by William Gray
He wasn’t hunting for cameos on the History Channel.
“The one on the drug cartels, how they were infecting the drug supply to attack us from within,” Devin said.
Caleb chuckled. It would be that one. He’d almost died, pursuing that one. “I’m still on some hit lists for that one,” he commented.
“Yeah, well, you won’t have to worry about the cartels if you don’t send me that rape kit article today,” Devin said. The admiration and euphoria had worn off. His normal somber tone had returned. “So, congratulations. I’ll show you your new desk when you finally decide to grace us with your presence.”
A brief pause lingered over the line as the two wrestled with their thoughts. Then, suddenly: “And I’m not expensing any trips to New York. So, don’t get any crazy story ideas or sources,” Devin said. Then he abruptly hung up.
Monty shrieked, filling the air with his shrill and monstrous cries. Sighing, Caleb got up. “I suppose I should silence the beast, huh, Hunter?” He gave the chubby calico a pat on the head and smiled, walking to the living room to let his stupid parrot out. As he did so, he rubbed his stomach. He felt it gurgling. “I think I can afford to spring for Polu Grill today,” he said. For some reason, that simple statement sent a ripple of pleasure through his veins. He shivered.
Opening the black cage, he stepped back just in time to avoid the furious flapping of the angry avian’ s wings. “Portland traffic sucks. Traffic sucks.” Monty said as he settled on a perch atop the dusty mantle of Caleb’s faux fireplace. The bird twisted its head and fixed one black eye on Caleb. “Fucking Blazers,” Monty said.
Laughing, Caleb shook his head. “Who taught you such… foul language?” He tittered at his own impromptu pun. “Get it, Monty? Fowl, foul?” he asked. He raised an eyebrow as the bird elected to ignore him. “You better not shit all over the room again. I’ll stop leaving you out when I’m not home,” Caleb warned.
Returning to his more immediate needs, he reached for his phone. Grunting, raising both arms high in the air, he released a sound of exasperation. “Will you go get my phone for me?” Caleb asked the bird.
“Phone’s ringing! Phone’s ringing!” Monty said. “Fucking Blazers,” he added for emphasis.
Caleb reluctantly got up, but instead of going all the way back to the bedroom, he decided to go to his desk and use his computer instead. Polu Grill recently created a website, complete with online ordering. For some reason, the other delivery service always got his address wrong, back when there was no option to order direct. Plus, Caleb kind of preferred the idea of giving his tips and delivery fee money to Mister Qasim. Everyone that worked at Polu seemed to be somehow related to the avuncular old man, so…
Having finished his order, Caleb scrolled through the work he’d somehow managed to eke out the previous night, before falling into a fitful slumber and waking up to… nightmares and Pulitzers. He shook his head. Things were growing a little too surreal.
Remembering the vivid horrors afflicting his subconscious, he shivered. Then he recalled that he should probably call his grandma. She’d be upset if she heard the news a week late. “Guess I have to get up and get my phone,” Caleb muttered.
“Phone’s ringing! Phone’s ringing!” Monty screamed in his tinny, high-pitched voice.
Walking past the creature, he gave Monty a quick pat on the head. The bird bobbed up and down and managed to somehow convey utter disdain and reproach.
Chapter 6
Caleb cried.
He wiped his eyes, sniffling, his hand trembling as he listened quietly to his grandma babbling excitedly on the other end of the line. He could just imagine her, sitting there gripping the red handle of her old plastic phone.
She seemed happier than he was.
“And, you know, you just have to try the Pizza, Caleb. I tell you, it sounds funny, but they really do have a… different way about doing it there. Oh, I wonder how Little Italy has changed. We Irish never quite got along with the… oh, I was going to say an impolite word.” Mary paused.
Caleb chuckled. He smiled. “You? An impolite word?” he asked, mockingly.
“Oh, you. Well, you know, the world wasn’t always as… polite as it seems to be now. We competed for jobs, all over the country.” Mary said.
“So, you know, I should talk to you more about Argentina. Because you’re Irish.” Caleb said. He was always looking for a new story idea to pitch. It was his job.
