What set him apart from your run-of-the-mill criminal, what made him creepy, was his head was up and his smile was triumphant. Regardless of what Reardon told the feds about why his client was turning himself in, this is what he’d come for.
Reardon and Crandall fell in behind Wood and Moze, and the whole thing became a moveable feast. The wedge could not pierce the clans because the clans moved with it, the shooters and cameramen tacking backward against the talent to get the best angle and the talent falling back along the sides to shout questions at the guy, the cops, and the lawyers. I dropped back and away to watch; the moveable feast is just as often famine when it comes to useful material, and I needed to be in position to make a quick decision about getting in the squad with the guy.
Wood had parked the squad just where he said he would: at the top of the underground ramp, nose out, ready to pull out onto the street. When the cops reached the car, the wedge finally drove through the shooters and cameraman who were pressed back against it. The troopers got the back passenger-side door open. Wood put his hand on the guy’s head to fold him into the back seat. Knowing full well where the cameras were trained, Reardon reached forward to put a comforting hand on client’s shoulder, but Moze brushed it away and got in back with the guy. Wood went around to drive. He stopped before he got in to give me an inquiring look across the roof of the car.
I made my choice. I probably knew what it would be all along. Yeah, I knew and hated that they were using me, but it was too much of an opportunity. I report. Wood and Crandall deal with the legalities.
I nodded at Wood and held up an index finger to tell him to wait one. I doubted Reardon and Crandall would stop to watch and wave, like maybe they were sending their son off to college, so I stood back until they began to move back toward the plaza. The clans went with them, shouting more questions and taking their last-chance photos and tape. Only one or two of the cameramen lingered at the car to grab some continuity of Wood pulling away, but they didn’t know me.
Janelle did, and I did not count on it. I like to think that she sensed my as-yet-brief absence as the opening of a void in her being, but more likely she was just her observant and competitive self. As she stood waiting to get to Reardon for her exclusive interview, she shouted, yes, shouted, to no one in particular: “Hey, where’s he going?”
I had one foot in the car and was about to swing my big butt onto the seat when I heard Reardon shout, “Stop!” I just about had the door closed and Wood was moving forward when Crandall’s voice boomed through the squad radio. He’d grabbed a trooper’s mobile unit. He said the same thing.
Wood said “Shit” and slammed on the brakes. We sat there for only a second or so before the clans rocked the car, crowding it on both sides. I turned to smile in my most boyish way into the faces of Crandall and Reardon. I had only enough time to see they were both scowling before the strobes and the video lights blinded me.
I’m not sure how he did it, but I believe Crandall used the word fuck or some conjugation of it no less than three times in yanking open the squad door and telling me to get out. The troopers had formed a semi-circular wall around the passenger side of the car to push back the clans while Crandall and Reardon conferred. Crandall said something about my mother then something about my sexual practices before pushing me away toward the troopers. I heard him say to Reardon that he’d personally ride with “these fucking yahoos” to make sure his client’s rights were not violated.
“That’s what you say,” Reardon hissed.
“You’re goddamned right I do say. And that ought to be fucking good enough for you. But you don’t trust me? Come along.”
Reardon looked at the car for a moment, then shook his head.
“Don’t fuck with me, Crandall,” he said.
Crandall bit his lips and nodded once like Reardon had confirmed whatever Crandall thought of him. Before he closed the car door, he said, “I wanna fuck with you, sonny, I’ll do it straight up, in court. You’ve got my fucking word on that, too.”
As the car pulled out onto the street, I could see Crandall leaned over, giving it to Wood. The guy turned to look at me through the back window. At that point, he was the only one with a radiant smile.
McConegal let his boys crowd and jostle me on the plaza while he took ten minutes out of his day to tell me that I had failed to properly balance the interests of a free press against the interests of the state and the accused in a fair trial and that accordingly I could only be considered a piece of shit. He said he would gladly arrest me for being a piece of shit if he could, but he couldn’t, so he would, with the greatest reluctance, turn me loose with the promise that he would kick my ass if I interfered with another investigation.
He’d said that to me before. I await delivery.
Janelle stood with her arms crossed, watching one of twinks do a standup with Reardon. She had a hard time making eye contact when I stepped up next to her.
“Notice Mr. Carter,” she said quickly, seizing the conversational initiative. “You’re acquainted with Jason Carter?
“If you mean the short, swarthy guy holding the microphone, I rarely watch TV news.”
“Mr. Carter is, in fact, short. I put him at 5-3, maybe 5-4. Thus, the cameraman.”
A fairly husky, young guy in a red-and-blue parka bearing the channel number and call letters of an Indianapolis station was on his knees, shooting over Mr. Carter’s shoulder.
“Note the kneepads,” Janelle said.
The cameraman had kneepads.
“Carter’s regular guy?” I said.
“Yes, Mr. Carter has his own personal cameraman, who must wear kneepads so that Mr. Carter will not look like a little person.”
“That’s very liberal and tactful of you. I take it you didn’t get your exclusive interview.”
