Speak Ill of the Living

by Mark Arsenault

  Eddie hid a smile behind his hand. For Cuhna, this seemed like serious stuff, and Eddie didn’t want to make an enemy out of him.

  “My lease says that I have to let the people who live upstairs use the giant washing machines in my office anytime they want,” Cuhna said.

  “Crazy.”

  “Now the family upstairs has started making evening meals in my kitchen on deadline, and I can’t find anything in the lease that says they can’t!”

  “Whew.”

  Cuhna groaned. “Not that it matters to my H.Q. Sometimes I feel all they want from me is to gray-up the white space around the ads.” He looked Eddie up and down again. “You’re still in the eighteen-to-thirty-five demographic, right?”

  “Barely.”

  “You’re supposed to be my target audience, but I bet you don’t subscribe.”

  “Actually, no,” Eddie admitted. He quickly added, “I pick it up on the newsstand sometimes, but I only have time in the morning for the Washington Post.”

  “The Post? It’s darn near impossible to get that delivered up here. You a diehard Redskins fan?”

  “No, I’m a fan of the help-wanted section. Lot of people advertise for freelancers there.”

  “Freelancer, eh? Must be nice to have no boss, but I’d wager the corporate newspaper boys screw you as hard as they do me.”

  “Amen.”

  Bitching about the business side of journalism is the universal sign of fellowship among scribes. Eddie introduced himself and they shook hands. Cuhna’s hand was small, sweaty, and stained black with ink.

  Eddie felt bad for him. Media chains are sometimes more concerned about stockholders than readers. They cut spending on their newsgathering to show more profit on Wall Street. Teeny editorial budgets at many weekly papers make for low pay and small staffs; sometimes the reporters have to sell ads or design pages in addition to writing.

  The straight newsweeklies have it the toughest; they can’t compete with the dailies on breaking news, and they don’t pay enough to attract experienced writers who can produce the thoughtful pieces. They survive by thinking small, offering news the dailies don’t bother with—school bus schedules and lunch menus, Little League and bridge club scores.

  Entertainment weeklies do better with younger readers. They give more movie and concert news, and sometimes offer political analysis with attitude.

  The Second Voice was a mix of the two styles, so it did nothing particularly well. The paper was forever clouded in rumors it was about to fold.

  The TV guys had finished and they bustled out of the room. Their aluminum tripods bounced and clacked as they carried them.

  The officer called, “Next!”

  Eddie let Lewis Cuhna go ahead of him. Cuhna got three steps into the room, looked toward the picture on the wall and stopped. He wiped a hand over his face and then slowly stepped toward the photograph.

  The picture was standard print size, about four-by-six, in color. The man in the picture was trim and healthy, probably in his early fifties. He sat at attention, holding the top half of a newspaper, at the edge of an oddly shaped coffee table, five-sided, made of blonde wood.

  The picture looked to have been taken in the basement of a very old house. The lighting was uneven—the light source off to the side somewhere, out of view—and the man and the newspaper cast long black shadows on the fieldstone wall in the background. Eddie had never met Roger Lime, but he had seen other photographs of the bank executive, and he recognized Lime’s thinning orange hair, his pointed chin, long Roman nose, and the wind-burned complexion of a competitive yacht racer.

  In the photo, Lime wore a navy polo shirt with the collar turned up, tan drawstring pants, and no shoes or socks. The expression on Lime’s face drew Eddie’s attention. He looked tight-lipped and tense, like he was seething. Eddie interpreted the expression as rage and disbelief, as if this executive had found himself inconvenienced by ignorant little people. A thought-bubble above Lime’s head could have shouted: “Don’t they know who I am?”

  The newspaper he held was ugly and gray, no photos above the fold.

  Eddie gasped in surprise and lightly slapped his own cheek.

  Lime was holding The Second Voice. Eddie looked to Cuhna, who was red-faced and engrossed in his note taking.

  The paper’s banner headline was readable in the picture:

  SHAKESPEARE FESTIVAL OFF WITHOUT A HITCH

  Eddie puzzled over the headline. Without a hitch? Was that a Shakespeare pun? No, he decided; the line was merely a cliché. Either way, it wasn’t exactly true: a drunk driver had rammed the stage during Act II of As You Like It, sending Rosalind and Celia sprawling through a mural of the Forest of Arden. Eddie had gone for a beer during Act II, unfortunately, and had missed it.

