Hard News

by Mark T Sullivan

  Mills sighed as she finished the last piece of sushi. She just wished Harpster offered companionship and financial security on top of his libidinous charms.

  Fashion Bulimia and Other Neuroses …

  TWENTY-FOUR HOURS LATER The Post’s chief political reporter, I Kent Jackson, knelt in supplication before his telephone answering machine and prayed to his Savior for redemption.

  “Dear Jesus, you forgave those Roman soldiers who rolled dice for your robes,” he whispered, tears rolling down his cheeks. “I’m asking you to lift this burden from the shoulders of this sinner, or I shall be smote down like Goliath before David.”

  Jackson knew he was mixing citations from the New and Old testaments, but figured such ecclesiastical confusion couldn’t hurt. It might even create some Biblical synergy of brimstone and redemptive forces that would gather to part his personal Red Sea.

  He clasped his hands to his breast. He prayed with a fervor he hadn’t enjoyed in years. He didn’t know what he expected in return: a masculine voice consoling him, a tongue of fire descending above his head, an archangel atop the answering machine?

  When nothing happened, he collapsed in a sweaty mess on the floor wondering how in Jehovah’s name he was going to come up with $56,248 he now owed his bookie? Who could have predicted that last night a journeyman palooka would knock out Iron-Fist Bean? Jackson looked skyward. How had the odds gotten so out of whack?

  Ten years ago he graduated from Oral Roberts University with a degree in journalism and a vow to right the liberal wrong in media, to cover politics in the name of Jesus Christ, to counter the virulent humanistic catechism of victimology that rotted the minds of so many reporters.

  He and Patti had been together since high school. She had lank blond hair, perfect blue eyes, a tiny waist, and a way of holding his hand in public that used to make him feel wanted. They’d married when he’d graduated and immediately tried to get pregnant. No such luck.

  Infertility clinics were taboo. Tests and high-tech fertilization methods crossed the boundary of their fundamentalist moral code. Patti would wait as had Mary’s kinswoman, Elizabeth, for the Holy Spirit to end her barrenness.

  In the intervening years, Patti functioned as Kent’s rudder while he navigated his way through a series of jobs covering city halls in small Southwestern towns. Then Lawlor offered him a job at The Post.

  Jackson diligently covered local and California politics. He wrote scathing attacks on the pinkos in Sacramento in a weekly political column syndicated throughout the state. Patti became deeply involved in church life and, it would seem, their minister, the Reverend Tim Waites.

  Lying on the floor in his apartment, Jackson scrounged in his pocket and came up with a virgin Lotto ticket. He rubbed off the three pots of gold and came up with zilch. He whimpered, remembering how the gambling had started.

  Like most good Midwestern boys, Jackson’s youthful weekends were a mix of church and football. Prayer meetings followed by high school football on Friday nights. College games on Saturday afternoon. The pros after the Sabbath service. In his mind football and religion were one; the passion play on the gridiron and the adulation of the crowd melted into evangelical ministers exhorting the faithful from their seats in praise of Jesus and back again into the overwhelming fervor of anxiety and love that surrounded a tie game with third down and goal to go and twenty-one seconds on the clock.

  Two years after joining The Post, Tony Pritoni, the paper’s premier sports columnist, wandered by with a betting pool sheet on the pro games. At first Jackson thought it unethical that a sports writer would run a betting pool. But Pritoni assured Jackson that gambling went on in the sports sections of every newspaper and magazine in America, including the weekly gospel of competition itself: Sports Illustrated.

  Jackson knew football. He won the first seven pools and went thirteen for fourteen during the regular season. He won the March Madness college basketball tournament pool. He made money on the Kentucky Derby and Wimbledon.

  He found in those moments when his picks were true a personal relationship with his Savior; he felt prescient, ubiquitous and, as blasphemous as it was, when he predicted the Buffalo Bills would lose four Super Bowls in a row, prophetic.

  Those who ascribe to themselves the status of divine seer, however, are often dealt harsh punishment. He went cold and the losses started eight months ago. He couldn’t even win the daily Roy Orbison spilt-coffee pool. His debts grew until they gnawed at him as a dog would the drawn intestines of a dark age martyr.

