Talking Heads (6 page)

*

Did he sleep? Did he wake and touch his wife, take coffee and the MTA? Midnight and morning seemed to carry Kit down the same shadowy tubes. By ten-thirty Wednesday, Corinna was getting exasperated. She began waving at him with each new call, showing off her nails, trying to light a fire under the boss.

For one call, her high-gloss lips got into the act as well. Eagerly they shaped a word Kit couldn't read.
A, B, A, B?

Then he recognized the connection, the static. He thought again of Bette's psychic, talking to the dead.

“Mrs. Rebes?” Kit bent close to the machine.

Getting the Monsod story had required no pull, no Parker House. The first of the Five W's was Who, sure, and so Kit had chased down the names of the men serving sentences longer than three years. Then he chased down their families. Finally Kit found a convict in the right place—down in solitary—with a contact on the outside he could trust. The prisoner was Junior Rebes, doing thirty-five years to life. Rape, murder, narcotics. Junior seemed to spend a lot of time in solitary, in the penitentiary basement. Down there, according to what Kit could put together, the rot was worst.

The contact on the outside was Junior's mother. “You got a minute for me, Missah Viddich?”

“All the time you want.”

It still jarred him, a woman ten or twelve years his senior calling him “Mister.” But she didn't like using first names. She never let him visit her apartment either. She claimed she had to keep Kit away from her other son. According to her this second son, Louie-Louie, was a better boy than Junior. But Louie-Louie would expect too much from Kit. The younger boy would expect Kit to turn the whole system around for them, get them on the TV or something.

Mrs. Rebes herself seemed to expect nothing. Today she told Kit she'd read the piece, she'd shown it around the coffee shop, and to hear her you'd think that
Sea Level's
few smudgy columns were the best her boy could have hoped for.

Kit had seen her shop. On the Goodwill Industries side of the South End, its floor tiles had long since run to yellow. There he'd made himself sleepless with caffeine, listening. Mrs. Rebes had revealed at last that she could show him something “a lot better than plain old letters.” She'd told him she had “the actual, real
cassettes.
” The tapes Junior had sent from prison. After that Kit had done most of the talking. The hopped-up flow of his words however had felt unreal, intrusive, hypocritical, and it'd come to Kit that he needed to work the same transformations on himself as on this string-fingered, unhappy woman. He needed to trust his own asking. He had to know that he was beyond sheer nickel-plated ambition.

Mrs. Rebes could stare for minutes on end between question and answer. Just sit there staring in cap and apron, a still-young woman worn to shreds.

Today Kit remained close to the phone. “There's a certain kinda way,” the mother was saying, “it's even better you didn't use our real name. It's better in the paper I mean, for someone else readin' it.”

“I'm glad you think so, Mrs. Rebes.”

“It opens their eyes, in a certain kinda way. When you say the name isn't real, they see it could be anybody.”

“Well … that's the idea.”

Fine talk. To hear him you'd think a man put together a story out of nothing but angelhair and the Ten Commandments. Kit's using an alias for Junior, however, had been as much a matter of protecting his back as anything more noble.
Globe
editors lurked in the bushes. And
Sea Level
might have suffered worse, with a single-source story. Public Relations at Monsod had stonewalled him when Kit called for confirmation. Refused to confirm or deny. A couple of the other convicts' families had provided corroboration here and there, but for more than one crucial passage Kit was going entirely on Junior's cassettes. Junior was the only one who could describe the closet. So Kit had created a straw man, “Manny.” He'd declared up front that the name was an amalgam, a fiction.

You had to do something. There were stories like that, top-page possibilities soft in a couple of spots. Kit however had never done it before, cooked up an amalgam.

“Yeah,” the mother told him now. “But it's not just any reporter woulda done what you done.”

“Well … thank you.”

“Not just any reporter look out for my boy.”

“Thanks, Mrs. Rebes.”

Kit began to think he knew why the mother had called. She needed bucking up; she'd developed a dependence. How's that feel on the conscience, Viddich?

“I'm working on a follow-up, Mrs. Rebes.” The constructive tone didn't ring unredeemably false, at least. “Maybe next time we can meet at your place.”

“Uh-huh well now you mention it Missah Viddich, you know that's kind of why I called. About the, the follow-up.”

“Don't worry. Please. Nothing's going to happen until you and I get a chance to talk.”

