by J. Wachowski
Tonya cackled, “Ooh, I like him.”
Uncle Rich would not be amused.
“Back upstairs, College.” I inserted my sweaty self between them, herding him toward the steps. “You’re early.”
“No beer. No videos. I woke early.”
As I hit the top of the stairs, Jenny came stumping out of the kitchen with a can of pop in her hand and cotton stuffed between her toes to protect her polish.
“Give me five minutes to change,” I told Ainsley. “Then we can run and meet Melton.”
“Are you going somewhere?” Jenny’s voice stretched to a squeak. Lately, even walking out to the road to get the mail out of the box, I’d heard that same question, in the same tone of voice.
Come on, kid. Keep it together. I answered slow and steady. “I’ve got to go pick up some stuff from the local newspaper. Tonya’s going to stay here with you.”
“How long will you be gone?” Tonya stepped behind Jenny, using her whole body to soothe. No hands, just a solid presence at the girl’s back.
Why couldn’t I do that, give her comfort automatically? How do you learn that?
“Not real long.” I saw the raised eyebrows of skepticism. T had offered to stay all day, if I needed it. Until that minute, I hadn’t realized how much I did.
“Okay,” Jenny mumbled. She wrapped her arms around her ribs and her shoulders rolled forward into two sharp points. Her chest seemed to cave in at the center.
“You and Tonya’ll have a good time,” I insisted.
Jenny stared back at me, blank-faced and big-eyed.
Everybody nodded. Nobody cared. I didn’t even try to hug her goodbye.
11:48:21 a.m.
It was a twenty-minute drive to the Clarion Newspaper Worldwide Headquarters. The red brick shoebox that held offices and press machinery was in a very industrial neighborhood surrounded by car dealerships, auto repair shops and a no-tell motel with a flashing sign promoting: All Parking in Rear.
Interesting zoning code.
Ainsley seemed relieved the newspaper had its parking right out front. Before we got out of the truck, I decided to say something.
“For the record, College, I like to keep my personal life out of the office. I’d appreciate it if you’d forget whatever you know about my home life.”
“You got it,” he chirped, very sincerely.
Gratitude makes me sheepish, but my thanks were equally sincere.
As I planned, we arrived a few minutes early. Through the glass double doors, I could see the receptionist packing up. She came over to lock the front and looked suspiciously in our direction.
“Don’t.” I cautioned Ainsley against knocking. People started filtering out the back doors and heading for the cars parked nearby. I made a show of looking around as if we were there to pick someone up. “I think Melton wants to keep this meeting private. She’ll be gone in a minute.”
“How do you know?” he asked.
“All the papers I’ve ever known roll up the welcome mat at noon on the dot on Saturdays. I’m guessing that’s why Melton told us to be sure to come after twelve.”
“What papers have you worked at?” Ainsley asked, dangling his preposition like a good midwesterner.
“I started taking pictures for the Cook County Register back in high school, then did news photography all the way through college.” He looked impressed; I shrugged. “Paid for my books.”
“They say print is really different from TV news.”
“Some of it’s the same: the low pay, crappy hours, psycho egos everywhere. The motives are different, though.”
The lights went out in the lobby. I tried not to look impatient.
“Motives?”
“People go into newspaper work for the stories, usually. They get a thrill out of knowing stuff nobody else knows. Knowing stuff first.” I glanced at my watch again. “TV people want to know stuff first, too. But it’s mostly because they want you to notice them; they like the glam. They’re attracted to the glow of the set, like a bug to a flame.”
Ainsley leaned against the glass and tested his come-hither smile. “Is that why you went into television? The ‘glam’?”
“I said ‘mostly.’” I could see his questions percolating. I answered an easy one. “There are a lot more people watching television these days, than reading newspapers. I prefer to swim in the big pond.”
“So you like the competition.”
“Partly.” I snuck a glance at his face and added, “Also, greater opportunity for impact.”
His brow furrowed. I figured I’d lost him, until he said, “Impact won’t be much of an option at WWST, will it?”
