Grace

by Howard Owen

  And I didn’t mention the gum wrapper. At that point, I still wasn’t sure what to do with the story that couldn’t be told. The piece of gum, by the way, had been sitting on my mantel the whole time Big Boy Sunday was laying out his story. I couldn’t resist.

  There is a certain risk in announcing to your readers that you broke into a home, no doubt disturbing potential evidence. I am banking on the fact that L.D. notices the mercy I showed him and will return the favor. Hell, if he doesn’t, I’ll run another story, naming his ass.

  My guess? The chief will issue a statement to the media, through Peachy. He’ll decry journalists meddling in police matters. And then he’ll let it drop.

  First-person stories by reporters give me the heebie-jeebies. They smack too much of the kind of “look at me” journalism that some of my compatriots seem to prefer to actually digging and sticking to the facts.

  But what do you do when you’ve put yourself ass deep into what you’re supposed to be objectively covering? Well, sometimes you just have to say “fuck objectivity.” I’m always troubled when I see some news snippet—the kind the local stations love to show even though it happened in Keokuk or Fresno—about some poor soul captured on some passerby’s iPhone being swept away by floodwaters or screaming in pain after being shot. “Put the damn phone down and help him, you asshole,” I have been known to rather loudly advise my TV. You have a choice between aiding a fellow human being and getting your anonymous bullshit “footage” on the evening news. How is that a hard decision?

  But who am I to talk? It will be, after all, my byline on this “first-person exclusive.”

  And then there was the biggest dilemma. It was already six thirty when I filed the “I was a cat burglar” story and turned my attention to the story that seemed unwritable: How Shorty Cole came to cut the thumbs, balls, and dick off James Alderman in the process of killing him.

  I knew what I came up with wouldn’t totally please Big Boy Sunday, and it sure as hell wouldn’t please my editors here, because there isn’t much attribution. Irritating Sally further was the fact that I would not divulge a couple of names she felt any self-respecting story had to have before passing it along to our readers.

  I told her if we had any self-respect, we’d all have walked off the day we got the twenty-five-dollar Food Lion Christmas bonuses. I also told her that everything there was true. Trust me, I said.

  So the final story in our Christmas Eve trifecta told our readers how a reliable source had told “this reporter” about the way James Alderman died. It was mostly all there: the eyewitness who recognized the color, make, and model of Alderman’s car, the unnamed individual who was able to trace it to the Seminary Avenue address, the grim scene inside the house as Alderman was tortured and screamed for mercy before finally admitting to being a monster.

  The way I covered my ass? I lied. I wrote that this information came to me by way of an anonymous phone call on one of those cheap-ass cells that drug dealers use and then throw away. I said the caller didn’t name names.

  I don’t see how the cops could trace any of this to Big Boy Sunday, even though they might suspect him, considering who his girlfriend is. And I sure as hell don’t see them stumbling on the real killer.

  But I started getting cold feet about eight fifteen, as I was finishing up my masterpiece.

  So I took a chance. I called Big Boy.

  “You need to meet me,” I said, and I told him what I was about to do.

  “I want you to read it,” I told him, “and if you don’t want me to, I won’t run it.”

  He was in the middle of a Christmas party and sounded a little bit too jolly, but he agreed to come by the paper.

  “Meet me outside in ten minutes,” he said.

  I did a printout and headed downstairs, walking right through the lobby where Shorty Cole had pulled a gun on our publisher nineteen days ago.

  Getting into Big Boy Sunday’s tinted-window gas hog wasn’t the kind of thing your life insurance agent would recommend, but this seemed the only way to do it if I was to get the story out there without having to dodge Big Boy for the rest of my natural life.

  He had apparently carried a plate of ribs from the party and was working his way through them. I handed him the printout and he told the driver to turn on the overhead light. To my relief, he didn’t tell him to drive away, although he left the engine running.

  He didn’t say anything. He was getting barbecue sauce all over the copy, and I saw his lips moving.

  “So this is your story, what you’re going to stick to?” he asked.

  I told him it was, come hell or indictment.

