Stone Rain (7 page)

“No,” said Benson. “I only got to the
Suburban
a year ago. Came here from Buffalo.”

“Oh yeah, wings,” I said. “Love those wings.”

Martin Benson stared, thrilled that his former home was reduced to an appetizer.

He said, “You do know what she does for a living.”

I hesitated. “What is it you think she does for a living?”

“I think she runs a sex business. I think she’s a hooker, a very high-end hooker that caters to very specific tastes.”

“I certainly wouldn’t know anything about that.”

“Then why did you nearly choke on your coffee when I asked whether you were one of her clients?”

“Look, I, I’m pretty sure Ms. Snelling—where the hell is she, anyway?—is not a prostitute. She does not have sexual relations with her customers.”

“Where have I heard that phrase before?” Benson asked. “When I asked whether you were a relative or a friend or a client, I forgot one. Are you her pimp?”

I guess my jaw dropped, and I stared at him in openmouthed astonishment for a moment, before I had the sense to close it. Twice I started to say something, and each time, a chuckle got in the way. “You have no idea,” I said, “how totally ridiculous that comment is.”

“Is it? Then you tell me, why are you here?”

“First of all, let’s go back to this hooker thing. Far as I know, Trixie—Ms. Snelling—does not offer sexual services. But you know what, you’d be better asking her about that yourself once she gets here.”

The waitress had reappeared, notepad at the ready. “You gentlemen ready to order?” she asked.

“We’re still waiting for someone,” I said. She nodded and withdrew.

Now Benson was looking at his own watch. “Pretty late.”

“I’m sure she’ll be along any—” The cell phone in my jacket pocket rang and vibrated. “Hang on,” I said, taking out the phone and flipping it open. “Hello?”

“How’s it going?” Trixie asked.

“Where the hell are you?” I said. Benson’s eyebrows went up. “We’re here, in Pluto’s, waiting.”

“Yeah, I know. I watched you go in. I’m parked up the street, reading your newspaper.”

I couldn’t stop myself from looking out the window, which, of course, tipped Benson off to do the same.

“How long have you been there?” I asked.

“I don’t know, half hour maybe. Have you steered him off this thing yet?”

“Trixie, we were sort of waiting for you.”

“I won’t be able to make it,” she said. “You know what that fat fucker will do, soon as I walk in or sit down, he’s going to take my picture. Why do you think he showed up? He wants a nice shot to run with his story.”

I slid out of the booth, held up an index finger to Benson to indicate I’d be back in one minute, and moved a few booths away before I continued my conversation.

“He thinks I’m your fucking pimp,” I said.

Trixie laughed. “Now that’s rich.”

“Look, I came out here for a meeting, a meeting that I thought you were going to attend. You don’t show. Trixie, you’re my friend, but you’re fucking me around.”

“Okay, go back and tell him I’ll come in if he gives you his camera phone.”

“Jesus, what if he says he hasn’t got it on him? Do you want me to frisk him?” Trixie was quiet. Finally, I said, “I’ll see what I can do. Call me back in five.”

I slid back into the booth. “That was Ms. Snelling,” I said. “She’s, she’s afraid that if she comes in here, you’re going to take her picture.”

Benson said nothing.

“So. I think she’d be willing to come in if you let me hold on to your camera phone while she joins us.”

Benson ran his tongue over his lips. “So let me see if I understand this. You, a reporter for the
Metropolitan
, want to take from me, a reporter for the
Suburban
, my camera phone, in case I want to use it to do my job. Is that what’s going on?”

I had to admit that it sounded bad when he put it that way.

“You know what?” Benson said. “You fucking reporters, you work for these big fucking dailies, you have no respect for what a guy like me does for a smaller paper like the
Suburban
. You think we’re some kind of joke, don’t you? That we just exist to wrap around a bunch of advertising flyers, that we don’t care about journalism, that we don’t care about what we do.”

I said nothing.

“Well, I may work for a small neighborhood rag,
Mr
. Walker, but when I hear that a woman is running some sort of sex dungeon in the middle of our community, I think that’s a story, and I’m not going to let some smartass hot-shit city writer try to warn me off it.”

