by Bryan Gruley
“Aren’t you in on the marina?”
“Well, yes and no. I have a sort of token investment presence, a few dollars, as a personal favor to Theodore, who’s been with me on many a transaction, after all. I’ll do everything I can to make sure he builds it. Maybe he’ll surprise me.”
As Francis talked, I thought of the deal Teddy had offered Soupy. If Francis was right, it would mean that Soupy would surrender his interest in the old marina in return for a potentially worthless stake in one that might never be built. Teddy would get a marina, all right, just not a new one. Soupy would be left high and dry. And if Teddy bled the old marina like Francis said he’d bled everything else, the town would be left high and dry too. I decided Francis probably didn’t know about the settlement. “I worry about Soupy,” I said.
“I’ll bet you do,” he said. “I worry, too. I knew his father. Alden’s not a bad boy, just a little immature.”
“That’s for sure.” Thinking of the marina reminded me of something. “I’ve got another kind of stupid question.”
“No stupid questions, son, just stupid answers.”
“Right. Did the town ever buy, or even consider buying, a ferryboat of any sort? Like, maybe to take people across the river? Seems crazy, I know.”
Francis chuckled. “Well, you’re not so far off. There was some idle talk way back, must have been the late sixties, before Jack showed up and we got things moving around here. But why do we need a ferry for the river? A child can swim it.”
True. Anyway, that marina receipt was from 1988. I stood to leave. “Thanks, Francis. You know, if you change your mind about being quoted-”
“Oh, no, don’t even think about it. I want to help you. You know what you know now and you’ll have to find ways to get it in your paper other than quoting your faithful barkeep. Maybe it’ll give you something to do besides dig up Jack Blackburn’s grave, God rest his soul.”
“I’m going to be busy.”
“Aren’t we all? This working stuff is never going to be popular.”
“You know,” I said, “I wasn’t around when Coach died. I just came in for the funeral. But maybe you know why they didn’t drag the lake. Seemed like the thing to do, don’t you think?”
Francis frowned. “Like I said, son, I really don’t like digging all of this up. The remains, you know, they never smell so good, if you know what I mean. But on this, well, hell, it’s been a long time, and I can’t say as I remember. Something to do with the budget, I think. The town council made that decision. You could probably look it up. Have you checked the minutes of the council meetings?”
“Have not.” I made a mental note to check in the morning. Because the county handled the town’s records, too, I’d have to deal with County Clerk Verna Clark, who still presided over the files like a sentry at the castle gate. I allowed myself a moment’s recollection of that night long ago in the closet, how Darlene’s eyes glinted in the dark.
Francis grabbed his phone. “Excuse me one moment,” he said.
I waited while he dialed. “And a good Sunday to you, my friend,” he said into the phone. “Just quickly now-that matter we spoke about the other night? Right. I need it taken care of first thing tomorrow. Thank you.”
He hung up. “Sorry,” he said. “My memory’s going so bad I have to do a thing as soon as it pops into my head or it’s gone for a month.”
“I appreciate your help. I know you’d rather we left this alone. You mind if I check in with you later?”
“I suppose not,” he said. “I guess we can’t leave the past buried, eh? I’ll admit it, between you and me, I’d like to know just what the heck happened to Jack too. You’re talking to Leo Redpath?”
“Trying to.”
“Well, keep me undercover and I’ll help you best I can.”
I was glad to hear that.
fifteen
Back at the Pilot, black-and-white photographs of a couple in wedding attire covered Delbert Riddle’s desk. The faint reek of a stogie and the tang of film-developing chemicals hung on the air.
“Stop the presses,” I said. “Delbert was actually here?”
“I can confirm a sighting,” Joanie said. “But the minute I started asking about pictures for my story, he was out the door.”
In his twenty-nine years as the Pilot ’s sole staff photographer, Delbert had taken a picture of just about everyone in Starvation Lake. The way he saw it, one good picture was plenty, no matter that over the years people got older, fatter, grayer, balder. “Readers understand,” he’d say whenever he balked at taking a fresh picture of someone he hadn’t photographed in a decade. “It’s nostalgic for people to see how their neighbors looked a long time ago.”