“I already gave you a scoop. Don’t forget your promises, Caleb,” Mary admonished.
Caleb made a face. That.
“Yeah, I know you want to get out of it, you weasel. But I’ll guilt you from the grave if I have to. This is my friend we’re talking about here. I raised you right, son. I know I did. I had my doubts when you became a no-good drunk. I had my doubts when you stole from me to continue being a no-good drunk. But you had all that pain from basketball and were a lawyer, yada, yada. Always with the excuses. And I listened. I always listened. I felt like the idiot. Then you called from jail, saying you’d hit some poor little girl because you were a no-good drunk. And I felt like I’d enabled THAT, because I never had called the cops on my grandson when he drove drunk or stole. Don’t you think I had my doubts then?” she laughed without mirth. A short, cynical burst of sound.
“Then you get out of prison, disbarred, all that student loan money and schooling for nothing. I’m broke, because I inadvertently let you steal the money I worked hard to earn to fund your thirst. Here comes my grandson, asking for money to start a sports memorabilia business. I’m thinking, baseball cards? But did I say no? To this harebrained scheme? Nope. Family means more to me than that. So I let you fail, knowing you would, because… BASEBALL CARDS?”
“I didn’t fail. I paid back every penny.” Caleb interrupted, weakly.
“Yeah, well, you didn’t exactly succeed, either. And you didn’t pay back all that you stole. You let me talk, now, son. Or else I’m going to get real upset with you. More upset than I already am. And you know how much I hate getting mad at my little Caleb.” She took a deep breath. “The point is, you owe me a big fat one. And I mean to collect this one time. Just this once. And, damn you, Caleb, you promised me, and I know your value your word. You never lost that, not even when you were a drunk. You would steal from me, but you’d never lie about it. I just avoided asking, since I didn’t want to know. So, congratulations on your prize,” Mary said. She sniffled. “Damn it, now I’m not excited anymore,” she said.
Caleb remained quiet for a long while. He couldn’t refute a word of what she said. He hated himself for even resisting the idea. And he had promised.
“What’s the story with Irish Argentines?” he finally asked. He didn’t have the energy to fight. Plus, he needed to get back to work. He had a deadline. If he didn’t submit the rape kit article soon, he’d be in trouble. Bad enough that he didn’t have all five sources, even if he had been up late acquiring another good one.
“You’re smart. Go look it up. Why do you ask me? You don’t trust me when I tell you my friend is being abused,” Mary said.
“Gra’ma, please. I’ll look into it. Okay?” Caleb said.
“Fine. So, I was born there. I don’t know. I think my parents went there to get rich. Same as pretty much all immigrants, really. You leave someplace because it sucks and hope the new place doesn’t suck,” Mary said.
Caleb laughed. His grandma has such a way of being both coarse and profound at the same time. “I mean, I’d never really heard about any of that. We never talked about it in school. There aren’t any documentaries on it that I know of,” he said.
“Yeah, I don’t know. You obviously know about all of the Irish in America, the Famine, all of that? Well, I guess it’s…” she laughed. “It’s really not the same, is it? I mean, we ate differently and had different accents than other Irish, so we weren’t always accepted as Irish, you know?”
“Interesting,” Caleb said. He couldn�
��t remember ever having had this discussion with her, which struck him as somehow both odd and sad at the same time. “Gra’ma…”
“Yes?”
“What the hell did we talk about over the years?” Caleb asked. He rubbed his chin.
Mary laughed. “THAT is a great question,” she said, without really answering his question. After a pause, she spoke. The words that escaped her lips surprised them both. “So, did you actually sell baseball cards?” she asked.
Shaking his head, Caleb laughed. “I need to get back to work. But, no, gra’ma. I sold memorabilia. Mostly basketball stuff. But I got some good baseball autographs. The Beavers had some great players, and they’re a small school, so their athletes were fairly accessible,” he said.
“Okay, son. I’ll talk to you soon, then. I love you,” Mary said.
