Hard News

by Mark T Sullivan

  “Sure I’m sure. Even before he was on television all the time, I knew him.”

  “Thought you said you’ve never talked to him?”

  “No, I said before I saw him outside my office I hadn’t talked to him in—oh, Christ—more than twenty years. Last time was probably at Jaime Ramirez’s wake. He and Ricardo Portillo showed up.”

  News screwed up his face. “Who’s Jaime Ramirez?”

  “The jumper. The one who brought it all down—Bobby Kennedy’s Justice boys, FBI, everyone—on Jennings’s head. Jaime worked on Jennings’s personal staff. He was the one your editor linked to the Quintanas, the one who his anonymous sources said was involved in drug smuggling. Just after Lawlor went to jail for not revealing his sources on that story, Jaime took a dive off the top of city hall.”

  “Jesus,” LaFontaine said. “I didn’t know that.”

  “Very dramatic shit. Leslie and Portillo came to Jamie’s wake scrambling after the fact to show they were on top of things. Lawlor hit everyone cold with that story.”

  “I don’t get it. Why Leslie and Portillo?”

  “You don’t know shit, do you, Bug?” Trujillo said. “Leslie was a D.A.’s investigator back then. Portillo was one of the eight or nine research attorneys assigned to the Jennings probes. Portillo has always known how to be in the right place at the right time, always building the sweet résumé. We were active in the La Raza movement together, late fifties. So was Jaime and his brother, Pablo. Then me and Jaime went to work for Jennings. Portillo went to work to get him nailed. He’s mayor now, running for governor. Jaime’s dead. Me, I got these swell offices, the hooves of a Clydesdale, and all these upstanding clients to tend to.”

  “Jaime’s brother still around?”

  “Pablo? Sure. He runs a small import/export company down near the border, Aztec something or other.”

  Trujillo looked at his watch. “Speaking of upstanding clients, I got to visit a couple before they get too used to their nice new digs.”

  “Just a couple more questions,” News said. “I was told Coughlin was an early backer of Portillo. True?”

  “True. Probably saw him as the bright youngster. Hard not to, you know? Handsome, smart, well spoken. Goddamn choirboy.”

  “Someone suggested it was a payback from Coughlin for services rendered.”

  Trujillo shook his head. “If it was, you’ll never find it. Ricardo’s too shrewd. He’s running for governor of California, right? All you local clowns and the East Coast media heavies been looking at him for months now and nobody’s laid a hand on him yet. Barnes? Christ, your colleague there, Isabel Perez, she’s just pulverizing him on the toxic dumping shit while our mayor’s sailing calm water.”

  News knitted his brows. “If he’s so clean, why’d you agree with me that Sloan probably got a sweetheart deal from Portillo’s administration?”

  “That’s how it works,” Trujillo said. “Probably not a direct payoff. Ricardo wouldn’t risk his virginal image that way. Ricardo sees himself as an indebted amigo of the old man who helped him. He’s going to pay close attention to Sloan’s bid for the waterfront. It’s not illegal, it’s …”

  “The system,” LaFontaine said.

  “You bet yours,” Trujillo said. He dried his feet, laid fresh gauze on his stitched wounds, then gingerly drew his socks and sandals over his toes. He got up slowly and winced. “Have a nice day, Bug.”

  As they went through the door, LaFontaine said. “Why’d you say Sloan’s in your asshole hall of fame?”

  Trujillo made a spitting sound. “I got that seal in place in six weeks, a goddamn record. A couple of years later, I made a name and some money for myself with the billboards and all. I get invited to this political fund-raising party. The Sloaner’s there, standing alone having a drink. So I walk up to shake his hand.”

  “Let me guess. He wouldn’t.”

  “That fucking woman beater looked at my fingers like I just pulled ’em outta the ass of a dead dog at the Tijuana dump, just rotting in the heat. But, I’m a man. I walk away cool, figuring I got the better deal out of sealing that case.”

  “Tell me, tell me,” News said.

  “How do you think I got the cash to pay for that first billboard?” Trujillo laughed.

