The Bottom

by Howard Owen

  He steps and walks back to a low table by one of the windows and picks up a flashlight. Shit.

  “Well,” he says, calm as can be, “I’ve taken care of two of my problems now. Let’s see if we can make it three for three.”

  Now he’s making his way toward me, a step at a time, the gun in his right hand, waving the flashlight from side to side with his left. I figure he can see maybe twenty feet away. From where I stand, pushed against a wall, he’s a monster silhouette, lurching toward me like an extra in some zombie movie.

  He’s maybe twice that distance when I make my move. There really isn’t much choice.

  The feeling is more or less back in my legs, but I am still no threat to win the forty-yard dash. I don’t remember bumping into anything on the way back here and hope my memory is correct.

  I have no intention of trying to fight Cordell Kusack. I’m a welterweight and he’s definitely a heavyweight. My hope is to somehow dash past him and get to that plywood door before he shoots my ass.

  He must see me just before I draw even with him. As he raises his left arm, I collide with him. The flashlight goes flying. Kusack lets out a roar.

  I’m still in the dark when I hear that first shot, echoing, and half-deafening me. He’s wide of the mark, but I don’t have much of a head start. When I burst into the lighted part where Kusack has been more or less living, it seems impossible that I could get that makeshift door open and get out before he brings me down.

  I see the knife, still lying there with my blood on it. I dive for it and crawl behind the chair where I was sitting. Kusack fires a shot into the chair, and my luck holds out again.

  There is only one option. Before he can try again, I rush him. Maybe it surprises him a little. I don’t know. All I know is that when I get to point-blank range, I go for his eye. The good one. The first time I’m a little wide of the mark, but so is his second shot. I only leave a gash along the side of his head. The next time, while he’s a bit distracted with the blood and all, I hit dead center. I try to drive that damn blade all the way through. I’ve never killed anyone before. It feels good, standing there with Ronnie Sax’s blood sticking to my feet.

  He squeals like a stuck pig, falling to the floor with the knife still sticking out of the socket of what was his only good eye. I’m still not sure he won’t fight through the pain, and he hasn’t let go of the gun that’s still in his twitching right hand.

  I run. I tear that plywood door from its makeshift hinges and scurry outside, free at last. It’s dark. My car is between my escape hatch and the river, but I don’t know where the keys are, probably on either the dead body of Ronnie Sax or the still live one of his brother. It occurs to me that he might have used my car to make a trip to Mary Kate’s house.

  I reach into my pocket. Amazingly, my cell phone is still there. I run up the same ramp we came down a few hours earlier and don’t stop until I’m on the street, a good hundred yards away from the place that I thought a short while ago would be my last stop on this planet.

  I call 9-l-1 and give them as good a description as I can of my location. The dispatcher is calm and cool. Half the police force has been looking for me. I can hear the sirens already. I tell her to tell them to hurry.

  And then I call Cindy Peroni and tell her it looks like she’s going to have to take another rain check.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

  X

  The cops are there in less than two minutes. I’m hiding in the bushes, keeping one eye on the warehouse building where I left Cordell Kusack.

  When I hear the sirens and see the blue lights approaching, I jump out and wave the first one down. And who should it be but Gillespie, my doughnut-devouring frenemy of many years.

  “I should have known,” he says. “If there’s shit stirred up, you’re bound to be there with a stick in your hand.”

  I explain, as quickly and succinctly as I can, what has happened. When I tell him and the other cops—there are three cars now, with more coming—that I think the Tweety Bird Killer is inside the warehouse building in front of them, it gets their attention. I also give them an address on the North Side where I think they might find a female body.

  They wait another ten minutes before coming up with a plan of action, which consists of cordoning off the area and telling Cordell Kusack, via bullhorn, to come out with his hands up.

  Then the SWAT guys take positions on both sides of the building. I’ve assured them that there is only one way in or out, but they have to see for themselves.