  Cuhna was sniffling and writing furiously. “This is bad,” he muttered to himself. “Bad. Bad. Bad. I don’t need this.”

  Eddie’s competitor on this story was also a source of information. “Lew,” he said. “I gotta ask, what edition is that?”

  Cuhna sighed. He opened his bag, rooted around inside and shoved a newspaper at Eddie.

  It was the August 3 edition of The Second Voice, two weeks old. Eddie smoothed the wrinkles from the page. The Shakespeare story carried Cuhna’s byline. Eddie skimmed the text. Cuhna had buried the news about the car crash in the twelfth paragraph, but at least he had it in there. Below the fold, the paper had run a black-and-white picture from a summer youth basketball league, a folk music concert review, and four government stories generated from the meetings of city boards and commissions.

  Pretty dull paper.

  But the kidnappers had verified Lime’s state of being with the local weekly, and that was dynamite stuff for Eddie’s story. Maybe it meant that Lime was still in the area, perhaps held captive nearby for six months. It meant that the kidnappers had been in Lowell within the past two weeks to buy the paper, unless they had an out-of-state subscription.

  “So tell me, Lew,” Eddie said, “do you mail many copies of The Second Voice to subscribers from…”

  “We don’t mail any at all,” Cuhna snapped. He whipped his bag open, stuffed his legal pad inside and hunted around in the mess. “Ah!” he said, when he found what he wanted—a roll of antacid tablets. He peeled back the foil, pried up a tablet with his thumb.

  “It’s just that…”

  “I know what it is,” Cuhna said, interrupting again. He ate the tablet, chewed and talked: “It’s part of the story—I know that. But I don’t need this negative publicity. Things are tough enough. And I can’t lay off any more staff because I don’t have any more.”

  Eddie glanced to the paper Cuhna had given him. “Judging by all these different bylines, you have a big staff for a paper your size.”

  Cuhna grimaced. “That’s all a ruse. Those people are all me.”

  Eddie looked to the paper again. “You’re Amanda Collar?”

  “Yes. And I’m Paul Alan, okay?”

  “Is that ethical?”

  “Too late for ethics, Bourque—I have no goddam staff. Nobody wants to read a paper written by one person—it looks cheap and not worth their time. I do everything on the news side—write the stories, edit my own goddam copy, write the headlines. I empty my own trash can, and once a week I gotta run the press, by myself!” Cuhna wiped his hand over his face again. He glared at the picture of Roger Lime. “And now I have to deal with this…” He trailed off.

  Eddie might have pulled a useable quote from Cuhna if he had invested the time, but decided he couldn’t afford it. He wanted to visit someone else who could help with the story, if she was on duty so early in the day.

  He left Cuhna and hurried through the halls of mint-colored cinderblock, toward the detective’s bureau. He couldn’t understand why Cuhna was so upset. Publicity was exactly what The Second Voice needed, and rarely in publishing was there such a thing as bad publicity.

  The detective’s bur
eau was a long room with desks arranged like two lanes of gridlocked traffic. Half the ceiling lights were off at this early hour and gloom hung over the space. Several doors led to offices and small interview rooms in which investigators would speak to potential witnesses. Calendars, street maps, and crime prevention posters covered the walls of the bureau. Just inside the doorway was a glass-topped wooden counter displaying stacks of official forms, for members of the public to fill out whenever something bad happened to them.

  A middle-aged clerk in jeans and a fleece sweatshirt—the uniform of the third shift—was typing handwritten field reports into a computer at a desk beyond the counter. She smiled and lifted her head, to invite Eddie to say what he wanted. That’s when Eddie smelled her perfume. Spicy, very nice. She shed ten years before Eddie’s eyes.

  “Is Detective Orr around?” Eddie said.

  The woman looked away in thought for a moment, then pressed a button on her speaker phone and said, “Lucy, there’s somebody here to see you.”

