Yesterday's News - Jeremiah Healy Page 3

  Main Street was dominated by old structures of red and yellow brick, dingy and dowdy on blocks leavened by churches, taverns, and the occasional VFW or Moose hall. The displays of retail stores were sparse, as though there were inadequate inventory for both shelves and windows. Their patrons were flabby women in gaudy, mismatched blouses and pants. Outside, skinny men waited in bowling jackets and baseball caps, the crowns reaching too high above the forehead. Three kids with a bag of popcorn threw some at the window of a branch bank, the poor guy sitting inside frowning and wagging his head. The Beacon sign appeared just to the harborside of downtown, but I drove past to the waterfront itself. Dilapidated wooden warehouses lay lengthwise on deteriorating pile and stone wharves. The wharves serviced oily, smoky fishing boats. Many of the boats approached fifty feet in length, painted whatever colors the marine hardware store suffered in overstock and bearing female names like Marie and Tina II.

  I stopped the car for a minute. Some of the fishermen, in port for the first time in probably a week, were hanging the nets to dry or hosing down the decks. Others stripped off the layers of oilskin slicker and sweater needed for warmth on the big water even on a summer's day. Working or changing, they yelled and laughed back and forth in Portuguese. I felt disoriented, marooned in another country.

  I turned the key in the ignition and headed back toward the Beacon.

  * * *

  "You what?"

  "I said I want to see someone about Jane Rust. My name's John Cuddy, and I'm a private investigator from Boston." I showed the woman at the horseshoe reception desk my identification.

  She looked at it and shook her head hard enough to nearly dislodge her pilot's headphone and mouthpiece. "I don't know who here could help you."

  There were three chairs and a table in a sitting area off to the left. "How about I wait till something occurs to you?"

  I sat in one of the chairs and picked up a copy of the previous day's Beacon from the table. It was a long form paper like the Boston Globe or the New York Times. Skimming it, I got the impression of a first section focused on the city, followed by others labeled National, Regional, and Sports. It seemed to have more coverage and articles than I would have thought a local daily could produce.

  A new voice said, "What do you want?"

  I lowered the paper. A thickset man of forty-five stared down at me. His jowls sagged like the plots on network TV He wore the pants of a cheap green suit, and a white shirt with a flyaway collar. A K Mart tie was pulled down from his neck, and the sleeves on his shirt were rolled up unevenly.

  "My name's John Cuddy. I'm a private investigator and I want to talk about lane Rust with someone in authority. Are you it?"

  "The cops are the authority around here. You want me to call them?"

  "Eventually. But you might want me to tell you things before you find out I told them things. Your choice."

  His jaw realigned twice before he said, "My name's Arbuckle, I'm managing editor. Come back to my office."

  Arbuckle led me through a winding corridor that had computer cables inelegantly braided overhead. We moved into a room measuring a hundred feet wide and twice as long. Pillars rose from the linoleum floor to the high ceiling. The ubiquitous computer cables dropped from ragged holes to most of the fifty or so desks in the area, each with a terminal and screen. An unabridged dictionary lay open on a pedestal stand under a large mural map of Nasharbor's part of the county. There were maybe thirty men and women talking on phones or clacking keyboards, a life-sized Bavarian clock gone mad. From one corner, a police scanner squawked like an electronic parrot. Altogether, it was just about quiet enough to hear a bomb drop.

  "The city room," said Arbuckle, as he led me into an interior office whose only window looked out onto the bustle of the people I watched. He closed the door behind me and threw himself into a desk chair without telling me to have a seat. I took one anyway.

  "Now," he said, "exactly what do you want here?"

  "I understand Jane Rust died last night. I'd like to know what happened."

  "Talk to the cops."

  "I'm talking to you."

  "We think it's kind of bad taste to dwell on suicide. Unless it's somebody prominent, we don't even identify the cause of death in the obit. "

  "Bad taste."

  "That's right."

  "She was one of your reporters. One of your own."

