“It killed me to do it, but I kept my promise. By the end of the month I was taking classes at the local college. By year’s end, I had transferred to the University of Washington’s business school and eventually dropped out when I decided I was better off figuring out this for myself. By happenstance, it was also at the UW I met my wife, Grace. She was this cute little gal in one of the fancy sorority houses. It was also when I first starting reading Rothbard. Grace and I used to go to the Seattle library together and read his stuff for hours; well, at least I did. She was never that into it, but she loved to hear me talk about it.”
“What about that investigation you were working on?” Carl inquired.
“It was later picked up by a local blogger based on my previously published articles. He eventually broke the story when the council was found guilty and two of them resigned.”
“Does it bother you?”
“I don’t like leaving things unfinished.”
“What happened next?”
“I won’t bore you with all the details, but I started several business ventures. Most of them I sold off. But along the way I made a lot of friends and acquaintances. I also made a habit of doing them favors, but reminding them I did nothing for free. Usher was one of them. Before he moved here, he was a consultant. We made a lot of money together. More money than I ever dreamt I’d have. I learned the important of wealth, the power that it buys you and the security it offers. But I also experienced its limitations. It never gave me the same joy that reporting did.”
Carl was transfixed. “What made you come here?”
Norton refilled their coffee mugs from the pot. He sipped on it thoughtfully, his eyes looking off to the side.
“Grace died right around the time the earthquake hit,” he said. “I wanted to die and be with her again. All my money meant nothing. I contemplated giving it all up. Then I had this dream one night. Grace was standing there beside my bed, telling me to use my fortune to leave a legacy that would last, the kind of legacy I would be proud of. The last she wanted of me was to idealize her and spend the rest of my life in perpetual mourning.
“It wasn’t difficult to know where to look. Newspapers had seen a brief surge in popularity but had closed due to the 95 percent tax rate. Usher informed me that an entire group was moving to Seattle to open shop. He did a little research for me on the market. We crunched the numbers and it was clear the demand existed. We wouldn’t have to sell it. Its very nature as contraband sold itself. In fact, I remember one of the focus groups we formed discussing why they wanted to buy a newspaper. One of the men in the group said he didn’t believe voting did anything. He had no faith in the political process. Nor did he think any of the politicians cared about him or his problems. Buying a newspaper, he said, was an act of political resistance. It was a vote that counted, a vote with his wallet.
“But it wasn’t enough just to start up a newspaper using the wealth I had accumulated. I wanted my paper to be different from all the others, to be something greater. To me, the Cascadian is not just the name on the masthead. I hope it remains when I go. That’s what I wanted from you.”
He got up from his chair and gripped Carl’s shoulder firmly. “Life must go on, my friend. Whatever happens, you must keep going. It’s what I would have told my son.”
Norton headed toward the entrance, pausing temporarily to gesture encouragingly to Carl.
“There are more ways to leave a legacy than having children,” he said. “You are proof of that.”
He didn’t give Carl the chance to reply. He was out the door and gone, his footsteps audible for a moment before petering out.
Carl sat at the table for hours, motionless. He stirred only when Tom appeared from his room, rubbing his eyes as he yawned loudly. Finding Carl in the main room, he noticed the two plates and coffee mugs.
“How you feeling?” he asked.
“I’ll live.”
“Yeah?”
“In fact,” Carl said as he reached into his pocket, “you can have this.”
He lobbed the ring box to Tom, who opened it with raised eyebrows.
“Sorry, but I’m already taken,” he joked.
“No, you idiot. It’s an in-house security device.”
“How so?”
“Leave it on the floor when neither one of us is here. If we come back and it’s missing, we know someone’s been here.”
Tom shrugged as he put it away and sat down.
“What did Norton say?” he asked.
“Nothing, really. Just wanted to make sure I was still in the game.”
“Are you?”
“Yeah. By God, I’m in for good, even if I’m in over my head.”
Chapter Twenty One
“Is that all you got for me?” Tom asked.
Carl rechecked his notes carefully. The pounding of typewriter keys on the other side of the phone drowned out most of his voice.
“That’s it,” he said.
“I should have it done in a bit.”
Carl was unsettled. The story should have had more weight to it, he felt. The proposal to unincorporate Seattle and turning it over to the King County Metropolitan Council was no trivial matter. But the quotes from his sources within City Hall and elsewhere had been half-hearted. The statements lacked the punch needed to give the narrative the forceful angle he had envisioned when he had first picked up on it. No one would say how things would turn out either way.
He rubbed his eyes, feeling the bags underneath them. He hadn’t slept in the three days since he had heard “the news.”
That was what they were calling it. They couldn’t even speak of it, not to themselves or to others.
“You alright?” Tom asked.
“Yeah, fine.”
“You’ll be here around deadline, right?”
“Yeah.”
Carl hung up and frowned, glancing around the safe house. The guards assigned there were new, unrecognizable to him. They were also young by comparison. He was not yet thirty, but Seattle drained from a man in one year what a normal life took a decade to consume. The effects weren’t on the body as much as the soul. To have worked at the Cascadian or any other newspaper for seven years was an achievement.
