Bad Guys by Linwood Barclay

“What?”
    “The one who wanted your film? That him there?”
    The angry short man was off to the left side of the frame, not doing anything in particular. Stan’s focus had been a pair of guys looking under the hood of a Pontiac. “I think so. I wasn’t even shooting him. Asshole.”
    “Hey, Walker,” someone on the other side of me said.
    I looked around. It was Cheese Dick Colby, the paper’s star police reporter, a heavyset man in his mid-fifties. A police search of his medicine cabinet would be unlikely to turn up any deodorant.
    “Hey, Dick,” I said.
    “Thanks for the call the other night, about the hit-run outside the men’s shop. Just so you understand, I do the breaking stuff, you can do the puff pieces.”
    “Sure, Dick. I just hope someday I’m trusted to handle the big stories like you.”
    Colby, evidently oblivious to sarcasm, said, “What you working on?”
    “A feature.”
    “This still the same thing you were working on the other night, hanging out with the detective?” He was leaning over my desk, forcing me to hold my breath, and looking at the contact sheet Stan had presented to me.
    “Whoa, the fuck is this?” Colby asked. “That’s Barbie Bullock there.”
    “Who?” I said, leaning in close to the pictures, not only to see them better but to put as much distance as possible between my nose and Colby’s armpit.
    Colby pointed to the guy who’d roughed up Stan and demanded his film.
    “Him. His actual name is Willy Bullock, but everyone refers to him as Barbie Bullock. He’s been attempting to run Lenny Indigo’s organization ever since Lenny got sent away for everything from dealing to robbery.”
    “That name’s popping up everywhere,” I said.
    “Lenny’s number two guy, Donny Leppard, he got sent up, too, but he’s going to be out in less than a year. Barbie here’s under a lot of pressure to do well while Donny’s gone a few months. He does a good job, Indigo’s likely to make him his number two guy instead of Donny.”
    “So why do they call this clown Barbie?” Stan asked.
    “He collects them. Barbies. Got hundreds of them, they say. All sorts of rare ones, plus accessories.”
    “His key chain,” I said. “It was a like a mini-Barbie. I figured it was his wife’s or something. Doesn’t a guy who collects Barbies run the risk of being made fun of?”
    Colby paused. “Last guy who made fun of Barbie Bullock had his face shoved into the running propeller of an Evinrude. You doing something on Bullock?” Colby eyed me warily, like I was trying to work his side of the street.
    Stan spoke up. “He just happened to be in the picture. We were there doing something else, Dick, so chill out.”
    Colby snorted, and I shifted in case any of it landed on me. After he walked away, I said to Stan, “So, don’t you feel special? Pissing off an important underworld character?”
    Stan shrugged. “Listen, when you’ve pissed off the Taliban, everything else kind of pales in comparison.”
     
10
     
    I BANGED OFF THE AUCTION STORY in under an hour, let the desk know it had been handed in, and popped into Sarah’s office. She was at her desk, reading stories on her screen.
    “I’m outa here,” I said.
    “Okay,” she said.
    “Cheese Dick came by to see me.”
    Sarah closed her eyes. “And?”
    “He strutted about, then left. Could you put him on some sort of beat that requires bathing? Maybe send him to fashion, writing about skin care.”
    “See ya at home. And don’t forget to see the managing editor before you leave.”
    I hadn’t forgotten, but I had been considering pretending to have forgotten. I wandered over to his office, where his secretary was posted outside the door.
    “Mr. Magnuson wanted to see me?” I said.
    His secretary said, “And you are?”
    This is always encouraging, when the secretary to the guy who runs the newsroom where you are employed has no idea who you are.
    “Zack Walker?” I said. “I work here?”
    She buzzed him,