The Pink Flamingo Murders (9 page)

“Good idea. You got a phone with you? No? Then call 911 from the clubhouse.”

“I’m on my way,” I said, my heart leaping like a
young lamb. I was sorry my freedom was bought at this price, but that golfer did not flop down in vain. I was grateful for his sacrifice. Katie and Mitch were closing in on the downed man in the fairway. I ran off to find the clubhouse. But even as I ran to bring help to that man, I couldn’t stop thinking about the two murders in my neighborhood.

Both victims lived within blocks of each other, but they sure lived different lives. One was a city employee pushing sixty, who never smoked anything stronger than a cigar. The other was a drug dealer who’d never see twenty-five, wearing enough gold to stock a pawnshop. They didn’t have much in common.

Except no one would miss them.

And they both had fought with Caroline.

Fighting with Nails was as deadly as fighting with Caroline. The gaping hole in the newsroom testified to Nails’s power to obliterate her enemies. Geraldine, Charlie’s ex-mistress, was gone—and so was her desk. All I saw was a dirt ring and a few twisted wires marking the spot. Every trace of Geraldine had been removed, but no one claimed this prime newsroom real estate. They avoided it, as if the area were contaminated.

I was amazed no one grabbed it. Space for reporters was in short supply at the
Gazette
. Although the paper had fewer reporters than at any time in its long history, it had less space for them. The editors built themselves bigger and bigger offices, until the reporters were squeezed like cattle into one open corral in the center of the room. The crowding frayed tempers. The staff oozed resentment and quarreled constantly, shouting curses and rude remarks at one another while other reporters tried to talk on the phone.

It wasn’t always like this. I came to the
Gazette
at the end of its golden era. The paper hadn’t had any major investigations or prizes for twenty years even then, but it still had the remnants of that prizewinning staff, although they were old and riddled with cancer, heart disease, and alcoholism. The paper spent money on its people back then—the
Gazette
paid some of the highest wages in the industry. Reporters traveled first
class and stayed at the best hotels. When a reporter was gone for a week, the
Gazette
sent his wife a dozen roses. This first-class treatment paid off. Reporters produced first-class work. They ruined their health and their home lives, but they spent eighty hours a week laboring for their true love, the
St. Louis City Gazette
.

In those days, we had huge olive-drab metal desks of stupendous ugliness and dignity, and sturdy padded leather swivel chairs. The furniture was battered, solid and useful, and we felt like we’d stepped into
The Front Page
. But the
Gazette
got greedy in the mid-1980s. The easiest way to make more money was to cut wages and staff perks. The roses and first-class travel went first. Then the high wages. The final humiliation was when the
Gazette
switched to computers. The magnificent monster desks were replaced by the smallest, cheapest computer “pods,” the tinny kind where the drawers stuck and the chairs creaked. We were crowded so close we heard everyone’s phone conversations. There was no privacy. We didn’t even have the proper tools for our job. Paper, notepads, and pens were locked up and rationed. Every reporter used to have a typewriter, but we did not have our own computer. Four to six reporters shared one terminal. Fights broke out at deadline as desperate staffers tried to find a computer. Editors had their own computers, which mostly went unused, but we weren’t allowed to touch them.

The paper saved thousands with this cheese paring but lost millions in staff goodwill. The best reporters left or took early retirement. The rest no longer worked eighty-hour weeks. The story count dropped, and pep talks urging us to write “shorter, better, faster” were met with shrugs and “fuck it.” The staff mantra became “You can love a newspaper, but it can’t love you back,” and anyone foolish enough to work late heard that chant a hundred times.

Geraldine had figured out one way to get some extra privileges. She took up with our runty but randy managing editor, Charlie. For accepting a few insignificant inches of Charlie whenever he felt like it, she got several extra square feet of choice space behind a pillar, where the city editor couldn’t see if she was working or loafing, plus an undeserved promotion and her own laptop computer. But what Charlie gave, he also took away. Geraldine’s empty spot was an ugly reminder. So was Nails’s triumphant face and fawning courtiers. I passed them and heard snide whispers and giggles, which I pretended to ignore.

But I couldn’t ignore the clumps of grumbling staffers gathered around the bulletin board. There must be some new, outstandingly dumb memo. I went over to look. There were two, actually, both from Charlie.

“The
Gazette
Sensitivity Committee has determined that the word
black
for
African American
persons is outdated, demeaning, and nondescriptive,” it began. “Therefore, the term
African American
will be used at all times in place of this word. The term
black
, when used to mean
African American
, will not appear in the
Gazette.”

At last, a decision. The
Gazette
committee had spent six months and god knows how many hours in meetings to reach this conclusion. A managing editor with any guts could have decided the question in two seconds. But Charlie, the cowardly little shrimp, was not short on brains. He wouldn’t make any ruling that might backfire later, and race in St. Louis was a quagmire. So he appointed a committee, and let them decide. If there was any controversy, he could blame them. In between, we’d waffled on which term was more politically correct. There were huge fights at deadline, as reporters argued for the right to keep quotes intact. Now at least we knew which word to use. I didn’t care one way or the other, as long as the
editors made up their minds. But trust the
Gazette
to screw up any sensible move. The rest of Charlie’s memo read:

“What!” I yelled. “What moron dreamed up that spell-check stuff?”

“I did,” Nails said, coming up behind me. Her voice was somewhere between a sneer and simper.

“It’s a dumb idea,” I said. “If the computer automatically changes black to African American, it’s going to cause big problems at deadline. Black is used for more than race.”

