Parker Field (24 page)

“Nevertheless, we do expect you back in the not-too-distant future,” he says. “Your beat isn’t covering itself.”

“No, it’s being covered by a kid who’s still naïve enough to work for free.”

“We pay our employees well. Some of them, too well.” He gives me his best gimlet-eyed laser beam.

Grubby doesn’t want to know his newsroom managers are running afoul of the National Labor Relations Board, which has succeeded in spanking our ass on occasion when some of our corporate types have gone beyond even the Pluto-distant boundaries of what is and isn’t allowed in our right-to-work paradise.

I can imagine his conversation with Wheelie re: Sarah Goodnight.

Wheelie: If she covers night cops and city hall, we’re going to have to pay her overtime.

Grubby: We don’t pay overtime.

Wheelie: Well, how are we going to do it?

Grubby: That’s up to you.

Grubby (unspoken): Just don’t tell me about it.

“At any rate,” Grubby continues now, “it won’t be a problem for very much longer, one way or the other.”

“One way or the other?”

“One more week,” he says, holding up his index finger. “Then you’re back.”

Message received. For some reason, journalism schools—excuse me, mass communications schools—are still turning out bright-eyed, hungry newshounds who would do my job for half of what I require.

I might be back with a story that’ll knock your dick off, I want to tell him.

K
ATE
is in her makeshift quarters at Marcus Green’s office. It’s just up the street, and I thought I might be able to catch the great man himself. But it’s a fine day for golf, and I know Marcus is now a jovial, backslapping member of one of the local country clubs that would only have let him in as a caddy in the not-too-distant past.

What I want to know is why Kate is spending a fine Saturday indoors.

“I’m researching,” she says. “Marcus can sell ice to the Eskimos, but he’s not so good on dotting the i’s, crossing the t’s. That, I can do.”

She’s looking for an angle, some way to make Raymond Gatewood a little less guilty than he appears. And if he’s found guilty, a way to make him seem as crazy as possible. She’s looking for precedents.

I can’t bear to let Kate work this hard for no good reason. I tell her who didn’t come in the basement door for at least two days before the shooting.

She rewards me by throwing a rather hefty law book in my direction.

“How long have you known all this?”

“Not long,” I say, picking it up and handing it back to her. “And you really shouldn’t be lifting something that heavy.” Let alone throwing it.

I wonder aloud why neither she nor Marcus had thought to check on that.

She throws her hands up.

“Hell, I don’t know. We should have. We’re just not as smart as you, I guess.”

I let her off the hook by telling her that checking the previous days’ tapes wasn’t exactly my idea.

“So he hadn’t come in the basement door for two days before this happened? But maybe he was in there for several days. Or maybe he came in the front door.”

I remind her that it’s a little harder for a guy who looks every bit as homeless as he is to get past our crack security guards, let alone have a fob or get himself buzzed into the building. I also remind her that it didn’t appear that anyone had been there for very long before the shooting. No food strewn about. The place wasn’t trashed. The toilets were flushed. No one had taken a dump on the Oriental rug. And there’s something else, something that didn’t occur to me until Custalow showed me that tape. When Awesome began living at Peggy’s place, she and Les soon became aware that he had to start becoming more intimate with soap and water. The English basement smelled like holy hell for a month after he got there. By the time I walked in on the cops inspecting Finlay Rand’s place, it smelled like I imagine Finlay Rand’s place always smells, like a tastefully done French whorehouse. No
eau de bum
.

It’s time to tell Kate who was seen coming in the basement door of the Prestwould on April 3.

“Are you kidding me?” she says. “Really?”

Yes, I tell her. Really.

“Well,” she says, “maybe it’s time to have another chat with your good friend L. D. Jones.”

“He’d probably just tell me to go fuck myself.”

“I imagine people do that all the time.”

I tell Kate that I’d rather wait a day or two. The cops aren’t going to turn Raymond Gatewood loose on the flimsy evidence I can show them on the videotape. They don’t want to turn him loose at all.

“This is bullshit,” she says. “You just want to do it all yourself, don’t you?”

“I just want to have something a little more solid to go on.”

“Nah. Nah. I know you. You’re going to be Mister Solo.”

I remind her that I’ve already told her more than she was ever going to figure out on her own—what happened to the other Vees, who did and didn’t come in through the Prestwould’s basement door in the two days leading up to Les’s shooting.

I explain that the only reason her client has a snowball’s chance in hell of getting out from under Les Hacker’s murder is because of my unpaid, vacation-burning dedication.

She is quiet, which is unusual for Kate.

“OK,” she says at last. “You’ve earned the right to say that, although I believe we eventually would have thought of looking at those other tapes. But we need to bring the police in.” “One more day,” I tell her, holding my index finger in the air, Grubby-like.

I walk back to the paper in the remnants of a beautiful spring afternoon. The Squirrels are home tonight, and it’d be great to take in a few innings, at least until the night chill rolled in to remind us that it’s still April. But I have promises to keep.

I’m to be over at Peggy’s by six, so we can lock in on some of the memorial plans. Monday’s just two days away. One of Les’s brothers, a few years younger, is flying in from Wisconsin, along with his daughter. The phone hasn’t stopped ringing off the hook at Peggy’s. It appears that Les knew approximately half the damn town, and now we’re wondering if the Baptist church will be big enough to hold everybody.

