City of Endless Night (Pendergast #17)(54)
First and foremost was the murder of Dr. Wansie Adeyemi. Ever since his interview on America’s Morning the day before, Harriman had been the toast of the town, his every prognostication taken as gospel. It had been a wonderfully heady feeling. And so this new murder, tragic as it was, had been like a sucker punch to his gut. On the face of it, the beheading—and in particular the nature of the victim—seemed to have nothing in common with the earlier deaths. And therein lay the rub. Harriman realized that his command of the Decapitator story depended on the upholding of his theory. He’d already gotten three calls from his editor that day, asking if he’d dug up the dirt yet.
The dirt. That dirt was precisely what he needed—the skeletons in the closet of this saintly woman, this Mother Teresa, who had just won a Nobel Peace Prize. There had to be skeletons, he reasoned—nothing else made sense. And so in the hours that followed news of Adeyemi’s death, he’d launched on a desperate search for that sordid but well-hidden past: doing deep background, talking to everyone he could find who knew anything about her, pressuring people, demanding they reveal what he was certain they were hiding. And as he did so—aware that he was making a terrific nuisance of himself—he was acutely aware that if he couldn’t dig up anything on the woman, then his theory, his credibility, and his command of the story would be in jeopardy.
In the middle of this frantic search, he’d received a cryptic note from Ozmian, asking him to drop by his office that afternoon at three. “I have important information regarding your effort,” the note had read—nothing more.
Harriman was well aware of Ozmian’s reputation as a ruthless entrepreneur. Ozmian was probably pissed off he had interviewed his ex-wife, Izolda, and surely he was angry about all the shit about his daughter Harriman had published in the Post. Well, he’d dealt with angry people before. He expected this meeting with Ozmian to be similar, one long screaming session. So much the better—everything was on the record unless it was specifically excluded. Most people didn’t realize that when dealing with the press, and in fury they often made outrageous—and highly quotable—statements. But if on the other hand Ozmian did have “important information”—perhaps regarding his search for Adeyemi’s dark past—he dared not pass up the chance to get it.
He stepped out as the elevator doors opened onto the top floor of the DigiFlood tower, announced himself to the waiting secretary, then allowed himself to be led by a flunky through one soaring space after another until he at last reached a pair of massive birchwood doors, with a smaller door set into one of them. The flunky knocked; a “come in” was heard from beyond; the door was opened; Harriman entered; and the flunky retreated backward as one might when in the presence of a monarch, closing the door behind him.
Harriman found himself in a severely decorated corner office, with a magnificent view overlooking the Battery and One World Trade Center. A figure was sitting behind a vast, tomb-like desk of black granite. He recognized the thin, ascetic features of Anton Ozmian. The man looked back at him, expressionless, his eyes barely blinking, like a hawk’s.
Several chairs were arranged in front of the desk. In one of them sat a woman. She didn’t look corporate to him—she was a little too casually, if stylishly, dressed—and he wondered what she was doing in his office. Girlfriend? But the faint smile playing about her lips seemed to suggest something else.
Ozmian motioned Harriman to one of the other chairs, and the reporter took a seat.
The room fell into silence. The two kept their eyes trained on Harriman in a way that quickly became unsettling. When it seemed apparent neither one planned on saying anything, Harriman spoke up.
“Mr. Ozmian,” he said, “I received your note, and I understand you have information that is relevant to my current investigation—”
“Your ‘current investigation,’” Ozmian said. His tone was flat, emotionless, like his eyes. “Let’s not waste time. Your current investigation has subjected my daughter to the vilest slanders. Not only that, but you have sullied her character in a manner by which she—from beyond the grave—cannot defend herself. I, therefore, will defend her myself.”
This was about what Harriman had expected to hear, only in a more controlled fashion. “Mr. Ozmian,” he said, “I reported the facts. Simple as that.”
“Facts can and should be reported in a fair and impartial way,” Ozmian said. “Calling my daughter a person ‘of no redeeming value’ and saying ‘the world would be better off if she were dead’ is not reporting. It is character assassination.”
Harriman was about to respond when the entrepreneur abruptly rose from his desk, stepped around it, and took a seat in a chair next to him, sandwiching the reporter between Ozmian and the woman.
“Mr. Harriman, I’d like to think I’m a reasonable man,” Ozmian went on. “If you will guarantee not to say or write another word against my daughter—if you will simply pen a few positive things about her to mitigate the harm you’ve caused—then we need say no more about it. I won’t even ask you to directly recant the scurrilous lies you’ve already bandied about.”
This was surprisingly mild, thought Harriman, even if he was offended at the implication he could be influenced like this. “I’m sorry, but I have to report the news as I see it, and I can’t play favorites because somebody’s feelings might be hurt. I know it’s not pleasant to hear, but there’s nothing I reported about your late daughter that wasn’t true.”