by Bryan Gruley
He was goading me. Although the Pilot ’s owners, NLP Newspapers, didn’t especially like controversial stories and the legal inconveniences they could sometimes bring, they hated it when Channel Eight had a story before any of its newspapers. If we got beat to an important story about the marina, I was certain to catch hell from corporate, and Fleming probably knew it.
“Jeez, Ted,” I said, “why didn’t you just tell me all this when you had your stick down my throat last night?”
Boynton hitched his chair up closer. The metal wheels squeaked on the linoleum. “Look, Gus,” he said. “Your buddy Soupy-our buddy Soupy-is a fuckup. Great guy, great hockey player. But a fuckup. You know it and I know it. Should the whole town suffer for that?”
“Who’s a screwup?”
We all turned to see Joanie standing there in her orange parka, clutching a notebook in her left hand. Over her shoulder hung a backpack that was half the size of her. Her hair, a wild, flaming bush that matched the color of her coat, billowed around her head and spilled over her shoulders. As always, she seemed out of breath.
“Where’s the fire?” I said.
“Just got back from the sheriff’s. Who’s a screwup?” She couldn’t bring herself to say “fuckup.” She didn’t like profanity, didn’t use it, didn’t like when anybody else used it. She gave me a little speech once about how senseless it was to use “fucking” as an adjective. “It’s not a pencil,” she’d said, “it’s a fucking pencil. It’s not a lamp, it’s a fucking lamp. Barbarians and fools talk like that.” I’d grinned and said, “ Fucking barbarians, you mean?”
Boynton stood and offered his hand. “Ted Boynton,” he said. “And it’s not me who’s the fuckup.”
Joanie frowned. “So who then?”
Boynton laughed. “I’m sure your boss will fill you in.”
Joanie’s eyes fell on the document. Then she looked at me. “What happened to your chin?” she said.
“Fell out of bed,” I said.
“I got some stuff on the snowmobile,” she said.
“OK,” I said. “Just give us five more minutes.”
“Going across the street,” she said, meaning Audrey’s Diner. “Looks like the thing was registered to someone, John Blackberg or Blackston or something.”
Teddy Boynton sat up and turned toward Joanie.
“What was that?” I said.
“I thought you needed five.”
“What was the name?”
She pulled out a notebook and flipped through it. “Blackburn,” she said, shooting me an irritated glance before she turned to leave.
Teddy turned back to me. “Holy shit,” he said.
four
My computer screen displayed a list of five news stories, two features, and a few briefs that had to be edited and sent to the presses in about six hours. I had to hustle. Our staff wasn’t much of a staff since NLP stopped letting us replace the young reporters who inevitably came to the Pilot for just a year or two before leaving for a bigger paper. Essentially, there was Joanie, Tillie, and me to write stories, and a photographer. My boss, executive editor Henry Bridgman, had been spending a lot of his time huddling with the suits at the corporate offices in Traverse City. We had a few blue-haired ladies who freelanced now and then. It was next to impossible to put out a six-day-a-week paper with such a tiny staff. I filled a lot of the paper with wire-service copy and barely rewritten press releases.
Joanie had written most of the stories on my screen, including the one at the top, slugged BIGFOOT. I punched the story up:
By M. Joan McCarthy
Pilot Staff Correspondent
A glass case on Clayton Perlmutter’s kitchen table contains what some might consider to be a bizarre treasure. Perlmutter’s prize is a three-inch-thick mound of hardened brown feces, which the retired house painter claims came from a Sasquatch, the mythical “Bigfoot” creature rumored to roam the woods of northern Michigan.
But some people think Perlmutter is the one who’s full of it.
I couldn’t help but smile, both at the lead paragraph itself and at the unlikelihood that it would run in the Pilot. We did our best not to put fecal matter in the paper, at least intentionally.
“What’s so funny back there?”
“Nothing, Tillie,” I said.
The Pilot and other papers in our area ran stories every few years on Clayton Perlmutter and his Sasquatch Institute. Invariably, the stories ushered readers through Perlmutter’s dank garage, where he kept his collection of blurry photos, scratchy audiotapes, footprint casts, and maps of Sasquatch sightings. And they quoted Perlmutter about his one-man campaign for a state law that would prohibit the killing of the Sasquatch.
