Bad News

by Linwood Barclay

  Angie, who’d been coming down the stairs as Sarah was going up, appeared. ‘I don’t know what you did, Dad,’ she said, ‘but it must have been bad, even by your standards.’

  I was ready with something sarcastic, then said, ‘Yeah. It was.’

  And as I sat in my new! desk! in! the! Home! section, I tried to sort out which was the worst of my crimes. It hadn’t been getting myself demoted to one of the paper’s soft sections, and it hadn’t been nixing Sarah’s chances at becoming foreign editor, although that one was up there.

  It was the fact that I hadn’t been honest with her. I hadn’t told Sarah what Trixie had asked of me. I hadn’t told her I’d agreed to at least meet with Trixie and Martin Benson.

  The way Sarah must have seen it was, if I hadn’t disclosed the details of that conversation with Trixie, what other conversations with her had I failed to fill her in on?

  Once, a couple of years ago, when I’d made a joke that I was not having an affair with someone, Sarah had laughed. It was the one thing she knew she’d never have to worry about, she said. I could never pull it off, I’d have too guilty a conscience, my face would betray me when I attempted a lie.

  Plus there was the part about my loving Sarah more than any other woman in the world.

  But I’d crossed a line somewhere, and was over it before I’d realized it. My marriage to Sarah meant a lot more to me than my friendship with Trixie. And if that meant distancing myself from her, then that’s what I’d have to—

  My phone rang.

  Did the Metropolitan switchboard already know I was here, and not out in the newsroom?

  ‘Walker,’ I said, picking up.

  ‘It’s happened,’ Trixie said.

  ‘What?’

  ‘My picture. It’s in the paper. Fucking amazing picture too. Must have been shot with a telephoto. No camera phone shot.’

  ‘I don’t know what to say.’

  ‘Maybe you could tell me why your paper shot it?’

  ‘What? What are you talking about?’

  ‘There’s this little line, under the picture.’

  ‘A photo credit,’ I said.

  ‘Whatever. It says, “Special to the Suburban by Lesley Carroll, slash, The Metropolitan.” She must have been parked up the street from the house, took my picture as I was going from the car to the house. I’m fucked.’

  Lesley Carroll took the picture? One of our photogs? I thought about it for a moment, and it started to make sense. Magnuson tells his old buddy Blair, Hey, our Walker guy messed with your guy over a picture of this woman? Leave it with us. We’ll get you a picture. We’ll send one of our people. We’ve got shooters who’ve been to Iraq and back. Think we can’t get a shot of this, what’s her name? Trixie Snelling? We’ve got this young intern, eager to make a name for herself as a photographer. You can bet she’ll get you your picture. Consider it our way of saying we’re sorry.

  That’s how it must have gone.

  ‘I’m sorry, Trixie. I really am.’

  ‘This couldn’t happen at a worse time. With those guys in town, trying to sell stun guns.’

  ‘Trixie, I have to go.’

  ‘Didn’t you check those guys out? Didn’t I tell you to?’

  ‘Trixie, I’m sorry.’

  And I ended the call.

  hidden text

  For a while, Miranda was your basic street kid. Stopped going to school, gravitated to the big city, hung around teen drop-in shelters, slept someplace different every night, got a bucket and a squeegee and tried to make some money cleaning people’s windshields. Most of them, they pretended not to see you when you tried to make eye contact. If you could catch their eye, wave the squeegee, smile nice, make them realize you weren’t some crazy crackhead or something, they might give you the nod, let you clean their window, they’d give you a couple quarters, maybe a buck if you were lucky. But mostly they ignored you, or waved you away, or told you ‘Fuck off, you miserable cocksucking whore, go get a real job like everybody else.’

  But she still made a good buck. She got to where she could guess who’d let her squeegee and who wouldn’t. She did better with men, not so good with lady drivers. She figured, maybe the men are less intimidated. ‘You dumb ass,’ one of her coworkers said. ‘You wonder why you do okay with the guys? Look at you. Leaning over their window with those knockers? That one guy, he drove around the block, didn’t you notice you did his window twice in five minutes? Shit, you look like that, what are you cleaning fucking windshields for? You could be making a fortune doing something else.’

