Joe nodded.
“You okay?” Fleming asked.
“Fine as silk,” Joe lied.
“Why don’t you work on something else after you finish with the piece on Gresham. Maybe that road project Gresham started last week.”
“Yes. Maybe that,” Joe said, looking hard at Fleming and feeling himself close to losing his temper.
“Easy, Joe. I didn’t mean anything by it.”
Joe could see in the man’s eyes all of the questions he wanted to ask, but he met Fleming’s inquisitive stare with as flat a gaze as he could offer.
“No,” he said. “Nobody means shit about anything. I know that.”
Fleming blinked and said, “Check Gresham’s desk for notes. You know him, he always kept a stack of notes.”
Joe nodded. He looked at the piles on his desk and asked, “Did the police come by today?”
“Not unless they came by in the middle of the night, but I think Sheriff Jackson would have mentioned it when he called this morning. Why?”
“No reason. You don’t think the sheriff’d be too upset if I went through the desk and took work notes?”
“Don’t see why,” Fleming answered and winked. “Work goes on after all.”
For a moment, Joe thought to attack Fleming, kick his bloody ass and slap his winking face. Not for any specific reason. Just to hit someone.
Fleming walked away. While his footsteps receded into the din of hushed voices, Joe once again surveyed his desk. He could see that someone had looked through his papers. Piles had been rifled, drawers emptied and replaced. Had nothing happened to alter the flow of his day, he probably wouldn’t have noticed the disturbances. He would have sat down to lay out his copy for correction or began making calls or jotting notes. But the day had been disturbed, and the disturbance had caused him to notice things not quite right.
He rounded the desk to sit in Gresham’s chair. All that populated the top of that side was a black Corona #3 typewriter with a clean sheet of white paper rolled in along with carbons between three sheets of paper. Everything in triplicate for Gresham.
He pulled open the center drawer. Cheap newspaper pens and worn down number two pencils stuffed the bottom of an old cigar box, old clippings yellowed in the drawer’s back, opened envelopes and read letters and undefined notes from past stories littered the drawer.
He pushed aside the cigar box of spent writing utensils. Underneath it was a sealed envelope. He looked up to see if anyone was watching. Nobody was. He turned the envelope over to find a scrap of paper gem-clipped to the envelope. On the paper was a list in Gresham’s handwriting.
He bobbed his eyes once again to check the room, but those in the room looked to have filled their curiosities and to have found a rhythm in their own work. Hunched over Coronas or Remingtons or huddled in small groups discussing racing forms or how long it would take Tunney to dispose of Charlie Weinert next week in New York, laying bets in either case on a hunch or an overheard tip.
Joe slipped the paper from its clip and read the handwritten list:
Champagne—25 Sep 15
Paul Dillard
Paris—Pl St Andre d Arts
Joe took the unopened envelope out of the drawer and slid it across the desk. He read the list again. He stared at it. He knew the Champagne as one of the bloody battles that Gresham had been a part of, one that had killed twenty thousand English and French soldiers in a single morning and several hundred thousand men over a matter of weeks. That he knew, but anyone who had been in the war or had read about the war knew about the Champagne. It was discussed in London and Paris in the same hushed tones that Texans reserved for the Alamo or veterans of the Civil War reserved for Antietam or Pickett’s Charge. Along with Verdun and the Somme and a dozen others from Belgium to Gallipoli, the Champagne had lived on in Europe as an example of the utter waste that was the Great War. It seemed as though every Brit knew someone whose life was shattered by the battle; the stain of blood left an etched image on the landscape of France. The death and the stench that rose from its muddy no-man’s land and the supposed treachery that initiated the slaughter had inscribed that September morning in the world’s unconscious.
The name and address on the paper, however, meant nothing to Joe. His next thought was that the list might extradite him from the sheriff’s hard glare. Give it to Sheriff Jackson and turn from under the microscopic eye of Greenwich’s constabulary. He smiled.
“Okay,” he muttered as he pocketed the list. A weight lifted, he closed the middle drawer and foraged through the side drawers. No manuscript. In the bottom drawer he found an address book, which he also slid across the desk to his side.
