Deadline for a Critic

by William Kienzle

  In the early days it was the acid flowing from his pen that had attracted both his editors and readers; he may have caused great pain among the fine arts community but he was seldom dull.

  As he did battle with the years, however, he grew predictable and effete. Eventually, the complaints and protests of the fine arts community—and its moneyed patrons—touched a chord with management. It was both the quantity and quality of protest that did the trick.

  Management determined that Groendal must go. That decision was followed by weeks of meetings dedicated to the question of how to get rid of him. For one, his position was protected by contract. And two, a knockdown, drag-out war was an unseemly sort of wrangle for the staid Herald to get into with any of its employees. Finally, no way did the Herald wish to, in effect, admit that its principal critic was by and large a fraud.

  However, management has ways of inducing employees, even those protected by contract, to leave. While employed at the same publication and receiving the same pay, writers can be given rotten assignments. They can be put on the graveyard shift. They can be shunted to inferior work space. There are countless ways of prompting resignation or retirement, with neither an admission of administrative blunder nor the payment of enormous severance.

  Ridley Groendal was as aware as anyone else in the business of the myriad avenues of coercion open to management. When the writing on the wall became crystal clear, Groendal wisely decided to cut his losses. He entered into a prolonged bargaining position. This resulted in his early and seemingly honorable retirement garnished with a formal, seemingly sincere statement of regret from management.

  At which point, Groendal and his inseparable companion Peter Harison decided to return to what had once been home for Groendal—the Detroit area. And so, the previous year, the two had moved into a most adequate house in Dearborn Heights.

  With the generous retirement settlement from the Herald, along with his considerable savings, Groendal—as well as Harison—could have lived out his years comfortably. And that, from a critical standpoint, would have been that.

  Had not Jonathan Dunn entered the picture.

  Of course there were rumors throughout the industry of what had really happened between the Herald and Ridley Groendal. But the scuttlebutt, by and large, did not filter down to the general public. Any publication that would employ Groendal at this stage would have been a laughing stock due to these inside rumors . . . a fate that couldn’t have disturbed Dunn less. He’d survived all the stages of disrepute; names would never hurt him.

  Thus, when Dunn learned that a writer with Groendal’s fame (or notoriety, depending on one’s viewpoint) was now living in the area and was idle, the grand idea struck.

  It did not take Groendal long to take the bait.

  At the outset, he knew it was near perfect. Granted, the pay was a joke, and the platform, compared with his former stage at the Herald, was inconsequential. But he was itching for a pulpit—of whatever kind—and, pound for pound, the Suburban Reporter was not all that bad. Naturally, if he had to condescend to some sort of provincial podium, he would have preferred the News or the Free Press with their massive circulations. Short of that, he was satisfied with the Reporter. The right people were reading it. Its reputation and clout were mushrooming. And he had carte blanche.

  So, much to the chagrin and downright anger of the local fine arts community, the deal was struck. Groendal had his pulpit.

  It was almost midnight when Groendal let himself and Harison into the now otherwise deserted building. They would have arrived sooner had not Groendal—over Harison’s fruitless protest—insisted on stopping for another dessert and liqueur.

  Groendal went directly to the editorial room where three word processors waited. Considering all the alcohol he’d had this evening, he walked very steadily. Harison followed, stopping only to gather Groendal’s mail, which he placed on the desk at which Ridley chose to work. Then Harison sat at a neighboring desk, to leaf through news releases.

  Groendal wasted no time. After programming the VDT, he began feeding it immediately. This confirmed Harison’s hunch that Groendal had mentally written this review long before . . . likely before the concert had even begun.

  As he typed, Groendal gave vent to self-satisfied little cluckings, as he always did when writing a review. Harison, used to the sounds, paid little attention.

  In short order, the review was finished. The ritual, peculiar to the two, proceeded. Groendal pushed himself from the machine and Harison moved in to read the copy on the display terminal.

