Basket Case (45 page)

"Whoopee-do. Where's the champagne." Young Race was in a tough spot, so I let him blow off steam. "Newspapers are in the business of making money, Tagger, so don't be so naive and self-righteous. Journalism can't exist without making a profit."

"Well, you damn sure can't have good journalism when you're milking the cow for twenty-five percent. We might as well be working for the Gambinos," I said. "By the way, how are the Porsches enjoying that dreamy Southern California climate? No more slush in your tailpipes, I'll bet!"

For a moment it appeared that Maggad was sucking his own cheeks down his throat. I'd touched a raw nerve with that California jab—Forbes had recently done a snarky article about the obscene cost of relocating Maggad-Feist's headquarters to sunny San Diego. Shareholders were seething.

Stonily he said to me, "We publish twenty-seven very good papers. They win awards."

"In spite of you, yes, they do."

The Race Maggads of the industry have a standard gospel to rationalize their pillaging. It goes like this: American newspapers are steadily losing both readers and advertisers to cable TV and the Internet. This fatal slide can be reversed only with a radical recasting of our role in the community. We need to be more receptive and responsive, less cynical and confrontational. We need to be more sensitive to our institutions, especially to our advertisers. We can no longer afford to shield our news and editorial operations from the pressures and demands that steer the business side of publishing. We're all in this together! In these difficult times we need to do more with less—less space in which to print the news, fewer reporters with which to cover it, and a much smaller budget with which to pursue it. Yet even as we do more with less, we must never forget our solemn pledge to our readers, blah, blah, blah…

It's an appalling geyser of shit and nobody with half a brain believes a word, not when polo-playing CEOs can confidently talk of twenty-five percent annual profits. Like most publishing tycoons, Race Maggad III is oblivious to his own vulgarity. On the positive side, he has (unlike the Hearsts and Pulitzers of their day) no hidden political agenda to peddle, no private vendettas to promote on the pages of his newspapers. Maggad cares about one thing only.

"What, you want me to grovel?" he said. "You know we need to repurchase Mr. Polk's shares, and you know why. Try to put aside your petty personal bitterness, Tagger. Think of all your friends and colleagues whose jobs would be jeopardized if one of these hostile entities gained control of our company."

"You're implying things would get worse in the newsroom? How's that possible? Are you suggesting these people have less interest in decent journalism than you do?"

Maggad desperately longed to kick out my front teeth, but the task at hand required civility. Lord, I'd have loved to see his expression when Charlie Chickle broke the news that Old Man Polk had put his Maggad-Feist stock holdings in a trust. A trust to be managed by me—the same wise-ass who'd insulted Maggad in front of his investors, the same impertinent prick whose career he had conspired to destroy. "The irony is delicious, isn't it, Race?"

"Fuck irony. How much do you want for the stock?"

"Mr. Polk left very specific instructions," I said.

Maggad steepled his manicured fingers. "We're flexible, up to a point."

"Flexible won't cut it," I told him. "You need to be whorishly compliant, prompt and unquestioning. The price of the shares is simple market value, averaged during the preceding thirty days."

"That's doable," Race III allowed coolly.

"But before the stock changes hands"—here was the kill shot—"Maggad-Feist must divest itself of the Union-Register."

My natty visitor went rigid. "Horseshit," he snapped.

"Aw, don't look so blue."

"No deal. No way."

"Fine," I said. "The more you stall and fart around, the richer I get. Did Mr. Chickle happen to mention what they're paying me to bust your balls?"

"Sell the Union-Register?"

"Yes, but not just to anybody."

Maggad gripped the arms of his chair as if he was about to eject himself from an F-16. The trunk of his neck turned florid, pulsing like a fire hose.

"Who?" he asked. "Sell it to who?"

"To whom.'" I was unable to conceal my disappointment with his grammar. "Really, Race."

"To whom," he sneered. "Tell me, goddammit."

"Ellen Polk. The old man's wife."

"The nurse?"

