“We just got them in a month or so ago,” he said. “Why?”
I picked one up and looked at it. For something called a “bomb,” it was small, and wrapped in brown paper that bore the same logo, with a line drawing of a kid holding his nose. “I remember when you had to make your own,” I said.
“Thanks for the nostalgia. The water’s a buck and a quarter.” The wrapper even had instructions for how to use the stink bomb—kids can’t even make a bad smell without reading about it first, it seems.
I reached into my wallet and gave him two singles. He started to make change. “You been getting complaints about these?” I asked about the little wonders. Anne Mignano had mentioned that parents thought the offending item had been purchased here.
“Yeah,” he said, handing me three quarters. “But the kids buy them.”
“You wouldn’t be able to name any of the kids who buy them, would you?”
“Stink bombs don’t require ID,” he smirked. “Anybody can buy one.”
“What do they do with them after they buy them from you?”
He shrugged. “That’s their business.”
“You know, three of these things have gone off in the elementary school in the past week. That’s a bunch of eight-year-olds who couldn’t use the boy’s bathroom for three days.” I thought maybe underlining the severity of the crime might soften the businessman’s heart.
“Whatcha gonna do?” A wolfish grin broke out on his face.
In accordance with the instructions, I opened the wrapping on the stink bomb and twisted it. “This,” I said, and threw it into the back of the store. Smoke started to emanate from it as the counter guy ran for the bomb. I left the seventy-five cents on the counter and walked out the front door.
Chapter
Eleven
“A stink bomb?” Chief Barry Dutton of the Midland Heights Police Department stood over me, eyes wide, his voice full of contempt. “You couldn’t think of anything better to do today than throw a stink bomb into the Kwik’N EZ?”
“I paid the guy for it,” I said.
I was sitting in the chair in front of the Chief’s desk, and was-n’t terribly frightened by his display of pique. I’ve known Barry for nine years, and even had dinner at his house a couple of times. I was a little frightened, though, because Barry is about six-four and looked like Arnold Schwarzenegger would if he were ten years younger and African-American.
“You think paying for the stink bomb makes it okay to use it in a convenience store?” Barry was James Earl Jones-ing his voice to full effect, and the chair vibrated a little, but I wasn’t going for it.
“The owner of the place seemed to think that once such an item is purchased, its use is strictly the responsibility of the owner,” I explained. “Besides, the name of his store breaks so many rules of grammar that, as a writer, it was a moral imperative for me to teach him a lesson.”
Barry sat down heavily and sighed. He knew perfectly well that he wasn’t going to get anywhere with me on this subject. It was either charge me or let me go.
“You didn’t just go in there to teach this guy how to spell ‘Quick,’” he said. “What were you doing there? Did this have something to do with the stink bombs at the school?”
“You knew about that?”
“Of course I knew about that—I’m the chief of police.” Barry fixed an imposing stare at me. “You think the parents in this town would let something that heinous happen without notifying, and then badgering, the chief of police?”
“Well, what are you doing about it?”
“The question isn’t what I’m doing about it—it’s whether you’re doing something about it, and if so, who asked you to do it.”
I actually looked away from him. “I’m. . . not at liberty to say.”
He snorted. It’s rare you get to hear someone snort, but he did it well. “What is this, freelance writer-client privilege? You’re not a private investigator, Aaron.”
“No. I looked into becoming one, but the state regulations are that you have to have. . .”
“. . . Five years of experience as a police officer or investigator with an organized police department of a state, county or municipality or an investigative agency of the United States, or any state, county, or municipality.” Barry said it all with what appeared to be enjoyable malice. “I’ve read the regs, and we’ve discussed them before.”
I fixed him in my gaze. “So you also know that in order to become a police officer in this state, you have to be under 35 years of age. So my time to start getting five years in as an investigator. . .”
Barry grinned. “. . . Passed about ten years ago.”
“Eight.”
