by Bryan Gruley
It was a good question. My old coach was a pedophile. My receptionist was his beard. My closest friend and maybe others I knew were their victims. My mother knew things I didn’t. I had been blind to it all. For years I had been walking around in the middle of the truth and I could not see it. True, I was just a boy but, even now, I could see only the blurred contours of the truth. From within its darker core a thousand questions taunted. Joanie was right. Even if I answered every question, no brighter future awaited, not in what I’d chosen to do with my life thus far. There was just the knowing. Somehow, I had to hope, the knowing would make things better. I was no longer on a mission for clips or prizes or raises or the envy of my peers. There was just the knowing. And it wasn’t even the knowing of the who-what-where-when-why of Blackburn’s life and death. I wanted to know why I wanted to know.
“I don’t know,” I said. “It pays the bills. But thanks for asking.” I meant it. “I’ve got to call Kerawhatshisfatass.”
I dialed at my desk. His secretary answered and put me on hold. As I waited, I doodled “Richard Ltd.” on my blotter. He picked up.
“Gus Carpenter, Jim,” I said.
“Excuse me,” he said, “I’m going to close the door.” He set the phone down, picked it up again. “Last night was not good, Gus.”
“This morning’s not so hot, either. We had a hell of a front-page scoop someone obviously killed.”
Out of the corner of my eye I noticed Joanie put her magazine down.
“You bet we killed it,” Kerasopoulos said. “I thought we had a talk-two talks-about certain stories. I thought we had an understanding.”
“We did. I was going to let you know when we had something out of the ordinary. Last night we did, and I let you know.”
“On voice mail? Not good enough. Not even close. I don’t want to hear from your secretary about the most inflammatory story in the paper.”
“I’m going to fire her.”
Joanie rolled her chair over next to my desk. I pointed toward the front counter. She shook her head no, meaning Tillie wasn’t in yet.
“Let’s just calm down now,” Kerasopoulos said.
“Let’s not. My job is to put news in the paper. We had legitimate news that had a direct bearing on something very big going on around here. We checked it out and we decided to run it. That’s what reporters and editors do. Anybody can kill stories.”
I knew I was treading on thin ice, but I no longer cared. “Careful, Gus,” Kerasopoulos said. “It is simply not sufficient to quote one person who is thousands of miles away, whom we’ve never even seen, whose credibility we have not tested-”
“Others corroborated it.”
“Really? How about the police up there or, whatever, the Mounties? Did this guy ever think to tell them about his, his encounters, if in fact they happened? What use is there in dredging all this up now?”
“If Blackburn was a child molester, it could suggest a motive. The person charged with his murder played for Blackburn.”
“You played for him, too, didn’t you, Gus?”
“Yes, I did.”
“Exactly. So let me ask you, and you obviously don’t have to answer, but did your coach ever do anything to you to suggest he was, you know, a little off? Did he ever come on to you?”
“No, he did not.”
“Well, excuse me, Gus, but you were there. If you didn’t see anything, why are you so all-fired sure it happened? What hard evidence links this guy in Canada-and, again, we don’t know what ax he might have to grind-to what tragedy may have befallen Blackburn? Anything?”
I’d had enough of this jerk. Maybe I was blowing the chance to be executive editor of the Pilot. I’d made worse career moves. “An ax to grind?” I said. “You’ve got to be kidding. Let me tell you, Jim-” As I spoke the words, I pressed the cradle down to end the call. Hanging up on yourself was an old newsroom trick. You used it to get rid of late-night weirdos claiming to have seen Elvis at Burger King.
“You hung up on him?” Joanie said, incredulous.
“Fuck it. Better get out of here before he calls back.” I grabbed a fresh notebook and a couple of pens. “I’m going to the jail.”
D’Alessio led Flapp and me into the windowless room where Soupy waited at a small steel table. “I’ll be out here if you need me,” the deputy said.
The first thing I noticed was Soupy’s head. It had been shaved down to tiny bristles. “What happened to your hair?” I said.
“Cops took it,” he said. “Thought I’d use it to hang myself or something.”
