Over the next half an hour, all three insomniacs on duty checked with their bosses and called back. We loosely had the same Q & A:
They: You worked for us in the past, no?
Me: That’s why I’m giving you the first shot.
They: Where are Missy and her lover?
Me: You’ll find out when you buy the story.
They: Does the couple know you caught them?
Me: No, not yet.
They: Exactly how current is the item?
Me: A few hours old.
They: Who else knows about this story?
Me: Absolutely no one, it is definitely an exclusive.
Only the Star asked if the pictures demonstrated beyond a shadow of a doubt that she was not being held against her will.
Me: Yes.
Each of them wanted more time. Five minutes later the editor at the Star called back to say he had learned that I had been fired from an editorial post at the WWN.
“True, awhile back, but I had no problems with credibility,” I replied.
Two minutes later the Enquirer called to ask, “You’re married to Fox News producer A. Paul O’Hurly, aren’t you?”
“Yeah, but we’re separated and he has nothing to do with any of this.” I regretted that his name had to be brought up, but it strengthened my reputation. When he asked me where the notorious lovebirds were, I again said I’d tell him once I had the money. When asked about the content of the photographs, I gave him precise details about the anatomical nature of the naked couple.
“Is there any proof that these photos weren’t taken prior to her being kidnapped?”
“Yes,” I replied. “It appears she has a fresh tattoo.”
“Okay,” he began, “if you can get the photos in here before tomorrow’s deadline and the chief can see them, and they are as you describe them, and you write us a decent two-thousand-word piece about how you found them, and the issue comes out, and it is indeed an exclusive, and proves upon publication not to be fraudulent, then he authorizes me to cut you a check for two hundred thousand dollars. Take it or leave it.”
Another phone had already begun to ring while he was giving his lengthy offer and conditional.
“One second please.” I switched over to the pay telephone I had reserved for the Enquirer. An old friend, Joe Fontaine, was their news editor. He also interrogated me for about five minutes, trying to get as much free info as he could before opening negotiations at a hundred and twenty-five thousand dollars.
“I already have two hundred thousand from someone else.” I didn’t reveal the other paper as I feared them calling each other and reaching a compromise to kill the bidding.
“Show us the photos and we might go to two-twelve.”
I went back to the Star and told them another news service had just offered two hundred and twelve thousand dollars.
“We’re authorized to go to a quarter million—if we really like the pictures.”
I told him to hold on and, switching over to Joe at the Enquirer, I said that I just got a quarter-million from the Enquirer.
“We’ll go to two hundred and fifty-two,” he quickly replied.
“Hold on.” I went back to the Star editor, to whom I boldly said, “I just got offered three.”
“They can have it,” the Star said. I had pushed too hard. That was when WWN finally deemed it a good time to call and coolly announce that if they really liked what they saw, they would buy the pictures for fifty thousand dollars.
I told them the bidding was up to two-fifty. The editor chuckled, so I went back to Joe at the Enquirer and told him that I could be in their office sometime in the middle of the night to show them the pictures.
“Why don’t you just bring them at nine when Barney comes in,” said Joe, referring to his clear-eyed publisher. “You’ll still make our deadline.”
“And you’ll have the check?”
“You bring the photos and story, and if we like them, you’ll sign a contract and get half upon delivery and half upon publication.”
“See you for breakfast, Joe.”
“Actually, you won’t see me. I’m on vacation in France. They asked me to speak to you cause I knew you.” Smart.
Photos like this sold papers, bundles at a time. Grabbing my little knapsack, I raced out past airline security to the front desk and changed my destination. Instead of Nashville, I needed the next flight to New York—the headquarters of the Enquirer.
It turned out I had just missed a flight to JFK, but I only had to wait another hour for the next one. Exhausted and fuzzy-headed, I used the time to catnap at the gate. When I finally got on the plane, I began reviewing my notes and eventually wrote out a draft of the story on the back of unused vomit bags I collected from empty seats. It was the only time I recall ever writing a piece in longhand.
It was a hot and muggy night when we landed at JFK. I caught a cab and by six a.m., forty-seven dollars poorer, I was in Park Slope, Brooklyn. There I would be able to rest a few hours at my friend Kara’s apartment.
“Are you parked on Seventh Avenue, cause—”
“My car’s still down in Tennessee,” I cut her off tiredly. Kara was a single mom I had known since college.
She let me flop on her couch and I fell right to sleep. An hour later, Kara’s kid Ajax woke me up. It was seven-thirty. Since all my clothes had been stolen, I was wrinkled with dirt indelibly ground into my once attractive pants and beautiful new shirt. Kara lent me some of her things as well as fragrant toiletries. Then she poured me a cup of freshly ground, freshly brewed, free-trade coffee and asked, “What’s going on, Sandy?”
I promised I’d tell her everything later, but was barely able take a sip before I saw that I was late and had to rush right out the door. I squeezed into a packed F train and headed over to the midtown offices of the Enquirer.
