Oregon Hill (30 page)

J
ust for fun, I get off the elevator at the second floor. The newsroom is humming pretty good for a Tuesday.

I walk past several reporters and editors on the way to my desk. At least a couple look like they’ve seen the ghost of Willie past. I see Mal Wheelwright look out from his little glass box. He starts to stand, then picks up the phone, then puts it down. As he comes out of his office, he’s approaching me the way you might come up to a wild animal that’s escaped from the zoo.

“Are you OK?” Wheelie asks, still out of striking range, looking and wondering where the HR goon is who’s supposed to be escorting me.

“Never better,” I tell him. “You’re going to have to get somebody to cover for me tonight, though. I’ve got something to do.”

“But . . .”

Wheelie’s stymied. No one’s supposed to know who’s getting it in the neck, although obviously everyone does. Again, it’s a newsroom. Since yesterday, the story has been more or less sussed out.

He can’t act like I’ve just been fired, because he’s not supposed to know. This way, his hands are clean, even though any fool can figure out that those pink, manicured digits of his are all over this. He’s been on the fourth floor a lot lately.

So, if he doesn’t know I’m supposed to be fired, he can’t act surprised when I’m not.

Finally, he does the only smart thing. He shuts up and nods his head.

One of the features editors comes over. She’s a little teary.

“Oh, Willie,” she says, throwing her arms around me. “I’m so sorry.”

I need a smoke.

Coming out of the building, I meet Baer coming in.

“I’m sorry, Willie,” he says, holding out his hand. “I know we didn’t always get along, but . . .”

Then he sees that I still have my ID badge. I guess Leon was supposed to rip it off my neck after he explained what my benefits were, beyond the benefit of drawing unemployment.

“Oh,” he says. “Sorry. My bad.”

I tell him it’s going to be his bad indeed if he doesn’t stay the fuck away from my story. I’m pretty sure I can’t get away with punching out Grubby or Wheelie, and Leon would kick my ass. But I need to hit somebody.

Baer wisely scurries into the building.

It takes both hands to get my nicotine fix going. One time, I asked Les how he could work on all those steep roofs. I mean, they’d do churches sometimes with pitches that would have freaked out a mountain goat.

“The key,” Les said, “is to never, ever look down. Just imagine you’re on a little three-foot hill.”

I think Les has more imagination than I do. I feel like I’ve put myself out on the shakiest limb of the biggest tree in town. It’s a long way to the ground.

It’s amazing what a fount of wisdom beetle-browed, addlepated Les Hacker can be. We were watching the playoffs the other night, and this dumbass comes around third, going full bore. He gets at least forty feet down the line when he tries to slam on the brakes and get back to the bag. Of course, he’s tagged a full two feet off the base, flopped out on the ground like a dead mackerel.

“He lost his nerve,” Les said. “You’ve got to keep going.”

That probably is the core of Les’s philosophy: Don’t look down and keep going forward.

OK, Les. Be my mentor.

I call Kate and ask her if we can meet for coffee.

“What is it?” she asks me.

I tell her I might have what she needs to induce Bartley, Bowman and Bush to make her a partner, although she’ll have to change her name back to Black. Alliteration is everything.

“I’d be happy right now if they didn’t make me unemployed,” she says. Apparently, that august firm is not thrilled to see its name sullied by proximity to accused predator and murderer Martin Fell.

She says she can get away in about an hour, so we settle on lunch.

I call the Fourth Precinct. Shiflett isn’t in, and they don’t know when he will be. I tell the guy at the desk that it’s about the Martin Fell case. No, I won’t talk to anyone else. He goes away and comes back. Shiflett will be on duty at two.

I meet Kate at Kitchen 64. I order a cheeseburger with sweet potato fries and a Legend lager. Yes, I tell the waitress, the big one. What can I say? When I’m nervous, I eat. And drink.

Kate starts off ordering salad, then changes it to something called a Southern fried chicken salad. Poor Kate. She wasn’t a healthy eater when I met her, and about the only things she came away with after the divorce were a few of my bad habits. As long as a dish has some healthy words in it, like “chicken” and “salad,” she can convince herself that she’s being virtuous. I pray that her hummingbird metabolism doesn’t slow down. Sadly, it was her various appetites that really attracted me to her.

This late in the game, there’s not much point in holding out any longer, although I can’t let go of it all. Not yet.

It’s time, though, to at least show her that little piece of non-biodegradable crap Custalow picked up at the boat landing.

She looks at it, turning it over as if more can be determined by inspecting the other side.

“And you found this upstream from where her body was found? I mean, there’s no way somebody put it there or something?”

I tell her that I can’t see how anybody but David Junior Shiflett could have managed to lose that particular item at that particular place.

She thinks about it for a while.

“You haven’t taken this to the police?”

I shake my head.

“Why? I mean, you know Chief Jones.”

Yeah, I tell her, and I know cops in general. They are more inbred than cocker spaniels. They won’t turn on their own unless the evidence is written in red letters three feet high. L. D. Jones might believe my story, and something might get done, but not fast enough, especially with Andi forced into hiding. I am in search of fast, fast, fast relief. I am yearning for resolution. Jerry Clower, this redneck comedian I used to enjoy, told a joke about a guy who climbs a tree, thinking he’s going after a possum, and winds up entangled with a bobcat. “Just shoot amongst us,” the guy tells his friends on the ground. “One of us has got to have some relief.”