“Nevertheless. That doesn’t explain what I’m going to tell Mr. Rebinow about his store. He’s got fresh produce in there, for crissakes, and now he’s going to have to close for two days.” Barry closed his eyes and rubbed them with an enormous thumb and forefinger.
“That may be produce, but it sure as hell ain’t fresh. Besides, the guy doesn’t seem to care what happens to the stink bombs he sells unless they get used in his store. I don’t see where I broke any laws. Doesn’t he have anti-stink-bomb insurance?”
Barry’s eyes opened wide again, and he started to point a finger at the sky, then gave it up. “Anti-stink-bomb insurance. What am I going to do with you?”
“You sound like me, talking to Ethan. Barry, while I’m here. . .”
“Oh god, you get pulled in for pulling a prank a nine-year-old would be ashamed of, and now you’re doing to ask me to help you,” Barry moaned. “Where do you get the nerve?”
“It’s called chutzpah. My people are born with it.”
“You must have been born a week late, because you’ve got twice as much as everybody else. What do you want?”
“Let’s say I’m investigating a murder. . .” I began, but Barry put his head on his desk and began banging his forehead on the desktop. “You want to cut that out? It’s distracting me.”
“Didn’t you learn anything from the last time? You damn near got yourself killed.” Barry stopped the forehead move, but kept his head on the desk. His voice echoed from under the desk, around his feet.
“This is different,” I told him. “I’m not anywhere near the killer this time. This murder took place in D.C.”
“Washington, D.C.? Our nation’s capital?”
“That was a question on the Police Chief exam, wasn’t it, Barry? Yeah, that Washington, D.C. Now, the question is, how do you investigate a crime long-distance? I mean, I’m a good 250 miles away from the scene, and I don’t want to move down there for however long it takes. What can I do?”
Barry sat back up and leaned back in his chair, thinking.
“Well, I assume you’ve already talked to the Washington cops.”
“Yeah.”
“What you want to do now is find out as much on the Internet about the victim as you can. Who he was. . . it was a man, right?” Barry asked.
“Louis Gibson.”
“Oh, that People for Family Values, or whatever, guy? How’d you get on that one?”
I told him.
“I guess everybody you go to school with can’t be as classy as you are,” Barry said.
“Well, how many people are as classy as me?”
“I was thinking of it from Gibson’s point of view, actually.”
“You’re funny. You should go into stand-up comedy. But wear the gun belt. If they don’t laugh, you can shoot them.”
Barry smiled a little. He’ll deny it, but he did. “Well, a high-profile case like that will be all over the Net. Find out what you can, and talk to your friend with the chest about motive. You say she acknowledges he was cheating on her?”
“Yeah, but Stephanie had already driven up here by the time he was killed.”
“She could have paid somebody to do it,” Barry said. “That happens. We had a rabbi right here in Jersey convicted of just that.”
“I r
emember something about that,” I admitted.
Barry chuckled. “Now, that’s chutzpah,” he said.
Chapter
Twelve
Barry promised to smooth things over with Mr. Rebinow at the Kwik’N EZ, and let me go on my own recognizance, but not without threatening to kick me in the recognizance if I threw any more stink bombs near open food.
When I got home, sure enough, there was a fax from Lt. McCloskey of the Washington, D.C. Police Department, detailing how he had nothing to say in the Louis Gibson case. Also, on the answering machine was one of the sources for my Star-Ledger story, but when I called him back, he was out to lunch. It was going to be one of those days.
I called Stephanie at home in D.C., and she took the call right away. “Louis’ funeral is tomorrow,” she said. “They’re actually talking about televising it on C-SPAN. Can you imagine?”
“Price of fame, Steph.”
“I bet the President will show up. And here’s me with nothing to wear.”
“That’ll make an impression,” I said.
She chuckled. “You always could make me laugh, Aaron.”
“That’s not how I remember it, Steph. Not to change the subject, but we need to have a long talk about Legs. I need a lot of background before I go nosing around into what. . . happened.”
