Grace

by Howard Owen

  So, I ask, where would somebody start looking if he wanted to bring a little justice to Artesian Cole and those four other boys, to say nothing of saving Sam McNish’s ass?

  “Oh,” Big Boy says, “I don’t know, but the evidence is out there somewhere. It just takes a smart newspaper man like yourself to find it.”

  He gives one of the young bloods up front a nonverbal message, just the tiniest sideways movement of his head, and my door is opened for me a few seconds later. Interview over.

  “Take care now,” Big Boy says as I exit his car. “Do good.”

  It sounds almost like an order.

  THE SPIRIT of the season has not descended upon the newsroom.

  Today we got our Christmas bonuses. There was a time, now but a dim, bittersweet memory for me and my more aged comrades, when you could pay off your Christmas bills with the company’s yuletide largesse. When we tell the young’uns about it, they either don’t believe it or just get pissed off.

  We always hope for, but never expect, a return to those thrilling days of yesteryear.

  This year, the company managed to exceed our worst expectations.

  “Twenty-five fucking dollars,” Sally Velez says. “A twenty-five-dollar gift certificate from Food Lion. Jesus, I couldn’t pull a good drunk on that.”

  Last year, it was fifty dollars. Doesn’t take a math major to figure out what we’ll get next year.

  I point out that Food Lion’s wine is pretty cheap. Sally does not appear to be appeased.

  They’re making Wheelie and two of his assistant managing editors hand out the envelopes as they thank us for our service. When our editor sees me, he makes his way over, looking as sheepish as a man should look when he’s giving Food Lion gift certificates for Christmas bonuses.

  “It’s all they’re giving anybody,” he says. I tell him not to worry about it. Nobody expects anything from the company these days anyhow. I’m no MBA, but it seems to me that not giving us anything at all, just pretending Christmas bonuses never existed, would be better for morale than this. But why worry about morale when you wish everybody would just get mad and quit anyhow, thus avoiding the inconvenience of two weeks’ severance pay?

  Sarah tells me that Enos Jackson took his gift certificate and regifted it to the semihomeless guy who perches outside our building, as soon as the guy assured him he could get to a Food Lion. Maybe I just got an idea for a Christmas present for Awesome Dude.

  I talk with Sarah about the Children of God story. She seems a little miffed that I talked to Stella Barnes, wondering somewhat profanely why she even bothered to track the woman down.

  “There’s always something else you can get in a second interview,” I tell her, adding that it was good to get in the front door and interview the woman face-to-face.

  “So what did that get you?”

  I note that Ms. Barnes seems to be the kind of person who really likes to please.

  Sarah gets it after a beat or two.

  “Oh. Damn, Willie, you’re not going to sleep with her, are you?”

  I’m offended, or at least pretend to be.

  “I am a professional journalist,” I harrumph as she tries to suppress a smirk. “And besides, she’s not my type.”

  “Excuse me. I didn’t know you were so persnickety. Oh, yeah, that’s right. You’re going steady now.”

  I always thought that, when I reached a certain age, I would be a respected mentor to the newsroom’s young turks. Obviously, fifty-four isn’t old enough.

  I tell Sarah about the command appearance for Big Boy Sunday.

  “He’s the kid’s mother’s boyfriend? Jesus, we haven’t written that yet, have we?”

  No, I tell her, we haven’t, because nobody told us before for sure. For now, he’ll still be a “family friend.”

  Even knowing as little as she does about Big Boy, she is as puzzled as I was about why he even cares whether Sam McNish lives or dies.

  “We do have a story, though,” I tell her, “one that’s going to knock people’s dicks—excuse me, socks—off.”

  She nods her head. She knows what I’m talking about.

  “Yeah. Frosty. If that doesn’t sell some papers, I’ll give back my whole Christmas bonus.”

  CHAPTER NINE

  Saturday

  Frosty has pretty much lit Richmond up. Everybody loves a mysterious mass murderer as long as he’s not in their neighborhood. The comments under the story that bore mine and Sarah’s bylines hit triple figures by the time I’d had a cup of coffee and a smoke. Even at Joe’s Inn I can’t escape it.

