“Might want to steer clear of that tree,” Stiletto said.
“Whoops!” Esmeralda yanked the wheel. “Sorry about that, Bubbles.”
“No problem,” I said, gasping.
Finally, Esmeralda pulled up to the Main Mane. Stiletto leaped out of the rear seat and opened the door for me—the result of my excellent training.
“I’ll just be a minute, Esme,” he said.
Esmeralda checked her lipstick like she couldn’t give a hoot. But I sensed that deep down she was ticked.
Stiletto escorted me to the door of the salon. “I don’t like leaving you, even if you do have Genevieve as a bodyguard.” He put his hand to the back of his neck as a reminder. “I got out of your cousin’s salon as soon as Genevieve’s back was turned. I was afraid that if I didn’t she’d club me with a baseball bat.”
“Sorry about that. Listen, you know the woods by the Number Nine mine entrance? I was walking through there a few minutes ago and I ran into this guy, a—”
“What were you doing in the woods by the Number Nine mine?” Stiletto asked, curious.
“Uh . . .” Oh, that’s right. I kept forgetting. Stiletto was working for the dark side. “Just, um, checking out where the explosion had been.”
“During the press conference?” Stiletto squinted. “Really?”
Esmeralda beeped the horn. “Come on, lover boy!” she yelled. “If we don’t get to the city soon we won’t make the party.”
“Party?” I asked. “You’re leaving me in the hands of a killer because of a party?”
“Just a stupid get-together.” Stiletto waved it off. “One of our entertainment reporters is throwing it. Esme wants to go because of all the celebrities and asked if I’d take her since I’d be in town.”
I batted my eyelashes. Stiletto cleared his throat and gave it another shot.
“The real reason I’ve got to go back to New York is because of those damn editors. They’re all hopped up about last night. I’ve got to meet with lawyers and write memos, you know how it is.”
Not good enough.
“And then there’s my exploded identity to repair,” he continued. “I’ve got no license, no credit cards. Even the key to my apartment was attached to the one in the Jeep, so it’s been blown up. I’ve got a lot of boring ends to tie up. Figured you’d rather stay here, get your car fixed, hang out with your cousin.”
What? Stay in a run-down coal town? With someone out to kill me? With my black-leather-wearing Mama and her friend, the Sherman tank with breasts? Eating meat-loaf dinner at four-thirty and watching full-volume Wheel of Fortune and going to bed at eight? Yes. I’d much rather be here than at a celebrity party, I thought.
But all I said was, “I see.”
“On the bright side,” he said, “I talked to the Passion Peak folks. Since your stuff is there and you were nearly killed, they agreed to let you stay tonight for free.”
“It won’t be much fun alone.” All those mirrors. All that cellulite.
“Why don’t you invite your mother to stay? She might get a kick out of it.”
Esmeralda leaned on the horn again and Stiletto kissed me quickly on the lips. Then he jogged back to Esmeralda’s car. The two of them zipped off, Esmeralda’s hair shimmering golden red in the breeze and me feeling like Cinderella. Then I thought, my mother? Why would I bring my mother to a lovers’ hotel?
Instantly depressed, I opened the door to the Main Mane and stopped still. The place was a mess! It reeked of permanent solution and shampoo.
Through the white haze of hairspray, I counted three women on the couch with curlers, foil and caps. Another was dripping in the sink while Roxanne was busily finishing the comb-out on a client so wizened she looked more like a prune than a woman. But what was Genevieve doing at the manicure table with—no, Lord, say it’s not true—an orangewood stick in her hand, pushing back some poor client’s cuticles with short, sharp thrusts.
“Bubbles! Am I glad to see you!” Roxanne shouted, palming a sweaty frizz of hair from her forehead. She tossed a comb on the pink vanity and yanked the top off a jumbo-sized Final Net, spraying madly. “It’s a zoo in here. The phone’s been ringing off the hook. Genevieve’s offered to do manicures, but I could sure do with another stylist.”
“You bring that hunk Stiletto?” Roxanne’s client the human prune asked. The three women on the couch lowered their magazines and the one at the sink raised her head.
“No,” I said, closing the door. “He’s gone back to New York.”