Damn. He was with me after all. I shrugged. “Could be worse.”
Melton appeared, looking furtive but smiling. He snapped open the door and bustled us through the waiting area.
“This way.” The buzz coming off him was palpable. He must have found something interesting.
The Clarion’s interior was remarkably similar to WWST. Brown on brown. The fourth estate is not renowned for the decor and gardens. Beyond the reception area, we passed through the semi-public classified area and on into the anti-public newsroom. We wound our way through a maze of desks, randomly personalized with widgety clutter, family photos and the all-pervasive paper mosaic of shorthand notes, post-its and newsprint. Some of the computer monitors looked older than Ainsley. The space was democratically at-large but mostly deserted. Here and there somebody sat typing or talking on the phone.
Melton paid no attention and made a bee-line for the back hall. He’d cultivated a slouching sort of amble that almost made him seem as if he wasn’t hurrying. “Plate room’s right through here. Jeff’s at lunch so we can talk without,” his voice dropped to conspiracy levels, “you know-interruptions.”
The plate room is sort of a demilitarized zone between The Press and the press-the people who think up the words and the people who actually ink them onto paper. Nobody hangs out there. Melton was taking no chances we’d be interrupted.
We crowded behind an old relic A-frame into a far corner, where the light tables had been left on, burning through the page proofs with that particular shade of pale gray and fluorescent glow I recognized. I could smell the developer from the nearby darkroom. I crossed my arms over my chest and smiled, feeling right at home.
This was going to be good.
Melton handed me an eight-by-eleven envelope, wiggling like a puppy. “I got him. Employment info, adoption history…”
“Spill it.”
“…and, did I mention, his arrest record?” Excellent instincts; Melton knew his lead.
“Curzon busted the guy?” I asked with more than a reasonable amount of glee.
“Not the sheriff. His cousin.”
“Ha! And now I got him,” I laughed and put up a palm. “Can I get a witness?”
Ainsley slapped my hand.
“Let it be a lesson to you, College. Give us the short version, Mel.”
“It’s an unusual situation because the Amish don’t register births like we do. What I found was Tom Jost’s real father left the area with his son when the kid was young. He went west-California, New Mexico-somewhere like that. The next thing we know, Mr. Jost is petitioning to remove the kid-he’s ten years old by now-from an Arizona foster home, bring him back to Illinois. Kid’s dad is listed as deceased.”
“Fast forward to the good stuff, please.”
“Right, right.” Melton waved a hand, shuffling through papers. “The next bit of paper I found on him is his application for the fire service. He’d just graduated from a fire school in Elmhurst. That was three years ago. Nothing else interesting happens ’til last August, about a month before his death. When fireman Tom gets pulled over with a minor in the car. Cop writes it up-”
“Curzon’s cousin?”
“Right-as contributing to a minor’s curfew violation. I think there was some kind of scuffle, couldn’t confirm that, but Officer Curzon ended up putt
ing them both in the backseat and giving them a ride to the station. Jost’s car was towed and-get this, the tow driver ‘happened to notice’ the trunk was full of porno magazines.”
“‘Happened to notice’?” Ainsley repeated.
“Them tow-truck drivers got X-ray eyes,” I mocked. “Go on.”
“Apparently, Curzon-the-cousin wrote that part up as well, and sent it to Jost’s lieutenant at the fire station.”
“How’d you find that out?”
Melton crooked a bashful shrug. “Buddy of mine at the fire station.”
“Not very discreet,” Ainsley tsk’d.
“‘Telephone, telegraph or tell a fireman,’” Melton said. “Those men sleep together two nights a week. There are no secrets.”
“But why tell you?”
“I get the feeling none of them really liked Jost, for some reason. Bad blood.” Melton shrugged. He seemed convinced the guy had been telling the truth.
“Any idea who the minor was?” I asked.
“No. But the record mentioned Amish clothing.”
Ainsley flashed me a look.
“Female?”
“Yeah,” Melton said.
“Rachel.” Ainsley said aloud what we were both thinking.