  The old Oregon Hill gang gets together at Joe’s on Saturdays when we can. If any of us is early enough to get the big table in the back, we can sit there for two or three hours, tell lies, drink three-dollar Bloody Marys and even order a little grub. One time, McGonnigal figured that, if you toted up the amount of food we ate and the cheap booze we consumed, it came out to about eight dollars an hour per customer. The wait staff must love us. At least we tip big.

  Abe and I get there after everyone else. To my surprise, Cindy’s at the big table. I guess Andy invited her. We do allow for special guests on occasion, and Andy Peroni’s little sister is pretty special to me.

  They let me squeeze in next to my main squeeze, who asks if I’m surprised to see her and manages to brush her hand against Little Willie under the table.

  The talk is mostly about Artesian Cole’s murder, and more specifically about Sam McNish. Since Cindy is the only one of us in his age bracket, her brother and McGonnigal pepper her with questions. One of the things I like about Cindy is that she plays it pretty close to the vest. No one at the table except me knows her contribution to my story. I don’t think anyone, even Andy, remembers that she worked for Grace of God for a while.

  Some guy I don’t know but who thinks he knows me plops his ass down uninvited across the table. He looks like he might have gone straight from clubbing to an all-night diner to Joe’s.

  “This Frosty guy,” he says, and I can smell his breath across the table, “is he for real, or is that just some shit you all make up to sell papers?”

  I inform him that we almost never make up stories.

  “Aw, bullshit,” he says. Obviously, he already knows what he knows and just needs a little confirmation. “The cops already got the guy that did it, that faggot over at that damn so-called church. You all must be covering for him.”

  At this point, I’m about to come across the table and try to serve up a helping of whip-ass, which might be the excuse Joe’s has been looking for to make better use of the big table we’re hogging. Custalow probably saves me from embarrassment, injury, eviction, or all three. He reaches over, puts his big right arm around the guy’s neck, and whispers something into his ear.

  The guy looks at Abe and sees something that registers. He doesn’t say another word, just gets up and leaves. Doesn’t even look back.

  I give Custalow my best WTF look.

  He shrugs his somewhat massive shoulders.

  “I just told him this was a private gathering and I’d appreciate it if he’d leave.”

  It’s possible, I guess. Custalow, when he gets that pissed-off Indian look, like he’s about to go all Little Bighorn on you, sometimes can convey his message in a very few words.

  We give our missing fifth, Goat Johnson, a call on his cell. We put him on speakerphone. Francis Xavier Johnson is no doubt on his knees blowing some prospective donor to that college in Ohio he presides over. The way he speaks, low and circumspect, makes us think he is among a group of scholars who would be appalled at his redneck, white-socks, and blue-collar roots.

  I remind him that I have memories of him pissing into the convertible of a boy from the West End who had had the temerity to date an Oregon Hill girl.

  He must have stepped into an unoccupied room by now, because he reminds me that I’ve done everything he’s done, in triplicate.

  True dat, I concede, but nobody expects any better of journalis
ts.

  He laughs and promises to come back to Richmond and kick my ass in the near future.

  “We still on for tomorrow?” Cindy asks me as we’re finally relinquishing our table.

  Absolutely, I tell her. Cindy wants to go to Colonial Williamsburg to “get in the Christmas spirit.” It might take more than bread pudding and fools dressed up like Patrick Henry to do that for me, but I’m game. We can blow my Christmas bonus if there are any Food Lions in Williamsburg.

  “You can get a lot of baloney and cheese for twenty-five dollars,” I tell her.

  “I get a lot of baloney all the time, hooked up with you,” she replies. “I’m expecting a little better cut of meat tomorrow.”

  I thank her again for her insight into Sam McNish and Stella Barnes. I give her the short version of my chat with Ms. Barnes.

  “I think she liked me,” I add.

  “She hasn’t been around you enough to know any better.”

  I drop Custalow off back at the Prestwould and go to check on my blood kin. As Abe gets out of the Honda, I ask him what exactly he said to the jerk back at Joe’s.

