Spiked (13 page)

Chapter 17

The advantage of an afternoon paper was never getting scooped. If the morning rags had a story The Empire did not, then the editors assigned the reporter on the morning “fireman shift” to chase it down by deadline, with help from additional reporters, as needed, as they filtered in. The disadvantage was deadline crunch for breakfast every day. Rules of polite society peeled away, and the level of profanity rose with the stress. The newsroom at deadline was like a pan of water approaching a boil. The trick was to put the paper together before the pan boiled over and the paper was late.

Any day's deadline was actually many incremental deadlines. If a reporter was late with a story, the copy editors might sacrifice part of their editing time to make up the difference, or they might pass the delay along to the paginators who map out the pages on computer. The buck stopped at the press. If it rolled late, The Empire missed deadline. And the union truck drivers started pulling overtime for standing around, chain-smoking Kents.

Eddie got to the newsroom by ten o'clock, smack in the middle of the morning deadline. Boyce Billips had pulled the six-o'clock fireman's slot this morning. He waved Eddie over.

“What do you think of this top?” Boyce asked, pointing to the first ten lines of a story on his screen.

Boyce made no mention of the fat yellow dog nibbling its own belly on the floor next to his desk. The dog's leash was tied to Boyce's chair.

Eddie read over his shoulder. Two people had been hurt in an accident on the Lowell Connector, a short stretch of highway linking the city with Route 495. It was known for wrong-way crashes and roadside shrines for the victims.

“Christ,” Eddie said. “The Connector is about one fatality short of a nickname. Something like Suicide Alley, or Murderer's Row. That'll be great for tourism.” He advised Boyce to move up a line about the number of past accidents on the highway. “The pols won't fix the road until the readers threaten to throw them out,” Eddie said. “And the readers won't do it unless we whack them over the head every chance we get.”

Eddie also nit-picked a few wording changes to tighten the language. “But overall, it's strong,” he said. “Good job.”

Boyce didn't have the condition reports for the victims. He kept typing from his notebook while Eddie called the hospital's patient information number. As long as he had the victims' names, their condition should be available. The cops had been quick to provide Boyce the names after the crash, usually a sign that the injuries were not life threatening. One victim was listed in “serious” condition, and the other in “satisfactory.” That's jargon for “somewhat mangled,” and “not so badly mangled.” Both should live.

Eddie dictated the information to Boyce, who tapped it into the story.

Phife hollered over the deadline bustle. “Boyce, I need that accident brief.”

“Two minutes,” Boyce yelled back.

“No, Boyce. Right now! Hit the goddam button!”

Boyce finished typing a final sentence and then filed the story. “I didn't have time to run the spell-checker,” he shouted to Phife, who was already reading the story, and ignored him.

“I hope he's not mad,” Boyce said. “Do you think he's mad at me? What if he's mad at me?”

Eddie ignored him, too. The yellow mutt on the floor stuck its snout up Eddie's pant leg and sniffed his ankle. Eddie's socks were on their second wear since their last wash, though they had aerated a full week on the floor before he had put them back on. The dog took thirty seconds to catalogue the sock's potpourri of flavors.

With Boyce's deadline crisis over, Eddie dryly asked him, “Is this Take a Fat Dog to Work Day?”

“He's my mental health dog,” Boyce said. He looked the mutt over. “Do you think he's too fat?”

“A mental health dog?”

“Like a Seeing-Eye dog, except he helps keep me mentally balanced.”

“I don't think Keyes allows dogs in the newsroom,” Eddie said.

“He has to allow Superdog,” Boyce insisted. “He's certified. My psychiatrist signed for him. Mental-health companion animals are allowed anyplace a Seeing-Eye dog can go—stores, restaurants, airplanes, and places of business. It's all right here in the law.” He offered Eddie a stack of photocopies, which Eddie waved off.

The mutt snorted and flopped its head on the rug with a thump.

“Superdog, eh?” Eddie said. “He looks slower than erosion.”

“He was more active when he was young,” Boyce explained. “He's seven. That's forty-nine to you and me.”