“It won’t be a problem, if people are careful,” Nails said. “But I wouldn’t expect a racist South Sider to understand.” That was a standard charge from people who hadn’t been in my neighborhood for ten years—and I didn’t count Nails’s night of love by the Dumpster. The South Side was the old German neighborhood. But recent infusions of Korean, Chinese, Bosnian, Romanian, Russian, Thai, Ethiopian, and Hispanic immigrants had greatly changed its complexion. Improved the food, too.

“Racist? If you ever left your lily-white suburb, you’d know I live in a mixed neighborhood,” I said.

“Kirkwood is not lily-white,” Nails said. “We have a black physician living three blocks away. His wife is a college professor. Their house is as well kept as any of ours,” she added, not realizing that she was patronizing the couple.

“Isn’t he an
African American
physician?” I said. “I thought
black
was dated and demeaning.” But I was talking to her back. She flounced off. I read the next memo with horror. I’d just insulted the first female
head of the powerful All Business section. Charlie’s memo announced Nails’s promotion as the new business editor, effective immediately upon the retirement of the old editor, John Gannet. John’s assistant, Joan, who’d been with him since women at the paper were called “girl Fridays,” was being passed over for Charlie’s main squeeze. Joan had been groomed for that job for ten years and now she would not get it. Worse, Joan would be Nails’s assistant, which meant she’d do the scut work and Nails would get the credit. Charlie’s memo also said the “multitalented and versatile” (his words, and he ought to know) Ms. Nadia Noonin would write a column on selected business issues “as she saw fit.”

As I read this, an arm went around my shoulder and gave it a friendly squeeze. “We’re all meeting at the Last Word at three o’clock to discuss Nails’s latest power grab,” said a voice.

“Jasper?” I said in disbelief. The paper’s most misanthropic reporter was acting like my old pal.

“It’s time to call a halt to the infighting,” he said. “That woman is dangerous. We need to pool our knowledge of our common enemy.” I was speechless, and Jasper didn’t try to explain. He just stuck out his hand and said, “Truce.”

“Truce,” I said, and shook it.

Nails must be a powerful threat if the surly Jasper was bothering to sweet-talk me. I agreed to be at the Word, my least favorite bar, at three. But before then, I had a column to write. I wanted to try out the concept of Katie’s beer stud on greater St. Louis. I went back to my desk, a landfill of old newspapers, notebooks, and papers. The day’s mail had the usual fan mail and hate mail, plus an odd postcard. The spiky blue ballpoint printing was hard to read, but I thought it said the guy’s mother had died recently. He seemed to be taking
it hard. “My life is not the same now that my dear angel Mother is gone,” he wrote. “Nobody cares.”

The postcard was sort of creepy, but at least I could write the guy a condolence letter. Where did he live? I checked the return address. A few blocks down from me, on Utah. His name looked like Erwin Shermann. “Dear Mr. Shermann,” I began. “I am very sorry for your loss . . .” The phone rang as I was licking the flap on Erwin’s letter.

“Jinny!” I said. I loved calls from Jinny Peterson. She was a gossip—correction, unpaid reporter—of the highest quality. “Whatcha got for me?”

“A word to the wise,” she said. “I saw your column about forking. I see you fell for Margie’s charm. We all do, at the beginning.”

I had that cold feeling of dread I always get when I’ve been bamboozled. I hated being a fool. “Is something wrong?” I asked carefully.

“Thought you’d like some background, my dear,” she said. “Margie has made some enemies by cutting sharp deals with friends. And rumor has it she may have sticky fingers. You’ve met Julia. She lives on Westminster. Julia has one of those houses with hundreds of little knickknacks around. You can’t imagine that she can keep track of them all. Well, she does. After a visit from Margie, Julia noticed her grandfather’s silver cigarette case was missing. She’s not saying that Margie took it, because there were other people in the house that day. But Margie would be the most likely person to know where to sell it. Julia couldn’t see her Grandmother Edith hocking it, and Hilda has worked for her for years. Anyway, after Margie visits now, Julia counts the spoons.”

“But there were no arrests, were there?” I’d checked the
Gazette
files before I did the story, but maybe I hadn’t done a thorough enough search.

“Oh, heavens no,” Jinny said. “There weren’t even
any formal accusations. Just some bad feelings and a little cloud of suspicion. I just wanted to warn you. Francesca, before you turn that woman into a regular source.”

I tried to tell myself that this was simply gossip. But Jinny’s information was generally accurate. I felt uneasy and a little embarrassed. I finished my column a little before three and turned it in to the Family section editor, Wendy the Whiner. Wendy looked even frowsier than usual, her no-color hair sticking up in points and her burlap suit wrinkled and sagging. “I’m working on an important project for Charlie,” she said. I noticed a fat book open in front of her:
Ensheathe and Ensnare: Equitable Essence of Power in the Press Corps in Post-Modem America
. It was the same book bedeviling Georgia. Wendy was a member of the
Gazette
book club, too. Well, at least it kept her out of my hair. Wendy was distracted and barely glanced at my column before she sent it without comment to the copy desk. I was pleased. Most
Gazette
editors were so bad, the best we could hope for was benign neglect. I wasn’t so lucky when the column got to the copy desk. Cruella, the copy chief, grabbed it. Cruella had dead black hair and bright red nails. She wore tight, glamorous clothes, which looked out of place on her tubby body. Her real name was Peggy. She earned her nickname because she once sent some pound puppies to certain death when she pulled their “Pet Pick of the Week” feature to run a picture of a hunky surfer. Cruella and I had a long, unhappy history, and she was in a troublemaking mood today.

“Francesca,” she said in a snippy schoolmarm voice. “I have a problem with your column.”

“Yes,” I said.

“I think it needs to be rewritten,” she said.

Copy editors were supposed to check spelling, names, addresses, and grammar. They could not order
reporters to do rewrites. Cruella was overreaching and hoping she could get away with it. She had picked the wrong woman.