Talking Heads (3 page)

“I remember,” Leo said.

Kit twisted the paper stick in his hands. The way Leo sounded, just now, you'd think he wanted nothing to do with
Sea Level
. This had always been the bedrock quandary of working with him—once Leo had made sure his daughter went on the payroll, he'd acted as if the paper itself were incidental. Stranger still, so far as Kit could see, Zia hadn't needed Pop to buy her a paper. She'd been making headway, breaking into print. Why hadn't the old man just set her up with a computer?

Kit had fallen a long way from this morning's good news. Abruptly, half angrily, he told Leo: “So, listen, there's something you should know.”

Kit told him and went on to point out how neatly the BBC's timing—going into the prison Thursday morning—fit
Sea Level's
deadlines. And he brought up the danger of doing nothing. “I mean, Leo, you can bet the
Globe's
going after this hammer and tong.” The confirmation call this morning, in fact, had come from a
Globe
stringer. “You can bet that, right this minute, there's someone at the
Globe
who's on the line to the State House.”

Folding back into place beside the desk, he gave the old man a long moment to reply.

“But see,” Kit continued finally, “so far I have an advantage on the
Globe
. I know more than they do.”

The stringer had been in touch with the BBC about an entirely different matter. He'd been part of a
Globe
Spotlight investigation into the city's current arson wave. Small world, that investigation had helped Kit think of Cousin Cal. The stringer had mentioned that in two recent arson cases, two apartment buildings that had burned down over Christmas, title was held by Halterstock & Steyes.

“Right now,” Kit said after another long moment, “I know more about Monsod Penitentiary than just about anyone in the city. All I need is some help from the Building Commission.”

The stringer had been so talkative, of course, because he was fishing for an assignment. Since Kit had reached the editor's side of the desk, freelancers had gotten a lot more generous with tips, ideas, whatever they had. Today's was typical, a Monday-morning eager beaver. So why was this old man before him just sitting there, a Brando-on-a-log?

“The BBC takes a reporter along every now and then,” Kit said. “A reporter or a politician or somebody.”

The old man's hands lay still. His vest, bunched up around his slouch, revealed a shadow-silver lining.

“They'll take someone along now and then,” Kit repeated. “Even if it's dangerous.”

“Dangerous,” Leo said. His voice came rheumy, showing his age. “Hey Kit, yeah. A place like that could be dangerous.”

“Ahh …”

“They got murderers in there, Kit,” the old man said. “Murderers, rapists, real slime. They had a riot a coupla months ago, right?”

“There've been disturbances, yeah. They've had trouble on and off for a year now.” Trouble enough to prick up Kit's muckraker antennae. Once he had the paper up and running, Monsod was the first place he looked for a story.

“Disturbances, bullshit. They put a guard in the hospital. Kit, there's no telling what those animals might do.”

Kit refolded his arms.

“They're gorillas in there, Kit. Dangerous guys.”

But surely Leo realized the BBC people would have a security escort. A proper inspection wouldn't allow for contact with the prisoners. “I mean,” Kit said, “they've got a job to do, these inspectors. Just to check out that closet …”

“Oh yeah, the closet,” Leo cut in. “That's an incredible story, Kit. Where'd you get something like that?”

Where'd he
get
it?

“See Kit, that closet, I mean, that's just what I'm talking about. That's really dangerous, Kit. Where'd you ever hear about that?”

“Leo, come on now.” Kit was careful to smile. “I don't remember anything in the contract about giving you my sources.”

The publisher had worked himself forward in his chair, gesturing. At this he dropped his hands.

“Kit, I'm not kidding around here. Monsod, a place like that, they'll rip you open and pull you inside-out.”

“Leo,”

“Place like that, no
way
you want to go in there.”

“Leo, I have to.”

Back to the silent treatment. His heavy face hidden, Leo fingered the white hunk of stone between them, the two-thousand-year-old marble. Kit knew enough to leave him alone. Leo must have long since figured out what he was here to ask. In fact in the next half-minute, Kit realized he knew this old worker with the horny palms better than he'd thought.

