The Bottom

by Howard Owen

  She’s quiet for a few seconds.

  “Wait a minute,” she says. “You know that guy, that Earl Washington-Wise.”

  “Pemberton-Wise.”

  “Yeah, and you’ve been trying to get this crap in the paper. And now, we don’t have any choice but to run it.”

  “Just a little serendipity.”

  “Serendipity, my ass. You can’t write it, and I’ll bet you’re the one that told Wheelie to put me on it.”

  I exercise my right to remain silent.

  “Dammit, Willie. I’m ready for a little stability. Whoever writes this story isn’t going to be very popular with Rita Dominick. I need to do something that’ll ensure that I’m not Cary Phillips in ten years.”

  Cary Phillips was a very good reporter. She worked several beats, won lots of state press awards, and then she merged her writing skills and passion for flicks by becoming as good a movie critic as a paper this size could ever want. Then with the last round of layoffs, they sent her packing. Nothing she did wrong; they just eliminated her position. They decided we could get our movie reviews off the AP wire from now on. She was forty-seven, and now she’s doing freelance editing, which pays worse than freelance panhandling, and reviewing movies gratis on some damned blog.

  I assure Sarah that she will not be Cary Phillips, but in this business, who knows? I do tell her, though, that she will be here longer than our new publisher, if she chooses to be. I’m pretty sure about that one. I’ve seen Rita Dominick’s type before. They’re already angling for the next job even before the business cards are printed.

  “Let Baer do the suck-up stories,” I tell her. “Trust me, you won’t be happy if you let the suits guide your future.”

  “I’d have a future, at least.”

  It does make me sad. When I first signed on for journalism, the bar was pretty low and the cotton was high. All the ad guys had to do was go to the two big downtown department stores once a week and come back with a wheelbarrow full of money. Now people like Sarah, more talented and much more driven than I was at her age, have to make deals with the devil all the time. We keep losing good young ones to “media relations” jobs, where they get paid to hide the truth from their former compatriots.

  “And I guess this is all connected with me trying to find that girl, the one Chenault was banging,” Sarah says.

  I have to admit that it all seems to be coming together.

  “And the Tweety Bird killings . . .”

  I am silent.

  “Shit,” she says. I think I might have reeled her in, at least temporarily, from the dark side.

  MY MEETING WITH Thomas Jefferson Blandford V is at three. Andi doesn’t know about this and, I hope, won’t. I do have to get a couple of things straight with young Quip, though.

  We meet at a place on Main Street that has a bar upstairs and around back. I prefer it because it’s one of the few places in town where I can drink alfresco without inhaling bus fumes.

  Quip’s there when I arrive, nursing some kind of beer in a multicolored bottle that indicates it might taste like honey and cranberries. I order a Miller.

  “So,” I say to young Master Blandford after we’ve dispensed with scant pleasantries, “I understand you’ve been threatening my daughter.”

  He seems surprised by the direct approach. In the Blandfords’ world, they use stilettos instead of meat cleavers.

  “No. No. I don’t know what you mean. We talked, but . . .”

  I pull my chair a little nearer to the table separating us, close enough that my gut is pushing against it.

  “I heard that you made some kind of reference to the baby having a ‘white trash’ upbringing,” I continue, speaking softly, making serious eye contact. “The thing is, Quip, he’d be growing up pretty much the way I did, and I think I turned out all right. That’s just my opinion, but do you think I’m white trash? If you think so, we can move on up to the next step.”

  Quip is looking around, maybe for a witness.

  “Look,” he says, holding his palms out, “I was pissed off. I didn’t mean it. I really want to marry her.”

  “Well, I guess that’ll have to be her decision, won’t it?”

  He clears his throat.

  “But he’ll be my son, too.”

  I assure Quip that Andi will want him to be a part of her son’s life.

  “The thing is, though, she isn’t interested in marrying you. She thinks, to put it bluntly, that you’re a bit of a fuckup. After checking with some people, I kind of have to agree with her.”

