The Bottom (8 page)

I can tell that Sarah thinks this will make me laugh, or at least smile. When I tell her that I visited the late Kelli Jonas’s parents two days ago, she puts the shirt away.

“Yeah,” she says, giving me a rueful smile, “we are a bunch of assholes, aren’t we?”

I don’t know if she means the whole human race or just newspaper people, but in either case, I’m in no mood to argue the point.

WHILE I’M WORKING on my story, Wheelie comes down. He moves into the open space in the middle of the newsroom, a vast prairie sprouting tumbleweeds where now-departed reporters and editors labored not too long ago.

He begs our attention. When we gather around, he introduces the rather attractive, late-forties vintage woman at his side.

After a few mumbled introductory pleasantries about doing more with less, during which I am afraid Enos Jackson or one of the other hard-ridden veteran editors is going to attack him with a pica pole, he introduces our new publisher.

Her name is Rita Dominick. She is a blonde, at least for the moment. She has one of those cuts like that woman on
House of Cards.
It must be the in thing. Sally said she saw a fat, unattractive woman come into the hair salon, pull out the woman’s picture and tell the stylist, “Make me look like that.”

Rita Dominick is wearing a red dress that is stylish and does what it is supposed to do: exude the sense that she could kill you in bed or just rip your head off and crap down your neck for fun. I’m guessing she does either yoga or judo and stays away from saturated fats. She was the head of advertising at the only paper in our chain that’s larger than us. She’s married with two kids, for whom I feel sorry, for some reason.

I’m sure Wheelie’s relieved to get back in the newsroom. He’d never been that close to the brimstone before. Ms. Dominick (“Call me Rita”) speaks to us about our exciting future. She talks about turning the corner. The only corners we’ve turned lately have brought us face-to-face with joblessness or salary cuts, so we’re a little skeptical. We’re pretty much over corners.

I glance at Baer. His head is going up and down like one of those bobblehead dolls they sell at the ballpark. He’s eating it up. Another place to put his brownish schnoz.

It just goes to show you. Things can always be worse. You can have a publisher like the late James H. Grubbs, who used his considerable clout to get rid of a large chunk of his former friends and mentors, only to wake up one fine September morning and find out that you are now in the clutches of advertising. Jesus Christ.

Wheelie brings her around and introduces her to as many of us as can’t find somewhere else to be. I look up, and she’s standing there, looking down at me.

“And this,” Wheelie says, a half smile, half grimace on his face indicating to me they’ve already had a discussion about my merits and demerits, “is Willie Black.”

“Ah, yes,” my new publisher says, “the famous Willie Black.”

It doesn’t sound like a compliment.

I GET A call as I’m finishing up my story on Ronnie Sax taking it on the lam.

It’s Kate. I ask her how the new baby’s doing, but she talks over me.

“Willie,” she says “we just got a call. From Ronnie Sax. He wants to talk to you. To us. You and Marcus and me.”

Sax took my advice. He called Marcus Green’s firm first thing this morning, from a cell phone at an undisclosed location.

“He told us he didn’t do any of this,” Kate says, “but he’s afraid once they get him in jail, it’s going to be a
fait accompli
.”

“He said ‘
fait accompli
’?”

“He said they were going to railroad his ass.”

I ask Kate if she and Marcus are going to give me a finder’s fee for this one.

She has to speak up over a baby yowling in the background.

“I don’t know what you’ve found. From what I’m seeing, he’s as good a suspect as any right now. He was living in the Bottom, he has a record and he has a penchant for porn.”

I concede that I can’t vouch for Ronnie Sax, but I tell her that I wanted to throw a little business Marcus’s way, knowing that he would rather be on TV than eat a prime rib at Morton’s.

I ask her if she doesn’t want to go and comfort her bouncing baby girl, who sounds as if she has a safety pin stuck in her butt.

“Greg!” I hear my ex-wife and landlady shout. “Grace has got a diaper full!”

Nothing like a little bundle of joy to add some romance to young lovers’ lives. Kate was a lot of fun, and I still love her, in my half-ass fashion, but I’m wondering if she is going to find total fulfillment in motherhood.

“He didn’t tell you where he is?”

