by Greg Iles
He looks up with irony in his eyes. “Ain’t we talkin’?”
“Yeah. But you came in here to ask if I’m fucking your wife.”
“Are you?”
This time his gaze is piercing. I don’t even allow myself internal dialogue before I give him a reflexive “No.”
His stare doesn’t waver. “You used to, though.”
“Yeah, in high school. Ancient history, man.”
He nods slowly. “You must have tapped it a few times since then. Right? College? She come up to UVA for a weekend? D.C., maybe?”
Did he put Jet through this kind of grilling? If so, what did she answer? “Paul, goddamn it. This is pointless.”
At last he breaks eye contact and looks at the floor again. “Don’t mind me. I’ll get out.”
“You don’t have to. Tell me about Kevin,” I say, hoping to steer him to more solid ground.
Sure enough, when Paul looks up, five years have fallen from his face. “He’s awesome, man. Not just an athlete. He’s smart, like Adam was. You know?”
“Yeah, I know. I bet the girls love him, too.”
Paul’s eyes shine. “Oh, yeah. He makes me remember how good we had it back then.”
“That’s how it’s supposed to be.”
“Yeah. Only . . .”
“What?”
“I don’t know. I shouldn’t say this. But he spends so much time with my dad that I don’t see him like I used to. This goddamn traveling baseball team? Max is obsessed with it. He bought the team an RV, and he drives it everywhere. And I see all those boys looking at him like some kind of hero—which you and I know he’s not.”
“No, he’s not.”
“But they don’t know that, see?” Paul’s eyes fill with the intensity of a man incapable of expressing some deeply felt conviction. “The problem is I think Kevin senses I’m not exactly stable right now. I feel like he gravitates to Max because he’s not sure I’m solid.”
What hell has this man been living in? How did Jet ever believe we could move to D.C. and take Kevin with us? Paul wouldn’t survive that. We might not survive it, either, if he chose to vent his anger before killing himself. In fact, he would likely kill us to remove the possibility that Kevin could be taken away—
“I’m gonna go,” he says, getting to his feet. “Sorry about ambushing you like this. I just didn’t know what to think.”
“You don’t have to worry, man. Not about me.”
I can’t believe I just spoke those words knowing that Max still possesses the video of Jet and me on the patio.
“Hey,” he says. “Just promise me one thing.”
“What?”
“I’m not gonna find out a week from now that this was all bullshit, right? That you just didn’t want to tell me the truth?”
I feel as though my body has turned to lead. Somewhere deep in my mind, far behind the frozen mask of my face, a rogue impulse whispers, Tell him. Tell him the truth. The whole truth. Tell him you love Jet, but that you love him, too. Because he knows that’s true—
“Goose?” he says hesitantly.
Even as I answer, I know a moment will come in the future when we face each other again and he’ll know that I lied today, as Jet lied—that we did not grant him the respect he deserves. That moment may mean death for us all.
“I promise, man. Now get out of here and go take a pill or something. You’ve got to sleep. You’re going to drive into a bridge abutment.”
He laughs again. “If I do, tell Byron Ellis it was sleep deprivation. Get me off the hook.”
“Goddamn it, Paul—”
“Just kidding.” Without warning he takes two steps and throws his arms around me, hugs me the way he did in Ramadi, after we made it out of the city and climbed out of the Mamba. He stinks of Scotch and old sweat, and though almost thirty years have passed, his smell is as familiar to me as my own, from a hundred dressing rooms, football fields, and basketball courts across Mississippi.
“Thanks, man,” he says. “Later.”
And then he’s gone.
An enervating wave of exhaustion rolls over me. Is this how actors feel after delivering an immortal performance? Jet must be sitting with her phone clenched in her hand, waiting to hear what happened. Before heading back to Ben’s office to get my burner phone, I unlock my file cabinet and remove the hard copy of the PDF file I received this morning. Then I carry it down to Ben’s office, where I nearly bump into him on his way to the newsroom.