  A tinny voice came from the phone, “Who is it?” The woman lifted her head to Eddie again.

  “It’s Bourque,” Eddie called out.

  “Eddie?” squeaked the phone. “Before breakfast? Tammy, you can send him down here.”

  The woman directed Eddie with a long index finger. “Last door,” she said.

  Eddie passed three detectives on the night shift typing at keyboards, irradiated in blue by their computer screens. The last door swung in to the narrowest office Eddie had ever seen. Inside were two wheeled chairs on either side of a desk. The chair closest to Eddie was turned sideways and jammed against the left-hand wall, so the door had room to open. There seemed to be no way to get to the other chair, except by climbing over the desk. The office was windowless, painted burnt-orange, and lit by a buzzing fluorescent doughnut on the ceiling.

  Detective Lucy Orr, in the chair across the desk, stood when Eddie came in.

  She grinned and shook his hand. “I’ve been following your freelance work in some pretty fair magazines,” she said.

  “My work has been rejected by all the prestigious ones.”

  They both laughed and sat down.

  Detective Orr was about forty. She had a squat build and powerful shoulders, like an Olympic swimmer from an old Soviet-bloc country. Her hands were rough, her nails unpainted and bitten down below the fingertips. Her hair was pulled back in a tight bun, which was impaled by what looked like two chopsticks.

  Eddie checked his watch. He didn’t have time to warm up the conversation before he asked for what he needed. “As a matter of fact, I’m working today,” he said. “Hard news, deadline stuff.”

  She squinted at him. “Are you on the Roger Lime story?” She didn’t wait for the answer. “Well, you can forget it, Ed, because I can’t help you.”

  “Just a couple questions,” Eddie pleaded.

  “It’s not my case.”

  “Then what are you doing here at quarter past five in the morning?”

  She frowned at him. “Maybe I was bored.”

  Maybe she was. She lived alone. Maybe she was alone and bored. Eddie felt a sting of regret for asking the question. He pressed on. “Lucy, this story is huge. You must have heard something.” Eddie felt no guilt over trading on his friendship with Detective Orr to get information. The woman could not be manipulated or corrupted, and she’d cheerfully throw Eddie out of her office if she thought he was out of line. “There has to be some inside noise on this case,” he said, leaning against her desk. “Just one scrap of red meat to set my story apart from the rest.”

  Orr lowered her voice. “This investigation is all buttoned down.”

  Eddie leaned back. The lowered voice was the tip-off—she had decided to help him. The opening she had given him was big enough for one question. He had come here hoping to peek at the ransom note, but that seemed like too much to ask. He’d have to be satisfied with something smaller. Eddie closed the door. He whispered, “At least tell me why you’re so sure the photo is legitimate. Any digital photo can be manipulated by a chimp with a laptop.”

  She looked him over and laughed. “You don’t give up, Ed. It’s what we have in common.”

  “It’s why you like me so much.”

  She shook a finger at him. “Now cut that out,” she scolded. “I’m not helping you because you tricked or flattered me into it—I want you to understand that.”

  Eddie held up his hands. “Perfectly understood.” He readied his pad and pen.

  “The photo,” she said quietly, “came to Lime’s wife as the single exposure on a roll of undeveloped film—we processed it and made the print ourselves. At first, we considered that the picture might simply be a close-up snapshot of a digitally altered photo, but the experts at our lab don’t think so.”

  “How do they think the photo was made?”

  “Somebody pushed a button on a camera and nothing more,” Orr said. “They think it’s an un-doctored picture of Roger Lime.”

  Eddie made some quick notes.

  “So how are your aunts?” Orr asked.

  “Fine.”

  “Good to hear it. Now if anybody asks, we can truthfully say we’ve been in here chatting about your family.” She smiled.

  “Check.” Eddie got up to leave.

  “Make sure you camouflage where you got the fact.”

  “Check.”

  “And Eddie,” she said, in a sober voice, “stay out of trouble. You nearly got yourself killed the last time you crossed the line between investigative journalist and investigator.”

  Eddie’s hand unconsciously reached to his head. He passed a thumb over the scar tissue on his ear where the bullet had cut a notch. He winked at her. “Thanks, Lucy. I’ve got no personal stake in this—Roger Lime’s reappearance is just a damn fine tale.”