Joe walked through the tracers of clouded light from the window above, welcoming the slight stab of warmth as he rounded his chair. Before he could sit, however, he caught the cold stare of Sheriff Jackson. The sheriff, hunched a little more than the last time Joe had seen him, was followed into the room by Bernie, the day janitor, and a uniformed police officer Joe recognized from the night before, a tall and thin man who walked as though he could fill out his undersized uniform but not his oversized self-perception.
Joe felt the sheriff’s eyes lock on him and could not shake the sensation of having once again ended up at the intersection of the man’s crosshairs. However, he did have the list and the address book and that might ease Jackson’s concerns, so he reached to pull the list from his shirt pocket.
Driven by his own intentions, the sheriff turned and said something to Bernie, and Bernie, walking quickly to keep pace, nodded his head and said something back.
“Joe,” Sheriff Jackson said in a terse and monotone voice as he stepped near. Bernie stood at the sheriff’s shoulder. The uniform stepped to the side of the desk, effectively sealing in Joe. Once again, the newsroom buzz dropped off and Joe again felt the spotlight of sudden notoriety.
“Sheriff.” Neither man offered a hand to the other. Sitting on the edge of his desk, Joe met the sheriff’s eyes on the level. They each took a moment to gauge the other. He ran a finger along the list’s paper edge.
“I’m glad you stopped by, Sheriff. I have something for you,” he said and handed the piece of paper to Sheriff Jackson. “This as well,” he said, lifting the address book from the desktop.
Jackson looked at them and handed them to the uniform standing next to him. The uniform huffed and handed them back to the sheriff, who pocketed the address book without a second, or even first, look.
“What is this, Joe?” the sheriff asked flashing the paper.
“I’m not sure, but it might have something to do with what happened last night.” Joe had the feeling that what he saw on the piece of paper as important, the sheriff saw in a completely different light and would be more than happy to ignore it.
Joe watched Jackson finger the paper as though it were gluepaper populated with flies, and realized, not for the first time, that the sheriff was no Sherlock Holmes deducing a solution to the crime. No, Jackson was working in the opposite direction. He had his theory and only needed to fashion whatever facts necessary in order to come to his preordained answer. If he were to run across a square peg, he just needed a bigger hammer to fit it into that round hole.
“I see.” The sheriff folded and pocketed the list and rubbed his eyes. He stood close to Joe, close enough for Joe to smell the man’s pomade and see the tiny nick on his jawline from the morning’s shave. “This the desk you shared with Gresham?” he asked, changing the subject.
Joe looked down, said, “Yes.”
The sheriff nodded.
“That paper,” Joe said.
“We’ll get to that,” Jackson said.
“For damn-sake, Sheriff,” Joe said. “Look at the paper.”
Jackson pursed his lips but said nothing. He pulled the paper from his pocket, unfolded it, and looked at it again. The plug of tobacco worked inside his cheek. He looked back at Joe. “What d’you want me to see?”
Joe thought to reach o
ut and slap the man twice, palm then backhand, and say, “Open your damned eyes.” But he just sighed. The blindest of men are those who don’t look, he thought.
“The date there. That’s the Champagne,” Joe said, his finger pointing toward the piece of paper in the sheriff’s hand. “Look in the library and read on it. And there’s an address in Paris and a name. I don’t know who it is, but that’s the name I’d begin with.”
Jackson studied the paper. He looked at the uniform standing next to him and Joe thought he might have actually winked. The uniform smirked. Jackson nodded and said, “You think I should take a visit to Paris—”
“Maybe take the missus with you,” the uniform added.
Jackson’s smile dissolved. “The murder happened here, and here I am.” He paused, then, as though starting over, repeated, “Now, this the desk you shared with Gresham.”
Joe muttered, “Two-by-fours.” As in dumb as. . . .
“What?” Jackson asked. “I didn’t catch your meaning.”