“What’s this?” he asks when I hand him the stack of pages.
“Your first Pulitzer. The start of it, anyway. Don’t show it to anybody else. We’ll talk after you’ve read it.”
He holds my gaze long enough to be sure I’m serious, then walks back into his office and locks the papers in his desk. Opening the bottom drawer of a file cabinet, he takes out my burner phone and the Walther.
“Is there anything else you need to tell me?” he asks.
“You’re not in danger, so long as you don’t show anybody those papers.”
He nods slowly but doesn’t speak for a few seconds. Then he says, “You weren’t kidding about the Pulitzer, were you?”
“No. But when I won mine, it was mostly for getting shot at.”
Ben smiles. “I hope there’s an easier way. Just let me know if I need to start carrying.”
Before I can ask whether he owns a gun, Ben heads for the newsroom. Since he’s left me alone, I decide to call Jet from his office, where there’s little chance that Paul could walk in on me, should he decide to come back.
“What happened?” Jet asks as I close Ben’s door.
“He bought it. I felt so damned low lying to him. Paul’s in bad shape, Jet.”
She sighs like someone who just dodged a runaway bus. “And Buckman? Did you reach him?”
“No. That deal’s off the table.”
“What? Why?”
“Arthur Pine called me. They know about Max’s video. They must have hauled him into the bank and demanded he give them anything he might have on me.”
She’s silent for several seconds. “That’s not the choice I’d have expected Buckman to make. He’s relying solely on that video to keep you from publishing the cache? I figured he’d get the cache from you, then try to welsh on whatever promises he could.”
“Jet, that video will keep me quiet. Paul is clinging to sanity by his fingernails. I just lied to his face after he begged me not to. Max and the Poker Club own us now.”
“Maybe not.”
“What?”
“They don’t have the video themselves. Max would never give it to them. He might tell them about it, but he’s too smart to give them that power. If he did, they wouldn’t need him anymore.”
She’s probably right about that. “So we’re safe for the time being? Look, I have no idea what our next move is.”
“I do.”
Ben Tate walks back into his office and motions for me to keep talking. Then he writes six words on the notepad on his desk: Arthur Pine is in your office.
“Tell him I’ll be right there,” I say.
“What?” Jet asks.
Ben disappears.
“Arthur Pine is apparently waiting in my office.”
“That can’t be good.”
“I can handle Arthur. What did you mean? What are you planning to do?”
“I’m going to get that goddamn sex video from Max. I’m not going through another spousal interrogation like that.”
“You might get his cell phone, but you won’t know if you have all copies.”
“Maybe not, but if those passwords from Sally’s necklace open his phone, I’ll be flipping the script on him. We’ll own Max for a change. How does that sound?”
“Be careful, Jet.”
“Remember who you’re talking to. P.S., I love you.”
“You, too,” I say, but the words are automatic. The desperation I felt when Paul hugged me is too fresh to feel clean about intimacy with h
is wife.
When I walk back through my office door, I find Arthur Pine waiting in his five-thousand-dollar suit. Unctuous on his best day, Arthur stands smirking before me with his golfer’s tan and perfectly coiffed gray hair.
“Looks pretty busy around here,” he says. “I’m surprised.”
“We’re working some big stories, if you haven’t heard. What do you want, Arthur? You here to threaten me not to run any more photos of your poker pals?”
He gives me a patronizing smile. “No, I’m here to inform you that you won’t be printing any more stories of any kind.”
“What are you talking about?”
The lawyer opens his coat and removes a sheaf of papers covered with tiny type. “I’ve come to shut down the Watchman.”
Chapter 34
I decide to take the back way from the paper to my parents’ house—Cemetery Road. I haven’t yet called my mother, and I wish there were some way to avoid it. The news of what happened to the Bienville Watchman over the past half hour could quite literally kill my father. It’s probably already broken on Twitter and Instagram, as the kids from our newsroom attempt to deal with the shock of their unexpected terminations. If the news has hit Facebook, even my mother might see it before I reach their house.