  Detective Orr gave the infuriating fake smile she used whenever she didn’t believe him. Eddie pretended not to notice, and hurried out of there.

  Outside, the air was cool, the sky clear. The stars were gone. A far-off orange glow, behind a four-story brick office building, hinted at dawn. A long, sputtering cloud to the east had been un-spooled across the sky and brushed with gold.

  Eddie dashed to the Mighty Chevette. Time was his enemy. He grabbed his laptop and then ran a block toward the brightest light in downtown Lowell, the Perez Brothers restaurant, a silver-top diner that never closed, and always smelled of coffee and bacon. Eddie pushed through the glass door. There were two pairs of customers in the diner’s two booths, shoveling mounds of cholesterol into their mouths.

  A heavily muscled man overfilling a white t-shirt was wiping down the aluminum counter with a rag. He looked up and shouted: “Eddie! Where have you been the past few months?”

  “Been trying to quit my breaking-news habit,” Eddie said, “but I’m off the wagon today.” He headed for the last stool. It was covered in a marbled green and black vinyl.

  “Just made a fresh pot of Columbian,” said the cook.

  “Set me up and leave the pot, Bobby. I got thirty minutes to file this story.”

  Eddie powered up his laptop. Bobby Perez’s coffee was scalding, as if drip brewed by atomic fission. A long splash of cold milk coaxed out the coffee’s mellow flavor.

  Eddie stared for a moment at the blue screen. Where to begin?

  News writers can’t afford writer’s block; it’s a luxury for people without deadlines. Waiting for the muse is for poets. Reporters on deadline write; the muse can pitch in or get the hell off the keyboard.

  Eddie typed:

  Bank executive Roger K. Lime may have missed his own funeral.

  A little flip. Too bad. No time to fool with it. Eddie kept typing. He wrote about the photograph, how the cops had displayed it for the media. He wrote about the tip from Orr, and that the police refused to comment on any ransom demands.

  He guzzled coffee and added background about Lime’s kidnapping, and how it appeared th
at Lime was murdered last spring after his wife, Sandra, had gone to the police. He wrote from memory about the funeral, the green coffin, and the security that had kept the press away.

  He wrote until time was up.

  “Gotta send it, Bobby,” Eddie yelled.

  Bobby Perez pulled the telephone off the wall of the diner. Eddie threw him one end of a modem cord, which Bobby plugged into the jack. Eddie’s computer dialed the Associated Press, connected with a hiss of static to the correspondent’s queue and dumped the story there.

  He verified electronically that the story had arrived, emailed his cell phone number to Springer, in case a desk editor had any questions about the story, and then rested his head on the keyboard.

  “More coffee?” Bobby asked.

  “Amen, brother.”

  “And how about breakfast?”

  “Something fast, Bobby. I gotta teach class and I don’t have a lesson planned.”

  ***

  The letter arrived four days later.

  It was in a long white, number-ten envelope, hand-addressed in dark pencil to Edward Bourque at his cottage in Lowell’s Pawtucketville neighborhood. The postmark was from upstate New York. The back of the envelope was stamped in red:

  “THIS CORRESPONDENCE ORIGINATED AT A FEDERAL CORRECTIONAL FACILITY. ITS CONTENTS HAVE NOT BEEN CENSORED. THE SENDER IS NOT AUTHORIZED TO ENTER INTO FINANCIAL CONTRACTS.”

  The return address was one word: Henry.

  Eddie’s brother, Henry Joseph “Henry” Bourque, twenty years Eddie’s senior, had been jailed all of Eddie’s life.

  For murder.

  The envelope sat unopened on Eddie’s kitchen table. Eddie stared at it. General VonKatz lay belly-up over Eddie’s lap, front legs swung to the left, hind legs to the right. Didn’t look comfortable, but the cat seemed to like it. He purred, eyes slowly closing, on the edge of a nap. Eddie rubbed the General’s head absentmindedly.

  Eddie Bourque had never met his brother. Never heard his voice. The words on the envelope were the first Eddie had ever seen printed by his brother’s hand.