“Mr. Carter’s name,” said Janelle, “is actually Jacob Kryzinksi. Thus, the swarth. Jason Carter is a name that’s easier to spell on a crawl and it plays better in insular, WASPy little Midwest towns such as your own. He’s pretty smart, he’s exceptionally aggressive and rude, and he’s got vocal cords that go all the way from the top of his inflated head to nails of his tiny, pedicured toes.”
“Deep,” I said. “Resonant.”
“Just listen,” she said.
Carter was repeating the same questions that various reporters had asked at the press conference. It was easy to hear him even from where we stood: his voice sounded like someone working the left end of a pipe organ. Reardon repeated his answers, adding considerably more spin now that he had rehearsed.
“He wants to make sure he makes the noon broadcast,” Janelle muttered, as the standup ended. “That son of a bitch.”
I didn’t know whether Janelle referred to Reardon or our competitor, but I really didn’t care. I leaned over to her and said, “We’re even.”
“Not hardly,” she said, watching Reardon as he turned and approached us.
He gave me an extra-long look before introducing himself to Janelle. She slipped her arm through one of his to turn him toward me and said, “Mr. Reardon, meet Clay Ambrose.”
Reardon has a smile for all occasions. The one he gave me had nothing to do the look in his eyes, which had gone instantly Arctic at the sound of my name.
“I was hoping I’d meet you today,” he said.
“I can’t imagine why.”
“I wanted to tell you how much my client and I’ve appreciated your recent work. I don’t mean to insult Ms. Wheeler here, but you have written, by far, the most detailed and thorough stories about the investigation.”
He programmed another smile, this one bearing a trace of self-satisfaction.
“In honor of your work, I have something for you,” he said.
From inside his jacket, he withdrew a piece of paper and pressed it into my hand, which he had not released since we shook. He explained to m
e that it was a subpoena, which directed me to appear that afternoon to testify on behalf of his client and to bring with me any and all stories and photographs that had been published in my newspaper and any and all notes or audio tapes in the possession of my newspaper or me related to the deaths of Lottie Nusbaumer and three children.
“I’ll have to run this past the paper’s lawyer,” I said.
“Do what you want, but make sure you show up at the hearing today. We’re moving this case out of Austin County, and you’re going to help.”
Janelle had stood back and to one side. She held up her own subpoena and smiled wryly.
“The only problem, Mr. Reardon,” I said, “is I don’t have a way back to Failey. You probably noticed, my ride’s left.”
I smiled back at Janelle. Reardon looked from me to Janelle, then down the steps to a small, black Mercedes at the curb.
“You can ride with me,” he said.
With good reason, Janelle looked horrified.
“Thanks,” I said. “I wouldn’t dream of interrupting your interview with Janelle, but if you don’t mind, I’ll take a few notes. And if there’s time, maybe you can talk to me when you’re done with her.
In the town of Bluffwood the year after the murders, there were four pay phones within two blocks of the courthouse square.
The most obvious was in the basement of the courthouse, near the vestibule of the public men’s room, where someone beyond memory had set up a table and chairs so loafers could smoke and play cards. As far as I was concerned, the fact that the phone was the most obvious made it the least desirable. Assuming they could stand the buzz of cutthroat euchre and the stench of cigars and human waste, it was likely to be the first phone the clans would make for during deadline stampedes.
Another phone was in a standalone booth on a corner across the street from the courthouse in front of the First Something Bank of Bluffwood. This one, too, was a little too apparent for my tastes. Even the more delicate twinks could not miss it.
A good prospect was the third phone, which was attached to the wall next to the door of a convenience store a block south of the courthouse. The treasure, though, was buried two blocks west of the courthouse at the back of a drugstore.
I found it when I sat down at the fountain for a honey-laced, toasted cheese and a cherry phosphate, yet another trove unearthed. Not only was the phone remote and hidden, it was a sit-down model situated in a little nook next to the condom rack around the corner from the pharmacist’s dais. For a guy whose paper was too cheap to give him a laptop, it had a shelf under the phone on which to unfold his notepad like gossamer wings while he dictated stories about justice and death.
The pharmacist noticed one of his elderly, female customers scowling at me as I squished my cheeks back and forth on the little stool that stood in front of the phone to test it for comfort, height, and weight loading. Just as I was about to declare this public phone perfect in all its many aspects, he descended from the parapet where he mixed his potions and said: “If you don’t mind, Mrs. Gordon needs to use the phone.”
“Of course,” I said.
I stood, doffed an invisible, feathered cap, and bowed to welcome her to the little stool. It did nothing to soften Mrs. Gordon’s expression of disgust. Maybe she didn’t like sitting among condoms. Probably she was calling to get a ride home so she could empty her ostomy bag.
“May I have change for the phone?” I asked the pharmacist, a short, bearded man with horn-rimmed, half glasses, who looked somewhat gnomish in his lime-green smock.
“Sorry,” he said. Then with a gnomic smile: “I got phone cards.”
“No shit?”
Mrs. Gordon glared at me as though I was speaking to her. Maybe she actually had an ostomy bag.
I knew where the pay phones were in the Bluff because three weeks before the trial I made a scouting trip. I did it on my own time. I took a vacation day. I didn’t mind because I have no life and therefore do not take vacations and I would’ve scouted the Bluff regardless.