I had expected Joanie to file something equally harmless. Reading her story, I saw I’d been mistaken. She quoted zoologists from Harvard and the Smithsonian discrediting the notion that the Sasquatch had ever existed. She cited a retired local photographer who said he’d helped Perlmutter doctor snapshots of a brown bear. The real news showed up halfway through: For years, Perlmutter had been getting state money to support his organization. In his grant applications, he had said he was maintaining a museum.
Documents obtained by the Pilot under the state Freedom of Information Act show Perlmutter has garnered at least $32,235 in eighteen state grants since 1985. In periodic reports to the state, Perlmutter has said only that the state money had been used for “sundry uncompleted research projects.” When asked, Perlmutter said he had “no obligation under the First Amendment” to address these matters.
I loved the story, even felt a pang of jealousy at Joanie’s ability to nail it. But I doubted it would fly with the corporate guys. It wasn’t just their usual skittishness that was giving me pause. My job was on the line. The bosses at NLP had balked at hiring me after my abrupt departure from the Detroit Times. Only Henry Bridgman’s personal guarantee had persuaded them-that and a year of probation. One bad slip and I could be gone from the Pilot — and maybe the whole newspaper business-for good. I didn’t like it, but I decided I had to let the NLP lawyers vet Joanie’s story. That created another problem. Expecting something tamer, I’d planned to splash the Bigfoot story across Saturday’s front page. Now I needed something else.
Up front, Tillie was leaning against the counter with the Detroit Times spread before her. A bluish cigarette haze hung around her bleached-blond head.
“Hey, Till,” I said. “What’s in the news?”
“Aren’t newspaper editors supposed to keep up with the news?” she said.
“I suppose.”
“Indeed. Well, it’s all Monica all the time.”
“Who’s Monica?”
“She’s a little hussy who worked in the White House,” Tillie said. “She had a little thing with the president. He stuck a cigar in her you-know-what.”
I cringed, less at what Tillie said than at having to hear it from her. “Her last name’s Lewinsky?” I grabbed a phone book. “I need a favor, Till.”
She crushed her cigarette out. “Please, Gus, not a Selby.”
The Pilot ’s former owner, Nelson P. Selby, had some peculiar ideas about “localizing” national news. One of his favorite gimmicks was to have reporters interview local people who happened to have the same surnames as people in Washington or New York or Hollywood who were making news. So, when General Schwarzkopf was leading the U.S. military in the Gulf War, some poor Pilot reporter sought out the three Schwarzkopfs-one may have been a Schwartzkopf-in Pine County to ask what they thought. None were related to the general. A retired plumber wondered if the general had a homely dog, like General George Patton. A widowed schoolteacher thought Schwarzkopf a handsome man who shouldn’t wear sunglasses when being photographed. I’d sneered at this sort of story when I was in journalism school and later as a reporter in Detroit. Now I riffled through a phone book and told Tillie, “There are three Lewinskys in the county, all spelled S-K-I. And there’s two LOW-inskys. If you’re desperate, there’s a Lewin
skas.”
“Oh, we’re plenty desperate,” Tillie said. “What happened to Bigfoot?”
“Problems,” I said. “Don’t forget to get a photo. It’ll have to run big.”
Tillie was looking in the phone book. “Here’s old Artemis Lewinski,” she said. “He could definitely run big.”
I winced again. “Copy by four, OK? Where’s Joanie?”
“She went for coffee.”
“Oh, no,” I said. She’d been gone too long. I hurried out without a coat.
Every head in Audrey’s turned as I walked in. Then every head turned back to the round table in the corner. Four men, three wives, and a sister-in-law sat there with Joanie, who was nodding and scribbling in her notebook, her backpack parked on the floor between her feet.
I was too late.
I stationed myself behind Joanie’s left shoulder. She didn’t look up. Their plates hadn’t been cleared; I smelled grease and cinnamon. Elvis Bontrager was talking. He glanced at me from beneath the brim of his Lawson’s Lumber Land cap. The back of the cap was made of plastic mesh, and I could see the rows of thin hairs like wires jutting from his pink scalp. A fleck of Canadian bacon clung to his left cheek as his jowls worked.