Eddie groaned. “If I'm like that at forty-nine, just cover me with compost. Is he trained for this?”

“No. His calming effect on my mental state is the product of our relationship.” He scratched the dog's belly. “Any more questions?”

“Why is he so fat?”

“Do you really think he's too fat?”

Eddie left Boyce to contemplate his dog's weight problem, and settled in at his own desk.

Detective Orr, her voice lacking its usual patronizing politeness, was on his voicemail. “I need to ask you some questions of an immediate nature, Mr. Bourque, relative to your relationship with certain known and alleged dealers of narcotics.”

Detective Orr might be new to the force, but she spoke fluent Cop. Did they talk that way at home?
Take me, my lover, in a horizontal-type manner. Commence intercoursal activities and do not cease until 0600 hours
.

She had obviously spoken to Keyes, who had told her about Eddie's pitch for a story about Leo and Gabrielle. Keyes had it wrong again, naturally. They weren't dealers, but Orr wouldn't know that. Of course, she had the autopsy report, and knew that Nowlin died of a heroin overdose.

Eddie called her back and left a message.

Phife had just cleared deadline. His eyes were closed. He pinched the bridge of his nose with a thumb and forefinger. Eddie walked over to him. “Tough morning?” he asked.

“The worst,” Phife said. “Getting the stringer copy into shape was a heavy lift.”

The newspaper used stringers, part-time writers, to cover municipal meetings in the smaller suburban towns. Most were not professional reporters, and the paper relied on Phife, the editing maestro, to whip the copy into form. Phife was in charge of hiring stringers, too. He favored nubile, grad school co-eds.

“We gotta stop paying these people by the word,” Phife said. “They're using six inches to tell me what the Conservation Commission chairman wears to the meeting.”

“You got too many good-looking stringers who can't write,” Eddie pointed out.

Phife grinned. “I thought you endorsed the quality of my hires.”

“I just ogle. You have to edit them.”

Phife leaned back, his feet on his desk. “I don't mind a reasonable amount of trouble,” he said.

That had to be a movie quote, but Eddie couldn't place it.

“You disappoint me, man,” Phife said. “That's Bogie, in
The Maltese Falcon
.”

Eddie eyed his friend with suspicion. “Your new girl ain't on the payroll, is she?”

Phife laughed. “I don't mind a
reasonable
amount of trouble. I know better than to fish off the company pier.”

“Driving range tonight?” Eddie said.

“Usual time?”

“Just ring my phone. And the beer's on you.”

“Damn,” he said. “My turn already?”

“And do me a favor,” Eddie said. “Tell Boyce he did all right on that accident.”

“I will,” Phife promised. “Once in a great while, Ed, you actually seem like a nice guy.”

“We all go a little mad sometimes.”

Phife snorted. He said, “You're trying to slip that quote past me? A line from
Psycho
?” He shooed Eddie away. “Take your grade-school film trivia and get out of my face.”

Back at his own desk, Eddie examined Nowlin's wallet. He wondered if Jesse would want a memento that was water-stained, given that her husband was found dead in a canal. He'd find a tactful way to ask her, he thought.

Eddie slid out Danny's license. Pretty good picture for a Registry of Motor Vehicles shot. It was a wonder they didn't reshoot it, maybe with a cup of caterpillars down his pants to get his expression just right. That was how Eddie looked on his own license.

He turned the card over. There was a white sticker on the laminate with an address written on it. The Registry gave out those stickers to record any change of address. The front of the card listed Danny's home address in Chelmsford, the upscale town to the south. The house was a white Cape with a pebble driveway.

The address penned on the back was in Dracut, Eddie's blue-collar hometown. North of Lowell on the New Hampshire border; a typical Merrimack Valley mill town, too crowded in the developed parts, growing too fast in the rustic parts. The address was in rural north Dracut. Eddie didn't know that area well; it had been just woods and farms when he was growing up.

If Danny had moved, his new address would be on file at the Registry. Any police officer could get that information with a telephone call. But what if nobody checked? Eddie had told the police where Danny lived when the cops found the body. They'd have no reason to verify the address with the RMV.