“That shouldn’t be a problem. I’m coming back up there over the weekend to deal with Louis’ family. Maybe we can get together for lunch on Friday.”
We made the date, and chatted for a few minutes before Steph’s larger task—planning a nationally televised funeral— intruded on her, and she called our conversation quits.
I spent a couple of hours after that on the Internet, which has completely replaced the library as the freelance writer’s main site for research. One of the few luxuries I allow myself is a high-speed cable Internet connection, and it pays for itself in time spent waiting for pages to pop onto the screen. I’d sooner give up my thesaurus—I could always download one, after all.
Through various web sites, I gained the following information:
Louis Gibson was an attorney who founded People for American Values in 1992—
Louis Gibson once told an interviewer he was “appalled at the degradation of American values by the excesses and mistakes of the 1960’s”—
Louis Gibson and his wife, Stephanie Jacobs Gibson, had been “happily married” for 23 years, and had two children, Louis Gibson, Jr., now 22 and a senior at Georgetown University, and Jason Gibson, now 17 and a junior at the Pringley School in Annapolis, MD—
Louis Gibson regularly appeared on such television programs as Meet the Press, Sunday Morning, Larry King Live; and The O’Reilly Factor. On his last TV appearance, on Left of Center, he had gotten into a shouting match with the host, Estéban Suarez.
I belong to an Internet bulletin board for writers called Writers United for Stage and Screen (WUSS), which was started by four disgruntled screenwriters about 10 years ago. Since the only kind of screenwriter is the disgruntled kind, WUSS is now populated by 250 professional and semi-professional screenwriters (like me), who leave messages for each other.
One of the great advantages of WUSS is the vast depth of knowledge that members can tap. If you need to know about the migrating patterns of Canadian geese, the caliber of the most widely circulated gun in America, the lyricist of “Do Wah Ditty Ditty,” or the perfect way to cook lamb chops, there’s always somebody to ask.
I logged on that morning and read my messages for the day— there were two. One was from Margaret Fishman, a screenwriter and novelist who wanted to know if New Jersey really had more Mafia members per square mile than any other state. The other was from Gene Manelli, a comedy writer with some fringe credits, which put him a few rungs up the ladder from me. Gene was continuing a thread of conversation that between the two of us had degenerated into a war of puns. Don’t ask me to detail it— you’d wake up screaming for weeks.
I left a message addressed to “ALL.” It read: “Anyone with info about the recently deceased conservative lobbyist Louis Gibson, please get in touch privately. There’s no money in it (for YOU), but it will be greatly appreciated.”
Once that was done, I logged off the Net and made yet another follow-up phone call on the Star-Ledger story. This time, I actually got the person I needed, spent 25 minutes asking questions I didn’t entirely understand, and wrote down answers I didn’t understand at all. Hey, it’s a living.
That left one more interview for the article, and I was awaiting a callback on that one. I decided to concentrate on the “Case of the Stinky Bomb.”
Every year, the Parent Teacher Organization (PTO, not PTA, so they don’t have to pay dues) of Midland Heights publishes what it calls “Find-A-Friend,” the list of every child in the school district (who sends in a form at the beginning of the school year), with address, phone number, and parents’ names. This year, it was rumored, email addresses (for the kids!) would be added, but since it was only October, the Find-A-Friend for this year hadn’t come out yet. The book is a resource so central to a family’s life it can often supplant the local phone book, and missing this year’s edition would be a major handicap.
Luckily, there was last year’s. I picked it up off the shelf on my desk (the Find-A-Friend is rarely far from my grasp) and started leafing through the pages, hoping to be hit on the head with the names of kids who might perpetrate such a dastardly crime.
I don’t like to sound callous about it, but the fact is, if you live in a small community long enough, and your children go to the public schools, you pretty much know which kids are more likely to flout authority, and which ones are going to play by the rules or die. So, while I’ll admit that this was a fishing expedition of the worst kind, it was not a witch hunt.
