Starvation Lake (21 page)

Trenton explained that Superior was seeking the
Times
’s cooperation in the Hanover litigation. The Hanovers were the Indiana family who had lost their son Justin in a flaming truck and later won the $354 million verdict against Superior, based in part on my stories. Superior had appealed. Now it wanted the
Times
to file an affidavit with the court stating that my stories were less than accurate, which might in turn nudge the court to throw the case out. The Hanovers would then have to decide whether to endure a second trial and another six to twelve months of reliving their son’s death.

“It’s not pretty,” Trenton said. “So far, Superior and the paper haven’t been able to agree on the language of the affidavit. But they’ll get there. They’ll probably file one minute before five o’clock on New Year’s Eve.”

There was more. In separate settlement negotiations between Superior and the Hanovers, the family had agreed to drop their lawsuit in return for Superior contributing $200 million to a fund that would subsidize alterations of the trucks for owners who wanted them. The Hanovers would also receive a $5 million cash payment, most of which would go to their lawyers.

“They won’t get the windfall,” Trenton said, “but some of the trucks might actually get safer.”

“That’s what they said they wanted all along.”

“Between you and me and the barn door, Gus, plaintiffs always say that. Really most of them want a mountain of cash and maybe a CEO with his testicles in a bear trap.”

“The Hanovers are good people.”

He paused. “Yes, they are. Which is what makes this last little detail a bit of a problem. Superior has stipulated that a condition of their going through with the Hanover deal is you have to give them the name of your voice-mail source.”

“They can’t do that.”

“They’re doing it, friend.”

“They must know who it is. They had the key to my damn locker.”

“Whether they know or not, Gus, they want you to tell them, OK? If you don’t, the Hanovers don’t get their settlement.”

“The hell with them.”

“Then it’s the hell with the Hanovers, too, because Superior says this is not negotiable. No name, the deal with the family’s off, and they take their chances on the appeal, which won’t be too good after the
Times
tells the court your stories are bullshit.”

“But they weren’t bullshit.”

“Frigging tough to argue in the shoes you’re wearing now.”

My anger felt like it would suffocate me there in my kitchen, surrounded by wrapping paper and Scotch tape. I wanted to shove the phone through the icy windowpane into the pelting needles of rain.

“I can’t fucking believe this.”

“Believe,” Trenton said. “And one more thing: If you don’t give up the name, Superior will also go after you for felony theft.”

“Why the hell do they care so much about the source?”

“I wish I knew. All their lawyers will say is they have their reasons.”

“Right. They want to fuck with me. So, basically, I can screw the Hanovers or I can screw myself. Either way, Superior comes out OK, and tough shit for all the poor bastards who fry in their trucks.”

“My advice?” Trenton said. “Give the guy up.”

“How do you know it’s—”

“Shut the hell up a second and listen to your attorney. You’re pissed off and I don’t blame you. But you don’t owe this voice-mail guy or gal or whatever a thing. You two made a deal: He tells the truth, you protect his identity. But he didn’t tell you he’d been canned. He lied. You couldn’t know his motives were questionable. That’s a breach of contract. You’re no longer under any legal obligation to cover for him.”

Technically, he may have been right, but I didn’t think that V had lied to me. As a journalist, it was nice to imagine that, in extending the cloak of anonymity, you were protecting brave and noble people who were risking their livelihoods or maybe even their lives to tell you things you weren’t supposed to know and were unlikely to learn otherwise. But a lot of the time—hell, most of the time—you weren’t protecting the brave or the noble. Most of the time you were shielding lawyers and flacks and lobbyists and other dissemblers who knew exactly how to exploit your convenient little rule of anonymity so they could shape your story without leaving fingerprints. Yes, V hadn’t told me the whole truth. But I never sought the whole truth. V told me what I wanted to hear, and I eagerly, willingly, hungrily swallowed it. He got what he wanted, I got what I wanted. And the truth was now, as Wendy Grimm had said, irrelevant.

“When do they need to know?” I asked Trenton.

“ASAP.”

“Merry Christmas, Scott,” I said, as I dropped the receiver in the cradle. Then I picked it up again and dialed V. I heard one ring followed by three high-pitched beeps, then a recording saying the number had been disconnected.

   So have you told them yet?” Joanie said. We had finished the beers and most of the nacho chips while I was telling my story.

“Told them what?” I said.

