The Lillian Byrd Crime Series Page 6

  Porrocks said, “Yeah, the lab’s doing all the forensic tests. It’ll be a while before they can give us a report.”

  “We’ll check out this Snapdragon thing,” Ciesla said.

  “Discreetly?” I asked. My anxiety over Bonnie blossomed at the thought of her connecting my nosy visit with the cops coming.

  “Don’t worry,” said Ciesla. Detectives, who carry loaded guns under their armpits everywhere they go, say “Don’t worry” easier than other people say “Hold the mayo.”

  “OK, I’m outta here,” I said, grabbing my notebook. There was this story to write, plus layout and headlines for tomorrow.

  Ciesla got up quickly and came around his desk. “Lillian,” he said, taking my arm lightly, “there’s a difference between reporting on an investigation and meddling in it. You’re going to stay out of this, right?”

  “Sure—God, yeah, Tom. I leave the tough stuff to you.”

  I was only too glad to leave it to them.

  10

  The ax started its descent when I walked into the Eye offices. The familiar surroundings of cheap walnut paneling and matted carpet tiles felt strangely inhospitable. I looked around for a second, trying to tell if something was different. Nobody in the outer office met my eye.

  “Lillian?” said Ed Rinkell from his doorway.

  I followed him in. “This is gonna be serious, right?” I asked as he closed the door. “Lemme get a cup of coffee at least.”

  “Sure,” he said through tight lips.

  I ducked into my office for my mug, a thick white diner one Judy had found at one of her flea markets, and headed for the back. There were only a few dregs in the pot. I got out a filter and the coffee can from the cupboard, then took the pot and headed for the darkroom, where we drew coffee water from the big sink.

  The door stood ajar and the fluorescent light was on. As I pushed into the room, I suddenly smelled coffee, a different smell than my nose was expecting: The darkroom always reeked of chemicals. The room was tiny, maybe six feet by eight. By the time my brain said “coffee,” it was also receiving signals from the back of my neck that said “Someone else is in here.”

  Momentum took my legs the three steps to the sink. I was turning to see who was behind me, when the light went out and the heavy door swung shut.

  When that happens in a darkroom, it becomes, well, really dark. No pinhole, no crack under the door, nothing.

  I stood with my back to the sink, the glass coffeepot in my hand, my mouth instantly metallic with the taste of fear.

  Bucky Rinkell’s voice jumped at me from a spot near the door. “Hey, Lillian, whatcha doing?” The disembodied voice was the perfect aural replica of Bucky: insinuating, clumsy, inane. In a microsecond my fear disappeared and anger took over—anger that Bucky Rinkell could cause me a moment of such fear.

  “Whaddaya want?” I said.

  “You made a big mistake. You’re gonna get it, Lillian.”

  I half-laughed; he sounded so much like a ten-year-old pretending to be a tough guy. “For what?” I said. “Poking you with my blade? You deserved it, for God’s sake.”

  I could almost hear his head swinging bovinely from side to side. Then a coffee-slurping sound.

  I felt along the countertop for the redlight switch. I snapped it, and there we were in that backstage sort of glow. Bucky stood with his back angled against the door, holding his he-man coffee mug, filled to the brim with extra cream and sugar. I stood ready to smash the pot against the counter and threaten him with the jagged handle.

  “Nobody does that shit to me, Lillian—”

  I snorted.

  “—and gets away with it.”

  “Buck, when I talked to you about keeping your hands off me, you didn’t get it, did you? You had to be a pain in the ass about it. You didn’t want to get it.” His expression was stony. “You play at being a nice funny guy, but deep down you’re an arrogant, contemptuous fucker, aren’t you? What did you expect me to do? Or Nona? If some guy grabbed your balls, you’d beat the shit out of him.”

  “Suck my dick.”

  I laughed again, he was being so predictably awful. He was wearing his Gibraltar Trade Center cap backwards, the plastic pop-strap tight across his forehead. Keeping his brains secure. I watched his chubby hands flex open and closed.

  “I know you know how to behave,” I said.