“I love you, too, gra’ma,” Caleb said. He disconnected just in time, as there was a knock at his door. It was his food. Grabbing a yerba matte from the refrigerator, he returned to his desk and ate as he stared vacantly at his computer screen. His mind was still feeling the aftershocks of his grandma’s incisive words.
He meandered back to the promise he’d made. To write about Sue.
“How the hell am I supposed to verify that?” Caleb asked the empty room. He sighed. Shaking his head, he sighed. He forced himself to forget the whole thing. Deadlines loomed. Devin possessed a nice side, and he’d likely be considerably more affable for the time being, seeing as Caleb has just won national recognition. But that other aspect of his personality, the harsh, nasty one… Caleb had a difficult time forgetting that.
After devoting around twenty minutes to giving his manuscript a quick scan, he ran it through his favorite editing software, Hemingway. The site picked up everything. Once that was done, he found a number of areas where he could improve his writing for clarity and style. Caleb rarely made major grammar or spelling mistakes, thanks to his time as a lawyer. That always made submitting articles at the last minute a little easier. Changing the wording a little, he sat back in his chair and stared at the screen, chewing on the inside of his lip.
Was he ready to send it?
Nodding, he stretched, cracking his knuckles. Then he opened the site’s word processing program and copy-pasted his article. Looking it over one last time, Caleb took a breath and hit the blue rectangular button to submit.
Just then, Hunter decided to make her presence known. She jumped up onto the desk, walking over his laptop, tail high. She settled down right on top of the keyboard, looking up at him, her long white whiskers twitching. “Meow,” she said.
“Get out of here,” Caleb said, picking the chubby little distractor up and plopping her on the floor. He needed to get to work. If he was going to look into this whole nursing home thing, he needed to do some research.
Out of habit, he logged onto his virtual private network and then got onto Tor. Caleb had long understood the importance and power of anonymity, especially online. He trusted the academic research and all of that. He didn’t have anything personally against Google. The problem, he’d found, is that some of the underlying assumptions most generally honest and decent people made were… fundamentally flawed. The people and information he as a reporter often wanted, it just wasn’t usually on the surface.
Sure, a report from the Southern Poverty Law Center or a reputable and established non-profit advocacy group could create credibility. But those reports were almost always safe. And even then, people generally didn’t prove terribly cooperative when asked to disclose information that would be damning to them. Such as shady cops and pharmacists.
The way to find the good leads was on the darkweb. If people were abusing vulnerable elderly patients in nursing homes, then it would be all over the nefarious underbelly of the information superhighway. There in the shadows under the overpasses, concealed by the din of passing traffic, the unseen economy was at work, shaping forbidden cultures and curating secret pleasures.
Navigating to one site that acted almost as a guidebook to all that was wrong in the world, Caleb clicked through and found a space dedicated to documenting elderly abuse. He forced himself to watch a ten-minute video. Within seconds, a wave of nausea battered his guts and attacked his senses.
“Fuck,” he said. Caleb turned off the computer abruptly and picked up Hunter. He pet the cat, stroking her fur with quick, anxious movements. He listened to his feline friend purr. The sound helped soothe him.
“I didn’t even see shit that bad in prison, kitty,” Caleb whispered.
He shivered. Closing his eyes, he was transported back to B-Block. The small cell with the heavy metal door marked from top to bottom with gang graffiti. The small rectangular slot where food was passed through during lockdowns. The rusted metal toilet and sink right by the thick wire-grated window. The harsh light that always emitted that ugly background noise. The constant buzz of tension in the air. The cellmate doing jumping jacks, pushups, and curling waterbags just before their hour in the dayroom. The bologna sandwiches that stunk.
While he’d been in prison, he’d seen people get stabbed. He’d seen guards rape prisoners, prisoners rape prisoners, and guards watching as prisoners raped each other. He’d mopped up pools of blood on more than one occasion, all for fifteen cents an hour and the privilege of extra time out of his cell to do his janitorial duties. One time, he’d almost been stabbed when he refused to smuggle stolen bleach back to the unit.
