner bobbed her head in a big alcohol-laden nod.

"You should be glad you're not working there anymore," Porter said. "The print newspaper industry is melting. But the WPA will survive as one of the world's biggest online content providers.... I digress."

"You digress," Archer agreed.

"Jack," Porter put his arm around Gannon. "We heard about your little adventure story about that cop out of Buffalo that impressed Melody so much that, despite everyone's advice to the contrary, she hired you. And from what we understand, the story was more luck than journalism."

Gannon shook his head, smiling at their inebriated arrogance.

"You guys are good."

"Well," Porter chuckled, "we are." He pointed to Archer, Turner and himself. "All Pulitzer winners, pal."

"It's amazing that you know what I went through for my 'little adventure story' sitting all the way down here in South America, because I didn't b.u.mp into any Pulitzer winners while I was living it. In fact, it was the WPA who begged me to help its reporters."

"Loosen up." Porter slapped Gannon's back. "Giving the rookie a hard time is a right of pa.s.sage. Ain't that right, Sally?"

The three drinkers raised their gla.s.ses, laughed, then bought another round to honor their dead friends as the afternoon morphed into a wake of teary tributes to Gabriela and Marcelo, leaving Gannon alone with his thoughts.

He withdrew into his memories of growing up a blue-collar kid in Buffalo where his mother was a waitress and his father worked in a factory that made rope. He remembered how his big sister, Cora, got their parents to buy him a used computer and encouraged him to write and pursue his dream of being a journalist.

You're going to be a great writer some day.... I see it in your eyes. You don't let go. You don't give up....

Gannon worshipped Cora, but they grew apart. She got into trouble with drugs before she ran away from home. Over the years, while he graduated from college and got a job as a staff reporter at the Sentinel, his parents tried to find her.

At times Gannon would push aside his anger and search for Cora himself.

Always in vain.

While he gave up, his parents never stopped trying, right up until they were killed when a drunk driver slammed into their car just over a year ago.

Gannon had no other family.

No wife, no girlfriend. He was alone in the world.

But that was fine with him, he thought, glimpsing himself on the Globo TV news report on the set over the bar. As it played, he studied the few seconds of footage of the scene and the breeze kicking up ash.

That's when it hit him. The piece he'd been missing.

"Excuse me," he said to the others. "It's been a long day, I'd like to head back to my hotel." He pulled several bills from his pocket and left them on the table.

Turner plucked out a couple and put them back in his hand.

"Tomorrow--" Porter started a new beer "--they may have the complete victim list. We'll work on that."

"You get to your hotel while it's still light out, Jack," Archer said. "This town isn't safe after dark. You remember what to tell your taxi driver?"

"Hotel de nove palmas."

"Good."

But five minutes later, when Gannon got into a cab, he told the driver to take him to the Cafe Amaldo, the A Zona da Matanca. Returning to the blast area, he saw police officers still protecting the scene while a few forensic people continued to work. Most of the news crews had left.

He walked along the fringes, wondering why the experts ignored a basic rule by not protecting transient physical evidence. All day long, the wind had been lifting ash and papers from the blast site.

The stuff had been carried along on a virtual flight path.

Sloppy police work, he thought. It helped explain why Rio's homicide clearance rate was around 3 percent, while the average back home was about 65. Using what he'd seen at the site, and on the TV footage, to guide him, Gannon figured that most of the material had ended up in the alley across the street from the cafe.

Although police were present, the alley was not sealed. The narrow pa.s.sage between the tall buildings was vacant and dark, but there was enough natural light remaining. Gannon's pulse quickened.

A number of papers were on the pavement among other debris, or pressed to the walls. He began collecting them. Were they from the blast? Who knew? He'd study every one he could find.

"Hey! Que voce esta fazendo la?" a voice boomed down the alley. He was in trouble.

"Que voce esta fazendo la?"

The voice was now closer; two figures were approaching from a distance. Gannon turned and walked in the opposite direction.

"Batente!"

The figures were moving faster, Gannon's breathing quickened and he started a fast trot.

"Policia! Batente agora!"

His heart pounding, Gannon ran from the alley.

Don't let the police get near you.

He cut across a busy street to a large hotel, entered the lobby and rushed through it, finding a rear exit that opened to an ornate gurgling fountain, which led to a plaza.

Sirens echoed through the city.

Were they for him?

Fueled by adrenaline, he kept moving.

Without looking back he hurried around the plaza's statues. Two or three blocks away, the lights of a theater, nightclubs and restaurants glittered in the dusk. He slipped into the crowds on the sidewalk and made his way toward the restaurants until he saw a taxi.

The driver was in his fifties, wearing a white cap. Gannon neared the cab, pointing at it then himself. The driver nodded, making the small silver cross on the chain around his neck sway a little.

"Hotel de nove palmas," Gannon said after getting in the back.

The taxi pulled away. No police were in sight.

As Gannon's breathing settled, he a.n.a.lyzed the situation. All he'd done was gather trash from a public street in an unsealed area near a crime scene.

Still, if Estralla learned of it, it would be disastrous.

Gannon dragged the back of his hand over his moist brow and glimpsed the driver's eyes studying him in the rearview mirror. Gannon felt a small ache in his right hand. He was still gripping the papers, a sheaf nearly half an inch thick.

As the cab worked its way through Centro, Gannon inserted his earpiece into his digital recorder and played Gabriela's last message, cuing up the key aspect.

"...I got a call from an anonymous woman who claims to have a big story and doc.u.ments for us. I set up a meeting at the Cafe Amaldo..."

Gannon replayed "and doc.u.ments for us," several times.

If Gabriela met her source, and if that source brought records, then it's possible the blast scattered some of them to the street.

Those doc.u.ments could be in his hands now.

A few of the papers were charred. Some had burned edges.

They had to have come from the blast.

Gannon caught his breath when he stopped at one page.