Meter Maids Eat Their Young (6 page)

“Me and HL? You've got to be kidding, right?” I said, though I knew she wasn't. Felice wasn't one for idle talk.

“Why do you think he called you back here? Offered you your old job?”

“He's done it before.”

“And you never accepted. Why this time?”

I considered telling her the feeling I had, the almost pleading nature of HL's request, or how it had seemed that way to me at the time. Except I was unsure of how he'd made it. Or how I'd received it.

“I don't know,” I said. “My Uncle Burt died? Left me the house? He needed a reporter, maybe?” I was grasping and knew it.

“He has many reporters. Good ones. Not as good as you but good enough for what goes on in this town.”

“Ok. So why did he call me back?”

“The question is why did you agree to come back?”

“Felice. You're talking in circles again. I'm a simple guy. I need it laid out in a straight line.”

“You are anything but simple, Teller.”

She turned back to her filing. “Think about it. And remember that the questions are as important as the answers.”

She started to hum and I knew I wouldn't get anything more from her.  It was Felice's way. She revealed what she chose to reveal in ways she chose to reveal it. It was up to us poor mortals to figure out what it all meant. But her words were never meaningless.

Troubled by our conversation, I walked to the big oak door that separated her office from HL's. Taking a deep breath, I opened it and stepped inside, her questions trailing like recalcitrant puppies.

HL's office was cool and dark, smelling of cigars and beeswax and something else I couldn't put my finger on. I sniffed the air but couldn't bring that something into focus. HL was whispering into the phone, a barely controlled whisper, and I wondered at whom he was trying so hard not to scream.

He was hunched over, the flat black handset all but smothered in his large hands, its color in sharp contrast with his eggshell-white hair. He glanced at me once, pushed his silver, wire-rimmed glasses up his narrow nose and continued to whisper. The two halves of my story sat neatly on the corner of his desk.

His office has always fascinated me. There was something so peaceful about it, so otherworldly. The walls were oak. The floor was oak. The desk a tremendous slab of oak. The heavy chairs framed in oak. The line of Queen Anne bookcases, all oak, each filled to overflowing with books. You could lose yourself in a room like this, draw the heavy drapes, pull a book at random from the shelf, and forget there was a harsh world beyond the window panes.

I tiptoed to one of the chairs and sat down, turning it so I could stare out the window. Trying to ignore the one-sided conversation, I focused my thoughts on the endless line of parking meters fading into the distance five storys below.

One could easily believe those flat-gray pillars of aluminum and plastic, lined up along the curb like sharp teeth, were spawned from the dankest torture chamber of a demented Marquis de Sade. Sad to say, they were invented by an American, one Carl Cole Magee, and first installed in Oklahoma City on July 16, 1935.

The original prototype, cobbled together with help from the Oklahoma State University Engineering Department, was dubbed the ‘Black Maria'. It came in two types: Automatic, which required the added expense to the city of a meter winder to crank the timing mechanism; and manual, which required only the poor slob who fed it. Guess which design won out?

A clearing of the throat brought me out of my reverie. He was leaning on his desk, arms folded. I squirmed in my chair like a schoolboy in the principal's office. He glanced at the two halves of the story and back at me.

“Um,” I said. “It's a little sparse, I know—”

“Sparse is not the problem.” He leaned back in his chair. He looked tired but his emerald eyes were as piercing as any dagger. I felt as if the inside of my skull was being inspected.

“There was a time in this business when all true newspaper men had one thing in common, whether they were running a small town, hand-crank press or working for a major daily with millions of subscribers. Truth was their passion and whether a story had twelve words or twelve-hundred, the story had heart.

“Teller, there are many reasons why I contacted you, why I asked you to return to the paper. This story is chief among them. The situation is getting out of hand. Violence is brewing.”

Brewing indeed, I thought. The number of protesters gathering near the Admin building was growing with every passing day. Just the week before, an irate motorist started yelling at a meter maid. Another meter maid arrived on the scene and between the two of them they beat and maced the driver and then had him arrested. The following day, two construction workers, angry over a ticket they'd received while at lunch, dragged a meter maid from her cart and pushed the cart into a construction pit.

“The tension is growing,” he continued. “People are angry and their anger is being ignored by those in power. Your return gave voice to their anger and the impact is being felt, if still being ignored. However, I have the impression over the last month or so that your mind, your heart, is not altogether here amongst us.”

He held out his palm toward me to ward off my protest. “Don't argue with me. Just listen. Your first articles nudged people from their complacency, got them talking, got them organizing. And, when this meter mangler arrived on the scene, likely a direct result of your writing, you covered it with enthusiasm and compassion. I'm sorry to say, though, your recent articles have been lackluster at best.”

He reached out, stabbed a finger on my torn article and then stared at me over the rim of his reading glasses.