  And he did. One spring day a year before, he’d invited the staff over to his apartment for a cookout. He lived in a building on the west side of Eagle, one of those places with microscopic balconies carpeted in plastic grass, and little storage closets in the basement. He had set up a hibachi on the balcony and took us all on a grand tour of the place just as nicely as Jackie in the White House: “And this is where I keep my camping stuff and my car stuff. My carport’s around back. Anybody hungry yet?”

  Unfortunately, he had placed the hibachi right down on the plastic grass, which by the time we returned was melting and smoking. Nona thought fast and turned over the ice chest on it. Then we phoned out for pizza. I’d never seen him as nice as on that day.

  “You don’t want to learn anything, Bucky. You don’t want to admit you behaved badly. So you keep digging yourself in deeper by blaming me. An apology would be nice. How ’bout it, man?”

  His face contorted as if I’d thrown acid in it. I turned my back to him and opened the water tap at the sink. The rushing water created a sudden matter-of-fact atmosphere. The chrome handle felt nice and cool. I filled the pot and turned off the water, then turned back to him.

  “OK, how ’bout this?” I ventured. “If I forgive you for pawing me, will you forgive me for stabbing you?”

  “I didn’t do shit to you.”

  “Then how ’bout getting out of my way?”

  He pushed himself off the door. “You think you’re something special,” he said. “You’ll see.”

  “Daddy’s gonna whup my ass, right?” I said.

  “You’ll see.” He walked out, slamming the door.

  Ed Rinkell was hunkered behind his desk when I returned. His swivel chair was in its full upright and locked position, and he looked uncomfortable in it. He beat around the bush for about ten minutes.

  “Honestly, Lillian, I don’t know how I would’ve kept this paper going without you.” He twiddled his letter opener.

  “You’ve always been good to me, Ed.”

  “It’s like this,” he finally began. Whenever somebody says, “Well, you see it’s like this,” you can be sure they’re not going to follow it up with, “You’ve been promoted.”

  “Bucky’s my son.”

  “Uh-huh.”

  “And you’re not.”

  “Uh-huh.”

  “I need to ask you to resign.”

  “Sorry, no.”

  “Then I need to let you go.”

  The words hung in the air. I breathed shallowly, feeling the force of the moment. I’d come all this way with the newspaper just to let that goddamn prick ruin it for me? I said nothing.

  Rinkell ran his hand over his hairpiece, sighed heavily, and shifted in his chair as if someone had strewn gravel under his meaty thighs.

  “You’re usually so controlled,” he said, “so—together. Now...I’m not sure I can trust you anymore.”

  “Hah!”

  “I hate to do it, Lillian, but I have no choice.”

  “I don’t quite see it.”

  He sighed again and turned his head slightly so that his eyes aimed over my shoulder. “This is the situation: Bucky’s deeply upset. The doctors say he might have permanent nerve damage.”

  “Permanent nerve damage?”

  “There’s an area of skin where he might not have feeling anymore.”

  “Well, how big is it?”

  “A few inches.”

  “On his butt, right?”

  “Yeah. This is a bad situation,” he repeated, “and I need to run this paper. I can’t change Bucky, but I can change editors. Bucky says if I don’t f
ire you, he’ll press assault charges against you.”

  I was speechless.

  “I don’t see how I can get around it.” He was whining now. “Would you want him to do that?”

  I could imagine Bucky trundling across the street and telling his story to the cops. They’d laugh in his face, but if he persisted, they’d have to take a complaint. If the question was, did I stab him, well, yes, I did. Nona had even witnessed it.

  I chewed my coffee and thought some more. If Bucky pressed charges, this could wind up in a courtroom. But there was provocation: He’d been taking liberties with my body. Nona could back me up there.

  Was I willing to deal with it? Any judge with a speck of sense would throw it out of court. But maybe not. Assault with a deadly weapon, which is what you could call those blades: a serious charge. If found guilty, I’d probably come out of it with only a mild penalty, but also with some kind of record. Let alone all the legal hassle and expense. Oh, fuck me.