“We’re supposed to meet him. I can’t tell you where, but come here in the morning at seven and we’ll take you there.”

I wonder out loud if she and Marcus Green aren’t skating on thin legal ice.

She says she’s considered that. I know Marcus likes to blast right through those warning signs, the ones that say, “Caution: Disbarment Ahead.” He’s come close a couple of times. But Kate likes to play by the rules.

“Marcus says we’re OK,” she tells me, lowering her voice as if she doesn’t want Mr. Ellis to hear. “He says we’re just going to have a meeting with our client, to try and get him to turn himself in.”

Sounds a little dicey to me, but I tell her I’ll be there. After all, I’m only a journalist. We don’t have licenses. If we did, getting yours pulled would be about as devastating as being kicked out of AARP.

CHAPTER SEVEN

X

Tuesday

I
’m at Marcus Green’s office at 6:55. Kate seems surprised, perhaps because she’s never seen me arrive early for anything, including our wedding. This is one appointment, though, that I don’t want to miss. I am fairly certain that I have information that Ronnie Sax’s potential legal team does not possess.

Richmond can be a small place, especially if you’ve lived here your whole life and have had dealings with everyone from the governor to guys like Awesome Dude.

LAST NIGHT I got another call from Cindy Peroni. My hope was that Cindy was calling to tell me she could not live a minute longer without me. That didn’t happen, but she did that thing the reporter in me always hopes people will do. She told me something I didn’t know already.

“I saw your story in the paper, about the Tweety Bird Killer, and I thought something sounded familiar.”

It turns out that one of Cindy’s friends in the between-husbands set is Mary Kate Kusack Brown. Mary Kate is two years younger than her brother and, unlike him, never saw fit to change her last name until she got married.

“When I saw that he’d changed his name from Kusack, I knew that was the brother she’d mentioned. I called her. She says she’s sure Ronnie didn’t do it. She says he wouldn’t hurt a fly. She says her girls are crazy about him. She thinks you all ought to leave him alone.”

I asked her if she thought Mary Kate might be a tad concerned that her brother has a history of porn-related activities, or that whatever the police found on his computer was enough to send them scurrying back to his apartment, a few hours too late, to arrest him.

I offered the opinion that he wouldn’t have been the uncle I’d have sent the girls to for a sleepover.

“Well, Mary Kate says he’s a good uncle, and a good brother. She says he’s sowed his wild oats, but he’s past all that.”

I told Cindy that I hope her friend’s sisterly intuition is right. If I had been telling her the truth, though, I’d have said I hope he’s the one and that they catch him fast. I want to get the son of a bitch who’s doing this off the streets. My meeting this morning might be a step in the right direction, although I wonder if I did the right thing in suggesting that he employ Marcus Green. Even if he is guilty, Marcus might get him off. Marcus could have sprung Judas Iscariot.

“There’s one other thing,” Cindy said, just as I was about to try and steer the conversation in a more romantic direction.

“What?”

“She says he was at her house that Thursday night. She said he didn’t leave until after eleven.”

So I’m thinking Ronnie Sax at least has someone to back up his alibi, although I’ve seen more than enough relatives swear that their miscreant son/father/brother was having milk and cookies with them when all evidence put him at the scene of the crime.

Before she hung up, I asked Cindy if she’d like to have dinner with me sometime.

“Maybe,” she said, then told me she had another call coming in. I have not yet climbed back high enough in Ms. Peroni’s esteem to trump an incoming call. Tomorrow is another day.

The information I have that Marcus and Kate don’t possess came from Peachy Love. It probably will soon be in the public domain.

After my interrupted phone call with Cindy, I decided to drop in on Peachy. Maybe I was feeling a little miffed about my failure to get back in Cindy’s good graces. Maybe––stop the presses––I was horny.

Peachy was home. It was one of those things where you tell yourself, I don’t really want to be bad, and if Peachy is out somewhere, it’ll be a sign that I should take Mr. Johnson home.

“Well,” she said when she opened the door, glancing both ways to make sure nobody in a police car was nearby, “you did decide to cross the tracks, didn’t you?”

