Oregon Hill (24 page)

“Not much. He’s a white dude. As a matter of fact, he might be from your neck of the woods. The Hill.”

“What’s his first name?”

She thinks on it for a minute, then says, “Wait. I’m pretty sure his name is Robert. Yeah. I heard somebody call him that.”

I think for a minute, and then the light bulb comes on.

“Older guy, maybe early fifties? Red hair?”

“Yeah. What’s left of it.”

Bobby Jenkins was a piece of work. We always figured he’d wind up at the jail, but we were betting on the other side of the bars.

I thank Peachy, who gives me a promising kiss and asks me if I want a drink.

I assure her that I do, as always, want a drink, but that I’m getting my buzz from Tylenol today.

“Well,” she says, “come by when you’re not on painkillers.”

I promise her I will. From what I remember of sex with Peachy, it wouldn’t be recommended for a man not at the top of his game, and I’m just about at the bottom of mine right now.

“Honey,” I think I remember her saying, the last time we untangled from each other, “I’m not sure you’re black enough to handle this.”

Back at the Prestwould, I find the box I’m looking for in the back of the closet, unopened since Kate and I moved here. She could never understand why I wanted to keep high school yearbooks.

You never look at them, she said.

I might someday, I told her.

I was right.

My freshman yearbook is right there where I left it after Jeanette and I split. It’s been moved from apartment to apartment, wife to wife.

I find what I’m looking for. The photo isn’t exactly like I remember it, but it’s close enough. A group of kids, mostly seniors, are trying to look tough. They were part of a definitely not school-sanctioned club called The Wild Bunch. They used to scare the crap out of me, even the girls.

There’s skinny, acne-faced, red-haired Bobby Jenkins, wearing the same leather jacket as the rest. Also like the rest, he’s trying to work up a good sneer, but on Bobby, from the perspective of thirty-some years, he just looks like a doofus with a bad haircut.

Next to him, with his arm around Bobby, looking scary without even trying, is David Junior Shiflett.

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

Sunday

I
can’t get a flight for Boston until tomorrow morning without paying a king’s ransom. Just as well. I feel worse than I did yesterday.

When I was a young man, a hard workout after a long stretch of lazy would mean sore muscles the next morning. Now, the pain’s more likely to wait a day to really kick in.

Turns out, the same general rule applies to beat-downs. Muscle, bone, tendons, eyeballs, hair, pretty much anything that can hurt does hurt more than it did yesterday.

Kate calls to see how I’m doing, and fills me in on her efforts to tear the city jail a new asshole. She’s found out who put Martin Fell in harm’s way, and she knows that Bobby Jenkins claims he got “a call” telling him to take Fell out of his safe, single cell, but that he says he isn’t sure who made that call. She has spoken directly to Chief Jones, who promises justice.

I have a story in this morning’s paper, written from my laptop and emailed to the office yesterday afternoon. “Jesus Christ,” Sally Velez said when I called to make sure they got it. “Didn’t I tell you to rest?”

“I can’t just let you all wander around blind in the wilderness,” I explained, and she had to concede that, no, Chuck Apple had not tumbled onto the attempted suicide.

It isn’t Apple’s fault. If he’d slept with the police flack and the defendant’s lawyer, he might have inside information, too.

I’m reminded of a guy who used to work with me on the legislative beat. He kept getting his butt whipped by this bright, pretty, ambitious young female reporter from Norfolk.

One day, when Jackson gently suggested that he was indeed getting his ass handed to him, the guy said, “Hell, she’s sleeping with half the General Assembly. No wonder she knows everything.”

“Well,” Jackson said, “maybe you better start sleeping with somebody, too.”

The story, of course, is about Martin Fell’s attempted suicide. Kate is concerned that some people will see it as some kind of confession of guilt. I tell her that I doubt it. Capable wordsmith that I am, I’ve made sure any chimp will draw the connection between Fell’s return to the general population and his decision to end his life.

The story is a little coy about how Fell got thrown to the wolves again. “Officials said they weren’t sure why Fell was taken from his private cell, where he’d been placed for his own protection earlier, but promised a thorough investigation in a timely manner.”

The blog posting was less subtle. I’m starting to enjoy a place where you apparently can just let loose and write anything, where innuendo is king. Oh, they tell us it’s real journalism, but if it’s real journalism, why isn’t anybody editing what I write on there? And why are we giving it away? I think they check it to make sure I don’t put “fuck” in a story or malign the paper, but otherwise, it’s open season.