  In his self-created agony, Jackson had pushed away Patti, who eventually collapsed into the warm, waiting arms of the Reverend Tim Waites.

  Lying there on the floor, trying to figure out a way to pay off the $56,248, Jackson admitted that as painful as the revelation of Patti’s tryst was, it paled in comparison to the news that he’d lost a bigger bet than the one he’d placed on last night’s fight.

  During the years of failed attempts at having a baby, Jackson had put fifty to one odds that it was Patti’s plumbing at fault; but the terrible truth had come in a message on the answering machine just before the news of Iron-Fist’s loss: Patti was with child by the Reverend Tim Waites.

  While Jackson prayed for divine intervention, Isabel Perez sat in her condo, naked and alone. The usual for a Saturday night.

  She had turned up the heat upon arriving. She closed the tan drapes. Next to the full-length mirror in her bedroom she hung today’s purchases on the brass clothes rack, an exact replica of the ones they kept in the designer section at Nordstrom’s department store.

  Perez carefully removed her slacks and sweater, took off her stockings, her bra, and, finally, her panties. She studied herself in the mirror. Four hours of aerobics a week kept her in reasonably good shape.

  She turned to an open bag of sinsemilla, rolled a thick joint, lit it, and took a deep electric toke off it. She thought of Kent Jackson and the status he had as chief political reporter. She thought what she might have to do to take that status from him and her stomach felt giddy and slightly sick. She took another deep toke to quell the nausea, then went to the clothes rack.

  Slowly, as if in a caress, Perez slid the cover off one ensemble, a Donna Karan in slate blue. She held it up before her nakedness, cupping the tags in one hand so she could plainly see the $550 price. She unbuttoned the outfit and fitted it over the plastic body of one of the three size six mannequins she’d bought from a junk dealer.

  The next outfit was a purple dress with black piping, a Nordstrom’s original. This she held to her side so she caught the image of herself in it in profile. The purple dress went on the middle mannequin, tags out.

  A mauve cashmere sweater with cream stirrup pants completed this evening’s collection. With it: faux pearl earrings and necklace and off-white satin pumps. She put the shoes on, then laughed to herself when the cold pearls rolled against her breasts. She rubbed the cashmere on her skin for a moment or two, reveling in the newness of the material.

  Perez put those clothes on the third mannequin, arranging the shoes and pearls just as she’d wear them if she didn’t know she’d be returning all the outfits Monday morning before work.

  She had her own private name for her habit. Fashion Bulimia. Whenever she felt anxious or depressed, she’d head to department stores like Nordstrom’s, stores which had no-questions-asked return policies, and buy until her credit card smoked. Then she’d return home and play dress-up like a little girl. Mostly she just liked to look at the tags on the clothes. They made her feel new inside. The marijuana didn’t hurt, either.

  Perez brought the mannequins out from the wall. She arranged them around her as if they were special friends at an intimate cocktail party.

  She thought about the fortuitous picture of Patti Jackson and her minister lover. She thought about her meeting with Arlene Troy, the mayor’s press secretary, a short, muscular woman with tightly cropped hair and a raspy voice.

  “A great day,” she announced. �
��A horrible day.”

  She’d talked with Arlene before, of course. But the meeting last night at Troy’s office was different. Both reporter and flack knew Jackson’s position was in jeopardy. A new relationship might have to be established.

  It had gone well, smashingly well in fact, with much information traded. When it was time to go, Troy had smiled, then said: “I’m so glad we had this chance to talk. I’ve heard so much about you lately. So many things I didn’t know.”

  Goddamn Prentice LaFontaine!

  Perez coughed and attempted to return Troy’s smile. “Yes, well … you know how difficult it is to finally admit who you are.”

  “There are more of us admitting it every day, in every walk of life,” Troy said. She put her hand on Perez’s shoulder. Pink fingernails. “I hope you don’t think I’m forward. But … well, are you seeing anyone?”

  “Uh, no,” Perez scrambled. “Not right now.”

  “Perhaps we could have a drink sometime?”