“Damn.” The prune snapped her fingers. “Darla Wychesko said he was bodacious.”
“Oww!” yipped Genevieve’s victim. She snatched back her hand and pinched her finger to stop the blood. “That’s live skin.”
“What do I know? I usually trim ’em with the vegetable peeler.” Genevieve sighed and opened the Band-Aid box. “You want Elmo this time?”
Roxanne flew to the cash register and rang up the prune’s bill. “I’ve got to talk to you, Bubbles, before Mrs. Manetti’s timer goes off.” The cash register binged and the prune handed Roxanne a twenty.
“Is it true what they’re saying,” Roxanne said, counting out change, “that Stinky’s a murder suspect?”
“We should talk alone.” I pulled Roxanne into her parlor and closed the door. There I gave her the lowdown from the press conference about how Stinky had been described by authorities as some disgruntled, homicidal ex-employee, and Roxanne started to cry.
“Reporters have been calling all morning. I had to remind myself that you were a reporter and that you were decent and some of them might be decent, too, but they’re all bastards. I caught a photographer shooting photos in the front window. Like a Peeping Tom. The thing is that all the attention seems to have brought in business. I’m booked. It’s like I’m a one-woman freak show.”
I gathered Roxanne in my arms and let her head rest on my shoulder. After rubbing her back, I asked, “Do you remember what you told me this morning about Stinky having a fit over the Number Nine mine maps not being updated?”
She lifted her head and fumbled for a tissue. “You made a pinky promise not to tell.”
“I know. But listen, Roxanne, I think you should let me write a story about that, before Stinky is completely discredited. I measured the distance from the Number Nine mine to the Dead Zone and I realized something. Is it possible McMullen was robbing coal from under the Dead Zone, the land Bud Price owned? Vilnia told me that Stinky was fired from McMullen because he discovered something there he wasn’t supposed to. This could be it.”
“Stinky wasn’t fired.” She blew her nose. “He quit.”
“Details.”
“I don’t know,” she said, sighing. “Let me check the box.”
“The box?”
“Where Stinky keeps all his documents and correspondence and maps. You know Stinky. He was a stickler for documentation. I keep it in the guest bedroom dresser.”
Holy hell, I thought. Mr. Salvo was going to pee in his pants. He lived for documents.
“I can get it when we get a break.”
Mrs. Manetti’s timer dinged.
“So you want me to write a story?” I ventured carefully. “A story that could be published tomorrow?”
Roxanne hesitated at the door and was silent for a minute. Then she said, “If it’ll help my Stinky, absolutely.”
Yes! I pictured Esmeralda boogying the night away with Stiletto and heard Mama’s admonition: Slow and steady wins the race. Mama was big on slow and steady, being rather slow—if not always steady—herself.
Roxanne opened the door and Mrs. Manetti, who must have been eavesdropping, fell in. “I wondered when you were going to get to me,” she said. “I don’t want my hair turning orange.”
Roxanne apologized and I dialed Mr. Salvo from the front desk phone as a heavyset woman entered. “I’m here for a makeover. I won the raffle.” She handed me a blue raffle ticket from a Ladies Auxiliary fundraiser. “Louise Lamporini.”
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I glanced down at the scrawl on the appointment book. Sure enough. Louise Lamporini at one.
Mr. Salvo picked up the phone on his end. “Salvo,” I heard in my ear.
I looked pleadingly over to Roxanne, who pointed to the other women on the couch and shrugged. “No way,” she said. “It’ll take me forty-five minutes to get to Louise. I’m way behind schedule.”
“Uhh, can you wait,” I said into the phone.
“That’s not acceptable,” Louise said, folding her large arms. Despite her extra weight, she was a striking woman. Strong, not fluffy. “I’ve got to get back to work.”
“Who is this?” Mr. Salvo asked.
“It’s Bubbles. I’ve got a hell of a story.” I turned back to Louise. “I can do the basics. Foundation through eye shadow and a bang trim.”
“Aww Christ.” It irked Mr. Salvo when my other life as a hairdresser intruded. “Don’t tell me you’re doing that girlie stuff.”
Louise glanced at her watch. “Okay. But we have to do it fast. I’ve got to be back at my desk in a half hour.”
