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Chapter 6

Reporter Russell Spaulding threw his own work on his desk. His hands tensed into claws, which he dragged over his bald scalp, scratching little channels through the sheen of sweat on his head.

“My flower planter story—on page one,” he said to Eddie. He picked the paper back up and smacked it on the desk like he was killing a fly. “This is why I couldn't do my budget story. This crap.” He sighed and slumped in his chair. “This place is going all to hell.”

Spaulding was a chunky cop reporter with a shaved bullet head, gray eyes, and an in-your-face intensity. He was known around the newsroom as “A.K. Forty-seven,” after the Russian assault rifle, because someday Spaulding was going to snap and climb a clock tower with one. Spaulding's best feature was his healthy contempt for the people he covered. There was no danger he'd go native and start referring to city officials as “we” and “us.” As in, “So chief, did we get that grant to overhaul the radio room?” Once a reporter jumps that fence, so goes objectivity.

Eddie stood on his tiptoes and spoke to a sprinkler head in the ceiling. “For the benefit of the stenographer secretly recording this conversation through a hidden microphone, let me say for the record that it was Russell Spaulding who said this place is going to hell. And Eddie Bourque certainly does not agree with his lies.”

Spaulding chuckled, and then suddenly sobered. “Keyes is coming,” he said.

The boss had a lollipop in his mouth and a one-page fax in his hand. “Nice job on the planter story,” he said.

Spaulding frowned. He seemed unsure if the compliment was meant to be sarcastic. “Now you can turn me loose on my budget story.”

Keyes wrinkled his nose and shook his head slightly, as if sending back some caviar not to his liking. “Not ready for that one yet,” he said. “The publisher has something more immediate for you.” He glanced at the fax. “McGruff the Crime Dog is visiting classrooms at Varnum School tomorrow, and we want you there. Looks like a cute feature, right up your alley.” Keyes cocked his thumb and aimed his index finger at Spaulding like a gun. Pooh! He shot him.

The reporter known as A.K. Forty-seven took a deep breath. Eddie glanced around to make sure the exits were clear. A.K. repeated his instructions, slowly. “McGruff the Crime Dog? At an elementary school?” A red wave washed over his scalp. He trembled and squirmed, like a guy trying to get comfortable in the electric chair. His voice was calm. Too calm. Eerie. “Let's make sure I understand, all right? I'm trained as an investigative journalist—hell, that's why you hired me. And I have a lead on a story about an alleged misappropriation of taxpayer money.”

Spaulding swallowed a few times, and then got much louder. “But I can't do that investigative story because I gotta write an important feature about McGruff.” He shouted this next part. “McGruff—the crotch-sniffing, ball-licking, leg-humping Crime Dog!” He threw up his hands. “Dammit, Frank. If you won't let your pit bull start any fights, why keep me around?” He snatched the press release from Keyes and spun around in his chair.

Keyes twirled the lollipop and pretended to just notice Eddie. “Oh Bourque, haven't seen your byline too often lately. Do you still work here?”

“Hard to tell after what happened to my last story.”

Keyes got angry and more direct. “Then maybe you should write more often. We have other reporters who produce three stories a day.”

Eddie shrugged. “Would you rather I explored the depths of one good story, or the surface of three? If we only report what's obvious at first glance, we're no better than TV news.”

Keyes took the lollipop from his mouth, a red one, and shook it at Eddie. The gesture was meant to be menacing, but there is simply no way for a grown man to intimidate another man with a lollipop. “Television is taking our readers,” he barked. “According to our marketing polls, people think TV is more trustworthy than us. And that TV news is more pertinent. So take a lesson.”

He marched off.

Eddie muttered, “He's dumbed-down our coverage and we've lost readers. So his answer is to give them more of what they don't want.”

“For the record, that was Eddie Bourque speaking,” Spaulding said, with a glance to the sprinkler head.

Eddie deadpanned, “As a reader, Russ, I'm interested to know how McGruff drives the squad car with his snout out the window.”

A.K. Forty-seven gave Eddie the finger over his shoulder without turning around.