  "She was. . ." he stopped for a moment, then said, "she came to see you, right?"

  "That's right."

  "About the confidential source thing, right?"

  "Go ahead."

  "Well, she probably told you more about it than she told me, but what she told me was screwy enough." Arbuckle rearranged I some papers on his desk. It ran Mo Katzen's work space a close second in appearance. "Jane wants to do a story, no, a series of stories, on this kiddie porn thing. I have her on the Redevelopment Authority project, and she isn't giving me shit on that. But Jane had this idea, no, this obsession, that the police here knocked off this scumbag source she had. Only she wouldn't talk about the source at story conference or staff meetings. She wouldn't tell me the guy was her source until after he buys the farm, and even then she won't come clean on things that don't make any sense at all."

  "Like what?"

  "Not the way it works, pal. I gave you a little, now you give me a little. Jane wanted to hire you on her own nickel, that's her business. She's dead now, and I want to know why you're here when she isn't around anymore to pay you."

  I considered it. "Because you figure I'm trying to get the paper to foot the bill for keeping me on the investigation."

  "Jesus, now why didn't I think of that?"

  "At two in the afternoon she wanted me to look into what she believed was a murder conspiracy. Then she ends up dead that night. Sound like the way of nature to you?"

  "The way of. . . listen, let me tell you some things, maybe you'll get the point." He took a deep breath, let it out exaggeratedly. "Jane was a lightweight, a beginner who wasn't going to get much better. She had these fantasies, romantic fantasies, of what the newspaper business is like. Exposés, dramatic disclosures, Woodward and Bernstein. Am I getting through to you?"

  "She was unrealistic."

  "Gold star. She was ridiculous. We hired her on as a Gee—Ay, a general assignment reporter. She'd bounced around too much, paper to paper, for somebody only a couple years out of school. I should have started her in Lifestyles covering store openings and women's stuff, but a couple people liked her, said give her a chance, so I did. Should have had my head examined."

  "How'd she get involved in the porno thing if she was so unreliable?"

  "Don't remind me. She was covering a Saturday night, skeleton crew. The weekend editor's trying to get lines on two fires and a vehicle fatality, so he sends her out to check on this raid. Then she can't think about anything else but that she's going to protect our fair city from the purveyors of kiddie porn panting at the gates. Obsessive, like I said."

  "The source, his name was Charlie Coyne?"

  "So I'm told."

  "This Coyne character does end up dead."

  "This Coyne character was a slug with the life expectancy of a thirteenth-century pickpocket. He hung out down on The Strip. Coyne was lucky to live as long as he did, the kind of people he probably crossed down there."

  "How did Jane Rust die?"

  "Preliminary says overdose."

  "Drugs?"

  "Sleeping pills."

  I looked at him.

  Arbuckle said, "What's the matter, you don't know what sleeping pills do?"

  "I know what they do. I also know she said she couldn't take them."

  "What?"

  "She couldn't swallow pills. Made her sick."

  "l don't know anything about that and I could care less. Coyne and Rust are yesterday's news, understand? In fifteen minutes, I got a story conference in the executive editor's office on thirty-six pages of today's news."

  "Anybody else here tha
t knew her better than you did?"

  Again the exaggerated breath. "Let's make a deal, okay? I give you two names and the rest of the day to poke around here. After that, I see you in the building again, I call the cops to kick your ass off the premises. Seem reasonable to you?"

  "What are the names?"

  "Malcolm Peete and Liz Rendall. They're both Gee—Ay's and knew Jane as well as anybody could. Okay?"

  "Thanks for your consideration?

  "Don't mention it. Close the door behind you."

  When I pulled the door shut, I felt a tap on my shoulder. I looked into a face badly weathered by the elements, so long as you counted alcohol in with wind and rain. His eyes were bleary, his nose a road map etched in red. The hair was gray, but given the booze his age could have been anywhere from me to sixty.

  He said, "You're here about Janey."

