The Spoiler (39 page)

“Listen”—Kirpatzke kept his voice low—“you're damn lucky I don't run this. He'd have your ass. You're damn lucky I don't take this over to him right now. You'd never stick your dick in a newspaper office again. The only thing you'd be screwing is the dirt in your grave.”

“You won't tell Brunner,” Lofton said. One of the proofreaders walked closer; he could hear her footsteps behind him. “You don't have any guts. You're a fuckin' first-class loser.”

“And so who do you think you are, Willie Mays?” said Kirpatzke. He glanced down at the screen.

“I have other places to take this.” Lofton started away. He almost bumped into the woman. She kept her eyes on the floor.

“They won't print it either,” said Kirpatzke. He stood with his back stiff, eyes to the screen, his long fingers on the terminal keyboard. And Lofton left, hoping that he was right about Kirpatzke, hoping the man was too much a half ass, a play-it-as-it-goes, to turn him in to Brunner.

10

His only chance was to get the story into a paper, and his best shot, as far as he could see, was with his old friend Warner down at the
Globe
. So he drove a rented car through the morning twilight, over the blue-gray stretch of turnpike headed east to Boston, where he phoned Warner from a booth by the side of the road. Warner's voice, normally slick and professional, was groggy and surprised. He agreed, reluctantly, to meet Lofton at the Carson Wall in South Boston.

The Carson Wall was a retaining wall, three feet high, dull and gray, stretching along between the ocean and the street. Behind Lofton, across the beach, the ocean washed up over the ankles of the morning bathers and covered the sand with a dirty filigree of foam. In front of Lofton, across the lanes of traffic and exhaust, stood the offices of the
Boston Globe
, a stone building that had a large window so passersby could watch the presses hammering out the daily news.

Leaning against the wall and closing his eyes, Lofton listened to the screeching of the gulls and the thrumming of the ocean. He could smell the peculiar mix of ocean smells: the low-tide stench, the crisp salt air, the pork-fried rice grizzling at the Ocean Kai. He thought of old times, when he and Warner had walked the streets of Cambridge, talking about women and writing and the future. “I'll make it,” Lofton remembered himself saying. The memory was vivid, Warner's young, glowing face in front of him, the traffic hammering by, the air filled with the shuffling of feet. Just as suddenly, however, the memory was gone. He's not coming, Lofton thought, and his chest filled with dread. But he was wrong. He opened his eyes, and there was Warner, working his way up the street to where Lofton leaned against the wall.

Warner looked good. His sandy brown hair had receded; but his cheeks were ruddy, and he was thin, healthy-looking, despite the pace—the long, sedentary hours of waiting, then the heart rush to deadline—that he must keep at the newspaper. He wore glasses with tinted lenses to hide his eyes, something he had done since college because of the dope he smoked, a habit, Lofton guessed, he had not given up.

“You look horrible,” Warner said.

“Thanks. Glad to hear it.”

Lofton knew what Warner said was true. He was slump-shouldered, the hospital had short-cropped his hair, he had a bruised face. He had changed his clothes, for the most part, but he still wore the green baseball jersey underneath his jacket. Nonetheless, the moment was good, a wry exchange.

“So what's so important that you had to get me up and down here on my day off? You still married to that woman out in Colorado?”

“I've got a story.”

Warner raised an eyebrow. For a second he looked like Kirpatzke, the same seen-it-all glare.

“It's about Holyoke.”

“Holyoke? You mean, the fire? I think we've got that covered.”

“It's more than Holyoke. It's bigger.”

“Bigger? Than Holyoke?” Warner laughed. “All right. But why don't you tell me what's been going on first? You should get some sleep or something. You been walking into lampposts?”

“No, they been walking into me. Will you read this?”

“In a minute. Tell me the story first.”

