Starvation Lake (37 page)

“No, ma’am,” I said, meaning I didn’t want coffee. “Sorry to bother you so early.”

“No bother. I adore having visitors anytime. Sit.”

I sat in a wing-backed chair covered with more pink flowers. Issues of
People
magazine covered the end table next to me.

“I have to say, young man, you have quite a popular newspaper,” Gloria Lowinski said. “I’ve been on the phone all day every day since I was in that article. It’s been absolutely astonishing.”

“I’m glad. What you said about the president was very interesting.”

“Oh, oh, yes, the way of the tantric, I think that most definitely would help him with his, shall we say, waywardness, and it certainly would be appreciated by his wife, I can you tell from glorious experience.” She closed her eyes and pressed a hand dramatically to her breast. “As in
Gloria
’s experience.”

“Yes, ma’am. I was wondering if you could help me with a story I’m working on now. It’s about tattoos.”

I had an idea about the tattoo I’d seen in the films. I’d come to hear Gloria Lowinski tell me if I was right. I wouldn’t have minded being wrong.

“Tattoos? Young man, your timing is perfect. My granddaughter just got a tattoo on—well, I shouldn’t tell you, but, oh, what the hang—it’s just above her privates on the left side. Here.” She pointed to a spot on her bathrobe. I focused on my notebook. “Would you like to speak with her? It’s Priscilla Lawlor, 1209 Fletcher Street.”

“Thanks, Mrs. Lowinski, but actually, I’d—”

“Oh, I know, I’m prattling on, you want to ask me something.” She sat down on a sofa facing me. “I should tell you, Mr., Mr….”

“Carpenter. Call me Gus.”

“Of course, Bea and Rudy’s boy. How is your mother? She used to come to our office but she stopped. She never said why.”

“She’s fine, thanks. You were saying…”

“And you, weren’t you going to marry the Bontrager girl, the buxom one, Deborah or Deirdre something?”

“Darlene.”

“Yes, Darlene. That wasn’t so long ago.”

“About fifteen years.”

“Oh, well, that’s not so long. My husband died twenty-three years ago and it still seems like yesterday.”

Everything in my past was beginning to feel like yesterday. “I’m sorry, ma’am. You were saying you should tell me…?”

“Yes, yes. What I meant was, I’m no expert in tattoos. I don’t have one myself, but of course, as an obstetrical-gynecological nurse, I have seen a few.”

“I figured,” I said, and we both smiled. She was indeed a blabbermouth, as Mom had said.

“Now,” she said, “are you interested in what sorts of tattoos I’ve seen? Or the most, shall we say, interesting places women have them? Oh, oh, I remember a woman—Doris, yes, Doris Kellogg—an exceptionally large woman who had a tattoo of a large beautiful butterfly right where her—”

“Actually, Mrs. Lowinski, I have a specific tattoo in mind. We, uh, we have a photograph of a tattoo we’re trying to identify. It’s quite pretty and we’d like to contact the owner.”

“Please call me Gloria. Are you going to put me in the paper again?”

“We might.”

“Good,” she said. “Because, if I may say so, it sounds a bit, shall we say, farfetched, that there would be some local collection of tattoos”—she raised an eyebrow—“but if you’re looking to quote an expert, or, maybe not an
expert
but certainly an
observer
, then perhaps I can help you. If it’s a woman and she’s local, chances are I’ve seen her and her tattoo.”

“Of course. I’m sure you can help.”

“Can I see the photograph?”

“Unfortunately, no. I don’t have it with me.”

“Well, whose collection is it? Why wouldn’t they know whose tattoo it is?”

“That’s a little complicated, Gloria.” I was dancing as fast as I could. “I’m really not at liberty to say.”

“Are you sure the tattoo is from someone around here?”

“Pretty sure.”

I described the tattoo I’d seen on Blackburn’s films. Though I’d thought at first that it was a four-leaf clover, I’d caught a few other glances of it during the films, including one fleeting close-up, and decided it actually looked more like a star with something inside it. Gloria listened. I tore a page out of my notebook and drew a crude version of it for her. She took one look and gave me a sly smile.

“You’re not really doing a story, are you?” she said.

“Pardon me?”

She leaned closer. “You are a devil. Are we—are you playing a practical joke? Is it a certain someone’s birthday?”

