Fourth Person No More

by John Gastineau

  “A little slack here, Bob. I’ve been up all night. I’ve been around. I think I know where we are.”

  “Well, let’s both be clear about it. We’re a little shitkicker newspaper. We don’t have a Sunday edition. It’ll be 48 hours before we publish again. In the meantime, our material’s on the wire going out to every news outlet in the state. Which means?”

  “Is this a quiz?”

  “You said you knew where we are.”

  “The twinks,” I said. Marley rewarded my insight with a curt nod.

  Twinks is the only term flexible enough to accommodate all of Marley’s complex, and uniformly negative, opinions about those of our brothers and sisters in the media who have been so unfortunate as to stray into TV. Sometimes they are the twinks merely because not a few consider themselves “the little stars” of journalism. They twinkle in the heavens above the firmament that is the rest of us. Other times, they are the twinks because when they gather in large numbers they remind him of fireflies. “Look at that,” Marley will say, usually while watching some street-side swarm at a disaster. “You’d think that many flickering assholes’d shed more light.” Most of the time, as they close their stories with puns and babble their way through inane segues, they are the twinks because they are soft and spongy with sweet, cream-filled centers.

  “It’s the weekend,” Marley said. “All they’ll have is the chicken-pie stuff. The dog shows. Fun runs. Fundraisers for kids dying of cancer.”

  “Plus, the old guys—anybody with any seniority—will have the weekend off,” I pointed out. “It’ll just be the kids working, the young ones looking to make their bones so they can move up to the next market. This’d be a good one to do that on.”

  “If it bleeds, it leads,” Marley agreed, although we’d both been around far too for that old chestnut to advance the conversation.

  So, Marley said, I should stay on top of the authorities in case there’s an arrest. He wanted me to talk to the families of the victims, too, he said. A sidebar on community reaction would be good. Call preachers, see if church attendance, counseling go up. Call the school superintendent, see if they’ll offer shrinks or time off to students. Maybe call a gun shop, see if sales were up. Find a locksmith, see if people are locking they’re doors.

  Also, Marley said, the Program would be meeting tonight, and I’d missed at least a couple of meetings last week.

  “Do I get to sleep this weekend?” I asked.

  “Most of all,” Marley said, ignoring the question altogether, “find me the woman.”

  “The woman.”

  “Nusbaumer,” Marley said. “The woman. Aunt Lotty. Christ, who else?”

  Dot brought our food.

  “You know Lotty Nusbaumer?” I asked Dot as she dealt china like clattering cards.

  “Well,” Dot said, just as wary as she should’ve been. “I might’ve met her once.”

  “You know where I could find her today?”

  Marley looked up from a close and skeptical inspection of the dryness of his white toast and glared.

  “Jesus, reggae king,” I said, “you got to start somewhere.”

  The question cost me lunch.

  The paper’s idea of security, like its idea of everything else, is that no harm results from exposure. Thus, the privacy of the newsroom is protected by a row of curtain-free windows and a set of glass doors across the front of the building. They’re merely an invitation to tappers.

  Tappers can’t or won’t do business with the paper during regular hours. They rattle the locked glass doors, they mash their noses flat against the panes, and if they see light inside, they tap on the glass with a coin. Naomi was a major-league tapper; she came tapping around three.

  Whatever Marley said, it was way too early to talk to preachers or gun-shop guys. Sunday would be a better day to talk to those people, after they’d had a chance to do a little business.

  I’d tried the phones of the victims’ families. Some rough voice at the Williams’ house told me to fuck off. No one answered at the Crawfords’. Tracking down Aunt Lotty seemed like the most promising and interesting idea, which is why I was talking to the director of the county ambulance service on the phone when Naomi tapped.

  The county ambulance director was saying he had to protect patient confidentiality. He could not possibly tell me whether one of his “units,” as he called them, had made a run to Orlo’s place, and he most certainly would not tell me where they had taken anyone if they had. I heard the tapping but turned my back to the door and waved it away.

  The director is a former nurse. He’s competent and diligent but a little precise in his manner and there’s a hint of a lisp when he talks. I have no idea whether he’s gay, but his mere presence in the room makes the skin crawl on the crusty old farmers who run this county. They’d fire him in a minute actually, if they could figure out a way, and the director knew it. What the hell. I knew pressure points when I had them.

  “Any truth to the rumor you guys won’t go to the hospital of the patient’s choice?” I said.

  He sputtered. “What? No,” he said, “absolutely not.”

  “Probably you got budgetary constraints,” I said.

  “Yes,” he said, drawing it out to buy a microsecond or two. “Of course. Who doesn’t?”

  “Going before county council next month for more money, I hear.” I also heard the tapping again. “You think they might be a tad pissed,” I said, “since you just got next year’s appropriation and didn’t mention that you were coming back for another dip to get through this year?”

  The tapping again; the woman was relentless.

  “I suppose the cops could be wrong about what they tell me,” I continued since the silence on the other end of the line told me I had his complete attention. “That patient choice and medical condition be damned, you guys only go to the hospital that’s closest to your pickup point. Hump and dump. Isn’t that what the cops call it? Maybe your guys, too?” I paused to consider. “Hump and dump. Great headline.”

