by Howard Owen
But Sandy’s the one, I know, who always has to make The Call, the one who then has to see a lifetime of friends and acquaintances come trudging up and then trudging out, escorted by HR, some of them in tears, some of them glaring at her as if she were responsible.
“Tough day,” I say. Sandy gives me a nod so small and tight that the security camera might not have caught it. Sandy’s divorced with two kids in college.
Wheelie comes puffing in, shaking his head and muttering something about how much he hates all this. He straightens his tie as we walk past Sandy and into the sanctum sanctorum.
James H. Grubbs doesn’t bother to stand up. He motions for us to take a seat. He looks a little haggard, pale even by Grubby’s standards. It really can’t be that much fun to fire people who once befriended you as a young reporter. But Grubby’s got the MBA playbook, the one that says the only morality is what’s good for the company. Coincidentally, doing what’s good for the company is good for Grubby, who can always take a Xanax when he needs a good night’s sleep.
“I wanted to get an update on what’s going on with the Simpson murder.”
Wheelie fills him in.
“So, we’re done with this one, until the trial?”
Wheelie nods his head.
I clear my throat. I should shut up. I can’t.
“Not exactly.”
Grubby acts as if he was expecting it. I hear Wheelie groan.
“Not exactly?”
I tell them both about my conversations with Philomena Slade and Marcus Green.
“His mother and his lawyer don’t think he did it?” Grubby says. “Well, we’d better get all over that, then. Stop the presses.”
“I’m not saying he didn’t do it. But I think we ought to look around a little, see if things check out.”
“Well, I don’t think so. So don’t do it.”
I’m a little surprised, I must say. Grubby is a cautious man, but he isn’t above selling newspapers, and he’s got to know that this story has everything the circulation department could ever hope for.
He looks at Wheelie.
“We’re done here,” he says, and my managing editor gets up to go.
I start to say something else, but Wheelie takes me by the arm. I shut up and leave.
“What the fuck?” I inquire back downstairs in Wheelie’s office. “We’re dropping this?”
“No,” Wheelie says. “We’re just not going to create our own news. The arraignment’s tomorrow, right? After that, we’ll wait for the trial.”
“What is this all about?”
Wheelie shuts the door.
“Just between you and me,” he says. “This never, ever leaves this room.”
I nod.
“It’s about the Whitehursts.”
The penny drops. The Whitehursts own the paper, have owned the paper since before the Civil War. Grubby is the first non-family publisher, and everybody in Richmond knows his predecessor isn’t just sitting back and giving the new boy free rein. Giles Whitehurst, a hale and blustery eight-five with no heirs desiring a career in newspapering, is still the chairman of the board, and chairman of the board trumps publisher.
“Did you know,” Wheelie asks, “that Giles Whitehurst and Harper Simpson were fraternity brothers at U.Va.?”
I confess that I am deficient in my knowledge of Alicia Simpson’s father.
“Well, apparently, the sister went to Daddy, who called Grubby and told him to back off, that the family has been through enough anguish already. They just want it dropped.”
I wonder out loud why Lewis Simpson Witt would think we weren’t dropping it.
“Maybe she knows something about the way you stick that big nose of yours into everybody’s business.”
“You know what they say, Wheelie. Big nose, big . . .”
“Yeah, yeah. Just let this one ride, though. I don’t want Sandy giving you a wakeup call.”
He grimaces as he looks out into the newsroom, where a photographer is being gently led out of the building carrying a cardboard box. He looks our way and pauses long enough to balance the box on his hip with one hand and give Wheelie the finger.
“Don’t worry,” I tell Mal Wheelwright, “anything I do, I do on my own. They won’t be able to trace it back to you.”
Wheelie groans again. It is not the response he was hoping for. I can’t help that. Now I’m interested. All of my best stories have come after somebody told me to back off. Most of my worst screw-ups have, too.
As I put my hand on the door handle, Wheelie says, “Wait.”
I wait.
“You’re off the story.”
I wait some more.
“There isn’t anything more to write anyhow, Willie. We’re just going to have Baer pick it up. He’ll cover the arraignment.”
“This is nuts. Baer doesn’t know shit about this case.”
“He’s a quick learner.”
“Goddammit, Wheelie, you’re giving this story away. There’s more to this. Go back up there and tell that son of a bitch we’re a newspaper. Grow a pair, for God’s sake.”
Even as I say it, I know my mouth has again outrun my brain.
Wheelie turns kind of pale, and then his face starts to glow. He comes around his desk so fast that at first I think he’s going to hit me, and my last act here will be to punch out the managing editor.
“Don’t you ever talk to me like that again, even in here with the door closed,” he says. “I argued your case before you ever got there. I lost, OK? Unlike some people, when I’m overruled, I do what’s best for the team. Unlike some people, who shall remain you, I’m a team player.”
I have several other things on the tip of my tongue. They’re waiting in line, actually, dying for their moment on the stage.
But, for once, my brain reels them all back in before they can slip past my teeth. I apologize and slip out quietly. Right now, I don’t need to be headed out the door carrying a cardboard box.