It was, in fact, a relatively small price to pay for the General Manager’s constipated promise that the paper would pick up the tab for covering what was likely to be a two-week trial in another small town in the opposite corner of the state. If the GM had had his way, I would drive three and a half hours each way to and from the trial each day, and if I wasn’t staying in the Bluff each night, what did I need meals for? It’d be just like I was working in Failey, for chrissake. At least for his purposes when he talked to the publisher about the budget, the GM, like Crandall, was pretty sure the trial getting moved was all my fault.
Marley and I literally begged to differ. Three times we took our alms bowl to the GM.
The first visit to his office we made upright, as two professionals to a third. It was shortly after that sour bastard of a judge listened to the testimony of Janelle, two twinks, and me about the extent of our coverage and the number of people we were likely to have reached. Based on our testimony, the judge rejected Crandall’s argument that it would be more economical to select jurors from another county and ship them in and ruled that the trial would be held in one of three similarly sized counties as far away from Failey as he could find. Each party could strike one county from the list; the last one standing won. Bottom line: The seriousness of the crimes and the ungovernable behavior of the clans scared the bejesus out of the crabby, old fart.
Not that any of that mattered to the GM. Marley and I were careful to approach him early to point out that the trial was likely to be held next year sometime and we needed to start thinking about how we were going to cover it. We’d need to set aside money for accommodations for at least one reporter throughout the trial and maybe the photographer on a couple of days, telephone costs, maybe some part-time help to fill in for the reporter assigned to the trial, and maybe some equipment, like a laptop.
Marley and I assumed sending a local reporter to cover a sensational local story was a given. The GM, however, is a guy whose background was advertising, the revenue-producing side of the operation, not editorial, the revenue-spending side of the equation. He made no such assumption.
“How ’bout we just pick it up off the wire?” he said. “I mean, Bob, don’t we always say, ‘It doesn’t cost much more than a reporter; it just produces so much more with so much less aggravation?’”
The guy was serious, and he looked at me when he mentioned aggravation. I was pretty much appalled Marley would buy into that exceptionally cynical business model. Marley was so stunned all he could think to say was he’d get back to him.
I may’ve screwed up the second visit, a week or so later. Marley was making a very articulate argument on the very salient point that we’d look like cheap amateurs if we didn’t have our own reporter at such a significant event when the GM said, “Well, you know, if we focus our resources on this trial, we’ll have to divert them from somewhere else. What d’you think we ought to cut?”
Before Marley could speak, I said, “Well, I’d hate to cut stuff like that full page in yesterday’s Lifestyle, the one devoted to what local personalities eat when they brown bag it. You know which one I’m talking about? It was maybe 30, 40 inches of vapid type wrapped around a half-page color picture of a paper sack. I wouldn’t call that wasted wood fiber. No, sir.”
I admit to being annoyed we even had to have the conversation, and I obviously forgot the GM occasionally slept with the Lifestyle editor. Marley spun me out of that office like a giant top.
I regretted I said it. By that time, I would’ve done anything not to be cut out of the story. It was too good. It was too much like the old days. For the first time in a long time, I had a story I wanted to see through to the end.
I told Marley I’d do it on my own time for free. He said he didn’t think I’d have to go that far, but I would have to go the GM on bended knee. I said that might be a problem, me being rotund
and all.
As he sometimes does when I talk, Marley’s first response was to look away and mutter “Jesus Christ” under his breath. After he’d thought about it for a while, though, he said that for round three, I’d have to apologize, which I did, keep my mouth shut, which I also did, and leave the talking to him, which he did.
Marley told the GM that we were in business to provide local news, this was nothing if not local news, and the GM knew as well as he did that we’d sell out every edition for the 10 days of the trial and the weekend in between. The last part—the acknowledgment that even we in editorial had to look out for his bottom line—was what the GM was waiting to hear.
Yeah, he said, that was the bet the paper’d make, and since we’d be lucky to break even, I’d better roll sevens. But as he laid out the rules of engagement—cheapest motel as determined by actual, comparative pricing and dickering, minimal per diem, collect calls to Marley only, no weekends in the Bluff, no laptop, and oh, yeah, some help on Lifestyle between now and then—the GM grinned. Marley and I agreed later he’d played the whole long hand just to make us feel eager and grateful to accept his terms.
I looked upon it as yet another reminder why I stay the hell away from the business side of a paper as much as I can.
So since then, I’d covered the usual accidents, burglaries, and fires. As fulfillment of my bargain with the Devil Lifestyle section, I’d written up some play at a nursing home and, God help me, grandparents day at the elementary school.
And now, here I stood, on yet another courthouse square, my face raised to the sun’s warmth on a mild, early summer day, trying to figure out if this was the seventh or eighth ponderous, pointed limestone block I had visited as a reporter for the Mirror-Press and worrying that if we didn’t start this damned trial soon I was going to run out of new things to say.
Crandall had stopped talking to me altogether about any case since the episode at the federal building and the change of venue. Wood and I talked on the phone frequently about all sorts of matters except the murders, and Moze had dropped off the face of the earth.
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