  All she really wanted was to be home behind closed curtains with her off-the-rack friends. “I’m pretty busy, what with the campaign and all,” she croaked. “Of course, you’re busy too, Arlene. So, sure, if we can fit it into our schedules. I guess.”

  “Why not next week sometime? My treat.”

  Perez had swallowed hard. “Fine, Arlene. Fine.”

  Now, sitting cross-legged amid the mannequins, Perez shuddered at the things one must do to become a heavyweight journalist these days. She shuddered again and told herself these uncomfortable memories would fade. Better to focus on the unchanging symbols of her destiny.

  She opened her jewelry box and brought out her most prized possession.

  Perez knew the rule: as a political writer you were nothing until you worked for one of the agenda-setting newspapers—The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Wall Street Journal, the Los Angeles Times. Last year she’d suffered the humiliation of treading the national campaign trail with a plastic badge around her neck that said The Post.

  She’d weathered the ignominy of having political handler after political handler glance at her badge, sniff, then walk away as if they’d whiffed a dead animal. A moment later these same spin doctors would encounter a badge printed with those magic words: The New York Times. They’d snort, then snuffle, then fawn and salivate with the raw joy of an alley stray that’s found a pedigreed poodle in estrus. Oh, it was true: more than anything on this earth, Isabel Perez coveted a press badge that the badge-sniffers wanted to sniff.

  So she’d stolen this one from a sleeping reporter from The Washington Post. Simple really. The poor woman had been suffering from exhaustion, the flu, too many Bill Clinton speeches, and three gin and tonics. In the middle of a late-night flight, Perez slipped the chain from the unsuspecting woman’s purse, then slid it deep in her luggage.

  It was now the nightly ritual. Perez hung the sniffable badge around her neck, a fashion accessory she’d never return. She assumed the full lotus position with the ashtray in front of her on the carpet. She watched herself in the mirror.

  She smoked the rest of the joint during this meditation on self, reaching out from time to time to stroke the different fabrics around her, always returning, as a baby will to its security blanket, to the green-and-white laminated press pass.

  For Prentice LaFontaine, the night was just beginning. He drove fast toward the Pink Stag, ignoring the gawks he received from fellow drivers at red lights.

  Carl Tracy, the Pink Stag’s owner and master of ceremonies, was throwing an AIDS fund-raiser. A man possessing a wonderful sense of black humor, Tracy expected everyone to come dressed for the event as their favorite dead military hero they believed was secretly gay. Earlier in the week, News had located a World War I doughboy outfit at an antique shop complete with dishpan helmet. He had bought an old nonworking carbine with a bayonet to complete his ensemble.

  He pulled into the parking lot of the Pink Stag, telling himself that tonight he was not going to think anymore about what Thomas P. Whitney had told him. Tonight he was going to have fun even if his ankle was still killing him.

  “Take fear, Huns, I’m in the trenches!” LaFontaine cried as he hobbled through the door into the Pink Stag. “Lay down your rifles or I’ll shoot you like turkeys.”

  “Don’t tell me, don’t tell me!” Carl Tracy screeched. “You’re Sergeant York!”

  LaFontaine let fly a snappy salute. “You know I’ve always had a thing for Gary Cooper, Carl. And look at you, Mr. Five-Star General. Ike would just roll over and die if he could see you now.”

  “Wouldn’t he, though?” Tracy laughed. He shook so hard his green cap slipped off his head. “Oh, go on in, Prentice, the place is just mad!”

  LaFontaine scooted by Tracy into the Pink Stag’s main room. John Philip Sousa marches were playing. The horseshoe bar was draped in mufti. Bunting hung from the horns of the elk head that had been dyed salmon and mounted high above the bar. Bond posters from World War I, World War II, and Korea hung from the walls. As did huge blowup photographs of Betty Grable, Rita Hayworth, and Jayne Mansfield entertaining the troops. Enlarged battle maps of the Inchon Reservoir, Gettysburg, and Waterloo were suspended over the dance floor.

  LaFontaine ordered a Campari on the rocks. First thing Monday morning I’m finding Burkhardt’s ex, he thought. She’s got to know what was in that sealed case. He finished the Campari and ordered another. He amused himself comparing the various costumes to his own.