When I walked in the door a little after nine, they were all waiting for me, half a dozen men and women dying to see the exposé. It wasn’t all just curiosity; a photo analyzer and computer graphic experts were summoned to assess whether their quarter-million-dollar purchase was the real deal. I felt their cold skepticism blow through me. For the few minutes it took me to open my bag and locate the flashcard, I feared that I might’ve lost it … or had I had left my lens cap on and only imagined I saw them? How was the light? Though they looked good on the tiny monitor, I obviously hadn’t developed any photos from that borrowed camera before. What possibly could’ve gone wrong? Everything.
When they put the little plastic square into the card reader and the photos popped up, they were even better than I thought. One by one, each image flashed to the borders of a monster monitor where they were thoroughly scrutinized. No one doubted for even a second that they were looking at the genuine article.
“Where’s your story?” the editor in chief asked.
When I unfolded the four vomit bags that I had written the story on, he looked at me as though I were insane. He tried making sense of my illegible handwriting.
“Someone stole my laptop. If you have a cubicle, I can copy them out for you.”
“I’d be grateful,” he said, leading me to an available desk.
“Can I see the check first?” I asked, neither forcefully nor timidly.
He handed me a large, crisp manila envelope. Inside was a contract, a blank 1099 tax form to be filled out, and the check for one hundred and twenty-six thousand dollars. Half the agreed upon sum.
The piece was going to be the cover of the next issue. Because of the magnitude of the story, it would be coming out three days early, on September 3—as a special edition. After finishing the piece, I went back to the top and added Gustavo Benoit as the lead writer in the byline and put my name second. Without him, I couldn’t’ve and wouldn’t’ve done it.
The editor read the piece and asked me half a dozen questions, which I sensed were just more tests of my credibility. Afterward, he asked if I’d do some rewrites. It was one of the few times I was ever as
ked to expand a tabloid piece. When I finished my rewrites roughly an hour later, it was three times its original size.
“You’re a good writer,” said the editor inspecting my final copy. “You looking for work?”
“Always.”
“Joe says you have a drinking problem but he has always liked you.”
“I haven’t touched a bottle in over a year,” I lengthened my week of sobriety.
“Well, I’ll give you a chance. Assignments like this one come up every few months.”
I thanked him and left. Two hours later, after some quick shopping and a trip to my bank to deposit the check, I returned to Kara’s to make reservations on the next flight to Nashville. Then I told her the whole story, grabbed a bite, returned her borrowed clothing, took a quick shower, and was back out the door.
The short plane trip was surprisingly calm considering the pilot’s casual rambling that a new storm was brewing just south of Nashville. After landing, I picked my car up in the parking lot and drove two hours to my mom’s place. Bella and her kids had left, but Ludmilla and her mannerly clan were still packing.
“So, is your friend buying the place or what?” she asked impatiently as she and her boys loaded the last of the family photo albums and boxes of knickknacks into the back of her SUV.
“I still have to show her the place and go over the details with her. What’s the rush?”
“Another storm is coming tonight,” she said, “and the humidity is just playing absolute havoc with my hair.”
After about an hour, when she was done, she gave me the keys to the old castle and said goodbye. She was returning home to Atlanta. Assuming Vinetta would go for it, I was hoping that she could put the trailer park down as collateral and take out a mortgage for the house. Whatever the discrepancy might be, I could supplement it with the cash I had made from the Scrubbs scoop. As I drove the short trip to her trailer park in Daumland, the rain started falling.
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
She’s back!” Vinetta yelled out as I stepped out of the car in the darkness. A gathering of little people converged on me at the trailer door.
“Did you find ’em?” the eight-year-old asked. Vinny had acquainted the older kids with my plight beyond the Rio Grande. Though I was exhausted, I gave them the suspenseful ten-minute version of all that had happened, right up to selling the spicy photos to the highest bidder. Rain began pouring down more heavily as we shared rice cakes and Diet Cokes. When the winds kicked up, Vinetta turned on a radio and heard that the weather was supposed to get even worse.
“There’s no chance of us getting washed away, is there?” I asked half-jokingly as the rains pelted the roof.
Though she said we were just above the flood zone, only the storm cellar was up on the part of the property that seemed to have some real height. As the winds blew, the kids filled me in on their latest little victories and adventures. I tried not to act worried when water began dripping through the raggedy seams of the compartmentalized trailer. Vinetta and the kids made a game of putting bowls and buckets under the increasing leaks around the trailer. They had all been through this before.
“Floyd used to say being here during a storm was kind of like being in a leaky sub,” Vinetta commented as together we repositioned the beds. She tried to get the kids to lie down, but the lightning and thunder was a little too scary. Some of the younger ones started crying.
“Hey,” I said, “what’s the worst that can happen? We’ll all get a little wet.”
“What if a tornado hits?” one of the twins replied.
“We’ll just go into the storm cellar,” Mom said.
Around 11 p.m. the electricity went out. Shortly afterward, though, the storm seemed to blow itself out; exhausted, everyone was soon snoozing. Since I had been running up a sleep debt, I too slept like a log.
Early the next morning, Vinetta’s fumblings woke me up. I looked out the window, and, though the skies were clear, we appeared to be in the middle of a lake. When I went into the bathroom, Vinetta spoke through the door: “I can’t tell you how relieved I was to see you coming in last night.”
