Two Jakes

by Lawrence de Maria

  “On a local level, they like to read about how their favorite teams do. They want to see their kid’s name in the paper, or on TV, when he hits a home run or scores a touchdown. Who is getting married. And let’s not forget obituaries. The last kind words we can say about family, friends and neighbors. Does anyone want to leave this vale of tears without being noticed by the communities we live in? Journalists make sure that doesn’t happen.”

  Pearsall decided that he had done enough proselytizing. Any more and he might lose them.

  “By the end of this semester, I hope to give you some practical grounding in the ‘art’ of journalism – which at the very least will help you in whatever careers you carve out for yourselves in the future. After all, being aware of your surroundings and having the ability to put thoughts down succinctly, whether on a page or computer screen, is a powerful competitive asset. I also hope to impart some sense as to why journalism is in ‘crisis,’ and where it may be headed in the 21st Century. You will be asked to read examples of what I consider execrable journalism.”

  “What kind of journalism?”

  It was one of the lineman.

  “Shitty,” Pearsall said, and everyone laughed. “To earn your three credits you will also be required to write articles.” He saw several of the linemen roll their eyes. “Don’t worry, it will be a collaborative effort. I will break you up in teams, so that you can brainstorm, and combine your strengths. Some of you may be writers, others editors. You will soon find out the difference.”

  Pearsall went behind his desk and sat down. He picked up the class roster.

  “Now, let’s get to know one another. I suggest you take notes. You may be writing about each other by the end of the semester.”

  ***

  It was a 20-mile drive from the campus to Pearsall’s two-bedroom log cabin on Bracken Lake. It was isolated; the nearest neighbors a quarter of a mile away on either side, or across the lake. He had purchased it 12 years earlier and cherished the vacations he spent there with Ronnie and Elizabeth. They had walked the spectacular woods, fished and swam off the small dock. At night they read or played Trivial Pursuit or gin rummy. The nearest movie, supermarket and restaurant were 10 miles away.

  Pearsall was surprised to see a car parked in his driveway. It was empty. He walked to the rear of the cabin and saw a man standing on his deck looking out at the lake. The man turned at his approach and walked to meet him. .

  “Jake Scarne?”

  “Yes.”

  “Everett called and said you might be coming by.”

  “I hope it’s no trouble.”

  The two men shook hands.

  “No trouble. But why didn’t you just call?”

  “I have something to tell you. Not the kind of thing I’d use a phone for. I hope you don’t mind me coming back here by the lake. It’s so beautiful.”

  “Not at all. The view belongs to everybody.”

  A fish swirled in the water next to the dock.

  “Bass?”

  “Pickerel,” Pearsall said. “You must be thirsty. How about I throw a few bottles of beer in a bucket.” He pointed to a pair of Adirondack chairs on the grass by the water’s edge. “We can sit and talk until it gets too cold.”

  ***

  By the time Scarne finished his tale, they had each consumed three bottles of Duck-Rabbit Amber Ale, an excellent local brew. Pearsall heard Scarne straight through, without comment. The only signs of distress were a few heavy sighs and a brief turning of his head while he wiped his eyes with a handkerchief and blew his nose.

  “I debated whether to tell you at all, Bob. It finally came down to one thing. If it was me, I’d want to know.”

  Scarne could see people on their lawns across the lake from them. A faint smoke smell and the scent of broiling meat drifted their way and competed with the bracing odor of pine and moss.

  “I owe you and Mack a debt I can never repay,” Pearsall said. “Why did you get involved? Dudley I understand. He was sweet on Ronnie. But we hardly knew one another. This has caused you a lot of trouble.”

  “I was at a point in my life when I needed to do something right. I had a bad experience on a case that made me feel sorry for myself. I was coasting, afraid to get involved in anything that might involve me emotionally. I was letting myself go physically, and mentally. Not anymore. So, you don’t owe me a damn thing.”

