A/N: Ownership of Chuck is ... is... sorry, I lost my train of thought.
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Her interview with the detectives over, Daphne Peralta stepped back into the conference room with Chuck, Ellie and Sarah. They were sitting with Daphne's assistant Sadie Moore.
Sarah and Ellie went to Daphne to try and comfort her. Booker said to Chuck, out of earshot of the ladies, "Sounds like he had dozens of enemies."
"Oh, boy. You'll be busy for sure," said Chuck.
Meanwhile, Chen was having a quick conversation with Sadie, confirming that she'd called Mrs. Peralta the prior evening.
Chen gave Booker a quick nod and gestured to the door.
Booker said to Chuck, "Is she going to be ok?"
"Probably not, but we'll do what we can. She seems pretty numb. When the shock wears off it'll get a lot worse, I'm guessing."
"Yeah. That's the way it works," agreed Booker. "Later," he said, giving Chuck a pat on the shoulder.
Booker and Chen said their goodbyes and began to make their way out of the hotel. They stopped by the front desk and confirmed that a six minute outside call had been put through to Peralta's room at 9:06PM the previous evening and that her car had been with the hotel's valet service all night.
Only a little while later they were driving to the offices of the Herald Examiner.
With Chen behind the wheel, Booker was looking at his phone.
"Hey, you know that reporter that she said was her husband's role model? Jimmy Breslin?"
"Yeah," said Chen.
"In 1970 he got the shit kicked out of him by a member of the Lucchese crime family. Put him in the hospital," said Booker.
"A warning? Intimidation to keep him quiet?" posited Chen.
"Well, if so, it didn't work for shit. Breslin named the guy in the police report," said Booker.
"And?" asked Chen.
"Nada. DA never pressed charges," said Booker.
"Humpf," grunted Chen. "That Breslin guy sounds like he had serious stones."
"Has, not had. He's still alive," said Booker.
"No kidding?" said Chen.
They pulled up to the modern office building housing the newspaper, improbably found easy parking, and made their way up the elevator.
Stepping into the offices they were met by what seemed to be chaos. There were people yelling and scurrying around, waving papers and conferring with each other in loud voices.
The pretty blonde receptionist sat at her desk on the phone. Her cheeks were wet from tears, her eyes red, but she was doing her best to be professional. A box of tissues sat on the desk near her hand with a small mountain of used tissues piled next to it.
She declared that the paper would release a statement later in the day and then hung up the phone. Turning to Booker and Chen, she said, "How can I help you?"
They took out their badges and proffered them for the woman's inspection. Chen said, "Detectives Booker and Chen. We'd like to talk to the editor, please."
She nodded and wiped her eyes once. She picked up her phone and pressed a button. A moment later she said, "They're here." Pause. "Right." She hung up.
Raising her head to the men she said, "Just a moment. He'll be right with you."
Booker said, gently, "Were you friendly with Mr. Peralta?"
She stared at him a moment and then burst into tears, grabbing a fist-full of tissues and trying to wipe her leaking eyes.
Before she could contemplate an answer, a man approached them. He was mid-thirties, thin, with a buzz cut to account for otherwise thinning hair. He looked very stressed. He also looked as if he might have been crying recently.
Sticking out his hand he said, "Hey. I'm Frank Deppard. I'm the editor of the paper."
The detectives introduced themselves and showed their identification to Deppard.
"Come with me, please," Deppard said, taking them to a glass walled conference room.
Walking through the newsroom was a revelation to the detectives. People were yelling and gesticulating. Scurrying around with papers in hand. On the way, they noted that there were multipole people, men and women both, looking upset and/or angry. More than one appeared to be either crying or trying not to cry.
Sitting them down he said, "Water? Coffee? Anything?"
"Naw. Thank you, Sir. We're good," said Booker. "Guess you all know about Mr. Peralta."
"Our line of work, detective. And we're pretty damn good at it. We knew when it came over the police scanner this morning."
"Didn't see you guys at the house earlier," said Booker.
"We were there. Pancho wouldn't let us close enough," said Deppard.
"You know Pancho?" asked Chen.
"Yeah. For like fifteen years or so. Good man," said Deppard.
"Yeah," said Chen.
"We're sorry for your loss, Mr. Deppard," said Booker.
"Thank you. Loss to me personally, but to the paper for sure. Hell, to the city. He was still in the early stages of a magnificent career and would have done heroic service to Los Angeles. It's a fucking shame." Understandably, Deppard sounded angry.
"Yes, Sir. We understand he'd done some outstanding work," agreed Booker.
"Yeah. Yeah, he did," said Deppard.
"Mr. Deppard, is it alright if we record this conversation?" asked Booker.
"Absolutely," said Deppard. "Provided I get a copy when the interview concludes."
"That's fine," agreed Booker.