  ‘I’m not hooking,’ Miranda said.

  ‘Who said anything about hooking? You’re like a dancer, leaping between those cars. Go on stage, dance around, shake ’em. Beats cleaning somebody’s windshield when it’s ten below.’

  Miranda had never really thought of herself as good-looking. Compliments weren’t exactly handed out back home. Somebody told her there was a bar up in Canborough where they were looking for strippers. She should check it out, they said.

  It wasn’t exactly what she wanted to do, but she was tired of working outside and freezing her ass off. She could have landed on Claire’s doorstep, but she had a decent life with Don. Miranda didn’t feel right barging in on it. They were living above a pizza place somewhere, sleeping on a pull-out couch in a one-room apartment. She had some secretary-type job, he’d lined up something at the Ford plant. You could make good money there. Someday, he said, they’d get a nice house out in the country.

  Miranda was happy for Claire, happy that she had a boyfriend who loved her. They were probably going to get married, that’s what Claire had told her. Miranda didn’t want to mess that up. She had to try to make it on her own. She’d been put down all her life, but she still had pride. She wouldn’t allow her parents to steal that from her.

  ‘You can stay with us,’ Claire told her. ‘Really.’

  But Miranda said no, don’t worry, she had plans.

  Going to Canborough and trying out to be a stripper, that was her plan.

  She hitchhiked up there, carrying everything she had in a backpack she’d found in a secondhand store. Got herself cleaned up in the washroom of a McDonald’s. Someone must have told, because just as she was finishing up, this short woman in a brown uniform and name tag that said ‘Lulu’ came in, said, ‘This ain’t the Y, sweetie. Scram.’

  Then she went to the Kickstart. ‘Heard you’re looking for dancers,’ she said.

  ‘You done any dancing?’ This was some short, nasty-looking fellow who kept sticking his finger up his nose.

  ‘Sure,’ she said. ‘But, you know, not on an actual stage or anything.’

  ‘Let’s see ’em.’

  ‘What?’

  Rolled his eyes. ‘Jesus, you come in, want to be a dancer, you don’t know what I’m talking about when I say “Let’s see ’em”?’

  So she showed ’em.

  ‘Whoa,’ he said. ‘Not bad. Rack like that, we got other ways you can make money too. Upstairs. Nice chunk of change to be had.’

  ‘I don’t think so,’ Miranda said. ‘I’ll just dance.’

  ‘Suit yourself,’ he said. ‘But when you see the other girls pulling down major bucks, you’ll be begging me, you wait and see.’

  And then, almost as an afterthought, he said, ‘What’s your name?’

  Miranda had already thought about this part. ‘Candace,’ she said.

  NINE

  Sarah sent me an e-mail.

  ‘Working late. Will grab something to eat on the way home. S.’

  She wasn’t more than seventy or eighty feet away from me, in her office, but she decided to send me a message rather than walk over and just tell me. True, she couldn’t actually see me at my desk the way she could when I was working in the newsroom. I was now down the hall and around the corner, working in Home! But honestly, was this what Bill Gates had in mind? That the greatest technological advances in history would be used to make it possible for people who were w
ithin shouting range of one another to not speak face-to-face?

  I clicked on ‘Reply’ and started to write something and then couldn’t decide what. Finally I opted to say nothing and canceled my reply. Sarah had plenty of reasons to be angry with me, but her e-mail pissed me off. If she had something to say, she could damn well find her way Home! and say it.

  ‘How’s the linoleum thing coming?’ Frieda asked, passing by my desk, being extremely cheerful.

  ‘Frieda,’ I said, ‘you only gave it to me an hour ago. Is it a fast-breaking linoleum story? Is page one looking for it?’

  She looked hurt. Her face fell. I instantly felt like a shit.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ she said. ‘I was only asking.’

