The Spoiler (6 page)

Earlier that morning, when he had gone to the
Dispatch
, the sports editor had sent him over to the city desk, to McCullough. McCullough was the one who had sent Lofton on the funeral parlor story, to follow the woman looking for money to bury her dead sister-in-law. “I want tough, meaningful stories,” McCullough had said. Today, since the Redwings were gone on the road, McCullough wanted Lofton to talk to a man who had been assaulted on the street. When police responded to the call, McCullough told him, they had ended up arresting the victim, a man named Lou Mendoza. The cops took Mendoza on a vandalism charge, and the assailants got away.

While McCullough gave Lofton the story, Kirpatzkex walked up. Kirpatzke was a thin, nervous man with a bad complexion and long yellowish hands he seemed unable to control. Technically Kirpatzke was the night editor, but he seemed to be around all the time. Smiling slightly, as if he were half-amused but mostly weary, he walked over, as he always did, to find out what McCullough was assigning. Kirpatzke often said nothing, just stood and listened and watched, though sometimes he cut in to change the story's direction or to suggest killing it altogether. He irritated McCullough, Lofton could tell, but McCullough, a serious bruiser of a man, played along anyway. Press box rumor said Kirpatzke used to have a better job, more prestige, more money, up at the
Springfield Post
. There was a hint of scandal—something Kirpatzke had done wrong or bungled—which made Lofton curious, of course, but he did not know for sure why Kirpatzke had left the bigger Springfield paper to work at the
Dispatch
.

“What story you giving him?” Kirpatzke asked.

McCullough told him, and Kirpatzke shook his head. He waved his long yellow hands in the air, then settled them near McCullough and drummed the fingers on the desktop. “Where did you get that idea for this business, Einstein's notes?”

“Einstein?” Lofton asked. The editors ignored him. McCullough watched Kirpatzke's fingers in the same way you might watch a roach before killing it.

“From Einstein?” Kirpatzke repeated.

The second time Lofton heard the name, he remembered where else he had heard it recently. It had been in the press box on the night Jack Brunner and Tony Liuzza were interviewed. After the others had left, Lofton had asked some more questions about the Redwings' owners' involvement in Democratic politics, and about Brunner's building investments downtown.

“Who do you think you are, the new Einstein?” Tenace had said, and laughed. One of the remaining reporters laughed, too, though not so loudly or so long. At the time Lofton had thought it was nothing but another one of Tenace's bad jokes.

Now the two editors stared at each other. They were at odds: Kirpatzke wry and bemused, his tie loose around his neck; McCullough frowning, comically, like a short, fat boy in a cartoon strip.

“There's no sense chasing that stuff,” said Kirpatzke. McCullough didn't agree.

“Listen, I'd rather do sports anyway,” Lofton said.

“Wouldn't everybody?” Kirpatzke turned to Mac. “Did you get it from Einstein?”

“Einstein was a reporter here?” Lofton asked.

McCullough nodded.

“Where is he now?”

“He's not with us anymore.”

“Where is he?”

Neither editor answered. They were more concerned with each other than with Lofton's questions. “I'd like to do something on Randy Gutierrez, the shortstop,” Lofton said.

“Another baseball story, hell. We've given Brunner and that bunch all the publicity I can stand. Everybody else in this state might be working for the Democratic party, but we're not. Or at least I'm not,” McCullough said, shooting a look in Kirpatzke's direction.

Lofton mentioned the scene at the ballpark and repeated what he'd learned: how the younger owner, Liuzza, had joined up with Kelley, and how both men were backing the liberal candidate, Richard Sarafis, for governor. “That leaves Brunner the odd man out, and I don't think he's too pleased about it.”

Again the two editors paid little attention to Lofton. They each remained in their respective places, saying nothing for a long time, each man tugging at his lips and avoiding the other's eyes—as if trying to avoid the fact that when you got down underneath the skin, there was not really very much difference between the two of them.

“That's old news,” Kirpatzke said suddenly, as if that somehow settled something. “Besides, we've already got a political reporter.”

“I'm not interested in writing politics; I just can't help wondering if anything's changed in Massachusetts since the last time I was here.”

The truth, Lofton had already guessed, was that nothing had changed. Aside from a few people dying and some younger ones taking their places, the political machinery was pretty much the same. The party regulars plastered the telephone poles and signboards with names in the summer heat, and the names stayed there to whiten in the sun, then to dampen in the snow and the wet. Eventually either the names faded or the paper that carried the names yellowed and frayed in the wind; then someone came along with more names to plaster over the ones that had disappeared. No, the names had not changed, at least not in any way that mattered, and the machinery had not changed either. Whoever won the Democratic primary, it was the same thing as winning the governorship. The Republicans were gray men in gray suits with gray ties in a party permanently out of power. So in the end it was only the Democrats, and for the last twelve years that had meant either Richard Sarafis or Ed Wells. Wells had won the governorship last time around, Sarafis before that, and now they were plastering their names up all over again. “How does this new senator, this guy Kelley—how does he fit in?”