  ***

  The sun had set and the sky was clear and rife with stars. Neither man wanted to go in. So Pearsall brought out sweaters and set out a small wooden table, on which he placed a bottle of Jack Daniels, some glasses, ice and a platter of thick ham sandwiches. They were both soon slightly drunk.

  “You know, Jake, after Elizabeth was murdered, I considered the possibility there might be a connection to my job.”

  Scarne was startled and said so.

  “I don’t mean right away. At first, I went off the deep end. I guess you know that. Just had to get out of there. But after I came down here I had time to think. It was by no means a certainty. But I didn’t rule it out.” He was quiet for several moments. “We had a great life on Staten Island as kids. Like living in the Midwest, in the midst of the biggest city on Earth. Even later, when I got married, it was pretty decent. When you have kids, you reconnect with old friends because their kids are going to school with yours. Parties, barbecues where three, four generations knew each other. A lost world. Never happen again.” He was silent longer this time. “Those bastards are trying to turn the Island into a sewer. Barbarians. Greedy fucking barbarians.”

  EPILOGUE – ONE MONTH LATER

  Evelyn Warr walked into Scarne’s office folding back the Metro Section of The New York Times to one of its inside pages. She placed the paper on his desk and tapped a story. Scarne stopped opening some mail he had collected from his apartment mailbox on the way to work. He picked up the paper and saw the small two-column headline that Evelyn had helpfully circled in red:

  Staten Island Editor

  Resumes Position

  By Robert Huber

  (New York) - The Richmond Register announced today that Robert Pearsall is returning as City Editor. Mr. Pearsall, a Pulitzer Prize winner, is currently an adjunct professor at Bracken College, a small liberal arts institution in North Carolina. He will finish the semester and take up his duties in January, according to a statement released by Beldon Popp, the Register’s Managing Editor.

  “We are delighted that Bob Pearsall has agreed to come back to the Register,” Popp said. “No one cares more about Staten Island, its people and its history than Bob. During his watch as city editor, the paper reached new heights of professionalism and relevance.”

  That was an apparent reference to a series of articles on nursing home abuses that were commissioned by Mr. Pearsall and reinforced by opinion pieces and editorials he wrote himself. The coverage, which started out as a local borough story, exploded nationally when Mr. Pearsall dispatched reporters who uncovered similar abuses in the nursing home’s operations in other states. Mr. Pearsall and the Register won a Pulitzer, the only one in the 108-year-old daily’s history.

  Mr. Pearsall left the Register shortly after the death of his only child, Elizabeth, a high school honors student who was murdered during a botched daytime burglary of their home. Mr. Pearsall, who had recently lost his wife to cancer, received news of his daughter’s death while at work.

  Prior to that, Mr. Pearsall spent his entire career at the Register, starting as a young reporter on the night staff. A graduate of Wagner College in the Grymes Hill section of Staten Island ….”

  Scarne put the paper down and Evelyn surprised him with a very undignified high-five. He went back to his mail as she went about tidying up his office, a task that he didn’t deem necessary and often found annoying. But he wasn’t going to let anything bother him today.

  There was a letter from his co-op board. What now? Good humor gone, he slit the letter open angrily and began to read. Suddenly he laughed.

>   “What’s so funny?”

  He handed her the letter, which she read aloud:

  “Dear Mr. Scarne:

  The board would just like to thank you for your quick response to our previous missive regarding your portion of the assessment for the building reconstruction project. Your funds have been placed in an interest-bearing account. Please be assured that should the project come in under budget, any remaining principal, plus interest, of course, will be refunded to you.”

  She looked at him.

  “Dudley?”

  Scarne grinned.

  “How do you think Pearsall will do?”

  “There’s more Pulitzers out there,” Scarne replied. “The barbarians who run Staten Island will find it tougher sledding now.” He put his feet on his desk and clasped his hands behind his neck. “You know, I’ve got a sudden craving for a jelly donut. How about calling down to the coffee shop for a couple?”

