The Bottom

by Howard Owen

  I don’t press Peachy on it. I don’t want to impose on the good nature of my old friend, former colleague, and sometime playmate. Peachy was a good night cops reporter herself before she decided she’d rather work with the police than follow them around with a notepad and a digital camera. She often feeds me information that a good media-relations person really should keep to herself, but she and I know she has to pick her spots. If something’s in the works, Peachy probably will find a way to let me know. Stonewalling me on the day-to-day stuff is how she keeps her credibility.

  “Don’t leave me in the dark, Peachy.”

  “Have I ever?”

  AT ELEVEN THIRTY, when I’m about to call it a night and make an appearance at Penny Lane in time for a beer or three, we get word of a shooting, and I’m scrambling down to the Bottom. When I get there, I suss out the sad but too-familiar story. A party celebrating a birthday was stumbling out of one of our finer establishments just as another group, celebrating Saturday, emerged from the one next door. Somebody bumped somebody, maybe scuffed his shoe. Words were spoken. The testosterone kicked in. At least one of the participants had a gun. And someone’s nineteen-year-old, underage drinking son is in the VCU Medical Center, clinging to a life that ought to have been good for another sixty years.

  The gut-shot boy’s friends are still there, leaning against cars, scared and pissed off.

  “If I’d had a gun,” one of them says, his eyes red, “I’d of shot the son of a bitch.”

  It is our answer to everything. The shooter, already caught and locked up, has a right to carry a people-popping firearm. All hail the Second Amendment. And since he has one, the kid who might have a confrontation with him outside some bar has to have one, too. A gun for a gun. Old Testament meets the Wild West.

  When I was a kid, back in the day, we had fights in Oregon Hill all the time. I’d had my nose broken twice by the time I was fifteen. Almost all of the fights involved fists, so much so that the Hill has turned out more than its share of boxers over the decades. It was considered the street equivalent of going nuclear if one of you pulled a knife.

  It takes more balls than most of our young studs possess to cut somebody to death. It gets a little messy. And it’s damn near impossible to beat somebody to death with your fists.

  Whoever is perpetuating our street-level arms race, I’m thinking there’s a toasty little corner of hell that has their names all over it.

  I’M ABLE TO get the folks at Havana 59 to let me sit at a table with my beer and e-mail my story back on my laptop. I mishit the tiny little keys about every fourth time. Still it’s better than driving all the way back to the paper. I look up after I’ve sent my story, and there’s Andi, behind the bar. I didn’t think she was working tonight.

  She’s off at one, so we have time to talk for a couple of minutes before she drives back to Peggy’s and I go back to my humble abode.

  “The cops were by again,” she says. “They showed me a couple of pictures, wanted to know if I’d seen either one of them. But I wasn’t able to help them.”

  “Sounds like they might be on somebody’s trail.”

  “I don’t know. I’ll leave that cops-and-robbers stuff to you.”

  I tell her to get off her feet. She needs her rest.

  “Jeez, Dad. I’m pregnant. I’m not an invalid.”

  Ah, youth. Even as kids not much younger than she is are being murdered by lunatics and shooting holes in each other, Andi thinks nothing bad could possibly happen to her.

  Why worry?

  That’s what fathers are for.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  X

  Sunday

  Abe and I are watching the Redskins lose when Peachy calls.

  “Do you know a guy named Ronnie Sax?”

  I do.

  Ronnie Sax was before Peachy’s short time as an honest journalist. He was a good photographer, but kind of squirrelly, or am I being redundant? He came to the paper as Ron Kusack. Two or three years later, he let it be known that he was Ronnie Sax. I guess he thought it would stand him better in his later career as a famous photojournalist, which never developed, pardon the pun. Or maybe he just thought— mistakenly—that it would make him a Cool Dude.

  He’s done a lot of freelancing of different sorts since he and the paper parted company. I run across a photo he’s taken from time to time in Richmond’s weekly entertainment magazine or one of the other rags trying to make a living off ink and paper. Last year he was shooting a wedding I got dragged to.

