The Spoiler (38 page)

Lofton grew impatient. He took Mendoza by the collar. One of the Latinos laughed.

“What happened to Gutierrez?”

“Yourself—you are lucky you didn't come to the depot. Your boss wanted us to use your corpse for kindling, to help light the fire. The same thing we did to the other reporter. When you didn't show up, it was a bad sign. My men told me it was a bad sign, but I said, ‘Go ahead, to burn the building. I'll go alone for the money. You burn, I'll go alone.'”

Lofton listened as Mendoza's voice drifted off. Mendoza started to repeat himself, but Lofton grabbed him a little tighter by the collar and asked his question again. “What happened to Gutierrez?”

“You were supposed to die tonight, not me.” Mendoza paused to catch his breath. He struggled awhile before answering Lofton's question. “Your Mr. Shortstop, the big baseball player, he came to me. He said he knew about the fires. He said if I gave him money, or maybe cocaine, he'd be quiet.…”

And there was that funny smile again, like the one Mendoza had given him in the church pew. It was a smile Lofton had heard about from other reporters and even seen a few times himself: in jails, in asylums, in the faces of men fighting guerrilla wars.

“I had to do to him what these men are going to do to me.”

Lofton headed out of the tunnel alone. The lights went dim behind him. He heard voices murmuring, he heard a thick, thudding sound, over and over in the darkness, but he did not hear Mendoza cry out. Outside, the smoke from American Paper had drifted over the railyard, a thick gray pall that covered the bit of sky overhead and made it impossible to see the stars.

He hurried along the railroad tracks. The Flats burned down below, not all of the houses, of course, but enough so that you could not count them, so that the sky seemed to flicker and turn bright, the darkness creased with the beautiful flames.

Lofton left the tracks and ran across Andersonville—a small outcrop of shacks, part of the city, a neighborhood of dark-skinned children, houses with corrugated roofs, tomato gardens, and narrow alleys. A hill beyond the neighborhood rose up to a highway that snaked along the ridge out to the suburbs. The streets here were dark, the fires had not spread this far, but Lofton, as he ran down a street, looking for a way up the hill, thought he could feel the people in the neighborhood—old men, women, children—staring at him from their porches. There was no road up to the ridge, but he found a path into the trees. It was dark, and he had a hard time seeing, but he hurried on. Something rattled in the bushes ahead of him: a dog maybe. Lofton swerved off in another direction, off the path. He took off the orange batting helmet, threw it into the bushes, and struggled upward. He heard young voices calling to each other in Spanish down below. He pushed on, found himself tangled in the bushes, very close to the top. A vine ensnared his foot and he fell, and then he heard more rattling nearby—
my imagination
—and he felt a sudden, crazy panic, his heart palpitating unevenly, and he burst through the bushes. He stood on the street, on the sidewalk of a four-lane highway. He walked along more slowly now, catching his breath. He decided he would go to the
Dispatch
and take his chances with Kirpatzke. He worried about Kirpatzke, of course. He wondered, again, who it was that had followed him to the library, who it was that had told Golden where to find him, that he was investigating the fires, and who it was that had trashed his room. He doubted it was Kirpatzke. It didn't seem his style. Kirpatzke might kill my story, Lofton thought, Brunner might have that much power over him, but I don't think Kirpatzke would do anything direct.

He worked his way through the streets until finally he was at the
Dispatch
, pushing through the glass doors and standing in the cool air-conditioned building.

There were a few reporters here, more than usual for this time of night, but not so many as he expected. An older man, a younger woman each sat at their desks, absorbed in the computer screen. Three young reporters stood gathered around Kirpatzke's desk.

“We need someone on the official end … fire chief, mayor, insurance companies. We need someone to talk to the merchants downtown. And someone on the human interest … burn victims, relatives of the dead.…”

Kirpatzke talked sadly, laconically, his lips twisted in a half smile. Lofton stepped forward into the circle of younger reporters. He could feel the men bristle.

“What do you want?” asked Kirpatzke. He looked Lofton up and down, and Lofton remembered how he was dressed: green baseball jersey, sagging pants, makeup on his face.