“The thing was, I mean, the real thing with Coach was, it didn’t matter who we were playing, they could be bigger or faster or, you know, fancier than us, and he don’t care, he’d figure out how to beat them.”
“A strategist then?” Joanie said.
“Always a good game plan.”
Everyone nodded. Elvis looked at me. Here it comes, I thought.
“But Coach Blackburn, unfortunately, had to have the players actually play the game, right, Gus?” he said. “What happened to your face?”
He meant my stitches. “Puck,” I said.
“Well, at least you stopped one, eh?” Elvis chuckled and turned to Joanie. “You know, miss, Gus is pretty famous around here. He was witness to the end of an era in Starvation Lake hockey. Hell, he was the one who ended it. Tell her, Gus. You know what happened. God knows none of us do.”
Joanie lowered her notebook. “What happened?”
Elvis shrugged. “Nothing. Gus here just lost us a hockey game. A state championship hockey game. Our one and only.”
Joanie looked as though she didn’t quite understand. “That’s it?”
“Miss,” Elvis said, leaning forward, “he lost that game and we ain’t come close to a state championship since.”
“Oh,” Joanie said. She looked at me. “So you jinxed them?”
Elvis had another laugh. He didn’t like me because I gave up that goal, and because, yes, to a superstitious person, and there were plenty in Starvation Lake, including me, I had jinxed them. But he also didn’t like me because I had broken the heart of his niece when I went off to Detroit to work at a newspaper instead of marrying her, as Elvis and everyone else had expected. Her name then had been Darlene Bontrager, but later she married a minor-league hockey player named Esper who suffered a mysteriously chronic back ailment and now spent his days playing video golf at Dingman’s Bar. Darlene Esper was the sheriff’s deputy who had called me about the snowmobile in Walleye Lake.
I’d gone off to Detroit so that someday I might be able to come back to Starvation and walk up to Elvis and tell him, “Why don’t you go to hell, so what if I lost a stupid hockey game years ago? Look at me now, a big-city reporter, a Pulitzer Prize winner.” But there I was, just another local loser who worked at the little paper across the street with the shaker shingles over the door and the sign in the window that read, “Peerless Pilot Personals Will Put You on the Path to Pleasure and Profit.” Screaming would have felt great. Instead I managed a tight smile and said to Joanie, “What’s all the interest in the coach?”
“The snowmobile,” she said. “Looks like it could’ve been his.”
“Weren’t you out to Walleye last night, Gus?” Elvis said.
“Yes, but I-”
“We heard they found a pair of Jack’s old skates inside, all rusted out.”
Joanie scribbled furiously in her notebook. This was just what I had feared. If I didn’t get her out of there fast, by nightfall we’d be hearing about sightings of Jack Blackburn, and maybe the other Elvis, too.
“Sounds like you all know a lot more than I do,” I said. I put a hand on Joanie’s shoulder. “We need to get the paper out.”
She shrugged my hand off and stood. “Come on back, Miss Joanie,” Elvis said. “I’ll buy you a cup.”
The door had barely shut behind us when she turned to me, florid with anger. “Why did you do that? I was getting good color.”
“Color for what?”
“For the snowmobile story you told me to do.”
“Blackburn died on Starvation Lake,” I said, “not Walleye.”
“Whatever. The cops think it might be his.”
“ Might be?” I noticed Elvis craning his neck to see us through the window.
“They got the registration-part of the registration number-and it matches. I mean, part of it matches what’s-”
“Part of it? Did Dingus confirm it?”
“No. D’Alessio.”
Pine County sheriff’s deputy Frank D’Alessio was young and dumb and a notorious skirt chaser. “I’ll bet it’s not on the record, though, huh?”
“So?”
“So you’ve got part of a number and the word of a deputy who won’t go on the record. You don’t really have a goddamn thing, do you?”
“Watch your language, please.”