"The heiress," I said.

"Christ Almighty. This was your idea, wasn't it, Tagger?" I didn't deny it, which was tacky of me. The old man himself dreamed up the scheme. But Maggad looked so wretched and beaten that I couldn't bring myself to set the record straight. "For how much?" he asked.

"A straight-up trade. She gets the newspaper, you get Mr. Polk's stock."

"That's asinine." He was doing the math in his head. "The Dow is in the toilet right now, so the Union-Register must be worth ten, twelve times the value of the old man's shares. Easily."

"As you wish, Master Race. Tomorrow I'll be lunching with the Canadians."

"Jesus, hold on."

"By the way, that's a gorgeous suit," I told him, "but it's eighty-four fucking degrees outside. And you were born for khakis, my friend."

In the end, Race Maggad III chose to give up one newspaper so that he might keep twenty-six others, God help them. The deal was signed one week before young Race's favorite polo pony attacked him in the stall, stomping on his cranium. With therapy he seems to be recovering steadily, though doctors doubt he'll ever drive a five-speed transmission again.

Last month, Ellen Polk became the first woman publisher of the Union-Register. The first thing she did was expand the news hole by twenty-five percent. The second thing she did was order Abkazion to fill the empty desks in the newsroom. Today separate reporters are assigned to Palm River, Beckerville and Silver Beach, blanket coverage which has compelled the politicians there to quit running their council meetings as weekly bazaars.

Under Mrs. Polk, even the Death page has been restored to its former glory, with two full-length obituaries running daily. Emma is no longer in charge of that section. As a reward for supervising the Jimmy Stoma stories, she was promoted to "deputy" assistant city editor. I asked if that meant she had to wear a silver star on her chest, and she told me to get out of the bathroom so she could finish drying her hair. She refuses to leave the newspaper business, and she refuses to leave me. I'm the luckiest nutcase I know.

After the airboat adventure Emma skated without incident through the remainder of her twenty-eighth year. Last Saturday was her birthday, and we drove to Naples for dinner with my mother, my stepfather, Dave, and the Palmers, whom Dave now extols as blue-chip additions to his country club. This racially enlightened attitude has evolved only since Mr. Palmer's son taught Dave how to fade a three-wood off the fairway.

As we cleared the table I cornered my mother in the kitchen and asked her how she came to receive Jack Sr.'s obituary. She told me that his older brother, a lawyer in Orlando, had mailed it to her. "He's the one I should've married. The attorney," my mother remarked, only half jokingly.

Included in the envelope was a check for $250 to cover a pair of small pearl earrings that my father had swiped on his way out the door, and later hocked. After his death, the pawn ticket (and a Fodor's tour guide to Amsterdam) was found in a shoe box beneath his bed in a Key West rooming house.

"What do you make of that?" I asked my mother.

"He was a flake job. Case closed," she said. "Listen, Jack, I'm quite fond of your new girlfriend. Please don't scare her off, like you did with Anne. Keep the morbid stuff to yourself, okay?"

"I'll try, Mom."

Emma and I spent last evening on the couch trading manuscript chapters of Juan Rodriguez's novel about his voyage from Cuba to Key West. It is heart-stopping but also humbling; Juan is gifted beyond my most improbable aspirations. A serious New York publishing house is launching his book in the fall, and I anticipate it will bring him wealth and acclaim. I only hope it will bring him sleep. He's dedicating the novel to his sister.

Today Emma and I have come to the Silver Beach pier for lunch, as we often do. One windy morning a few months ago, Janet Thrush joined us. She kicked off her flip-flops and clambered up on the rail and poured her brother's sworling ashes into the Atlantic. "Bye, Jimmy," she sang out, heaving the empty urn into the water. At that instant, I swear, a dolphin came up and rolled in the surf—just once. We never saw it again.

I keep bringing Emma here because I want her to meet Ike, the ancient obituary writer, yet he hasn't reappeared since the day we first spoke. I'm beginning to think I dreamt him up. Emma wonders, too, though she's too kind to say so. Even if it means I'm still wacked, I'd prefer to know that I imagined Ike than to learn he has died.

