Quick Pivot

by Brenda Buchanan

  “She didn’t.” I was kicking myself for allowing my interview with Joan to detour down Finnegan Road. “She mostly talked about how angry she was at Wellington for saying she was your brother’s secret lover.”

  Helena headed toward the oven, lurching a bit. “That was a stupid notion.”

  When she removed the casserole dish and lifted the lid, the aroma of tomatoes and herbs filled the room.

  “Once this gets figured out I’ll have to make a point of reconnecting with Joan. We went through hell together all those years ago.”

  After eating a few bites, Helena set down her fork and looked out the window, where the early evening glow was backlighting the spruce trees. I toyed with the idea of relaying my conversation with Tom MacMahon, maybe even sharing the retired state police lieutenant’s theory, but resisted the urge. Even if MacMahon was right about Coatesworth, it would be cheap talk at this stage of the game.

  Jimmy and I left Helena’s a few minutes after eight o’clock. He took the scenic route to the ferry dock, reassuring me that the boat didn’t leave till quarter of nine.

  “I want your take on Christie’s situation,” he said. “You know she’s like a sister to me.”

  I nodded, wondering where this was going.

  “I’m worried she’s pissing her life away with a guy who doesn’t appreciate her.”

  “Arn the Accountant?” I used the monotone that suited Christie’s boyfriend, whose personality was about as exciting as vanilla pudding.

  Jimmy’s face was grim. “What does she see in the guy?”

  “I have no frigging idea. He’s predictable? Doesn’t put many demands on her?”

  “What the hell kind of a life is that? Being with somebody who’ll never surprise you.”

  “Agreed. It makes no sense. Christie’s been taking care of most of my daily nutritional needs since I moved to Riverside nine years ago. She is one of my closest friends, but we never talk about Arn. My best guess? She doesn’t have the energy to break it off. She’s too busy running the diner and raising Theo.”

  Jimmy scowled as I made her excuses.

  “Last Wednesday, we met in Portland for an early supper,” he said. “Maybe she’d just had a lousy day, but after a glass of wine her emotional spigot opened and she gushed sadness all over the table.” He pulled into a parking space halfway around the road that hugged the shoreline, pointing the nose of his truck toward Ram Island.

  “She’s thirty-six years old. Her son will be grown and gone in three years. She’s looking the future in the face and it’s an absent-minded boyfriend who’s more interested in his computer programs than he is in being with her. And she’s a damn fine woman.”

  “Arn isn’t worthy of her,” I agreed. “But they’re enough of an established couple that no one else is going to come around as long as he’s in the picture.”

  Jimmy drummed his thick fingers against the truck’s steering wheel.

  “She needs to dump him,” he said. “He’s never going to be the one to walk away. It’d be good if her friends let her know they’ll be there for her if she gives him the boot.”

  “You think she doesn’t know that?”

  Jimmy shrugged. “I don’t like seeing her miserable, that’s all.”

  On the ferry back into Portland I stood on deck and watched the sunset turn the bay gold. My body was twanging from the nerve Jimmy had struck with his sincere worry about Christie. Her time and sympathy were ever-ready when it came to my love life, but I’d grown adept at sidestepping the subject of her unhappy relationship. It made my head ache to think about why that was the case. I was embarrassed to hear she’d turned to Jimmy instead of me for support. Some friend I was.

  * * *

  Clicking through the local newscasts at eleven o’clock, I saw three reporters stuck in first gear. When Wrecker Rigoletti told them nothing was new, they bought it, packaged it and put it on the air. It was fine by me if they thought that counted as covering a story. When I pulled out my laptop and checked my Twitter stream and the Facebook rumormongers, I found they’d roamed off onto a tangent about other unsolved murders in southern Maine.

  I was tired but too restless for bed, so I dished up a bowl of chocolate ice cream and got methodical about Paulie’s old notebooks still sitting on my kitchen table. A short stack was segregated on the far edge, the ones with no dates scrawled on the front cover. Because it was the smallest pile, I decided to start there. It didn’t take long for me to slap myself on my intuitive back.