  It’s all starting to come back to me now.

  Ronnie was not trustworthy. He was suspected a couple of times of staging “spontaneous” photos. Back then before the hanging judges of human resources started calling the shots, you could take somebody like Sax, a guy who had talent enough for you to overlook his less savory qualities, and give him a stern talking-to, off the books, and let it go at that. Turns out we should have just fired his ass.

  Even in those lenient days, many of us were not sure that Ronnie hadn’t already used up all the strikes a budding photojournalist should have.

  Strike three, though, was a doozy.

  It turns out that Ronnie Sax was doing a bit of freelancing while he was still drawing a paycheck from the paper. And some of his freelancing, a rather lucrative part of it, was porn.

  The end came soon after a well-endowed West End couple discovered that their darling daughter, a sophomore at the University of Richmond who also was well-endowed, was featured rather prominently in a movie they had rented to add a little zest to their love life. Confronted, she finally and tearfully told all. Ronnie Sax, it turns out, had managed to talk her into doing a couple of “glamour” shoots—part of glamour, apparently, being buck naked in a gynecological pose. He had then introduced her to a friend who was in the porn business, and little Susan was soon stashing away some considerable bucks that she didn’t even need in exchange for doing the nasty in front of a camera crew. It wasn’t too hard to figure out that it was a local production. I saw one of their classics—purely for research, of course. The girl went by the stage name of Renee Wett, and the title was Renee Ravages Richmond. Kind of derivative, but the scene at the foot of the Lee Monument was pretty gripping.

  As the father of a daughter, I think now that, in a similar situation, I might have shot Ronnie Sax. No one did, but we all knew the guy had to go. They raided his apartment and found lots of incriminating evidence. What they seized involved girls who were “legal,” although in some cases barely so.

  “Jesus,” Peachy says, “I think I do remember somebody telling me about that guy. Well, it seems as if he still has a knack for snatch shots.”

  Somebody gave the cops a tip. It turns out that Ronnie Sax is living in an apartment in one of the converted warehouses down in the Bottom. He’s been living there for about two years. And he bragged to a few of his neighbors that he had some “hot chicks” in for photo shoots. He even showed them some of the pictures. At least one of the neighbors was concerned enough about Ronnie’s hobby, and that neighbor called the police. He said he thought one of the naked ladies bore a striking resemblance to Kelli Jonas, Tweety Bird Victim Number One.

  “They brought him in for questioning this morning,” Peachy tells me. “I don’t think they can hold him, but they’re pretty excited over this one.”

  No doubt they are. Chief L.D. Jones would love to close this particular file. The mayor gave a statement yesterday. It didn’t exactly encourage the chief to start sending out résumés if a perp wasn’t produced posthaste, but you could kind of see where the buck was going to stop—right in the chief’s ample lap.

  I thank Peachy and ask her to keep me posted. I promise to come around for a drink sometime soon. Encouraged to be more specific, I give a weasel answer.

  “What the fuck,” she says. “Are you swearing off chocolate?”

  Straddling the racial lines that divide our lovely city even at this late date, I face different expectations from various
constituencies. It seems clear to me that Peachy Love thinks I’m going Oreo on her, although it’s more like bronze on the outside and white on the inside in my case.

  At any rate, I assure my old friend and reliable source that this is not the case and that I am, as always, an equal opportunity fornicator.

  “Couldn’t prove it by me,” she says. I detect a note of huffiness in her voice. I promise to come by sometime soon.

  Truth is, I really do want it to work with Cindy Peroni, and I imagine that Cindy, while generous to a fault, probably isn’t too cool on the subject of sharing. Of course I still haven’t earned a second chance from the lovely Cindy. I’m working on that.

  I figure the cops won’t keep Ronnie Sax long unless he breaks down and admits he’s a serial killer.

  It doesn’t take much—just a look at switchboard.com—to find Ronnie’s address.

  ABE HASN’T MOVED since I went into the den to take Peachy’s call. He looks exasperated.