  It’s amazing what doesn’t get prosecuted if your daddy has enough money. I recount the two DUI arrests I know about that didn’t make it onto Master Quip’s permanent record, reduced to speeding and reckless driving. As someone whose drinking and driving issues don’t get swept away, I particularly take offense at this abuse of power. Peachy Love is a wonderful source.

  And then, there was the cocaine bust. Thomas Jefferson Blandford IV must have paid a king’s ransom to get that one knocked down to probation and keep his son out of jail. The amount of coke in Quip’s car usually would have earned a trip to a medium-security federal prison for a few years, maybe ten to twenty if he were of the wrong ethnic persuasion.

  I am appalled that my daughter has been living with such, to use Quip’s word, trash.

  “How do you know all that?”

  I explain that I am, after all, a reporter. I also explain that I am sure we can come to an agreement here: I don’t write a story about the inequality of our justice system with the Blandfords as Exhibit A, and he stops leaning on my pregnant daughter.

  “Plus, I won’t have to kill you,” I add, smiling to let him know I’m only kidding.

  “Besides,” I tell him as we part, “you can’t be calling us ‘white trash.’ The baby will be one-eighth African American. I think your great-great-grandaddy would have called him an octoroon.”

  I leave him pondering that.

  I ARRIVE AT Cindy’s condo just after six. When she shows me in, allowing me only a chaste peck on the cheek, Mary Kate Kusack Brown is already there. She’s sitting on the livingroom couch, nervous as a cat.

  She looks a little like Ronnie, but not too much, for which she must be grateful.

  We chat for a minute or two, but she wants to cut to the chase.

  “He was at my place,” she says. “I told the police that. I don’t think they believed me.”

  I mention the images they got from his computer. She seems a little shocked, and I’m wondering if she’ll be asking her brother to do any more babysitting, just to be on the safe side.

  She frowns and then shrugs.

  “Ronnie hasn’t always been the best at looking out for himself. He’s done some kind of crazy things.”

  She confirms that her brother was at her house at eight or so the night of the eleventh, and that he was there until sometime after eleven.

  “He said he spoke to your neighbors, but they didn’t see him.”

  “That’s right. I imagine they could identify his voice.”

  “But there’s nothing you know of that would keep you from backing up his story?”

  Again, a little hesitation. She looks away.

  “No. Nothing. Ronnie’s been good. He’s always trying to look out for me and the kids. And Cord, too.”

  “Cord?”

  “His—rather, our—brother.”

  She goes on to explain that their older brother, living up in Ohio, sends her money sometimes.

  I note that it’s nice to have family watching your back. I’m not quite sure how she takes it.

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  X

  Monday

  The first thing I see when I fetch the morning paper from the other side of my front door is the story on Wat Chenault and the slave graveyard. It’s on the local front instead of A1, maybe because Wheelie sees this as mitigating circumstances when Chenault hauls the paper into court. The story is careful to give full credit to the Sci
mitar, so everyone knows it’s not our fault. We didn’t want to report the news, but they made us do it. I guess they’re going to have to wait a couple of days to run Baer’s puff piece on what a gift to humanity the fat man is.

  Goat Johnson is in town, and we’re planning to meet over at Joe’s Inn and tell lies. Custalow is off this morning, so he’s coming along, too. Andy Peroni and R.P. McGonnigal are going to meet us there. Old home week.

  Abe sees the note stuck on my car’s windshield before I do. It’s pretty much along the same lines as the first one, only a bit more threatening.

  “You and the cops are idiots,” it starts out. “If you don’t turn Ronnie Sax loose by Thursday, I start hunting again. I’m hungry for more Tweety Birds. Maybe that little bitch daughter of yours is next.”

  I recognize the handwriting. Same as before. This asshole has definitely upped the stakes.

  Custalow looks at it.

  “Don’t you need to show that to the cops?”

  Yes, I do.