  "Word travels fast."

  "The drums, fellow traveler. The drums tell all."

  He didn't seem stiff, just overly metaphorical. "Can you point me toward Malcolm Peete?"

  He extended his right hand. "At your service. I plan to get stinking drunk to mourn the poor girl's passing. Care to join me?"

  I shook his hand. "Only for one."

  "Drink or bottle?" he said as he moved to the closest desk and wangled a tweed sports jacket off the back of its chair.

  4

  "Another?"

  "Not just yet, thanks"

  Peete shrugged, filling his own glass from the liter of Smirnoff he'd persuaded the bartender to leave with us. It didn't take much persuading in the Watering Hole. Six stools over were two truckers tossing shots-and-beer, sawdust on the floor to soak up any sloshed Bud draft. Wooden bowls of pretzels and peanuts, mixed together, clattered on the oft-wiped old mahogany. No butcher block or ferns in sight.

  "They'll be here someday, you know, " Peete said.

  "Who?"

  "The nouveau gentry, who else? There is a limit to which even sweetly slumping Nasharbor can sink before urban renewal rears its ugly, and unwanted, head."

  "I haven't seen any warning signs so far."

  Peete threw back three fingers of vodka and reached for the bottle again. "You've but to open your eyes to see the waste about to be destroyed around you. Poor Janey was panty-deep in the current efforts before she grew weary of the good fight."

  I figured I would have to move pretty quickly to get straight answers from the man. "She said something to me about a development story. "

  "Yes, development. Or, to be precise, redevelopment. Has an encouraging ring to it, 'redevelopment.' As though society has already tried nobly and failed, but has gleaned something from the initial effort which will improve the next one."

  "Which effort are we talking about here?"

  "The Harborside Condominiums, Limited. Limited, that is, by the peculiarly polyester vision of its principal partner, one Richard Dykestra, the Horatio Alger of our modest metropolis."

  "I haven't seen many likely buyers."

  "No, no and you won't, good sir. You see, the buyers aren't going to be trampling each other on their way to the model units. Know why?"

  "No."

  "Because the economy is wrong for it, the tax climate is wrong for it, and Mr. Dykestra is wrong for it. But that didn't stop the En—Are-ay."

  "The. . .?"

  "N-R-A, the Nasharbor Redevelopment Authority. The NRA embraced dear Dykestra's dream and lobbied like demons for an accompanying bond issue to relieve him from the pressures of financial reality."

  "And Jane Rust thought something stunk there?"

  "Like the cannery in August, my lad. But there are others who can tell you far more about it than I." He paused, running the nail of his index finger down the side of the Smirnoff label.

  "Coming out of Arbuckle's office back at the Beacon, you asked for me specifically. Flattering, but why was that?"

  "Arbuckle told me you knew Jane as well as anyone."

  Peete smiled ruefully. "He was just trying to get rid of us both. You're a new and hopefully temporary nuisance for him. I'm an old and rather permanent one."

  "You've been with the paper a long time?"

  "Only seven years, and only the last four under Arbuckle. But while he has the power to hire and fire most of us, I enjoy a rather charmed employment existence. I served in Korea with the dead son of the now nearly senile owner of the rag. When I happened upon some alcohol-induced reverses some time ago, I happily remembered that connection, and my resumé was received with open arms by our publisher, to the immediate and continuing consternation of all responsible for producing a decent paper. "

  "So Arbuckle's stuck with you, and he was just killing two birds with one stone in sending me after you."

  "Yes, in that I'm sure that was his motive. No, in that I probably can in fact advance you in your quest. What exactly is your quest, by the way?"

  Peete had put away at least half the liter already, but he was still surprisingly in control of mind and mouth.

  I said, "Jane talk with you about her confidential source?"

  "Ah, of course. The late, lamented Mr. Coyne. She believed our brothers in blue eradicated him to cover up some corruption scandal, correct?"