“Told them to go to hell, what else?”

She wasn’t letting me off the hook. “I haven’t told them anything yet.”

“Look, Gus. Maybe you shouldn’t have stolen the voice mails. But what’s done is done. You’re still here, doing what you do. Don’t mess that up. There’s no wiggle room here. You can’t give up a source. Period. Did the
Times
file that thing Superior wanted, saying your stories were bull?”

“Yep.”

“Nobody noticed?”

“The court sealed it. But it’ll be public when the ruling comes.”

“Which is when?”

“Superior’s lawyers are expecting it Friday. I have until Tuesday to decide. If I give up my source, they settle with the Hanovers and the appeal is moot. If I don’t, and Superior wins the appeal, the Hanovers are screwed.”

“The Hanovers are not your responsibility, Gus.”

“Yes, they are.”

“No. You cannot—wait, hold on.” She yanked a pager out from under her sweater and peered into it. “Oh, gosh, I gotta go,” she said. I watched as she stuffed notebooks and papers into her backpack and threw on her coat.

“Where are you going?” I said.

She ignored that. “Will you be in early tomorrow?”

“Probably. What’s up?”

“Nothing.”

“You’ll do the Dingus press conference?”

“Yeah.”

“The zoning board’s at two.”

She was almost out the door. “Oh, right. I wish I could do that, too, but looks like I’ll be wrapped up with the cops.”

I heard the bells jangle on the front door. I’d started collecting the empties when I heard the bells again. Joanie reappeared, breathless. “I got it,” she said. “‘Sound Off: Do you believe there are underwater tunnels in the lake?’”

“Done,” I said.

   I left Tillie a note about the Sound Off question and went up the inside stairs to my apartment. As I reached the top I heard a voice outside. Through the curtains I saw Soupy sitting on the landing, his head in his hands, a bottle between his snow-slickened boots. His jacket was unbuttoned. He was shaking his head and muttering something. I stepped outside.

“Soup?”

He didn’t look up. He just kept shaking his head. “What the fuck, Trap?” he was saying. “What the fuck you doing to me?”

“Soupy, what are you talking about?”

“You fucking know, Trap.” He was drunker than he’d sounded when he called from his truck. Barely two fingers of whiskey remained in his bottle of Old Crow. I reached for it, but he pulled it away.

“The Crow, man,” Soupy said. He took a swallow. “All I got. You want that, too?”

“Come on in, Soup.”

“I’m fine, see?” he slurred. Then he tilted his head back and squawked like a crow: “Caw! Caw! Caw!”

“You’re going to wake the whole town. Come in, please.”

He tore off his hat and swiveled his head up toward me, his face a rubbery grin. “Quite a night,” he said. “Two beers—make that three, three beers—and a shot with my dear old pal.”

“Old pal who?”

“Teddy boy.” He clamped an unsteady hand on the railing and wobbled to his feet. The whiskey sloshed around in the bottle. “My old chum.”

Soupy took a slug and offered me the bottle. I reached again, but he yanked it back again, snickering. “I don’t play that,” he said. “So, so, so…Tell me, Trap. What the…what the hell were you doing in my office?”

So he really had been with Boynton, I thought. “Looking for you,” I said, almost telling the truth. “It’s a mess in there. Your dad wouldn’t be happy.”

“Now there’s a goddamn news flash—my dad wouldn’t be happy.”

I thought then to ask him about the boat receipt Dingus had given me, but he was in no shape to answer. “Why don’t you go home? Just walk. I’ll bring your truck over tomorrow.”

“Fuck the truck,” he said, turning back to me. I was surprised to see tears in his eyes. Soupy was prone to drunken crying jags, but I knew there was something real beneath these tears because he was trying to hold them back.

“Jesus, Soup, what’s the matter?”

He lifted the bottle to his lips, stopping just before he drank. “Teddy boy,” he said. “He says you got a story about Coach.”

“Yeah?”

“Leave it alone, Trap. Leave it alone. Ain’t nothing good can come.”

That’s it? I thought. That’s what has him so upset? The bullet hole story must have been getting around. But why would Soupy care? After our last defeat, he and Coach hadn’t gotten along so well either.

“Dingus is holding a press conference. I can’t help what the cops find out.”

He let the bottle fall to his side. He looked dumbfounded. “Press conference? Fuck. Not that. Dingus knows shit.”