I was grinning like an idiot. I love these moments. “Got anything else for us, Mel?”
“Nothing really. The girl was shipped home. The guy was given some kind of write up. His employment record is sealed. I couldn’t get anything on how it impacted him at the fire station.”
“Your friend didn’t have anything to add about what happened with his shift buddies?” That seemed odd to me considering the gossip fest we’d had so far.
“Nope.” Melton shook his head. “He said it all blew over.”
“Except the guy killed himself a couple weeks later.”
“Yeah. Except that.”
1:03:11 p.m.
Fire station number six was out in the middle of nowhere. Couple of guys were giving a big red engine a bath on the driveway. Behind the station a three-story brick building with smoke smears around the windows sat alone in a parking lot. A training tower, maybe?
Several old junkers were lined up on the tarmac below the tower. We watched someone pull another barely drivable vehicle around and park it. The driver got out and walked toward us, your typical hulking, midwest beef-eater.
I opened my door and waved.
Ainsley followed me out of the van but didn’t make a move to pull a camera. “These guys aren’t gonna tell us anything.”
“Why do you think it’s not worth trying?” I pulled off my sunglasses before delivering the bad news. “Listen, College, if I gave up every time I thought I wouldn’t get an interview, I’d be selling Mary Kay cosmetics right now. You want to sell cosmetics, leave the camera in the van.”
Ainsley shook his head, his lips tight.
Stories always feel like something at the start-a texture, a shape, even a temperature. Once I recognize it, the whole thing falls together quickly. Occasionally, I get a story I don’t understand right away. I have to back up and feel my way around the edges. Crack it open. Stick my hands in deep, take hold and turn it around a few times. Those messy, ambiguous stories are the ones that don’t come easy. They’re also the ones that keep me coming back for more.
Two days ago, I thought this was going to be a straight salacious sex-death; the kind of story that reveals in intimate detail exactly how strange your neighbor is. With Melton’s research, on top of Amish oddities, and sheriff tantrums, I knew things were about to get messy in a very good way.
“Relax, College. This is the fun part. We’re living the dream. Right now.” I smiled at the guy with the soapy sponge.
He smiled back, until I flashed my credential and said my name. “I’ll get the captain. Hang on.” He disappeared into the station without another word.
“What do you want?” the beefy one asked. Up close, he was ruddy-skinned. Bright-eyed. Good looking. And young.
Lately, I’ve noticed there seem to be a lot of near-children doing grown-up jobs like fighting fires.
I tried casual. “We’d like to talk to someone about Tom Jost. He worked here, right?”
“Yeah.” He pulled off a pair of work gloves and tucked them in his back pocket. The patch on his shirt was embroidered with the slogan Prevent & Protect.
“Did you know him?”
The guy folded his arms over his chest, looked at Ainsley, looked back at me. “Yeah. I knew Tom.”
“You all work together pretty closely, know each other pretty well, don’t you? Did he have any family? Girlfriend, maybe?”
“Tommy was a loner,” he mumbled. He stared at me, willing me to shut up and go away.
“I’ve heard it’s like having another family when you work for fire service.”
His eyes narrowed, suspiciously. Yeah.
“Maybe the guys on his shift were like his family?” I asked.
The eye contact I got for that question crossed over from annoyed to odd. Maybe the guy had issues with family.
“Maybe,” was all he had to say.
“Was it like losing a brother when he died?” Ainsley asked.
The guy spun around to stare at Ainsley now, as if some kind of insult had been implied. He looked down at his hands, out to the street, everywhere but at us.
“What’s going on here?” A big fella with a respectable gut came out from around the fire trucks in the garage.
“Hey, Captain. We’ve got a TV reporter here, asking questions about Tom.”
“Thanks, Pat. I’ll handle it from here,” the captain replied.
Sometimes it’s hard to tell with men and their patented empty-expressions, but the captain seemed genuinely concerned. He gave the younger man a bracing upper arm squeeze and sent him inside.
“Just a few routine questions. We’re looking for background mainly.”