  The Depths of Despair …

  GIDEON MCCARTHY CRADLED HIS father’s trumpet. He watched Miriam and Carlos play on the swing set out beyond the porch. They seemed to move in slow motion. Each pump of leg and pull of arm to make the swings go higher, each smile at the swoop upward, each gasp at the arc down, took on terrible meaning. He was lost forever.

  When Prentice LaFontaine came out on the porch and saw the anguish on his friend’s face, he knew. He hugged McCarthy. “You haven’t told them yet, have you?”

  “I don’t know how to.” Tears welled in McCarthy’s eyes.

  “It’s not final, is it?”

  “No. But the way it went we have to prepare for the worst. Everything against Owens was circumstantial. Everything against me was tangible, especially the damaging effect my job has on the kids.”

  “It’s not like you’re a cop.”

  “I might as well be, according to Brady. The bastard crucified me. He took what Dr. Hammond—the counselor I had the kids seeing?—was saying about our family life and twisted it. Got her to talk about how I’m never here until late at night, how the kids say they’re frightened about the bombing. We thought Claudette, because of her friendship with Tina, would be my big character witness. She talked about how Tina and I knew we were made for each other from the first moment. How we spent all our free time with the kids and planned for the future. But Brady ignored all that on the cross and got her to talk about the dirty little secrets of journalism—the rate of broken families, the incidence of drug and alcohol abuse, the eighty-hour work weeks for low pay, the shrinking job market, the depression, the burnout, the despair.”

  “Oh, come on,” LaFontaine said. “The carnage is what makes journalism fun!”

  McCarthy managed a weak chortle through the steel that still held his jaw shut. “That’s what makes gossip fun, you cynical queen.”

  “News, gossip. Same difference. What your other witnesses said didn’t hold weight?”

  “The best we had was Roger Dean, Charley’s ex-partner, talking about the coke addiction and the money problems. But Brady got Dean to talk about Tina’s coke problem. It was a wash and Charley’s still the biological father.”

  “Crawford disallowed Dean’s testimony about Owens’s mother?”

  McCarthy turned the trumpet over, seeing himself in the finish and almost choking again. “Hearsay. Brady objecting left and right. She had no choice.”

  “You think it’s true.”

  “From what Tina said about the guy and his family, nothing would surprise me.”

  “It turns my jaded abdomen to think he might be after the kids just to satisfy some whim of his mother’s that he have a family.”

  “Dean said the rumor in Santa Fe is that it’s financial. If Owens gets the kids, he gets the money he needs when she dies. She’s in her late seventies.”

  “Subpoena his mother.”

  “She’s out of state. The subpoena system is convoluted. And we could get her here and she could lie. And that would bolster Owens’s case. Brady tells the judge we’re inventing stories to damage his client. We’re screwed.”

  News dug through his mental dirt files, retrieving a courthouse gossip item he’d heard a few months back. He was about to mention it when Carlos ran up onto the porch.

  “Play some catch?” the boy asked McCarthy. He slapped the ball into the palm of the glove.

  McCarthy put the trumpet down. “You bet.”

  Miriam got down off the swing to sit in the grass and watch the ball fly back and forth. After the fifth toss, she announced, “I don’t like cars.”

  McCarthy missed the ball. It sailed by and struck the house with a thump. He motioned to Carlos to get it. “Why’s that, honey
?”

  She toyed with her sneaker tread, but didn’t reply.

  “You’re afraid of what happened to my car?”

  She nodded. “Mommy’s, too.”

  McCarthy knelt to stroke her hair. “I don’t like cars either. It would be better if we still rode horses.”

  Carlos came back with the ball and said, “Do we get to go to the courthouse to talk to the judge?”

  Looking at their expressions McCarthy understood for the first time how rotten life had treated them at an age when it should have been simple and pure. “Maybe sometime.”

  Miriam tugged at her lower lip, looking just like her mother. “If we go, will they ask us who we want to live with?”

  “Maybe,” McCarthy said. His stomach tightened.

  “That will be easy,” she said. She threw her arms around him. Carlos hugged him, too. McCarthy looked over his shoulder at LaFontaine. He felt as alone as the night Tina died.

  Estelle called from the porch. “Okay, children, your dinner is ready. Gideon, you and Mr. News in twenty minutes, okay?”

