Max's Folly

by Bill Turpin

  The Smiling Cobra chimes in: “I can assure Your Excellency that you have nothing to be concerned about as far as this paper goes.”

  There follow the ritual goodbyes and a few lame jokes about the rainy weather. The great man and his assistant are at the door when Max asks a final question.

  “Your Excellency, I asked if you are a religious man but you haven’t answered.”

  The Archbishop looks at Max as if he has just set his own hair on fire.

  “I’m the Archbishop,” he says, in English.

  • • •

  After enduring a warning from the Cobra to spike any story he has about Father Peter, Max heads straight for the City Editor.

  “Is Mother Mary here?” he asks. Mother Mary has earned the nickname for her tendency to mother everyone in the newsroom, although she’s the same age. She is also the most devout soul in the newsroom, but Hell on wheels if you’re an errant priest.

  “She’s covering the bank robbery.”

  “Well, when she gets back, tell her I want a story on some local pederast priest.”

  “Details?”

  “All I know is that his name is Father Peter, he’s been relocated, and probably worked in or near the city. Oh, and the idiots at the Other Paper are sitting on the story.”

  1973

  Editor in Close Touch

  with his Emotions

  MAX PULLS INTO the Sunday Tabloid’s watery parking lot wondering if he’s emotionally deficient. He practically tripped over a dead body but all he can think of is comic strips he read as a kid and drinking beer after work. He knows he should be more upset. Inside, the makeshift newsroom is lit like Frankenstein’s lab with bare fluorescent tubes. Max takes a breath and finds the polluted air to his satisfaction. He locates the Veteran Reporter and heads for a cubicle across from her. He rolls in a piece of copy paper and settles in to write. This is the best part.

  “Don’t get comfortable,” the Veteran Reporter, wearing the usual spotless white blouse and jean skirt, whispers. She is simultaneously hammering away on her typewriter.

  A voice like a rusty table saw slices the air from three cubicles away.

  “Where the FUCK have you been?” the Editor shouts. The Veteran Reporter sniggers quietly, but keeps typing.

  “Dead body in the woods by the Canadian Tire,” Max ventures, liking the sound of it.

  “It better be a cock-sucking murder.”

  “Suicide.”

  “Oh, excuse me, detective, how do you know it’s a fucking suicide?”

  Max grins. “This isn’t fucking Hawaii Five-O. You find a dead guy with a rifle in his hand and the box it came in lying next to him, it’s a fucking suicide. Point finale.”

  The Veteran Reporter whispers again: “You saw the body?”

  “Almost tripped over it.”

  The Editor cranks up the volume: “Well that’s not very fucking good, is it?

  “Why not?”

  “We don’t cover suicides. You know that. What else have you got?”

  “Car accident, nobody dead. Robbery at a convenience store, nobody dead, no shots fired.”

  “Jesus fucking Christ. Two crappy briefs. Nobody dead. Not much of a day, is it?”

  “I gave you three stories before five o’clock.”

  “Well, isn’t that just GRAND. We got a guy robbing banks with a machine gun all week and you bring in stories about a 100-year-old woman, a whale caught in a ship’s propeller and a strike at a fucking CANDY FACTORY!”

  The Veteran Reporter jumps in, still, typing. “You assigned him those stories. It’s Saturday. There’s nothing new on the robberies, and you didn’t assign that to him anyway. And the banks are closed. They’re harder to rob when they’re closed — even with a machine gun.”

  Silence. From the cubicle behind the Veteran Reporter, the mild-mannered Copy Editor mumbles: “Too far. You went too far.”

  Explosion. “Well, aren’t we quick to defend our incompetent little friend. I happen to know that our asshole cop reporter was at that suicide HALF AN HOUR AGO because a cop-friend at the station called and told me they saw him running away from the body like some kind of pervert caught in a disgusting act! Never get to a scene before the COPS!”

  “Sorry,” Max says. “I figured it was kids, so the cops wouldn’t care.”

  “Well, I guess they DO care, because they fucking CALLED ME, didn’t they?”

  “Sorry.”

  “I don’t give a shit. What I care about is I don’t get any copy from you because you spend all day jerking off. What have you been doing for the last 20 minutes? Walking around the woods with your peanut-sized dick in your hand?”

  The Veteran Reporter has finally stopped typing and now she’s laughing merrily.

  The Copy Editor shouts: “Twenty minutes to 10. I need copy now if you want to see it in the paper tomorrow.”

  “Sorry about your dick,” says the Veteran Reporter, who has resumed typing.

  1975

  Reporter Gets Big Story!

  (Some May Have Died)

  BACK AT THE Palacio after dodging bullets Max is still high as he phones in his story.

  Being shot at — and missed — is better than anything he’d hoped for on this trip.

  “Police opened fire with rifles and machine guns on protesting community college students in this mountain capital today.”

  “Slow down! Slow down!” the Bureau Chief says. “I’m not Gandalf the fucking Wizard. There’s no such thing as magic typing.”

  “Sorry-sorry,” Max says. But he isn’t. He can picture the Bureau Chief, the phone jammed between his shoulder and cheek, pounding out the words. Max’s words. This is better than sex, he thinks. It’s a scene from The Front Page — “Hello, sweetheart get me rewrite!” — PLUS sex.