“What have I said?” I said. “Have I threatened you? Have I tried to get you off this story?”

“Here’s what I don’t get. Why aren’t
you
writing about Trixie Snelling? Any reporter worth his salt would be taking a run at this.”

“She’s a friend,” I said. “She—”

Benson pushed his coffee cup aside. “We’re done here,” he said, shifting his weight across the seat and getting out. “See ya later.”

My cell rang as he walked out the door. I reached into my pocket, flipped it open.

“Zack,” Trixie said, “I’m reading this story of yours in the paper, about these guys trying to get the cops to buy stun guns. Jesus Christ, Zack, do you have any idea who these guys are?”

“Trixie,” I said, “I don’t give a rat’s ass who they are. The meeting here is finished. Benson’s walked out. You set me up. Thanks a fuck of a lot.” I slapped the phone shut and went back downtown.

One day he went too far.

Miranda was in the kitchen, making an after-school snack. It hadn’t been a good day. The guidance counselor wanted a word with her. Brought her in for a meeting. He said he’d tried to reach her mother, to discuss her school performance, but wasn’t having any luck when he phoned the house.

Miranda thought
, Good luck. Mom’s there, but she’s probably watching
Family Feud
and getting smashed.

“Then I tried calling your father at work,” he said.

Oh no,
Miranda thought
.

“And he was very helpful. Good to talk to. Says you just haven’t been pulling your weight. He knows you could do better if you just put in some effort. You stand to lose your year,” the guidance counselor told her. “You’re failing all of your subjects, with the exception of math. You’re a natural at math. Why can’t you bring that sort of effort to your other subjects, huh, Miranda? What’s the problem? Is it drugs? Are you getting into drugs, Miranda?”

No,
she wanted to tell him
. My mom’s a drunk and my dad wants to get into my pants. And you think I should give a flying fuck about how I’m doing at school?

Except for math. I like numbers,
Miranda thought
. At least there’s some order there. Some predictability. You don’t wake up someday and find out that somebody decided fuck it, we’re making two plus two equal five.

So she went home, dumped her backpack at the door, opened the cupboard and looked for something to eat. Her mother was sitting in the living room, a Camel in one hand and a scotch in the other, watching
One Miserable Life to Live
or
As the Fucking World Turns.
Didn’t say anything when Miranda came in the door. It was nothing short of a miracle that there was some peanut butter. The Wonder bread was probably a week old, but Miranda managed to find a slice or two without green spots on them, and dropped them into the toaster
.

That’s when he came in the door. He was early. He didn’t usually get home from the plant until after six.

“Well, look who’s here,” he said. “I got a call about you today.”

Miranda ignored him, stared at the toaster, watched the tiny elements inside glow red as they browned her slices of stale, white bread.

“Your guidance counselor says you’re flunking everything except math. Here’s what I don’t get. Why do you even try at math? Why don’t you be a total fuckup, instead of a 95 percent fuckup? It’s like you can’t even get that right.”

No wonder he was angry. She’d been blocking her door with a chair every night for weeks. Sometimes, during the day, he’d take the chair out, and she’d have to find one and take it to her room right before bedtime.

“Hey,” he said, slapping her ass, but not too hard, so it was almost a pat. “I’m talking to you here.”

She didn’t know she was going to do it. It just happened. She doesn’t even know how she had the presence of mind to first yank the plug from the wall. But once she’d done that, she reached her fingers into the two slots of the toaster. Her fingers would have been burned worse than they were had the two slices of bread not been there. She jammed her fingers in, almost like it was a rectangular bowling ball, and came around swinging.

Swinging hard.

The toaster caught him just above the right eye, and the connection of metal against bone made a hell of a noise. The move was so unexpected, so out of the blue, he didn’t have time to bring his arms up, but he had them up when she came at him a second time. The toaster bounced off his arm, and Miranda was thrown slightly off balance, staggered up against the counter.

The blood was pouring out of her father’s head and through his fingers as he put his hand up to the wound.

“Jesus!” he shouted, staggering back himself. “Jesus!”