From the Empire Building, the address in Dracut was about a nine-mile drive.

Chapter 18

People enjoy the Merrimack Valley because you can point your car toward New Hampshire and find forest ten minutes outside of downtown Lowell. Narrow country roads wound Eddie past stone walls, evergreens and sprawling fields in which black earth pushed into piles showed where new subdivisions would be built. This was the way in all the rural towns within The Empire's circulation area.

The road eventually led to an old farmhouse with a dirt driveway and two mailboxes out front. The house was a lime-sherbet color, with dark green trim. Several gables added character to the building; an iron weathervane on the roof supplied charm. Thick hemlock encircled the building and a large yard strewn with wind-blown leaves.

Eddie left the Mighty Chevette on the street and marched up the driveway toward the screened porch. Three chubby kittens at play sped across his path.

This place hadn't seen a paintbrush in a generation. Cracks sliced through several windowpanes. Holes in the screens were big enough for bumblebees. Inside the porch, the door to the main house had two police crime-watch stickers on the window. Seemed unnecessary way out here, but the daily headlines in any city newspaper can sell a lot of locks.

Eddie knocked.

He was about to knock again when the inside door scraped open and Frank Sinatra's “Luck Be a Lady” flowed out. The music was warm and scratchy, probably a vinyl record. A moment later, a woman of perhaps eighty, in a flannel housecoat and a wool cardigan, eased onto the porch. Fragile-looking, she moved in slow motion, as if considering the risk before every step. Her head trembled gently, like she was forever saying no.

Eddie decided to play it open-ended and let her fill in the blanks.

“Hello, ma'am,” he said. “I hope I have the right address. I'm looking for Danny's place.”

She looked him over for twenty seconds. Her wrinkles bent into a smirk. She said, “He told me he goes by Daniel now. He lives 'round the back. In the carriage house. Moved in six weeks ago.”

Lives
? She didn't know he was dead.

Eddie smiled and softened his voice, careful not to sound like he was addressing a small child. “At least I found the right address. Even if I knocked on the wrong door. My apologies.”

“I'm afraid you have traveled for nothing,” she said. “Daniel hasn't been here for the past few days. Haven't seen him at all.”

Eddie wrinkled his brow. “Do you know when he left?”

“Sometime between my bedtime Friday night and my breakfast last Saturday morning. Can't be any more specific. I got no use for the clock anymore.”

The crime-watch stickers were bad. If he leveled with her, she'd want the police here. Eddie doubted Detective Orr would let him see what was inside that carriage house. And the landlady had offered no hint that she'd let a stranger into Danny's place. Eddie had to become more than a stranger. He sighed. “I've come such a long way,” he said, not sure where he was going with this. “He said he'd be back from… from Toledo by now. Maybe his flight was delayed.”

She stepped closer and squinted up at him. “Back from where, you say?”

Poor eyesight, eh?
Eddie suddenly knew where he was going with this.

“Ohio. It's where our parents live.”

She clapped her hands, barely making a sound. “Are you Daniel's brother? How marvelous. He never mentioned his family.”

Eddie figured there was a special room in Hell for people who would con information from a half-blind old lady. His moral compass was spinning like a roulette wheel, and spraying shame. He told himself that this would not be the worst neighborhood in Hell—he'd be rooming with the lightweights of the eternally damned—the ticket scalpers, people who stole cable TV, and Catholics who ate meat on Fridays before Easter.

“Dan's always been kinda private. It's not personal, I'm sure,” he said.

She leaned closer still. “Forgive me for not seeing the resemblance,” she said. “I don't have my glasses. Let me find them.” She headed back inside.

Eddie said, “Don't bother on my account.”

“No trouble,” she said. “Come in, come in.”

Eddie followed her inside and closed the door. They were in a drab kitchen with butterscotch wallpaper and fake wood paneling. A few dozen pictures of family gatherings, photographed in bad light, were displayed in stand-up frames around the counters.

