The Philadelphia Quarry (8 page)

“Maybe he got somebody else to do it for him,” I say as Kate directs me to wipe ketchup off my chin. “He could’ve orchestrated the whole thing and had it done while he was sleeping at his momma’s.”

“Anyhow,” she says. “I thought maybe we could work together, share information and all that.”

“That could work,” I tell her. It did last time. She got a gold star from BB&B. I got one of those three-dollar Virginia Press Association awards. Wheelie even nominated me for a Pulitzer, which is not so impressive when you realize that you can nominate the weekly school lunch menu listing for a Pulitzer, as long as the check doesn’t bounce.

“There’s something else,” I tell her, after we’ve chitchatted a bit and she’s insisted on picking up the tab.

She looks up from figuring out the tip.

“What?”

“I think the defendant is my second cousin.”

I explain my convoluted kinship with Richard Slade, mentioning Philomena without telling Kate I’ve seen her in the last twenty-four hours.

“Well,” she says, “you might ought to recuse yourself from the case.”

I remind her that I’m a newspaperman, not a lawyer. Plus, nobody at the paper knows, yet, that Slade and I share a couple of great-grandparents.

“So,” she says, “can we, you know, meet once in a while, compare notes and such?”

I nod. Why not?

We walk out together, but we’re parked in different directions.

I ask her how things are going with Mr. Ellis, her present husband.

“His name’s Greg. Everything’s fine. But thanks for asking. Headed in to work?”

I tell her I’m on my way to see Marcus Green.

Green’s office is on Franklin Street, close enough to the paper that I can use the company parking deck and walk there.

He is a lone wolf, no partners, just a couple of assistants, one of whom tells me that she will check and see if Mr. Green is in.

Soon, the door to his office opens and he comes bursting out like the place is on fire.

“Willie! How’s my favorite muckraker? Come on in!”

He slaps my back and gives me a man-hug.

Even if Marcus Green was going to shoot you, he’d treat you like you were his long lost brother. Even if you wanted to shoot him, he’d probably be able to jolly you out of it, if he was trying. The night-and-day aspect of his personality works well in the courtroom and elsewhere. He can make you want to be his best friend and, in the blink of an eye, cop that menacing, fuck-with-me attitude he uses on witnesses and others he wishes to bend to his will.

“Still got your penthouse apartment?”

I tell him that Kate is still my landlady.

He laughs. He has the kind of booming laugh that makes people want to tell him their funniest joke.

“I don’t think I’d like giving either one of my exes the option of kicking me to the curb. Although I do write them each a check every month.” He laughs again, then turns down the volume, goes all solemn on me.

“So, what’s this about?”

I tell him, like he doesn’t know already.

“Do you think there’s a chance I might be able to talk with your client? His mother said I’d need to check with you.”

“You got Philomena to talk to you? Damn, Willie. You are a helluva reporter.”

I don’t tell him, just yet, about my trump card.

“Thanks, by the way, for letting her put my ass out in the middle of the East End the other day.”

Green shrugs.

“It was her call. She was somewhat upset with that racist rag you work for. I don’t blame her, actually.”

I wonder to myself what our editorial department has cooked up in the aftermath of Richard Slade’s arrest. I’m surprised there wasn’t something in this morning’s paper.

I ask him again about meeting with Slade.

He frowns and says he’ll consider it.

“Well,” I tell him, “you might as well have the whole family working with you. Me, you and Kate. The Mod Squad.”

“Ah. So you know about that. Well, I know she’s on the side of the angels. I’m not so sure about you. You’re more like the guy with an angel on one shoulder and a devil on the other one, both whispering in your ears.”

There doesn’t seem to be any way around it.

“My father and Philomena were first cousins.”

He absorbs this, never showing any sign of surprise. I would hate to play poker with Marcus Green. Actually, the thought of him at one of our Oregon Hill sessions with Custalow, McGonnigal, Andy Peroni and the rest is amusing.

“I always thought you were one of us,” Green says. “Something about the way you carry yourself, your hair, something.”

I doubt it, but if I can win the hand with this particular hole card, so be it.

“Let me see if my client is amenable to your request.”