  “Well,” he said, drawing the word out into three syllables while I held my breath. “I don’t see no reason why you can’t run that.”

  He had the partition between the front and back seats up so the lad up front couldn’t hear us. “It’d be good for folks to know that he killed Laquinta’s boy, instead of having to wonder about it.”

  He offered me a rib. I accepted.

  I started to get out, almost free. I had one foot on the pavement when he put one of his big paws on my bicep and squeezed while I froze in midbite.

  “Just remember, though,” he said, “I’m right here. I’m like old Santa Claus, makin’ a list. You all better be good, for goodness sake. Know what I mean?”

  I assured him that I did. He told his driver, who still looked like he’d love to shoot me, to drive on.

  And then, along came Dominick.

  She was in the newsroom when I got back upstairs with the good news that the story was, from my source’s point of view, a go.

  She looked like she had hitchhiked from Vermont. I found out later that she had had to spend the night in some cheap-ass motel near the airport in Burlington and then got stranded again at LaGuardia. Then she had to take a flight to the DC airport (I still call it National; kiss my ass, Ronald Reagan) and rent a car. And then the car broke down outside Fredericksburg.

  She had come to the paper straight from the I-95, in the replacement rental car.

  She did not seem imbued with the Christmas spirit.

  “Why the hell didn’t you answer my calls?” she greeted me. Other people in the newsroom had moved back into the shadows, away from me and Sally and out of the line of fire.

  “And where the hell is Wheelie?”

  I explained that my phone was on the fritz, just as the blues ringtone started playing in my pocket.

  I turned off the phone and wished the publisher a Merry Christmas. Sally said Wheelie was taking his last two vacation days.

  “Didn’t I tell you you were fired?” she asked.

  I reminded her that she was going to make it official when she got back.

  “Well, I’m back. Now get the fuck out of here.”

  I told her, loud enough that the other, cowering staffers could hear, that I was sorry if I had screwed up the suits’ plans to sell us down the river to a holding company, that if I had known that James Alderman’s brother was one of the potential buyers, I might have backed off a little. (Bullshit, but I wanted the whole staff to know the score.)

  I also told her that anyone defending James Alderman at this point might be tarred and feathered, and that, furthermore, if I came to grief over this, the whole English-speaking world soon would know that a publisher of a midsize daily newspaper in Virginia tried her level best to cover for a serial killer.

  “We need to have this conversation upstairs,” she said. She seemed to want me to lower my voice, which seemed unfair to me, since she’d F-worded me within earshot of a couple of dozen of my cohorts.

  “No,” I said, “we don’t. And if you read tomorrow’s paper, you might want to send me a goddamn thank-you note.”

  Rita Dominick, being the publisher, could have still sent me packing. She definitely could have told Sally Velez to kill whatever I was writing for today’s rag. But she isn’t stupid, or not always anyhow. She could see the handwriting on the newsroom wall, and
she didn’t want it to read, “Publisher quashes stories, fires reporter whose exposé killed takeover deal.”

  Lovely Rita is only our interim boss. She hopes to have a future elsewhere in MBA Land after she helps the money guys gut us and sell us. She probably can see that, if she’s to have that future, I’d better have one too. At least for a little while.

  “We’ll settle this when Wheelie gets back,” she said. Then she turned around and marched back out to her rental car and left us alone. I figured that she could read my story on her computer at home later.

  Sarah Goodnight came out of the shadows. She walked up to me and planted a big one right on my kisser.

  “When I grow up,” she said, “I want to be like you.”

  I told her to be careful what she wished for.

  AND SO here we are, all comfy-cozy on Christmas Eve.

  Peggy, Awesome Dude, Andi, and young William are here, of course, as is Abe Custalow. And then we have Thomas Jefferson Blandford V, aka Quip, the man who would be my son-in-law if my daughter would allow it. Not sure how I want that one to turn out. And there’s Sam McNish, who did a more-than-passable job of asking the blessing. Philomena and Richard Slade even drop by for a while, along with a host of neighbors.