“I hear that. But see and cause like, see, now there's another newspaper call me.”

The phone-static rose and fell, surf and undertow.

“Was the
Globe
. Somebody from the
Globe
call me.”

Kit checked the outer office. The workspaces remained quiet, the women head-down at their desks. Junior's mother assured him she hadn't told the other reporter anything. Missah Viddich be the only one look out for her boy till now, she not about to start trustin somebody else.

He couldn't just go on saying thank you. But what Kit came up with—“You have to do what you think is best for you.”—tasted even flatter.

“Uh-huh well see, I ain't talkin' to somebody else, don't fret. Oh see. Somebody else just lookin' out for
themself.
”

Kit continued to labor toward clear thinking, ripping through the papier-mâché of the last couple of days. He asked the mother if she'd gotten the
Globe
reporter's name. Mrs. Rebes recalled a syllable or two, maybe the first initial, but she hadn't thought to make a note. Kit cut her off when she started to apologize: “Don't,
don't …
”

Too loud. The glass walls echoed.

Lowering his voice, loosening his grip on the receiver, he told her there was no harm done. “If you told them you won't talk,” he assured her, “they shouldn't pester you.” Meantime he faced up to the news—bad news but hardly unexpected.
Sea Level
had never been more than a couple of phone calls ahead of the pack. Sooner or later somebody else had been bound to find Junior's mother. All things considered, it was better to hear it from her, the source, with her smoker's squeak and nervous honesty. Better Mrs. Rebes than reading it in tomorrow's paper.

“I told em,” she was saying. “Told em. Oh see, I was thinkin the whole time, ain nobody been good to me like Missah Kit Viddich.”

“That's … thank you.”

“You done some good for me, good like in the Gospel. My boy was dead and you made him live.”

“Thank you.”

Afterwards Kit sat back from the silent phone. For the first time in a while he noticed the things he'd taped to the glass rather than the glass itself.

He'd put up a couple of table-teepees, goofy stuff he'd found in restaurants out West. One came from Wyoming, some hole in the wall where every booth had a photo of “The World-Famous Jackalope.” The shot was almost as overdone as Zia's postcards. A cowboy in two-hundred-dollar chaps lifted a saddle onto a huge horned rabbit.
They're tough to handle
, the logo read,
but you won't find any animal faster
.

A gunslinger saint, riding on a fantasy. Yet now Kit sat there with a hard-to-figure new energy. He was suddenly hands-on around the workspace. He touched the table-teepee before him—and, astonishing himself, chuckled at the joke. He touched the card from Senator Croftall's aide.

He was on his feet, his back to the workspace, looking out over
Sea Level's
home block. Across the way, the turn-of-the-century brownstones had bowed window-settings that bulged on either side of their central doors. Like dark children with mumps. Like brown forearms stitched down the middle with a needle's track. The city had its diseases, certainly. But who said
Sea Level
couldn't cure one or two of those diseases? Kit felt the constriction of the Boston winter, the weight of church bells a hundred years old tolling eleven. But who said he had to keep his head down under the gray, the clockworks? With or without the Building Commission, he still had a story. With or without Leo Mirini's ambiguous support, he still had a paper.

It did cross his mind, by the time he headed out to Corinna's desk, that this morning's energy might look just as foolish as Monday's.

“Who haven't we tried yet?” he asked her.

She blinked. Gently, editor.

“That freelancer who called me Monday,” Kit said. “That stringer with the Spotlight Team. Let's find out who he knows.”

“You got a number for him?”

“Sure. And come to think of it there's another
Globe
number I want you to try. Somebody from over there just called my source on Monsod.”

“Uh-oh.”

“Don't worry.” Kit assured her that Mrs. Rebes wouldn't talk. “But think about it, Corinna. It's time I talked to that editor that came to the party. Rachel, remember?”

“You're going to ask someone at the
Globe
for help?”

Over in Zia's space, the writer had been huddling with Topsy Otaka. Kit had okayed a design inset for the disc-jockey piece. But the mention of Rachel Veutri brought Zia's head up; Kit hadn't been blowing smoke when he'd told Leo how the
Globe
woman had liked the Humans piece.

“Zia, you remember Rachel,” he said.

“I remember.”

“I think it's time we talked to her. It's time we got a
move
on.”