  “It’s not immediately known whether there were deaths or injuries . . .”

  “Stop! What do you mean ‘not immediately known’? What bullshit is that?”

  “Well . . .”

  “What you mean is, you don’t know and therefore I don’t know, and that’s no fucking good, is it?” The Bureau Chief is shouting.

  “Well . . .”

  “You don’t know. Now all I got is another fucking riot story.”

  “I’ll ask around . . . hospitals . . . cops.”

  “You do that. Do some reporting. But stay away from the cops,” says the Bureau Chief. “They’re getting nervous about the Army, and the secret police chief there is a nasty piece of work. El Mago.”

  “Yeah, you told me,” Max says.

  “Well, I wasn’t kidding. He’s not afraid to hurt you. How is it you don’t know about injuries, anyway? You said you were there.”

  “We were . . .”

  “Never mind. Word is, no one seriously hurt. But I don’t like reporters who cover stories without leaving their hotel. Finish this and go find out for sure about injuries.”

  “I don’t cover stories from my hotel.”

  “Stay away from El Mago.”

  “Fuck you. I’ll interview him.”

  Six paragraphs later, he’s done. The Bureau Chief will write the background himself, for which Max is grateful because he’s only beginning to understand what’s going on.

  He hangs up, takes a breath, and then nods to the Doorman, who’s on the other side of a half-door, waiting at the switchboard. After a minute or so of negotiation with the operator, the Doorman signals him to pick up the phone again. He hears it ringing in his apartment — he’s sure he recognizes the ring.

  “Maxie?” The Wife’s voice is faint. It’s like the Doorman has connected him to a different planet.

  “How are things, Cactus?”

  “Everything’s fine, but I miss you.” The sound of her voice breaks through the cocoon he has been carefully building since the riot
in the capital, and he fights to keep his emotion contained.

  They exchange the basics: what’s new with her job, the Editor is the same asshole he’s always been, they’re having a gorgeous spring in Montreal. But the Wife is worried about Max. It seems the Copy Editor had quietly arranged for their service to include the Latin America feed.

  “I do read the wire, you know,” she says. “You guys were in that riot.”

  “We watched it from a balcony,” Max says. “It was like box seats.”

  “Bullshit. I saw the photos,” she says.

  “That was before it got going,” he says. “Basically, all we’re doing is spending money on travel so we can arrive late for stories.”

  Max knows the Wife isn’t buying that, either, but she lets it go. He tries to reassure her and she warns him to come back in one piece: “Don’t let me down. You’ve got three months left to get this out of your system.”

  They finish with a few affectionate words and he hangs up. Max has a curious feeling that he is in two places at once, that he is watching himself over his own shoulder. In the next breath the sensation is gone and forgotten.

  Max signals the Doorman to put the next call through.

  “Oh, Maxie, I wasn’t sure when you could call,” the Dancer says.

  “Every four weeks, right on schedule,” he says.

  “Everything okay?”

  “I’m fine, but it’s fucking dangerous here. How are you?”

  The Dancer is fine, too, and this time wants his advice on whether to sell her interest in the nightclub.

  “They’re offering me twice the book value of my share. My board member in Calgary says I should hold out for more.”

  Max is alarmed.

  “What are you thinking of?” he shouts into the phone. “You’ve told me yourself how nasty these people are. I’ve written about the things they’ve done. They’re criminals and you’re not, and now they’ve decided you could be a liability. They’re being generous because they like you and want you out quickly. Take the offer. No haggling.”

  “But Calgary . . .”

  “Calgary doesn’t know how those Montreal bastards do business,” Max says.

  “There could be a lot more money . . .”

  “Don’t get greedy. Okay? You’ll take it and run?”

  “Okay. I promise. Jesus, Maxie, you sound scared. Be careful.”

  “I’m not scared. Well, I’m scared for you. Take the offer. Gotta go.”

  “Wait!” she says. “Your dividends. You want them paid out or reinvested?”

  Max is too preoccupied to turn his mind to the matter: “Do what you think is best.”

  He emerges from the office behind the reception desk of El Palacio and pays the Doorman for letting him use the phone. He gives Max a quizzical look.

  “Don’t get it wrong,” Max says. “I am a one-woman man.”

  “I was more interested in your call to your bureau chief. You seemed very pleased,” the Doorman says, having changed into a white shirt and black vest in the unlikely event that a customer shows up in the bar. “May I ask . . .”

  “I just filed a story to the wire service,” he says, unable to repress a smile.

  “About the two-headed sheep?”

  Max, feeling magnanimous, chuckles tolerantly. “Not quite. There was a riot near the cathedral. Well, not a riot. An attack by the police.”

  “And you were there?”

  “We were right there, man.”

  Getting high on the experience is icing on the cake. Now he understands that his little omissions are inconsequential. By God, he is a reporting machine. Nothing can stand between Max and a story. The Bureau Chief will see that soon enough.

  The Photog is probably on his way back from the airport, having given his film to a pilot friend. They have agreed to meet at the Palacio bar, but Max can’t wait for him now.