  “Now, just a minute,” the director began.

  “I don’t suppose council could be any more pissed when they find out about that.”

  “You wouldn’t.”

  “Well, I don’t write to the council personally, you understand, but I suppose if I wrote a hump-and-dump story at least one or two people’d read it, maybe tell their friends.”

  Call the silence that rolled in from the other end of the line a black mist. The tapping blew it away.

  “Logan Community,” the director said.

  “Excuse me?” I said.

  “A Lotty Nusbaumer was delivered to Logan Community.”

  “Pickup point and time out?”

  “Jesus God, you are a suspicious bastard,” he said, but he gave me Orlo’s address and a time the ambulance departed from there that jibed with what I already knew. The tapping was now constant.

  “You’ve been most helpful,” I said.

  “You have been a complete prick,” the director said. “I want an editorial.”

  “You want what?”

  “An editorial. Supporting the additional appropriation. Explaining the short runs are just a way of keeping within budget, not ignoring patient’s wishes.”

  “Maybe,” I said, giving him my best bum’s rush. “Or maybe I just won’t cite you as the source of my information on Aunt Lotty.”

  “Oh, my god,” he said, remembering we hadn’t discussed terms.

  “I got someone at the door.”

  I hung up and whirled. “What?” I shouted at the tapper but then I saw who it was.

  She wasn’t Little Sheba anymore, but neither did she look like someone who’d watched her kid hauled off in a body bag twelve hours before. Now she was an attractive, dark-haired housewife. Her hair was cut in what used to be called a bob. Her clothes wer
e simple—white T-shirt, denim jumper, and sweater—but the cut and the textures made them look like they came from fashionable stores in the city. Without makeup, she looked a little worn and hollow-eyed, but she showed no sign that she had cried. She looked straight at me through the glass, and when I did not immediately move toward the door, she grabbed the handle and rattled it.

  “I didn’t like the picture,” she said, when I opened the door to her.

  We considered each other in the foyer on the customers’ side of the front counter. I extended my hand and introduced myself.

  “You know who I am,” she said and kept looking at me. “I read your story.”

  I said I was sorry for her loss and it was a school picture.

  “I know what it was. I remember every picture of my son. You’re going to keep running pictures of him, use this one,” she said, and shoved an 8 by 10 in my hand.

  It was professional portrait of Naomi, William, and the boy. The impressions around the edges made me think she’d just removed it from the frame. In the photo, she wore a black dress and was seated against an off-white background. William and the boy were dressed identically in black suits and ties and stood on either side of her. They each had a hand on her shoulder as though she were lighter than air and might fly away.

  “Tim?” I said, pointing to the boy.

  “Timothy,” she said, correcting me without looking at where I pointed.

  “Maybe you could tell me about Timothy.” I took her elbow to direct her to our library and to keep her from getting away, but she refused to move until I had released her and instead waved her ahead of me.

  “He was a very difficult delivery,” she said, without preamble, as soon as we were settled. “I was in labor for 57 hours. I don’t know how I survived.”

  “When was Timothy born?”

  “You already know. You had his age in the paper. I’m 37.”

  “My information could’ve been wrong,” I said.

  “I know my own age,” she said.

  “No,” I said. “Timothy’s age.”

  “Oh.” She batted away annoyance with the back of her hand. “Well,” she said and rattled off a date.

  The rest of the interview was like that: questions about the boy and answers about her. She’d waited until she was 27 to have Timothy so that she would be mature and wise enough to raise a child. Then his birth had been so “arduous”—her word—she could not bring herself to bear another. Her husband—“William, not Bill,” she said, “although that’s what his friends call him”—William had wanted another but after a time he acknowledged that it was her body and she could choose. Not that I was to infer that she was a feminist or anything.

  “In fact, don’t print that part,” she said.

  “Mrs. Crawford . . .”

  “Naomi, please.” She smiled as if we were old friends and I wouldn’t dream of denying her a favor.

  I smiled back.

  “Naomi, let’s understand each other. I appreciate your willingness to talk to me. I know this is a difficult time. But you’re sitting in a newspaper office. You’re talking to a reporter. You know where you are, and you know whom you’re talking to.” I stopped smiling. “Under those circumstances, I’m liable to print any damn thing you say.”

  I’m not normally that blunt. Maybe her self-absorption at a time like this kind of turned my stomach. Maybe it was because sources who like publicity so much and then try and control me get under my skin. Or knowing me, maybe the speech was kind of a test, to see how far she’d go. I half expected her to end it there, but I wasn’t too surprised when she said only “I see.”

  She did not work, she said, continuing without another question. She was perfectly capable of success in the work place. She knew that. She’d always been good in school. But she had decided to be home for Timothy, to teach him when he was little, to be available for emergencies or wholesome activities—scouts, 4-H, music lessons, sports—when he became old enough to go to school. It was true, she said, there might be more fulfilling extracurricular activities for Timothy if she lived in Indianapolis. “The arts do not get a lot of attention around here, you know.”