After Kit's father had been killed, Kit had been raised by ranchers. By his uncles, his mother's two brothers, men without children of their own. One preferred life as a cowboy bachelor and the other—this was supposed to be a secret—preferred men. The brothers raised beef cattle on a spread of nearly three hundred acres in central Minnesota. And while Kit was growing up, again and again they'd taken him through the same style of talk as Leo liked to use. A style with a built-in contradiction. The body language came across crystal-clear, impossible to misunderstand, while the words spoken remained fuzzy and elliptical. Kit's uncles had always kept him guessing. They'd mention something Kit had never seen, some place he'd never been to, and expect him to understand a whole range of implied meaning. “Hibbing,” an uncle would say, or “Mesabi red.” From that alone Kit was supposed to deduce an entire way of life. Plus out of nowhere these ranchers could come up with intensely personal questions he shouldn't have had to answer in the first place.

“What about your wife?” Leo Mirini asked, still fingering the stone on his desktop. “Can't she help you?”

Kit touched his neck.

“Your wife,” Leo said, “she's old Boston, right? Old Boston, an old family. They gotta have somebody over at the State House.”

“I can't do that,” Kit said.

“You can't? A reporter can't ask his wife?”

Kit took a crack at silence himself. Trying to relax, he stared from under his eyebrows. Leo changed the angle of his chin.

“You're sure they're going in there?”

Kit waited out the black thought that neither the Saturday call nor this morning's confirmation had got it right.

“Of course I'm sure,” he said.

The old man left off stroking the desktop rock. He refolded his hands under his belly. Kit remembered his misguided attempt with Bette and wondered if, in coming to Leo, he was again out of line. What was the protocol here? He tried to reckon meaning from the bulge of Leo's paunch, the shrunkenness of the neck. He'd never seen the father so still, so thoughtful.

“Well, Kit, hey,” Leo said finally. “It's good news, yeah. Very good news.
Hey!
”

Surprised him. Something like ten minutes late, the old man at last got around to congratulations. His hands came back up and his satchelmouth showed teeth. Kit worried for a moment that there might be another round of neck massage. The CEO's office was small enough that with his “
hey
” and “how ‘bout
that,
” the man may have made the pictures on the walls shiver. Kit may have seen it happen. He tried to keep up, grinning.

“Thanks,” Kit said, “thanks.”

“And I think I got an idea here, Kit. I think I can help.”

“You can?”

Surprised him, surprised him. One of Leo's brown hands remained in mid-air between them, but its message had changed. A moment ago that hand had been a celebration, gimme five, but now it was a warning: Hush. With that one statement the old man's voice had dropped. Kit latched up the jack-in-the-box in his chest—
he can help!
—and checked the window, the doorway. The view was of blind waterfront warehouses, and the office remained closed.

“You remember my business down in Surinam?” Leo asked.

Surinam?

“Sure Leo,” Kit said, “I remember. Your bauxite.” Raw material for the Mirinex product line. Leo had set up one of his sons down there, along with a Caribbean bank account.

“Right,” Leo said. “Cheap labor, cheap product.”

Kit nodded. The
Texas Observer
, he figured, probably had a little dirty money behind it too. Baptist sleazeball oil money or something.

“Right. I mean, I been thinking about Surinam, Kit. You help me out down there, I'll help you out up here. I been trying to figure a way I could get some more cash to my boy.”

“Cash?”

“Kit, kid. Cash, I mean, that's how you do business down there. You don't pay much like I told you, you don't hardly pay anything, not real money. But you have to be down there with like three thousand, maybe five thousand dollars. Cash. You have to be ready, see what I mean?”

Kit fitted his paper stick upright beneath his chin.

“Lately, whenever my boy tries to do business,” Leo went on, “it seems like somebody else's got the cash. Somebody else's trying to cut in.”

Kit's stick was straight up, his spine likewise. Not only did Leo's problem seem a long way from the Building Commission, but also the whole subject left Kit feeling unready. In the newspaper network people rarely talked about cash. Whether a writer was at the
East End News
, the
Phoenix
, or even the lower rungs of the
Globe
, everyone understood that there simply wasn't much money involved. Kit's friends tended to mention specific figures only when they'd worked up a good head of contempt—contempt being, of course, the best camouflage for envy.
Can you believe
, someone might say,
they paid twelve hundred dollars for that piece of shit?
The sort of steeply pitched attitude that made Zia Mirini a natural for the job.