“This is a small town, Joanie. Asking questions about stuff you don’t know to be true is no different than gossiping to everybody here.”
“Well, maybe this town’s too small.”
“Maybe. Just don’t bring me this stuff until you have it nailed.”
“OK, boss,” she said. She veered to cross Main without me but had to wait for a car to pass. She spun to face me again. Her hair had fallen across her eyes. I knew D’Alessio. He’d be all over that.
“What about the Bigfoot story?” she said.
“What about it?”
“Do you need anything more?”
“Not right now.”
“Meaning?”
I glanced away. Soupy’s truck was parked in front of Enright’s. “It’ll run next week. Got to have it lawyered first.”
“Lawyered? Bullcrap! They’ll cut out all the stuff about the grants and all the crap Perlmutter’s been peddling all these years. And you can run the usual little piece of crud instead of a story that might turn a few heads.”
“You don’t know that.”
“But you know, don’t you, Gus?”
I watched, speechless, as she turned and darted into the street, holding up her hand to slow an oncoming pickup.
five
No way was I going back to Audrey’s for lunch. I walked around behind the Pilot and climbed the wooden stairs to my apartment.
I took bologna and ketchup from the fridge, a frying pan from the dish drainer. I turned on the stove and tore the bologna into ragged strips in the pan. The meat sizzled into crisp curls. I dumped ketchup all over it, turned the heat down, and laid two slices of white bread on a paper plate.
Out the window, I stared at Soupy’s truck, still parked in front of Enright’s. I hit the play button on my answering machine. My mother reminded me about coming for Sunday dinner. Somebody hung up. Then a reedy voice filled my breadbox of a kitchen.
“Gus,” it said. “I wish you’d return my calls. Tuesday’s the drop dead.”
“Then I’ll call you Tuesday,” I told the machine.
The voice was the Detroit lawyer I had had to hire in my final days at the Detroit Times. I turned the stove off and scooped the crispy bologna onto the bread.
“Jesus,” I said.
My best reporter-my only real reporter-was angry with me. Teddy Boynton was trying to blackmail me. My old coach had resurfaced. And now it looked like I would finally have to deal with
the mess I had made in Detroit. I sat down in the recliner to eat. But I wasn’t hungry anymore.
The sandwich spent the afternoon in the newsroom fridge, while I edited stories and wrote headlines for Saturday’s Pilot. The school board was seeking a special tax to pay for a swimming pool. A cellular phone company cut the ribbon on a store in the mini-mall. A frustrated mother called the sheriff’s department for help putting her eleven-year-old son to bed. And the River Rats were headed downstate for the first round of the state hockey playoffs. I spent most of an hour translating Tillie Spaulding’s Monica feature into readable newspaper patter. She couldn’t write, but she surely could find the strange.
She dug up eighty-three-year-old Gloria Lowinski, a nurse who thought President Clinton and his wife should try tantric sex, and a CPA named Barton Lewienski, who insisted Republicans had paid the intern to seduce Clinton. There was a French poodle named Monica and a cashier at a burger joint called the White House who said, “Monica who?”
I held my nose and sent the thing to the printing plant.
Joanie didn’t turn in her story about the snowmobile until 5:12, eighteen minutes before deadline. It began:
Pine County sheriff’s deputies think a snowmobile that washed up on Walleye Lake may have belonged to John D. “Jack” Blackburn, the legendary youth hockey coach who died in a snowmobile accident ten years ago.
Reading the rest, I saw no more evidence to support that assertion than Joanie had let on outside Audrey’s. Nor did she attempt to explain how the snowmobile, if it was Coach Blackburn’s, had surfaced on Walleye Lake after sinking in Starvation. She was sitting at her desk, marking up a notebook with a red pen. She hadn’t said a word to me all afternoon.
“Joanie,” I said. “You haven’t nailed this snowmobile thing.”
“Fix it then.”
“Too late,” I said, annoyed. “Corporate’ll raise hell if we keep the plant overtime. I’m spiking it.” Just as I turned back to my computer, I heard a metallic thwup against the wall facing me. Two feet over my head, a wet brown stain seeped down the wall. A Diet Coke can hissed on the floor beneath.