Lofton was not sure he liked the way Warner was treating him. He remembered doing the same thing when dealing with free-lancers over the telephone. Tell me the story first. And now, as Lofton started talking, Warner glanced around the wall, watching the traffic, the women walking by. When Lofton got going too fast or too loud, Warner would whisper, “Hush, buddy, slow down.” Lofton did not like the way his friend was acting, but he told him the story anyway: about how Amanti had approached him; about Gutierrez's death; about how slowly the names and tangle of Holyoke surrounded him until it became clear that Brunner was using Dick Golden, the Redwings' general manager as a go-between, a payoff man who fed the head of an old street gang money to burn the city. Everything had been going smoothly for Brunner, Lofton explained, until Senator Kelley discovered the scheme and tried to use it against him. When Lofton was done talking, he took the story and handed it to Warner.

“Will you read it?”

Warner took the story and held it between his fists. He looked at it for a while, turning the pages, his lips parted, just barely, as he read.

“Well,” Warner said, handing the pages back to Lofton, “so this is how come you look like a goon battered by his own fists?”

“Can you print it?”

“No.”

Lofton didn't ask why. He felt the muscles below his eyes shaking. He looked out beyond his friend to the ocean.

“I think you're too involved. Too close.”

Lofton turned his back, looked out at the traffic. He contemplated walking away.

“I told you, Frank, we can't print this. It's subjective, it's libel, and you don't have any proof. And who are these people? Brunner? Mendoza? The Latinos? This is small-town gossip, twenty-five-cent melodrama. You know that. Inside, you know it.”

Lofton looked at the sea.

“Frank,” Warner said, “I know this is tough, but maybe I can work something out. A kill fee, give you a couple hundred, as if I'd commissioned the story, and you get yourself a start out of here.”

Lofton said nothing.

“It's tough, I know.” Warner's tone was sympathetic.

“Don't give me this crap about how tough it is.”

“Listen, Lofton, don't you give me crap either, this naïve and holy shit. What do you expect? I haven't seen or heard from you in years, and now you come up to me, looking like something out of a carnival, and act as if you've just written the next Pulitzer. You want to indict half the politicians in the state on the basis of what some street punk says in some gutter tunnel? Give me a break. Now come on, over to my office, and I'll see what I can do about a kill fee.”

“Nah, I'll stay out here and get some sun.”

Warner sighed and leaned against the wall. The two old friends looked out toward the ocean. Warner pointed to Columbia Point, a government housing project that overlooked the water.

“The old folks, they like to say that on a clear day you can see Ireland over the ocean,” Warner said. “But all they really see is Columbia Point. The slums. And they hate it.”

“So?” said Lofton.

“Would they cry if it burned? Would it really be so bad?”

Sleeplessness and motion. Exhaust and rubber. The stretching gray asphalt, and gray steel guardrails, and pluming gray exhaust.
Too much hearsay
. Lofton swore and tried to keep pace with the traffic but found himself going either too slow or too fast. One minute he would feel overpowered, surrounded by a crush of cars, a huge truck bearing down on him from the rear.
Goddamn Warner
. In another minute—or what seemed like a minute—he would be gliding fast over the road, the rented car smooth and powerful beneath him, but not quite under his control, rolling so easy that he had to swerve lanes to avoid the traffic ahead of him. He dug through the ashtray, looking for a good-size butt.

Outside Boston the scenery was green and lush. Some of the trees, though, up in their highest branches, were changing colors early, as often happened in New England, their leaves bursting into orange.

So Warner didn't take the story. So I don't have all the loose ends. So what? Things don't always work out that neatly. You can't always dance through the convolutions of the plot, the twistings and turnings, elaborating on them in some baroque counterpoint, and then tie everything together at the end. A lot of times people die before their big moment, before everything makes sense. He turned on the radio and let it crackle. Maybe Warner had been right.

He kept driving, but he did not know where he was headed, where he should stop. These gently rolling hills could be anywhere in America: Iowa maybe, or Wisconsin, or upstate California, or Oregon. And the highway was always the same; in fact, the road had a way of dominating the scenery, so that he could be approaching any American city. He could be driving into Denver, back to Maureen and his brother.

He thought of Maureen, the white cotton gown she slept in, her head against the pillow. A sign read
POINTS NORTH: NEW HAMPSHIRE, VERMONT
. On the radio there was news of Holyoke, the fire, the looting. Nothing he had not heard, nothing he hadn't seen firsthand while running along the railroad tracks.