The recorder started and Deppard gave his contact information and consented once again to the recording of the interview.
"Before we start," said Deppard, "can I get a statement from the LAPD? Something to put in the article about his murder?"
"Above our pay-grade, Mr. Deppard. That stuff comes out of headquarters, not a couple of working guys like us," said Booker. "Sorry."
"It's ok. I expected that," he said. He stood up and opened the door to the conference room. "No further statement. Run it," he announced to someone.
"Right," the someone shouted out in response.
"Ok," said Deppard. "Let's get started."
"Mr. Deppard, we understand you are the victim's supervisor here at the paper. Can you describe for us what his role was?"
"Vinnie was an investigative reporter. His job was to find out things that were newsworthy and write about them for the public. He was very, very good at his job. I think he would have earned a Pulitzer eventually. It was my privilege to be his editor. I've only been editor here for a few months. Before that, for almost a decade, I was his colleague and his friend."
"We understand from his wife that he had been threatened for the work he did," said Chen.
"Yeah. He did. He was proud of that actually. Here are the threats," Deppard said, sliding a folder across the table. It looked as if it contained forty or fifty pages of information. "For the last year. Let me know if you want the older ones. Also, almost all of those came in by email. If your computer guys want access to the electronic files, just let me know and we will open those up for you."
"Is this file for us to keep, Sir?" asked Booker.
"It is. We made the copies for you," confirmed Deppard.
"Thank you," said Chen.
Deppard said, "What did Daphne have to say about the threats?"
"Said they upset her and she and her husband didn't talk about them because of that," replied Booker.
"Yeah, I'm not surprised. She always worried about those. Hard to blame her now, I guess. She was always on his ass to transfer to sports reporting. I'd have let him do it, but he never had any interest. He loved busting open cool stories." Deppard chuckled sadly, looking at his fingers on the table and said, "If he ever got into reporting on sports you can bet he'd find some huge scandal to rock the sports world."
"Yes, Sir," said Chen.
"Anyway, the threats. In order to understand some of that, you'll need to know about the articles he wrote," said Deppard. He slid a slip of paper across to them. "That gives you the password to get into the archives online. All of Vinnie's articles will be there, searchable. Going back almost a decade. You'll have a lot of reading ahead of you. Obviously, the most recent threats to him were from the most recent articles."
"Thank you, Sir," said Booker.
"If you need to look at the old files from any of those articles, let me know and I'll arrange it," said Deppard.
"Thank you," said Booker.
"What was he working on right now? The active investigations?" asked Chen.
"He had three ongoing. The most serious was about the Acosta crime family. Seems Old Man Acosta is doing a deal with the huge Swiss company, the Noparnis Group. Through a ton of cut-outs, they are going to enter into a joint venture to buy an office building in the Valley," he said referring to the San Fernando Valley.
"A real estate JV with a reputed mobster? That's weird. But what do the Swiss get out of it?" asked Booker.
"Don't know," admitted Deppard with a shrug. "And Vinnie didn't either."
"What else?" asked Chen.
"One looking at you guys, I'm afraid. A captain in the LAPD Art Theft Detail might have facilitated the switch of a painting for a forgery and pocketed a hefty bribe. Supposedly went down a few months ago."
Booker gave a heavy sigh, "Ok. What's the last?"
"The Arapaho Corporation might be shipping banned electronics to North Korea through a Vietnamese intermediary."
"Arapaho?" asked Chen.
"Yeah. Based out of North Carolina. Tech stuff," said Deppard.
"How'd Mr. Peralta get onto it? So far away?" asked Chen.
"You know. Phones. Email. Distance doesn't matter anymore. Would have been a national story if he could have broken it," said Deppard.
"Jesus. And that's just the active stuff?" asked Chen.
"He was sniffing around some other leads, but none of them had amounted to much so far. I could give you what I have on those, but most likely it would be a waste of time. I'm having those three files cleaned out for you..."
"What do you mean cleaned out?" asked Chen.
"People talk to us, to Vinnie, with varying degrees of confidentiality. We are ethically bound to maintain that..." began Deppard.
"Even with Peralta dead?" asked Chen.
"Detective, the confidentiality isn't to protect Vinnie. It's to protect the source," said Deppard. "There are sources that will speak to us on the record, folks we can quote in the paper. Those sources will be completely open to you guys. But not alot of our sources are prepared for that. Those people who have not chosen to speak on the record, those identities we will have to protect. People speaking just for background, for example. Unnamed sources. Folks not authorized to speak by their company. Stuff like that. I know it makes your job harder, but it's not something we are prepared to compromise on."
"You don't think a murder investigation trumps that? What if one of his sources is the murderer?" asked Booker, annoyed that information would be concealed from them, potentially useful information.
"Then I trust you will figure that out through some other avenue," said Deppard. His voice was solid and his demeanor was unintimidated by the young detective.