  THE CHAT WITH Ronnie Sax’s sister was somewhat enlightening. The other brother, she told me, had been kind of in and out of their lives. I gather he’s been, even by Ronnie’s standards, a little troubled. The night of the eleventh, Ronnie seems to be accounted for, unless he managed to murder Jessica Caldwell before he arrived at eight and then deposited her body in the train station while he was also spending the evening with his sister and nieces. And Mary Kate was sure the neighbors would vouch for hearing Ronnie’s voice at some point in the evening, she thinks between nine thirty and ten. Now, though, we have yet another mash note from somebody out there who isn’t Ronnie Sax. And now it’s gotten personal. I need to talk to Andi.

  I CALL THE chief’s office and, after I tell his secretary—excuse me, administrative aide—what I’ve got, L.D. Jones calls me back in five minutes.

  I ask him if he would like to see the note.

  I heard him sigh.

  “Yeah, dammit, I would. Can you bring it by?”

  I resist the urge to make him say “please.” It’s such a pleasure to have L.D. in my debt. It must be killing him. He’s got the guy who did it in jail, except now maybe he doesn’t.

  I make a copy of the note and take it to the chief before we meet Goat, R.P. McGonnigal and Peroni. L.D. doesn’t seem very grateful. He does have the grace to ask me if my daughter needs some police protection. I tell him, no, what she needs is to quit her damned bartending job and lie low until we settle this monster’s hash.

  I tell him that I’m not reporting on the latest note yet, although conditions might change. He seems to know that’s the best deal he’s going to get.

  “DO YOU THINK he’s going to let that Sax guy go?” Custalow asks me back in the car.

  “Not a chance. He’s going to need more than this.”

  L.D. did seem a little worried, though, when he got to the part about the guy threatening to go hunting again. I haven’t mentioned yet my suspicions about Wat Chenault. No sense in worrying our overburdened chief unduly.

  I call Andi and tell her I need to see her. She can work me in before her shift starts at four.

  FRANCES XAVIER “GOAT” Johnson is his usual bullshitting self. They were able to commandeer the big table at the back of Joe’s and are in full force when we get there.

  “Do you remember the Church Hill tunnel?” Peroni asks me while we’re sitting down. It has obviously been the topic of spirited conversation. “Goat says we spent the night there. He’s full of crap, right?”

  I tell him yeah, of course I remember the tunnel.

  When we were teenagers, somebody told us about the locomotive that got buried underneath Church Hill, all those men buried alive and their bodies never recovered. Since the corpse of the Tweety Bird Killer’s third victim turned up there at the entrance, a new generation has become familiar with the story, with poor Lorrie Estrada added to the tunnel’s lore and legend.

  The entrance was still there in 1977, so we felt duty bound, being badass Oregon Hill boys, to go explore it.

  Goat had a car, and we finally found the entrance, almost covered over by weeds. I remember it was damp and spooky. We went what seemed like a long way, but it was probably just a few hundred yards, before we were blocked. We were going to spend the night there, but it was just too damn weird, even for us. Goat, of course, remembers us staying all night and seeing some weird light at the end. Goat’s imagination sometimes gets the better of him.

  “Well,” he says, “the way I remember it, we didn’t go home until dawn.”

  I mention the body that was dumped there in March.

  “I hope they fry that motherfucker,” R.P. says.

  I tell him I hope so, too, and that I hope they have the right motherfucker.

  “What I’ve heard about this guy,” he says, “I’d say just pull the switch and let God sort it all out.”

  We give Goat shit about high-hatting us. He is actually wearing a suit. I guess it comes with the job. He’s president of some half-ass college in Ohio, and there are three or four alums in town who might die and leave their alma mater some money if Goat kisses their asses with enough gusto.

  He’s still Goat, though, after three beers.

  “To tell you the truth,” he says, lowering his voice like we’re wired for sound, “it’s hard to have much respect for an institution of higher learning that would have me as its president.”

  We quickly agree. They order another round, but I have to go and meet Andi. Talking about the tunnel has me thinking, though. R.P. says he’ll give Custalow a ride back to the Prestwould.