“I have a story about the fire,” Lofton said.

“Thanks. But I think we got it covered.”

“I've got the arson angle,” said Lofton. “I didn't hear you mention that.”

Kirpatzke sighed.

A reporter turned to Lofton. “They don't know it's arson yet. They can't start to investigate until the fire cools down.”

“Just hold off, Lofton. We got it covered,” said Kirpatzke.

Lofton turned away. He headed to the proofreaders' ghetto. He worked on his story there. Kirpatzke ignored him.

Several hours later, when the darkness outside had started to lift, Lofton was still working. He had gone to the
Dispatch
's files for Einstein's fire stories; he had patched some of the other reporter's work into his own piece for background. Because Lofton's own notes had been taken while he was in the hospital, he had to rely on his memory for the stuff he had dug out on his own. Inevitably that meant some of the quotes were not quite right, words transposed, sentences forgotten. But that didn't bother him too much; that sort of thing happened in every story, though most reporters wouldn't admit it. Still, there were other weak points. He did not want to mention Amanti by name; it could be dangerous for her. That strained the story, and so did the fact that he could not prove he'd seen Brunner's papers. The story was weak on figures. Still, it had to be that way. If Amanti wanted to come forward later and make some kind of on-the-record statement, then she could do that. As for the rest of them, whatever they had said to him and whatever bits of it he could remember, he used. Except for Golden. He was not quite sure why, but he refrained from mentioning his name either. He had a dogheaded loyalty to the man that he himself did not quite understand. Perhaps it was because Golden had been a big leaguer once, or because Lofton didn't want to believe Golden was dead, or because if the man was alive, he wanted to give him a chance to come forward on his own, to leave town forever, to do whatever he had to do.

By the time he had finished the story, the other reporters had gone. Kirpatzke, however, still mused at his desk. Lofton read over what he had written.

Investigations begun earlier this summer indicate that a statewide arson ring may lie behind the fire that devastated Holyoke's mill district last night.

The alleged conspiracy involves people from all ranks of society, ranging from the members of local street gangs to those at the highest levels of state government. The conspiracy reportedly involves such figures as Holyoke businessman John C. Brunner, Senator David Kelley (D.-Holyoke), and retired U.S. Senator James Harrison.

Last night's blaze, which lit up the evening sky for miles and spurred looting in the neighborhood near the canals, was the largest in a series of fires that have plagued the town all summer. Though local residents have often expressed the belief that an organized ring lies behind the fires, reports by the city's fire officials have repeatedly cited negligence and random vandalism as prime causes.

“The fire officials are lying. Somebody is buying them off. We know who's behind the fires.… The police, the white businessmen, they're the ones who gain,” said the leader of the Latinos, a local street gang, in an interview with
Dispatch
reporter Dennis Einstein earlier this summer.

The leader, known only as Angelo, was killed shortly afterward in a street clash with a rival gang. According to members of the Latinos, Angelo was killed by the Wanderers, an opposition gang that was paid to set the fires and that used the payoff money to finance a drug operation.

Einstein's investigations into the fires stopped abruptly in early July, when the reporter disappeared without explanation. His charred body was finally identified last week after having been discovered sometime earlier in the ruins of an apartment building on High Street.

A third person, Randy Gutierrez, was shot to death just hours before a scheduled newspaper interview in which he was to discuss the arson. Gutierrez, a shortstop for the Holyoke Redwings at the time of his death, reportedly had information linking the team's front office to the arsons. The team is co-owned by John C. Brunner and Anthony Liuzza, Jr.

“Randy Gutierrez was really scared. He told me he knew who was behind the arsons, and he was afraid they would kill him,” said one source who talked to Gutierrez before his death. The source, who asked not to be identified, claimed that Gutierrez believed a member of the Redwings' management was delivering money to the arsonists, acting as a go-between for someone higher in the Redwings' organization.