“Uh, no, I’m not sure what you’re—”

“Come on, Gus. There’s only one person in this town with a tattoo even remotely like that, and you darned well know who she is.”

I wasn’t going to say it.

“Why don’t you guess?”

“I’d rather not, Gloria. Guessing gets newspaper people in trouble.”

“Really?” she said, laughing. “You are a devil. You’re here enchanting me with a chance to get in your paper again, but really you have some other secret agenda. OK, I’m game. It wouldn’t be the first time a man has bamboozled me.”

“So,” I said, totally unsure of myself now, “can you tell me?”

She shook her head and laughed again. “Hand me one of those.” She meant the
People
magazines stacked on the end table. “Any of them.”

I gave her one. She flipped through it, came to a stop, and showed me a photograph. “Here’s a clue,” she said. In the photo a young actress I didn’t recognize was stooping to admire her freshly implanted star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame.

I looked up at smiling Gloria Lowinski.

“That’s what your tattoo looks like, doesn’t it?” she said. “Makes sense, doesn’t it? How else could our beloved beauty queen have gotten one of those?”

“Right,” I said.

Gloria stood. “You’re not going to put me in your paper, but this was fun anyway. And what a coincidence! She was just here the other day, sitting on that very chair.”

I didn’t really need further confirmation. But inside my truck, I flipped back to the notes I’d taken in my semistupor the night before. I wanted to see if I had written down the brand of the whiskey in the bottle standing on the shelf in the background. I had. My barely legible note read, “gntlmn jac.” Or, as Soupy put it that night on my stairway, “Gentleman-fucking-Jack,” the brand of Starvation Lake’s very own beauty queen, Tillie Spaulding.

   Some things were beginning to make painful sense. Now I understood why Tillie had been behaving strangely, why she’d been so protective of the photo files, why Soupy had always resisted meeting me at the
Pilot.
Blackburn had stashed his film at the paper so Tillie—a movie star at last, in thrall to her director—could keep watch.

I was glad to see she wasn’t in yet when I got back to the
Pilot.
I was a little angry and a lot uncomfortable and I might have fired her on the spot, which would have been foolish. Better that she didn’t know what I knew, at least for now, although she had to be suspicious if she had noticed the missing films.

Joanie sat reading
Newsweek
with her feet up on her desk. Her clutter didn’t usually allow space for feet, but today she appeared to have cleared her desk onto the floor. I walked up and stood silently regarding the mess.

“In case you’re wondering, those are my notes from the story we’re supposedly covering,” she said, without looking up from her magazine.

“Nice. Why not just toss it all in the garbage?”

“I’ll get around to it.” She snapped a page back. “By the way, there’s a press release in the pile about some New York bank buying a bunch of little banks up here. Sounds like something tame enough for us.”

On my desk lay that morning’s paper. Across Tillie’s wrestling story Joanie had scribbled in red ink, “Pulitzer?” Higher up the page, that old picture of Blackburn in his slicked-back hair stared up at me. The caption read, “JACK BLACKBURN, Jan. 19, 1934–March 13, 1988.” Something about it bothered me.

My message light was on. I dialed voice mail. Kerasopoulos had called at 7:14, saying, “Please call the minute you get in.” I wandered back over to Joanie. I didn’t blame her for feeling the way she did. But I needed her to get over it.

“Hey,” I said. “I got a jailhouse interview with Campbell.”

“Great. You can add to the pile.”

She kept reading. I stooped down to look at what was on the floor. Seven or eight notebooks, half a dozen file folders, a smattering of other papers. One was a photocopy of a tax document that had to have come from the county clerk’s office. I picked it up.

“This from the old Blackburn land?” I said.

“If it’s that Richards Company, yep.”

“Boy. The assessed value’s almost five hundred grand.” My eyes went to the line identifying the owner. “It’s actually Richard Limited, singular, not Richards,” I said. There was an address in Springfield, Virginia.

“Who cares?”

I stood, letting the paper drop. “So what are you doing today?”

“Hmmmm. First I thought I’d finish reading this story about how everyone’s going to get rich selling poodle sweaters on the Internet. Then I was thinking maybe Audrey’s for a leisurely brunch or maybe just straight to Enright’s for a double Bloody Mary. Maybe Dingus’ll join me and I can at least tell
him
what I know.”

