Rubout (28 page)

“Probably scrubbing floors,” the younger cop said. “Don’t they call these people around here the Scrubby Dutch?”

I’d had enough. I opened my briefcase, which was still sitting on the parking pad where I’d dropped it when I first saw Ralph. I pulled out my hand-held tape recorder, which for once had working batteries, and clicked the red button. “Maybe I should just tape record this conversation, officers, and your superiors can decide for themselves what they think at the citizen’s complaint hearing. A little more publicity won’t bother me,” I bluffed. “And the press is on my side because I’m one of them.” Another lie, but they seemed to buy it. “Now, are you going to do your job and call for an evidence van to take some prints off this car?”

“You can’t take prints off this metal,” the young cop said. “It’s too damp.”

I didn’t know if they were telling the truth or they didn’t want to bother.

“We will write up a report for your insurance,” the older cop said, sounding halfway polite. “If you get any leads, please call us.” It would sound good on the tape, but he didn’t even bother giving me his phone number or card. He didn’t mean a word. I knew exactly how much effort he’d put into this case. If I had any leads, please call. Yeah, right. I could imagine the fun he’d have if I told him I suspected Hudson
Vander Venter or his son had vandalized my car. He wouldn’t believe me. He wouldn’t even believe Hudson was in this neighborhood. And come to think of it, why hadn’t anyone seen Hudson? A huge, expensive car like his would be noticed here. The old-timers drove modest, respectable Ply mouths, Fords, and Chevys, American cars that were scrupulously maintained. The yuppie newcomers drove beat-up Hondas, Toyotas, and Volvos, plus an occasional Jeep Cherokee. The rehabbers had pickups, and the poorest people on the South Side drove big old avocado-green or mustard-color junkers with coat-hanger antennas. Neighbors would comment if an expensive car like Hudson’s was parked nearby, even for a short time. They’d see it as another sign that the neighborhood was looking up. If nobody mentioned the car to Mrs. Indelicato in the next few days, I could be pretty sure he didn’t drive it. Maybe he drove Sydney’s Jeep. That might be less noticeable. Did he even have Sydney’s car now that she was dead? Mayhew would know. If I ever got up the nerve, I’d call him and ask. Maybe I’d wait until I talked with Sydney’s mother-in-law today. Elizabeth might give me more information on the Jack connection, or tell me how all the motor oil got in Hudson’s car. Mayhew would be glad to talk to me then.

Meanwhile, I needed some wheels. I called my insurance agent. Carl was properly sympathetic and promised to have an insurance adjustor look at Ralph today, so I could arrange to have him towed and start the repairs. “That car’s not fit to drive,” Carl said. “You have it towed. You can’t sit on that seat with all that glass and it will blow around the car.
Don’t worry about the cost. It’s covered. Your insurance will provide a loaner car. We have a special deal with a company on Morganford Road. You can walk there. Nice folks. Their cars are nothing fancy, but they’re reliable. They always run. You tell Jimmy I sent you.”

Retread Rentals had a collection of ancient, anonymous clunkers in tan, gray, and brown. They looked like the cars undercover police used for surveillance. They were so anonymous, they might as well have had
UNMARKED GOVERNMENT CARPOOL
stenciled on their sides. Jimmy, a skinny guy with an acne-scarred face, gave me a dented gray Ford that looked like a filing cabinet lying on its side. Drove like one, too. The car actually had four square corners and swayed when I made a turn. It was at least twenty years old. The File Cabinet rattled and shook and idled so roughly, I was queasy by the time I drove it three blocks. The steering was mushy and the radio was permanently stuck on a shock jock radio station. After I heard the morning show DJ talk about how he masturbated because “ya don’t have to send Mrs. Palm and her five lovely daughters flowers, and your hand never has a headache” I decided silence was better than that. I entertained myself by watching my Dunhill briefcase bounce up and down on the red leatherette seat. A big tear on the passenger side was repaired with gray duct tape that matched the car’s exterior. Spiffy touch, that.