CHAPTER EIGHT
Wednesday
This morning, the only mention of the Alicia Parker Simpson murder is in editorial.
Apparently, Giles Whitehurst, Lewis Witt and the rest of the Simpson family are not opposed to certain kinds of publicity. Our crack editorial writers, defenders of truth, justice and the white American way, took Richard Slade to the woodshed. They even saw his arrest as a repudiation of DNA testing, somehow. (Editorially, we’re not big fans of science around here. See: evolution, global warming.)
Some of our readers will smack their lips over their Cheerios and nod approvingly, shaking their heads over fuzzy-headed criminal coddlers who would turn such a man as this loose again. Many others, no doubt, will believe that we are once again afflicting the afflicted. Maybe that’s why we don’t have as many readers as we once did. But that’s just my opinion.
I’m hanging out the window over Monroe Park, trying to direct Camel smoke in that direction, when the phone rings. Custalow gets it. Holding the phone in his hand, he mouths “Kate.”
I remind her, before she can get really wound up, that I don’t write the editorials.
“I know that,” she says. “But how can you work for those people?”
I tell her I’ll quit tomorrow if she’ll stop charging me rent.
“I just might,” she says. We’re both bluffing.
She asks me if I’m going to the arraignment. I tell her I’m off the story.
“But I still plan to be there,” I add. I don’t think Wheelie and Grubby will fire me for that. I think I’m free to do what I want when they’re not paying me.
“So, I guess you’re not going to be much help to us.”
“Does that mean you’re definitely on the defense team?”
“If, by ‘team,’ you mean Marcus and me, yes.”
I tell her that I’m still not sure about Richard Slade, but that I want to check around a little more.
“On your own time?”
“If that’s what it takes. But I’m no
t going to get my ass fired over this.”
She snorts.
“Getting fired from that place would be like getting evicted from the bus station bathroom.”
I tell her I’ll see her at the arraignment.
It’s going to be a busy day. In addition to the arraignment, services for Alicia Simpson are scheduled for three P.M. I told Sally Velez that I’d be in by five-ish (without, of course, giving the funeral as the reason). Since I have one less story to cover than I did a day ago, I have some time on my hands.
When I get to the courtroom, I see a sparse crowd consisting mostly of news media types. Philomena Slade is sitting by herself a couple of rows back. The entourage that was there to celebrate her son’s freedom has vanished. It is as invisible as it apparently was for the twenty-eight years he was locked up.
“Mind if I sit here?” I ask her.
She seems to take a couple of seconds to recognize me. Then she tells me to get the hell away from her. She obviously has read our paper, including the editorial pages. All things considered, I can’t believe she subscribes. I move two rows back. In the same row on the other side, Mark Baer looks surprised to see me. I ignore him, and the judge comes in before Baer can ask me what the hell I’m doing here.
Richard Slade is bedecked in an orange jumpsuit and handcuffs. It doesn’t take long for him to be charged with first-degree murder. It doesn’t even take that long for the judge to deny bail. Marcus Green’s face is a billboard, telling the world what a gross injustice has been done to his client, but it’s all for show. Everybody in Richmond knew how this was going to turn out.
They take him away, and we all leave. On the steps outside, Green gives our assembled fact-gatherers a lecture on the right of every man to have his day in court and not be tried in the news media. He looks meaningfully at me when he says that.
“Before this lamentable episode is over,” he says, actually shaking his fist, “some of those who have appointed themselves as this innocent man’s judges will hide their faces in shame.”
Well, I doubt it, but it’s a nice thought, if Marcus is right.
Out of the corner of my eye, I see Philomena walking toward her beat-up Camry. She looks as defeated as I’ve seen her. I decide to try again. All the others are still in the thrall of Marcus Green.
I reach her before she can get in her car and lock the doors.
“Ms. Slade. Philomena. Wait.”
She tries to get around me. I move with her in an awkward dance to keep her from getting into the car until I can convince her, again, that I am not the devil.
“Get away from me,” she says, and I can see that she is near tears.
“I’m on his side,” I tell her. “I want to find out what happened.”
“You already know what happened. I told you what happened. And then you all went and wrote that, that stuff. Family, my behind.”
“It wasn’t me. They don’t ask my opinion on editorials.”
She finally manages to get past me and into her car. Before she slams the door, she looks up at me.
“I think we both know which side you’re on. You’re gettin’ a nice salary, it looks like to me.”
As she starts the car and speeds away, all defenses of my righteousness and purity in this sorry episode curdle in my mouth like sour milk.
Baer finally catches up with me as Philomena is leaving.
“What are you doing here?” he asks. He seems a little winded. I can see already the pudgy middle-aged hack he’s morphing into. It’s always sad when you see them come here fresh out of college, all lean and hungry, and then you watch them put on a couple or three pounds a year and start losing their youth a day at a time. Although, with Baer, it’s not all that sad. He is an opportunist, and I don’t really like opportunists.
I tell him that I’m exercising my right as a citizen, that I wanted to get a close look at how our judicial system works.
“You know that I’m covering it, though, right?”