I look him in the eye.

“He’ll be amenable if you tell him to be.”

Marcus Green gives me a look that could cut diamonds. Then he nods.

“Could be,” he says. “Could be. We’ll have to pray over that one.”

I put up with this bullshit because, for all his grandstanding and playacting, he has walked the walk, a burr in the power structure’s ass since he got out of law school. No name causes more consternation at the Commonwealth Club, where the white-haired great-grandsons of the Confederacy have their bourbon and water with a shot of bile.

He walks me to the door, then stops. He pins me with the look he usually saves for his final summations. His face is like a fist, hard and ready.

“Know this. Richard Slade did not kill that woman, no matter how much some people want it to be so.”

I nod. He dials The Look back a notch.

“Please give my regards to Kate,” he says, and I remind him that he’s likely to see her before I do.

The most mellifluous laugh in Richmond follows me out into the street.

I have time for a Camel between Marcus Green’s office and the paper. I’m a block away when my cellphone rings.

“Willie,” Sarah Goodnight says, “they’re at it again.”

My ID badge still works, although the guard at the front desk looks a little more alert, or at least awake, than usual.

As soon as I come out of the elevator, the tension hits me like a blast of sewer air. Rumors have been perching on our computer terminals like buzzards for weeks. Advertising is down. Circulation is down. Expenses aren’t down far enough. Today, it appears, is the day.

There’s a clot of people over by the features department, where some decidedly uncomfortable-looking human resources boy is watching Beth Reynolds clean out her desk. Jesus Christ, Beth Reynolds has been here longer than I have, and she does what nobody else in the newsroom wants to do. She deals with the brides and—God help her—the brides’ mothers. When they come parading in, determined that absolutely nothing is going to screw up the social event of their lives, that they are not going to brook any sass from some newspaper flunky, Beth is on the receiving end, defusing them and at the same time preserving whatever dignity our poor tree-killing anachronism clings to. When we get the brides’ photos and IDs somehow mixed up, Beth is the one who catches the mistake and averts disaster. Three years ago, we managed to switch photos of a truck driver who’d just saved a woman’s life in a car fire with that of a very self-important bride. Before she was done, Beth had appeased not only the trucker but both the bride and her mother. If we sent Beth Reynolds to Washington, she could make the Republicans lie down with the Democrats.

And now, apparently, she’s gone. Another one bites the dust.

“There’s six that we know of,” Sally Velez says before she goes over to offer condolences to a fifty-seven-year-old woman who’s about to not have health insurance.

A photographer, a page designer, a copy editor, a sportswriter, Beth Reynolds and an assistant city editor. Chip, chip, chip.

“By the way,” Sally adds, “Wheelie wants to see you. He and Grubby.”

She sees me blanch.

“Don’t worry,” she says. “They’re not going to fire your ass. Not now, anyhow.”

“How do you know?” I figure I must be near the top of the managing editor’s and publisher’s shit lists.

“All the ones that have been axed so far, they got calls from upstairs this morning.”

I check my voice mail back at the apartment, then start breathing again. This place makes me crazy, but what else am I going to do? Media relations?

I walk past Enos Jackson, who looks a little pale. He’s already been brought back from the dead once, thanks to a little secret agreement between me and Grubby, and he doesn’t know that he is—unless Grubby himself gets hauled away—more or less golden.

“You’re next,” I tell him. He doesn’t seem to think it’s funny.

Up on the fourth floor, Sandy McCool looks a little flustered, at least compared with her usual unflappable self. When Pete Bocelli in sports did a face-down in the lunchroom two years ago, it was Sandy who had the defibrillator out and working its magic in about thirty seconds while everybody else was crapping their pants. She saved his fat-ass life, then went back and finished her sandwich.

But Sandy’s the one, I know, who always has to make The Call, the one who then has to see a lifetime of friends and acquaintances come trudging up and then trudging out, escorted by HR, some of them in tears, some of them glaring at her as if she were responsible.

“Tough day,” I say. Sandy gives me a nod so small and tight that the security camera might not have caught it. Sandy’s divorced with two kids in college.

