“I mean it. We might even have some fun.”
Nine
The young woman’s face was full of pain and terror. She knelt next to the log, cowering in anticipation of the ax. The top buttons of her flannel camping shirt had been ripped off, and ugly red scratches ran from her exposed shoulder down to her cleavage.
The ax head hovered, poised for the death blow.
“You’re going to die!” the man with the ax shouted.
“No! Please!” the woman said.
“You’re going to die, bitch.”
“No!”
“Beg me, bitch!”
“No! Please!”
The echoes of the shouts died away, as did the last of the camera clicks.
“Okay, everybody. That’s it,” Walter Striker said. Then, to the young woman, “Good work, Janet. You’ll get your check in a few days.”
The man who had been holding the ax had set it down. Now he helped the young woman to her feet.
“Thanks,” she said, wiping the painted scratches off her skin with a tissue and rebuttoning her shirt.
“Can I give you a lift?”
“That’s okay, thanks. I’ve got a ride. Bye, everybody.”
“Bye, Janet. Thanks again,” Walt Striker said.
A young man in dungarees and T-shirt appeared, picked up the plastic log and the ax, and took them back to the prop room. When he returned, he would haul away the green-and-brown canvas that had simulated a wooded background. Then he would sweep up the real twigs, leaves, and pine needles that had been strewn about for authenticity.
“Good, everybody!” Walt Striker said. “On time and on budget. Nice work, Grant.”
“Thanks.” Grant Siebert shook the hand of the editor of Sleuth. The crime magazine had just closed its September issue, whose cover article (based, more or less, on a real case) was entitled “Lunatic Lumberjack.”
“Stop for a beer?” Walt Striker said. The editor was short, balding, dumpling shaped, amusing and easily amused—good company at a bar.
“Can’t tonight,” Grant said. “There’re some things I have to do.” That was not exactly true. But the photography session, as usual, had left him feeling slightly unclean.
When he walked out of the building in midtown Manhattan, he was glad to see that it had rained. It was early evening. The walk to his apartment was a long way, but he welcomed the exercise, even though he had to walk through a dirty part of town.
The rain had given the air a just-rinsed feel that he found pleasant, especially since New York had been unusually muggy for so early in the summer. Still, the odors of whiskey and urine clung to the West Side like skin.
Grant tried to ignore the smells as he walked down Seventh Avenue. Cops patrolled the sidewalks in groups of two or three, their pale blue shirts looking a bit crisper than usual in the cooler air.
“Hi, want some company?” The prostitute was eighteen or nineteen, hair in dirty strands. She was pale and bird thin and had scabs on her face. And arms.
“No thanks.”
Near the subway entrance at Forty-second and Seventh, a black man winked at him. “Pretty girl? Pretty girl?”
Grant ignored him and walked on.
“Smoke? Smoke?” Another offer from the shadows.
As he approached Penn Station, between Thirty-first and Thirty-third, he saw the usual collection of beggars and the homeless. Sometimes he gave them quarters, but he was not in the mood tonight.
Just north of Penn Station, he saw a woman a little over five feet tall, dragging her worldly possessions in two soggy shopping bags, one in each hand. Her hair was dirty gray; she might have been forty, or sixty. She had got wet in the rain, but the rain had had no cleansing effect. Instead, it had only smeared the woman’s grime and filth throughout her dress. Then the woman hiked up her dress to reveal soiled undergarments and horrid, strawberry-red skin sores.
Grant was past her now. The scream in his heart had died in his throat. God Almighty, he thought. God Almighty.
“Homeless Vietnam veteran here. Won’t you please help.”
“No, get away from me,” Grant heard himself say. “Get the fuck away from me.”
I should have taken the subway, he thought.
He walked faster. He felt guilty about snapping at the Vietnam beggar and vowed to make up for it. There would be plenty of opportunity: the beggar had been in front of Penn Station for months.
