While Newsweb was fulfilling her request, she snatched up the phone at
her desk and called long-distance information for area code 318, then
212 then 714, and 619, seeking a listing for Jim Ironheart in Los
angelese Orange, Riverside, San Bernardino, and San Diego counties.
None of the operators was able to help her. If he actually lived in
southern California as he had told her he did, his phone was unlisted.
The laser printer that she shared with three other workstations was
humming softly. The first of Newsweb’s finds was sliding into the
receiving tray.
She wanted to hurry to the cabinet on which the printer stood, grab the
first printout, and read it at once; but she restrained herself,
focusing her attention on the telephone instead, trying to think of
another way to locate Jim Ironheart down there in the part of California
that locals called “the Southland.”
A few years ago, she simply could have accessed the California
Department of Motor Vehicles computer and, for a small fee, received the
street address of anyone holding a valid driver’s license in the state.
But after the actress Rebecca Schaeffer had been murdered by an obsessed
fan who had tracked her down in that fashion, a new law had imposed
restrictions on DMV records.
If she had been an accomplished computer hacker, steeped in their arcane
knowledge, she no doubt could have finessed entrance to the DMV records
in spite of their new safeguards, or perhaps she could have pried into
credit-agency databanks to search for a file on Ironheart.
She had known reporters who honed their computer skills for just that
purpose, but she had always sought her sources and information in a
strictly legitimate fashion, without deception.
Which is why you’re writing about such thrilling stuff as the Timber
Trophy, she thought sourly.
While she puzzled over a solution to the problem, she hurried to the
vending room and got a cup of coffee from the coin-operated brewer. It
tasted like yak bile. She drank it anyway, because she was going to
need the caffeine before the night was through. She bought another cup
and returned with it to the newsroom.
The laser printer was silent. She grabbed the pages from its tray and
sat down at her desk.
Newsweb had turned up a thick stack of stories from the national press
in which the name “Jim” was used within ten words of “rescue” or “saved
the life.” She counted them quickly. Twenty-nine.
The first was a human-interest piece from the Chicago Sun-Times, and
Holly read the opening sentence aloud: “Jim Foster, of Oak Park, has
rescued over one hundred stranded cats from” She dropped that printout
in her wastecan and looked at the next one. It was from the
Philadelphia Inquirerù “Jim Pilsbury, pitching for the Phillies, rescued
his club from a humiliating defeat” Throwing that one aside, as well,
she looked at the third. It was a movie review, so she didn’t bother
searching for the mention of Jim. The fourth was a reference to Jim
Harrison, the novelist. The fifth was a story about a New Jersey
politician who used the Heimlich maneuver to save the life of a Mafia
boss in a barroom, where they were having a couple of beers together,
when the patron began to choke to death on a chunk of peppery hot Slim
Jim sausage.
She was beginning to worry that she would come up empty-handed by the
bottom of the stack, but the sixth article, from the Houston Chronicle,
opened her eyes wider than the vile coffee had. WOMAN SAVED FROM,
VENGEFUL HUSBAND. On July 14, after winning both financial and child
custody issues in a bitter divorce suit, Amanda Cutter had nearly been,
shot by her enraged husband, Cosmo, outside her home in the wealth River
Oaks district of the city. After Cosmo missed her with the first two
shots, she had been saved by a man who “appeared out of nowhere,”
wrestled her maddened spouse to the ground, and disarmed him.
her savior had identified himself only as “Jim,” and had walked off into
that humid Houston afternoon before the police arrived. The
thirty-year-old divorcee had clearly been smitten, for she described him