As for Delbert’s own face, he rarely showed it at the Pilot, except to develop pictures, most of which, as far as I could tell, were for his sideline. I doubted those wedding pictures were for the Pilot, although I assumed-or hoped-he’d let us publish one. Henry kept him on, maybe because it was difficult to lure competent shooters to little towns with nasty winters. Delbert came through when we needed him. He also kept meticulous, alphabetized files of all the photos he’d taken in six steel file cabinets up front.
“What photos do we have for your stories?” I said.
“We could use a shot of Blackburn’s funeral,” Joanie said. “And one of Dingus.”
“I should’ve thought to have a map made of where Blackburn went down. Too late now.”
“He knew Blackburn, you know.”
“Delbert? Yeah, he took pictures of him. Or at least one picture.”
“He used to develop game films or something too. Said he made a few dollars off him.”
Coach had had an 8-millimeter movie camera for recording games and the occasional practice. Leo operated it from the bleachers. I hadn’t known that Delbert did the developing.
“Busy guy, Delbert,” I said. “Though you’d never know it around here.”
I sat down at my desk, and there, right where I thought I’d left it, lay the dossier on Soupy’s legal troubles. I resisted the urge to ask Joanie if she’d borrowed it, figuring it was smarter to have her focus on her stories for now. I grabbed a pen and on my blotter jotted, “Council minutes mon a.m.” Joanie sat across the room, still wearing her wool scarf. “Listen,” I said. “I don’t want to keep you from your writing, but how exactly do the cops know it’s a bullet hole?”
She stopped typing and let her hands hover motionless over the keyboard, as though she were deciding whether even to acknowledge my question. Be patient, I told myself. She dropped her hands to her knees and turned to face me. Her eyes locked on mine, then went to the clock, then back. “I sent you the Blackburn sidebar,” she said. “Now I really need to just write this. OK, boss?”
“Yes, you can write it, and we’re going to run it, but first I need to know a few things, and I really don’t need a lot of your ‘OK, boss’ crap right now, OK?”
What I’d heard at Mom’s had unsettled me enough. Then came the news of the bullet hole, and Francis’s accusations of Teddy. My head was filled with unanswered questions about $25,000 receipts and ferryboats and vague details in police reports. I was beginning to think everybody in Starvation Lake knew more than I did, and it was starting to piss me off.
“Take a chill pill,” Joanie said. “I don’t know much, but what I know, I know. There’s a bullet hole, and that’s news.”
“Agreed. Got two sources?”
“Yes.”
I assumed D’Alessio was one. “What does Dingus say?”
“Not talking.”
The story would certainly raise a ruckus. Although the word “murder” wasn’t about to appear in our stories, everyone would read it between the lines. Most people didn’t want to hear that Jack Blackburn had been murdered. I wanted to be sure we were right. Or at least close.
“Let’s just talk here, between us,” I said. “Think about it. How the hell do you know there’s a bullet hole in something that’
s been submerged in eighty feet of water for ten years? How can you be sure?”
She drew herself up in the chair and gave me a knowing smile. How sweet it was to have a dumb-shit editor ask you a question to which you had the perfect reply. “Well,” she said, “they have a bullet.”
“They do? What caliber?”
“Twenty-two.”
Who in Starvation Lake owned a. 22-caliber handgun or rifle? Just about everybody. It wasn’t much good for killing deer, but it was handy for muskrats and chipmunks. “Where was it?” I said. “Did it lodge somewhere inside the snowmobile or-”
The phone on my desk rang. I slid back and grabbed it. “Pilot.”
I heard static, then, “Trap.” Soupy was on his truck phone. I could hear the pickup’s rumble.
“Yeah?”
“I’ve got to talk to you, man.”
“I’m on deadline. Drop down later.”