As always, Emma and I choose the bench near the phone at the end of the pier, the same phone on which she called me after being kidnapped. Once I mentioned that to her, and all she said was: "Those creeps."

Today the Atlantic is flat and glassy, the perfect mirror of a cloudless periwinkle sky. Kids are out of school so the pier bustles; above, a circus of swooping gulls and terns. Emma and I shield our pasta salads, in case of bombardment. Squinting against the fierce summer sun, I search for Ike's fluffy gray head among the anglers lined along the rails.

"Maybe he went back north until the weather cools off," Emma suggests.

"Maybe."

"Or he's laid up in the hospital. Have you called Charity?"

"Not yet." I don't even know the man's last name.

We're distracted by a lumpish, hirsute tourist in a sweat-stained tank top. He has reeled in a small barracuda, which flops frenetically on the wooden planks. The tourist has his heart set on supper, for he's endeavoring to stomp on the fish before it flips back into the sea. He seems unheedful of the ample dentition of barracudas, impressive even in juvenile specimens. Within minutes the man's pallid ankles are striped crimson, and in retreat he can be heard moaning like a branded calf.

Emma walks over and, with the toe of a conservative navy blue pump, carefully nudges the wriggling fish off the pier. Rejoining me on the bench, she says, "It's that time again."

"No, I'm begging you."

Every day she asks: "When are you coming back to the paper?"

Abkazion has offered me a slot on the new investigations team, but the time isn't right. I'm still having night sweats about what happened on Lake Okeechobee. These I don't mention to Emma, because she's had some unsettling dreams of her own.

"Jack, you should take the job. You worked hard for it."

"Maybe that's the problem. As Jimmy Stoma would say, I'm all humped out."

"And, as Emma Cole would say, I'm going to hurt you now." She thumps the side of my head. "Come back to work, dammit. I miss you."

"She's right. What's your problem, Tagger?" a scratchy voice demands at my back.

I spin around and there's Ike, a sly smile on his whiskered possum face. He is carrying an orange bait bucket, a small cooler and his three spinning rods. He looks fit and frisky.

"Where've you been?" I ask.

"Battling an unmannered polyp," he replies cheerily, "but fear not. I prevailed."

"Ike, this is my friend, Emma."

He sets down the fishing gear and takes her hand. "You are most lovely, Emma. I'm dazzled to meet you."

The old hound!

"You had a birthday, didn't you?" I ask him.

"Number ninety-three," he reports proudly.

"Incredible," Emma says.

"Not really. I planned it this way. All those years, writing all those hundreds of obituaries—well, pretty lady, I paid attention. I learned a few tricks."

Emma is taken with the old guy, as I knew she would be. After arranging his clutter of fishing tackle, he methodically rigs a bait and casts it over the rail.

"Sunscreen." He cocks his head our way. "Both of you should be basting in the stuff. Forty years from now you'll thank me."

Ike's rod begins to bend, and he gallantly passes it to Emma. She cranks up a nice snapper, which he guts and tosses on ice.

"Fish is the healthiest food in the world. Cemeteries are full of people who didn't eat enough fish."

"Ike," says Emma, "please tell Jack why he should come back to the newspaper."

He wipes the blade of his fillet knife on a leg of his trousers. "Number one, you're not cut out for a regular job."

No argument there.

"Number two, you still get a bang out of the news." His crooked fingers are working a large sharp hook into a bloodless chunk of mullet. "And number three, you can make things happen, writing for a paper," he says. "Make a difference in the world. That's a damn fact."

Emma lightly claps her hands. "Well done!"

What the opossum man says is true." But if I came back," I say, "I wouldn't be writing obituaries."

"That's all right. It was a helluva piece you did about that wild young gal killing off her husband," says Ike. "It wouldn't surprise me if you got an award. I'm serious, Jack."