  “The point is, Lillian, it’s not up to you to decide whether you’re leaving. I won’t have two of my staff at each other’s throats. Bucky doesn’t even want me to let you quit, but I’m offering you that choice.”

  “Big fucking deal, Eddie,” I said. “I choose the boot.”

  “So you’ll get no job reference, no nothing?”

  I snorted. “Ed, Christ almighty. In the regular world, they ask for job references. In our business they ask for clips. Right?”

  “True.”

  “So you can take your reference and crumple it into a tight little ball and stick it—”

  “OK!”

  “You’re handling things like a moron.”

  “I was forced into it. If only you hadn’t stabbed the kid.”

  “He’s not a kid, and if I hadn’t stabbed him, he’d still be pawing me and I’d be contemplating something worse.”

  “All right.” He patted his hands on his fake-wood desk top, the signet ring he wore on one pinkie clacking unpleasantly. He looked down at his hands, then up at me. “Will you stay and finish tomorrow’s issue? I’ll get Bucky out of here for the rest of the day. I’ll do his work myself,” he offered. His face was the picture of belief.

  I stared at him, making sure I’d heard him right. Then I walked out. He gave a little puff and looked mournful.

  I shut the door to my office and quickly pulled out some files and collected my odds and ends. I made sure to get all my notes for the Macklin story.

  Archie and Christine watched silently as I carried my stuff to my car through the outer office. Then I returned and made for the back. Bucky, a triumphant smile wreathing his lips, was sitting on a table swinging his legs. I looked through him. I found Nona clicking away at the Compugraphic. She swiveled around.

  “You’re really leaving?” she said.

  “If that’s the rumor, it must be true. Hey, Nona, take care. You know what this was about.”

  “Yeah. What will you do?”

  “Don’t know.”

  She stood up and gave me a hug. “I’ll miss you.”

  “Good luck,” I said, casting a glance toward you-know-who. I walked out past him, as he gloried in what had to have been the most satisfying moment of his sorry bastard life, and back to the outer office. Christine and Archie made regretful noises.

  Nobody, however, said anything like “Gee, you sure got screwed, and I’m going to tell Rinkell what I think.” When you work for somebody else, there’s always that Ritz cracker ready to fall Cheez Whiz-side down if you don’t watch it.

  It was still hot, but an easy breeze had sprung up, and suddenly nothing about the world seemed oppressive to me anymore. The sunlight felt great on my shoulders as I stepped onto the street. The gigantic maples in the neighborhood behind the office looked as majestic as ever, their branches arching and tossing over the buildings on Main Street. I felt lighter. Stronger. I rolled down the windows of the Caprice and peeled out. After a swing through the A&W on the corner for a cold root beer, I aimed the hood for I-75 and a nice long run through the countryside of Oakland County.

  11

  The car knew where I wanted to go, even if I didn’t exactly. I-75 north of Pontiac is, midday, pretty serene. You get up out of the flat floodplain of Detroit into rolling green land, small hills left over from Ice Age glaciers. Maple, oak, and beech make up most of the woods. In the fields and clearings along the highways, you get plenty of sumac and shrubby cedars, and all through the summer the goldenrod and asters shoot their pollen into the world. May through August, I’m never without one or two Benadryl pills in my pocket.

  Before I knew Judy, I dated a woman who was into natural healing; we were two bugs making love in the spring, and my allergies were our constant companion. She seized the opportunity to test her gifts. First she took me off my wonderful pink Benadryls. “Those things are poison! They dehydrate your cells,” she said, twisting her hands in the folds of her parachute pants. “Allergies can be healed naturally. Completely!”

  The spiritual name she had chosen for herself was Sky. Somehow it was even on her driver’s license. I never learned what her real name was. Organic vitamin C, she prescribed at first. I swallowed copious quantities of the dry, sour tablets every day.

  When that didn’t work, she got some herbs from a metaphysical pharmaceutical center. I ate them, drank them, and inhaled steam from them. She even made poultices and applied them to my feet and the small of my back.

  I tried to suppress the sneezes; I bathed my eyes in cool water. God knows I wanted it to work, for her sake as much as mine. I could always revert to drugs, but who knew what Sky would come up with next.