  THE END

  Keep Reading:

  An excerpt from CAPRIATI’S BLOOD,

  an Alton Rhode mystery from the author of SOUND OF BLOOD and MADMAN’S THIRST

  follows on the next page!

  CAPRIATI’S BLOOD

  By Lawrence De Maria

  Copyright © 2012 by Lawrence De Maria

  PROLOGUE

  “They look smaller than the last bunch.”

  “You’ll get more in the box,” the elderly woman working the counter said. “Same price. You can’t beat it.”

  “They taste the same?”

  “If anything, they are sweeter.” She pointed to a stand a few feet away. “We have some free samples cut up over there. Try them.”

  The man looked over at the table and saw that some flies hadn’t needed an invitation.

  “I’ll take your word for it.” His mother probably wouldn’t know the difference. At least that was what he’d been told. The information had eased his conscience. Why risk a visit to someone who wouldn’t even recognize her own son? But perhaps the occasional – and anonymous – gifts would soon be unnecessary. But just the thought of what he was going to do sent rivulets of sweat down the man’s sides. “What do I owe you?”

  “It comes to $34.95, shipping included east of the Mississippi.”

  Prices were going up on everything.

  “Where’s it going?”

  The customer recited the address. Three times. Like everyone else in the goddamn town, the clerk was a few years past her expiration date. That was one reason he was about to take the biggest risk of his life.

  “Want to include a card?”

  “No.”

  “What’s the return address?”

  “If it doesn’t get there,” he said, smiling. “I don’t want them back.”

  “I know, but we can apply a refund to your account.”

  “I don’t have an account.”

  “It would be credited to your card. We take them all. American Express, MasterCard, Visa, Discover. Debit cards, too.”

  “I’m paying cash, don’t worry about it.”

  “Well, if you give us your address, phone number and email, we can contact you.”

  He wanted to throttle the old crone. But long ago, for safety’s sake, the man learned not to make a scene.

  “No, thanks.”

  “We send out emails about our specials. People love them.”

  He took a deep breath and forced another smile. Then he pulled out his wallet and handed the woman $40.

  “Just send the box. Keep the change.”

  ***

  It took the man an hour and a half to drive to Fort Lauderdale and settle in at the rundown motel off Dixie Highway straight out of the 1980’s and run by a couple of Russians, which he thought was ironic considering what he was about to do. He registered using one of the many phony I.D.’s he’d collected over the years. They’d wanted a credit card at the desk “for incidentals,” which from the look of the place might include pest control, but the extra hundred bucks he gave them along with the room charge he prepaid shut the Russkies up. They assumed he just wanted to get laid and didn’t want to leave a paper trail. They were half right.

  The call he planned to make on the room phone wasn’t going to cost a hundred bucks. It would be short, sweet and to the point. A previous call, made a few days earlier from a similar dump in Sarasota, had insured that the lawyer would be in at 4 P.M. to take his call. The lawyer’s secretary was a dim bulb but the mention that he had important information about the lawyer’s main client finally sealed the deal.

  The man looked at his watch. An hour to go. There was a bar across the street from the motel. He walked across and had three stiff bourbons. The last one barely managed to stop the tremor in his hand. One of the rummies sitting on a nearby stool smiled in commiseration. He pegs me as an alky like him, the man thought. He doesn’t now I’m just scared shitless.

  ***

  “It’s that call you’ve been expecting, Mr. Rosenberg.”

  His secretary stood in the doorway to his office and could have announced the arrival of the Messiah with less fanfare. She was all of 22 and proof to Samuel Rosenberg that the New York City public education system had gone into the toilet. He had tried to get her to use his first name and the phone intercom, with no luck on either.

  Rosenberg sighed. She had only recently mastered the basic legal forms he rarely produced. His previous secretary was canned for running her mouth in the wrong places and the lawyer decided that if he had to choose between stupid and indiscreet, stupid was the way to go.