“Sure. Sure.”
Ainsley got the camera rolling. The captain re-tucked his shirt. You don’t usually get the top job unless you can talk the talk. The incident with Jost was a “tragedy.” They were all “saddened.” Employment records were “of course, private.”
“We have a letter written by a police officer documenting some trouble that Mr. Jost got into with a minor.” I threw that fact out there, fishing. “Do you think the situation contributed to his state of mind before the suicide?”
“Son of a… how the…? Never mind.” The man winced and rubbed one hand across his bald head. “No way. No more questions.”
I had so little to go on, I nodded to Ainsley. He took the camera off his shoulder.
“Off the record?” I smiled. “I don’t want to bring it up, if it doesn’t matter.”
The smile always helps. “That letter should never have been written. Cop was out of line.” The captain pointed his finger at me. “I had to talk to Tom about it. Had to. We weren’t going to fire him or anything. We couldn’t have, legally.”
“How did Jost react?”
“Deer in the headlights. He seemed stunned. Oh, he was pissed, I could tell. But Tommy wasn’t the kind to just blow off steam. He held it in, you know? I told him the whole situation would pass if he’d put it behind him. Forget about it.” He waved the whole thing away with both hands. “The kid needed to get out more. I offered to take him out myself to a real bar. Meet some women. Set him on the right track, so to speak. That’s how much I respected him. As a firefighter, of course. The kid had stones.”
“Did he catch flack from the other firefighters about the letter, or the incident?”
“Probably.” Captain shrugged. “The boys give each other grief for farting on the toilet.”
“And Tom was just one of the boys before the trouble. Got along with everyone?”
“I wouldn’t say that-exactly.” Captain puckered up with consideration. “Tommy was different. He had his ways, you know.”
“Because of the Amish background?”
“Yeah. Wou
ldn’t watch TV. Except the Weather Channel. Always had to take a moment, you know, when he sat down to eat. Praying and shit. Me, I got no problem with that. Doesn’t bother me. Some of the other guys, it took ’em a while getting used to that kinda thing. Vegas helped him fit in.” The captain tipped his head in the direction he’d dismissed the younger man.
“The other man we were talking with, he was a friend of Tom’s?”
“More than a friend. They partnered on the ambulance.”
Maybe that explained the odd expression when I’d mentioned family. Tom’s partner was definitely someone we would want to speak with again.
“Pat’s last name is Vegas?”
“No.” The chief shook his head. “Vegas is his nickname. Everybody in the station’s got one.”
“He’s a Las Vegas fan?”
“Doubt he’s ever been there. Pat’s a dealer.” The captain snorted a little chuckle. “Always got something going on, you know?”
Ainsley went ahead and put the camera back on his shoulder. “This isn’t privileged info, is it, Captain? Could I get one more shot? I’m not sure about the last one.”
The captain gave him the Big Man’s affirmative. “Tommy and Pat rode the ambulance together. Both of them are…were paramedics-EMS.” He sighed and stepped back. “That all you need to know?”
I smiled some more. “Were they friends?”
“Yeah, sure. Pat had been here a while already when Tommy got hired. Kind of took him under his wing. Tommy was small for a firefighter, you know. Some of the boys had trouble with that at the start. But he was a good man. Fearless. He’d do things nobody else would, you know?”
“Yeah. Sure.” Fearlessness is the first requirement of unbalanced competition. “Tom ever go into a fire?”
“Oh, yeah. Did it not one month ago. House fire. Got a sticker in the window, says there’s a kid in there. I’m about to call for volunteers, Tommy’s already suited up. The guy had stones, I’m telling you. He came to us better trained than most of those babies out of fire school, ’cause he’d worked VFD for the Amish. He knew fire. Unafraid.”
“How does it work out there, if there’s a fire on Amish land?”
“If? Shit, they get them all the time. They’ve got barns full of sawdust and kerosene lamps. They live in wood buildings and use candles. And wood-fucking-stoves! I’m surprised there aren’t more fires out there.”