He let himself into his apartment building. Down the narrow pink corridor he went until he reached the elevator, which he summoned with another key. The elevator lurched its way to the fourth floor, where he emerged into a narrow blue hallway that usually smelled of fried foods. He got to his apartment door without seeing anyone, which was fine with him, and let himself in. After turning on the lights, he locked the dead bolt and fixed the door chain.
The entrance door to his apartment led directly into a narrow kitchen, which was windowless but white and clean. It was large enough for a refrigerator, a small stove, a sink, some counter space, and a few cupboards.
A door from the kitchen led to a small living room. It had a window that afforded a view of the street, a sofa and one easy chair, a small coffee table, and a larger dining-room-size table where, in a straight-back chair, he did his writing.
His word processor and printer rested on the table, and Grant felt better when he saw the several fresh sheets of paper he had turned out that morning. He had done his writing for the day, and he could relax for the evening without feeling guilty.
Which is just what he wanted to do. He went into his tiny bedroom, hung his tie in the tiny closet, and looked at the telephone answering machine on the night table next to his bed. The machine was blinking.
Never mind; after his walk down Seventh Avenue, he was not in the mood for surprises. He would leave the machine on so he didn’t have to answer the phone.
The phone itself had a long cord so he could have it in the living room, or even the kitchen, if he chose. At night, he always took it into the bedroom. His building was safe, but New York was New York, and he wanted the phone handy if he opened his eyes to the dark and heard a strange noise.
He got a beer, took off his shoes, and lay down on the sofa. From where he lay, he did not have to move his head to see the television set nestled in the bookcase. Maybe a ball game tonight, he thought. Something mindless …
A single ring came from the phone, then the loud click from the bedroom as the answering machine kicked in. For a moment he wondered if he should answer; suppose it’s an important call. Suppose someone wants to buy my manuscript.
Screw it. The beer tasted so good he finished it in several gulps, got up, and fetched another. This one he would savor a bit longer. Maybe …
He hadn’t got back to the sofa when the phone gave another ring. This time, his sense of urgency took over, and he picked up the receiver.
“Just a minute, I’ll be right with you,” he said over the sound of his own recorded message. “Hello?”
“Yes, Mr. Siebert, I thought I saw you come in, but I got your recording just a minute ago, so I decided to try again.”
“Hello, Mrs. Bowe.” He had recognized the landlady’s voice at once.
“Yes, well, it is that time again, and we can’t let you—”
“I’ll leave the check in the office tomorrow. Okay? Have a nice evening.”
He decided to check the rest of his messages before lying down again.
“Mr. Siebert, this is Jerome Saltzman from the credit department of Barney’s. We’d like to talk to you at your earliest convenience—”
“Check’ll be in the mail tomorrow, dick brain.”
“Grant? Is this Grant Siebert’s residence? Grant, this is a voice you haven’t heard for a while, or even thought of, probably. It’s Will Shafer from the Bessemer Gazette. Remember? It’s been a long time. Listen, I need to talk to you, I really do. Please call me at the office, okay? Call collect. Here’s my number …”
Wi
ll Shafer was right: Grant had not thought of him in years. What could Will Shafer possibly want? He’s coming to New York for a Broadway show, and he wants a cheap place to stay. Naw. He wants a job in New York and he wants me for a reference? Even less likely.
He lay back down on the sofa with an I’ll-be-damned feeling. His eyes fell on a book that stood on the shelf next to the TV: The Kingdom and the Power, the book about the Times that he had been given in Bessemer as a going-away present.
Grant had seen items in Editor & Publisher magazine about Will Shafer’s promotions over the years. He snorted ruefully into his beer. Good for Will Shafer, he thought. Little duck, little pond. Hey, have I done any better?
He had not been back to Bessemer since he left the Gazette. Sometimes he had wondered what it would be like to go back, but he had never wondered enough to do it. And there were things he had left buried there.
Grant thought back, to how frightened he had been when he first arrived in New York. He wondered if things would have been different for him if his first few days had gone better. He had felt like a small-town boy.