  “Thank you, Francine,” he said. “That’s a fetching outfit you are wearing today.”

  She smiled and twirled away. Her clothes were still terrible, he knew, but at least they covered her midriff. That was one battle won.

  “This is Samuel Rosenberg,” he said into the phone. He looked at the calendar on his desk for the name. “What can I do for you, er, Mr. Wagner?”He put his feet up on his desk and rocked back in his chair. “You mentioned something about one of my clients. I have many. Can you be more specific.”

  “Quit dicking around, counselor. You don’t want me to be specific. We both know who we’re talking about. I want you to be an intermediary between us. I have a proposal, a trade.”

  “I’m listening.”

  “I know who killed Fred Jarvis.”

  Rosenberg’s feet came off the desk as he sat up. Like every attorney on Staten Island, he remembered the unsolved killing. Jarvis was a piece of crap, a crook, but a lawyer nonetheless. If crooked lawyers became targets on Staten Island, who was safe?

  “If it wasn’t you,” Rosenberg said coldly, “then I suggest you contact the police. If you need representation, I can suggest someone. What does this have to do with my client?”

  “You’re client was with me. He saw everything, too.”

  Jesus H. Christ. He reached for a pad and noted the time, just because he felt he had to do something. He looked at the caller I.D. It said “Unknown Number.”

  “I thought that might get your attention. I guess he forgot to mention it. We were young, and just along for the ride, so to speak. Even so, we might have been implicated as accessories. Not that we were inclined to say anything back then. We were all just one happy family. But things have changed. I read the papers. He’s got a shitpot of reasons why he’d want the murder solved now, capische? He would probably love to blow the whistle, but can’t, not without corroboration. So, here’s the deal.”

  After the man finished speaking, Rosenberg said, “I’ll see what I can do.”

  “It won’t be easy, pal, there is a slight problem.”

  “What’s that?”

  “Your client wants to kill me.”

  ***

  A half hour later Rosenberg pulled into the Crooke’s Point Marina in Great Kills Harbor. Not for the first time he reflected that, considering who owned many of the boats docked there, the “e” could have been dropped from the marina’s name.

  Nando Carlucci was stan
ding on the bridge of a Grady White whose engine was just then rumbling to life. Rosenberg climbed aboard clumsily. He didn’t like boats, or fishing. But it was hard to bug a boat, especially when his client belonged to a boat club that allowed him the use of dozens of crafts of varying sizes on short notice. At least the Grady White was big enough to have an interior cabin. It really was cold. Ten minutes later he and Carlucci, the grossly overweight head of Staten Island’s last remaining Italian crime family, were cruising a half mile offshore, far from any possible listening devices aimed their way. Yes, thank God for the Grady, Rosenbrg thought. Nando in anything smaller was an invitation to a capsize.

  “So, what the fuck is so urgent?”

  The lawyer told him. Carlucci stared at him for a full minute.

  “I can’t believe the balls on the guy. After what he did to me. He’s right, I’ll kill him. What did he call himself?”

  “Said his name was Wagner.”

  “Son of a bitch.”

  When Carlucci calmed down, he said, “What does he want?”

  Rosenberg braced himself for another tirade.

  “One million dollars and a head start after the trial.”

  Carlucci erupted again, flinging charts and ashtrays around the cabin. When he stopped, he said, “What do you think? Can you swing the deal?”

  “I think so. It would be a feather in the D.A.’s cap. Can you swing the million?”

  “Yeah, but tell him some of it has to be in jewelry, mostly diamonds.”

  Rosenberg didn’t want to know where the jewelry was coming from. There had been a rash of burglaries in some of the borough’s most upscale neighborhoods over the past few months. The cops were stumped, since some of the homes had state-of-the-art alarm systems. But the burglars vanished before the response cars arrived on the scene.

  ***

  Wary at first, the D.A. and his assistants had grown more interested and animated as Carlucci and his lawyer outlined his plan in more detail during several secret meetings.