“You good?” they asked, having noticed the scowl on his face.
“Dandy,” he replied as he walked past them without looking them in the eye.
His car was parked in the usual spot underneath a canopy. He looked around the street block, trying to focus his thoughts. The news still hit him hard. He was hardly able to concentrate on this story.
Maybe that was why the quotes were so trite; he hadn’t asked the appropriate question.
Most of the time, he couldn’t care less what happened in a story. His emotions were removed, nothing but the facts. This one was among the exceptions. He didn’t want the city to unincorporate. He had no love for the City Council, an emasculated collection of halfwits. The county council wasn’t any better.
It was the change he hated. There had already been too much change for his taste.
It was impossible to not notice the transformation as he drove south toward the newspaper. Urban prairies that had once hosted local informal sports games had been replaced with shanties and the social refuse from the other parts of the state. Gangbangers stood on the sidewalk outside the homes they had taken over, having expelled the residents by direct or implied threats.
Carl had done the requisite story on the phenomenon in the hope of generating sympathy, but all the protestation hadn’t stopped the migration. Communities where he had known everyone by name were now populated with outside elements.
It was irrelevant that they weren’t even from outside the state, that they posed no threat to him physically, or that they detested the ISA as much as he did. They still weren’t one of his people. They were strangers whose intentions he did not know, whose word he did not trust. The newcomers spoke with a touch of arrogance, as though they were as much a part of the city as
he.
Except their blood had not been spilled to keep it their city. They had not fought to preserve what was theirs. They wanted to share ownership of something they had not had a hand in crafting.
He drove up to one of the streets where the youth used to play near an urban prairie. He looked out of his window longingly, dismayed to see no one below the age of forty to be seen, all men. They looked at Carl politely and nodded, but they weren’t friendly. It was far removed from the welcoming milieu that had made it one of his favorite places to go for tips and gossip. The men had come months ago as part of a large wave of homeless people from the Eastside following crackdowns on their encampments. They were willing to live where the petty gangs dared to operate, but they weren’t there to build or create a new way of life. It was all temporary. They would leave as soon as a better opportunity arose elsewhere.
He had seen it before. They would come, live as best as they could, then flee when the gangs made it intolerable. They left nothing behind except a mess for someone else to clean up.
The newspaper would not be the one to do it. Following the short-lived war with Fremont that now seemed like a lifetime ago, the Cascadian editorial board had enacted a strict neutrality policy to prevent future conflicts over squabbles that had no impact on the bottom line. It had been made clear to the street gangs they would be left alone if the favor was returned.
The gangs were wise enough to take the offer. But it had come with a cost. Carl had been forced to stand aside while they had terrorized the locals and set up protection rackets. A subscription to the Cascadian was sometimes an insurance against break-ins or muggings, but other times it wasn’t. Only organized associations like Pike Place could stand up to them.
He had done his best to use his notoriety as “Killer Carl” to keep the petty thugs off the people’s backs, but he was only one man. His reputation was also not as celebrated as it had been. His penchant for violence as a solution to problems had waned. He knew blood alone would not stem the troubles.
Reminiscing bitterly, he drove away. It was almost time.
But he still wasn’t ready.
***
The newsroom was full when he entered, but he was unnoticed as he greeted Tom beside his desk. The story bin was empty. Internal processes had been perfected over the years. The copy-editors were now apt to grab any spare stories. It was one change he liked. The stringers even had a workplace manual to consult. All they needed was a lousy human resources department and they could call themselves “respectable.”
Looking around the newsroom, Carl found himself just as uneasy as he was elsewhere in the city. The reporters there weren’t strangers, yet they weren’t truly friends. They talked sufficiently for him to get a handful of names. The rest were mere faces to him. Either they died too quickly for him to bother, or they couldn’t relate.
Tom was reading over notes when Carl approached him. Both wore their best striped suits and hats, their shoes glistening from the morning’s polish. His waistcoat and shirt still felt warm from repeated sessions ironing out the wrinkles. Ordinarily, Carl would delegate the task to one of the girls he knew from their neighborhood who worked a maid gig. However, this time he preferred to handle it himself.
“All good with the story?” Carl asked.
“Yep. Got approved just a minute ago.”
“Good.” He glanced over at the office of their news editor, Duane. “I hope he isn’t disappointed with it.”
“He’d have said so.”
“But we’re breaking the news. He may not be willing to bother with that at this point.”
“It’s fine, man. Don’t beat yourself up about it.”
Wiping his forehead with a handkerchief, Carl glanced around the room. That old familiar ambiance ignited feelings of nostalgia, reminding him of the early days when everything they had done was new and bold and untested. Those memories were becoming more and more precious to him as there were fewer men remaining to recall them.
