Andrew Riley sat on a stool at the bar, an empty shot glass by his hand and a bottle of Budweiser he was working his way through. He had been at the business of getting drunk for a while and had managed to dull the edge of his anger a little.
It still bit hard every time he thought of the camera in the FedEx bag he would never see again and the humiliation of having made the front page looking like a jerk. A copy of the Washington Star had been passed from hand to hand in the crowded bar, and some of the regulars had bought him drinks and slapped his back.
Jordan’s was a sports bar off Elliott Avenue; it had signed Mariners and Seahawks pictures on the walls and framed newspaper articles written by reporters who got drunk there from time to time.
After being dragged out of the Sinclair house by Detective Alice Madison, he had stayed on the lawn and bitched with a colleague. Standing on the balls of his feet, he had seen the bodies being taken away and had gazed after the ME vans until they had disappeared in traffic.
Back home he had quickly changed out of the FedEx uniform, grabbed his camera bag with the Leica and the Olympus and their different lenses, and practically run out of the house. He couldn’t bear to be in it. Driving toward downtown, he had called his agency and a friend at the Star.
Steamed up in his car, he had waited for hours to get a picture of a Hollywood actress who was shooting a movie in town. He saw her and snapped her and e-mailed the agency, and all the time he thought only of the three minutes he had spent inside 1135 Blue Ridge. Then he had gone to the bar.
The guy sitting on his right had been talking to him, his voice reaching him through the cheers of the crowd watching the game on cable and his own disordered thoughts.
“What it is, it’s a hawks game.”
What the hell was a hawk’s game?
Riley rubbed his eyes with his fists like a child. His companion was a couple of decades older than he was, with a good suit and an expensive watch. He made a circling motion with his right index finger, and the bartender nodded and brought them both fresh drinks.
Riley downed the shot in one, turned to the suit, his left elbow on the bar, and tried to concentrate on what the man was saying. A whole load of nothing, he thought.
He had not seen the door open or the man walk in, find a way through the crowd, order a Coke, and lean on the bar behind him, his eyes on the game.
More often than not it’s what you don’t know that keeps you safe. Andrew Riley would never be so close to the making of his own death as he was at that moment, sad and frustrated, talking to a stranger in a noisy bar.
“Do you know who Weegee was?” Riley asked, referencing a famous street photographer from the 1940s.
“Who?”
“Never mind.”
Alcohol made him melancholy, and he’d rather be angry. He did not feel the eyes scanning the crowd behind him, then resting back on the game. A loud cheer and clapping—somebody somewhere had done good work on the field.
The telephone behind the bar rang, and the bartender picked up, the flat of his hand against his other ear.
“Riley,” he said, and he held the receiver out to him.
He occasionally got calls there.
“Riley here.”
Nothing. There was noise and crackle; he wasn’t sure whether it came from the telephone or from the headache pushing against the inside of his eyes.
“Hello?”
The line went dead.
“Shit!” He replaced the receiver and finished his beer in one long draw. He could smell old sweat and cigarette smoke on the fleece top he was wearing, and it almost made him gag.
“Nice talking to you, man,” he said, and he put a couple of bills on the bar. He was wearing a heavy mountain jacket from REI with down-filled lining and Velcro straps on the wrists. He patted the inside pocket, where he had tucked his Olympus. Like an off-duty police officer, he always carried a weapon.
He made his way through the crowd and a moment later was standing in the freezing cold. He had left his car in an alley on the side of the building, where staff parked. No more than three seconds away from a quick drive home and a long sleep.
“Riley.” The voice came out of the darkness behind him.
“Yeah?” He started to turn, and something hit him hard on the side of the face. A pain so sharp, it knocked the breath out of him. And again, before he could put his hands up and fall to the ground on his knees. He couldn’t breathe; he couldn’t see. He put his arms around his head. He felt hands patting him down. His face was on the wet concrete, rough against his bloody cheek.
The man took the camera from his inside pocket, wrapped the strap around his own hand, and slammed it against the brick wall just above Riley’s head.
Once, twice. A crunching sound and a shower of tiny fragments of plastic and metal shattering. Three times, until there was hardly anything left at the end of the strap.
Riley felt the man pause, standing over him as he fought for every breath.
This is it, he thought, and he passed out.
A waiter found him ten minutes later, called 911, and put a blanket around him to keep him warm until the paramedics arrived.