“I don’t have time for this,” Mr. Salvo said. “Call me back.”
“Hold on.” I led Louise over to an empty chair. Roxanne pulled open a drawer to reveal the makeup supplies. “You want bold or neutral?” I asked.
“What?” Mr. Salvo said.
“Not you. I’m doing a makeover.”
“Neutral,” Louise said. “I’m at work, remember?”
I pinned Louise’s hair back and began to dab her face with a cotton ball to clean it. “You hear about what happened to me?”
“What happened to you?” Louise asked.
“Yeah, I heard,” said Mr. Salvo. “A little tip? If I ever send you on assignment, it will never be by fax. I’ve been in this business for over twenty years and I never, not once, heard of an editor sending a reporter to cover a story by fax. What were you thinking?”
“So glad to know you’re safe and sound, Bubbles,” I said, shaking out foundation onto my fingertip. “What a horrible ordeal you went through.”
“Oh, don’t start with the guilt trip. I’ve left dozens of messages on your answering machine at home, making sure you were okay. So what’s the big story?”
As I blended in the foundation lines, I filled in Mr. Salvo about the press conference and the documents Roxanne reportedly possessed. By the time I was finished, I had applied a transparent brown lipstick and mentally written the lead to the story.
“Wow,” Louise said, examining herself in the mirror. “I want that lipstick.”
“Next week. You can work on that story next week,” Mr. Salvo said. “In the meantime, I want to inform you of a change in the schedule. You’re on for Sunday day shift. I’m thinking of sending you to the Catasauqua Republicans’ annual barbeque.”
“What?”
“This lipstick,” Louise said, holding up the tube. “I want it. How much?”
Roxanne, aware of my growing desperation, came to the rescue and led Louise over to the makeup counter. I focused my attention on Mr. Salvo.
“You’re not going to tell me this story is out of our circulation area, are you?”
“No,” he said. “Lehigh Steel has a historical connection to McMullen Coal and the other coal companies in that area. Hell, the Lehigh Valley Railroad physically connects the two. Our readers will definitely be interested in what you’ve got. Just not tomorrow.”
This man was becoming impossible. Almost as bad as his evil boss, Dix Notch. “But we could run an exclusive proving that Carl Koolball was a bona fide whistleblower who is now being smeared by McMullen Coal who may have been robbing coal to avoid state oversight. Are you telling me you don’t want that?”
Mr. Salvo sighed. “What I want, Yablonsky, is two more editors on the night desk. As it is, it’s just me and Griffin tonight to handle three school board meetings and a profile that’s as thick as mud on the mayoral candidates. I’ll be damned if I have to unravel some overly complicated forty-inch saga you call in to Cora at the last minute.”
I was silent. Fuming.
“Besides,” he added, “Thursday is poker night. I missed last week and I told the guys I’d get there by eleven.”
I spoke evenly into the phone. “Okay. So I was trapped in a mine, nearly blown up, and I don’t get to write anything about that because you have to play cards.”
“You can write a first-person account of the experience. Six inches only. We’ll box it and run it as a column next to the AP story. Esmeralda Greene’s a seasoned reporter. I’m sure her piece will be as airtight as all her stuff is.”
Air wasn’t all that was tight in Esmeralda Greene.
“Don’t be too disappointed, Bubbles.” Mr. Salvo’s tone softened. “Just bring your notes and those documents your cousin supposedly has to the newsroom next week and we’ll go over them together. See if there’s credible material. Then we’ll present them to Dix Notch and hear what he has to say. That way we won’t encounter the same legal problems we came across when you wrote that Metzger story. As you know, if we get sued again, I’m out of a job. This time for good.”
That Metzger story was only the most riveting piece of journalism the News-Times had run since it uncovered the ten most dangerous intersections in Lehigh the year before. And it wasn’t my fault that Mr. Salvo’s job security was sketchy. That he had brought on himself.
Still, seeing as how preppy managing editor Dix Notch was my sworn enemy, I didn’t hold out hope that he’d be game to give me another go at investigative reporting. Even if this time I did have notes.
Already I was scheming. “Did you say Cora was on rewrite tonight?”