God, he had been a naive jerk. He had walked past the entrance of the New York Times twice, trying to appear nonchalant, before going inside. The neighborhood hadn’t smelled so bad then; that he remembered. He had even managed to get to the main newsroom on the third floor, where he had used up all his guts just approaching the receptionist and asking to be pointed toward the metropolitan editors.
He had found a subaltern editor willing to talk to him for a few minutes, although the editor did so with a puzzled look that seemed to say, “How did this guy get in here?”
The Timesman had talked about Grant’s need to get “a bit more experience” and had wished him well. Then the editor had excused himself, offered Grant a dismissive handshake, and suggested that he “drop by personnel” and fill out an application. And he had, though it was a silly, futile gesture.
Still smarting from humiliation, he had managed to get an appointment with a wire service’s first or second assistant bureau chief in New York. The meeting had been in the early afternoon, and to Grant’s surprise his interviewer smelled of beer. Too late it had occurred to Grant that he should have made an effort to keep his contempt from showing.
“Suppose we had something for you,” the man had said. “What would you like to do for us?”
“Go to Vietnam,” Grant had immediately said.
“Old story. And we have experts there who’ve followed it from the start. Takes a new guy six months just to cultivate sources.”
“‘Cultivate sources’?” Grant said. “That’s part of the problern. Reporters have the wrong sources over there. And the same ones.”
The interviewer might have had a beery lunch, but he could sure as hell focus his eyes, which gleamed with annoyance. “Well, we can’t all go to Vietnam and win Pulitzers,” he said.
Grant had wanted to say something snotty, the way he had sometimes replied to the assistant city editors at the Gazette, but he couldn’t. This was a job interview, after all.
The interviewer had asked him why he left Bessemer with no job lined up in New York.
“I just needed a change,” Grant replied.
The gleam in the interviewer’s eyes had changed, Grant remembered later, from anger to mischief. “How much were you making when you left the Gazette?”
Embarrassed, but with his heart rising in anticipation, Grant told him.
The man shook his head slowly and frowned. “Well, you could never live on that in New York. Even if we had something for you.” And then he swiveled in his chair, showing Grant his back.
It was a while before Grant could laugh about it.
He tried other papers, some magazines in the city. Then he tried the publishing houses and met more discouragement. Just when he was running out of cash and good dress shirts, he had landed at Sleuth Inc., publisher of pulp true-crime magazines. An overweight, rumpled man—Walt Striker—who smelled of hair oil and cigars had liked something Grant had said (or perhaps had just taken pity on him) and offered him a job.
The second beer was empty already. Coming back from the kitchen with his third, Grant Siebert opened the living room window to let in the rain breeze and the city noises. He heard a siren a few blocks away. Someone else hurt or dying or cut to pieces in New York City.
Grant had been so grateful to get the job at Sleuth Inc. that he had thrown himself into it. Amazing how much a person could accomplish, could endure, when his pride didn’t get in the way.
He had worked his way up to copy editor, sometimes rewriting the gore tales that came in from stringers all over the country. He had showed a real knack (he was ashamed to think how much of a knack) for editing stories about suffering and murder. What the hell, the salary wasn’t great, but it paid the rent. Grant’s hours were flexible enough to leave him time to write.
Will Shafer. If there was anyone in the solar system he had not expected to hear from, it was him. Oh, it must be that he was coming to New York—some kind of editors’ conference?—and wanted someone to show him around the city. Sure.
Maybe if I show him around, he’ll buy me a big lunch, Grant thought. He relaxed on the sofa, letting the breeze caress the top of his head.
Next morning, halfway through his second cup of coffee, he called Will Shafer collect.
“Grant! It’s been a long time. Good to hear your voice.”
“Same here, Will. How’s everything with you?” Not that I care a lot, he thought.
“Not bad. I’m keeping busy.”
“Me, too.” Siebert remembered that Will Shafer was married, but he didn’t really want to get into much personal stuff.
“I bet you’re busy,” Shafer said. “You’re doing magazine work?”