  Harison had to adjust his vision to discern the small white characters on the green background. Groendal moved around the desk and began going through his accumulated mail.

  Groendal’s style was so familiar to Harison that it was easy to skim the copy. He looked for the telltale phrases, clauses, that were the hallmark of a Groendal review. After all these years, they were not difficult to spot. “. . . wrestling running passages strenuously to the stage floor and pushing uncomfortably the strident tones of a violin, which, in David Palmer’s hands, became a deadly weapon . . .”

  Ah, yes. Clearly—had there been any doubt?—this was not destined to be a favorable notice. “. . . Palmer’s tendency to be treacly . . .”

  Another.

  “After an uncertain beginning, Palmer led the tremolando strings through a tangled maze of fragmented phrases and passingly inhibited emotions.”

  This might be one of Ridley’s better efforts.

  “The Midwest Chamber Players might be directed back to the drawing board. The Schubert and Mendelssohn did not work together. The Beethoven, for example, was tame and humorless as a result of being sandwiched between these two majestic and stentorian pieces. His chaste little quintet almost died of suffocation. The entire performance contained passages that were lost in amorphous rhapsody and, with it all, the players missed a needed sense of intuitive mania.”

  While Harison continued to read—or, more actually, scan—the review, Groendal created a steady tattoo of pieces of junk mail hitting the metal wastebasket. Publicity releases and promotional pieces followed one another to the trash.

  Harison scanned on.

  “Palmer’s interpretation was tainted by Mendelssohn’s neuroticism, aided and abetted by the ensemble’s aberrant phrasing.”

  The tattoo had let up. Harison glanced at his friend. Groendal, having disposed of the junk mail, was starting on the first class mail. Harison returned to the review.

  “The Beethoven might have been better had it not been for Palmer’s quivering hypersensitivity to the most minute whines of the score. Thus the audience was subjected to almost shockingly bland odd gobblings which, in no time at all”—Groendal was in rare form—“became a little amorphous.”

  “Why that pompous son of a bitch!”

  Harison looked at Groendal. His mouth was working, but nothing coherent was escaping. His outburst apparently had been occasioned by the letter he was reading. As he slammed the page down, his fist hit the table. The impact must have hurt, but his obvious anger seemed to sublimate the pain. He picked up another letter. Harison returned his attention to the review.

  “Palmer seems determined to cement his reputation as Lord High Commissioner of all that is declamatory, bombastic, and pretentious in music. His is the stolid, detached, and uninspired attitude that so often infects leaders of chamber groups. This evening’s offerings produced nothing so much as a potpourri of embarrassments.”

  Groendal uttered something, Harison had difficulty making out what. Something like, “She can’t get away with this! She won’t get away with this!”

  “Were you talking to me?”

  “What? No! No!” Groendal slammed the second letter on the desk and with the opener quite literally attacked a third envelope.

  Harison read on. Mercifully for David Palmer and the Midwest Chamber Players, there wasn’t much more. “Overall, the string sound was overwhelmingly undernourished, entirely and unfor
tunately due to Mr. Palmer’s utter lack of music substance. Not that Palmer was inventive enough to take any chances with his program. Tonight’s performance was analogous to a trapeze artist trying to ensure the safety of his act by refusing to let go of the bar. To carry this torturous metaphor to its fatal conclusion, Palmer had better never try to perform without a net.”

  “Say,” Harison commented, “this is rather good, Rid.”

  “Who does he think he is, God Almighty?” Groendal quite obviously was not responding to Harison. Rather, the critic was focusing his total concentration on a letter he was now crumpling into a small wad. “By God, I’ll show him who’s God!”

  Harison grew attentive. It was difficult to see clearly by the soft fluorescent glow of the desk lamp, the sole light they had turned on. But it appeared that Groendal’s face was becoming flushed. Harison was only too well aware of how very far Groendal had strayed from a sensible diet this evening.

  “Rid, are you all right?”

  Groendal now seemed oblivious to Harison’s presence. He bounced the crumpled letter against the desk top and selected yet a fourth envelope.