***

Eddie spent an hour on the phone with City Council candidates, prepping for his election analysis. The candidates essentially were divided into two camps, the incumbents, and the reform slate. The incumbents supported spending public money on major revitalization projects. The reformers wanted to shore up public services and spend more on schools. They said the private sector should pay for brick-and-mortar development. Eddie could see why Manny Eccleston had been so cautious with his tip—nobody on the reform slate would ever support the destruction of the Acre.

Around three o'clock, Eddie pulled on his overcoat and walked to City Hall to make his rounds. City Hall is a grand stone building with a high clock tower and a tin roof, tarnished green. Inside, worn white marble stairs wind to the upper floors.

At the City Clerk's office, he checked campaign finance reports filed by the candidates. The incumbents had raised more money than the challengers. That was no surprise. But one detail interested him. Six incumbents fighting for reelection had recorded contributions from the “GLCI Political Action Committee.” It was a Lowell-based PAC, according to the contribution disclosure forms, but Eddie had never heard of it. Each contribution was for the maximum allowed by campaign finance law. It all went into the notebook for a possible story.

Eddie headed back to the office just before four. Melissa was waiting in the lobby. They hugged. There was nothing special in her touch. She wore a black skirt and tights, a thick knit sweater, gray like Eddie's suit, and a beige beret. Her jacket was tan suede with fake fur around the wrists. They headed up Market Street toward The Dead Zone.

Melissa Moreau was The Empire's top general assignment reporter. She was nearly six feet tall and spindly, lacking deep curves. But her eyes! Melissa's brown eyes were huge, round and dark as French-roast coffee beans. They were always moist, like they were holding little tears about to spill out. Lots of men looked into Melissa's eyes and yearned to protect her. Men couldn't shut their mouths around her, even when she was taking notes. Some men never learned. Some like Eddie. He'd thrown a dozen passes her way, all incomplete.

Melissa talked like she wrote, a little too dramatic. They had gone only a few steps when she said, “I don't know what I'm ever going to say when we see Jesse, that poor woman, all alone in the world.”

“Maybe the answer's in here,” Eddie said, pulling her furry sleeve toward The Umbrage, a gourmet coffee spot.

She sighed. “You're so addicted.”

The one-room restaurant had its usual gathering of pale, skinny people dressed in the all-black uniform of the tortured individual, brooding over their lattes. “I'm just here looking for something to say at the wake,” Eddie whispered to Melissa. “Who knows more about death than this crew? This looks like a casting call for a vampire movie.” In a loud Dracula voice he said, “If you stay up late feasting on human flesh, you'll need that caffeine kick in the morning.”

Melissa scolded him, “Edward!”

He ordered an Italian roast, black. Melissa didn't want anything. She picked at her cuticles while Eddie's order was filled.

The cold front that had dawdled over New England for two weeks hadn't budged. Gusts of icy wind passed like X-rays through Eddie's overcoat. They walked toward the funeral home, zigzagging through the Acre neighborhood, past Asian restaurants emitting odd and wonderful smells, and Khmer markets with bottles of strange brown spices in the windows, which, when added in the right proportions to stirred vegetables, created those odd and wonderful smells.

People sat on their front steps, watching what went by. Children giggled and chased after each other, unaware they were underdressed for the cold. Graffiti, peeling paint and plywood windows became common. Trash blew against rusty chain fences. Parked cars with two wheels on the curb shared the cracked sidewalks with pedestrians.

But there were also patches of pride amidst the decay. Immaculate little yards. Bushes trimmed into spheres and cubes. Victorian architecture lovingly restored, from the fieldstone foundations to copper cupolas. And washing over the neighborhood as dinnertime drew near, came the voices of mothers and fathers calling for their children in Spanish, in English, and in words of Southeast Asia, which Eddie could only guess were from Vietnam, Thailand, and Cambodia.

Eddie and Melissa walked in step, her stride as long as his. For the first half mile, neither of them spoke. Eddie fought the cold by gulping coffee that nearly scalded his insides. Melissa broke their silence. “You haven't said much about Danny since he died. You two were friends, weren't you?”