  This was the difference between working in the newsroom, where sarcasm and angry outbursts are the norm, and toiling away in Home! or travel (called ‘Away!’ at the Metropolitan) or our new shopping section (‘Spend!’). It was more like a typical office back here. Someone made tea. A card got sent around for everyone to sign when it was someone’s birthday. People were friendly, sociable, decent to one another.

  I had to get out of here.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ I said. ‘Really, I’m sorry, Frieda. I was just being a dick.’

  Her eyebrows jumped. I guess people didn’t refer to themselves as ‘dicks’ around here, either.

  She left before I could say anything else to offend her.

  I went online, looked for some contacts in the flooring industry who could fill me in on the latest developments in linoleum, and as I did so, this sense of hopelessness washed over me. How could it have come to this? It had only been days since I’d written a major piece for the paper about this gang of nutcases who’d planned to set off a bomb at a small-town parade. It was page one, above the fold. The TV stations picked it up.

  I was golden.

  But that was how it was in the newspaper business. You were only as good as your next story. So what if you got a big exclusive on Thursday. What are you going to do for us Friday?

  I had the feeling that someone or something was pressing down hard on me as I sat in the chair. My shoulders were sagging so hard, it’s like they were dragging me down to the floor. I had a shit assignment, my wife was only communicating with me by e-mail, and I’d just been mean to Frieda, perhaps the sweetest woman in the entire building.

  I jotted down some contact numbers on my scratch pad, but I couldn’t bring myself to pick up the phone and make a call. For reasons I cannot explain, I found myself unable to focus on linoleum. There was something else nagging at me.

  I grabbed a copy of yesterday’s paper from one of the recycling bins and found my story about the stun gun salesmen.

  Why was Trixie going on about them?

  I found their names and scribbled them down on my pad. I decided to start with the one who’d done most of the talking before the assembled officers, Gary Merker. I Googled him. There weren’t many. One was a radio DJ somewhere out west in Arizona. There was a picture of him, along with the other station personalities. Young guy, very thin, bald, wire-rimmed glasses, big smile. Definitely not the guy who’d done the stun gun presentation. Another was a financial consultant up in Maine. No picture. There was a phone number, so I called.

  ‘Hello? Merker Financial.’ A woman.

  ‘Is Gary in?’

  ‘Just a moment.’

  Some dead air. Then: ‘Merker?’

  ‘Hi,’ I said. Frieda was looking over at me, turned away when I saw her checking on me. ‘Is this Gary Merker?’

  ‘Yes. Can I help you?’

  ‘I’m looking for the Gary Merker who’s got some of those new Dropper stun guns for sale. Would that be you?’

  ‘No, sorry. Stun guns? You got the wrong guy, pal.’

  I offered my apologies and hung up.

  Only one Gary Merker came up when I did a search on the paper’s database. This Merker showed up in a story that evidently had run in the Metropolitan five years earlier, with a Dick Colby byline, no less. It was datelined Canborough, and the headline read, ‘Three Slain in Biker Massacre.’

  Canborough was a city of about sixty thousand, maybe a hundred miles west. It was a college town; the Canborough River ran through it north to south. The college was the main thing that had kept the town alive after the auto parts plant closed down seven years ago, the jobs all having gone to Mexico. I had done a book signing up there once, when my first science fiction novel, Missionary, had come out. Two hundred miles, round trip, sold three copies. The store owner couldn’t look me in the eye when it was over.

  The story read: ‘Canborough may be on the verge of a biker gang war after three members of the Slots, a local gang that makes its money off drugs and prostitution, as well as some legitimate businesses, were shot to death above their own tavern, the Kickstart.’

  The story went on to say: ‘Dead are Eldridge Smith, 29, Payne Fletcher, 26, and Zane Heighton, 25. All the victims were said to be known to police. All were fatally shot, and while police hinted there was something distinctive about the manner in which the executions were conducted, they would not provide further details.’

  I started to imagine things. Were they shot in the mouth? Did someone stick a gun in their ears and blow their brains out? Were they lined up in front of each other, and one bullet passed through the lot of them?