  “I’d like to know,” I tell him, “so I can use that line next time some guy wants to kick my ass.”

  “It’s not what you say,” Custalow explains as he shuts the door. “It’s how you say it.”

  At my mother’s house, Peggy, Andi, and young William are (a) mildly stoned, (b) washing clothes, and (c) sleeping. Awesome Dude is out and about. Despite the fact that he has a warm English basement in which to sleep these days, compliments of my mother, he’s still a wee bit feral.

  “Quip’s coming by later,” Andi tells me. “He wants to see William.”

  I ask her if she wants me to be there when that happens. I still wouldn’t mind doing some impromptu dental work on the guy who knocked up my little girl.

  “Dad,” she says, dragging the word out like an exasperated ninth grader, “he is the father. He’s not a bad guy. He’s just not quite grown up yet.”

  “He seems like an OK guy,” Peggy, ever the astute observer of humanity, offers.

  I am slightly concerned that Andi is defending the guy she definitely did not want to marry when the rabbit died, but what the hell. What has taking the high road gotten her? A berth in a lower-middle-class rental in Oregon Hill that she shares with her grandmother and a guy whose legal name is Awesome Dude. She’s tending bar and trying to jump through the last hoops between her and a degree that won’t likely get her a better paying job than bartender or waitress. At least as long as I keep my sorry-ass job, she won’t come out of VCU with a five-figure debt, which seems to be the standard these days.

  I guess some of my irritation with Thomas Jefferson Blandford V is that he and his rich-ass family might take this darling boy sleeping in front of me out of my orbit and into the cloistered West End, where the black side of his family would become an embarrassment to him some day, the source of self-deprecating humor.

  Yeah, being around the upper crust does make my butt itch a little. So shoot me.

  SPEAKING OF shooting and other forms of mayhem, my wishes for a slow Saturday are dashed before I even get to the paper.

  Sally Velez calls me when I’m a block away and says they’ve had an apparent homicide. In Richmond, this normally would be slightly more startling than telling me the sun came up in the east.

  This one, though, is different. The victim is one James N. Alderman. He served a few terms on city council. He was head honcho at the seminary for God knows how many years. He still teaches a class on religion at VCU, and Andi tells me you have to be a senior to even have a chance of getting into it. He’s also the only Pulitzer Prize winner I know of, or knew of, in our area. We sure as hell haven’t won any at the paper. Alderman got his for a highly acclaimed book no one I’m aware of has read, on the origins of the Old Testament. Hell, I thought God just dictated it to Abraham. That’s what I think they told me in Sunday school.

  At any rate, James N. Alderman is not a man to be relegated to an obit on B3. He’s A1, all the way.

  Sally is still talking to me when I walk in the front door and am waved past by Shorty Cole’s replacement, an old white guy who doesn’t look like he’s toting.

  This story seems pretty sure to knock the feature piece on the VCU basketball coach’s wife, the paper’s first nonalabaster Christmas mother, off the top of the front page. I tell Sally she can hang up and tell me the rest of it in person as soon as I make my way up the elevator and clock in.

  When I get to her desk, she says I need to go right back out. Baer is already on his way there, but I might know somebody who’ll tell me what really happened.

  “We got a tip,” Sally tells me. “Whoever put it on our blog said there was blood all over the place. We know he’s almost certainly a homicide and the cops are on it like dogs on a hambone, but they aren’t telling us shit, as usual.”

  Why she thinks anyone in a uniform would talk to me is a mystery. I’m pretty sure L.D. Jones has my name at the top of his “do not acknowledge” list. Well, I can always try. And thinking that Mark Baer might be poaching a story that should belong to the cops reporter is enough to inspire me.

  Alderman’s house is on Seminary Avenue, one of our fair city’s prettier streets, up on the North Side. The big oaks and sycamores that line it, planted long ago, make it look like you’re somewhere much more exotic and European than Richmond. Even now, with all the leaves off, the branches hover overhead like a protective covering.

  Apparently, they didn’t do much to protect James N. Alderman.

  I’m not usually that thrilled to see Gillespie, a cop with whom I have some bittersweet history. But today I’m happy he’s here. He might, if I kiss his butt with enough sincerity, talk to me.