  Exile—Day Nine was the caption on the first page of the notebook that topped the stack. Dated June 10, 1968, it appeared to be notes of interviews related to Desmond’s disappearance. It seemed that despite all the Bernard Francoeur bylines in that summer of 1968, Paulie had continued working the Desmond story into the month of June.

  Backtracking through the other notebooks, I found my starting place: a spiral-bound pad with half the front cover ripped off and a first page labeled Exile—Day One. I turned it over and marked the back with a big #1.

  Start to finish, it covered four days—June first through fourth. The notes were cryptic in some places, almost narrative in others. Sometimes there were first or last names. Occasionally both. Other times, just initials.

  On June 1: Tell Bernie to push fbi. More $$ missing?

  On June 2: Call BF in a.m. What does he know about Lew?

  On June 4: JP’s inside scoop—can’t go there. Where from here?

  “Bernie” and “BF” had to be Francoeur, the reporter who took over the story. The reference to “Lew” was mysterious. Paulie hadn’t quoted anyone in any of his stories with a first name of Lewis or Louis. Was “JP” Jay Preble or someone else with those initials? What inside scoop had Paulie been given on the fourth of June, forty-six years earlier?

  Cross referencing the notebooks with the 1968-era clips I’d been carrying around in a manila envelope, I realized Gene’s theory was wrong. The Desmond story hadn’t been handed off to another reporter when Bobby Kennedy was shot. Paulie’s byline disappeared and Francoeur’s name showed up several days before the assassination. Yet the notebooks proved Paulie kept at it. His scribblings held no hint about why he was reassigned away from the Desmond story.

  Setting the ripped cover notebook aside, I found one with notes for the fifth and sixth of June. There were interviews with a security guy at the Saccarappa and a couple of Desmond’s neighbors. Toward the back I spotted Helena’s name and a phone number, but no notes indicating Paulie had actually spoken with her. Overall, not much, but at least he was still digging. The last half was blank, as if Paulie put the notebook aside while the Kennedy assassination and all of its implications were reverberating around Maine and the nation.

  There was no notebook for the seventh, eighth or ninth of June. Either Paulie didn’t keep it with the rest or he had no time to devote to the Desmond story on those days. The first notebook I’d scanned—the one headed Exile—Day Nine—began on June 10, a Monday. After marking it #3, I dug in. About a third of the way through, Paulie had written in block letters: ASK KEN C. IF MILL HAS MADE ANY PROGRESS WITH INSURANCE CLAIM. Three pages later he’d scribbled: Ken says ins. dead end. Policy exclusion for mbezz. Big guys scrambling.

  My eyes were watering from a series of yawns. There was no way I could mow through the last notebook. I marked it with a big #4 and put a sticky note on it saying “next.”

  In an uncanny bit of time-space coincidence, at noon Paulie’s apparent source—Jay Preble—would be making the anti-gambling case at Portland’s Downtown Club main event, billed Casino Gambling in Maine—Winning Hand or Crap Shoot? My attentive debate coverage was going to make Leah as happy as a plump clam at high tide.

  As I squeezed paste onto my toothbrush, I schemed how to arrange a private interview with Preble. I had the entrée of our chat in the parking lo
t at the Mill Stream. The next ingratiating step would be to show up at the debate early and sit in the front row. When it was over, I’d approach him with follow-up questions. The guy liked to talk. If I got lucky, he’d let me walk him down Memory Lane.

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Friday May 31, 1968

  Riverside, Maine

  Paulie tailed Ken Coatesworth in a casual way during the Memorial Day bash, managing to remain near enough to overhear many of his conversations. The deliberate proximity gave him plenty of opportunity to study the mill manager-in-training. Perhaps he was on his best behavior, but he did nothing that justified MacMahon’s suspicions.

  Paulie never heard a swear leave Coatesworth’s lips, and watched him grimace at another man’s off-color joke. He nursed his beer while others were chugging theirs. The party got louder after the tarp was removed from the fire pit, and the lobsters and clams were reduced to a pile of shells on the tide line, but Coatesworth wasn’t among those making the noise.

