“Are you following me?”
“Pure coincidence, Professor. I’m actually covering the human-interest story of the first legless man being hurled into space.”
“And in San Diego you allegedly were covering the senatorial primary,” said Adamski. “You don’t stick to your assignments very well.”
Weiss laughed. “Lemme tell you how this business works, Professor. If a flying saucer landed on this beach, do you think I’d still be interested in the whales?”
Adamski was not amused. “Is this more important than your legless astronaut?”
“I would say that twelve whales washing up dead in Florida one week after eight washed up dead in San Diego is news.”
“But not exactly a scandal.” Adamski leaned back into the van and fiddled with the hasps of a metal box.
“Scandals used to put a lot of bread and butter on my table.”
“And when they didn’t occur spontaneously, you invented them.”
“That was a long time ago.”
“Some of us have longer memories than others.” Adamski opened the box, revealing a set of glittering surgical tools. He selected an assortment of scalpels, scissors, and tubes and placed them carefully on a towel.
“Are you preparing to perform an autopsy?” Weiss asked.
“Maybe.”
“What would you say killed them?”
“It would be inappropriate to venture a guess.”
“Don’t guess, Professor. Hypothesize, theorize. Take a look at that adult there. What do you think killed it?”
“Weiss, I don’t give a damn about your new legitimate journalistic career. I’m not telling you a goddamned thing.”
“Pretend you’re not talking to me.”
Adamski looked at the whale lying in a tidal pool twenty feet past the front of the van, big as a cross-country bus or a tractor-trailer rig. A wrinkle crossed his brow, then faded.
“The storm,” he said.
“Bullshit the storm,” said Weiss. “I inspected each one of these whales and they look emaciated, just like the ones in San Diego.”
“Thank you for your observation, Mr. Weiss. You have just cut my workday in half.” Adamski rolled the instruments in the towel and stuck it under his arm.
“Not so fast, Professor. You performed an autopsy last week on those San Diego whales. You must have the results by now.”
Adamski turned away and slogged into the tidal pool. Weiss was right at his heels.
“Is that a yes? Is that a yes, Professor Adamski? Or are you going to tell me that a storm killed those whales, too?”
Adamski put his nose an inch from Weiss’s.
“I have been quoted by you for the last time,” he said, baring his teeth and enunciating each word very carefully. “Now you either leave me to my work or I’ll ask one of those police officers to eject you.”
Weiss backed off. As soon as Adamski disappeared behind the first carcass, he set out looking for the young redhead he had spoken to earlier. He found her scraping green gunk from an adult’s baleen into a plastic container.
“Hi, remember me?” he said.
“You were looking for Professor Adamski,” she said. “Did you find him?”
“Yes, thank you. Nice guy. Do you work with him often?”
“First time. He flew in from San Diego to review our marine mammal protection project. Then this happened.”
“He didn’t exactly have the time to talk to me, but he did say all of you fine young people would cooperate. I wonder if I could ask you some questions.”
“Who are you?”
“Sorry. I’m Aaron Weiss. The Aaron Weiss TV Tabloid. Remember?”
“Oh God, you’re right!” The young woman’s sudden smile crossed the line from charmingly cute to downright goofy. She said her name was Sandy. Weiss immediately knew that he had an ally.
“Do you know much about whales?” he asked.
“Not really. I’m an English major at Florida State and I’m working at Sea World for the summer. But I did write a bio paper last semester on the diets of several species of baleen whales.”
“Great,” said Weiss. “Are you familiar with the whales that were found off San Diego?”
“Sure am. That’s all we talked about this week.”
“Isn’t it true that they were thousands of miles from where they should have been?”
“That’s right,” said Sandy. “Right whales ordinarily spend their summers off the Alaskan coast.”