Killer Waves (9 page)

"But your new editor is more interested in other kinds of stories."

She wiped her chin with a paper napkin.  “Yeah, he is.  Spice and sex and blood.  His mandate is to get circulation up, no matter what.  Hell, I’m no newspaper absolutist.  Without a healthy circulation, there's no newspaper, so what's the point of bitching about plans to raise it? Which reminds me... have you talked to Diane yet about the story Rupert wants to do on her?"

"That I have," I said. "Simply put, Detective Woods appreciates the heads-up but she's not in a mood to do any kind of favors regarding her personal life. Including passing on a juicy story to you that will offset any planned story about her and what kind of woman she is."

"Lewis, that's not good enough."

"I know."

"Damn it, the things this holier-than-thou guy wants us to do ... He sees himself and the rest of us as moral beacons of the community, all working toward one big-ass goal: more papers sold. And you know what's funny? Last year we got stock options as part of our compensation. An increased circulation means more money in my pocket, but that increased circulation is going to depend on mining some people's lives. You think there could be a healthier way of doing it."

I finished my lunch, watched as the Falconer firefighters drained their hoselines and then began the tedious job of rolling them up. "If there is a healthier way, I don't think Rupert is interested in hearing about it. I had a little visit with him about an hour ago. He surely does take his job seriously, especially the part of' being in control."

Paula frowned, began stuffing soiled napkins into a paper hag. "Yeah, he does. Each week we have staff meetings, on Wednesday, at lunchtime. Casual little things, not too serious. But when he came aboard, he put a memo out --- and I think it's the first time we've actually seen a memo in over a year --- that said the meeting starts promptly at noon. Well, I got there on time, but a couple of our freelancers didn't, and when it came to the noon hour, he locked the conference room door. He practically made these two women --- about my mom’s age ---- beg forgiveness before letting them into the conference room, and he said that was his first and last lesson in promptness.  Tell me, did you have a run-in with him?”

I thought for a moment about Rupert’s threat to hold up expense reports, and decided it wasn't worth getting her upset over it. "No, not really. Except he's a bear about non-employees using the rear entrance of the newspaper. Hell, if that's so important to him, I won't tick him off."

Paula smiled at me. "Tick him off as much as you want. That's about one of the few fun things I get to see in that newspaper office."

"And how long does he get to stay there?"

"Until the circulation reaches a certain level, or we murder him in the conference room. Whichever happens first." She glanced at her watch on her tanned slim wrist. "Speaking of murder, someone's gonna kill me if I don't get back to the office and start working on this story. Thanks again for lunch, Lewis. You're a dear."

I picked up her trash and said, "Next meal will be more proper. In a restaurant, with real tables and chairs and everything."

Another smile. "Such a deal."

Then I leaned over and kissed her, and Sighed and kissed me back. The sound of the fire trucks and radios all seemed to fade away as I tasted her lips and her mouth, tasted the sharp tang of onions, and not caring one bit. When I finally stepped back she reached over and stroked my face. "My, that was nice. Do call me, will you?"

"Without a doubt," I said. "Without a doubt."

With the traffic still being slowed from the fire apparatus blocking the road, I reversed course and headed back up Route 286, taking the long route back to Tyler. The two-lane road traverses through the marshlands and has a great view of Tyler Harbor and the squat and bulky concrete buildings of Falconer Station, the nuclear power plant in this part of the state that attracted thousands of protesters when it was being built three decades ago, and hasn't attracted a single one in the past couple of years as it quietly produced its power without killing or injuring anybody.

Along the way north were a number of bait-and-tackle shops, seafood places, and one store that had a number of people parading in front of it, carrying signs. I slowed some as I went by. The building was one-story, wooden, with its windows blocked out by large sheets of brown paper. The place was called ROUTE 286 VIDEO and there were four people there, three men and a woman, slowly walking in a circle. Each of them carried a handmade sign on the end of a wooden stick:

FREE US FROM THIS FILTH

NO PORN IN OUR PLAYGROUND

GOD PUNISHES PORN

SINNERS PORN OUT NOW

I kept on driving for just a few seconds more, thinking not of those signs but of a certain newspaper man a few miles away, sitting confident and smugly, knowing in his heart of hearts that he knew what was best for this area.

I muttered something and then made a U-turn and drove back to the video store. I pulled over to the side and got out and deftly walked through the protesters as I entered the store. The woman among them called out, "Don't support these sinners; please, don't support these sinners!"

Inside the store there were racks of videotapes on the walls, categorized into comedy, science fiction, adventure, horror and family. Toward the rear was a counter where an older woman sat, reading a book and smoking a cigarette. She looked up at me and I hen went back to her book. By the counter was another doorway, with a sign on the closed door: ADULTS ONLY BEYOND THIS POINT. I went up to the counter and said, "People out there bothering you?"

She eyed me over the pages of her book. "Are you carrying hidden camera for one of those TV blooper shows, or are you just asking stupid questions for no reason?"

Her voice had an accent, Eastern European, it sounded like.  I glanced at the spine of her book.
Cancer Ward,
by Solzhenitsyn. "Not a bad book," I said. "I liked
Full Circle
better."

She had on a shapeless flowered dress and one earpiece of her eyeglasses had been repaired by a bit of tape. "I've been out of the old country for almost twenty years now, and I'm still trying to catch up on the banned books. Trying to figure out what really went on. And I don't know sometimes why I do that, you know. What difference does it make? But still... I read. I want to know. That's all."

"Not a bad reason."