We had a good time. We always have a good time. If I were smart, I’d probably try to be more than an occasional lover. But Peachy seems to want it that way, too. She has a guy. He works for the police up in DC, and she says maybe one day they’ll move in together. I asked her once if she loved him. She hesitated too long before she answered. It seems sometimes like nobody is ever going to get married again. I have mentioned this, gently I thought, to Andi, who reminded me that, between us, we’ve been married three times, which probably is enough for right now.

At any rate, my occasional night with Peachy has to end before the sun comes up. If somebody recognizes me doing the walk of shame away from the police flack’s house, Peachy might be out of a job.

While we were lying there in the dark, both of us smoking in bed, she told me the thing I now know that Sax’s lawyers don’t.

When the cops were perusing the photographer’s digital porn collection, a face stood out to one of them.

“Turns out,” Peachy said, “it was the girl at the station.”

“The Caldwell girl.”

“Yep. There she was, her or her identical twin, wearing her birthday suit and smiling for the camera and sucking on a pacifier with a stuffed toy between her legs. Trying to look even younger, I guess.”

Peachy didn’t have to remind me that I didn’t get that information from her. I thanked her profusely for it. I didn’t mention, for some reason, that I might be talking with Mr. Sax within a couple of hours after I left her warm and welcoming bed. No sense in telling everything.

“Come back anytime,” she said as she turned off the porch light and I slipped out the door at four thirty. I said I would. I really meant it.

MARCUS GREEN SHOWS up at 7:05. He’s dressed to the nines, as always. Marcus might sleep in a three-piece suit. He glances at my jeans and pullover sweater and remarks that it’s too bad I didn’t have time to dress.

I advise him to screw himself.

Kate looks lovely, even if you disregard the fact that she’s recently given birth. She might weigh less than she did before she got knocked up. Her jeans make a much better impression than mine and elicit no comment from Marcus.

“So,” I ask them, “do you have to blindfold me first?”

Marcus doesn’t answer, just walks toward his Yukon with us following.

He heads down Franklin Street and around the capitol, and I deduce that we’re headed for the Bottom.

It never looks that great in daylight, since many of its finer establishments closed only a few hours ago and won’t open again until the afternoon. The broken beer bottles glint in the morning sun like cheap costume jewelry.

Marcus turns left, and we go one block up and two blocks over, finally stopping at one of the many old brick buildings that are being repurposed as overpriced housing. This one probably sat for twenty years before someone saw its potential as something other than a source for old bricks and timbers.

We walk inside one of the buildings and go up to the second floor, where Green knocks four times, then twice. The door opens a crack. We walk inside, and there’s our man, Ronnie Sax.

Sax doesn’t look like he’s slept much. He smells like he hasn’t showered in the last day either.

Green asks him whose place this is, and Sax says it belongs to a friend who’s out of town.

“I need you to help me,” he says.

“Well, that depends on whether you’re guilty or not,” Marcus says. Actually it depends on whether he thinks he can get Ronnie Sax off and garner some free publicity in the process.

“I ain’t guilty of nothing. The cops’ve had it in for me a long time.”

He turns to me.

“You know what I told you,” he says. “My sister will vouch for me. She knows where I was that night.”

It’s probably time to drop a little truth bomb on Mr. Sax.

I tell him, along with Marcus and Kate, what I know, without divulging how I know it, about the images the cops have of the late Jessica Caldwell.

“They’re pretty sure they have you nailed for taking pictures of an underage girl, Ronnie, right before somebody raped and murdered her.”

“Goddamn,” he says after a slight pause. “That was her? Well, maybe I did take pictures of her. But that doesn’t mean I killed her, does it?”

I note that, if they were to list everyone in the city of Richmond, he might be Number One on the “most likely” list.

Kate glares at me. Once again I’m guilty of not sharing. Well, hell, I only found it out myself a few hours ago.

“You’ve got to come clean with us,” Marcus says. “I am not going into court looking like a fool. What kind of crap are you trying to hand me?”

I’m about ready to call it a day myself. I’m thinking about a tall tree and a thick rope.

“No. Wait,” Sax says as Green starts heading back toward the door we just entered. “I’ve took pictures of a lot of girls. But there’s no way I killed anybody. And my sister will tell you I was at her house the night it happened.”