  That one seemed a bit unlikely. Unless it was a really, really, big bullet. Despite having held, and even fired, a gun in the last couple of years, and having had the misfortune to have been around some, I still knew very little about them, and that was just fine, thank you very much.

  The story continued: ‘The Kickstart is a well-known local watering hole that also features adult entertainment. The shootings occurred shortly after the close of business hours, and the women employed as exotic dancers were not believed to have been there at the time. The Slots own the Kickstart, and were believed to have been counting the receipts in the upstairs office when the incident occurred.’

  Out of the corner of my eye, I caught Frieda sneaking another look at me. I waggled my fingers at her.

  ‘Canborough Police say there are three or four small gangs operating in the region, and while none of them is a large operation, they are responsible, collectively, for much of the area’s drug trade. In the past, each gang had carved out a portion of the market for itself, not stepping on the others’ toes, but that now appears to be over.

  ‘The question now may be who is left in the Slots to retaliate. The gang’s reputed leader, Gary Merker, 30, who is also said to be the manager of the Kickstart, was not present when the three members of his gang were killed. Nor was another member, Leonard Edgars, 29.’

  I glanced back at my story. It appeared that I had found the right Gary Merker. His associate, the one who’d been zapped with fifty thousand volts, was Leo Edgars.

  What were two surviving members of a small biker gang that ran drugs and prostitutes doing peddling stun guns?

  And what business was it of Trixie’s?

  ‘I thought maybe you would like a coffee,’ Frieda said. ‘But I didn’t know what you take in it.’

  I jumped. ‘Oh, sure,’ I said. ‘That would be nice. Cream and sugar.’

  ‘What’s that you’re reading about?’ she asked. She was scanning the Colby story, probably wondering why she wasn’t seeing the word ‘linoleum’ anywhere.

  ‘Gang shooting,’ I said. ‘I was thinking, an interesting way into the feature would be, what kinds of linoleum are most resistant to bullets and blood stains.’

  Frieda was getting downright scared.

  I forced myself to call a couple of flooring experts, just to keep Frieda from setting security on me, and when it was cookie time in the afternoon, I updated her on my progress. I asked her if she knew, for example, that linoleum had been invented in 1863, in England, by Frederick Walton, who had come up with the word by taking the Latin names for flax, which is linum, and oil, which is oleum, and putting them together
. She did not, and seemed absolutely fascinated, offering me another Peek Frean.

  I’d had no further communications from Sarah, and I’d sent nothing to her. If she could get something to eat on the way home, then I didn’t see why I couldn’t do the same. I managed to sneak out of Home! a little after four, and as I was heading out of the parking lot in our Virtue, I remembered that Paul was going to be working at his new job after school today. I thought maybe it might cheer me up to see Paul gainfully employed, and get myself a cheeseburger and fries. We never knew whether Angie would be home for dinner, so I didn’t feel any obligation to get home and make sure there was something on the table for her when she returned from Mackenzie University.

  I wheeled into the oil-stained parking lot of Burger Crisp. The lot was about half full, and there was trash spilling out the tops of trash containers that looked sticky with old soda. Flies buzzed around the opening.

  The squat, square building, all glass up front, looked as though it might have been; in a previous life, a doughnut franchise. There was a row of tables along the front window, then down the right side, in an L shape. At the left end of the long aluminum counter was a cash register, and above it a menu made out of little black plastic letters that fit, crookedly, into grooves on a white background. Written in marker, on a sheet of cardboard and taped to the wall, was the special: ‘Ch’burger/fries/Coke/$5.49.’

  At the cash register must have been the woman Paul said could stand in front of a moving tank and total it. She appeared, in a word, formidable. She was shorter than I, but standing there behind the cash register, she seemed rooted like an oak. Stocky, fridge-like, with thick fleshy arms that hinted at considerable muscle underneath. Slavic looking, late fifties, early sixties maybe, gray hair pinned back, a severe, weathered face devoid of anything you might call make-up, deep creases running down from her nose on both sides of her mouth, and piercing black eyes.

  She fixed them on me and said, ‘What want?’