As I leave the old grid of downtown streets, heading east, I think back to the pitiful scene that unfolded before I left the Watchman for the last time. Standing gobsmacked in my office door, I asked Arthur Pine what he was holding.
“A debt-purchase agreement,” he told me. “Marty Denis is an old friend of your father’s, I think?”
“Marty Denis?” I said, recalling only that he took my parents some crawfish tails yesterday. “The president of First Farmers Bank?”
“The very man. Marty’s been carrying the paper on your father’s various loans for a number of years—at considerable risk to himself, I must say. He imperiled his position at the bank. But all that’s been resolved now. As of an hour ago, Mr. Denis sold all those loans to Bienville Southern.”
Claude Buckman’s bank. I wanted to tell Pine I didn’t believe him, but he wouldn’t have been in my office if his mission weren’t a fait accompli.
“We have the right to demand full payment at any time,” he went on, “and we’re calling the notes today, in full. If you can’t pay, we’re foreclosing on the property and all physical plant of the Bienville Watchman as of five p.m.”
“What’s the total amount?” I asked, barely able to summon my voice.
“Just under five-point-five million dollars.”
I probably wavered on my feet. “That’s impossible.”
“Talk to your father. You’ll find that it’s not only possible, but the state of his balance sheet as of yesterday.”
I had some idea of the company’s debt, but when I used what I knew to express skepticism, Pine quickly disabused me of my illusions. He could do that because my father had kept his longtime “business manager” on the payroll to act as a buffer between me and the true nightmare of our situation.
“Beyond what I’ve told you, the company pension plan is underfunded,” Pine informed me. “You’re even in trouble with the state, over payroll taxes. By the way, we’re going to allow your parents to keep their house, which is heavily mortgaged, if and only if after severance from this newspaper, you cease all criticism of the Poker Club or any ancillary business ventures.”
I walked past the lawyer and stood beside my desk like a dog returning to a house where it had once lived. How is it that the worst moments of our lives happen without warning? Only hours earlier the Poker Club had offered me the moon. In response, I nearly sold out everything I’d ever stood for. Now, thanks to a video of me having sex with a married woman, my deal with the devil would not be consummated. And years of financial negligence by my father would allow the Poker Club to destroy the work of seven generations of my family.
While Pine watched with ill-concealed pleasure, I took a sip of coffee from the Styrofoam cup beside my laptop. It had gone cold hours ago. “You’re a parasite, Arthur,” I told him. “You make ambulance-chasing look like an honest living.”
“Save your breath,” he said. “And don’t try to salve your conscience by blaming us. Your father borrowed and borrowed, throwing good money after bad. The interest kept piling up. Duncan had plenty of offers to buy this paper, but he turned up his nose at all of them. Everybody tried to talk sense into him, but he refused to listen. I know you must have tried.”
He was right, but I didn’t give him the satisfaction of admitting it.
“There’s nothing left of this company but a hollow shell,” he concluded. “We’ve created an LLC, the Tenisaw Newspaper Group. We’ll hire new management, let this paper start performing its proper function.”
“Which is what? Cheerleading for Poker Club business ventures?”
“And for Senator Sumner. Bienville’s a community, Marshall, not a commune. You can put your red headband back on as soon as you land in Washington.”
Pine looked around my office like an auctioneer estimating fire sale values. “As to practicalities. There’s a sheriff’s deputy outside, to be sure this is done professionally. You may remove personal items, but nothing that’s part and parcel of the paper’s operations. No computers, hard drives, disks, or flash drives. These premises belong to us as of now. Anything you remove will be considered theft.”
I asked him how long I had to gather my things.
“You’re leaving now. By the way, any work product currently under consideration for publication is the property of the Tenisaw Newspaper Group. You may not publish any of it. And all your employees will be so advised.”
“That’s bullshit. I know the law in this area better than you. You can’t buy facts. Not yet, anyway. Also, you should treat all personal emails on my office computer as my personal property.”