“I told you I’d be back,” I said, wiping.
“I really thought you had taken his money and gone south of the border.”
“I told you, he didn’t give me any money.”
“I thought maybe after spending the night with him, something had changed …”
“No. He said he didn’t do anything to Floyd and he refused to pay what he called extortion.”
“But when you called me from Mexico didn’t you say—”
“Before we go into all the details, let me ask you something. Roughly how much are you worth?”
“How much?”
“Yeah, this property? Any idea of its worth?”
“This place was purchased by a pig farm conglomerate.”
“Do you rent it from them?”
“We’re squatting here till they tell us to leave. But what does any of this have to do with anything?”
“I was hoping you could get a mortgage on this property and I could get you all a really nice place to live.”
“Right now, we just better find a dry place,” she said softly. When I came out of the bathroom, I saw Vinetta staring at what used to be the tiny laundry room. The wooden shed at the end of the trailer appeared to have floated away.
“I know where we can go,” I said.
“Where?”
“My mother’s home in Mesopotamia is up for sale. You can stay there.”
She put eight bowls down, poured cereal and milk, woke up the kids, and stepped back. After they ate, I helped them wash and dress while she packed a few things to take with us.
“Oh gee, I’m going to need more diapers,” she said as she walked ankle deep through water, bringing things out to her truck.
“I’ll get them,” I said and headed up to the storm cellar.
“Get two packages,” she asked.
“You better bring a flashlight if you’re going down there,” Floyd Jr. wisely advised, so I went into the office and grabbed one.
Barefoot, I headed through the shallow pond uphill to the rear of the property, then down into the storm cellar. The water there was also ankle deep. After a bit of fumbling and splashing, I grabbed two new packages of disposable diapers all the way against the far wall. Near the pile of new diapers was the lone filing cabinet pivoted against the wall that I had never opened. It had been bothering me since I first left it. Hauling it to one side, I was able to pull the top drawer out and tuck the flashlight under my chin. More papers. It when when I opened the second drawer that I saw them. About a dozen new bottles of cough medicine with singed and burnt labels.
“Fuck!” I yelled. Vinetta had lied to me. Pseudoephedrine, the magical ingredient in methamphetamine, is distilled from cough syrup. Floyd was cooking the stuff. Hearing the distant cries of the kids, I realized that this was just not the time. I grabbed the diapers and left the storm cellar.
Except for the two youngest, who Vinetta and I carried, all slogged through the brackish waters of last night’s storm to our vehicles, where we divvied up her clan and she followed me as we slowly drove down Makataka Road toward my mother’s place.
Despite their ridiculous youth, all Vinetta’s little urchins applauded when they saw the luxurious house in Mesopotamia that they had been so eager to leave just a week earlier. After the sinking bread box, I think they would’ve been pleased to be anywhere else. Once inside, the Loyd children raced and roamed through the empty rooms of the cavernous home.
“How long will we be able to stay here?” Floyd Jr. asked.
“Well, I have to ask my sisters, but I think you can stay until we get a buyer. It might be weeks, might be months.”
“The water around our home should drain in just a few days,” Vinetta said, as if to suggest that they shouldn’t get too comfortable.
That first night, I decided to just cut Vinetta a check for fifty thousand and be don
e with her forever. She could stay the rest of her life in her leaky, sinking trailer for all I cared. Tomorrow I had a long drive back to New York, where I had to rebuild my own life, which was still a sizable mess.
While Vinetta was dealing with the kids, I went into the store to say hi to old Pete. We chatted briefly, then he asked when I was next going to see Ludmilla next. I said I was heading to Atlanta to visit her tomorrow on my way back to New York. He asked if I could drop off some things she forgot to bring with her and handed me a large file of receipts and other accounting. My busybody nature led me to snoop inside. While inspecting the various records, I was stunned to see that the store had been earning roughly two thousand dollars a month of pure profit for the past several years. Rodmilla had always given me the impression that she was only getting by, not actually profiting.
Some of the older kids broke out of the house and began foraging in the store for treats. Vinetta soon followed the racing twins so I introduced her to Pete. They chatted a bit and discovered that forty years back, Pete had worked with Vinetta’s father at a local factory when they were both young men.
“You’re not buying the place here, are you?” he asked hopefully.
Vinetta smiled and looked down. Pete smiled too, a bit embarrassed. Leaving the kids there, Vinetta brushed right past me without making eye contact. I followed her out to the driveway.
“Why did you bring me here?” she asked as soon as we were alone.
“Because you needed a place.”
“You’ve been acting pretty weird since we left the trailer.”
“I found your little drug stash,” I revealed.
“What are you talking about?”
“The burnt bottles of cough medicine. That goddamn sheriff, Carpenter—they all told me! Snake didn’t do shit! Floyd blew himself up, didn’t he?”
“He was cooking drugs awhile back,” she said, “and there was a fire, I don’t deny it. But that was earlier. After that he stopped cooking. But we both know that if I had told you this, you wouldn’t’ve helped me.”
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