“The Department of Parking Enforcement is a very powerful agency,” he continued, his voice soft. “City government loves them, turns a blind eye to them in every way.” He cocked his head, studying me for a moment.  “I haven't revealed this to you before, but the Department of Parking Enforcement has been trying quite strenuously to thwart your investigation.”

“Thwart it? How?”

“That's unimportant. What is important is that they seem to have information they shouldn't have. Recently, their lawyers tried to quash one of your articles. It was apparent they knew what was contained in that article … before it went to press.”

I sat up straight in the chair, the implication of his words hitting me hard. “They what? How did they know what I'd written?”

“I've sought the answer to that question with fervor,” he said. “And believe me, I will find their source. In the meantime, they have tried to quash every subsequent article concerning their affairs. The pressure being applied to this issue has been intense.”

He removed his glasses and began polishing them with a handkerchief he kept in his vest pocket.

“You know as well as I, that this kind of pressure is not unusual with a story of this nature. Like the roach, government agencies shun the light. It has happened a number of times over the years I have sat at this desk.”

He held the glasses up to the light, examined the lenses, slipped them back on.

“What
is
unusual in this case is the complete lack of support I have amongst my own power base. My phone calls go unanswered. My emails returned with pleasantries but little else. I'm being shunned at social outings, treated as though I had shat in the punch bowl, with everyone too fearful or embarrassed to acknowledge the deed.”

He straightened in his chair, his gaze probing me.

“What I am trying to get across to you, Teller,” he said, his voice escalating in pitch and volume, “is that something very big is going on and I, for one, am not going to back down from it. I have lived too many years, been behind this desk, this paper, too long to put up with the kind of intimidation tactics used by a sniveling little upstart like Jefferson Cooper. I want my best reporter on this story, his mind and, more importantly, his heart. I want to know what is really going on.”

I stared at him, dumbfounded and not a little ashamed. He was right. The sleepless nights, the wild dreams, hours in the Robyn Zone that left me sweat-drenched and twisted in my sheets had knocked me off my game. I tried to swallow, found my mouth as dry and foul tasting as old socks. HL was leaning forward on his desk again, his face red, a look of concern in his eyes. And something else there as well, a tightness I couldn't read.

“Are we clear on this, Teller?”

I snatched the two halves of my story from his desk. “Yes, sir,” I said. “Quite clear.”

As I started to rise, he held out his hand.

“Wait. There's more,” he said.

I sat back down.

“First, I'm sorry for your loss. Harrison de Whitt was a good man and one of those rarest of gems today: An honest politician. His loss will be felt by this entire county. Second, though you kept the connection between his death and the Mangler vague, I assume you are aware that he was conducting his own investigation of the Department of Parking Enforcement?”

“I knew he had an interest but he wouldn't give me the details. But an interest and an investigation are two quite different things, don't you think?”

“I do indeed. And, as with you, he was not forthcoming with the details, though I do know he suspected something nefarious was going on there. I've known Harrison for a number of years. Often, if he had a perplexing problem or a difficult decision to make, he would come to me and we would talk. Off the record, of course. He called me around 8:00p.m. the night he was murdered, wanted to meet the following day. He said he had something important to talk to me about.”

I thought about what the Mangler had said, implying there was a connection between Harrison's death and the destruction of the parking meters. Add to that the opposition HL was confronting and the SUV that had shown up twice yesterday, and a third time when it tried to run me down later in the evening – an SUV that matched the description Skeeter had given for the one cruising the monorail parking lot about the time Harrison's body was dumped – and the connection became obvious. We were all three targeting the DPE.  Were HL and I in their crosshairs now as well?  Seemed a safe bet we were.

“You think there's a connection,” I said.

“Do you believe there might not be?”

I considered telling him about the Mangler's message and my encounters the previous day, but decided against it.

“And if there is a connection,” he said. “You may well be in the line of fire.”

By the time I got back to my office, my stomach was churning like one of those smoothie machines. My skin felt clammy, cold. My heart was racing, the sound of it a hollow drumbeat in my ears, like a distant call to action. It took me a moment to realize I was enjoying the feeling, like a lost memory lovingly recalled. It had been a long time since I'd done anything that made me feel threatened and that was exactly what I was feeling.

Were Harrison's investigation of the DPE and his death related? Does the Pope shit in the woods? Had to be but how and why? And was last night an attempt on my life or an effort to scare me off the story? It sure seemed like that and though it scared me, they'd have to kill me to make me back off a story.

And what the hell did the Mangler have to do with all of this?

I glanced at the clock and saw it was just past 8.00 a.m. I'd skipped breakfast so I decided a cigarette and couple of dogs were in order. I walked out my office and, as I hurried across the newsroom floor, someone called my name.

“Mr. Teller.”

I stopped, doing the Three Stooges' ‘slowly I turn' routine in my head, my body following the thought.  I hated being called mister.  A young kid stood behind a battered desk. Pink cheeks, eyes bright, an eager expression on his face.

“I just wanted to say your Sunday editorial was … well, an inspiration, sir,” he said.