“I … I guess so.”
From the rubble McCarthy picked up a fist-sized stone. “I’m going to count to three and then I’m going to throw the rock to the snake’s right. He’s going to forget you and Malice and think about that rock, just like a change-up. You’re going to jump backward.”
“I can’t see what’s behind me.”
“I can. You’ll fall a couple of feet and land in a big bush.”
Malice darted toward the boy, yapping. The snake rolled and made a mock strike at the dog, but didn’t stretch its body in full attack.
“Wait, Carlos,” McCarthy commanded. He held the rock behind his ear, focusing on a deep pile of avocado leaves six feet from the snake. “One, two, three.”
The stone flew straight. The dry duff exploded into a cloud of leaves and twigs. The snake struck sideways into the cloud even as Carlos leapt backward and fell. Malice sprang after the stretched rattler to sink his teeth into the flesh at the base of its neck. The terrier’s turtle jaw held tight. He snapped his head to and fro while the snake’s body writhed in the bright evening air, looping around the dog’s body, rattle lashing at his eyes. The dog summoned all of his strength to buck like a horse shedding an unwanted rider. His head thrashed in one savage crack of a whip. The snake went limp. Blood turned the dog’s muzzle bright pink.
By then McCarthy rocked Carlos in his arms. “It’s okay, nothing’s going to hurt you.” He looked down the canyon at the home of the Oklahoma gas man. “Nothing’s going to hurt you ever again.”
McCarthy made the necessary phone call much later after the terror of the day had ebbed and the children were asleep in their beds. Hanging up the phone he felt the fetters of old rules of conduct slip from his wrists.
LaFontaine was right. There was no such thing as an objective observer. People couldn’t be clear lenses, recording without a flinch life’s appalling comedy. Everyone had to marshal the facts to fashion an interpretation that they could live with. The key was to control the interpretation, to spin it, to give it direction, your direction. To do that you had to have all the facts. Information was raw power.
He was up until two that morning, reviewing every note he had, reviewing every note he’d taken from News’s file cabinet. He made a long list of the strings they hadn’t tied tight. Somewhere in that list of unanswered questions was the reason why Carol Alice Gentry and Prentice LaFontaine died. And he intended to find it. No matter what the cost.
McCarthy arrived at the city clerk’s office two minutes before 8:00 A.M. A low-ceilinged, bureaucratic maze with walls the color of stale oatmeal. The only relief from the institutional effect were poster-sized photographs of the zoo and the park and Alta Bay.
A young clerk with spiked black hair and razor-thin lips waited on him. She came back with the documents LaFontaine had ordered the week before. “You want the stuff, the other guy, Jackson, wanted? The stuff on the mayor? He never came to pick them up.”
“Why not.” Screw Jackson.
She returned with another stack. “That’ll be $16.50 for the both of them.”
McCarthy paid and went to a desk in the corner. He went through Chief Leslie’s disclosures first. As chief of police Leslie made $119,000 a year. He had a stock portfolio worth more than $10,000 and less than $100,000. He owned bonds with a similar assessment. His three-bedroom condo on Alta Bay was valued in the low six figures. Three years ago he’d bought raw acreage worth less than $100,000 on Lake Mead, Nevada. He had an equal amount sunk into a Texas limited partnership called Countryside.
Net worth? Probably half a million. Not out of line for an unmarried man in his late forties with that kind of annual income. But nothing here that might lead News to believe he was onto the biggest story of his life.
McCarthy put the Leslie disclosure forms aside and started in on Mayor Portillo’s. Portillo grossed $106,000 a year. A politically astute move to keep his salary substantially less than that of the police chief, the city manager, and the city attorney. It made him look like a humble servant of the people. His mutual funds had a net value of between $5,000 and $50,000. His five-bedroom house abutting the south barrio—another politically astute move: stay close to your roots—was worth less than Leslie’s condo.
McCarthy turned the page to “Other real estate investments” and gaped. Three years ago the mayor had bought raw acreage worth less than $100,000 on Lake Mead in Nevada. He had an equal amount of money sunk into a Texas partnership called Cityscape Ltd.
