God's Pocket - Pete Dexter (11 page)

Judge Kalquist looked at his watch, and then at the
prosecutor. "Do you anticipate your questioning of this witness
is going to take much longer?"

“
Yessir," the prosecutor said. "It could
go on for quite a while."

The judge considered his watch again, blew some air
into his cheeks, held it a minute, and then let it go. "It's
three-thirty," he said finally, as if that was something none of
them had ever run into before, "and I think I'll stop us here,
and we'll get a fresh start early in the morning."

It was all right with
Shellburn, he had to go to work anyway.

* * *

"I love this city," he said, "not the
sights, the city; I loved her last night, and I love her this
morning, before she brushes her
teeth,
knowing she snores." He was forcing his voice so the tape
recorder on the seat next to him would pick it up.

"I am used to the feel of her beside me. I know
her warmth and her coolness. She has forgiven me, and I have forgiven
her, and I am used to the feel of her beside me .... "

A carload of Puerto Ricans was sitting next to him at
the light on the comer of Fifteenth and Callowhill. By the time
Shellburn noticed them, they'd heard it, and the ones at the windows
were smiling.

"You right," one of them said. "I
think I fuck her last night too." He waited in the window, his
'chin on his hands, smiling.

Shellburn had nothing against Puerto Ricans, some of
his best columns came out of their neighborhoods. The cops would go
in to settle a domestic argument, the Rican would hit a cop, and then
they'd call for backup cops because nobody in his right mind is going
to shoot a Rican in a Rican neighborhood without ' a way out. And
maybe the Puerto Rican would have a machete, and before they carried
him out of there in a plastic bag, six or seven of the cops would go
to the hospital.

And Shellburn would write yes, they were a spirited
and proud people, but surely there was some way for eight grown,
trained men to handle one out-of-work, drunk and depressed Puerto
Rican without shooting him eleven times. He would write about the
Puerto Rican's neighborhood. Burned-out houses, wine bottles, rats,
naked children. He would suggest giving Juan Diaz a job instead of
shooting him eleven times. Sometimes it won him a Keystone Press
Award.

He didn't write about the Puerto Ricans often enough
to piss off South Philadelphia, or even often enough to piss off the
police. Sometime in the week after they killed the Puerto Rican, the
cops would do something right, and he'd do a column about that. Billy
would turn something up, or Shellburn, if he had to, could build a
column around, say, a cop walking around a wino instead of kicking
him. He'd call it "The Loneliest Job" or "Down Any
Alley." It worked out because he had a sense of balance.

The Puerto Ricans were still looking at him. "I
hope she don't have no type of herpes," the one in the window
said. "I am used to the feel of her, you know?"

The light changed and Shellburn turned right. The
Puerto Ricans went straight, headed into North Philadelphia, and the
one who had talked to him sat in the window with his chin on his
hands and watched him until the fence around the newspaper's parking
lot took Shellburn out of his view.

He had nothing against Puerto Ricans, but that one
deserved it. Shellburn had paid $14,000 for the Continental, and it
was the safest place he had in the city.

'
He turned the tape recorder off and pointed the
Continental into the company parking lot. There was a space with R.
SHELLBURN printed across the cement curb in front of it, or there
should have been.

It was the third parking space from the shack where
the guard sat. He checked himself. There was E. V. Davenport's space,
and T. D. Davis's space, and then R. Shellburn. Davenport was the
owner of the paper and the chain, and came in only on Thursdays for a
meeting with his editors. He sat at the head of a long, shiny table
and directed a review of the past week's papers. The secretaries
served tiny sandwiches and radishes cut to resemble flowers. E. V.
was in his eighties and interested in style. Last week, for example,
he'd outlawed contractions, and memos to that effect went up all over
the building.

T. D. Davis ran the paper day to day and had been
editor nine years. His Volvo was parked in its space, but the space
next to it,.R. Shellburn, was gone. There was a hole where it had
been. Six or seven feet wide, at least that deep. Shellburn honked
twice and the guard came out of the shack. His name tag said FLOYD.
Shellburn couldn't remember if he knew him or not.

"Somebody stole my parking place,"
Shellburn said. Floyd looked at it a minute and shook his head.

"I sure didn't see nobody come in, Mr.
Shellburn," he said. "I had to go up to the garage 'bout
twenty minutes ago, they must of come in then."

Shellburn said, "What are they going to put in
there?" The old guard looked again, shook his head. "Maybe
you best park over in Mr. Davenport's place," he said. "Mr.
Davenport don't come in on Mondays."

"It looks like a fucking grave," Shellburn
said.

"Yessir," the guard said. “Probably
somebody who don't know no better."

Shellburn sighed. "I'll tell you, Floyd, it's
harder than that to get rid of us. They keep bringing in the
replacements, the New Journalists, waves of them, kids out of every
dip-shit little paper in the chain, and they come in with their own
rules, and they wash in and they wash out, and you and I are still
here." He'd decided he knew the guard.

Floyd shook his head. "We sure as hell still
here, Mr. Shellburn," he said.

Shellburn got out of the Continental and looked in
the hole. "What if somebody stepped into that in the night?"

Floyd looked in the hole with him. "T. D. Davis
hisself could of got out his car and broke his ass," he said.

Shellburn thought it over. "I guess it isn't
hurting anything there," he said.

Shel1burn's office was a desk, a chair, a phone and a
typewriter. Four hundred square feet with a view of City Hall. He
could look out his window and see an oxidized statue of William Penn,
anytime he wanted to. There was no carpet on the floor, no pictures,
no awards or plaques in gratitude from the Fraternal Order of Police.
When it came up, he would say that the only picture he needed was the
one out his window.