She hobbled around the room. “I had those spectacles a minute ago.”

A pair of tortoise shell glasses lay in plain sight on the counter. Eddie grabbed a picture near them and said, “You have a lovely family.”

“Those are my youngest boy's twin sons. Walter and William. They're in high school now. Well, William is.”

Eddie put the photo down in front of the glasses, upgrading his reservation in Hell. For hiding the old lady's specs, he'd be bunking with Stalin and sharing work detail with Vlad the Impaler.

“Is that Sinatra I hear?” Eddie asked.

“Oh yes. Do you like it?”

“Sure do.” At least that was the truth.

She gave up the search for her glasses and sat down. Her name was Mrs. Evans, but Eddie could call her Ruby, she said. They chatted about the music. Eddie knew enough about Sinatra to hold a five-minute conversation with a true fan. When he ran out of material, he changed the subject.

“Do you know Danny well?” he asked.

“Nice boy,” she said. “He cleaned my gutters. I don't see much of him. He's always working at that computer of his. Frightful things, aren't they? I don't even own a television, and I've given up on the radio. Nothing
good
on anymore. Where are the old shows?”

Eddie frowned and agreed with her. Talk radio had been awful for years. He asked her, “Does Danny get many visitors? I worry he doesn't meet enough people.”

She sniffed lightly, drew a white handkerchief from her sweater pocket and dabbed her nose. “Can't say I've seen any visitors over there.”

“Have you seen a blonde woman here? About this big?” Eddie held his hand at Jesse's height, five feet off the floor.

“No, I would have remembered her.”

It was suddenly obvious that Jesse would not be satisfied with Danny's wallet as a “memento.” Not after she specifically mentioned his keys. That was what she had been playing Eddie for—the keys to Danny's secret apartment. Jesse never mentioned that her husband had moved out. What else hadn't she mentioned?

“Alone all the time? Danny must be sad,” Eddie said, more to himself than to Mrs. Evans.

She grinned. “Not that boy,” she insisted. “There's a joy about him. Take my word. I got a sixth sense about people.”

Eddie smiled.
I hope not. Because here comes my pitch
. His hand covered a yawn. He said, “Ruby, I'm a bit tired. Would it be too much trouble for you to let me into my brother's place so I can nap until he's back?”

She pursed her lips and pressed the pink from them. She took what seemed a long time to decide, and then said, “Let's walk over together.”

The carriage house was a one-story wooden cube, painted the same two-tone green as Ruby's house. It had a few small windows and an angled, Victorian-style roof that showed off the real slate shingles. Three steep cement steps led to a white door with an iron horseshoe knocker.

She turned a key in the door and swung it open. “I hope it satisfies your needs,” she said. “I'll be back in the house. See me before you leave.”

Eddie thanked her and went inside. The heat was on and the apartment was warm. The front door opened to a small living room that held a couch and a television. Both looked second-hand. The walls were plain white, and Danny hadn't bothered with curtains.

The bathroom was immaculate, not a speck of grime. Typical for Nowlin, that goddam neat freak. The bathroom cabinet held cough drops and aspirin. No unmarked bottles, no syringes.

A tube he almost mistook for toothpaste caught his eye. There was too much fine print on the side: it was a contraceptive cream.

Eddie stood there with the tube and tried to reconcile the family man he knew with the evidence in his hand. Danny and Jesse had known for years that Jesse could not conceive; they were trying to adopt. Yet this tube was half empty.

There was another woman. That's why Nowlin had moved here alone and didn't tell anybody.

Danny, what the hell were you doing?

He put the tube back and checked the kitchen. Two raw steaks, six Guinness, and some fruit were in the fridge. The freezer held coffee beans, cheap vodka, and a dozen frozen dinners. Danny had regressed quickly to bachelorhood, except for the fruit.

The bedroom was tidy. The full-sized bed was made with a down comforter. Danny's laundered work shirts hung in the closet. Five pairs of shoes lined up in formation on the closet floor. Danny's tennis racquet and baseball glove hung on hooks, his golf bag stood at attention in the corner. Eddie realized he could never have been Danny's roommate; it would have been like living at West Point.