He forced himself to analyze. Leslie and Portillo were close friends and had been for years. Maybe one of them found out about the land, and, knowing they’d have to retire sooner or later, brought the other in on the deal as a place to spend their waning years. But that didn’t explain the Texas investments.
It was 9:00 A.M. He needed more facts. He would not draw conclusions, nor shade them with interpretations until he had exhausted the facts.
He got himself to a pay phone and called a title search company in Lake Mead, Nevada. For $100 on his credit card he was assured he’d have the relevant documents faxed to him in the newsroom by midday tomorrow. He made a second call to Austin, Texas. For another $150 he employed a paralegal there to dig out the articles of incorporation on Countryside and Cityscape. They, too, would be faxed tomorrow.
It was now ten-forty-five. Fifteen minutes until the appointment he’d arranged by phone last night. He exited city hall. He walked north seven blocks, then took a right on Twelfth. He went into a combination coffee shop and bookstore halfway down the block.
Peter Crawford, the husband of Judge Evelyn Crawford, had already taken a booth in the back corner. A fit man in his early sixties. Silver hair and beard. Nattily dressed in a blue blazer with matching red tie and handkerchief. No hand was offered.
“I’m not at all comfortable meeting you like this,” Crawford began.
McCarthy said, “Did you tell your wife you were coming here?”
“No.”
“Good. I’m not going to beat about the bush. Here’s the situation. My fiancée died and left me her children. They’re the most important things in the world to me. Her ex-husband is a bastard and he wants them now for reasons I believe are less than altruistic.”
Crawford held up his hand. “I know about your case, McCarthy. Tragic.”
“Then you probably know that I’m probably going to lose them.”
“My wife hasn’t made that decision yet. Just get her the facts and I’m sure you’ll be the winner.
McCarthy stared at Crawford. “The facts are that your wife’s sixty-four and tired. You’re sixty-two, on the verge of bankruptcy, and more tired than she is.”
Crawford got up. “I think I’d better leave.”
McCarthy reached out and grabbed the developer’s wrist.
“As judges go, your wife is pretty good. I know that. You know that. She knows that. I also know that she deserves better than bankruptcy and a state pension after retirement. I’m prepared to make that possible.”
Crawford swallowed and sat back down. “I’m listening.”
“I own prime acreage abutting The Ranch. A very wealthy man has been after the land for the last several years. He’s offered a considerable sum, far beyond its assessed value. The land has significant emotional value to me. I have been reluctant to sell.”
“Go on.”
“The marketplace is a strange and wonderful thing. It doesn’t question why a man might choose one buyer over another. It doesn’t question what a man might sell his property for as long as it seems reasonable.”
Crawford hesitated. “And what might reasonable mean?”
“A thousand dollars over the assessed value,” McCarthy said.
“Very reasonable. Being close to The Ranch and all …”
“Especially in light of what it might be resold for,” McCarthy said, ending the thought for him.
“Or developed for.”
“I plan never to be there to see that happen.”
> “You’re thinking of moving then?”
“If certain legal proceedings go my way. Yes.”
They fell silent. McCarthy could tell the gears were turning inside Crawford’s mind, already conniving to do the deal. “You’ll hear from me,” Crawford said. “I would expect so,” McCarthy said. “And soon.”
When Crawford had left, McCarthy found himself studying the black flecks in the tabletop. It had been easier than he thought and that’s what sickened him. What had brought him here? Cynicism? No, that was too easy. Awareness? Maybe that was what spawned the cynicism. Whatever it was, the cumulative effect was to crush the last bit of his belief that there were commonly held standards of right and wrong. He knew now that he was finished as an investigative reporter, as a reporter of any kind. He couldn’t stand back and observe anymore. He was involved.
There was just this last story to get. He would see it through to the end. He owed News that much.
The House of Bile …
“THIS IS CONNIE.”
“I know a motel on State Street.”
“Is that a fact?”
“It is. And I know that in a half an hour there will be a brown leather satchel on the bed in Room 11-B.”