“Well, what then?”

“Canada. You know.”

“No, I don’t. What are you talking about?”

“Don’t mess with me.” He pointed the bottle at me. “I can see your horseshit a mile away. Canada. Coach had a problem?”

Did he mean the gap in Coach’s past? Had Boynton told him? How could Boynton have known? Unless Joanie told Boynton. She’d gone to him for an interview. Maybe he’d ended up interviewing her. Now Boynton was playing Soupy as he’d played her. But with what? Unless Boynton knew something about that missing year that Joanie and I didn’t. There had to be something more.

“No,” I said. “We don’t have any story about Canada. Boynton’s screwing with your head. Anyway, who cares what the hell Coach did in Canada thirty years ago?”

Soupy’s lower lip trembled.

“Hey,” I said, taking a step closer. “What is going on?”

“You’re my best friend.”

“What is it?”

“My only friend.”

“Soupy. Goddamn it.”

He was shaking his head, choking back sobs. “I don’t know a fucking thing,” he said. I put a hand on his shoulder, but he shook it off and started down the stairs. He knew something, all right, but he wasn’t trusting me tonight.

“I wouldn’t do anything to hurt you,” I said.

Halfway down the steps, he stopped and turned and brandished the bottle. “See this piss-water? There’s only one whiskey worse. You know which?”

I had no idea.

He yelled it. “Gentleman-fucking-Jack!” Then he reared back and flung the bottle over his truck into South Street, where it burst on a chunk of ice.

   I had to blink back cigarette smoke when I walked into the
Pilot
on Monday morning. Tillie didn’t look up from the paper she stood reading at the front counter. It was barely nine and her ashtray was already jammed with butts.

“Good morning,” I said. “Did you see the TV truck out front of Audrey’s?”

Tillie didn’t answer. She leaned on an arm, obscuring her face. Something was bugging her. I grabbed a
Pilot
off the counter and slid a quarter next to Tillie’s elbow.

“Kerasopoulos called,” she said.

“Who?”

“At corporate. He didn’t sound happy.”

   Joanie was at her desk, still in her wool cap and jacket, sifting through what looked like a stack of receipts. I spread the
Pilot
out on my desk. Joanie’s main story, “Bullet Hole Found in Late Coach’s Snowmobile,” and the sidebar, “Blackburn Remembered as Strategist, Town Booster,” filled the entire top half of the page. It was a nice display, with photos of the scene of Blackburn’s accident, Blackburn hoisting a trophy, Blackburn cutting the ribbon at a pizza parlor. There was also that mug shot of Blackburn, the one that hung at Enright’s, superimposed over the inscription “John D. ‘Jack’ Blackburn. Jan. 19, 1934–March 13, 1988.” I wanted to savor it for a minute, feel like I’d accomplished something. But I had to call Kerasopoulos.

“Maybe I’ll head over to the cop shop,” Joanie said. “I was going to finally do my expenses, but that can wait.”

That reminded me. I had been meaning to ask her about a phone bill. I fished through the pile on my desk. As I looked, I told her, “Listen, once Dingus’s press conference gets going, just sit there and be quiet. Unless there’s something you absolutely can’t get from Dingus or one of the other cops on your own, don’t ask any questions. You’ll just be helping the TV people.” I also didn’t want Dingus thinking I’d told her anything about his visit to my apartment.

“Huh. Hadn’t thought of that. Excuse me.” She went into the bathroom.

I found the phone bill stuck to the back of the Bud Popke press release. It listed a dozen or so calls to the 202 and 617 area codes, and one for $57.28 to the 703 code. Joanie had called Washington, D.C., and Boston for the Sasquatch story, and I knew from my time covering the auto safety regulators that 703 was in Virginia near D.C. According to NLP Newspapers policy, because that single call was for more than $50, I was supposed to inquire about the purpose of the call and tell corporate. If I didn’t, the people in finance would. They lived for it.

The faucet splashed on in the bathroom. I stared at the bill. If I didn’t report the reason for the $57.28 phone call, would that jeopardize my chance at the executive editor’s job? I couldn’t believe I was worrying about this crap. The hell with it, I thought, and tossed the bill back on my desk.

Tillie appeared, holding a scrap of notepaper in one hand and a smoldering cigarette in the other. Now that I could clearly see her face, I could tell she’d been crying. “Is this a joke or something?” she said, waving the paper around.