  Either the kid was a great actor or MacMahon was way off base.

  Paulie managed to focus on his date even while conducting his surveillance. Joan snuggled closer as darkness fell, her head on his shoulder. Jay put his stereo speakers on the broad porch and soon couples were swaying under the tiki lights. Joan squeezed Paulie’s hand at the first strains of “Baby I Need Your Lovin’.” Paulie felt eyes on them as they slow-danced under the illuminated pines.

  An argument broke out about ten, a pair of drunks squaring off over a rude comment made to one of their wives. Responding to Joan’s pressure on his arm, they wandered down to the beach, away from the crowd.

  Paulie leaned against a rock and pulled her against him. While they watched for shooting stars, he ran his fingers through her long hair, gently tucking it behind her ears. After a while she turned to face him and they kissed for a long time, luxurious kisses that had no beginning or end. The condom in Paulie’s wallet didn’t cross his mind when she blew warm breath into his ear. Glancing over his shoulder to make sure they were alone on the beach, he slid the pink dress up over her hips while she unbuckled his belt. The tide was rolling in as their bodies moved together, the rhythmic waves drowning out their moans of pleasure.

  Paulie relived that particular moment as he drove to work the next morning. Dizzy with the memory, he was slow on the uptake when a red light turned green, and a dump truck bellowed its horn. Though Paulie flipped the driver the bird, the beefy guy in the truck cab had a point. He was acting like a flake. He needed to get his head back into work, tout suite.

  Jake Stuart had given him free hand to cover the Desmond story, but the city editor was showing signs of frustration. He complained that the FBI and state police were like kids playing the schoolyard game of keep-away. If Paulie wanted the story, he needed to be more aggressive in his conversations with them.

  “There are a lot of ways to make ’em look bad,” Jake said. “They’ve gotta believe you’ve got the power to turn public opinion against them, and that you’ll use it if they don’t stop screwing around.”

  Paulie didn’t bother trying to explain Wellington’s glare to his boss.

  If Jake was annoyed by the cops, he was disgusted by Jay Preble’s reluctance to talk for the record, save a bunch of self-serving comments. He called him Cheap Talk Charlie, scoffing at the idea Preble might give Paulie any dirt on the record. Paulie realized the truth in this assessment, but still saw value in keeping Preble on the string.

  He couldn’t tell Jake about MacMahon, on whom he was pinning his highest hopes. The big statie’s fury with the FBI had already led to several choice bits of information Paulie was able to work into his stories, attributing the information to “a source inside the investigation.”

  But the Coatesworth angle was beyond hush-hush. If MacMahon’s theory wasn’t as farfetched as it seemed, and the evidence against Kenny came together, Paulie would break the story wide open. In the meantime, he’d keep his mouth shut about MacMahon altogether. His bosses would have his head if they knew he was trading information with the cops.

  It was time for another call to Desmond’s kid sister, Helena. Joan had provided him the initial entrée, having palled around with Helena in high school. Though she always took his calls, Helena hadn’t shared much. Still, Paulie had hope. He was digging out her phone number when Jake Stuart’s hand fell on his shoulder.

  “We need to talk,” the city editor said, jerking his head toward the conference room. Following Jake through the newsroom, Paulie knew he was in trouble. Jake wasn’t a conference room kind of guy. His domain was the big front table, elbow deep in copy, ear tuned to the police scanners. If you wrote a lousy lead or dropped the ball on a follow-up, he dressed you down right there in his big voice, making it clear to everyone in the newsroom why you were in the doghouse.

  Being hauled into a private room meant he was in deep shit. When Paulie saw the managing editor and assistant publisher already in the room, he was sure of it. Jake shut the door and gestured for Paulie to sit. With no preamble, the managing editor jumped in.

  “We’re pulling you off the Desmond disappearance story,” he said. “We hear you’re screwing a suspect.”

  Paulie gripped the arms of his chair. “The fibbies called you, did they?”

  The managing editor met Paulie’s eyes but didn’t answer his question. “Is it true that you’ve developed a personal relationship with Desmond’s secretary, or am I mistaken?”