“Right. An outfit called Sleuth. True-crime stuff.”
“I see. And I’ve seen your byline in the New York Times.”
“I’ve sold them a few free-lance articles. A book review, a suburban feature.”
“I see. Have you ever thought of working there full-time?”
“A long time ago I did. I didn’t get hired.”
“I see. Doing any other writing?”
“Yep. No books published yet. A few articles.”
“That’s great.” Pause. “Grant, the reason I called …”
At last, Grant thought. He had made up his mind to lie; he would tell Will Shafer he was going to be out of town when Shafer came to New York.
“… I’m getting in touch with some Gazette alumni. We want to have a reunion this summer.”
Grant could hardly believe what he was hearing.
“Do you think you could make it, Grant?”
“I don’t know.”
“It’s the Gazette’s ninetieth birthday. The publisher, well, I’m sure he wonders if he’ll be around ten years from now, so he decided to have a shindig this year.”
“A shindig?”
“Here’s the story, Grant. This whole deal is partly self-promotion, okay? I mean, we’re going to sing ‘Happy Birthday’ to ourselves and put out a special section. You know, how the Gazette and Bessemer have grown together. You follow?”
“I follow.” But why me?
“Off the record, a lot of it is Chamber of Commerce-type bullshit. You know Lyle Glanford. Anyhow, for part of it I’m trying to assemble some of the old staffers for a reunion gig. A big dinner, I mean. I’ve tracked down some people who went on to become lawyers, politicians. Oh, I even found a couple of people who stayed in our field.” Chuckle. “There’s Charlie Buck. Remember him? Anyhow, he’s an assistant managing editor in Milwaukee—”
Why me? Grant thought.
“—and then there’s you, Grant. Are you interested?”
“But why me?”
“Why not? You went from Bessemer to New York, for crying out loud. How many other people ever went from the Gazette to New York?”
“I don’t know. Not offhand.”
“That’s
what I mean. Look, Grant, let me level all the way. The publisher is counting on me to have a big turnout of old Gazette hands, so I’m calling in all the favors I can. I know you and I weren’t real buddy-buddy, but that’s okay. We had different agendas back then. What say?”
“Damn. I just don’t know.”
“That’s honest enough.” Chuckle. “If it helps, part of this thing is a golf outing.”
“Golf?” He hadn’t held a golf club in a long time.
“The golf is all tied in with the Chamber of Commerce bullshit. Showing off the remodeled country club and all that. But at least it’s a chance to play at the country club and have some fun. What do you say?”
“I don’t know. I thought I left Bessemer behind for good.”
“The publisher’s picking up the dinner and party tab. Greens fees and caddies, each player pays. Sound okay?”
“I don’t know. I just don’t know.”
“I hear you, Grant. Quite a bolt out of the blue, huh?” Chuckle. “If you come, I’ll see we’re paired up for golf, if that’s okay. Listen, I gotta go. Think about it and let me know.”
He poured himself another cup of coffee, berating himself for not saying no right away. The last thing he needed was a trip to Bessemer for anything, let alone to play golf with Will Shafer.
So why hadn’t he just told Will Shafer that? Why?
He went to the closet, reached into a corner, and dragged out the long-unused golf bag, brushing jackets and coats out of the way. He took out a long iron, held it in his left hand, waggled the club. Strange, it felt so strange. It had been so long since he had swung a golf club.
“Goddammit!”
In a burst of anger that surprised him with its force, he swung the club as hard as he could into a sofa cushion.
Ten
Will Shafer hung up and let out a deep breath; talking to Grant Siebert had not been too much of an ordeal, especially compared to the talk he had just had with the publisher, although Grant had seemed a bit aloof. Some things never change, Shafer thought.
Will hoped Grant would come. It wasn’t that he liked him that much; it was just that Will hadn’t had many positive responses to the reunion invitation. Charlie Buck from Milwaukee had said yes, probably because he was coming back to Bessemer anyway for his father’s eightieth birthday.
Night of the Ice Storm Page 8