  “Skins suck,” is all the information I need.

  SUNDAY AFTERNOON IN the Bottom is quiet. A few people are wandering out of their late brunches at Millie’s or Poe’s Pub. Farther down the river, they’ll be sipping wine and contemplating the river at the newer places that have sprung up along with overpriced condos along the James.

  I find Sax’s apartment. No one answers when I knock, and I can’t hear anything inside that might indicate anyone’s there.

  There’s a pool outside, not far from the apartment. It’s still warm enough to sit there and soak up some rays. I decide to wait. No one’s checking IDs, although my age might hint to an observant person that I am a little outside the age range of most of the residents.

  There are only two other people poolside. Then a young woman sits down two deck chairs from me. She takes off her robe. She’s wearing a string bikini. I try not to stare.

  After a few quiet moments, she turns to me.

  “Do you live here?”

  I tell her that I am an acquaintance of Ronnie Sax’s and was supposed to meet him at his apartment.

  “But it looks like he’s been detained.”

  The girl gives me the stink-eye.

  “Yeah,” she says. “He’s been detained, all right. The cops came by around eight. Woke my ass up. Do you know what that’s all about?”

  I confess that I am a reporter. I don’t tell her that Ronnie Sax might be the reason half the women in Richmond are packing heat and the other half are carrying mace. No sense in getting everybody’s knickers in a knot. I just tell her that I got a tip and am checking it out.

  She’s a smart girl, though.

  “Ohmigod,” she says, bringing her right hand up to her ample cleavage. “It’s that Tweety Bird thing, isn’t it? Damn. I knew there was something wrong with that dude.”

  She’s heard the second-hand reports that he was doing some clothing-optional photo shoots in his apartment. I don’t say it, but I’m surprised he hasn’t approached Miss Buns here. Maybe she’s too old for him, probably pushing thirty.

  I emphasize that they are just questioning Sax.

  “But, you’re not, like, a friend or something?” she asks. She seems to be inching her chair a little farther from me.

  I assure her I am not, although Ronnie Sax and I did work together, long ago, at the newspaper.

  I ask her if she has any idea where he might have been last Wednesday night or Thursday morning. She says she doesn’t.

  A few minutes later, there’s a commotion behind us. I turn to see three policemen escorting Ronnie Sax back to his apartment.

  “You got no right to search,” he says. One of the cops flashes a warrant in front of him.

  “This says I do.”

  Obviously, they’ve questioned Ronnie already and have let him go, for now. But they’re going on a little search party. I am sure Ronnie Sax’s computer will be leaving the premises shortly.

  “I already told you where I was,” he says. “My sister will vouch for me.”

  “No doubt,” one of the other cops says.

  When I approach, one of them moves to intercept me. I tell them I’m a friend of Ronnie’s, hoping the fetching lass behind me doesn’t now think I’m not trustworthy.

  “You’re that asshole from the paper,” the oldest of the three, and the guy in charge, says. I’ve seen him around, and I’m pretty sure he knows just what a pain in the butt I’ve been to Richmond’s finest in the recent past.

  Yeah, I confess, that’s me.

  Ronnie tells me to fuck off, but then he makes the connection.

  “Willie Black!” he says, suddenly glad to see anyone who might not think he’s a psychopath.

  RONNIE SAX HAS an overbite and bad teeth. He’s short, about five foot seven I’m guessing, and he’s got this wheezy kind of laugh that generally adds to the creepiness. All I can think is he must be paying well to get women to let him take pictures of their lady parts.

  I’m remembering something now. Once, a thousand years ago, the paper decided that everybody, even the statehouse reporters, of which I was one, had to produce x-number of feature stories. I think it was one a month.

  Anyhow I saw that our last surviving local porn theater was having a real live porn star on the premises to autograph stuff and show her tits. I chose that for my puff piece of the month. They assigned Sax to go with me.

  The woman looked like she was forty and was, according to her extensive résumé, twenty-six. She was pleasant enough, although most of what she said was later paraphrased.

