Starvation Lake (22 page)

“What?”

“This Sound Off question. The tunnels?”

Joanie emerged from the bathroom. “No joke,” I told Tillie. “It’s news. Use it. And keep the smoke out there, please.”

She disappeared.

“What’s her problem?” Joanie said.

“No idea.” I picked up the dossier on Soupy’s marina troubles and held it up for her. My phone rang. “Did you happen to borrow this?”

Her face said yes, but before she could say anything, Tillie ducked in again. “Gus. Scott Trenton?”

Joanie turned for the door, grinning. “Not saving you this time.”

   I picked up the phone and punched the blinking light. “Hello, Scott.”

“You don’t return calls.”

“When I don’t have anything to say, no.”

I heard the wheels on Trenton’s swivel chair squeak. “We have a meeting tomorrow,” he said.

“Who’s we?”

“Me and you and a bunch of lawyers. Superior. All-Media. The Hanovers. Noon.”

“Scott, I have a paper to—”

“Listen to me, Gus. You will be in Detroit tomorrow for this meeting or you won’t have me as your attorney anymore. You don’t have to say a word, but I want you there to show good faith, one way or the other.”

“The Hanovers are coming? Doug and Julia?”

“Yes.”

“Jesus.”

“Yeah.”

“Why didn’t you ask me first?”

Trenton let the silence answer.

“OK,” I said. “What’s the agenda?”

“This is our last shot at getting Superior off your back. We’re going to tell them whether you’re going to give up your source or not. It would be good if you could tell me your intentions now so I can position us for a decent outcome.”

Now I let the silence speak.

“Gus?” Trenton said.

“I don’t know yet. Sorry.”

“Gus—”

“Most reporters would go to their grave before they burned a source.”

“We’ve been through this. I appreciate your good intentions and your”—he paused—“integrity. But they’re superfluous here, friend. This guy, or woman, or whoever your source is, burned
you.
Your obligation to protect their identity is frigging kaput.”

“That’s what you say.”

“That’s what I say.”

“Where’s the meeting?”

“You’re not going to give me an answer now?”

“Unless you want one you don’t want to hear.”

“Let me be clear, Gus. If you don’t give them an answer tomorrow, or you give them the wrong answer, count on Superior seeking criminal charges against you. Believe me, they can make that happen. The Hanovers won’t be happy either. They want that settlement set in concrete before the appellate court rules.”

I didn’t care about Superior. The Hanovers were a different matter. “Where’s the damn meeting?”

“Superior’s law firm, Eagan, MacDonald & Browne. Comerica Building. Are you going to be there?”

“We’ll see.”

“You know,” he said, “all you hockey players are nuts. You’re a goalie, right? My partner had a goalie once for a client. Just a kid. He and the other goalie on his team were butting heads in the locker room. Like a couple of frigging rams, lining up in nothing but goalie masks and jock straps and running at each other with their heads down. Then, wham! The one breaks his nose pretty bad and his parents have us sue the frigging company that made the mask. Can you believe that?”

“Did you win?”

“Nah. Settled.”

   The morning had turned bad fast. I dialed our corporate office, got a machine, hit zero, got an operator, and asked for Jim Kerasopoulos.

“Yes,” the lawyer’s voice boomed out of the phone. He was on the speaker.

“Gus Carpenter, Jim.”

“Gus.” He picked up the handset. “How’s the snowmobiling?”

What snowmobiling? I thought. He was the one who’d been snowmobiling. I remembered the egg pie I didn’t get to eat and felt suddenly hungry.

“Um, fine. You called?”

“I did. I would really have appreciated a heads-up on the paper this morning.”

“How’s that?”

I pictured him stuffed into a black leather chair behind a pin-neat desk with a brass letter opener resting atop a stack of freshly opened letters, behind his head a framed etching of mallard ducks landing on a pond.

“I thought we had a good talk about communication between you and us folks here at the mother ship,” he said. “Then I pick up the
Pilot
this morning and see murder splashed all over the front page.”

“There’s no—”

“All over the page.”

“Jim, the word ‘murder’ does not appear.”

“Gus, if you’re going to write about murders in small towns and quote anonymous sources, you’re going to let us know before you do.”

“We shouldn’t have run the story?”

“Gus?” A squeak made its way into his foghorn. “You’re really disappointing me here, especially after Henry’s been singing your praises. What I’m asking is pretty simple, sir. I want to know when any of our editors is running a story that could stir up the masses, or people who might want to sue us, especially if we have zero sources confirming it on the record.”