Flapp pulled a chair next to Soupy and sat. I sat facing them. The room smelled vaguely of paint. I recalled an item in the Pilot about the county setting aside money to repaint the jail. Then I remembered Tillie had written it. Pinpricks of heat tingled at the back of my neck.
“How are you?” I said.
“Flapp and Trap,” Soupy said. He grinned. “Head hurts, but other than that I’m fine.” He wore an orange jumpsuit, white sneakers, shackles on his wrists and ankles. Bandages covered both of his hands. He looked OK for someone who the night before had barely escaped from a burning building.
“You remember last night?” I said. “You were pretty wasted.”
“You know, I didn’t really mean to burn all those shacks. Just the one.”
“Excuse me,” Flapp interjected. “Can we discuss a few ground rules?”
“Relax, Flapjack,” Soupy said. “This ain’t business. It’s personal. I got a few things to say.”
“Splendid,” Flapp said, the muscles in his jaw pulsing as he ground his molars, “but do you want everyone in the county listening in on your personal conversation?”
“Gus and I’ll work it out.”
“Once it goes in the paper, it’s fair game-”
“Look,” I said, “we can do this off the record and if there’s something I really want to use, I’ll run it by you first, Terence.”
Flapp looked at Soupy. “Fine.”
“Great,” Soupy said. “See you in a bit, Flapjack.”
“You want me to leave?” Flapp said. He looked horrified. “Absolutely not. I cannot advise that.”
“OK, you didn’t,” Soupy said. “I want to talk with my man alone.”
Flapp picked up his satchel and left, shaking his head.
Soupy leaned back and looked up at the ceiling, where lightbulbs glowed in little cages. “Things are pretty fucked up, Trapezoid.”
“Yep.”
“How’s Boynton?”
“Not dead.”
“The prick had it coming.”
“Yeah,” I said. Soupy watched while I pulled out my pen and notebook. “What about Coach, Soup? Did Coach have it coming?”
“You sound like Dingus. Man, he doesn’t quit.”
I doubted now that Dingus really believed Soupy killed Blackburn. It was looking as though he’d arrested Soupy to shake him down.
But I was going to ask anyway.
“Did you kill Coach, Soupy?”
He laughed. “Jesus, Trap, I asked you here, man.”
“Did you or not?” I didn’t usually start by asking the biggest question, but I’d wasted enough time already with Soupy and his shenanigans.
“Trap,” he said. “Don’t do it. Don’t even try.”
“Try what?”
“To save me.”
I knew what he meant. “I’m not trying to save you,” I said. “You can save your own sorry ass.”
“Right,” he said. “Look, either I don’t need to be saved or I’m beyond saving. So just forget it. I asked you to come because I want to tell you something.”
“Why don’t you just tell me the goddamn truth?”
Soupy laid his manacled, bandaged hands on top of the table. “No,” he said. “All right? I did not kill Blackburn. But I’ll you what. I wish I had. I should have.”
“So it was Leo?”
“No, no. Leo was protecting me. Leo-”
Soupy suddenly
bowed his head. He was gathering himself. I decided to change the subject. “Boynton blackmailed you, didn’t he?” I said.
Soupy shook his head, embarrassed. “The bastard,” he said. “I should’ve let him. Maybe I’d be sleeping in my own bed now.”
“That’s what the other night was about, right? When you came over to my place shitfaced?”
“Trap, this ain’t what I asked you here for. But since you asked. Remember me and Boynton bitching at each other the other night at Enright’s? Sunday morning, he shows up at my place. Remember now, everything is about his goddamn marina. He says, look, we got to work this out, blah blah-”
“I know. He was going to give you a piece of the action, and you were going to tell the zoning board to go ahead with the new marina.”
“How’d you know?”
“Doesn’t matter. So Boynton comes over Sunday morning…”
“He brings buns from Audrey’s, for Christ’s sake. He wants coffee, but all I got is Blue Ribbon, so we drink a couple with the buns and he says I got to reconsider and I tell him to basically go to hell. I know I’m not so hot at running the marina, but it’s all I got. And Boynton says, well, maybe you ought to consider some new information.”