Zia's eyeliner was like two equals signs. “Dylan comes back,” she said.

Kit laughed. “Aw, Z.” To think he'd once wanted to do without this live wire. To think he'd let a hambone like Leo disconnect his own wires. The next several hours seemed to Kit to be defined by Zia's black-bordered gaze, a strict outline of what mattered. For starters, there was no reason he couldn't make plans for two Number Twos. No reason he couldn't line up assignments and deadlines for each of the mockups on his desk. When he'd been covering Agriculture for the
Globe
, he'd always had three or four pieces brewing at once. Kit had even hired researchers, and one of those researchers had been Bette. Worked that time.

Today he took pains to clarify the alternatives, figuring the difference between the two issues in column-inches, in word-counts. He did this out where everyone could see him. He set both of Topsy's designs on one of the extra desks between his space and Corinna's.

Not that his sense of purpose didn't suffer the occasional blow. Things got sticky when he took Zia into his office and made it clear that the Oedipus profile might be bumped back an issue. She understood, sure. If Kit got into Monsod, sure. But the black borders of Zia's gaze trembled, the gaze itself shifted to Kit's jackalope, and for the next minute or so he was wondering again if he was up to this. He had Zia wait, there within his glass walls, while Corinna tried Rachel Veutri's number again. And reaching Rachel, Kit took pains to keep his purpose in focus.

“Whatever happens,” he told the
Globe
editor, “we still have to lead with Monsod. We can't go changing what we're about after a single issue.”

Rachel—he made sure Zia knew—agreed.

“The penitentiary has still got to be one of our top-page pieces,” he said into the phone, “whether I get inside or not.”

His friend couldn't help him, it turned out. Rachel worked more in Zia's territory; Kit, when he'd finished his questions, passed the phone to his writer. Nonetheless both the call and the work came as a relief. A recharge. With increasing zip, Kit made assignments for himself, Kit the employee. He scheduled a couple of hours in the Harvard Law Library, he noted down follow-up questions for Mrs. Rebes. He needed to talk to her again, whatever happened.

Kit even found confirmation of Zia's heroin habit, out of the blue at the end of the afternoon.

This happened in the office across the hall. The outfit over there, like
Sea Level
, was something Zia had helped bring into the building. It was a women's counseling setup, non-profit. Another ‘60s angel struggling with plucked wings. Till now, Kit'd had no idea where Zia had heard of the organization, but according to Leo, it'd been Zia who'd found the outfit. The old man had been happy to take on a tenant whose service status helped him get a break on property taxes.

Today, Kit was called across the hall late, after four. He was the only one left at
Sea Level
, and across the hall, the mirror over their bathroom medicine cabinet had fallen off its hinges. A woman came asking for help, making jokes about a “man's job.” Over there, they were down to a single staff person as well. And by that hour, Kit had more or less accepted defeat. He'd seen how it was—no Monsod inspection for
Sea Level's
Editor-in-Chief. He'd seen and he hadn't gotten all webbed up in imaginary layout and pasteup. Then among the call-memos on the counseling group's bulletin board he spotted one for “Alice Mirini.”

The call was from a doctor with a Hindu name, the address a health center over in the Fenway. And here came Kit's muckraker antennae.

“Has the methadone clinic been trying to reach Zia lately?” he asked, turning the detached cabinet mirror between his hands. “I'm afraid I've kept her pretty busy.”

“Oh yes,” the woman answered brightly. “Topsy and her both got all their calls before they left.”

Yet it was as if the news never laid a glove on him. As if Leo had never laid a glove on him. Of course now and again, during his remaining half-hour or so in the office, Kit found himself rocked with a spasm of anger. He'd sit there clenching his notepad, his eyes pinched shut. And he'd think of the thousand-year-old rock on Leo's desk. The man wanted to keep
Sea Level
under that rock,
Sea Level
and his daughter both. He wanted to have his own in-house rehab. Nonetheless, by the time Kit's grip on his spiral-top notepad began to hurt, the anger would already have passed. He'd study the fading red marks in his palm and tell himself: Come on. This latest piece of dirty business only confirmed what he'd been feeling since he'd gotten off the phone with Mrs. Rebes. Regardless of Leo's Godfather games, regardless of Kit's rookie groaning, there remained something in
Sea Level's
staple-bound paper that wouldn't smudge off.