Parker Field (9 page)

“Five minutes late,” he says by way of greeting.

“I hope I’m not interrupting anything.”

“Oh,” he says, “don’t worry. I’d never let you interrupt anything.”

“After all I’ve done for you.”

He emits a sound that would be a laugh, were it accompanied by any show of merriment whatsoever.

“Like give me gray hair and ulcers?”

I figure it’s a fool’s errand to mention that I’ve also given him some damn good stories when they were in short supply in our ever-shrinking newsroom. It’s an even bigger fool’s errand to mention that selling his soul to the devil probably gave him his gray hair and ulcers.

So I cut to the chase. I explain, in as few words as possible, about my idea for a takeout on the 1964 Vees, our last Yankees farm team.

“We have a sports department,” Grubby notes.

“Bootie says it’s fine with him.”

Grubby does actually laugh at that one.

“Everything’s fine with Bootie. Did you bring him some Scotch?”

I mention that our sports guys don’t have time to go to the bathroom anymore. One guy’s covering the whole prep beat and another one’s responsible for two major college athletic programs plus auto racing.

“And you do? You’ve got plenty of time?”

I say the only thing I can think of.

“I’ll make it worth your while.”

When I mention the Frannie Fling angle, he seems slightly more interested. He can see that there might be a hook.

“Yeah,” he says. “You might be able to get some of the old geezers to talk about that. That’d be interesting.”

I mention that my mother’s “special friend” was on the team.

“Ah,” Grubby says. “So you’ve got an angle. Well, maybe he can tell you some inside stuff.”

I tell him that Les is in the hospital, recovering from a gunshot wound and a stroke. It was in the paper, I remind him.

“Oh yeah,” Grubby says, as he uses the little stylus to respond to someone in the ether who must be more important than me. “Sorry. I hope he’s OK.”

I’m sure you do, I think.

“Well,” he says, looking up “how much sabbatical do you need?”

“A month.” I try not to make it sound like a question.

“A week,” he replies.

I try to get him to settle for two, but he won’t budge. Hell, if it takes more than a week, I’ll use vacation time. And I’ve got about six unpaid furlough days waiting to be wasted.

We both say OK, and then he doesn’t say anything else, which is my cue to exit.

I blow Sandy McCool a kiss on the way out and tell her to get Grubby a sunlamp.

I’m playing Internet solitaire at my desk when my roomie Abe Custalow calls.

“Just wanted you to know,” he says. “Rand is back.”

Finlay Rand apparently returned from his vacation this afternoon to find his apartment more or less trashed, as much by the cops as by the shooter. That’ll teach him to leave a contact number with somebody before he leaves town.

The police have already been by to play Twenty Questions with him.

“He’s not too happy,” Custalow says. “He says the guy who broke in damaged a couple of old chairs he said were worth $5,000 each. Can a chair be worth that much, Willie?”

“I don’t know. Does it have beer-can holders on the arms?”

“Anyhow, he said he’d like to talk to you.”

“Why?” I can’t think of much that Finlay Rand and I have in common. He’s a fine-wine kind of guy, and the only kind of Burgundy I’ve drunk much of is the hearty kind, Chateau Gallo.

“I guess about the shooting. He knows Les lives with Peggy. Maybe he wants to apologize for not putting a better lock on his door.”

I remind Custalow that Gillespie has told me Rand’s place was entered with a key. No muss, no fuss.

I tell Abe I’ll call on Mr. Rand tomorrow, which will be the first day of my poorly funded sabbatical.

I
T’S A
zero-sum game in the newsroom these days. If somebody takes a week or two off, somebody else has to double up. No cushion anymore. And if the beat is night cops and it’s starting to get warm on the poor side of town, you can’t just blow it off. People die, and other people want to know about it. Everybody bitches about all the bad news in the paper, but try making a living printing stories about people doing the right thing. The right thing’s boring to Bubba and Mary Catherine sitting on their West End screened-in porch. Reading about the down and dirty is what gets people’s juices flowing. Shouldn’t be that way, but Les Hacker shouldn’t be in VCU hospital paralyzed on his right side. Shouldn’t doesn’t mean a damn thing.

So, I’m pretty sure Sarah Goodnight’s not being sincere when she stops in front of my desk and says, “Thanks a lot.”

Because she’s been to a dirt nap or two, she gets to be me the next week or so. Wheelie probably expects her to keep covering city council, too. “Excuse me, Mayor. Could you hold off voting on that new sanitation dump for an hour or so? Somebody just caught some lead in the East End.”

Sarah’s a good newshound. As soon as one of our timeworn political reporters dies or retires (which, from the look of them, won’t be too long now), she’ll be covering state politics. Unlike me, she probably won’t screw it up and wind up doing a repeat performance as night police reporter.

I apologize for the inconvenience and promise to buy her a few rounds when I get back.

“You better,” she says.

I tell her I’ll probably be around most of the time. Two or three trips to exotic places like Wisconsin and north Florida ought to be the extent of my travels. Plus, I don’t want to be away from Les and Peggy for too long.

It’s a quiet night. I go to the microfilm and do a little research on the ’64 Vees.

Then, about nine, Kate calls. I tell her I mailed the rent check on the fifth, which is almost true. She interrupts me.

“What do you know about Raymond Gatewood?”

I tell her I know he should rot in hell. I fill her in on the latest on Les.

“Oh, God. I’m so sorry. Shit. This makes it even more awkward.”

“What?”

There’s a pause.