She motioned with her cigarette out the door. "Those people.... they think they know it all. They think they know black and white. They see a place that is a source of all evil. They don't see a store that just serves a need. They don't see an old Russian woman trying to make some extra money. They don't see all that. They are righteous and full of conviction, and I wish I could take them to my old home, where many people filled with righteousness and conviction slaughtered millions." She shrugged. "Enough of my talk. You're here to rent videos, are you not?"

"Yes, I am," I said.

"Then get to it, please." And she went back to her book.

I looked around the small room with the standard videos, and feeling a bit unsure of myself, I opened the door marked ADULTS ONLY and walked in. If you're going to make a stand, sometimes you have to do it in the mud, I thought. I stood for a moment, surprised at what I saw, and then I closed the door behind me. Luckily I was alone, for I thought that if I were with anybody else in here I would probably ignite from embarrassment at being in public with somebody else with so many video box covers showing naked people in various activities, some of which looked as if they were still illegal in some states.

The room was easily three times as large as the one I came from, and like in the first room, the videos were placed on walls and racks in different categories. But while the categories earlier had been horror or science fiction, the groupings here were quite different: straight, gay, bi, European... I went around the room, not looking at anything in particular, but just amazed at the quantity and variations. Who were these people?  How did this all get produced and duplicated and shipped?  Oh, I’m no prude and I've always been aware that one of the largest industries in the country --- especially in a couple of California counties --- is the sex industry, but the sheer magnitude of what was available out there stunned me.

After a few minutes the naked bodies and forced smiles and silicon-enhanced breasts all began to blur together, and I picked five videos at random and then went back out to the counter. I felt another hot flush of embarrassment, but the old Russian woman just went through the motions, as she no doubt did dozens of times a day. Since I was a new renter, she asked for a name, address and phone number, which I provided, and then I scribbled a signature on the receipt and went out the door. Thankfully by then the videos were in black plastic cases, so I didn't have to go through the picket line openly displaying my rented wares. Even then, they booed at me as I went back to my car, put the videos down on the seat and drove away.

I shivered, from the embarrassment of having been there in the store, and the feeling that whatever I was doing made absolutely no difference at all. The twenty dollars I had spent on renting these videos wouldn't make up for whatever lost business was there, and besides, defending the First Amendment was fine in the abstract. It got a little more gray and grittier when you looked at the wares the Route 286 Video shop was peddling.

Twenty dollars. I thought back to what I had also spent on I he lunch for Paula and an earlier gas-up of my Ford, and when I got back into the center of Tyler, about fifteen minutes away from home, I turned right onto High Street and drove up into the branch of the First National Bank of Porter. I pulled up to the drive-up ATM, right behind a red Toyota. A man with a baseball cap on backward was looking at the machine for a long bit, as if the instructions had been printed in Sanskrit. Then he pulled out an envelope and began writing on something in his lap. I waited. A Chrysler minivan pulled up behind me. I was trapped. The man in front of me kept writing and scribbling.  He shook his head, tore the envelope in half, and went up for another one.  From behind me a horn blew, and the man in front ignored us all.  He returned to his life’s work.  I had thoughts of men out there in suits keeping an eye on me, weapons in hand. In this location 1 was out in the open; 1 couldn't move.

Finally, the man in front of me triumphantly made his deposit and drove out, and 1 pulled up to the machine, braking a bit too hard. 1 slid in my A TM card and punched in a withdrawal for sixty dollars, and 1 looked about the parking lot as 1 waited. The lot was empty. The machine bleeped at me and I looked over. The card was hanging out of its slot, as well as a white receipt, but there were no twenty-dollar bills. Not a single one. 1 looked at the slip, where it showed my request and below, in a fancy blue script, INSUFFICIENT FUNDS.

A tickle began at the back of my throat. Back the card went into the machine, back again went the entry of my access code and the request for sixty dollars. Sixty bucks! I knew that my checking account easily had a hundred times that amount available, and I thought that perhaps something had gone silly in the ATM's innards, but the second round was the same as the first round.

INSUFFICIENT FUNDS.

Now it was my turn yet again, and another horn started blowing from the line of cars behind me. 1 pulled out and stopped in the parking lot, looking dumbly at both receipts. Then I went through my wallet, pulled out an ATM receipt from the previous week, from this very same branch. The account numbers matched. Last week my balance had been $6,032.41.

Today it was zero.

1 got out of my Ford and walked straight into the bank branch.

The branch manager was a woman in her mid-thirties with short, dark hair, named Gloria Harrison. She wore a dark blue skirt and a white shirt with ruffled collar and a Victorian-style brooch at her throat. On her desk were pictures of her husband and two young sons, a stack of free calendars, and a little glass jar that offered lollipops in a variety of colors. She wore half-rim glasses and was warm and pleasant and helpful and not able to get one dime of my work back.

“I’m so sorry Mr. Cole, but I received yesterday afternoon," she said, passing over a fax that had bleeped through her machine a few minutes earlier. "It's an order from the Treasury Department. They're fairly cryptic in what they say, but it does look fairly clear. There's an audit being performed of a certain activity within the Department of Defense, and because something... untoward has been found, they've seized your accounts as a precaution. Do you receive a monthly pension from the government?"

"I do," 1 said, trying to keep my hand steady as 1 read the cool legal words on the sheet of paper.

"Were you in the service, then?"

"No," I replied automatically. "Just in the DoD, working out of the Pentagon."

Yeah, just like that, I thought. A monthly pension, to keep my mouth shut about what 1 saw happen to me and my friends in the Nevada desert, and the columnist job through Shoreline magazine basically to launder the funds. Mighty Uncle Sam had turned on this particular spigot some years ago, and now he and his minions had just shown me how easily they could turn it off.

Off. Not only off, but drained.

1 looked up at her. "My savings accounts as well?"