“I’m confident in the story, Jim.”

He paused for a moment, then said, “That’s nice that you’re confident, but frankly, Gus, in your case, that doesn’t cut it. You have a past here, no? We’re trying to accommodate you and your supporters here, and you’re not meeting us halfway.”

At last, the truth. Actually, all Kerasopoulos knew about my past was that I’d had an unfriendly parting with the
Times.
Depending on what I did in Detroit the next morning, he might know a lot more. I wanted to tell him my “past” had nothing to do with the Blackburn story, that this was just Newspapering 101 and we’d done our jobs. But I was worried that I’d gotten Henry into trouble too. So I swallowed hard.

“Jim,” I said. “I understand. I wish I’d given you a call. It was hectic yesterday. Sorry.”

“A call would’ve gone a long way, Gus. I’m not saying we would or wouldn’t have run the story. Maybe we would’ve waited for the press conference. Excuse me.”

He put me on hold. I decided it probably wasn’t the best time to ask about the Sasquatch story. My other line started blinking. I couldn’t risk cutting off Kerasopoulos, so I let Tillie get it. Kerasopoulos came back on, his voice calm with distraction. “OK, I’ve got to hop. I hope we understand each other.”

   Fleming picked up on the first ring. “Mr. Carpenter. Thank you for your message yesterday. It turns out that that matter has disposed of itself.”

“Pardon?”

“We are still speaking off the record.”

“Which matter?”

“Thank you. The matter we discussed in your office the other day with my client, Mr. Boynton.”

Oh, no, I thought, thinking he’d given the dossier to Channel Eight. “I’m too late?” I said.

“Indeed, today was our deadline, but what I’m telling you now is, the issue is moot. We’ve done nothing with the documents we showed you, nor do we plan to.”

“You don’t want a story?”

“I’m running late for a conference call. Apologies.”

   The Pine County Clerk’s Office was exactly as I remembered it. Behind the frosted-glass windows set on the lacquered oak counter now stood twelve rows of filing cabinets instead of eight, a testament to the growth and prosperity the county had enjoyed when Jack Blackburn and Francis Dufresne, and later Teddy Boynton, were stumping for progress. All that was missing, for the moment, was County Clerk Verna Clark. Instead I was greeted by Deputy Clerk Vicky Clark, Verna’s daughter.

As a teenager, Vicky Clark had played the piano well enough to win a scholarship to a prestigious out-of-state music academy. But she’d gotten pregnant with triplets, no less, and enjoyed a brief moment of triplet celebrity before sinking back into anonymity in Starvation Lake. She never went to the academy. Now she was a heavyset woman who dyed her blond hair black, streaked it purple and scarlet, and drew it back into a spiky leather catch. She wore a black T-shirt, black jeans, black lipstick, black stud earrings, and black mascara on her eyes, which were pinched nearly shut by her fat cheeks. A plaster cast painted black encased her right arm from the wrist to just above the elbow. Spackle, I thought. I couldn’t help it. When we were kids, Soupy had dubbed her Spackle for all the makeup she plastered on her face.

“What happened to your arm?” I said.

She held it out, bracing it with her left arm. “Fell off a ladder at my boyfriend’s house. Taking down Christmas lights.”

“Your boyfriend puts up Christmas lights?”

“His kids like them. Mine could give a crap. But here I’m trying to help him out, and he’s in the house watching hockey. I’m laying out there in the snow for like an hour before Sully comes out and says, ‘What happened to you?’ I broke my damn arm is what. He ain’t my boyfriend anymore. I’m going to sue him. Know any good lawyers?”

“Nope.”

“Well, I might get one if it doesn’t cost me an arm and a leg—I mean my other arm and a leg. Dad said I could probably get some money out of Sully’s homeowner’s. Fine with me. Help me get the hell out of here.”

I wasn’t sure whether she meant the clerk’s office or Starvation Lake, but I would’ve bet she’d never leave either. Despite what she said, she was probably back with Sully, or would be soon. I wouldn’t have been surprised to hear he’d put her up to suing so they could split the insurance money.

“I hope your arm gets better,” I said. I told her I needed to see the minutes for all the town council meetings from March through August of 1988. Just as her mother had fifteen years before, Vicky handed me a public-information request form.

“Boy, Vicky, do I really have to do this?” I said. “I’m in kind of a hurry.”