“And what will be in that satchel?”
“Three peacock feathers and a silver-sequined mask.”
Neil Harpster smeared the phone against his ear, waiting anxiously for Mills’s marvelously perverted mind to turn the four inanimate objects into a carnal fantasy capable of offsetting the dread that had enveloped him the past thirty-six hours. Every ninety minutes since leaving LaFontaine’s wake he’d received phone calls from Margaret Savage. Here in the office. At home. Lydia calling him in from the garden, demanding to know who his lover was. He, warding off her attacks with the three-pronged weeding fork, pleading, telling her it was all a campaign of persecution to keep him from getting the promotion he deserved. Then going back out into the garden to find the azaleas chopped to bits, the shredded leaves arranged on the dark soil in a letter “Z.” He desperately needed to escape on the exotic landscaping of Connie’s body.
The line was silent.
“I said, three peacock feathers and a silver-sequined mask.”
“Doesn’t do anything for me,” Mills replied.
“What?”
“Boring.”
“You and me with three peacock feathers and a silver-sequined mask—boring?”
“That’s what I said.”
His ears rang. Cold sweat broke out in his briefs. Harpster tugged his tie open and looked out through his Glasshole. She had her perfect backside to him. Exactly the way he wanted it. But naked and in their squalid motel. “We … we could be inventive. Maybe pretend we were circus stars. Yes, that’s it: acrobats!”
No response.
“Or … or Harlequins. I’ll pick up some black-and-white makeup on the way?”
“Sorry.”
Beyond Mills, on the far side of the newsroom, Harpster saw something that put him over the edge: Savage had arrived in skintight stirrup pants, matching tank top, gold pumps, a hundred-dollar hairdo, and a foot-high stack of books. Savage turned his way, oblivious to the uproar her appearance was causing, and winked knowingly.
Harpster cried into the phone, “You’ve got to come with me, Connie. You don’t have a choice!”
“Are you saying you’d force me to go to Room 11 B in the motel on State Street?”
“If I have to, yes,” Harpster growled. “You owe me. I’ve given you everything. Your career. Everything. I need this and you’ll comply.”
“Oh, thank you, Neil,” Mills purred.
Harpster sighed with relief. If she wanted to play rough, why didn’t she just say so? “That’s my girl. See you there in twenty minutes?”
Mills turned her chair around to face the glass. She held a cassette recorder and the phone. Between the two was a thin black wire. “You’ll be served papers sometime later today,” she said, her tone frigid. “This little conversation will be icing on the cake.”
“What papers? What icing?”
“Sex harassment, Neil. I’ve done your bidding for too long. It’s payback time.”
The Assistant Managing Editor for Form and Content went slack-jawed. The image of a weedy vegetable garden overcame him. He was a carrot. Bobbie Anne Pace had him by the top leaves. She was yanking.
“Margaret, what is the meaning of this?” the Assistant Managing Editor for News and Information demanded.
“Meaning of what?” Savage cooed.
Pace tilted her head so the rest of the newsroom couldn’t hear what she was saying. She thumbed at the dozen romance novels that littered Savage’s desk. She nudged her Birkenstocks against the columnist’s new pumps. “The books, the shoes, the pants, the … oh dear … Margaret you’re a redhead!”
“Auburn head,” Savage corrected. “The cellophane treatment gives my natural brunette the auburn highlights.”
“A protest, that’s it, isn’t it? This is some form of protest against the way women are made slaves to the cosmetic and fashion industries. Am I right?”
“A protest?” Savage replied. “I prefer celebration. A celebration of my awakening.”
“Awakening to what?”
Savage puckered her lips. She whispered, “My femininity. My passionate femininity. And the man I love.”
“Man? What man?”
“Why Neil of course. What other man could there be?”
Pace’s stomach reeled. She fought for control.
“Not Neil, Margaret,” she pleaded. “Anybody but Neil. You’re forgetting what we’ve fought for, everything we’ve fought for.”
Savage stared right past her toward the glassholeman of her dreams.