Wheelie comes puffing in, shaking his head and muttering something about how much he hates all this. He straightens his tie as we walk past Sandy and into the
sanctum sanctorum.

James H. Grubbs doesn’t bother to stand up. He motions for us to take a seat. He looks a little haggard, pale even by Grubby’s standards. It really can’t be that much fun to fire people who once befriended you as a young reporter. But Grubby’s got the MBA playbook, the one that says the only morality is what’s good for the company. Coincidentally, doing what’s good for the company is good for Grubby, who can always take a Xanax when he needs a good night’s sleep.

“I wanted to get an update on what’s going on with the Simpson murder.”

Wheelie fills him in.

“So, we’re done with this one, until the trial?”

Wheelie nods his head.

I clear my throat. I should shut up. I can’t.

“Not exactly.”

Grubby acts as if he was expecting it. I hear Wheelie groan.

“Not exactly?”

I tell them both about my conversations with Philomena Slade and Marcus Green.

“His mother and his lawyer don’t think he did it?” Grubby says. “Well, we’d better get all over that, then. Stop the presses.”

“I’m not saying he didn’t do it. But I think we ought to look around a little, see if things check out.”

“Well, I don’t think so. So don’t do it.”

I’m a little surprised, I must say. Grubby is a cautious man, but he isn’t above selling newspapers, and he’s got to know that this story has everything the circulation department could ever hope for.

He looks at Wheelie.

“We’re done here,” he says, and my managing editor gets up to go.

I start to say something else, but Wheelie takes me by the arm. I shut up and leave.

“What the fuck?” I inquire back downstairs in Wheelie’s office. “We’re dropping this?”

“No,” Wheelie says. “We’re just not going to create our own news. The arraignment’s tomorrow, right? After that, we’ll wait for the trial.”

“What is this all about?”

Wheelie shuts the door.

“Just between you and me,” he says. “This never, ever leaves this room.”

I nod.

“It’s about the Whitehursts.”

The penny drops. The Whitehursts own the paper, have owned the paper since before the Civil War. Grubby is the first non-family publisher, and everybody in Richmond knows his predecessor isn’t just sitting back and giving the new boy free rein. Giles Whitehurst, a hale and blustery eight-five with no heirs desiring a career in newspapering, is still the chairman of the board, and chairman of the board trumps publisher.

“Did you know,” Wheelie asks, “that Giles Whitehurst and Harper Simpson were fraternity brothers at U.Va.?”

I confess that I am deficient in my knowledge of Alicia Simpson’s father.

“Well, apparently, the sister went to Daddy, who called Grubby and told him to back off, that the family has been through enough anguish already. They just want it dropped.”

I wonder out loud why Lewis Simpson Witt would think we weren’t dropping it.

“Maybe she knows something about the way you stick that big nose of yours into everybody’s business.”

“You know what they say, Wheelie. Big nose, big . . .”

“Yeah, yeah. Just let this one ride, though. I don’t want Sandy giving you a wakeup call.”

He grimaces as he looks out into the newsroom, where a photographer is being gently led out of the building carrying a cardboard box. He looks our way and pauses long enough to balance the box on his hip with one hand and give Wheelie the finger.

“Don’t worry,” I tell Mal Wheelwright, “anything I do, I do on my own. They won’t be able to trace it back to you.”

Wheelie groans again. It is not the response he was hoping for. I can’t help that. Now I’m interested. All of my best stories have come after somebody told me to back off. Most of my worst screw-ups have, too.

As I put my hand on the door handle, Wheelie says, “Wait.”

I wait.

“You’re off the story.”

I wait some more.

“There isn’t anything more to write anyhow, Willie. We’re just going to have Baer pick it up. He’ll cover the arraignment.”

“This is nuts. Baer doesn’t know shit about this case.”

“He’s a quick learner.”

“Goddammit, Wheelie, you’re giving this story away. There’s more to this. Go back up there and tell that son of a bitch we’re a newspaper. Grow a pair, for God’s sake.”

Even as I say it, I know my mouth has again outrun my brain.

Wheelie turns kind of pale, and then his face starts to glow. He comes around his desk so fast that at first I think he’s going to hit me, and my last act here will be to punch out the managing editor.