I added it up quickly in my head. By then Joanie had talked to Boynton, and Boynton had talked to Darlene, or tried. An echo chamber in the service of blackmail. I told Soupy, “He said the Pilot was going to run something bad about Coach.”
“Yeah. About…” He stopped. “I ain’t going to talk about that.”
I didn’t need him to talk about it just yet.
“So eventually you told him you’d do the deal, right? You were supposed to go to the zoning board and tell them the marina was fine and dandy.”
“Something like that.”
“Did you tell Boynton anything else?”
“About what?”
“About anything, Soupy. About Blackburn or Leo or whatever the hell happened in those billets you tried to burn down.”
“I don’t remember.”
“Fuck you. Did you hear the prosecutor say she’s got testimony from somebody who spoke with you recently? Who the hell do you think it is?”
“Sorry.”
“Why didn’t you show up at the zoning board?”
“I was planning to, I was. But I go to get my skates sharpened, like I always do, and Leo’s gone. The Zam shed’s cleaned out. I figure he hit the road because Boynton went to the cops with…with what he knew. So I go to Boynton and blow a gasket. He swears he didn’t talk but says I better have my ass at the zoning board or he will. But now I’m like, fuck him, it’s over, so I blow off the zoning board. And then…” All the blood went out of his face. “Fucking Leo, man.”
“Soup,” I said. “Leo was my friend, too. I hate what happened to him. But do you think it’s even remotely possible that he killed Blackburn? Is that why he killed himself? You said he was protecting you. From what? What did Teddy know? Why did you let him bail you out?”
“So I could burn down that goddamn building.”
“Soupy.” I reached across the table and grabbed his shoulder. Then I spoke as slowly and evenly as I could. “I know, OK?” I said. “I know what happened in the billets. I know about Coach and Tillie and what you meant the other night about the whiskey.”
“What whiskey?”
“Gentleman Jack.”
“Oh, fuck,” Soupy said, yanking his shoulder back.
“It’s all right, Soup. You were just a kid.”
He looked away for a while. Then he wiped a sleeve across his face and propped his elbows on the table. “All right,” he said. “Put the pen down a minute.”
“Why?”
“Just put it down.”
I obeyed. Soupy told me what he saw that night with Blackburn and Leo in the woods between Starvation and Walleye lakes.
twenty-seven
On that March night in 1988, the pistol felt cold against Soupy’s palm. He gripped it loosely, nervously, in his coat pocket as he emerged from the trees at the clearing’s edge.
“Hello,” he said.
Jack Blackburn and Leo Redpath barely heard him over the crackle of the fire in the rusted oil barrel. The glow of the flames played across their faces where they sat on their snowmobiles.
“Look who’s here,” Blackburn said. “Old Swanny.”
“The returning soldier,” Leo said, waving a flat, clear glass bottle. “Welcome home, Mr. Campbell. Come toast the Ides of March. We’re celebrating early this year.”
The knee-deep snow felt like mud as Soupy stepped toward the men. He was sweating. He’d been building up courage at Enright’s.
“What’s up, Jack?” he said.
“What’s up, Jack?” I said. “You’ve got a gun in your pocket and you’re saying, ‘What’s up, Jack?’”
“I know,” Soupy told me. “I didn’t know what the hell I was doing. I almost bolted right there.”
“Almost?”
He shook his head. “Fuck him, Trap. I hope he’s frying in hell.”
“Jack?” Blackburn said. He smiled and raised his own brown bottle to his lips. His hair was matted from wearing the wool cap and helmet that rested in his lap. “How’d the season go, Swanny? Still in Harrisburg?”
“Hershey,” Soupy said. His last season in the minors. The booze churned in his belly. His hand was now shaking so badly that he let the gun go and clutched the inside of his pocket. “Got hurt.”
Blackburn grunted. “I’ll bet. You were never too big on the conditioning. You just wanted to play.” He took another drink. “Just wanted to show off for the girls.” He and Leo laughed.
Soupy felt a surge of anger and took hold of the gun again, his index finger resting on the trigger. “Champy says hello, Jack,” he said.
“Pardon?”