Why joke about it? After Ralph, driving the File Cabinet was a depressing experience. No guys flirted with me when I was in this ugly, square car or gunned their engines and challenged me to a street
race. They probably thought I was a narc. But I didn’t have time to concentrate on my misery. I had to nurse the car at every red light, slowly feeding it gas, so it wouldn’t die on me. And I had to get to Frontenac as fast as the File Cabinet could waddle. It was now five after ten, and the Voyage Committee meeting started at ten-thirty, this time in a conference room at the West County Inn. The high-priced hotel smelled of bayberry. I followed the six-foot-tall silk flower arrangements and crystal chandeliers to a peach-colored conference room. Once again, I was the last one to arrive. Even Voyage Captain Jason was there, fiddling around at the podium, getting ready to set sail on another sea of psychobabble. The publisher looked at me like I was a bug in his bathtub. Georgia frowned. Vonnie the Steel Magnolia and Charlie the Mendacious Managing Editor both smiled. They were thrilled that I was in trouble. Roberto started to give me a polite nod, then caught a look at Charlie and made a split-second decision to support the boss. He bared his teeth in an unpleasant grin. The two business guys, Simpson Tolbart and Tucker Gravois, were busy discussing golf. That meant Brittany, Courtney, Scott, and Jeremy, the four business office clones, hadn’t been told how to think, so they kept their faces in their natural expression—absolutely blank.

Voyage Captain Jason tapped the microphone. “Good morning, people,” he said. “Good morning, Francesca.”

Evidently, I wasn’t a person this morning. Our captain had singled me out for special attention, so I knew the name of the creek I was up, and I didn’t
have a paddle, either. He leaned forward and smiled at the publisher with his most engaging smile. The publisher smiled back, like the class homely guy who’s finally been noticed by the cutest teacher in school. Voyage Captain Jason addressed his remarks to this class of one.

“We are not here to build circulation but to build teamwork, which will in turn build circulation once we learn where we want to go on our Voyage of Discovery,” he said, profoundly serious. Based on that conversation, I figured we were going in circles. I wanted to go out the door and get some work done. I hadn’t been able to go trolling for columns at Uncle Bob’s this morning and I desperately needed a topic.

“Today we must learn to face our deepest divisions,” he said, and looked me squarely in the eye, “and heal them so we can go forward into the future. We want our efforts to prove fruitworthy—”

Fruitworthy? Was that a word?

“Ahoy, Francesca, are you home?” Captain Jason said. The guy was sticking to me like a barnacle today. He must have been really ticked at my display last time, and this was his way of getting back at me. But I’d resolved to behave myself, so I answered ever so politely. “I was lost in admiration at your unique use of the language, Captain, sir,” I said. Georgia’s frown cut a deeper furrow in her forehead. She knew I was making fun of Jason. Good thing the captain didn’t recognize bilge. He seemed to swallow it.

“Before we can sail into our new future, we must face death,” our captain said. “On this voyage, death must not only be met. Death must be conquered.”

The publisher straightened his shoulders, as if preparing
for the struggle. Charlie straightened his tie. Vonnie crossed her legs. Each member of management prepared to fight the Conqueror Worm in his or her own way.

“But in our case, death is not the end of our journey. It is the beginning. We shall rise from this death and begin a bold, shining, successful new day at the
Gazette.
Ladies and gentlemen, are you ready to meet death?”

We all nodded. This was sounding suspiciously like a sermon. No one but me seemed uneasy with the semireligious tone. Maybe it was the devil in me. Voyage Captain Jason clapped his hands. The conference room door swung open. Six men dressed like undertakers in black suits, white shirts, and dead black neckties carried a coffin into the meeting room and set it on the conference table. It took up almost the whole table. Everyone hurried to move notebooks and coffee cups, so Death wouldn’t touch anything of ours. An empty foam coffee cup went skittering over the edge, but no one picked it up. We were too stunned. Besides, no one wanted to bow to death. I’d never been eye level with a coffin before. It was a real one, too, the cheap gray kind used for cremations. I’d done a story about coffins once and inspected several models. This one had shiny silver metal handles that didn’t melt when you burned the coffin. The lid was closed.

It was a little too authentic for one of the business office quadruplets. “Eeeuwww,” squealed either Brittany, Courtney, Scott, or Jeremy. All four looked disgusted, as if Voyage Captain Jason had exposed himself in the country club dining room.

“Some of you might find this shocking,” he said. “That’s good. We need to shock ourselves out of our old ways. The sands are running out on the old
Gazette.
But before we set sail into the future, we must sing our swan song.”

