The Anonymous Source by A.C. Fuller Read Free Book Online Page B

to be hip, French, something different. And I was a little self-involved.”
    Mirna smirked. “You don’t say.”
    Camila tossed a napkin at her. “Hey, leave me alone. I’m fragile right now. Anyway, I wanted a drink that sounded cool and no one else drank, so I started drinking French 75s.”
    “And now that you’ve stopped trying to be cool, why are you still drinking them?”
    Camila finished the drink in one long sip. “It’s like drinking a glass of joy, bitterness, and fire.”
    A man shouted from the kitchen. “Burger’s up!”
    Camila raised her glass. “And I’ll take another one of these, please.”
    Mirna retrieved the burger from the window and set it in front of Camila. “You’re gonna eat that whole thing, huh?”
    “Damn right,” Camila said. “I need to refuel so I can go home and cry some more.”

Chapter Eleven
    ALEX TOOK GRETA’S hand and walked on. At 90th, they stopped at the window of a small grocery store.
    “Lots of energy in fruit,” Greta said.
    Alex looked back and saw the man standing next to a pay phone a half block behind them.
    “What’s wrong?” Greta asked.
    “Nothing,” he said, nudging her and continuing up the street. “I think I need a coffee for the walk home.”
    They stopped at the Starbucks on the corner and stood in line. Alex looked out the window. After a moment, the man appeared under a streetlight. He wore a puffy black jacket and his curly black hair peeked out from under its hood. Alex thought he recognized him. The man glanced inside, then looked away and lit a cigarette.
    Greta didn’t want anything, so when they reached the register Alex just ordered a small coffee for himself. While they waited, he turned back to the window.
    The man’s face was pressed against the glass. He had a yellow and red bird tattooed on the left side of his neck and his wild green eyes were fixed on Alex. Frozen, Alex held his gaze. He thought of the call from earlier in the day. This was real.
    “Two dollars and nine cents, please.”
    Alex turned around and the barista handed him his coffee.
    “Why not two dollars even?” he asked, trying to sound confident. He handed her three dollars. “Right now, there are probably ten thousand Starbucks employees counting out ninety-one cents and handing it to guys like me.”
    “Most people just drop it in the tip jar,” she replied, unimpressed.
    “But that’s a 45 percent tip,” Alex said, smiling.
    Greta gave his arm a gentle tug toward the door. He dropped the money in the jar and looked back toward the window. The man was gone.
    Alex looked both ways as they stepped out onto the sidewalk. No man. He took Greta’s hand and they walked north. Every few minutes, Alex glanced back into the shadows, trying to remember John 12:25.

Chapter Twelve
Friday, September 6, 2002
    ALEX READ HIS STORY on the Santiago trial standing in front of the NYU journalism building, a fifteen-story stone tower a few doors up from Washington Square Park. The sun was still behind the buildings and a thin fog hung in the air. He thought of all the people across the city reading his story. Tenmillion people in the five boroughs, three-hundred thousand of whom bought The Standard each day, including home delivery. Probably only half of them looked at the front page, and maybe half of those actually read it. Seventy-five thousand readers. In an eighteen-hour day, about four thousand readers per hour, about seventy every minute. And that wasn’t even counting the web edition.
    When Camila stepped out of the taxi, her eyes looked puffy and her hair was even more disheveled than it had been the day before. As she walked past Alex into the journalism building, he slung his laptop bag over his shoulder and followed her in, careful to stay a few yards back.
    Nearing the front of the elevator line, Alex saw a sleepy-looking security guard checking IDs as the students filed past him. When he was a student at NYU, they hadn’t had security. “Checking