William Penn stood on top of City Hall—by law the
tallest building in the city—and beyond that was Center City, and
beyond that South Philadelphia. History aside, it seemed to him South
Philadelphia was where the city started. When he looked at a map, he
could see how something must have tipped over there and spilled out
in two giant stains, the northeast and northwest parts of the city.
The source was South Philly. When it came up, he would say he could
look out his window and see the people he wrote for.

It didn't come up much, because Shellburn didn't
encourage casual visitors. In his office or his home, for the same
reason. He sat down in front of a small pile of letters, and began
throwing them away. He threw away all the press releases, without
opening them. He threw away the Guild notices, the inter-office
communications about changes in the VDT system. He threw away letters
from Golda and Irene and Henry and Dora, which he recognized from the
handwriting. Arthritic, jagged script, it looked like cracked glass.
He threw away their letters because he knew what they would say, not
because he didn't appreciate them. They were proof of what he was in
the city.

That left the real mail. Eleven letters, all of them
from women, thanking him for some column he'd written in the last
couple of weeks, complimenting him on his courage for writing it.
People always thought it took courage to write columns. He read the
last line or two of each of the letters and tossed them into the
wastebasket too.

He remembered a woman in a purple hat with a piece of
net hanging from it onto her face. She'd stood up during the
question-and-answer period Saturday night—he couldn't remember what
group it was, but it was the regular $700—and asked if he really
read all his mail. Personally.

"When I stop listening to the people," he'd
said, "then they ought to stop listening to me." Richard
Shellburn had been writing his column at the
Daily
Times
exactly twenty years, and he'd been
saying that a long time. Back when he'd started it, it may have even
been true.

He was twenty years into it now, and the people
hadn't said anything he wanted to listen to for at least half that
long. And he hadn't said anything he wanted to listen to in that time
either. He picked up the phone and called Billy.

Billy Deebol was his legman. He'd grown up in the
Northeast, and he'd grown up wanting to work for the
Daily
Times
. Shellburn often told people that he
didn't care if Billy never went to Columbia to learn New Journalism,
he cared something about the city, which was more than you could say
for all the kids they brought in on their way to the
Washington
Post
or the
New York
Times
. Or on their way to other Davenport
newspapers, to be city editors.

If you weren't enough of an asshole for that yet,
Philadelphia was where the chain brought you to learn.

Billy answered the phone on the second ring. He
always answered on the second ring, he was an absolutely reliable
kid. Kid Billy Deebol was thirty-seven years old and two-thirds bald,
and he had a wife and six kids of his own.

Billy had less imagination than the door to the
office, but in a strange kind of way he understood what went into
Shellburn's writing. He knew what kind of detail worked and what
didn't, he knew what would fit into eight hundred words. It was funny
he'd never thought of writing a column himself. And he hadn't,
Shellburn would have seen it.

When Richard Shellburn wrote about rats and
burned-out shells and naked children in North Philadelphia, it was
Billy who went out and saw it. And he was the one who talked to
grieving widows and mothers, and he was the one who went over the
things that had happened every day in the city and told Shellburn
what was out there.

And the one who typed Shellburn's copy into the
computer system. Shellburn knew he cleaned it up—like when he wrote
drunk—but he didn't know how much. Shellburn never read the paper.

And Billy never wanted anything for it except to be
paid, and to be allowed to do it again. The thing Shellburn liked
best about Billy was that he didn't want anything else. "Billy,
my boy," he said, "what's going on in the City of Brotherly
Love?"

"It's a funny thing, Richard," he said.
"Nothing. Nobody killed in three days, nobody important got
mugged. There wasn't even a parade, all weekend long." Shellburn
hated parades and often wrote about them.

"Nothing?" Shellburn let himself sound
disappointed.

There was nobody who wouldn't get lazy if you let
them. He didn't tell him he'd already written half a column for
Tuesday, on the subject of his twentieth anniversary at the
Daily
Times
. The phone was quiet for a few seconds.
Shellburn said, "Death takes a holiday, huh?"

"Well," Billy said, "almost. I mean,
there was an accident this morning down at Holy Redeemer.
Twenty-four-year-old construction worker named Leon Hubbard was hit
by a crane or something."

"White or black?"

"From the address, it has to be white,"
Billy said. "Yeah, it's God's Pocket." He waited while
Shellburn thought it over.

"Is it any good?"

Billy said, "Not that I saw. The guy's a union
bricklayer, lived with his mother. Unless you want to do something
with the hospital end, you know, irony or something."

"No. The mother crippled? Did he support her?"

Billy said, "I could run over there tomorrow and
take a look if you want me to. I could go over there tonight if
you're hung up for a column .... "

Shellburn let the line go quiet again. "No,"
he said finally, "I'll scare something up. By tomorrow, they'll
be something better. Don't worry about it, my boy."

"You sure? I could run over there."

"Don't bother. The mother's probably asleep
anyway." He looked at his watch. Quarter to six. "Take the
night off."

Billy said, "I'll make another check with the
police before I put you in the system .... "

Shellburn said, "Whatever you think. I'll be
here." He hung up and moved over in front of his typewriter. It
was an old Royal that weighed as much as a watermelon. Nothing fancy,
nothing electric. It was the same typewriter he'd had for twelve
years.

The rest of the staff of the
Daily
Times
had gone to VDT machines four years
ago. The New Journalists sent their words into a computer. Shellburn
had refused to learn.

He'd fought with a managing editor over that, gone
all the way to Davenport. T. D. Davis had refused to hear the
argument, Shellburn being a city institution and the managing editor
being the man who was supposed to deal with him then. T. D. Davis had
a chain of command, and he lived by it, although eventually he took
over Richard Shellburn himself.