  “You go along now,” McCarthy said. He barely saw them run across the lawn.

  When the kids had gone inside, LaFontaine came down off the porch, trying hard to suppress his own emotions. If he witnessed too many more of these scenes, he might change his mind and decide all children were not evil pests.

  “I’m afraid … I’ll have to leave after dinner. A rendezvous with Brad.”

  “It’s okay,” McCarthy said. He wiped his face on his sleeve again. “I need some time with them to figure out how to explain it. But enough of that. What the hell was Leslie doing there that day outside Trujillo’s office?”

  “Riding shotgun, making sure everything went smooth,” LaFontaine said, glad for the change in subject.

  “You don’t ride shotgun if you’re an assistant police chief unless there’s a serious debt you’re paying back,” McCarthy said. “What do we know about Leslie, his finances, his background?”

  “I got that covered. I went to the city clerk and asked for his disclosure forms going back ten years. There was some kind of water pipe break in a back room a couple of days ago. The whole place is under tarps. It could be seventy-two hours before they get to it. It’s on order. Funny thing. Kent Jackson has asked for it, too.”

  “Jackson? What’s he up to?”

  “I wouldn’t even bother to ask. You know what a prick he is when he thinks someone’s trying to invade his turf.”

  “Let’s focus on what we’ve got for now. With Sloan’s history of abusing women, he’s got to be a possible suspect for killing Gentry.”

  “Round three,” News nodded. “Question is: did he do it for kicks or was he provoked?”

  “I say if he did it, he was provoked. She had something on him.”

  “Like what?”

  McCarthy kicked at the stoop. “If only I knew.”

  Inside Miriam giggled. McCarthy’s attention immediately traveled to the voices inside the house. He didn’t answer when LaFontaine asked what he planned to do tomorrow. “Gid?” News said again.

  McCarthy startled. “Huh? Oh, I think I’ll go back and talk with Dusk, see if she remembers anything else Gentry might have said about Tiger’s outcall. You?”

  “I’m going to dig some more on Leslie. Maybe pay a visit to the courthouse,” he said. He didn’t bother to mention Trujillo’s description of Portillo and Leslie during the Jennings years, nor a possible side trip to see Jaime Ramirez’s brother, Pablo. The sort of historical background he enjoyed knowing. Gossipy bits to store away for a rainy day. Nothing to do with the real story.

  McCarthy fitted the straw of his drink into the gap between his teeth and sucked in the cool, tart liquid. The booze fired off a synapse in the back of his head. “Trujillo said he paid off two detectives at ten grand apiece. Who were they?”

  News slapped himself on the forehead. “I was so agog to learn that Leslie was in on the sealed file I never asked.”

  “Something to check out,” McCarthy said.

  “On my list of things to do,” News promised.

  “Another drink before dinner?”

  “Did Plato love Socrates?”

  Augustus Croon gently knocked on the door to Abby Blitzer’s apartment. A shuffling and a dead bolt thrown. The door opened two inches.

  “I brought some things I thought might cheer you up,” Croon said. He held out three videos. “The Poseidon Adventure, Earthquake and Othello; it’s the black-and-white version with Orson Welles as the Moor.”

  In the dim light Blitzer clutched the lapels of a faded blue terry cloth robe. Mascara and newsprint streaked her cheeks. “I didn’t deserve to be suspended,” she said weakly.

  “Not suspended,” Croon said. “Geld just thought you needed some time to get your batteries recharged.”

  “I’m ever ready. I don’t need a recharge.”

  Croon set his jaw. “Abby, you weren’t acting like the woman I’ve mooned over for more than a year.”

  “And who’s that Abby?” she snapped. “Sweet tough Abby? Soft coldhearted Abby? So sensitive feel-nothing Abby?”

  “The workable Abby,” Croon said. “The way she used to be.”

  “You don’t know what I used to be!”

  For the first time in fourteen months Croon didn’t feel lunar in her presence. He handed her the videos one by one. He stooped down and picked up a bag and handed it to her. “Mutton shank. Boiled potato. Yorkshire pudding. It’s takeout British food.”

  She threw him a queer look. He forced a grin. “Most tragic meal I could think of.”