  And, to my great delight, we have the lovely Lucinda Peroni in our presence.

  There are two tables with everything from chicken nuggets to a Smithfield ham that Cindy brought. There are ample half-gallons of bourbon and the makings for eggnog. Anyone walking by the window we’ve had to open to cool things off might catch a hint of cannabis in the air. I’m pretty sure McNish has been lured to partake. I even had a toke myself, a risky move since Rita Dominick is liable to start giving me daily drug tests in the hopes of getting lucky just once.

  McNish is staying until tomorrow, when he’s spending the day itself with some of his parishioners who want to welcome him back into their midst. He is going to give an off-the-cuff Christmas Day sermon at one of his flock’s homes. He’s already getting responses to the help box we ran this morning.

  “One man,” he says, and he names one of the city’s most deep-pocketed benefactors, “said he wanted to give us twenty-five thousand dollars, no strings attached.”

  And they say nobody reads the newspaper. Maybe we should run a help box every day, on the masthead, in case anybody wants to give the newsroom a few bucks. It’s bound to be better than depending on advertising or Christmas bonuses.

  I thank Richard for putting in a good word with Big Boy Sunday and give Philomena a big kiss.

  As for Cindy, well, she came with Custalow and me.

  My Prestwould unit has, at least until I fuck things up, a third resident now. The master bedroom is plenty big for the two of us, and Custalow doesn’t seem to mind. He and Cindy get along just fine, and the quality of food and general tidiness is sure to improve, although Cindy has made it clear that she didn’t move in to be a maid. Since she’s going to be chipping in on the rent, that seems fair.

  I ran it past my landlady. Kate gave her blessing.

  “Who knows?” she said. “Maybe the fourth time will be a charm.”

  Among the Christmas cards lying on the floor beneath my mail slot this morning was one without a return address or a stamp. Someone had somehow been able to get up to the sixth floor and drop it through the slot.

  The card looked like one of the ones you buy thirty to a box at Rite Aid. Some would have called it politically incorrect, because it actually had a drawing of the nativity scene, and it said “Merry Christmas” instead of “Happy Holidays.” Don’t get me wrong. I’m all in favor of bringing in drones to take out those TV idiots who blather about the “war on Christmas.” But, Jesus Christ, can’t you call it what it is without employing some bland-ass euphemism?

  It was signed “Shorty” and added “thanks for everything.”

  I imagine he’s thanking me for helping him get a job. I might never know.

  Around eleven, I see that Cindy is fading fast. I gather her and Custalow for the short drive home, promising Peggy, Andi, and Awesome that I will be back tomorrow with a sleigh full of goodies, especially for young William, who passed out about three hours ago.

  “He’d be just as happy playing with the boxes,” Andi says.

  I tell her I’m not doing it for him. I’m doing it for me.

  Back at Chez Black, the three of us have a nightcap. Cindy and I toast Custalow, unrivaled among friends and cotenants, and then sack out.

  “McNish asked me to come to that thing he’s doing tomorrow,” I tell Cindy after we crawl beneath the covers.

  “The sermon? Why don’t we do that? Did you get the address?”

  I tell her I did, but that I don’t want to do anything to screw up my Sunday brunch tradition. She reminds me that no place we ever go will be open for brunch tomorrow and that, furthermore, it won’t be Sunday.

  I tell her we’ll sleep on it.

  She reaches beneath the covers and whispers to me that she thinks “sleep” is probably just a euphemism.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

  Christmas Day

  Christmas has seldom lived up to my expectations. As a kid, it seemed to fall into two categories. Either I didn’t get what I wanted, which was the default mode, since the money Peggy made from a variety of low-paying jobs provided food, shelter, and little else. Or, if she would somehow manage to save enough to make my materialistic dreams come true, I’d be depressed at the end of the day when I realized that whatever followed Christmas was going to be a major letdown.

  Damned if you do, damned if you don’t.