  Gillespie seems to have actually gained weight. This shouldn’t be surprising, since he seems to spend much of his working shift at the Sugar Shack, where people, including me, stand in the cold for half an hour to buy donuts. The last time I saw him here, his car was parked outside, and I saw him order half a dozen maples and half a dozen samosas. When I came out five minutes later with my dozen glazed, he was still in the parking lot. He looked like he had two samosas in his mouth already.

  I tapped on the window. He did not look especially glad to see me.

  “Gillespie,” I told him, “you are a cliché.” I’m not sure he knew what it meant, but I sent him a dozen from Sugar Shack two days later at the station. You never know when you’ll need a friend.

  I catch him standing in the front yard. There are about three times as many cops here as you’d need for a bomb threat, let alone the death of one old man.

  “Did you get the donuts?” I ask him as I come up from behind.

  “Yeah,” he says. “I shared ’em with the other guys. Didn’t tell ’em who they were from.”

  Knowing Gillespie, he probably had eight and shared the other four, but it’s hard to be a Sugar Shack sharer.

  I cut to the chase.

  “What happened?”

  He leads me around the corner, past a huge boxwood that should shield us from anyone who might object to a cop conversing with a nosy-ass reporter.

  They found him, Gillespie says, shortly after noon. One of the neighbors had gone over to take him some leftovers—apparently Mr. Alderman wasn’t much on cooking for himself. When the neighbor looked in through a window around back, he saw the victim, or what was left of him.

  “The guy said he barfed in the yard,” Gillespie says. “He was pretty shook up.”

  Gillespie said they found Alderman’s thumbs lying near the chair where he was tied. His penis and balls had been stuffed in his mouth. There were sundry other stab marks all over his body and a couple of gunshot wounds for good measure. From the mess he made of his Turkish carpet, he seemed to have bled to death.

  “I’m thinking he probably was glad to die by the time they got through with him.”

  I’m thinking Gillespie is right. I feel safe in using
as much of the grisly details as our editors think our readers can stand. Gillespie can be a fuckup, but he’s about as devious as a Labrador retriever. What he told me I’m sure is the truth. The only question, of course, is why.

  I approach the chief, who tells me it’s––repeat after me––“an ongoing investigation.” I pretend to be disappointed. He doesn’t even pretend to give a damn about that. I am buoyed by the vision of the chief, tucking into his Sunday morning bacon and eggs, when he reads: “Chief Larry Doby Jones refused to comment on the killing. However, sources within the department said . . .” I owe Gillespie another dozen, at least.

  THE NEWSROOM is humming for a Saturday afternoon. I see to my chagrin that Rita Dominick is at large. This one no doubt has the big boys really charged up. Five black kids disappearing and maybe slaughtered is nothing compared to the death of James N. Alderman. Our longtime core readership, old white folks, is dropping like flies, with families buying two-column obits and canceling dad’s subscription at the same time. However, that’s still who we’re playing to.

  “Drop that Frosty stuff and get on this one,” Dominick says as she comes striding up to me like George Patton on amphetamines. I think it just makes her all tingly to speak the obvious in a loud and grating voice.

  When I tell Sally and Sarah what Gillespie told me, not for attribution, Sally says we probably should run it past Wheelie.

  “You know, taste and all that shit.”

  By the time it’s over, our publisher and Wheelie have conferred, with Ms. Dominick doing most of the talking and Wheelie doing most of the nodding, and it’s decided that we will tiptoe past what she calls “the gruesome details.”

  OK, fine, I tell Wheelie when he passes that message along to me, but how come we weren’t squeamish about saying the Cole boy probably was sexually molested?

  “Just do it,” Wheelie says. “Act like you don’t have any choice, because you don’t.”

  Wheelie reminds me of how hard it is for fifty-four-year-old heavy smokers to land on their feet.

  So we wind up telling our readers that James Alderman died from stab and gunshot wounds in what appeared to be a break-in at his North Side home. Enough to jerk the chief’s chain, but not enough to avoid being chickenshit.