Miranda’s mother came into the room, looked at her husband, at the bloody toaster still in her daughter’s hand, and shouted, “He’s your father! How dare you! This man is your father!”

She ran out of the kitchen. She ran out of the house. She didn’t even have time to pack her things in a paper bag.

THREE TIMES ON MY WAY BACK
into the city, Trixie tried to phone me on her cell. When I got back to my desk at the paper, the light on my phone was flashing. I hadn’t even checked the message yet when the phone rang. I picked up.

“Zack,” Trixie said, “I’m sorry about what happened with Benson. Really, I’m sorry about that. But forget about that for now. Those guys, those two in your story. They didn’t always sell stun guns, these guys. They—”

I felt Sarah standing behind me. “I gotta go,” I said, and hung up. I turned around. “’Sup?”

She nodded her head toward Magnuson’s office. “He wants to see us,” she said, and she didn’t look happy.

“Both of us?”

“Apparently.”

“What’s it about? Is he going to apologize for dragging me off the Wickens story and giving it to that asshole Colby?”

“I don’t think so,” Sarah said. “I don’t think that ‘sorry’ is part of Magnuson’s vocabulary.”

I got up, made sure my shirt was well tucked in, and followed Sarah to the far corner of the newsroom, where the managing editor’s corner office looked out over the city.

Even though we could see him in there, sitting at his desk, we didn’t walk right in. Sarah told his secretary we had arrived, as if that were not immediately evident, and she buzzed him. Through the door, we watched him watching us as he picked up his phone. “Send them in,” we heard him say into the phone.

His secretary said, “He’ll see you now.”

We went in. I had a bad feeling.

“Ah, the Walkers,” he said, not getting up to greet us. That seemed like a bad sign to me. “Take a seat,” he said. I would have felt better had he said, “Please, be seated.”

We sat down. Magnuson said, “I didn’t bring you in here because you happen to be married to one another. I brought both of you in because I wanted to speak with you, Mr. Walker, and seeing as how Sarah is your editor, this will impact her as well.” He stared at both of us for a while, but mostly at me.

“I have an old friend,” he said suddenly, “name of Blair Wentworth. We used to work together, as reporters, long ago. Used to get drunk together on a regular basis too. Once, when he’d had a little bit too much one night in the bar, we got into a heated debate about whether Jimmy Carter really had a peanut farm, or whether it was just a load of bullshit, so we walked out, got in a cab, and asked to be taken to Plains, Georgia. Well, that was several hundred, if not thousands, of miles away, and the cabby had some reservations, but we said not to worry, we were newspapermen, and we had expense accounts. Instead of driving us to Georgia, he drove us back to our paper and dropped us off at the front door before we made complete asses of ourselves. If I could find that cabby today, I’d give him a job here. Doing what, I don’t know, but he clearly had more sense than some of the people who work for me here now.”

I blinked.

“Anyway, Blair decided to go off in another direction. He was a pretty business-minded individual, got into community newspapers, worked his way up to publisher of one of them. The
Suburban
, out in Oakwood. You might have heard of it.”

Oh God.

“We keep in touch, Blair and I, so when something comes across his desk that troubles him, he gives me a call. And I just now got off the phone with him. It was a very interesting call, the most amazing thing. Do you have any idea, Mr. Walker, what it might have been about?”

Sarah turned to look at me.

“Yes,” I said as evenly as I could. “I have a pretty good idea.”

“What is it, Zack?” Sarah asked.

“Why don’t you tell her, Mr. Walker.”

I cleared my throat. “I was out to Oakwood for lunch—well, actually, I never had any lunch, come to think of it, only a coffee. Which probably explains why I’m feeling a little light-headed all of a sudden. Edgy. I could use a bite to eat.”

“Zack.”

“I had lunch with Martin Benson, who writes a column for the
Suburban
. I think he may have been left with the impression that I was trying to get him to scrap doing a story on Trixie, which is not at all the case.”

Sarah was speechless. Magnuson was good enough to fill the silence.

“Blair says this Benson fellow told him that you wanted him to surrender his camera phone so he wouldn’t take a picture of this, this woman known as Trixie, who, I understand, has a rather unorthodox line of work.”