Eddie finished his coffee and pushed the cup into an overflowing can somebody had dragged to the curb for trash day. “We were beat partners,” he said.

Melissa wouldn't take his politician's answer. “But not friends?”

Eddie bristled. “Danny and Jesse had me over a couple times. I spent Christmas afternoon with them last year.”

She said nothing. Her heels fell harder on the asphalt sidewalk.

Eddie sighed and gave her what she wanted. “There was a distance between Danny and me, a professional distance.”

“Professional?”

“It was unspoken, but we both wanted out of The Empire. There are only so many journalism jobs in New England, and only so many of those go to political reporters. Danny and I were teammates in Lowell, but competitors for jobs everywhere else.” Eddie hoped to end it there, but she elbowed him. “Danny was the best reporter I've ever seen, but not the best writer. His raw copy was sloppy and too wordy.”

“Always read fine to me,” she said.

“Danny got good editing.”

“Gordon?”

Eddie nodded. “Phife rewrote Danny's stuff. But Danny was making progress. As soon as his writing caught up with the rest of his skills, he was out of here.”

“And you were afraid he'd take a job from you?” The truth sounded pathetic coming from her mouth.

Eddie confirmed her conclusion with silence.

She waited a moment, and then said, “Your competitor is dead. But at least you didn't lose a friend.”

Her words hammered him. The blow cracked something open inside Eddie and spilled his own foolishness all over him. An acid tear burned his eye. He blinked it away, gave her a little smile and said, “You must have been a reporter from birth—you're a natural.”

“Actually, interior design class was full,” she said, “I needed three credits, and journalism fit my schedule.” She laughed. “True story. And you?”

Eddie felt closer to Melissa than he ever had before. “There was this perfect little forest of white pine near my neighborhood growing up, with deer tracks and windy trails running through it.”

“It's probably a subdivision now,” she said.

“Goddam condos. Anyway, none of the kids dared to play around there because the forest had an abandoned well in the middle of it. It was dry and capped, perfectly safe, but the story had gotten around that the well was where the town fathers used to dump crazy people from the state hospital, and that the bottom was full of bones.”

Melissa clapped her hands. “I
adore
urban legends.”

“I didn't,” Eddie said. “I was ten years old and wanted to play in that forest. So I took my aunt's Polaroid and some rope from her clothesline.”

“You didn't!”

“Yup. Left some wet sheets on the lawn. The cap over the well had a trap door. I smashed the lock with a rock, tied off the rope, and lowered myself down. Problem was, I was heading down a forty-foot hole with about thirty-three feet of rope.”

She laughed.

“When I ran outta rope, I jumped.”

“Did you find bones?”

“Naw, just the carriage of an old wheelbarrow. It might have looked like bones from above, which was probably how the legend got started. I snapped a picture, and then realized I couldn't reach the rope. I scraped my hands red trying to climb the wall.”

“You must have screamed bloody murder.”

Eddie admitted, “Never been so hoarse. When darkness fell I started to believe that I hadn't debunked the legend at all—I was going to prove it true with my own bones. A search party of neighbors heard me pounding stones the next morning, digging in the bottom of the well, and got me out of there.”

“Why were you digging?”

“Not important,” Eddie said. He blew into his hands. He had never told anyone about his sleepless night at the bottom of the well, where Fear had first visited him, perfumed in mold and mud, and had persuaded ten-year-old Eddie Bourque to dig himself a proper grave. “Anyway, it didn't go the way I planned, but my investigation worked out. A writer at the Weekly Chieftain wrote a few inches about me at the bottom of his column, and ran my Polaroid from inside the well.”

“You must have been the hero of the adolescent world.”

“Sure felt like it. Nobody was ever afraid to play in that forest again, and I realized how powerful the press could be. I was a reporter from that day.”

They turned onto Pawtucket Street and walked into The Dead Zone, a stretch of six funeral homes along just a few blocks. They were fat Victorian-style buildings with plenty of parking and canvas canopies between the sidewalk and the front doors.

A line of dark suits and overcoats snaked from under one white canopy. Danny Nowlin was an impressive draw. Some local pols were there, including Councilman Manny Eccleston.