  “Of course! This one had to be from him! Four of a kind! All present and accounted for! All ganging up against me, are they? Well, we’ll just see who gets the last laugh!”

  Groendal tore the envelope away from the letter, spread the two pages on the desk and quickly, furiously read through it, pausing only to spit out invective.

  “That’s . . . that’s ancient history!” He clutched at his tie, jerking it loose from his neck. “He wouldn’t dare bring that up! Why, it was as much his fault as it was mine!” Suddenly, he turned frantic. He first fumbled with, then tore at his shirt, popping off the top buttons.

  “Rid! Calm down!” Harison moved to Groendal’s side. “Calm down! You’re only upsetting yourself! Get hold of yourself!”

  “Peter!” Groendal’s eyes bulged. Rising from his chair, he clutched Harison’s jacket with both hands, shaking the smaller man like a doll. “Peter! None of them could do it alone! I could beat them one by one! I’ve done it before! Lots of times! They could never get away with this otherwise! But . . . Peter! But . . . Peter!” Groendal pulled Harison so close their noses almost touched. Now desperately concerned, Harison was unable to move. He could not escape Groendal’s clutch.

  “Peter . . . Peter . . . I . . . Peter! Oh, God . . . this can’t be! I need . . . more time! Peter! Peter! Stay!”

  Abruptly, Groendal released his grip, made a clutching gesture toward his chest and pitched forward, burying Harison beneath him.

  It was Harison’s turn to experience fear. He was pinned beneath what he was certain was literally dead weight. But in times of terror, some people’s strength becomes as the strength often, whether or not their hearts are pure. With such unexpected strength, Harison pushed Groendal up and off him.

  Still close to uncontrollable panic, he examined Groendal. He could detect no signs of life. But what did he know? Not only was he not at home with dead bodies, he was repelled by them.

  Harison backed away from Groendal’s still form. Could Ridley yet be alive? Was he just unconscious?

  Harison wasn’t sure what he should do next. CPR—any form of resuscitative aid—was beyond his capability. Help—he must call for help! 911. 911, the all-purpose emergency line. He turned and hurried through the door to the switchboard room, running into desks and overturning chairs on his way.

  The board, as usual, was shut down for the night. How to activate it? Which buttons? He picked up the headset and with his other hand began to push switches. Nothing seemed to work.

  Finally, despairing of getting a dial tone, he dropped the headset and ran toward the exit. Maybe he could find a public phone. Maybe it would not be out of order. Maybe he could avoid a heart attack himself.

  3

  Getting scooped in one’s own newsroom is a bitter pill indeed. Such was the lot of Suburban Reporter staffers who responded to their editor’s frantic phone calls in the wee hours of the morning. The general feeling was that they should do something. But what?

  Most of the surface questions had already been asked by the television reporters: “With me is Detective Charles Papkin. Sergeant, have you found any signs of foul play in the death of Ridley Groendal?”

  “We’re not ruling out anything.”

  Or: “With me is Jonathan Dunn, publisher of the Suburban Reporter. Mr. Dunn, what will be the effect of Ridley Groendal’s death on the print journalism field?”

  “Ridley Groendal was an institution, a legend in his own time. He’s going to be missed, there’s no doubt about that.”

  A statement of the fact of Groendal’s death, along with the taped interviews, would be included in the morning news programs. The story, as far as television was concerned, either would die at this point, or—if there were further developments—there would be more interviews for the noon, six and/or eleven o’clock news. Since most people got their news from television, most people would learn that a critic had died under somewhat questionable circumstances and that he would be missed by, among a few others, his publisher.

  Reporters from the News and the Free Press were next in line, demanding considerably more background information than the TV people. Some were milling about in search of provocative quotes or any other angle to the story no matter how seemingly insignificant.

