Deadline for Lenny Stern Peter Marabell (best ereader for comics .TXT) 📖

to generate publicity. We wrap it up in Chicago, and that’s the official publication date. Copies will be everywhere then.”

“Especially in the Midwest?” AJ said.

Lenny nodded.

“Do you have the evidence, the documents themselves?” I said.

Lenny nodded. “In a safe place. Only two people have ever seen the documents: Tina, and Kate Hubbell, my editor at Gloucester.”

“What about Bigelow?” I said.

“No, not even him.”

“Why’d you hold them back,” I said, “why not use them for publicity?”

“Mobsters have long memories,” Lenny said. “The mob’s into a lot of things. They can reach a lot of people. If anything happens to me, my attorney gives them to Bigelow.”

“Three crime families ran the town in those days,” I said. “And one of them bribed the prosecutor.”

“Yep,” Lenny said. “If they knew for sure I had the documents, they’d offer the right price, get someone to steal them from me, and, bam, gone. Suddenly, everybody’s safe … so I held them back.”

“How about that,” AJ said. “You pissed off the mob. Nice going.”

“There’re a few public officials who don’t want to see their names in print either. If the documents are destroyed, everyone has plausible deniability no matter what I put in a book.”

I tapped the file on AJ’s desk.

“Tell me about the threats,” I said. “I’ll read the file later, I want to hear it from you.”

“The emails were first, then text messages and voicemails,” Lenny said. “Threatened to beat the shit out of me, burn my car, that kind of thing. I’ve been threatened before. Usually nothing happens. If the bad guys really want to hurt you they don’t give a heads-up.”

Lenny’s reputation was based on years of experience. He had trusted sources in Emmet, Charlevoix, and Cheboygan counties. Little of importance happened in the northern tip of the state that he didn’t know — and often write — about.

“Then two guys, young punks, surprised me one night, stood me up against the car and gave my ribs a working over.”

“You connected that to the book?” AJ said.

“Had to. One of them said I was sticking my nose where it didn’t belong. I wasn’t working on anything else at the time.”

“Recognize them?” I said.

Lenny shook his head. “No. Kids in their late teens, early twenties. I’ll know them if I see them again.”

“What did the cops have to say?” AJ said.

“Not much,” Lenny said. “They figured it for a street crime. You know, beat on an old guy for fun.”

“Have they come after you again?” I said.

“Nah. But, you know, it feels like someone’s following me. Where I ate lunch, when I went to the post office. I started looking over my shoulder. Checked my junk mail, Twitter feed, Facebook. Took my laptop and phone to Gilbert.”

“Who’s that?” I said.

“Deshawn Gilbert,” AJ said. “The paper’s teenage techy.”

“Maury hired a student to work on your computers?” I said.

“He’s a dropout,” AJ said. “Seventeen-year-old Black kid who lives in Oden.”

“Seriously?”

“Kid’s a genius. Worked on the loading dock. Volunteered to fix the bugs in our network. He did. Maury fired the computer company and hired Gilbert.”

“He find anything in your devices?” I asked Lenny.

“Nothing. Emails and texts couldn’t be traced. Gilbert said they were ‘unhackable,’ his word.”

“The ‘deep web’ in action?” I said.

“Guess so,” Lenny said. “Threats kept coming. They’ve been more specific the closer we get to publication day.”

“Curious the threats started before publication was announced,” I said.

“Sure is,” Lenny said.

“Your publisher’s based in Chicago, right?”

“Yeah.”

“Is that where Bigelow and Lawson work?”

“And 250 others.”

“Could be a leak somewhere,” I said.

Lenny nodded. “Gloucester hires media people, production, printers, transportation. Lot of people involved that don’t work for Gloucester.”

“You call the cops about the threats?”

“The sheriff, yeah. Full report. That’s when Maury alerted Bigelow. He landed in town a couple of days later and took over.”

Lenny looked at his watch. “Look, I have to be in Harbor Springs in a little while.”

“The city manager interview?” AJ said.

“Yeah,” he said, and stood to leave.

“I’ll probably have more questions after I read the file,” I said, “and we need to talk about the book tour.”

“You going with me?”

“Only way to keep your ass out of harm’s way,” I said.

“If you say so.”

“I do say so, and by the way …”

“Yeah?”

“Why’d the other guy quit?”

“Bigelow’s bodyguard?”

I nodded.

“I wouldn’t do what he told me.”

3

“Do we really sound like a married couple?” AJ said.

“Lenny seems to think so.”

“Do other people think so?”

I shrugged.

“Hold on a second.” AJ got up and shut the office door.

“If you want to know the truth,” I said, “I really don’t think about it.”

“We don’t talk about us all that often,” AJ said. “We did that all the time in the early days.”

“We were adjusting to each other back then. We don’t really have many issues to talk about these days.”

“Or argue about.”

“That’s a good thing,” I said.

“Most of the time.”

“Most of the time?”

“Sometimes it’s good to argue things out, Michael. We do it when we need to.”

“Yeah, I know,” I said, “but Lenny was talking about something else, I think.”

“Because we sounded married,” AJ said.

“Uh-huh.”

“Who was the last one to bring up getting married?”

“I was,” I said.

“You were? You remember that?”

“When Frank almost died.”

Frank Marshall was a retired Chicago investigator. He was also friend, a mentor, the closet thing I had to an older brother. Five years ago, he was gunned down one rainy October night on the streets of Petoskey.

AJ nodded slowly. “That was a rough time. You spent a lot of it with Frank and Ellen.”

Ellen Paxton was Frank Marshall’s wife and confidante.

“I saw marriage differently after that,” I said, “watching them under all the stress.”

“Do Frank and Ellen sound like a married couple?” AJ said.

“Never thought about it, so …”

A knock on the office door.

“Come on in,” AJ said.

Tina Lawson came through the door and closed it behind her.

“Hope you don’t mind,” she said. “Lenny told me you were here.”

AJ pointed at a chair and Tina sat down.

“I’ll just be a minute,” she said. “I don’t want to interrupt.”

“You’re not,” AJ said.

“I’m worried,” Tina