“Sorry. It’s policy. My moth—my boss would kill me.”

She folded her hands on the counter while I filled it out. She looked bored. I’d almost finished when she leaned across and said, “Can I ask you something?”

I looked up from the form. “Sure.”

“Why’d you come back?”

“Come back?”

“Here. Why’d you come back here? I heard you had it made downstate, then you got fired.”

What the hell happened to you, Spackle? I thought. Didn’t you have it made? Then I immediately felt bad for thinking it.

“Fired?” I said. “Not really. I just wasn’t seeing eye to eye with my bosses, and I thought it’d be good to come back here and regroup before I get out in the real world again.”

She knew I was lying. She gave me a little smile, seeming comforted to know that she had a kindred spirit, someone else who appreciated the dull pain of being stuck forever in Starvation Lake. “Give me that,” she said, taking the form. She looked around the room. “Hang on.”

Fifteen minutes passed as she went through drawer after drawer of filing cabinets in the back of the room. She came back to the counter empty-handed. “I’ll be damned,” she said. “They aren’t hard to find, everything’s filed by year, but there’s a whole big folder missing from 1988. Maybe somebody from Town Hall came over and—uh-oh.” She was looking past my shoulder. I turned around to see Verna Clark, lips pursed, hands on her hips. She didn’t look pleased, but then I wouldn’t have known what she looked like when she was pleased.

“What’s going on here?” she said.

Vicky said, “Gus was asking for some—”

“If a customer wants some archival files,” her mother said, “we have them prepare a public-information request, don’t we?”

Vicky waved the sheet of paper. “He did.”

Verna stepped forward and grabbed the form without the slightest glance at me. She skimmed it and, for the slimmest sliver of a second, I thought I saw Verna Clark smile. “Unfortunately,” she said, “these particular files are unavailable at this moment.” She gave me a look that felt like a slap. “I haven’t forgotten you, Mr. Carpenter.”

She was still as thin as a hockey stick, still wearing a gray dress and glasses that dangled at her neck. “Nice to see you again,” I said.

She turned to Vicky. “As a matter of procedure, we don’t go digging around in files until we’ve completed the proper processing of the form.” She turned back to me. “That normally takes three to five days.”

“Gus works for the newspaper, though, Mother, and he—”

“I thought we’d spoken about how you should address your superiors in the workplace. And I’m well aware of where Mr. Carpenter works. In fact he worked there once before, many years ago, and now that he has decided to come back, he’ll find that our procedures have remained consistent.”

“Yes, they have,” I said.

“In any event, the files you’re requesting were needed elsewhere this morning. I would’ve had them make copies, but our copier has been malfunctioning and we haven’t been able to get it serviced yet, what with the budget cuts.”

I thought it strange that someone from Town Hall would want to see ten-year-old minutes at the very moment that I wanted them. It had to be Dingus, working through channels.

“Can I ask who took them?” I said.

“You can ask, but I’m unable to furnish a reply,” Verna Clark said. I looked at Vicky. She obviously didn’t know. Her mother said, “If Town Hall follows procedures, we should have the documents back and ready for you to view in approximately seventy-two hours, no earlier.”

   Back at the
Pilot,
Tillie’s little television showed frosty wisps of breath rippling around the perfectly round face of TV reporter Tawny Jane Reese. Her shiny mahogany hair framed a look of near constant surprise, accentuated by her slightly upturned nose. “Dumber than a bag of hockey pucks,” Soupy liked to say about Tawny Jane. “But who cares?”

She was talking into a Channel Eight microphone in front of the sheriff’s department. “Within minutes,” she said, “Sheriff Dingus Aho is expected to talk about the discovery of a snowmobile at nearby Walled Lake. As exclusively reported by Channel Eight, police have determined the snowmobile belonged to legendary youth hockey coach Jack Blackburn, who drowned in an accident…”

Though she screwed up facts like Walleye Lake and took credit for “exclusive” stories she’d actually read in the
Pilot,
I had a soft spot for Tawny Jane Reese. Sometimes I just turned the sound down and watched her practice those TV moves: The punctuated nodding of the head. The furrowed brow of concern. The everything’s-going-to-be-OK flash of smile. Tawny Jane had them down. Sometimes I tried to picture her having dinner with me. Would she chat with the same furrowing and nodding? I supposed she wouldn’t. Other times I wondered if she was still young and perky enough to land a job in a big city. I supposed she wasn’t.