The money!
Suddenly Lofton remembered. He had taken the envelope from his pocket, down at the railyards, and hidden it under the tracks. Did he want the money? Would it be safe to try to find it? And what would he do once he had it? He passed another sign:
HOLYOKE: NEXT 3 EXITS
.

On the radio the announcer finished the local news, then patched in a national sports broadcast, a pregame show, the Boston Red Sox playing the California Blues. The station faded out as the road climbed, then came in louder than before.

“Yesterday, in a move to bolster their pitching staff for the stretch drive in the American League West, the California Blues called up pitcher Rickey Sparks from their Double A club in Holyoke. Not long after Sparks stepped off the plane, however, the Blues brass handed him his walking papers.

“In an unusual late-season shuffle involving four players and three teams, the Blues dropped Sparks after Yankee veteran Tommy Sands was unexpectedly placed on waivers by a disgruntled George Steinbrenner. Sparks now finds himself on waivers, without a team, and Tommy Sands is in California, occupying Sparks's place on the roster. The Blues also announced that they will be sending two minor league players to Cleveland as compensation for slugger Billy Reames, whom the Blues had signed away from the Indians earlier in the year. Meanwhile, a spokesman for the Royals in Kansas City criticized the Blues' last-minute dealing as being in violation of league trading deadlines.…”

Lofton listened for more about Sparks, but the sportscaster went on to talk about other games, other players, other cities. If Sparks had done any special favors for Brunner, this was a funny way to get repaid. He had been brought to the brink of the big show, but then that was it, party over. There was nothing for Sparks to do but play the hope some other team would lift him off waivers.

“Not with his stats,” Lofton muttered. “Not a chance in the world.”

The last exit came, and he swung the car into Holyoke. Part of him did not believe that Golden was really dead, that the city had really burned. He wanted to take a last look, to see the place in the daylight. Also, down in the railyards, the money was waiting. He could use it. He could go and take it, make the long drive back to Maureen, to Denver.

He followed Dwight Street into the city. Close in, the traffic thickened more than usual; in the neighborhoods close to downtown, where the fires and looting had been worst, people wandered the streets. There were a lot of people, in from the suburbs, coming to look at the burned mill. The town had a strange, festive atmosphere. Smoke still plumed up from the ruins. On one corner a fire fighter stood in heavy gear. Children rode their bicycles in the streets, blocking traffic. Lofton turned the corner toward Barena's. He would get a closer look later.

He considered calling Amanti, but he could not see much point. She had made herself pretty clear the last time he'd seen her: She'd done as much as she could, and now she'd wait it out, caught between Brunner and Kelley, just as always. He couldn't expect her to do much else.

The operator's twangy Colorado voice made Lofton homesick. Maureen caught the phone on the fifth ring, when Lofton was about to give up. She was out of breath. After she had recognized his voice, there was a long silence. While waiting for her to speak, he imagined her on the phone in the kitchen of the old house, leaning against the counter in one of those wide skirts she wore to teach in.

“Have you done your story?”

“Almost,” he said. “They're giving me a kill fee. The
Globe
is. The story's too hot to print.”

“You fuck anyone yet?”

He said nothing. There was another silence on the other end of the phone.

“I need you to sign some papers, to finalize the divorce.”

“I'm leaving here,” Lofton said.

Maureen was quiet. He listened to her breathing, imagined her turning, looking out the window. He thought of getting the money, of going home.

“Another one of the cats died,” she said. “It was Merle; he got sick all of a sudden.”

“How's my brother? You seen him lately?”

“No. Didn't you hear me? I told you Merle died.”

“I heard you. I said I'm leaving Massachusetts.”

“Don't you care about the cat?”

“Of course. Have you sold the house?”

“No. I decided not to. I was reacting to the divorce, but the house is mine. I want to keep it.”

“Good.”

Though he wasn't quite sure why, Lofton felt a surge of anger, of jealousy. What was she trying to tell him?