“Not your office.”
For some reason, Soupy would never come to the Pilot. Since returning to town, I’d asked him to meet me there a few times and each time he’d made an excuse.
“Enright’s then?” I said. “Seven?”
Another burst of static made me pull the phone away from my ear. “No,” I heard him say. “Fuck.” He’d been drinking. He sounded like he was talking with a mouthful of fishhooks. “Trap,” he said. “I’ll-” Static obliterated him. The phone went dead.
“What?” Joanie said.
I shook my head. “Where were we?”
“You asked where the bullet was. In the snowmobile, obviously. But I don’t know exactly. My source was being a little cagey.”
No, I thought, D’Alessio was too dumb to be cagey. “Hold on-were there any reports of gunshots being fired that night?”
“Not on Starvation Lake.”
“Of course, and this happened-well, shit, we don’t know where the hell it happened. Or even what happened. Are the cops saying-wait, are the cops actually saying it was murder?”
“The cops aren’t saying anything, officially. But there’s a press conference tomorrow. I overheard a dispatcher calling the TV guys.”
“So that’s your second source? Of course. TV brings the Dingus bear out of hibernation.”
“Yes. So can I please write this now?”
For the next hour, the only sounds in the room were the clacking of our keyboards and the rattle of the printer. Joanie’s profile of Blackburn contained all the salient facts: Make-Believe Gardens. The near-misses in the state tournament. The town’s growing repute in amateur hockey circles. The letdown since his passing. The story noted that Blackburn, via his partnership with Dufresne, had become a fixture at local ribbon cuttings and dedications. The story also briefly recounted what the Pilot had reported about his accident, including what Leo told the police in 1988. Leo had politely rebuffed Joanie’s effort to speak with him about it. The story said, “Redpath referred a reporter to his attorney, Peter Shipman, who declined to comment.” I had to wonder why Leo would hire a lawyer, unless-I put the thought out of mind and turned to Joanie. “The sidebar looks good,” I said. “But did you ever figure out what happened to that one-year gap in Blackburn’s Canada period?”
“One second,” she said, typing. “Um, no, sorry, didn’t nail it yet.”
The phone rang. I picked it up without thinking. “Pilot.”
“Keeeeee-rist,” the voice on the line said. It was my boss, Henry Bridgman, calling from Traverse City. “What are you doing answering on deadline?”
I smiled. “I knew it was you and you must have something important to tell me, like what kind of polish you use on Kerasopoulos’s Caddy.”
“Haw! I meant to call yesterday but all I had was goddamn budget meetings. On Saturday, for Christ’s sake. Even missed the Wings game. I swear I spend half my days here picking goddamn doughnut sprinkles out of my teeth. Anyway, I won’t keep you, just wanted to slip you a little intelligence. Got good news and bad news.”
“Bad first, please.”
“You won’t believe this. They’re canning our motto.”
“No way. ‘Michigan’s Finest Bluegill Wrapper’?”
“Yeah. Apparently they did some focus groups, who told them it’s an anachronism, and not all that professional. Tell the truth, I can’t believe it lasted this long.”
“We’ll catch hell.”
“Not as much as we caught when I moved the crossword off A-2. Most folks probably won’t even notice.”
“What’s the good news?”
“You didn’t hear it from me, but your old pal’s getting kicked upstairs.”
Henry was finally going to make the move to corporate. That meant I had a shot at taking over as executive editor of the Pilot.
“Congratulations.”
“Thanks. The missus won’t be happy about moving over here, but these people sign the checks. As for you, I think I’ve got ’em sold. You know the town and the job and you know you made some mistakes before and it won’t happen again. It won’t be a done deal for a few days. But the job is yours to lose.”