  “How many hospitals in this town?” he asks the Doorman.

  “Two, but your friend has left a message to meet him at the community college. The students have occupied the cafeteria.”

  “Shit. How do you get there?”

  The Doorman surveys the empty tables. “It is five minutes from here by car. If there is trouble, no taxi will take you. I will be your taxi for five American dollars.”

  “Deal!” Max says. “But I have to change first.”

  • • •

  Max and the Doorman pull up in a VW Beetle a few blocks away from the community college. Ahead, Max can see a cluster of Ford Escort police cars blocking access to the college.

  “The curfew begins at seven o’clock,” the Doorman says. “I will finish work and be here — exactly here — at half-past six.”

  “Got it,” Max says as he opens the passenger door. Then he turns back toward the Doorman. “What does El Mago mean?”

  The Doorman is startled. “That’s a person,” he says. “A secret policeman.”

  “So what’s it mean?”

  The Doorman hesitates. “It means ‘The Magician’ — because he makes people disappear.”

  The Doorman is agitated and has more to say, but Max ignores him and hops out of the VW.

  He starts walking parallel to the street the police are blocking. He’s wearing khaki shorts, heavy hiking boots and a tie-dyed T-shirt. Instead of a notebook, he carries only his folded paper and pencil stub. His Kodak Instamatic hangs from his neck and he’s pulled his lengthening hair out from behind his ears. The final touches are his guidebook and a Canadian flag pinned to the strap of his knapsack. He has gone from gringo hack to gringo tourist. Annoying and over-privileged, but harmless.

  Max hates the goofy shorts — he has legs like toothpicks — but the disguise is part of being an intrepid correspondent. Heart pounding, he runs crouching from block to block, as if someone might shoot at him, but standing up when he comes to each intersection and walking casually by, looking to see if the police are blocking the way. He does this four times before he comes to an open street. It rises steeply and takes a sharp right to circle around a huge stone building. At the point where the street changes direction is a long stone stairway leading to a balustrade. The building, Max now realizes, is the cathedral.

  He is still taking it all in when he sees a familiar metal and glass phallus rise up from behind the stone and then lever downward like a submarine breaching the surface. Right behind it, the Photog’s head comes into view, complete with bush-hat. He is glued to the viewfinder behind his most precious and impressive telephoto lens. Max almost laughs out loud with joy and admiration for his formidable friend.

  He starts up the hill, Instamatic bouncing on his chest. As he approaches the stairway a dark figure wearing the weird, Nazi-style helmet favoured by the police swings toward him, his right hand resting on his Uzi. Max smiles widely and waves, lumbering toward the guy with an aw-shucks side-to-side gait.

  “How’s it goin’?” he asks, now a couple of feet away. To his left the dusty street is littered with bricks, stones, cop cars and police. He starts in that direction and the cop immediately blocks his way.

  “No pasa.” His eyes betray neither hostility nor doubt that the gringo has taken his last step toward the community college.

  Max ostentatiously displays a thumb and finger and uses them to delicately retrieve his guidebook from his front pocket. He nods at the blank face of the cop and opens it.

  “Por favor,” he says in the most engaging tone he can muster. “Donde esta el churcho?”

  For a long time the guard stares at Max as if he has just stepped from a flying saucer. Then he grins.

  “La iglesia,” he says, correcting Max’s Spanish.

  “Si,” Max says. “La iglesia.”

  The guard widens his grin and extends his arm toward the hill.

  Max makes a show of laughing at himself and thanks
the guy several times. The guard says it’s nothing. Max is about to mount the first step when the guard calls out. There is a trace of simpatico in his expression.

  “Hey, turista,” he says. “Por favor, be careful. Go away from here.”

  Max waves his assurances. It occurs to him that underneath the guard’s uniform is probably a low-paid family guy who would rather not have anybody’s death on his conscience.

  At the top of the stairs, in case the guard is watching, Max keeps moving toward the cathedral until he’s out of sight. Then, crouching again, he joins the Photog by the balustrade.

  The Photog gives him an awkward hug.

  “Nice shorts, pelican man. How did you find me?”

  Max feigns indignation: “Easy. I’m a trained journalist.”

  “Trained, my ass.”

  The Photog says he has come up the other side of the hill because he knew the cops would arrest him if they spotted his camera equipment. He says the street blocked by the guard runs between the teaching building and the administration offices. Near the entrance there’s an apartment building. From their perch they can see most of the street but only the roof of the teaching building. The Photog says there are about 100 kids holed up in the cafeteria. So far, they have repelled two tear gas attacks by chucking the canisters back into the street. The Photog has good shots of gas and cops, but none of the students.

  “We can’t find a better spot?” Max says.

  “No, man. I don’t want to get my balls shot off. Do you? Oh wait — I forgot — you do.”

  They wait and listen for something to happen, but aside from the occasional order, there is nothing to be heard. The crisp mountain light is turning to dusk. Max looks at his watch and warns that the Doorman will be at the rendezvous in 15 minutes.

  “You’re right. Let’s go,” the Photog says. “It’s too dark for pictures and I need to get my film to the airport.”