  Reporter staffers had their questions too. But they knew that everyone else would be in print long before they would. They had to go for a second-day story. So far, they had accomplished little more than returning to stare at the still unmoved corpse of the late Ridley C. Groendal. And Groendal was now history.

  “You say that Mr. Groendal didn’t complain about anything this evening? No pain?” Ray Ewing, now questioning Harison, was by far the more affable of the two detectives present.

  “No,” Peter Harison answered. “He seemed to be feeling fine. The review he finished just before he died was one of his better efforts. And I don’t think he could have done that if he’d been feeling ill. Rid was not the sort to work over great discomfort.”

  “But you mentioned something to Sergeant Papkin about what Mr. Groendal had to eat tonight . . .”

  “Yes, I did.” Harison was getting a bit testy. This was the second time he’d gone over the evening’s events. “Do I have to do this again?”

  “If you don’t mind.” Ewing’s manner made it clear that it didn’t matter whether or not Harison minded. He was going to do it again. The implication was not lost on Harison. “You never know when some detail will come to mind. Could be a big help.”

  “Oh, well, Rid really indulged himself tonight . . . uh, last night now, I guess. Anyway, he ate and drank all the wrong things. Bad for his heart, which was not all that strong.”

  “Why would he do that? I mean, if he knew it was bad for him.”

  Harison shrugged. “It certainly wasn’t the first time Rid did something foolish like this. He was not the abstemious type. He liked his food and drink and he didn’t, let us say, regularly deny himself. So tonight’s dining and libations were not in any way unique. It’s just that they happened to happen on a night when there would be a . . . a complication.”

  “Now that’s one of the things I wanted to ask you about, Mr. Harison. We’ve heard from several sources, some of his fellow workers here, that Mr. Groendal was, well, a rather heavy eater. But he doesn’t look like one . . . I mean, he could not be described as obese. As a matter of fact,” Ewing’s inclined head indicated the corpse stretched out on the floor nearby, “he seems to be pretty thin.”

  Harison shuddered. He had been trying assiduously to avoid again viewing his friend’s body. Now that his attention was directed to the corpse, Harison noticed abstractedly that Groendal was now blue—at least the exposed skin of his face and neck were a bluish hue. “Well,” he commented, “he wasn’t always.”

  “I’m afraid I don’t get it. If he had a weight problem and he was currently ea
ting the way you’ve described, how come he wasn’t a heavy man?”

  Harison hesitated. “I guess you’d find out anyway. There’ll be an autopsy, won’t there?”

  Ewing nodded.

  “Rid had AIDS. That contributed to, if not caused, his somewhat emaciated appearance.”

  “I see.” I wonder; thought Ewing, if he got it from you? It was not a certainty that Groendal had contracted the disease from Harison, but it was an hypothesis until something better came along.

  Ewing had put this possibility—that theirs was a homosexual relationship—on hold in his mind shortly after he had arrived on the scene. It was not merely that the two men were together when Groendal died; a number of other factors contributed to the premise. The two were not journalistic colleagues. The deceased, the detectives were told, was a critic. The other stated he was not employed but was living in retirement. But he would not say from what he had retired. Then too, Harison had a slightly effeminate air.

  That, along with the fact that they shared the same address and that neither was married, added to the suspicion that they were a homosexual couple. That Groendal had AIDS was about all Ewing needed to spell out his probable sexual preference. Short, of course, of coming right out and demanding the information from Harison. Which Ewing was prepared to do should such become relevant.

  “I found it,” said Papkin, returning to Ewing and Harison.

  Ewing looked at the other detective inquiringly.

  “The other letter Harison says Groendal was reading just before he keeled over. It’s all crumpled into a ball.” Papkin was carefully unfolding and smoothing a piece of paper.

  “Where’d you find it?”

  “Over there . . . on the floor.” Papkin indicated a spot under a desk several yards from the desk at which Groendal and Harison had sat. “He must have been pretty goddam mad to have slammed it down hard enough to bounce it all the way over there. And it’s crushed so tight it’s tough straightening it out without tearing it.”