Then he gave each one of us a two-pocket black vinyl ring binder with
THE VOYAGE COMMITTEE
printed on the cover in gold. “In the future, this will be a place to store your committee reports and notes,” he said. “A free gift before we embark on our journey into the future.”

The publisher beamed. He loved free gifts, even if he was paying for them. He started to open his present.

“Don’t do that,” Jason said, like a mother cautioning an overeager child. “Don’t open it yet. It has a surprise inside—our swan song, which I wrote specially for the
Gazette.
Don’t open it now,” he said, rapping Roberto coyly on the head. Roberto had been caught trying to sneak a peek. “First let me pass out these.”

He gave each one of us several black-bordered white cards, engraved with one word, “Regrets.”

“These cards are to write down our regrets about the
Gazette,”
he said. “We can regret many things: our impatience with readers, our dissension with our colleagues”—once again he gave me a look—“our hesitation to take bold new steps. Let me give you a few moments to think about your regrets and write them down.”

Charlie and Vonnie were busy scribbling. Roberto peeked at Charlie’s card and then wrote something.
Georgia thoughtfully chewed her ballpoint pen tip and then wrote. The publisher pulled out a four-hundred-dollar gold-banded Waterman fountain pen and wrote with such seriousness, you’d have thought he was signing the Constitution. Tucker Gravois and Simpson Tolbart both exposed their own expensive pens and wrote with a flourish, as if they were signing checks. Brittany, Courtney, Scott, and Jeremy looked like four students working on a tough term paper. Everyone wrote with surprising speed. I think they all wanted to go forward into the future—and get that blasted coffin off the table. Only I sat there. I had a lot of regrets about the
Gazette,
but I wasn’t going to write them down for this bunch. I regretted that I was stupid enough to ever think that runtlike rat, Charlie, was my friend. Lyle had warned me about him, but I didn’t listen. For almost ten years, I was one of his admirers. I think he reminded me of my father, another man who was good at betrayals. Dad was handsomer than Charlie, and a good foot taller, but they had a lot in common, and I knew it. I called myself a trained observer. I’d observed Charlie’s constant infidelities. I knew he pimped his girlfriends to the managing editor to advance his career. I knew he sold pot to his friends and jacked up the price. I knew he betrayed his male friends, sometimes to get ahead and sometimes just for the fun of it. I’d observed all of that. But I never thought he’d betray me. Until Georgia showed me the famous not-so-secret memo, where Charlie tried to ruin my career the way he’d destroyed so many others. After that, I avoided the little creep like
E. coli.

Now I regretted the day he was born. I regretted
the day he took over the
Gazette,
because no matter what Voyage Captain Jason said or did, with Charlie at the helm, we were rearranging the deck chairs on the
Titanic.
But I regretted most of all that I couldn’t say any of this. The publisher was crazy about the little toady and thought he was the greatest advance in the newspaper business since the invention of movable type. So with no regrets at all, I left my “regrets” card blank.

“Do we all have our regrets, people?” Voyage Captain Jason asked, as if he were talking to a class of low achievers. I nodded along with everyone else. After all, I had major regrets. I just didn’t write them down.

“Here’s what I’d like you to do. I want you to take all those regrets that you have written down and throw them into the coffin. I want us to bury our regrets and animosities. We will read them aloud first. And while we do this, we will sing this special song that I wrote for the
Gazette.
This is an important ceremony,” he said. “It is a rite of passage, a grave undertaking”—he gave a little laugh to let us know it was a pun—“so we can pass into the new bright future.” He tapped on the podium like a conductor and said, “I will begin singing the special hymn to the
Gazette.
Please join in. I know you know the tune. You may now open your books so that you can sing along with me. Our special song is called”—and he paused to smile at the publisher—“ ‘Amazing
Gazette.’
” And then, to the tune of that beautiful old Protestant hymn, he began singing these words, in a surprisingly good tenor:

I did see. It was blasphemy, pure and simple. I was about as religious as a rattlesnake. I hadn’t attended Sunday Mass since my grandparents died, and Catholics didn’t sing that hymn. But I had Baptist friends who did, who loved those words and reverently used them to praise their God. They would be shocked and horrified to know it had been put to this godless use.