Opening his eyes, Caleb wiped a quick hand over his face. He didn’t want to think. He needed to escape. He felt like he needed a shower. Getting up, he took his half-eaten food and deposited the containers in the trash. Then he trudged toward the bathroom, turning the hot water on to the max and waiting for the room to fill with steam. He wanted it so hot it hurt.
Deciding that now would be a good time for music, he played some oldies at full blast. He always had preferred stuff like the Beach Boys and tunes from the 80s. Roy Orbison was another favorite, along with the Mommas and the Poppas. Caleb felt shaken to his core by the horrific images he’d seen.
That was one of the drawbacks of anonymity. The darkweb could be… dark. People disguised by distance and phony IP addresses could reveal anything with relative impunity. Even…
Finally stepping into the hissing stream, Caleb allowed his worries and traumas to momentarily dissipate. However, before he was able to fully let go, he realized that, if something like that could happen to his grandma’s friend- to his grandma- then he had no choice. It was a moral obligation to find whatever evidence existed and expose the scum perpetrating these vile crimes.
After showering, he still felt the dread. The lingering, pulsing awareness of the evil that not only lived- but thrived- in the world scratched its thick ugly yellow nails against the chalkboard of his consciousness, filling his mind with nothing but harsh reality.
Caleb didn’t know exactly what to do. He’d never experienced anything like this before. Drying off and returning to his bedroom almost from rote, he felt almost lost in a fugue-like, dissociative state. He jumped. “Hunter…” Caleb said, shaking his head. Then he smiled. The cat just circled around, purring louder as it pressed against his legs.
Getting dressed, he idly decided on something a little more formal, since he suspected he might get at least one request for an interview today*
. Winning a Pulitzer can do that. It tends to attract attention. The process of sliding his arms into the silky pink striped shirt and buttoning it seemed somehow odd. Caleb normally took a strange pleasure in his fashion. Getting ready and clothed offered almost an opportunity to prepare for his day- and the many roles contained therein. But, today, he just wasn’t all that interested.
Because he was thinking of Sue.
Sitting down on the bed to put on his shiny new black shoes that he’d purchased for only fifteen bucks at an estate sale, Caleb looked over at his phone. He knew he had to do it. He didn’t want to. He feared the answer. But he underst
ood that he’d reached a point of no return. The proverbial Rubicon had been breached, and he was riding on journalistic Rome. After what he’d just inadvertently witnessed online, Caleb needed to write the book on nursing home abuse. The fact that he’d made a promise to the woman who’d practically raised him, the woman who’d plucked him from so many boiling cauldrons that her hands were burnt, that only served to seal the deal.
Calling Devin, he reached forward, careful to keep the phone cradled between his shoulder and ear, to tie his shoes. Caleb didn’t have any real plans yet to go anywhere. He didn’t even really want to celebrate. Hell, he couldn’t even afford to until he got whatever check they were supposed to send him. He was lucky he hadn’t run up a major debt with Mr. Qasim at Polu. Even so, it felt good to be focusing on something so banal and ordinary. Caleb was a mess. He’d be more of a wreck if he were to surrender to the anxiety playing racquetball in the back of his brain.
“Caleb. Hey,” Devin said. He sounded happy. Devin almost never sounded happy. He was an editor. He didn’t get paid enough to be happy.
“You sound… did you just get laid or something?” Caleb asked, laughing. He didn’t know if he chuckled at the apparent absurdity of the thought or because it was so random of an idea. Even so, the words tap-danced off of his tongue, and now he had to deal with them.
“What is that supposed to mean? Did you get that rape kit article off to me yet? And why are you calling me? You should be in the office. Someone even went to the trouble of buying you a cake. Now, you must have made some friends somewhere, since no one would ever authorize such an expense with company funds. It’s a nice-looking cake, too. From Nero’s. All sorts of chocolate decadence,” Devin said.
Smiling awkwardly, Caleb scratched his neck and glanced at Hunter. Then he cleared his throat and dove right into the uncomfortable task at hand. “Devin, uh, I’ve got, well, I need a favor,” he said.