"We can talk to the DA. Get a court order," said Booker.
"Yeah, you sure could. But we'd fight it. I'd go to jail before giving up Vinnie's sources," said Deppard seriously. He held up a hand to forestall interruption and continued, "Understand something, gentlemen. Vinnie was my friend and I'm both enraged and heartbroken to lose him like this. If you caught the son-of-a-bitch that killed Vinnie and California had the death penalty, I'd flip the switch on the electric chair myself and bring a bag of fucking marshmallows. But the professional integrity of this newspaper and my own obligations to it will not be compromised. Within those constraints, I will do anything and everything I can to help you in your investigation."
Booker sighed. "Ok. We'll take a look at what you have for us. If we decide we need more, we'll come back and talk to you about it before getting the DA involved in a more adversarial way."
"Good," said Deppard. "Thank you for that courtesy."
There was a knock at the door and a short fat man came in with a thick folder. He put it on the table and said to Deppard, "I'll get to the art thing next."
"Thanks, Eric," said Deppard to the man as he left the room.
Deppard slid the folder to the detectives. "Here's the file on Acosta thing with the Swiss. I'll have the other two files cleaned out by morning. You can stop by and pick them up or I can have them messengered over to you. Whatever you want."
"Thank you. I think we'll stop by and pick them up. We'll want to talk to some of the people here that Mr. Peralta worked with. Anyone helping him with his investigations. His assistant. That sort of thing," said Booker.
"Sure," Deppard said. "He worked with Rusty Becker a lot. Seemed to like him took him under his wing a bit. Vinnie liked to consider himself a mentor. Some of the kids and interns when we had them over the summer, you know, journalism students hired for summer jobs. They're all back in school, though. His regular assistant is Tessa Jenkins."
"Mr. Deppard, did Mr. Peralta have life insurance?"
"Sure. We all do. It's part of the benefits package from the paper. Couple of hundred thousand dollars, I think," he said. "If you need to know for sure I'll get our benefits person to give you a call."
"Yes, please," said Chen.
"No problem," said Deppard glancing at his watch. "She'll have left for the day already. If you'll be around in the morning you can talk to her then. Just remind me, please."
"Yes, Sir. Other than enemies he might have made through his work, can you think of anyone else that might have had a grudge against Mr. Peralta? His work is an obvious avenue of inquiry, but we'd prefer not to be blinded by the obvious and ignore anything else you might know about in his life. Angry ex-girlfriends? Anything like that?"
Deppard stopped and thought, but then said, "No. I'm sorry. I can't think of anything other than his work. So far as I know, his marriage was solid. He had a ton of friends, including here at the paper."
"Like Mr. Becker?" asked Booker.
"Exactly," said Deppard.
"Is there anything else you can share that might help us?" asked Booker.
"Nothing I can think of. Sorry," said Deppard.
Booker slid a couple of business cards across to the older man and said, "Well, if you can think of anything else, please reach out. In the meantime, we'll come by in the morning to talk to some more folks and get the other two files."
"That's fine. See you in the morning," said Deppard.
The detectives took the recorder off the table and clicked it off.
"Again, Mr. Deppard, we are very sorry for your personal loss. I know this is hard on you and we appreciate your professionalism and cooperation," said Chen.
"It's hard. I was in the Army. I've lost friends before and it's always hard." He paused and seemed to mentally shake himself. "Thank you both for your consideration and professionalism. You're a couple of young guys to be detectives. I've been around long enough to be a decent judge of people. I'm very happy you guys caught this. I have a feeling you'll solve this one and get justice for my friend."
The men shook hands and Booker and Chen left the offices of the newspaper with the files under their arms.
"Dinner?" asked Chen once they got to the street.
"Yeah. Missed lunch. I'm ready to chew my arm off," said Booker.
"Me too. Indian food?" asked Chen.
"You know I don't like Indian. You just suggest it to annoy me," groused Booker.
"I think you'll change your mind one day," said Chen with a smirk.
"How about Italian?" asked Booker.
They drove away, still discussing the choice of dinner selection.
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A/N2: I've mentioned before that my son is a newspaper man. He helped me with the descriptions of the characterization of sources. I guess you can all tell that I'm proud of him.
A/N3: Jimmy Breslin (1928-2017). FulI disclosure here. When I was growing up, my family and Jimmy's family were very, very close. I've known them for more than 60 years and, while not all of them are still with us, I'm still close friends with Jimmy's son (the one who is my age – Jimmy had four sons and two daughters). For anyone interested in the story of two street level reporters you might want to check out the excellent documentary Breslin and Hamill: Deadline Artists (2019) about Jimmy and Pete Hamill. Great movie.
A/N4: Love to hear from you guys, as you know. Thanks for any thoughts you can share about this chapter. You guys rock.