  At last they make their move. They throw one of those flash-bang grenades inside and go tearing in right after it. I want to tell them that the flash part won’t have much of an impact on the now-blind if not dead Cordell Kusack, but I don’t want to butt in. I’m watching from a hundred yards away, which is as close as they’ll let me come. They’re in there for what seems like a long time, and I don’t hear gunfire.

  I call Sally Velez and tell her she’s going to have to remake A1, and why. I tell her I’ll try to get there within a couple of hours. I take a few pictures with my iPhone camera of cops picking their noses. Gillespie tells me to stop. I tell him to go fuck himself.

  By this time, half the town seems to be here. L.D. Jones has been in attendance since he left the football game in the third quarter. He’s still wearing his Virginia Union sweatshirt. A large contingent of Shockoe Bottom residents and revelers has made its way to the edge of the yellow police tape, sensing free entertainment.

  Cindy is there maybe twenty minutes after I called. She gives me a venti-size hug and then gives me hell for trying to go it alone. I try to explain that I didn’t really plan to be abducted by maniacs. It just worked out that way.

  When she stops yelling for a second or two, I lean down and give her a kiss and thank her for caring. She kisses me back.

  Meanwhile the cops seem a bit confused. I learn, through eavesdropping and pestering, that Cordell Kusack is not inside the warehouse. Yes, they checked all over, with floodlights on. There apparently was no way to get from the first floor to the ones above, and the only life form they found on the first floor was the bullet-riddled body of Ronnie Sax, whose brother definitely was not his keeper.

  “Looks like a damned slaughterhouse in there,” I hear one cop say.

  One of the detectives, a guy I’ve known since my first gig on the night cops beat, asks me if I’m sure it wasn’t me who shot Sax. I told him that I’d done all my damage with a knife.

  “Didn’t see no knife,” the detective says. I tell him Kusack might still be wearing it.

  I ask him if I get a reward. He tells me not to go anywhere. I tell him I wouldn’t dream of it.

  When the cops aren’t looking, I manage to slip inside the tape and fall in step with Gillespie. I tell Cindy I’ll be right back. Gillespie starts to tell me to get the hell out of there. I tell him I’ve got too much invested in this to go back now, that if he wants to tase me, it won’t be the first time today. Hell, if he wants to shoot at me, he won’t break a cherry there, either, as long as he doesn’t hit anything. He shrugs and tries to ignore me. With a couple of pints of Cordell Kusack’s blood on me, maybe he thinks I’ve earned the right to be here.

  It’s kind of a madhouse near and inside that plywood door. An ambulance has arrived to take Ronnie Sax’s body away. L.D. Jones is shaking his head.

  I’m out on the edge of the clusterfuck, close to the river. There’s a concrete pier jutting out into the James, and I step out there to enjoy my first Camel of the evening. My hands are shaking a little. I’m sure a little nicotine will knock that right up.

  With all the hubbub, I don’t guess anybody else hears the voice. I look around and finally locate the speaker. It’s the same old guy that’s been across the river, probably all day, hoping for a catfish.

  I move as close to the edge of the pier as I can, and I finally make out what he’s saying.

  “He went thataway,” the man is saying. “He went downstream.”


  That’s when I look down and see Cordell Kusack’s gun, lying five feet away from me on the concrete. Beside it is the knife. When the first cop sees what’s stuck to it, he turns to one side before he throws up.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

  X

  Monday

  I have some serious comp time coming.

  I feel within my rights to count Saturday as a workday, since I spent a large part of it tied up in a Shockoe Bottom warehouse, waiting to be tortured to death for being a nosyass reporter. And I did get back to the office in time to write a stop-the-presses piece for Sunday’s paper. They never found my car keys, but L.D. Jones was so thrilled at the prospect of informing the city that it was shy a psychopath or two that he gave me a ride in his own, personal car.