“Nothing,” Joe said. “Not a damn thing.” He paused, adjusted his weight. “Yes. It’s the desk we shared.”
Bernie nodded his head enthusiastically. Joe liked Bernie. He was a good man, always did his job, never bothered anyone while they did theirs. Joe could not help but notice, however, how Bernie enjoyed having his presence elevated. “That’s theirs,” he agreed.
“Another coincidence,” the sheriff said as though talking to himself, making mental notes. “Which side was his?”
“The other side,” said Bernie. “He’s sittin’ on his. A right neat worker, that Mr. Gresham is. For all the notes and writin’ he does, he don’t leave a big mess like most of the rest of the room. He keeps his place clean. I always ’preciated that.”
Joe smiled at Bernie offering his observations of the newsroom. He wondered what bits the man had to offer about him and the others while at home with his wife over the dinner table or at some Northside speakeasy on Saturday night.
“You been here long?” the sheriff asked Joe.
“Today or in this job?”
“Both,” Jackson said, then added, “and can the sarcasm.”
Joe smiled. “I’ve worked for the Beacon about three years, since I returned from France. Gresham let me have this side of his desk.”
“What do you mean, ‘He let you’?”
Joe shrugged. “He wasn’t an easy man to get next to.”
Bernie nodded as though in agreement. “Ain’t that the damn truth.”
“So why’d he favor you?”
“I didn’t ask. He read a piece I had written on men returning from the war and he liked it, or maybe he liked the fact that I was the only other person in this room who had any notion of what he saw in the trenches. I didn’t have to ask him about it, I already knew well enough. He liked that.”
The uniform snorted. Joe looked the uniform up and down and shook his head. He had seen the type plenty since his return, someone who had wanted the glory of war but had been turned down for one reason or another, maybe a bad eye or maybe a boil on his butt or maybe his testicles had yet to drop, and now the uniform had to prove his manhood in another way, including the mockery of a war vet.
“You had no troubles with him?” Sheriff Jackson asked.
“Me? No. Everybody argued with Gresham, me no more than anyone else.”
“What did you argue about?”
“Copy mostly. Gresham was a perfectionist. He would comment on my previous day’s work. I appreciated his interest, if not always his honesty, but I learned a lot from him.”
“I see,” the sheriff said. Joe felt like saying that the sheriff saw a lot for a blind man.
The sheriff took a moment to look around at the faces trying hard not to look back at him.
The uniform stepped around the sheriff and removed a framed photograph from the wall as though it were his. After glance at the image, he placed it face up on the desk. He stepped back to keep the symmetry of the odd circle complete, blocking any escape attempt.
The sheriff sighed. “Back to my question. You been here long. . . today?”
Joe put his chin to his chest and smiled and shook his head. He raised his head and said, “Not long. Less than an hour, I’d say. Why?”
“Just asking.” The sheriff took a leather pouch from his back pocket, opened it and added a two-fingered pinch of tobacco to the masticated wad already stretching his cheek.
Joe asked, “Did you already go through my desk?”
The sheriff stopped his action and looked at Joe from the corner of his eye, a furrowed line across his forehead. “Why?”
“Just asking.”
“No,” Bernie interrupted. He stepped closer. “It weren’t the sheriff. Least not according to Francis.” He looked at the sheriff. “That’s the night janitor. He said some guy come ’round early last night askin’ for Mr. Gresham’s desk but he coun’t hardly understan’ the fella’. Francis said this guy said he was a cop, policeman, and he just pointed him over here and the guy comes over and picks around for a few minutes in Mr. Henry’s desk here but din’t take nothin’.”
“Probably one of the Frenchmen you found in the accident,” Joe added.
The other three men looked at Joe as though he were speaking some foreign tongue unknown in their world.
“I see,” said the sheriff to Bernie, wiping a piece of tobacco from his lip.
Jackson scratched his head and suppressed a yawn and looked at Joe. “You haven’t been picking around in Gresham’s desk this morning, have you, Joe?”
Joe said, “Yes, and I found the list—”
Before he could finish, Sheriff Jackson waved him off and said, “So you’ve been rutting around. And you just happen to find this paper.”