  “Jesus,” Enos Jackson, my old editor, told me when he read the very rough draft. “You can’t say ‘pussy’ in the paper.”

  But I remember Sax taking an inordinate amount of interest in her and asking her questions that were inappropriate even by my low standards.

  Sax left before I did. When he was gone, the porn star said, “Who was that guy? He gives me the heebie-jeebies.”

  Hearing this, from a woman who made a living doing things in front of a camera that at least two of my three wives would never do in a dark room with their husband, made an impression.

  “I don’t know what these bastards are talking about,” Ronnie says, as one of the bastards gives him what could only be described as a baleful look. “They’ve had it in for me ever since that thing back in 1992. That was twenty-one damn years ago.”

  I assure Ronnie that it’ll all be straightened out soon.

  “Well, it damn well better be,” he says. “These assholes have ruined my reputation. I’m gonna sue.”

  He yells after the cop who’s carrying out his computer.

  “Hey, be careful with that. I got some valuable stuff in there.”

  “I bet,” the cop says and warns Ronnie not to plan any big trips anytime soon.

  According to Ronnie Sax, he had dinner with his sister and her kids on Wednesday night and didn’t leave until after eleven. He also says he had a photo shoot on Thursday morning, across town.

  “I’ve got witnesses,” he says.

  He asks me if I know a good lawyer. In exchange for a few more minutes gleaning some more background and quotes from Sax, I tell him he ought to contact Marcus Green. Marcus, with the aid of Kate Ellis, my third ex-wife, will be indebted to me, although he’d probably be looking up Ronnie Sax anyhow as soon as this breaks on the six o’clock news tonight. Marcus loves publicity more than a beagle loves bacon.

  The background stuff is important: I want to be able to call the cops and tell them that I’ve had a long interview with Mr. Sax myself, and that he claims he had nothing to do with any of this and is going to sue them. Maybe then, after they get tired of threatening me for interfering with a police investigation, they’ll tell me what they’ve got, or at least give me some bullshit quote, just so the story in tomorrow morning’s paper doesn’t look so one-sided.

  I leave Ronnie Sax and head back to catch the second half of the four o’clock NFL game.

  “Skins lost,” Custalow informs me. Stop the presses.


  I open a beer and get out the laptop. Until they start letting me drink openly in the office, I prefer to send stories I write on my off days from the comfort of my own rented abode.

  I step into the other room and call Peachy, who tells me who the lead detective is on this case. Fella named Lombardo who I don’t know that well. She gives me his number.

  Lombardo knows who I am, which doesn’t help us get off to a good start. Things go downhill when he learns that I’ve already interviewed Ronnie Sax.

  “How the fuck did you know about that?” Obviously the cops who took Sax’s computer didn’t tell Lombardo I was there.

  “Can I quote you? It’d make my boss happy to know I’m doing such a good job. He might even give me a raise.”

  Lombardo sputters a little. When he knows I’m serious about writing what Sax has told me, he finally calms down and gives me a passable quote about “ongoing investigation” and all that crap. He does confirm, though, that they’re going over Sax’s electronic records with the proverbial fine-tooth comb.

  “You know, Black,” he says before we part ways, “you’re going to stick that big nose of yours where it doesn’t belong one time too many and get it shot off one of these days.”

  I wish him a good evening.

  I file the story, then put it onto our website. Someone else will put it into yet a third place, our tablet site, for which we are getting a few of our former readers to pay a very small amount. Print journalism, from where I sit, is trading dollars for dimes.

  I go to bed early enough that Custalow asks me if I’m feeling well.

  It’s a fitful sleep. I keep thinking about Ronnie Sax, and about those girls. I haven’t had a lot of interaction with psychopaths and sadists, but Mr. Sax had me fooled. I always thought of him, if I thought of him at all, as feckless and weak.

  I didn’t have Ronnie Sax pegged as pure evil, until now.

  CHAPTER SIX

  X

  Monday

  Peachy Love’s call comes while I’m shaving.