“That reminds me,” I said. I grabbed Joanie’s phone and dialed the county clerk’s office, hoping Vicky would answer. I was in luck.

“It’s Gus Carpenter,” I said. “How are you?”

“Sick of snow,” Vicky said.

“Me, too. Listen—remember that file from eighty-eight I wanted the other day? Did you ever find out who took it?” Dingus, I’d figured.

“Oh, God, I’ve got to get that back before my mother kills me,” she said. “Dave from Town Hall has it and he’s not returning my calls.”

“Dave?”

“Dave, you know, the bartender?” She meant Loob. He worked part-time for the tax assessor. But why in the world would Loob need those minutes? “If you see him, will you tell him to bring me my folder?”

“Sure.” I hung up the phone.

“Tell me,” Joanie said. “Why do you keep doing this?”

“Doing what?”

“Doing
this
. Being a reporter. Chasing this story. Why bother? Nobody here wants to know the truth anyway. They don’t care what we have to say unless it’s to tell them where’s the Rotary lunch or what’s showing at the movies or who caught the biggest fish. I mean, sorry, but this is it for you, isn’t it? You had your shot at the big time and you blew it. Now you’re in piddling little Starvation Lake, the denial capital of the world. Why do you keep going?”

It was a good question. My old coach was a pedophile. My receptionist was his beard. My closest friend and maybe others I knew were their victims. My mother knew things I didn’t. I had been blind to it all. For years I had been walking around in the middle of the truth and I could not see it. True, I was just a boy but, even now, I could see only the blurred contours of the truth. From within its darker core a thousand questions taunted. Joanie was right. Even if I answered every question, no brighter future awaited, not in what I’d chosen to do with my life thus far. There was just the knowing. Somehow, I had to hope, the knowing would make things better. I was no longer on a mission for clips or prizes or raises or the envy of my peers. There was just the knowing. And it wasn’t even the knowing of the who-what-where-when-why of Blackburn’s life and death. I wanted to know why I wanted to know.

“I don’t know,” I said. “It pays the bills. But thanks for asking.” I meant it. “I’ve got to call Kerawhatshisfatass.”

I dialed at my desk. His secretary answered and put me on hold. As I waited, I doodled “Richard Ltd.” on my blotter. He picked up.

“Gus Carpenter, Jim,” I said.

“Excuse me,” he said, “I’m going to close the door.” He set the phone down, picked it up again. “Last night was not good, Gus.”

“This morning’s not so hot, either. We had a hell of a front-page scoop someone obviously killed.”

Out of the corner of my eye I noticed Joanie put her magazine down.

“You bet we killed it,” Kerasopoulos said. “I thought we had a talk—two talks—about certain stories. I thought we had an understanding.”

“We did. I was going to let you know when we had something out of the ordinary. Last night we did, and I let you know.”

“On voice mail? Not good enough. Not even close. I don’t want to hear from your secretary about the most inflammatory story in the paper.”

“I’m going to fire her.”

Joanie rolled her chair over next to my desk. I pointed toward the front counter. She shook her head no, meaning Tillie wasn’t in yet.

“Let’s just calm down now,” Kerasopoulos said.

“Let’s not. My job is to put news in the paper. We had legitimate news that had a direct bearing on something very big going on around here. We checked it out and we decided to run it. That’s what reporters and editors do. Anybody can kill stories.”

I knew I was treading on thin ice, but I no longer cared. “Careful, Gus,” Kerasopoulos said. “It is simply not sufficient to quote one person who is thousands of miles away, whom we’ve never even seen, whose credibility we have not tested—”

“Others corroborated it.”

“Really? How about the police up there or, whatever, the Mounties? Did this guy ever think to tell them about his, his encounters, if in fact they happened? What use is there in dredging all this up now?”

“If Blackburn was a child molester, it could suggest a motive. The person charged with his murder played for Blackburn.”

“You played for him, too, didn’t you, Gus?”

“Yes, I did.”

“Exactly. So let me ask you, and you obviously don’t have to answer, but did your coach ever do anything to
you
to suggest he was, you know, a little off? Did he ever come on to you?”

“No, he did not.”

“Well, excuse me, Gus, but you were there. If you didn’t see anything, why are you so all-fired sure it happened? What hard evidence links this guy in Canada—and, again, we don’t know what ax he might have to grind—to what tragedy may have befallen Blackburn? Anything?”