Besides, I had nothing to go on.
And after a good long look at pretty much every name in the Midland Heights school system, I had compiled a list of eight extreme long shots. In other words, I still had a grand total of nothing to go on. But I had killed an hour, and in freelance writing school, they teach that an hour killed is never a bad thing. Especially if you’ve avoided paying work.
I started in on the third act of the mystery screenplay. Screenwriting, for those of you sensible enough never to have tried it, is traditionally done in three acts. And the acts are defined in no better terms than those of Julius Epstein, who, with his brother Philip and Howard Koch, wrote a little picture called Casablanca that you might have seen, so he should know.
“In the first act,” Epstein said, “your main character gets caught up a tree. In the second act, people come out and throw rocks at him. And in the third act, he gets down out of the tree.”
So my bogus Aaron Tucker stand-in, Andy Trainor (I had to make the characters “less ethnic” to appeal to Hollywood), had already gotten himself up a tree by agreeing to investigate a crime. And various people had thrown rocks at him, mostly by threatening his life and cutting off his source of income. I’d even thrown in a chase scene to make producers happy. Now, in Act 3, it was time to get Andy out of the tree.
He’d started to climb down off his branch when my phone rang. As usual, the end of the screenplay was the easiest part for me to write, because I’d already gotten up a head of steam writing the first two acts, and because I’d been thinking about the ending all along. Of course, in this case, it was easier than ever, since I had reality to use as a template, so I was typing fast enough to elicit smoke from the keys. But I took a breath between sentences to reach for the phone.
The guttural voice on the other end spoke quickly, but clearly enough for me to understand. “Back off, man,” it said. Then it hung up.
Stunned, it took me a minute. Then, I scrolled all the way up to the beginning of my second act, when Andy first runs into trouble from outside. And I changed the mysterious phone caller’s dialogue from “stop your investigation,” to “back off, man.”
Chapter
Thirteen
> Abby looked at me wearily. “A threatening phone call, Aaron? We’re not starting that again, are we?”
“Beats me. I haven’t done anything the other reporters writing about Legs didn’t try. In fact, I’m sure I haven’t done as much as most of them.” I flipped over the chicken filet I was frying in the pan. “I wonder if Dan Rather is also getting terse, anonymous phone calls.”
“I heard on NPR that Gibson’s funeral is going to be covered live on CNN tomorrow,” Abby said, taking out an earring. In a minute, she’d go upstairs to change out of her work clothes and into exercise clothes. “The President is showing up.”
“Which begs the question of whether Stephanie will be naked or not.”
She stopped. “Huh?”
“Don’t worry about it,” I told my wife. “Don’t worry about anything.”
“That’s hard to do,” she said, walking out of the kitchen, “when the phone calls are starting again.”
“All he said was ‘back off, man,’” I had to raise my voice to reach her. “It might have been Bart Simpson.”
That cut through Ethan’s perpetual haze. “Bart Simpson called?” he asked excitedly.
Abigail was not as talkative during dinner, even when Ethan made an awkward stab at dinner conversation and Leah actually used a fork on her mashed potatoes. Abby was seriously unnerved by threatening phone calls we received during the Madlyn Beckwirth story, and was now clearly dealing with the possibility that they’d be starting up again. Maybe the ten grand was-n’t enough of an incentive to write about Legs.
After the kids beat a hasty retreat to the television, I started to load the dishes into our dishwasher, an ancient model which, I believe, simply made a lot of noise and spritzed a little water on the dishes. They often had to be washed by hand after they came out. Abby was clearing the table and leaving the dishes in the sink for me to transfer when dishwasher space opened up.
Our kitchen isn’t huge, so we often had to get out of each other’s way. And while I never mind bumping into my wife, I did notice we weren’t talking as much as we usually do.
A Farewell to Legs Page 6