  I’m counting yesterday as an eight-hour day, too. They let me kill a few trees explaining, as best I could, the whole sorry saga of the brothers Kusack and Sax. I doubt if it makes the parents of Kelli Jonas, Chanelle Williams, Lorrie Estrada and Jessica Caldwell feel a damn bit better, but the shrinks are always talking about closure, so maybe that’s something.

  The photo chief wanted to get a shot of my new, unwanted tattoo. After fighting it all the way up to Wheelie, I agreed. I hang people’s dirty underwear on the public clothesline all the time. I guess I’m in no position to shun the spotlight. When I said something about “not pulling a Garbo,” Sarah Goodnight asked me to translate that from old folks into English. The kids they send us these days.

  They found the body of poor Mary Kate Kusack Brown, as I feared they would. She was apparently shot dead by her dear brother just inside her front door. Her daughters found the body when they got home from a sleepover.

  Mary Kate and Ronnie seem to have been under the spell of their brother––a spell of pure evil. They thought they had escaped it, but it found them, and they were either too intimidated or too weak to resist. In Ronnie’s case, it didn’t help that he already had a sweet tooth for the kind of sexual misbehavior that can earn you a long sentence even if you don’t kill anyone. Maybe big brother nurtured that particular kink when they were still kids. Who knows? And there’s no one around to tell us––at least not right now.

  Sunday and Monday are my usual days off, but today there’s more to write. We’re still trying to retrace Kusack’s steps and figure out how this maniac was able to live off the grid for years while he’s supposed to be a parolee up in Ohio. Turns out somebody up there had him marked as “presumed dead,” probably because they were too damn lazy to track him down. Out of state, out of mind.

  Wheelie said someone else could jump in and pick up the ball if I wanted some time off. I told him I’d give this story up when they tear it from my cold, dead, nicotine-stained hands.

  FEAR HANGS OVER the newsroom today like cigarette smoke once did. Newsrooms are marginally healthier, but the business still needs a quintuple bypass, and we’re having chest pains.

  It turns out that the Friedman chain’s vultures have been circling again. Sally Velez says two of their hired guns were around this weekend, kicking the tires. It was all hush-hush, but somebody got the mystery men’s license plate number, and within a couple of hours everyone knew who they were. Never try to keep a secret from a journalist, especially if his or her livelihood is involved. That really inspires us.

  “I hear they came into the newsroom of that paper they bought down in Carolina and told everybody to turn in their resignations, and they would decide who to keep,” Enos Jackson said. “It took ’em about a week to clean house.”

  I worry about Enos. He’s only here because of a deal I worked out three years ago with our now-late publisher. I doubt if that free pass has conveyed from James “Grubby” Grubbs to our new publisher. Enos doesn’t know about the deal. No sense in worrying him now. Things could always be worse. One of the other state papers got bought by an investment group last year, whose only reason for existence was to turn a short-turn profit for their investors by buying distressed properties (newspapers) cheap, improving the bottom line by cutting expenses and selling high. Reporters and editors fall under the category of expenses. Within six months, half the newsroom was gone.

  Speaking of our new publisher, Ms. “Call me Rita” Dominick phones down to request the honor of my presence. I don’t know whether she’s going to give me a raise or fire me for my role in besmirching the fine reputation of Wat Chenault. I ask her if we can meet at three, because I have to finish a story and then be out of the office for a bit for a very important meeting.

  “Can’t you cancel the interview?” she asks me.

  I tell her that, if things go well, she will be glad I went to this particular meeting.

  “I’d like a few more details.”

  “I can’t give them to you right now. I’m sworn to secrecy.”

  She doesn’t seem to exactly believe me. Trust is such a fragile thing.

  She sighs. Clearly I exasperate her. I have that effect on publishers.

  “Well,” she says, “you’d better be here at three. Your presence might determine whether you still have a job.”

  Bullshit, I’m thinking. I’ve just given you the best story this rag’s going to have all year. And by the time the big hand’s on twelve and the little hand’s at three, you’re not going to have to worry about Wat Chenault.