  Andy Peroni asks me if I’ve gotten back in his sister’s good graces yet. I tell him I’m still trying and ask him to put in a good word for me.

  “You mean lie to my baby sister?”

  Yeah, I tell him, if that’s what it takes.

  MY DAUGHTER ISN’T too happy when I tell her what the latest note said. She’s even less happy when I tell her she has to quit her job for a little while.

  “I’m not letting that son of a bitch rule my life,” she says.

  I point out that he’s already permanently curtailed four young women’s lives.

  “But they weren’t careful,” she says. “They didn’t know what they were doing. Besides, I can’t quit. I need the money.”

  I assure her that, between her mother and stepfather and me, we can take care of her until we get to the bottom of this. I also assure her that this isn’t going to take long. I’m not so positive about that, but I like to paint a cheery picture.

  “If that bastard comes around here,” Peggy says, “he’s gonna get some of this.”

  She pulls a pistol from the silverware drawer and waves it around a little. Great, my dope-delirious mother is also now armed.

  “Where did you get that thing?”

  “It belonged to Les,” she says as I turn the barrel away from Andi and me. “He said I might need it someday.”

  I ask her if she knows how to shoot it.

  “I had a pistol all the time you were growing up. Just got rid of it a few years ago.”

  I am amazed. I ask her why I never knew this.

  “I never had to use it,” she says. “With a couple of my boyfriends and my second husband, I was tempted, but I resisted the urge.”

  She laughs, and I realize it’s the first time I’ve heard my mother laugh since Les died. A small thing, but it does seem like a step toward the sunlight.

  I tell Andi I’ll go by Havana 59 and tell them the news.

  “No, you won’t,” she says. “What do you think I am, ten years old?”

  She pauses and sighs.

  “I’ll tell them myself.”

  I FINALLY FIND the tunnel entrance. It looks even more overgrown than it was all those years ago. It looks completely impenetrable now. I manage to get filthy walking and crawling through the mud. They still have the crime scene tape up, and it doesn’t look like anybody’s been back in the last six months. I can’t even figure how
somebody got a body up here. Maybe he made her walk up and then raped and killed her.

  By the time I get back down to where my car is, it’s starting to get dark. The wind or something is making a whistling noise, coming out of the mouth of the cave. I am pretty sure Goat Johnson is wrong about us spending the night here. I don’t think we had balls enough.

  ONE GOOD THING to come out of last night’s meeting with Sax’s sister is that I do have another date with the lovely Cindi Peroni tonight.

  When I get back, though, intent on taking a quick shower and making myself as presentable as is possible for a fifty-three-year-old bald man who needs to lose weight, my plans get hijacked. Literally.

  As I lock the car, I feel something hard push into my back.

  “Get in,” a voice says. It doesn’t sound like a request.

  I’m pushed into the backseat of a van I didn’t notice before. The doors lock. Seated beside me, taking up way too much space, is the guy who obviously orchestrated this meeting.

  The one with either a very hard finger or a gun gets in, too, and I’m wedged in the middle. Another guy, the driver, takes off.

  “I understand,” Wat Chenault says, “you’ve been asking some people about me.”

  I try to talk my way out of it, explaining that we’re just doing a story on Top of the Bottom because our rival, the mighty Scimitar, beat us to it and now we have to catch up.

  Chenault interrupts me midbullshit.

  “Shut up,” he says. “I’m not talking about the damn colored graves, although I’d surely like to know how that ghetto rag got it. Maybe you people have your own old boy system.”

  He smirks at me. I promise myself I will hit him when I can do it without getting shot.

  “No, I’ll let my lawyer handle all that. Just more proof of how you all are out to get me. What I want to talk about is that Adkins girl.”

  I’m not stunned. Maybe Johnny Grimes tipped him off. Maybe Sarah gave somebody too much information while she was searching. Whatever, there isn’t much use in denying that I’m trying to find a girl who went missing more than a decade ago, after she helped ruin Wat Chenault’s political career.