“I’m probably going to be his lawyer. One of them at least.”

It doesn’t compute for a few seconds.

“You’re going to defend the guy who tried to kill Les?”

“Everybody deserves a lawyer, Willie.”

I should have seen it coming. She’s working with Marcus Green now, and he’s a magnet for cases like Raymond Gatewood’s. After getting pulled into a couple of hopeless causes that turned out to be not so hopeless after all, thanks to a little help from yours truly, my ex-wife decided that teaming up with a self-promoting, muckraking defender of truth, justice and the American way was more fun than the corporate tedium of Bartley, Bowman and Bush.

I just hope that Mr. Ellis is bringing in steady income. Hell, they’re a two-lawyer family. Not to worry, even with a baby on the way.

I tell Kate that some people don’t deserve shit.

“I know how you feel, but you should see this guy, Willie. I’m not sure he could find the elevator to the ninth floor, let alone get his hands on a rifle and hit something—somebody—halfway across Monroe Park.”

I tell her it isn’t too damn hard to lay hands on a gun in Virginia. It’s probably harder to buy a pack of cigarettes.

“I know. I know. But he just seems so, I don’t know, helpless.”

“Les Hacker is helpless. I’ve seen helpless today.”

She sighs.

“I’m sorry, Willie. I really am. I just wanted you to know. Somebody’s got to make sure he really did do it.”

I tell her that’s what the police are for.

Kate Ellis, the former Kate Black, is always going to take on the hopeless case. She even took me on for longer than she should have.

I have the grace to ask her how the baby’s doing and when it’s due.

“October. I told you.”

I resist the urge to advise her that maybe she ought to take it easy for a while. Kate has never taken it easy.

Chapter Seven

W
EDNESDAY

I
drive Peggy over to the hospital. She asks me if I mind if she finishes her joint on the way over. Why the hell not? She probably needs some chemical support. I suggest that she might consider moving somewhere like Seattle, where her affinity for weed won’t be so much of an issue. She says she doesn’t like rain. Awesome Dude, riding in the back seat, helps her toke it down to what couldn’t even be called a roach about the time we park. A fume of illegal smoke follows us as we leave the car.

I spend a couple of hours at the hospital, then leave Peggy and Awesome there. Les seems about the same. Some cheerful uniformed soul came in and started chirping about rehabilitation. Her optimism did not seem to convey to Les, who mostly stared up at the ceiling.

I called Finlay Rand before I left home and arranged to meet him in his unit at noon.

Rand answers and ushers me in. He’s probably a little older than me but better preserved, with a salt-and-pepper mustache. What little bit of hair he has left is swept back and shouts out “sixty-dollar haircut.” He must have someone else to meet today, because he’s decked out in better threads than I’d wear to a funeral. I’m trying not to be self-conscious about my wear-it-’til-it-smells-bad shirt and the mustard stain on my khakis.

His unit and mine are twins of each other, but those twins must have been separated at birth.

Custalow and I have a lighted Miller sign facing the card table that works equally well for fine dining and poker parties. Finlay Rand has a table that might have belonged to one of the more affluent kings of France. Where it’s set up, he could make it as long as fourteen feet, and I have no doubt he has the leaves to do it. The frame for the art above it probably is worth more than my Honda.

Our hardwood floors’ scuff marks are mostly hidden by throw rugs from Target. Rand’s are covered with Oriental carpets so valuable he won’t serve red wine at parties. I’m surprised he doesn’t ask me to take my shoes off at the door.

The thirty-foot hallway leading to Rand’s living area is like an art gallery. He’s had special lighting put in to showcase modern shit that, for all I know, could be hanging upside down. Our walls don’t have paintings. Our walls need painting.

Rand shows me the chairs he says were “irreparably damaged.”

“It looks like someone sat on this one, and the leg broke,” he says. I’m imagining Gillespie plopping his fat ass down on it.

Still, Rand’s a congenial soul, not stuffy or snobbish so that it shows. He does, though, seem a bit agitated.

“I wanted to ask you for something,” he says. He offers me lunch, which I decline, and some (white) wine, which I don’t.

“You work at the paper. I know the, ah, shooting was a big story, but it is attracting the wrong kind of attention.”

I’m not sure what he’s getting at, but I’m sure he’ll get to it soon enough.

“I wonder,” he says, taking a sip, “if it would be possible for you not to mention my name in all the following stories. With the man caught and the trial coming up … well, I just don’t want that kind of publicity.”

“Why? I mean, it’s not like it reflects on you. Could’ve been anybody’s apartment.”

He sets his glass down.

“But the kind of people I deal with, Mr. Black, they expect me to be like Caesar’s wife, above reproach.”

I tell Rand he’s so far over reproach that he couldn’t see it with binoculars.

He laughs.

“I know. I know. But just seeing my name in a story about something this … unpleasant could have an adverse effect on what I do.”

Since what he does is get rich people to pay $20,000 for the table he glommed for $5,000 at an estate sale, I get his meaning. I tell him, though, that I can’t just go in and tell the managing editor we can’t use someone’s name.

“But I’m an innocent bystander,” he says, frowning and spreading his arms for emphasis.

I tell him I’ll do what I can to keep him out of the limelight, but I’m making no promises.

He sighs and says he’d appreciate any help I could give him.

As I’m leaving, he says, “So, what do you cover for the newspaper?”

Obviously, he’s not a subscriber, which puts him in the strong majority in the greater metropolitan area. I explain, and he kind of wrinkles his nose.