“If they’re on your office computer, they’re ours until you prove otherwise in court.”
I pointed at the computer on my desk. “That laptop is my personal machine.”
Pine looked dubiously at the computer. “Your personal laptop is a Mac you generally keep at home. That Toshiba machine belongs to the newspaper.”
What the hell? I thought. Somebody in this building has been talking to the Poker Club.
“Let’s get this over with,” he said. “Do you plan on taking anything with you? Legitimate personal items?”
I looked around the office, finally settling on the framed front page of the first Bienville Watchman ever published. The masthead of the original Watchman bore an eagle with a banner in its beak above the name of the newspaper. The banner read Vincit Omnia Veritas: Truth Conquers All. “That belongs to my father, not the company.”
“Take it, then. You won’t be coming back.”
I walked over and lifted the frame off its nail, fighting the temptation to crack the lawyer’s nose with it. But as I passed my desk, inspiration struck. With the bottom edge of the frame, I tipped the contents of the coffee cup into the laptop’s keyboard. Pine didn’t immediately realize what I’d done, but about six seconds later, the machine shorted out with a flash and a crackle.
“All right,” he snapped. “Deputy!”
A uniformed sheriff’s deputy stepped into my office with a gun on his hip. Accustomed to overseeing evictions, his face showed not an iota of sympathy. Thankfully, my burner phone was already in my pocket. After slipping my iPhone into another pocket, I looked at Pine and said, “I shall return, asshole. But for now, let’s go.”
The lawyer waved me out of my own office.
I walked ahead carrying the big frame, so as not to look like I was being led out by the deputy. But the appearance of law enforcement had done its work. Entering the newsroom, I found the whole staff assembled, their eyes wide, their mouths tight with anxiety.
“Just keep moving,” Pine said. “No tearful farewells.”
I stopped in the middle of the room and looked at the group I’d led for
the past five months.
“Don’t let him give a speech,” Pine cautioned.
I felt the deputy coming up behind me.
“You guys are as good as anybody I worked with in Washington,” I told them. “And this war’s far from over. In fact, it just started. You’ll hear from me soon. Stay ready.”
The deputy shoved my back. “Outside, Mr. McEwan.”
“Hey!” Ben Tate yelled. “What the hell, man?”
“Fascist!” shouted Carl Stein. “This is America, motherfucker!”
“Where we have to pay our bills,” Pine retorted. “Gather your things, children. Recess is over. You’re all fired.”
While I stood there in shock, Ben Tate flipped Arthur Pine the bird. Seconds later, everyone else in the newsroom followed suit.
Walking out under the harsh afternoon sun, I thought about the attorney for the Poker Club. When guys like Arthur Pine watched Frank Capra films like It’s a Wonderful Life, did they root for greedy old Mr. Potter? As a young man, did Pine dream of accruing wealth by skimming money off other men’s work? By foreclosing on anyone he could nudge or lure into financial difficulty? The further along we move in this American experiment, the more Arthur Pines we seem to produce. But Pine didn’t show up in person to be thorough. He came to rub my face in the dirt—and my father’s, too. The Poker Club doesn’t want a newspaper in Bienville; they want a PR rag, preferably a glossy one filled with promotional hyperbole. Standing on the sidewalk, I turned back to Pine, who didn’t seem the least discomfited by the mass firing he’d just carried out. In fact, he looked smugger than he had in the newsroom.
“Remember this moment, Arthur,” I said with as much restraint as I could manage. “This is the moment when I decided to destroy the Poker Club.”
The lawyer looked singularly unimpressed.
“You want to fire those kids?” I went on. “You want to send me home to tell my dying father that his family’s legacy is gone? Okay. But get ready to own it. I’m going to send you to prison. Your fat-cat buddies, too, every one. But I’m going to pay special attention to you.”
Pine waved off the deputy, then folded his arms across his chest and said, “Aren’t you forgetting Max Matheson’s video?”