  As the weeks rolled by and the empty Kleenex boxes piled up, she gradually lapsed into discouragement. She told me she felt inadequate. I sensed trouble coming fast. First she blamed the vitamin C and the herbs. Next she blamed herself. Then she blamed me.

  “I’ve discovered,” she announced one day with an ominous toss of her crystal earrings, “that allergies aren’t real. It’s your body being out of tune with your emotions.” She showed me a book that listed various ailments, from abdominal pain to warts, and assigned correct blame to various departments of the sufferer’s inner child.

  “You are trying to control your love in a self-serving way,” she read aloud.

  I gave her a kiss and ran to the drugstore to buy a fresh box of Benadryl. When I got home I opened it deliberately in front of her, savoring the tiny pop of the bubble packaging. She shook her head with a hostile smile. I tossed a pill back with some Vernor’s and awaited relief, while she gathered up her herbs and left for good.

  As the afternoon heated up and I drove farther into the countryside, I could almost see the clouds of pollen blanketing the landscape, like fallout over Los Alamos. I popped a Benadryl and washed it down with the dregs of the root beer, and shortly thoughts of pollen disappeared. I turned off the expressway onto a two-lane road and headed west into the lake-dotted area beyond Mount Holly.

  There’s a nature preserve surrounding an aging swamp, miles from nowhere out there, wedged between county land and a railroad right-of-way. Few people go there—I guess because there’s no nature center, toilet, or canoe rental. All that’s there is untamed quiet and massive populations of plants and animals. Det. Erma Porrocks, a closet birder, gave me directions to it once.

  I turned down the little access lane, shut off the motor, and coasted to a stop. It was quiet at first, very. But then I gradually heard the little sharp music of tanagers and titmice, the percussions of a woodpecker, and the soft, foamy sound of treetops leaning and turning in the wind. The air smelled heavy and clean.

  I stretched over and popped open the glove compartment for my hand lens and compass. After standing by the car for a few minutes, listening to the natural sounds overtaking the ticking of the cooling engine block, I set off down the path.

  Bull thistles and jewelweed, marsh marigolds and all the varieties of asters were in bloom—well, all the summer flowers were
doing what they were supposed to be doing. The high old-growth canopy closed over my head, and I became the biggest animal in this full-blown, furiously green swamp in summer.

  I walked along the springy trail, stepping carefully over rivulets and rotten logs. To my right lay the bog itself, with the heads of snapping turtles poking up here and there from the black water, clear-black, as good swamp water is. To my left, the maple-beech forest. I twisted a twig from a spicebush and chewed it. The sharp taste mixed with the moist air my lungs were taking in and made me feel good.

  Much as I would have enjoyed not thinking for the rest of the day, thoughts did come. So this is what it’s like—one step out of line and they’ve got you. I’d taken a risk. Rinkell, of course, had his own place in the pecking order, below people who held power over him: creditors, advertisers. The game goes round and round.

  However, those who don’t have the concrete, idiot-proof kind of power that money and influence confer, have the power of choice, if not cleverness, on their side.

  During my years at the Eye, I’d come to understand that a successful journalist possesses two important characteristics. One is the ability to be an asshole at will; the other is having the killer instinct.

  Being able to turn asshole at the drop of a hat is essential when, for instance, you’re told to get quotes from people whose singlewides just got flattened by a tornado, or when you’re assigned to cover the Eagle Garden Club’s spring fashion show.

  To break it down further, those two examples represent separate dimensions of being an asshole.

  In the tornado case you can pretty much just say to the people, “Talking to some asshole like me has got to be the last thing you want to do right now, but I’m supposed to ask you how you feel.”

  Amazingly, lots of people will warm right up, open their guts right up to you, a complete stranger. “We’ve lost everything. Look. I can’t find my Hummels. I can’t find none of my momentoes. That door didn’t used to have that post through it. My Danny? I guess God’s looking after my Danny now. Let me tell you how Danny saved a little blind girl’s life, back when the winters were a lot colder...”