“Listen, Sheriff—”
“No,” Jackson said, cutting Joe short. He pointed a finger at Joe’s face. “You listen here. I just talked with Gresham’s lawyer today and had me a look at Gresham’s will. You know what it said?”
Joe said nothing.
The sheriff drew a breath. “He left his worldly goods to you. Now why is that?”
Joe closed his mouth. “I don’t know, Sheriff. He didn’t have any family and—”
The sheriff cut him off once again, “And ain’t it just another coincidence. Those coincidences just keep building up around you, don’t they?”
“Like a high gallows,” the uniformed offered.
“Maybe he knew his life was in danger and—”
“Maybe shit,” the uniform laughed. “His life was most definitely in danger.” He laughed again.
The four men waited through a silence, an uncomfortable silence like that which follows a single bullet shot. The uniform lifted the photograph he had taken from the wall. “This you?” he asked.
Joe looked at the photograph held loosely in the man’s stubby fingers, a photograph of Joe standing alone amid a rubble of stones. Silhouetting Joe in the photograph were the skeletal remains of a church’s empty and ruined windows held within a blackened and truncated wall. The sky behind was hazy and indistinct. Joe remembered that the photograph did not capture the tears that had welled over in his eyes.
“Yes,” Joe said. “That’s me.”
“Pretty.” The uniform placed the photograph on the desk and smiled down at Joe. All Joe could think of was that here stood a man whose only importance in life was inside the confines of his own small brain.
The uniform held a crooked smile on his face and asked, “You guys have a lot of time to take pretty pictures over there?” He stressed the last two words with heavy sarcasm.
Joe looked at him long enough to force him to divert his eyes. Joe said, “Yes. It was like a festival over there. Everyday a holiday; every meal a picnic.”
He looked at the photograph with its fold marks and creases and torn edges. He remembered how the war was brought home through camera work; mostly, though, and especially in the beginnings, the camera had lied, telling the story only poli
ticians and generals wanted told and mothers wanted to hear. The French and English had been first to use photography as propaganda. Early on in 1914, they had dedicated photography units to chronicle life in the trenches. Let those back home see that their loved ones in the front lines were well off. When the American doughboys arrived, special units of the Signal Corps accompanied them, clicking their cameras to record haircuts, hot meals, clothes-washing days, and mail delivery.
Very soon, though, the photographers saw that the real picture of war was elsewhere and turned their lenses on the felon scenes of death and destruction. The photographs might never be published, but they could not ignore what was right in front of them. A photographer accompanying Joe’s unit had wandered upon Joe standing in the rubble of the ruined church and asked to take a picture. He sent Joe a copy, which Joe had kept wrapped and tucked inside his war bag until his return from Europe.
The sheriff returned to his game of cat-and-mouse and said, “If you’re wondering whether we’re ready to make any arrests, the answer is ‘No,’ but you’ll be the first to know.”
The uniform snorted a laugh and had to wipe his nose on the inside of his shirt sleeve. “We got our suspects,” he said. The man talked as though he held a secret that he wanted badly to let loose from behind his smothered smile. The secret wasn’t difficult to decipher.
Joe looked at the floor, at the hardwood both scarred and polished by decades of scuffing shoe leather. He couldn’t blame the sheriff for suspecting him. The coincidences were close enough to damning that an ungenerous man with a minimum of imagination might easily add them up on his tally sheet. And Jackson was as ungenerous and unimaginative as a broken fencepost.
The sheriff continued, “I stopped by your apartment this morning to talk with you.”
“Must have just missed you,” the uniform added.
“I was probably here.”
Bernie looked at his pocket watch and nodded his head.
“Most likely you was,” the sheriff said. “But I let myself in to make sure you weren’t hurt or nothing.”
“You broke into my apartment?”
“No, hell-no.” He held out his hands defensively. “Your landlord—nice fellow—let me in. After I explained that I was concerned for your safety, he was more than happy to help.”
Death of a Century Page 4