Zia's father explained that, at the Surinam plant, the labor varied from job to job. “Sometimes it takes a hundred women, punching them out round the clock, and then sometimes the place is practically empty.”

“I hear you, Leo.”
Texas Monthly
probably had cocaine money behind it. Maybe Mexican babies-for-sale money.

“So whenever I go down there, Kit, I got to have cash. Cash in hand, for the boy. That's where you come in.

“Kit, kid,” Leo went on. “I wonder if you know how bad it looks, a businessman writing out all these checks to cash.”

“Cash,” Kit said.

“Kit, lemme tell you. Writing checks to cash, a businessman might as well just drop trou and bend over.” Leo had swung closer, his bulk on his forearms. He complained a while about audits, the IRS. “Someone like you, Kit, I mean. You probably never had to go through an audit.”

Aw, why hadn't Kit spent more time in Boston? Why didn't he know better the scams a guy in Leo's line of work might pull? “Well Leo,” he tried, “I would think that's what you've got accountants for.”

“Kit,
madonn'
. I've got accountants. Fucking con artists, the things they try to talk you into.” The old man went into another brief round of complaints. Another set of terms Kit had never heard of: general ledger, discounted cash flow.

“So Kit,” Leo said. “So what I'm thinking is, I'll give you some more money.”

“What?”

“Oh, now he lightens up. Oh-ho, hey-yey. I'm offering you extra cash, Kit. That's what we're talking about here. Could you use an extra grand for January?”

“A, a grand? A thousand dollars?”

The old man's smile showed some tongue.

Latch it up, Viddich. “Leo,” Kit said, “you know what my budget is.”

“I know it's only two weeks till the next issue. And I know your budget, yeah.”

“Leo, what's the deal? What do you want?”

“It might sound a little rough.”

Kit had come up here, after all. He'd come and he'd asked.

“Here's how it works. Kit, say I give you a check for twenty-five hundred. I mean, your first one, I can give you that next week. You could be taking twenty-five hundred dollars to the bank Monday morning.” Leo had brought his smile so close that Kit could smell his coffee. “But then, Kit, every time I do this for you, you do something for me. You get me back fifteen hundred. Cash.”

It was like the weight of Kit's eyes had increased. “What? I give you something back?”

“Only fifteen hundred, Kit. Fifteen hundred to me in cash. You do what you want with the other grand.”

Kit couldn't trust any response more complicated than a stare. He dropped his hands but kept them fisted around his paper. Leo took advantage of the silence, shoveling on the rationale. ‘S just business. Your friends at the
Globe
, hey, they do this kind of business all the time. Your friends at fucking Harvard … Kit got up from the desk. He put a long stride between him and Leo's espresso-breath, between him and that smutty gesture every time the man said “cash.” He noticed that the idea of laundering money didn't impress the figures from Pompeii. In one fresco, a wrestling scene, two grapplers had robes over their shoulders but their genitals swung naked.

Leo swiveled left-right, following Kit. “Listen,” he said, “you told me yourself the
Globe
wanted to get into Monsod. You think they're not looking for some shit to trade?”

Casting around for help, Kit recalled other times he'd been faced with shady deals. In the Midwest once, a hops vendor had dropped six hundred dollars on his desk. Just spread the bills on his desk and walked out of the office. In North Carolina there'd been talk of a lot more.

But none of those people had been paying Kit's salary.

“Leo,” he tried, “let's set aside the money a minute. This cash deal, let's leave it alone for a minute.” He faced the desk. “Didn't you say you could help me with the BBC?”

It took more than that to break the old man's momentum. Even changing the subject, Leo kept his chest up. “Yeah, well the Building Commission, I mean. Yeah. I know some guys. Tomorrow, see, there's this thing at Parker House. Tomorrow lunch. They want Mirinex at Parker House.”