  I called him yesterday. I didn’t tell him everything I knew, just dropped one name that I was sure would make him swallow his bile and make room for me in his busy, busy schedule.

  WE MEET AT his office at one thirty. Sitting in the outer sanctum, I’m pretty sure I recognize one of the goons who accompanied us the day Wat took me for that ride around Richmond. I nod. He scowls.

  Things are not going well for Top of the Bottom. The story I bequeathed to the Scimitar, the subsequent ones in our paper, and those pesky bones of former slaves that interested parties continue to dig up seem to have turned the tide against Chenault’s project. Even the mayor, who had been acting like Wat’s junior partner, is starting to back off. Reelection isn’t that far away.

  And so, between all that potential money flying out the window and Chenault’s knowing that I went way out of my way to try to prove he was the Tweety Bird Killer, he has some legitimate reasons to hold a grudge.

  I wait fifteen minutes. Finally Chenault’s secretary ushers me in. The fat man’s office wall does not disappoint. There’s a deer head mounted on it. Beside that is a Confederate battle flag. Wat is sitting in his leather chair, smoking a cigar and glowering at me. He doesn’t offer me a seat, but there are two chairs facing him, and the suit, who turns out to be his mouthpiece, is in the other one. I sit.

  “What the hell do you want?” he asks.

  “I think you know,” I tell him. “I want you to drop the lawsuit.”

  The lawyer laughs. Chenault doesn’t. He’s obviously not told his hired boy the name I relayed to Wat yesterday, and what it means.

  “I’ll have your ass,” the fat man says, setting the cigar down carefully on the lip of an ashtray.

  I nod toward the lawyer.

  “Tell him why you won’t.”

  Chenault is silent.

  When I start to speak, he holds up one pink palm.

  “OK, OK, no sense in letting this get out of hand. I doubt you have enough, uh, information to cause me any serious harm.”

  He’s fishing. I’m not biting.

  The expression on the lawyer’s face indicates he thinks he and Wat need to talk. He doesn’t know yet why his client’s boot heel isn’t on my neck anymore.

  “Look,” I tell them, “I don’t have time for this. I’ve got an important meeting at three.”

  I turn to the lawyer.

  “I don’t want to embarrass your client,” I tell him, “and cost you a big fee, in addition to maybe sending his fat ass to Greensville for a few years, but you need to know some stuff, counselor.”

  Actually I don’t really give a damn whether Wat Chenault goes to prison or not. I just want t
o break even on this one.

  DESPITE HIS DUMBASS nom de sleuth, Sam Spadewell is not a complete idiot. At least he wasn’t on this occasion.

  You’d think Chenault would have learned something from the incident that cost him his political career, but old habits die hard.

  It took Spadewell less than a week hanging out at the high-end place Wat was renting overlooking the river to come up with the photographs and audio.

  The audio, from a wire Spadewell planted, was especially juicy. When I played a bit of it, the lawyer reached up and rubbed his temple, like he needed a Tylenol.

  He was a gamer, though.

  “That won’t hold up in court,” he said.

  Of course it won’t. But as I explained to him and my old buddy Wat, it wouldn’t really have to. After the girl was confronted with the tape, in the flophouse where she and a couple of other runaways were staying, making a living any way they could, she was surprisingly compliant in explaining, gory chapter and verse, what she and “Mr. Walker” had been up to. Maybe she just wanted to do the right thing. Maybe it was Spadewell assuring her that she was going to face prostitution and drug charges if she didn’t help us out.

  I can tell the lawyer hates to ask the question:

  “How old?”

  “Fourteen.”

  “That’s not possible,” Chenault blurts out. “She swore to me she was seventeen . . .”

  He stops, perhaps realizing that seventeen is not quite old enough for legal sticklers, either. Or maybe he can hear himself and knows how goddamn stupid he sounds.

  “I wasn’t hurting anybody,” he says, almost whining. I want to slap him.