  "Correct. "

  "My lad, I'm afraid our Janey had some misconceptions about reporting in general and the police here in particular."

  "Like what?"

  "Well," Peete scoffed two more ounces of eighty proof, "let's begin with reporting. It's an unseemly profession in many ways, not the least of which is the manner in which we gather news. We pick at scabs just forming over wounds recently inflicted, thereby causing new pain for the inflictee and new shame for the inflictor. We even use confidential sources, but generally in ongoing governmental or political cases, when we need information that's reliable but otherwise unavailable."

  "Meaning you don't think Coyne was a source for her?"

  "Meaning she didn't discuss it with me, though I assume she must have with someone. Meaning also that in reporting, sources in the criminal world run a very distant third to sources in government and politics."

  "Some reason she wouldn't have discussed Coyne with you?"

  A different look came into Peete's eyes, a gleam that pushed back the glaze for an instant. "Perceptive, quite perceptive. I fear I was to Jane what is politely known in the trade as a police buff."

  "A reporter who likes cops?"

  "No, a reporter who is fascinated by the police function. There are many officers I like and some I dislike, but the idea, the concept of the law enforcement function is one which never ceases to intrigue me."

  "So, if Jane thought that Coyne might be in danger from the cops, she never would have come to you to talk about it."

  "Just so. Though if she had, I could have assured her that the police need not stoop to homicide to seal the lips of a felon as vulnerable as the soiled Mr. Coyne."

  I already knew that argument. "I understand that the cop supposedly on the take from Coyne's employer is tied into the hierarchy down here?"

  "Nasharbor is technically a city in the geopolitical sense, given its population and form of municipal government. But in many ways it is a very small town, and nepotism in city services is one such way."

  "Assuming I understand the principle, care to provide the relevant illustration?"

  "Careful, Sancho. You converse with me long enough, you'll begin to affect my prolix patterns of speech" He sucked down another two shots of booze. "Now, where were. . . yes, yes the social register of our constabulary. First, the current chief is a figurehead, the first Porto to hold that place, thanks to some clever maneuvering a few years back by our state representative."

  "What kind of maneuvering?"

  "I'm not a lawyer by training, but I understand the statutory framework to be that one becomes chief through various civil service standards and tests."

  "And?"

  "And our current chief, bless him, would have trouble signing his name in a legible fashi
on. However, the aforementioned state rep had the crucial vote in committee on somebody's pet pork barrel as the legislative session clock approached midnight, and the trade was our vote on the pork barrel in exchange for a special statute exempting the position of chief of Nasharbor from any civil service requirements."

  "New one on me."

  "Yes. Rather shakes one's faith in the democratic process, doesn't it? In any case, however, the current chief is nearing retirement, with two potential successors vying in the wings."

  "Namely?"

  "A second Porto, Joseph Hogueira, the captain of uniforms here. And Cornelius, or Neil, Hagan, the captain of detectives."

  "Jane mentioned Hagan."

  "As well she might. Hagan took personal charge of Coyne's death. And the cop allegedly, and I stress allegedly, on the take from Gotbaum, Coyne's nefarious employer, was one Mark Schonstein, son of Hagan's former partner when Hagan was in uniform."

  "And Jane figured that Hagan would bury a murder as a favor to an old partners kid?"

  "Well, it does go a bit deeper than that."

  "How do you mean?"

  As he spoke, Peete regarded the remaining four fingers of vodka with renewed respect. "There was an incident, oh perhaps fifteen years ago. Way before my time, so I've heard only the retellings. But basically, Hagan and Schonsy—that's what everyone called the elder Schonstein, Schonsy—Hagan and Schonsy are on patrol when they pick up a local punk on some kind of charge. Perhaps 'Failure to Give a Good Account of Himself.' That was a wonderful catchall when I worked in New Jersey. Anyway, there's a row in or near the cruiser, and when they get to the hospital, Schonsy is covered with his own blood, and the kid is dead of a broken neck."