  Blitzer took the bag and, in spite of herself, smiled. She reached up, pulled his massive head down, and planted a kiss full on his lips. “Good night, Croon. And thank you for caring.”

  He walked away dazed. He’d never been kissed like that before. There was the promise of romance in that kiss. Which swelled his heart. But there was something else, too, something that reminded him of the chaos he’d endured in combat. The photographer made it down the stairs and through the gate to his car without once looking back.

  Blitzer shut the door. She padded through the dark apartment into the kitchen. She unloaded the meal, put it on a microwave tray, and zapped it for four minutes. The mutton chop came out steaming. She went into the living room, popped in the Earthquake video, and fast-forwarded it to the scenes where the walls start tumbling. She did not allow herself to look down at the pile of yellowed clippings with the picture of the sandy-haired ten-year-old boy that littered the coffee table.

  On the television screen, a woman driving a car screamed as the freeway buckled. Blitzer bit into the hot mutton, scorching her tongue. She bit again and again into the searing flesh until her mouth had no sensation. She nodded to herself as she cried, affirming her conviction that unlike revenge, tragedy was a meal best served flaming.

  Margaret Savage didn’t know whether to cry or sing or punch the wall until her knuckles split. There it was again—the shimmer in her spine, hot and humid like a gusty wind on a July day. A raspy thick blues guitar voice surrounded her, told her to rewind the tape and play it again. For the twentieth time in the last two days, Margaret Savage turned on the cassette recorder.

  When she’d first heard the tape in Pace’s office, Savage had turned from the primal sounds as if hearing an animal dying. At home she’d listened again. And again. And gradually, without reason, like unfamiliar music slowly revealing its quality, the animal dying became the siren of wanting. She listened to Neil Harpster’s demands and Connie Mills’s cries. She knew for certain that the research assistant had gone to that motel room of her own free will. Connie’s wanting echoed within Savage, too, a slim peal at the beginning, then deeper, a clang that resonated in her knees and her belly and shimmered in her lower back.

  Hearing it now, for the twentieth time, she gave way to a desire that had been building the past twenty-four hours. She longed to be in Room 11 B in the motel on State Street, lon
ged to give way to the animal instinct she’d suppressed her entire adult life.

  She sat up on the bed and drew her knees in close. She was further tortured by the fact that when she thought about what was happening to her it was always in the syntax and rhythm of the ridiculous prose in Love’s Furious Fury.

  Savage listened to Harpster’s insistent voice. She looked down at her copy of the paperback on the bed. She picked the book up, hearing in the background Connie’s voice say, “Page ninety-one now, Neil. Get to 91!”

  Savage thumbed the pages until she found it. The scene in which Damien, the young, athletically chested master of the White Oak Plantation, seduces Laura Lee, the schoolteacher from New Orleans. She read along as Neil acted Damien and Connie his Laura Lee. Again the clanging and the longing and the wanting and all the other passionate gerunds she could think of took hold. Until she could bear it no more.

  She threw herself on the bed and began to sob uncontrollably.

  The strict, linear thinking that had served her so well had gone circular, even spiral. No longer could Savage compartmentalize and judge the justness of every action with cold, socially correct logic. Random compulsion shook her like the mother of all hot flashes. The sobbing became a wailing. She punched at her pillow, sweating and denying it, then cursing and cursing again when it came to her clear, painful, and unavoidable.

  She bit at the knuckle of her finger aware that it wasn’t the sweet morning sick love she’d anticipated as a teenage girl. This was needy and hurtful, the first desperate yearning of a sexual obsession. And she couldn’t do anything to stop it.

  Vicious Twists of Fate …

  Connie Mills said, “Bobbie Anne, you’re way out of line. This is between Neil and me.”

  Pace clasped her hands to her chest. “Dear, we all know from reading the advice columnists how difficult it is to admit being caught up in a destructive relationship, especially with someone who wields power over you.”

  They sat on the blue couch in the living room at Mills’s apartment. Harpster’s research assistant brushed the film of sweat away from the purple band about her forehead; she’d been flexing her butt muscles in time with the platinum blond in the “Righteous Rumps” exercise video she bought last week when the Assistant Managing Editor for News and Information had knocked on the door and asked to talk.