  And, of course, William wouldn’t have to drive so far and could be home more. She’d concede that, she said, as though I had raised the issue, but she thought it was important to live close to family so that he could get to know his grandparents. And they could get to know him, of course. Through things, like babysitting.

  It’s difficult to describe the feeling I get when my antennae twitch. Frisson might cover it.

  “You and your husband go out often?” I said.

  “We try to get out once a week, more if we can. Although William says he spends so much time on the road, he doesn’t always want to. I don’t care; my magazines say it’s good for our marriage.”

  “So you usually leave Timothy with your folks?”

  “Well, yes,” she said. “Of course.” Her voice dropped to whisper. “I don’t . . . I didn’t like to leave him with babysitters.”

  “You left Timothy with Aunt Lotty,” I said.

  “I had no choice,” she said.

  “Your parents busy?”

  “They’re in Florida.” She was recovering her strength.

  “How about William’s parents? They live around here?”

  “They don’t do me favors.” She was downright steely. “This was William’s idea anyway.”

  “What? Going out?”

  “To that costume party. Those Russells asked us. The mister’s one of William’s friends. The missus said we could just leave all of the kids with their sitter, that Lotty.”

  Naomi was like fine crystal, transparent and subtle, delicate and hard, pretty much cold to the touch. When she said it, she was looking at me expectantly, inviting the next question. Fine. In this business, you have to nail things down.

  “So what you’re telling me is that nobody can say this was your fault?”

  “Yes,” she said. “That’s true.”

  “It might be William’s fault, it might be your parents’ fault, it might be Williams’ parents’ fault, or it might be the Russells’ fault, but it is not your fault.”

  “I’m not trying to blame anyone else,” she said innocently.

  Sometimes you just have let the nail sink in.

  “Has someone suggested it was your fault?” I asked finally.

  “Well, no. Yes. They will.”

  “Which is it?”

  “I know what people think. They think I’m selfish. Stuck up.” Her bottom lip quivered, and the tears were welling up in her eyes. “And those police were asking all those questions about where we were and why did we leave our baby behind. And were there other children at that party. As though I neglected my son because I left him with some old crazy woman who couldn’t even keep strangers out of her house.”

  Dill was wrong. I may be cynical, but I can still be amazed. Maybe I should watch more Oprah.

  “You’re telling me you think this was Lotty’s fault?”

  “I’m telling you . . . .” She started to cry. “I’m telling you that it was her job to take care of my Timothy and she did not. She is alive, and he is dead.”

  She sobbed over the family portrait. I didn’t want it damaged, so I moved it out of range of her tears and went to get her some tissue. She had fully recovered by the time I got back.

  “And now the cops won’t tell me a thing,” she said.

  “Maybe they don’t know anything.”

  “Do they?”

  A little fact swapping will sometimes grease an interview. “Not that they’re telling me.”

  “Then they should tell me that. I had to call the funeral home to find out when I could get my son’s body. I had arrangements to plan.”

  “When is the funeral?”

  “
Monday at 2.”

  I had picked up the portrait, trying to figure out how to crop it so we’d get a shot of only the boy. I grunted and frowned.

  “What’s wrong with that?” she asked.

  I hesitated. I had enough of her number to predict her reaction if I told her what I was thinking. But I also remembered Marley and our conversation about the twinks. I suppose I’ve done more manipulative things in my life, but probably not since I’ve been sober.

  “It’s after my deadline,” I said simply.

  She did not hesitate. “When’s your deadline?”

  I told her.

  “I need your phone,” she said.

  I pointed to the phone on the desk beside which we sat. She dialed the number without looking it up. I excused myself and went outside the room, but I could hear her end of the conversation.

  “Mr. Poteet, I want to have the funeral at 10. . . . Yes, the same day. . . . I know what I said before. . . . Then call them back and change it. . . . I wasn’t thinking clearly. I mean, my God, my child had just been murdered. Don’t you understand? . . . Well then. I appreciate it. . . . I’m not in the right frame of mind right now to talk about what this will cost. Goodbye.”

  When she came out of the library, she handed me the portrait. “Don’t cut it,” she said. “And I want it back.”

  As I shook her hand at the door, I looked at the portrait again and said, “Maybe we should print this whole thing.”

  “Yes,” she said. “Yes, maybe you should.”

  Probably some people will be surprised to learn that after all these years in the business I am still capable of feeling a little smarmy. I could’ve written up the interview right then, but it occurred to me that unless I backed off a little and let it jell it might not have the objective tone that Marley likes. In fact, what I really wanted to do was go home and take a shower, but I still had one thing to do.

  Let it be noted that I did try to do it their way. I did first present myself at the front door, in a manner of speaking, of Logan Community. I called the hospital’s public information number and let the ancient candy striper who staffs the switchboard tell me in her quavery voice that no one by the name of Lotty Nusbaumer had been admitted in the last twenty-four hours. I let her tell me that she was sorry but she was not obligated to look any further. I even let her suggest to me that I have a good day, dear.