Gutierrez apparently told the same story to several of his teammates, including second baseman Tim Carpenter and pitcher Rickey Sparks. “I didn't know what to believe; Randy was pretty wired up those days,” said Carpenter. Sparks refused comment.

Material evidence apparently indicates that a majority of the buildings which burned were owned not by Brunner himself but by proxy owners who then forwarded the largest percentage of the insurance premiums to Brunner via Nassau & Associates, a Boston-based law firm. The only building directly in Brunner's name was American Paper, which was engulfed in fire last night and which should continue to burn for several days.

“Is it wrong to destroy the slums or to give landlords money to rebuild? And if the government doesn't help, maybe we should do it our own way,” Brunner said yesterday afternoon before the fires, when questioned about his role in the arsons. Brunner stands to collect upwards of $10 million in insurance from last night's blaze.

The arson scheme apparently took on political overtones when it was uncovered by Senator Kelley, Holyoke's representative in the state legislature. According to one source, Kelley threatened to reveal the scheme if Brunner did not use a percentage of the arson money to help finance challenger Richard Sarafis's election campaign. Kelley reportedly reneged on his threat when he discovered his father-in-law, Senator Harrison, had received large sums of money from Brunner in the past.

Last night, when the fire started, both Brunner and Kelley were in attendance at MacKenzie Field. While they watched the game, members of the Latinos had caught up with the head of the rival gang, Lou Mendoza, in an underground tunnel near the city's railyard.

Lofton stopped reading here. He pictured again the damp sewer, Mendoza's gleaming eyes, the Latino lighting a cigarette. Brunner's plan had gone awry. He hadn't figured on Amanti's refusing to send me to the depot, Lofton thought, and he hadn't figured on the Latinos catching up with Mendoza when they did, and he couldn't know that the kid would stumble by and call me to the scene.

He looked over his story again. It didn't have all the facts it could have. The story relied in places on supposition, it attributed important information to unnamed sources; but it was the best he could do with what he had available, and it wasn't bad. If the story somehow made its way into print, then that in itself would help. Its mere presence in the paper, cast in type on newspaper rag, would get other reporters working, would force official investigations, and would start something serious. Maybe. Anyway, he had seen such things happen before, and he'd seen it happen the other way, too, when a story seemed to make no impact at all, or not enough to matter. Lofton scanned the story again, saved it in the computer's files, and hit the button for hard copy.

“What are you being so diligent about?”

Kirpatzke stood over him. He looked as disheveled as ever; his eyes were red-rimmed, and his shirttail was out. His skin was the same worn color.

“I told you. I've got a story.”

“Yeah, the whole world's got a story. Isn't that the schlock piece for Brunner and the Redwings, the end-of-the-year promo? Something to make the powerful citizens look good in the midst of confusion? Pro like you should be able to whack that off in a minute.”

There was bitterness in Kirpatzke's voice, as if the idea of Lofton's writing the lie for Brunner had made him sick. Lofton had almost forgotten all about it: how he had promised Brunner a well-timed whitewash for today's paper. Still, Kirpatzke seemed ready to publish the lie. He did not even look at the screen.

“What kind of outfit is that you have on there?” asked Kirpatzke. “You joining a baseball team?”

“You know the story behind that fire, don't you? You've known all along,” said Lofton.

“I know, and so does everyone in town. Keep your mouth shut, and keep your money. Just do what Brunner paid you to do.”

“Read my story; it's on the screen.” Lofton walked to the printer and tore out the printed copy. He folded it and put it into his back pocket. Kirpatzke's eyes opened as he read. He smiled, at first, then chuckled out loud. His pupils were small and black.

“Are you out of your mind?”

“Print it,” said Lofton.

“Hearsay, circumstantial, libel, the stuff of lawsuits.”

“The story's true.”

“Doesn't matter.”

“No? What does Brunner have on you?”

Across the building the front door opened, a couple of the proofreaders arriving for work.

“It won't fly. It's not my problem,” hissed Kirpatzke. “It's tough luck. Now get out of here.”

“Everybody knows you're nothing, not even a good hack.… How much does Brunner pay the paper to keep you on here?”