In one last reckless attempt, Pace leaned forward and yelped like a puppy.
“It won’t work,” Savage said. “There’s only one pack animal I’m interested in now.”
An hour later, just before the morning meeting, Claudette X stared at the ceiling and prayed, “Lord, I never asked you for much, ’cause I didn’t figure I’d ever get it. That’s just how it was being Afro in America. Now I’m asking. No, I’m begging. Spare me the nightmare I fear is about to become reality.”
The heated aura of an end time had been spinning in the newsroom since the word of News’s death had reached the city desk five days before, building in tighter, more concentric circles with each passing moment. She’d come to work this morning to find Pace wandering toward Lobotomy Lane making hound dog noises. In the daily story budget file, Margaret Savage indicated she was writing a column examining the lessons society could learn from romance novels. Neil Harpster had closed the blinds to his office and taken his phone off his hook. Ed Tower had disappeared just as they had a computer breakdown during transmission of the next five days of comic strips. Kent Jackson said his behind-the-scenes-at-the-Portillo-campaign piece was a bust; they had denied him access the last week. Isabel Perez was acting the prima donna, refusing to write up any more political hate Faxes until she was done with the Barnes story, which admittedly had legs and deserved the great play it was getting.
But the corker was Stanley Geld. He had arrived at his desk this morning in drab olive cotton top and bottom, shaved head, no earring. Like a marine prepared for battle.
About the only people adhering to The Post status quo were Connor Lawlor, working hard in his office; the Zombie, flailing at his keyboard; the Stepford Editors, scrolling through boilerplate copy; and Abby Blitzer and Augustus Croon, hanging out in front of their police scanner.
Claudette X didn’t allow herself to look over toward News’s old desk or to McCarthy’s. For a reason she didn’t understand or didn’t want to, that part of the newsroom represented a sledgehammer that threatened to break down the glass walls of the house of bile that was now The Post.
She glanced at the wall clock and groaned. Ten-thirty.
“Let’s meet, people,” Geld said.
The Stepford Editors
rose and shuffled toward the conference room. The door to Harpster’s Glasshole opened. He tottered out, by turns lurching and reeling between the desks, as if he’d been kicked in the testicles. From the opposite side of the room Pace stumbled from her office, dabbing at her eyes with a tissue.
Claudette X raised her hands toward the ceiling Holy Roller style. “I tell you I’m begging. I’m begging!”
The phone rang. She snatched it from the cradle. “Post, city desk.”
“She’s gonna kill him!” an elderly woman yelled.
“Kill who, ma’am?”
“That little boy. She’s got her little boy and she’s threatening to kill him. They have the cops all over my roof and they got the whole street shut off. Haven’t you heard? Gail Howe, she lives with that artist fellow. She’s gonna kill that boy.”
Claudette X scribbled the address, thanked the woman, and hung up. She lumbered toward Croon and Blitzer. “You got anything on a SWAT operation, something involving a little boy?”
Croon shook his head. “Nothing. But we’ve been listening on the main channel, maybe they’ve gone alternate.”
“Little boy?” Blitzer asked.
“Mom threatening to kill him. Lives with some artist at 3407 Palm View. Go.”
Croon slung cameras and lens bags around his neck. Blitzer remained seated.
“Abby, I said there’s a tragedy going on.”
Blitzer’s shoulders trembled. “I’m not feeling well. Maybe I came back too fast, you know? Maybe I need another day.”
The executive assistant city editor drew on a heretofore untapped reservoir of fury. “This is a daily newspaper and that’s news happening now. You’re the tragedy expert. You’re here. You go!”
The tiny reporter took on a crazed expression. Claudette X took a step backward, afraid Blitzer might bite. Croon knelt and said, “Abby? We’ll go together, all right?”
Blitzer’s eyes spun. Then they dulled. She nodded, took Croon’s hand, and walked.
For a long time, Claudette X stood frozen. This had never happened. Never! She had been scared of that little woman. No, she had been goddamned petrified. I’m losing it, she thought to herself. I’m going down.
Hard News Page 34