  There was a fashion photographer at the far end of the bar dressed as Audie Murphy—a grenade in one hand and a guitar in the other. A bookstore owner clad as Charles DeGaulle waved the colors of Free France while hugging Admiral Yamamoto. Several of the hot young male models in town had donned basic G.I. outfits and as a group kept jumping up on the stage to reenact the raising of the flag on Mount Suribachi.

  Of course, there were the retro dressers. Here came a bearded gastroenterologist in Confederate gray as Gen. Robert E. Lee and his companion as Ulysses S. Grant. They carried a placard that read “Appomattox or Bust.” LaFontaine sniffed at the overstatement.

  As the “Boogie Woogie Bugle Boy of Company B” played, Joan of Arc took to the dance floor with George Washington. So did Napoleon, who did the lindy hop with Marc Antony. George Armstrong Custer cut in.

  Behind them stood LaFontaine’s vote for best costume: an abstract painter dressed as Achilles, complete with Greek warrior skirt, iron breastplate, helmet, sword in scabbard, and sandals that laced up his muscular calves. The topper was an arrow that stuck straight out from his heel!

  LaFontaine was on his way through the crowd to congratulate Achilles when he noticed a young four-star general in leather riding boots, leather crop, and combat helmet staring at him. LaFontaine held his breath; the boy looked vaguely dangerous and he had so many muscles his uniform threatened to rip. My God! He’s not staring; he’s leching!

  No guts, no glory. News slung his rifle over his shoulder, then marched crisply across the floor. He came to attention before the young man and drawled: “Scouting the battlefield, General Patton?”

  “Rommel, the Desert Fox, believed in forward observation. So do I,” the soldier replied in a gravelly voice.

  “Plotting your attack on the grid map already?”

  “Feels like I might have to move in the heavy artillery.”

  “Not one for guerrilla war, I see.”

  General Patton shook his head. “Classic attacks are my specialty. I like to whip the flanks.”

  Though a voice inside him told him to walk away, LaFontaine couldn’t. He shivered with delight. He took a step closer and gazed deep into the general’s eyes. “A warrior with a sense of history. I like that. What campaign are you thinking of now—the deserts of North Africa, perhaps?”

  “Too dusty, Sergeant York, too many scorpions,” Patton said as he slowly moved his riding crop up between News’s legs. “I was thinking of a skirmish characterized by heavy armor and hand-to-hand combat. The B
attle of the Bulge perhaps?”

  “Oh, my!” whimpered LaFontaine. “Oh, my yes!”

  The Milkman Cometh …

  MID MONDAY MORNING AT a coffee shop out on the Boulevard. Even after two calming days at home, two days spent fishing and hiking around the reservoir with the kids, Gideon McCarthy still felt Carlos’s terrified fingers digging into his back. Small, powerful goads that kept him on the hunt. He couldn’t give Charley Owens the slightest opening.

  The sun burned off the ocean fog as he reread his scrawled account of his talk with Tabor and Delta Ann Porter. Reading their words made him want to shower again. He’d been doing this kind of reporting for years and rule number one was you had to invade the world you were investigating, learn it better than the inhabitants did. Gentry had cavorted in the sewer. This greasy feeling went with the territory. What had Prentice LaFontaine told him once? “If you want to be society’s proctologist, you’d better be prepared to look up some foul holes.”

  He’d called Claudette X at home over the weekend, telling her that he was after a story of a murder contract being put out on Carol Alice Gentry, possibly by police officers.

  “You get that story, Gid, and all is forgiven,” she said. “Connor and Ed will lose their minds.”

  “I know,” McCarthy replied. “The trouble is finding this hooker, Dusk.”

  “I have faith,” Claudette X said.

  “Then give me the next two nights to get her.”

  He heard her hesitate and knew before she spoke what the answer was. “I got no one to cover for you, Gid. All you got to do is grab this snake and I’ll free you up.”

  McCarthy looked out the window of the coffee shop at the busy sidewalk crowd, wondering if this story of a contract was real or just a snake’s tail in the shadows that would disappear down a hole when he tried to grab it.