So, my blog asks some questions as pointed as a thumbtack on a publisher’s chair:

Why was Martin Fell taken out of protective custody? Rumor has it that everyone knows who threw him back into the GP, so why are they protecting the guy? Is it true that this jailer claims he was told by “someone” to move Fell, but he doesn’t know who? Is it true that this jailer has a longtime friendship with someone high up in the police department with a strong interest in Martin Fell’s case?

Kate’s read the blog, too.

“You’re holding out on me,” she says, and I have to concede that she’s right.

“You don’t need to know everything,” I tell her.

“I never did know everything. That was part of the problem. Trust.”

“Neither one of us knew everything,” is the best I can do. “Sometimes, you don’t really want to know everything.”

Still, I’d like to give her a reason to have at least a modicum of trust right now. We are on the same side of the net here, even if I do, as always, prefer to play singles.

So I tell her about Robert Jenkins.

She seems less than impressed.

“He was best buds with Shiflett in high school?” she says. “I doubt that’s going to get us far in court.”

I can’t really explain to her how long friendships—and grudges—can last on Oregon Hill. I could tell her how Custalow and R.P. and Goat Jackson and Andy Peroni have been my best friends since grade school. I’ve done that before, and she just sees it as a failure to grow up. She still thinks I’m some kind of freak instead of the Hill norm. Her father was military, and she had a new set of friends every time she moved when she was a kid. She doesn’t know where any of them are now.

“I can always make new friends,” she told me once. At the time, I considered myself a friend, among other things. It shook me a little.

She’s looking for something solid, and I’m not ready to give her all the hard, cold facts just yet. In good time, Kate. In good time.

Custalow is pretty calm, for a man who may have one day of gainful employment left. The board meeting’s tomorrow, and the way Feldman looks at me whenever we pass in the lobby— where he hangs out like a bird in a snowstorm, hoping for stray crumbs of gossip—does not bode well.

“You might be back to paying the rent by yourself pretty soon,” he said yesterday. He was definitely smirking when he said it. Usually, I don’t let McGrumpy get to me, but I was hurting. So I told him to fuck himself. It seemed to please him. Feldman’s pushing eighty, and I guess he knows I won’t hit him. He’ll probably complain to the rest of the board about that tomorrow, too, in addition to telling everyone who passes through the lobby what a rude bastard I am.

Today, Abe is actually whistling while he scrambles us some eggs. I realize he’s been waiting for me to get my ass out of bed. It’s almost ten thirty.

“You look like hell,” he observes. I reply that I’ve heard that before. He says that I’m exceeding myself this morning, and I ask him if he’d like me to put a paper bag over my head.

“Nah,” he says, smiling into the electric skillet, “it’s growing on me.”

I observe that he seems rather sanguine for somebody who’s soon going to have to explain to his parole officer why he doesn’t have a job anymore.

“Oh,” he says, “I wouldn’t worry. Things have a way of working out.”

In Abe Custalow’s life, things definitely have not always worked out, so his optimism is a little surprising. I assume that he’s had so much crap fall on his head over the years that what’s coming tomorrow will just seem like a little shit dandruff.

The
New York Times
didn’t make it up to the sixth floor, as usual. After my belated breakfast, I go down to the lobby in the hope that someone hasn’t stolen it already. Kate started a subscription just before she left, and I’ve kept it up, mainly for the Sunday crossword, which I usually finish about Thursday.

There’s one left on the counter, next to the guard—an overweight VCU student whom we pay twelve bucks an hour to sleep.

“I guess this one’s mine,” I tell him.

“Oh, yeah,” he says, rubbing his eyes. “I was just about to bring that up.”

“Well,” I say, “just sit back. You need your rest.”

My sarcasm, as usual, is wasted.

Clara Westbrook comes in as I’m going back upstairs. Her daughter is helping her with her little oxygen buddy. She still goes to church, although I don’t know for how much longer.

“I heard what you said to Mr. Feldman,” she says, and I observe that I guess I should apologize.

“Don’t,” she says. “He deserved it.”

I ask her how she’s doing. I sense that her daughter doesn’t know about Christina Chadwick.

“I’m fine,” she says. “Just got back from church. Confession is good for the soul, I guess.”

She looks up and gives me kind of a sad smile. Her daughter doesn’t see anything wrong with an Episcopalian talking about confession, but Clara and I know she’s not talking about church.

I’m able to talk Custalow into going for a drive. The sun’s shining, the Redskins, as usual, are not worthy of our attention, and the baseball playoff game isn’t until tonight.

I insist on driving. Other than the possibility of scaring another motorist into running off the highway, there’s no reason I shouldn’t, I tell Custalow.