“Good old Careless Cora. So speak slowly and clearly. Otherwise she’ll just screw it up.”
Perfect.
Roxanne didn’t realize the wealth hidden in her guest room undies drawer. Stinky, ever the meticulous geek, had retained every letter and memo on the subject of McMullen’s coal robbing. There were two maps that he must have copied and sent to his superiors showing where coal had actually been removed. Since the maps were intended for those without degrees in geographical cartography from Carnegie Mellon, even I could understand them.
I was right. McMullen Coal had been violating federal and state regulations by entering the Number Nine mine and digging into the Dead Zone, possibly by as much as two-hundred-and-fifty feet. Stinky wrote in the letters that, although it was not his job to determine why the company had done this, he speculated that perhaps McMullen Coal did not want to wade through the lengthy regulatory process to receive approval to lift the mining ban. A process, he noted, that could take as long as ten years.
At the bottom, hidden underneath a collection of pink phone slips, was a letter to Stinky from Craig Sommerville of the State Bureau of Deep Mine Safety. It opened with Sommerville commenting on their long working relationship and his professional respect for Stinky, whom he called Carl, of course. He went on to thank Stinky for the letters and maps, which he had forwarded to his colleagues on the federal side. He added that he was planning on making a surprise state inspection of the Number Nine mine. This week.
Pay dirt. I dialed the number on the letterhead and got Craig on the second ring. Even though he was only a state bureaucrat, I was so excited to get hold of him he might as well have been Eddie Van Zandt. It was like a journalist’s fairy tale come true.
I identified myself as a reporter and told him that I had his letter in my hand, along with other documentation collected by Stinky indicating that McMullen had been—I stopped myself from using the inflammatory words “robbing coal.”
“. . . had extended its digging beyond the area of its permits.” There. That sounded innocuous enough.
Sommerville didn’t say anything. I heard him flipping through a Rolodex. “Here’s the number for our public relations department—”
I was prepared for this dismissal. “The public relations department will tell me that they can’t comment, which won�
�t help Carl Koolball. I just returned from a press conference where Hugh McMullen himself publicly described Carl as a loose cannon who was a danger to other employees and a likely murder suspect.”
“Jesus Christ.” Sommerville sounded genuinely shocked. “I had no idea.”
I waited. Please, oh please talk. Say anything.
“Write this down,” Sommerville said, new determination in his voice. “Carl Koolball is one of the most thorough engineers I’ve worked with in my twenty-two years on the job. He considers the safety of the miners and the environmental consequences of mining above all. I spoke to him the day before Bud Price’s murder and he seemed perfectly reasonable to me.”
It wasn’t getting me what I needed. “To convince my editors that Carl’s concerns about the, uhm, overextension are valid, it would help if you could, as a state inspector, validate them. Of course, if you haven’t visited the Number Nine—.”
“I made a state inspection yesterday,” he said. “And I have the violation letter in my computer. McMullen Coal Inc. faces at least one hundred thousand dollars in state fines alone and a possible shutdown for digging three hundred feet into the so-called Dead Zone. I can fax you a copy if you want.”
“You can do that?”
“I’ve apprised all the owners by telephone, why not? It’s public record.”
“Thanks,” I said. “Hold on.” I called over to Roxanne, who was smoking a cigarette and flipping through Woman’s World. “You know of a fax machine anywhere?”
“Down at the stationery store.” Roxy checked her watch. “But you better hurry. They close at five.” She looked up the phone number, wrote it down and slid it to me.
I got back on and gave him the number. “We’ve got twenty minutes.”
“Will do,” Craig said. “By the way. You running this tomorrow?”
I told him I was, though the paper didn’t know it yet.
Sommerville laughed. “Bubbles Yablonsky, huh? That’s a name I won’t soon forget. More ways than one, I expect.”
A half hour later I had a copy of Sommerville’s letter and a call in to McMullen Coal. As the company had closed at five, no one was available to speak with me. So I left a message for head honcho Hugh McMullen at The Inn in nearby Glen Ellen, a ritzy tourist town about thirty miles away. Roxanne had taken a stab that he might be there and she was right. Then again, did she expect him to be staying at the Red Roof?
Bubbles Ablaze Page 8