Something rustled in the bushes behind Soupy. He looked around, keeping his hand in his pocket, and saw nothing.
“Just a deer that wants a beer,” Blackburn said. “He won’t hurt you, Swanny.”
“You don’t remember Champy, Jack?”
“What’s got you so hot under the collar?” Blackburn said. “Who?”
“Champy, Jack. Played for the Rats. You cut him, remember? But he turned out to be a player. Good wheels. Awesome hands. Better hands than me.”
Blackburn propped his bottle on his knee. “I had a lot of players, down here and up in the homeland. I don’t remember all of them. But nobody had better hands than you.”
“He had the stuff to make it big, Jack,” Soupy said. “But he’s all done now. Like me. He was pretty much done when he got to Hershey this year. You know, Jack, if we had a three-day break between games, Champy could blow through a pile of coke bigger than your head.”
“I’m sorry to hear that. What’s your point?”
“When Champy showed up in Hershey, I hadn’t seen him in years. We talked a lot, Jack. Talked a lot about you.”
Blackburn shifted the bottle to his other knee.
“Worried?” Soupy said. “You can probably figure what we talked about, huh, Jack? You probably thought nobody would ever talk about it. You were wrong.”
Leo stood. Blackburn looked at him and then back at Soupy. He said, “Spent the evening at Enright’s, eh, Swanny?”
“Don’t fucking call me that anymore.”
“Soupy,” Leo said. “What’s the matter?”
“Quiet, Leo,” Soupy said. “Don’t fuck around with me, Jack. You stayed in pretty close touch with Champy, didn’t you? Real close. His parents must have loved you helping him get the full ride to State. I wonder what they would’ve thought about you going to visit him now and then. Do you think they would’ve been happy about you fucking their son? Huh, Jack?”
“Jack?” Leo said.
Blackburn twisted the cap onto his bottle. “Let’s go, Leo. The boy’s had too much to drink.”
“No,” Soupy said, taking a step forward. He pulled out the gun and pointed it at Blac
kburn.
“What the hell?” Blackburn said.
Leo took a step toward Soupy. “My God, son.”
Soupy waved him back with the pistol. “Sit down, Leo. Ain’t about you. This is all about Jack. And Champy. And me.”
“What do you want?” Blackburn said.
“Hah,” Soupy said. “Whatever it is, Jack, it’s way too fucking late for you to give it to me. Or give it back.”
“You know what? I think you’re drunk, eh? I think you’re a little pissed off about your shitty little career and you’d like someone to blame. You might want to go look in a mirror, eh? As for your friend, Champy or whatever, I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
Tears had begun to burn in Soupy’s eyes. He lowered the gun barrel until it was aimed at Blackburn’s crotch. “What was his name, Jack?”
“Put the gun down, Swanny.”
“I’m going to blow your dick off, Jack.”
Blackburn lowered his voice. “You little shit. I never did anything you didn’t want me to.”
“Jack?” Leo said.
“What was his name?” Soupy said.
“Jeff,” Blackburn said. “Jeff Champagne, all right?”
“Fuck you, Jack.”
The shot went off as Blackburn somersaulted backward into the snow. The bullet missed him and pierced the snowmobile. Soupy aimed to fire again but Leo had jumped in his way, crying, “Oh, my God.” Blackburn scrambled out from behind the snowmobile and flung his bottle at Soupy’s head. Soupy ducked at the same time that something whacked him hard behind his left ear and he fell. In an instant Blackburn was on top of him with the pistol. He grabbed Soupy’s coat collar with one hand and pointed the gun at his head with the other. “You little shit,” he said. He forced the gun barrel into Soupy’s mouth. The metal banged against his teeth. “Suck on this,” Blackburn said. Soupy closed his eyes. He heard another voice, maybe Leo’s, he wasn’t sure, shout, “Get off that boy!” and then another-not Leo’s, not Blackburn’s, not one he recognized in his drunken grogginess-say, “You took it too far, Jack. Too damn far.” Then Blackburn cried out and his weight fell suddenly away and Soupy half opened his eyes to see Leo standing with the pistol in hand and Blackburn sitting in the snow, rubbing the back of his head.