  As an adult, the coal in my stocking usually has been well earned. Too many Christmases have been spent in failing marriages or the aftermath of same. Too many times, I’ve preferred the company of fellow hell-raisers to that of those who are supposed to be near and dear. I have been drunk on the twenty-fifth more times than I’ve been sober over the last thirty years, and it usually is not a “Deck The Halls” kind of drunk—more like Scrooge if Bob Cratchit and his family had told him to take that Christmas turkey and shove it up his ass.

  Regrets, I’ve had a few.

  This one, though, has not disappointed.

  Cindy and I were up at dawn.

  She went out yesterday while I was shopping and managed to find a Christmas tree. I hadn’t had one since the year before Kate and I broke up. Our last holidays together did not lend themselves to expressions of seasonal joy.

  Granted, it isn’t a great tree. Actually, truth be known, it’s just about the ugliest damn Christmas tree I’ve ever seen. She got it at CVS. All the really good fake drugstore trees had already been taken. What we have is some kind of green not seen in nature. It has blue lights on it, like somebody in China thought blue was a good yuletide color. It’s probably a blessing that half of them don’t work. And it looks like somebody broke one of its scant branches. It’s so small we put it on the coffee table.

  I love it. I told Cindy we would keep it forever, as a symbol of our undying devotion.

  She said she thought the tree’s life expectancy was somewhat short of “forever.”

  We opened our gifts to each other, sitting on the couch. She got me two suits that are better than anything in my closet now. I bought her a coat and a couple of sweaters. The other gift she bought me was something of a shocker. It was a half-gallon of the kind of bourbon you should never mix with anything.

  I must have looked surprised.

  “I’m not your enabler, Willie,” she said, “but I’m not going to be your disabler either. I’m not sure I’d be that crazy about Willie on the wagon anyhow.”

  “Just,” she said, as she leaned over to kiss me, “try not to be an asshole.”

  I promised to try.

  My other gift to her came in a fairly small box.

  There was a reservation for two at one of those West Virginia ski resorts I’ve never been to but that Cindy claims she loves. I told her I’d go for the après-ski. And there was a
small piece of paper inside.

  “Just say the word,” I had handwritten, “and I’ll go to the jewelry store.”

  It seemed like a better way to proceed than doing the ring thing, considering my recent history. Offering a ring before you’re sure it’s going to be accepted could be painful. I was at a New Year’s Eve party one time where a guy proposed to his date in front of about fifty people. He probably saw somebody do it in a movie. In real life, it didn’t work so well. Talk about embarrassing.

  She read the note, refolded it, and put it in her purse.

  “When the time’s right,” she said, “I think we’ll both know.”

  That seemed fair enough.

  We packed the car and went over to Peggy’s. It took the two of us three trips to bring everything inside, about two-thirds of it for young William. We spent a couple of hours opening presents and watching William grab at the wrapping paper and try to eat the bows.

  Now, we say our temporary good-byes, promising to be back by early afternoon.

  “You’re going where?” my mother asks. I told her last night, but she’s prone to dope-nesia these days.

  “Church.”

  “Good God.”

  THE COUPLE who are hosting Sam McNish’s return to the pulpit live out on the other side of Willow Lawn, on one of the many chopped-up pieces of Grace Street.

  Their house doesn’t seem that large, but it has a big-ass basement. The basement, when we get there, is full of folding chairs. They brought a lectern from somewhere. There are probably fifty people seated and a couple of dozen more standing where they can find a place. A few, including Cindy and me, are sitting on the stairs.

  Sam doesn’t talk long. He thanks everyone “for believing in me when it would have been easy to let so-called facts overrule faith.” He reads a short passage from the Bible and talks about love and joy and other gifts he’d like to see everyone get. He says he believes the New Year will be the best one yet for Grace of God.

  Looking around the room, I see believers. It has always scared me, how easy it is to get people to buy into a thing they can’t see. I’ve seen so many people bilked by charlatans and turned into zombies in their desperate attempts to latch on to something that might last and make them whole. Like the bastards who scammed sinking homeowners out of their last few bucks with blue-sky schemes during the recent economic unpleasantness, they go around shooting the wounded.