Nowlin had made a cubbyhole off the living room into an office. An unfinished pine table supported his computer and its keyboard and mouse, a telephone, and a microphone on a ten-inch stand bent like a dental instrument. The missing Cambodia files from The Empire's library were on the floor. It seemed as close to disheveled here as Nowlin could get.

Eddie sat behind the desk and turned on the computer. It beeped alive, and then called for a password. How many computer passwords would Nowlin have cared to remember? One, probably. Eddie punched in Danny's Empire key code. The machine agreed and let him in.

Eddie ransacked Danny's files. His folder of audio files was full of easy-listening songs—awful, just awful. A folder marked “video” had one ten-second baseball clip—Bucky Dent's home run against the Red Sox in Fenway in 1978. It plunged Eddie into a sour mood. Why in the name of Smokey Joe Wood would a New Englander have that clip on his computer? Sox fans should be eradicating all evidence of that home run, the way doctors went after smallpox.

He opened Nowlin's Internet browser and nosed through a list of sites Danny had bookmarked. They included the Poynter Institute page for journalists, and the electronic editions of the New York Times and the Wall Street Journal. There was a porn site, the “Erotic College Sluts of Suburbia,” and the on-line version of the King James Bible. A final bookmark took Eddie's breath. The home page of the New York Yankees baseball team. Eddie couldn't deny it any longer. Nowlin had been a closet Yankees fan!

Eddie dug a little deeper, snooping for a record of the Web pages Danny had recently visited. Nothing. All his off-line content had been cleaned out.

Danny's email program was set to remember his password, which saved Eddie the trouble of guessing it. The computer dialed into the email server and the two machines engaged in a mating call of beeps and hisses until they settled on a connection. Eddie downloaded Danny's email, and then hung up the modem.

Danny had two new messages.

An on-line bookstore had confirmed Danny's order of
The Elements of Style
, the most important book for writers ever written. Eddie's ragged copy was held together by packing tape.

The second message had come today from Boyce Billips, who had not removed Nowlin's email address from his master list. Boyce's latest paranoia was a list of symptoms for the Ebola virus, which he had forwarded to every person in his on-line address book, including Eddie.

Eddie clicked “reply” and sent Boyce a message that would carry Nowlin's return address:

Cruel? Absolutely. But that Bucky Dent video had really bothered Eddie. Boyce was lucky it wasn't the Bill Buckner clip from the World Series. Or Eddie would have ordered Boyce to wear a yellow
skirt
.

A message box popped up when Eddie opened the word processor. It asked him to choose either the keyboard or voice-recognition software.

Nowlin had finally licked carpal tunnel syndrome—he didn't type. The document folder was empty. Not one file. The computer's recycling bin, where junked files went before they were flushed, was also empty. Eddie cancelled the word processor and wondered why Danny, a writer trying to improve his work, would have no writing on his computer. Especially after he installed word processing software that recognized his voice.

This computer mystery was above his head. It was time to call tech-support. He dialed The Empire from Nowlin's telephone and punched an extension he had recently committed to memory.

The phone rang a dozen times, but Eddie persisted.

“Yeah?” Stan answered, finally.

“It's Bourque. How's the funny training?”

“My face is sore,” he moaned. “I can't do any more smiles.”

“Comedy ain't for quitters. What if Larry Fine quit the first time Moe poked his eyes?”

“Larry was the Stooges' straight man, a buffer,” Stan said in a robotic monotone. “Moe's physical retaliations were generally directed at Curly or Shemp.”

Eddie was indignant, “Are you saying Larry Fine couldn't take a poke in the eye?”

“No, just that—oh, never mind.” Stan sighed into the phone. “All right. I'll do my exercises.”

“Larry would be proud. In the meantime, I need some computer help.”

“A deal's a deal,” Stan said. He sounded glum.

“You told me before that information deleted from a computer is not actually destroyed right away, and can be recovered, right?”

“Sometimes.”

“How do I get it back?”