I need some relief.

Kate says Fell is doing OK, now that he’s out of the general population. She is trying to keep his spirits up, and he swears he won’t do anything as stupid as last Friday again.

“I keep telling him that I’m building a good case,” she says. “I think I can prove that Shiflett called that guy Jenkins on Thursday night, not long before Jenkins moved Fell. But we need more.”

I tell her that, if she will be patient, I will get her more, soon.

“Willie,” she says, taking my face in her hands, forcing her to look at me while I try to swallow a big lump of well-done beef, cheese, bacon and bread, “what else do you know? What are you holding out for?”

But I’ve come too far, doing it my way like old Frank.

“You know he was at the landing,” I tell her. “You know he talked to Jenkins at the jail. You know Fell and his mother couldn’t have cooked up that story about where he was.

“OK, here’s something else: he was grossed-out by blood.” I tell her about the chickens.

“And that’s it?”

I’m silent.

“You son of a bitch,” she says, really angry now. “You’re holding out. You better be holding out, actually. If I’m going to court with what you’ve got, I might as well start sending out résumés right now.”

I don’t know which pisses her off more, knowing I’m still not telling her everything or thinking I’m not holding a strong enough hand to win. I’m afraid that her fried chicken salad and I are giving her indigestion.

So I tell her about Grubby and the deal I made, leaving out the Jackson part.

“You really are crazy,” she says. “I always thought you were, but that was mostly when you were drunk.”

She points toward my twenty-two-ounce draft beer, still my first one of the day.

“But now you’re more less or sober, and you’re still crazy.”

Either that, I tell her, or I’ve got the goods.

I reach across to wipe some chicken grease off her pretty face. She flinches but then allows it.

“You have to trust me,” I tell her, and we both know she’s heard that one before.

“Oh, Willie,” she says, looking down at her plate. “I just wish you trusted
me
.”

Guilty as charged. It was maybe the ugliest part of our marriage. I’d come in at two thirty or she’d be at the beach with some girlfriends and I couldn’t ring her, and the bloodletting would begin. We thought we were adults, thought we could be cool and casual, look the other way. We thought we could get by without trust.

“This will work. I guarantee it,” I tell her. I’m lying through my teeth, but if I say it enough, I’ll believe it, too.

When it’s obvious that she has to put her abused faith in what I tell her and what I don’t, we wrap it up. She insists on Dutch, and I don’t argue much.

“The rent’s overdue,” she reminds me, and I tell her, truthfully this time, that the check is in the mail.

On the way out to our cars, I ask her about Mr. Ellis.

She’s quiet for a few seconds. Uh-oh.

“I don’t know why I’m telling you this,” she says, “since you don’t seem to find me worthy of your confidence, but Mr. Ellis is staying with a friend.”

I have just enough grace not to ask if it’s a female friend.

“I think we can work it out,” she says in voice that tells me she doesn’t think that at all.

We’re at her car. She’s fishing for her keys, trying not to cry.

I lean down so she has to look at me. I feel like I’m talking to a little girl instead of a strong, upwardly mobile lawyer—upwardly mobile, that is, if she doesn’t ruin her career by trusting the likes of me.

“Look, this is all going to work out. All of it. The whole trouble with us was my fault. Only thing you did wrong was marrying me in the first place. Don’t get into instant replays. Patterns do not have to repeat themselves.”

She gets into her car and looks up at me.

“So you say,” is her goodbye line.

I do a quick drive through the Fan. No sign of Awesome Dude. Nobody at the shelter owns up to having seen him, either. When I call Peggy, same thing. She says she’s worried about him, and I tell her I’m on it.

“How’s Les doing?”

I hear her sigh.

“Oh, he’s fine. He had me tie one of his ankles to the bed last night so he’d have to at least wake up before he started looking for the ladder. Kind of reminded me of Walter.”

She giggles a little. Peggy has, through much trial and error, found a way to stay just high enough pretty much from just after breakfast until bedtime.

Walter, whose last name I can’t remember, was briefly married to her. I don’t want to know any more about ropes.

“But he had to get up and piss, and he almost broke his neck, so we’re back to square zero, ground one, whatever.”

I tell her I’ll be by later.

My cell phone rings. It’s Jackson.

“Craziest thing,” he says. “Wheelie just called me. He said they want to talk about a possible job. Something on the copydesk. I ought to tell him to shove it up his ass.”

I advise against this. I remind him that Bob Parks, who was a pretty good assistant editor until they laid him off last year, is selling used cars. I don’t have the heart to say what he and I both know: Whatever his new salary, it’ll be the best one he can get for the rest of his working life.

I’m glad to see that Grubby apparently isn’t going to renege on our deal. Now it’s up to me to make it happen. Otherwise, I’ll be helping Bob Parks pretty soon.

It’s a quarter past two when I go back to the Fourth Precinct. Shiflett’s door is open, but I knock anyhow.

“What?” he says, but then he looks up and sees me.

“Willie,” he says. “I hear you’ve got some information for me.”

Yeah, I’m thinking. I’ve got enough information to make you wet your pants.

I shut the door.

“I’ve been checking around,” I tell him.

“Snooping around, you mean. That can be hazardous to your health.”

He looks at my eyes, which are starting to lose some of their Mardi Gras color.

“I get paid to ‘snoop around.’ I’m a reporter, remember?”

He reaches into his vertical files and pulls out a sheet of paper.