“That’s what they tell me.”
“They just thought maybe you were, like, too close to the case.”
Too close as in asking too many questions. But neither Grubby not the Simpson family, and certainly not Mark Baer, knows just how close to this case I am, at least not yet.
“So who was that?” he nods in the direction of Philomena Slade’s now departed car.
He probably ought to know her on sight, but I tell him.
“His mother? You talked to his mother?”
“Tried to. After that editorial this morning, she wasn’t in the mood.”
“Yeah,” Baer says, agreeing with me for once. “That was a little hard to swallow.”
I turn to leave. Baer stops me.
“But, you don’t have any reason to believe he didn’t do it?”
I tell him I don’t know anything. Yet.
“But you’re going to find out. I know you.”
“I’m not empowered to find out. I’m off the story, remember?”
He doesn’t believe a word of it, but he lets me go.
Marcus Green has finished dispensing quotes, and he and Kate are waiting for me.
“Those guys,” Marcus says, shaking his head. “They eat this stuff up. Oh, wait. Did I say that out loud?”
He gives me a quick grin, then looks around to make sure no TV camera is there to catch him not looking like Frederick Douglass with a hangover.
“But seriously,” Kate says, “how can they just write something like that without waiting for any kind of trial, without any kind of hard facts at all?”
“Well, they did preface it with, ‘If the facts are as they appear to be.’ ”
“Yeah, that was considerate. And then they went on for ten paragraphs excoriating our client as the lowest form of scum.” She reminded me that, last year, the paper urged the “utmost caution in rushing to judgment” when one of our leading state senators was arrested for shooting his wife to death. Then, after his slam-dunk conviction, they expressed their sorrow over “the downfall of a man who has done the Commonwealth much good.”
“They might be doing us a favor,” Marcus says. “Maybe they can editorialize us into a change of venue.”
I note that his client might have a better chance keeping his business in the city and not depending on some suburban or deep country jury for his deliverance.
I ask them if they want to join me at Perly’s for either late breakfast or early lunch. Marcus Green has to get back to his office. Kate, who usually turns down such offers from me, surprises me by saying yes. Breaking bread with her twice in two days will set the post-marital record.
“I’m on a kind of leave of absence,” she tells me when we’re seated and I remark on her willingness to blow off an hour or so of company time. It turns out that Bartley, Bowman and Bush isn’t all that thrilled about Kate working on this particular case. When I think about it, it makes sense. The old partners in her firm have, like Giles Whitehurst, probably had more than a few bourbons with Harper Simpson and would like to distance themselves from his daughter’s alleged murderer.
Kate confirms this when she tells me that old Felix Bowman was one of the founding members of the Quarry.
“Blood’s pretty thick around here,” I observe.
She can use BB&B’s offices for now, and she can come back to the land of the living when she’s finished with this case, presumably with no ill effects. Or so they say.
There’s something else, though. Kate would deny it, but I was not consistently and completely oblivious to her when we were married. I knew when she was holding back, when she had a bug up her butt.
We finally get around to it, about the time she’s finishing the last of her eggs.
“I guess you could say I’m kind of on leave from Greg, too.”
There aren’t many things an ex-husband can say about that without stepping on a tender part of his anatomy. So I shut up and let her talk, pitching in with the occasional “I see” and “uh-huh” to keep t
hings flowing.
There’s nothing original or startling in what she’s telling me. Mr. and Mrs. Ellis have decided on a little unofficial trial separation “just to figure out where we’re headed.” They don’t seem to have as much in common as they once thought they did. I think but don’t say that this is often the case.
“I don’t know why I’m telling you all this,” she says.
“Maybe because I can keep a secret?”
She shakes her head.
“No. Hell, everybody’s going to know about it anyway.”
Kate isn’t completely unlike me, God help her. Maybe there are some people who just aren’t meant to say the magic words and spend the rest of their lives never considering all the roads not taken.
“Well,” I say, looking at my watch, “I’d better go home and change.”
“You’re going to the funeral?”
“Yeah, I thought I would.”
“Would you mind if I came back to the Prestwould with you? I could wait while you change. I’m about as dressed for a funeral as I intend to be. We could go together.”
She graces me with a smile that hints of very un-Kate-like shyness.
“I’d like to see what you’ve done with—or to—the place.”
Probably not the best idea, but we’ve each had a Bloody Mary, and I can’t think of a reason to say no, other than “What will the neighbors think?” Which would be a very stupid thing to say right now. It would indicate that I believe my ex has something in mind other than convenience and a chance to see the inside of the place for which she pays the mortgage.
So she follows me over and parks in a visitor’s spot.
McGrumpy is, as always, ensconced in the lobby. He makes a point of having a very courtly conversation with Kate, who never seemed to mind him as much as I do. She tells him that we’re going to Alicia Simpson’s funeral service. So is McGrumpy, along with about half the Prestwould. At least three of our residents are near or distant cousins. There are about a million and a quarter people living in the general vicinity, but then there’s the small village, undetectable to the untrained eye, of Old Richmond, carrying seven generations of history to the latest wedding or funeral.