Aside from Tom, there was only Duong from their original group. The rest had died or disappeared. Some had been killed by rival stringers, others by the ISA. Others had fallen prey to too much drinking or other destructive habits. Duong had been the exception; his sense of caution and patience had earned him a position on the editorial board. Carl had been offered a spot there at the same time, but turned it down. He couldn’t leave his beats to someone else. He belonged out there, not inside.
Duong was still one of them. He’d be there for the ceremony. He had not forgotten where he’d come from and who he had to thank for it.
They were heading down the stairway to the back entrance when Tom stopped them both, wincing slightly.
“You going to say anything?” he asked.
“I don’t know. You?”
“Maybe. Just wondered if you had thought of anything.”
He had spent the entire night thinking it over. In the morning, he was just as undecided.
“It’s fine,” Tom said. “They didn’t say there’d even be a chance to speak.”
Carl smiled appreciatively at his friend. The two stood in contrast in how they had aged since first arriving in Seattle. Carl hardly looked a day older, with some daring to call him baby-face. Tom’s face had filled, his features less defined. A few wrinkles here and there around his eyes gave him a dignified appearance. It made him the first person the new writers went to for help, turning him into an unwitting mentor. Over that time his temperament had also changed. His lack of self-certainty had given way to jaded confidence.
They both headed for Tom’s car and after a mile pulled up alongside the curb in front of the old church. It had long been abandoned, and haunted ghost stories kept out most people tempted to use it as a hideout. The bell tower was collapsed, destroyed decades before by the earthquake. The remainder of the building was supported by beams on the outer walls.
Carl would have questioned the structural integrity, but the ceremony’s planner had personally inspected it. The large heavy wooden doors were open for them as they ascended the few steps leading up from the sidewalk. Taking off their fedoras, they went inside the church and immediately smelled a sweet aroma. The inside was shrouded in a transparent veil of incense smoke. Carl could scarcely make out the makeshift pews in the front near the casket or the organ where a musician played an unknown dirge.
Duong had arrived early and was seated in one of the front pews, hat in hand. His head was bowed reverently. To Carl’s knowledge, he wasn’t a man of faith.
However, every man in the room was probably praying the same prayer; that if there was a God, he had embraced Wally Norton upon his death without hesitation.
Carl and Tom sat beside Duong. Only the front pews were occupied. The rest were empty from a lack of attendees.
The wooden casket was partially open, showcasing Norton’s face and chest. The mortuary hired to prepare the body had earned their keep; he looked as though asleep, not dead. Carl had no idea what Norton had looked like when he had been found one morning in his residence after no one had heard from him the entire day.
The official cause of death was heart failure. Carl almost wondered if a broken heart was a better diagnosis. Just days before, he had expressed his misgivings to Carl about how much the city had changed, the newspaper along with it against his efforts. It had been a seemingly offhand remark. In hindsight, Carl recalled the distress in his voice, the sense of loss.
“You going to say something?” Duong asked them.
Tom shrugged lightly. “Don’t know what to say.”
“You, Carl?”
He kept looking at the casket. “Perhaps.”
Finally, the priest, Joseph Kruger appeared in his ceremonial robe and stood beside the casket. He signaled to the organ player, who stopped and hopped off to join the rest of the men in the pews.
Carl eyed Kruger sternly. Norton had ostensibly named him in his will to perform his funeral service. There were hardly any priests to speak of left in Seat
tle. He was another man in the city Carl wasn’t acquainted with, and it didn’t seem appropriate to have him lead the service when others had known Norton better.
Kruger began speaking of spiritual matters, of eternal life after death. Carl’s attention waned as he counted the number of men in attendance. In all, there were only twelve. All of them, except for Kruger, bore the hand scar they had received seven years ago. They were the stringers, writers, and associates that had comprised the original Cascadian news staff.
Kruger set the prayer book he was holding down on the podium, and took out a paper.
“Norton wanted me to read this to you all in the event of his death,” he said. He cleared his throat and began reading. “Farwell, my dear friends. If this is read after my death, I have no doubt that those honoring me in my passing are those who were with me from the beginning. I also have a strange feeling that you will probably be the only ones.”
Every man looked at the other beside him and shook their head ironically.
Kruger went on. “As a man ages, he begins to have a clearer picture of life, a better perspective. I was an old man when I came to this city, knowing I would not live for long. However, I was determined to bring together in my company the best men I could find. The kind of men who would be true and loyal to me and one another. You came from different backgrounds, and you left them and came to me for your own reasons. Nevertheless, you all possessed the qualities I sought. It was the chance of a lifetime. Here, staring at my own impending departure from this world, I am so fortunate to say that I had the opportunity to lead you for the few years I had remaining. We fought the good fight together. We forged bonds that withstood hardship and strife. I do not know if such relationships can or will be duplicated when I am gone. I fear they will not. I can still take comfort in knowing you were there then and you are here now. Someday, you too will join me on the other side. Until then, know that when death came for me I did not greet it with fear and regret, but with pride and dignity. Do not forget your duty to each other.”
The Redeemers Page 31