I’d figured my career was over when I left Detroit. I sent my resume and clips to other dailies around the country. Most didn’t call; maybe they’d heard I was damaged goods. For those who did inquire, I had a hard time explaining why I was leaving the Times. I found myself hiding out in my apartment, afraid to go outside where I might run into one of the other Times people. Eventually I ran out of money. With nowhere to work and nowhere to live, I figured I’d go back to Starvation Lake, spend a little time with Mom, maybe work with Soupy, regroup. After all, my problems really had begun there; I’d just carried them with me to Detroit. Besides, going home seemed fitting punishment for my mistakes in Detroit. Henry goaded me into coming back to the Pilot. “Just till you get your bearings again,” he said. At least I could make a living, or half a living, doing something I didn’t mind doing.
“Thanks, Henry.”
“Not a problem. You’ll get a little raise, and you’ll go into the bonus pool. Now, one other thing: What’s up with this story on the Bigfoot guy?”
I lowered my voice. “We’ve got a little more work to do.”
“Well, you might want to go slow, eh? Let them put your name on the masthead before you start stirring the pot.”
“Right.”
“And by the way, I like my steak medium rare.”
“You got it.”
“What do you got going for tomorrow?”
“Hang on,” I told him, hitting the hold button. Did I really want to tell him about the bullet hole? Would he tell me to hold off on that, too? Of course Henry had known Blackburn, had written some of the stories about his accident. But he didn’t know yet what was really going on. It was too late to hold Joanie’s stories. Better for Henry if he could tell his bosses he didn’t know about them.
I got back on the phone. “Henry, I gotta run,” I said.
“Be good.”
After editing Joanie’s bullet hole story, I ran down to Fortune Drug and picked up six Pabsts, a bag of nacho chips, and a container of cheese dip. I thought I’d treat Joanie. Over the years I’d learned that getting close to people I envied made me feel better, as if they could forgive my selfishness by sharing their success.
When I walked back into the Pilot, Joanie pointed at my phone, where the hold light was blinking. “Fleming?” I guessed.
“No,” Joanie said. “Somebody Trenton? From Detroit?”
“Get rid of him, please.”
“Does this have something to do with your, uh, situation down there?”
“Get rid of him and maybe I’ll tell you.”
Scott Trenton was the attorney I’d had to hire in my final days in Detroit. Joanie told him I was on deadline. There was a pause. Trenton was too scrupulous to say why he had called, but frustrated enough to use silence to express his displeasure. While she took down his number, I went up front and called Boynton’s lawyer, Fleming. I hadn’t done a thing with that dossier o
n Soupy. I didn’t expect him to be there on a Sunday night, and he didn’t answer. I left a message.
“So,” Joanie said when I returned. She had popped a beer. “Who’s Trenton and why does he keep calling you?”
I lifted her backpack off a chair next to her desk and set it on the floor.
“This thing weighs a ton,” I said. “What do you keep in here?”
“Everything,” she said. “You know, this Trenton dude left a bunch of messages on the machine yesterday.”
“Not when I checked.”
“Maybe they bounced to the Sound Off line.”
Every Tuesday in the Pilot, readers were invited to respond to the weekly Sound Off question: Should deer hunting season be extended? What are your favorite spring flowers? Do you prefer powdered sugar or syrup on your pancakes? The answering machine recorded their phoned-in responses. Answers ran on Saturdays with photographs of the readers quoted.
“What’s Till got for Sound Off this week?” I said.
“Something stupid about people shoveling off their roofs.”
“It’s always something stupid.”
“No kidding. My favorite was the one that asked if people thought it was wrong-like a sin or something-to leave their Christmas lights up past Easter.”
We both laughed.
“So what about Trenton?” Joanie said.
“No, no, wait,” I said, trying to keep the subject changed. “Let’s come up with something for Sound Off, something even funnier.”
“Tillie’ll be ticked.”
“Tillie will get over it. Come on. Here, stoke those creative fires.”
I opened two beers and handed Joanie one. She looked at her first beer, still nearly full. She shrugged. She set the fresh beer down, picked up the first, pulled her hair back from her face with one hand, and chugged the rest of the beer. Her hair tumbled back onto her shoulders as she loosed a guttural belch.