  “It’s true that we’re dating,” Paulie said. “But it’s crazy to call her a suspect.”

  “How do you know?”

  “We’ve talked about Desmond’s disappearance for hours. She was as stunned as everyone else when he disappeared. In fact, she’s helping the cops investigate the theft.”

  “Do you think she’d admit it to you if she were Desmond’s accomplice?” Insinuation oozed from the assistant publisher’s voice.

  It was all Paulie could do not to lunge across the table and grab the guy by the throat.

  “I know Wellington’s theory.” He fought for control of his voice. “I also know the real cops—the detectives who’ve done the actual investigative work—think he’s full of shit.”

  “Who told you that?”

  “I have my sources.”

  “And we’re your bosses,” Jake said. “If you hope to stay on this story, you need to give us a rock-solid reason not to reassign you.”

  Paulie knew if he named MacMahon, Wellington would know about it before the day was over. He changed the subject instead. “You’re going to let the FBI dictate how the Chronicle covers this story? What are we now, their public relations arm?”

  “We’re not going to stop covering the story in a vigorous, independent manner,” the assistant publisher said. “You’re just not going to be assigned to it. Whether you agree or not, your involvement with Miss Slater compromises your objectivity. If it turns out she helped Desmond in any way—even by covering his tracks—it will demolish our credibility when readers learn that you’re romantically entangled with her.”

  Paulie sat up straight, clasping his hands on the conference table, looking each man in the eye. Though the managing editor hadn’t confirmed the dime had been dropped by the all-controlling FBI, Paulie felt sure that was the case. “You’re giving Wellington what he wants.”

  “The FBI is not the enemy.”

  “No, but the FBI agent running the show parachuted into Maine with a fully developed theory, and he’s determined to bend the evidence to make it fit. In addition to my cop sources, everyone I’ve interviewed has complained about his tactics.”

  “If the FBI can’t solve this case, it will be on Wellington’s head,” Jake said. “If they charge Joan or anyone else for that matter, a jury will decide whether those charges are backed by evidence. Your personal involvement is not necessary for justice
to be done.”

  Paulie looked at each man in turn, his stomach churning. “What if I end my relationship with her?”

  “The damage is done,” the managing editor said. “I thought you might come in here and tell us our information was wrong, that you weren’t foolish enough to jump into bed with someone who was in the middle of such a big story. But you’re not denying it.”

  “I’m not,” Paulie said. “The fact of our personal relationship is true.”

  “Then this story will be reassigned. Today.”

  As the Chronicle’s powers that be stood to leave, the assistant publisher offered what Paulie read as a sympathetic smile. But he was only paving the way for a last gut punch.

  “It goes without saying that if you expect to keep your job, you’ll have to end your relationship with Miss Slater,” he said. “You’ve been seeing her for less than a month. It shouldn’t be too hard.”

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Wednesday, July 16, 2014

  Portland, Maine

  Portland’s Downtown Club was timeless and dated at the same time. Headquartered in a federal-style manse near the Western Promenade, four-course dinners and an extensive wine list were offered to members and their guests seven days a week. Floor-to-ceiling windows in the gracious dining room were framed by velvet curtains in deep crimson because, the story went, the Harvard men always had outnumbered the Yalies.

  In the 1960s the DC was the fulcrum of municipal power. By the mid-eighties it was one of several Portland venues where up-and-comers went to see and be seen. Thirty years later the silk wallpaper was faded and the members were mostly paunchy and hard of hearing—at least the members who showed up for the casino gambling showdown.

  Though its prosperous members were no longer the movers and shakers they once were, the club’s monthly policy debate got regular press coverage, even when the topic was odd or dry. The July program was neither. Casino fever—aided by stagnant job numbers and declining tax revenues—had swept through New England during the just-ended recession. So far, only a couple of smallish gambling joints had been built in Maine. But in November, voters would be asked to clear the way for resort casinos like the mega gambling palaces in Connecticut. If Jay Preble and his compatriots at Don’t Gamble With Me had anything to say about it, some other cure would be found for Maine’s economic ills.