I made sure that I called Buck McRae to tell him the sad news. He said he was coming up. I tried to dissuade him, and it seemed to offend him.

“Whoever shot Les,” I explained to the ancient right fielder, “might still be out there. I have reason to believe that.”

“Bullshit,” Buck said. “I’m coming. It’s like they say, if we’re afraid, the terrorists win.”

I start to ask him what the hell this has to do with terrorists, but maybe he’s right. Whoever goes around killing old minor-league baseball players is as much a terrorist as the late, hell-residing Osama bin Laden.

I told Buck that he and whoever drives him up here are welcome to stay with Abe and me.

“I can drive my own damn self up,” he said. “But I thank you for the invitation.”

I tell him to be careful.

“I didn’t get this far,” he said before he hung up, “by being careful.”

B
EFORE
I go over to Peggy’s, though, I need to do some more research. There is still a lot of “why?” to unravel.

I’m back at my desk, scribbling on the pad next to me, collecting printouts and going back over notes from my odyssey so far. I am, in short, trying to make sense out of lunacy.

I’ve written down lots of names: All the 1964 Vees and their survivors, then August Harshman, Eleanor Harshman Flynn Fairchild, Dairy Flynn. I cross out Dairy and write in his real name.

I used to pass the time in windbag legislative sessions and later waiting for the next East End shooting by doing the crossword puzzle and then the word jumble. You take six or seven random letters and try to make the biggest word you can out of them. I got pretty good at it. I got so it was almost like instinct.

Now, looking at Dairy Flynn’s given name, it hits me.

“Son of a bitch.”

Chapter Eighteen    

S
UNDAY

I
f God gives mulligans, and you only have three for your entire life, I’ll take one of mine for last night. Failing that, I’m praying that Cindy Peroni gives them.

When I called at Rand’s apartment, I got a recording. When I got back to the Prestwould, I took the elevator up to the ninth floor and knocked, but nobody answered.

It was time then to go over to Peggy’s and be of some use to my mother. The place was almost as full of people as it had been on Thursday night, and now the guests, instead of bringing food, were eating it. I suppose it’s a good idea to bring something to the bereaved that you yourself wouldn’t mind chowing down on a couple of days later. By the time the post-funeral crowd gets through on Monday, Peggy’s fridge will be as empty as it was before Les died.

My mother’s never been much of a hostess. She never did big holiday family dinners, mainly because most of her family had abandoned her. She and I spent most of our Christmas days in the company of each other. We were fond of the whole barbecued chicken Peggy’s employer for most of my tween and teen years gave out in lieu of actual money. We’d feast on it for a couple of days, then go back to frozen dinners and whatever I could manage not to ruin. My repertoire was somewhat small, but Peggy was too busy earning a living to really learn how to cook, and even before I reached the age of reason (if, indeed, I have reached it yet), I knew that it wasn’t really a good idea to let my mother loose in the kitchen after she’d had her post-work smoke. Stoned, she was certainly better company than the hard drinkers some of my friends got stuck with for parents, but she was something of a fire hazard.

As far as parties, whatever Oregon Hill soirees occurred at our rental house of the moment mostly consisted of people bringing their own beer or jug wine, with Peggy supplying the Fritos and onion dip. If things got really fancy, she’d have me grill hot dogs.

Last night, though, Andi and Cindy took over. My daughter is a pro at serving the public, having spent as much of the last three years dispensing food and drink as she has pursuing that ever-elusive VCU diploma. With her degree destination somewhere in the neighborhood of psychology, sociology or English, I suppose it’s good that she has marketable skills. She worked her way through the crowd with whatever she and Cindy could stuff into those little dinner rolls everybody in town buys at the grocery store. And Cindy showed an amazing dexterity in slicing the country ham someone donated into razor thin slices. I believe she could have fed the five thousand with this one damn piece of pork, as long as the rolls didn’t run out, and they sent me out for more.

Why, in the worst week of your life, do you have to serve and entertain?

Some people brought their own liquor or beer and braved the chill on the porch to take the edge off somebody else’s loss. Peggy disappeared every hour or so. She has gotten pretty good at self-medicating, managing to stave off the grief without becoming a dope zombie.

I tried Rand’s number again. No luck.

By nine thirty, the crowd was starting to break up. Most of the really good food was gone by then, anyhow. The crowd didn’t seem to be pacing itself well; most of the tasty stuff had disappeared, and a lot of Jell-O salads and cold, store-bought fried chicken littered Peggy’s dining room table. Cindy whispered to me that we might have to buy more food for the Sunday and Monday moochers, er, mourners.

“God,” Peggy said as she tripped and nearly knocked me over, “won’t these assholes ever leave?”

I know she appreciates the company, but she could use some rest.

Cindy takes her back to the bedroom, perhaps to lie down rather than toke up this time.

Awesome Dude came in the house sometime after nine from Lord knows where. Awesome is hurting. Les was one of those rare creatures who treated everyone like equals, and Awesome hasn’t had a lot of that in his life. My hope is that he and my mother can keep their addled, jerry-built little family standing without Les around as the support beam.

Awesome tried to help us clean up, and we appreciated the effort if not the results. Guys who are used to scooping pork and beans out of a can with their fingers aren’t very fussy about removing food particles from dishes.