“He's preening himself for bigger things, you ask me,” Kirpatzke said. “Maybe he thinks he can be governor someday. Anyway, he wants to prove he can deliver the vote out here. He's got ambition.”

There was another pause, more lip pulling and a general silence that suggested the editors had been through this conversation before, and even their mutual dislike for each other couldn't get them excited, at least not at the moment. Lofton asked where the
Dispatch
stood on the election.

“Nowhere,” Mac said.

“That's right,” Kirpatzke agreed, brightening up in a way that was obviously and deliberately false, like a Christmas tree in a department store window. “We're taking no sides, holding up the lantern of objective truth. That's why Mac wants you chasing two-bit thugs around town. Keeps the heat off. Makes us look impartial and socially conscious at the same time.… Why don't you cut it out, Mac, and let the guy do his lousy baseball story?”

“Crime's an issue here,” Mac said curtly. Kirpatzke sighed and shook his head. He started to say one last thing, it looked like, making ready a final pitch to can the story. But then he changed his mind and just walked away.

“I knew a man who had a breakdown writing crime.” Lofton smiled.

“Lots of people have breakdowns,” said McCullough. “You're free-lance, so do as you please.”

After stopping at payroll, while walking down the hall, Lofton had caught a glimpse of Kirpatzke and McCullough, haggling apparently. They stood in one of the side offices, the door open. McCullough had his back to Lofton. Kirpatzke was shaking his head over and over and waving his yellow hands in the air.

The business between the editors hadn't bothered him much until he saw Lou Mendoza's apartment building. Why send a reporter to interview a man arrested for small-time vandalism? He would have walked away from the story except the Redwings were out of town, and he could not talk to the shortstop Randy Gutierrez—the man Amanti had directed him to—until the team came back.

Inside, the place was dirty, the hallways scrawled with graffiti. He found Lou Mendoza upstairs, in a four-room apartment with tattered wallpaper, peeled away in spots, each layer a brighter color than the one before. A young woman cooked in the kitchen, stirring sweet red Goya paste into the rice. Mendoza sat on the couch; he didn't wear a shirt. Playing with a pencil, touching the point delicately, as if it were a knife, he told Lofton he wanted nothing to do with the press, that the papers never got anything right because they were on the take from the police. Even so, it was obvious he enjoyed being interviewed and seemed to think he could somehow use the attention to his advantage.

“You make heroes out of the Latinos, and they are the ones who tried to kill me. Why should I trust you now?”

“Who are the Latinos?”

“The police report said they were trying to rob me, but it wasn't robbery. The Latinos didn't want my money. They want me. They want to kill
me
on the street.” Mendoza pointed at himself with a peculiar pride. He spoke with an accent, but it was the accent of a native, someone who had grown up on the streets and could speak both English and Spanish well enough, but each with the inflections of the other. The right side of his face was swollen, but he smiled as he spoke to Lofton, a smile that was somehow both menacing and friendly at the same time.

“There were too many for me to fight back. They held my arms and beat me in the face. Pretty soon there was blood in my eyes, and I couldn't see. I couldn't feel either. I didn't even know when the police came. They took me in their car, but pretty soon the radio said they want me for burglary, robbing, something like that. So the police take me to the station. But that vandalism they talk about—it's nothing. Nobody lives there; the place is burned out by fire, just windows on an empty shell. Who cares if I smash the glass out?” Mendoza paused, realizing his mistake. “But I didn't break any glass, don't write that down. I just want people to know that the police, instead of helping me, of chasing murderers, they put me in jail.” Mendoza paused. He clenched his fist and raised it, melodramatically, to his chest. “Meanwhile, the people in Holyoke—everybody starves.”

“Who are the Latinos?” Lofton asked again.

Mendoza shook his head, as if amazed by Lofton's ignorance. Then he told Lofton that the Latinos were a street gang. Mendoza himself had belonged to a rival gang, the Wanderers, but his gang had broken up, thrown off its colors, and decided to go legitimate. At least that was Mendoza's story.

“They're trying to kill all the old Wanderers. They're hunting us out, one by one. We want to be like the rest of the community. That's why the Latinos hate us. We're not hoodlums; they are.”

After the interview Lofton had gone to the Holyoke police station and found one of the arresting officers, a man named James Lopez, who was half Puerto Rican, half Anglo.

“Listen, I can't tell you anything. The case is headed for court. Off the record …” Lopez raised his dark eyebrows.

“No, not off the record.”

“Off the record,” Lopez said, ignoring him, “that mugging business is nonsense.”

“What about his face?”

“Fuck his face.”

Lopez walked away. He did not seem to care what Lofton put in the paper. Lofton dogged him down the police station steps to his cruiser.

“Don't let him fool you with that starving Puerto Rican routine. We've heard it before. If the Latinos hit him in the street, it's what he deserves. They would've taken care of him if we hadn't stumbled along at the wrong time.”

“What do you mean?”

“We been after him for a long time. Finally, we get him, not much, just this vandalism, breaking and entering, and the landlord drops it. Can't believe it. The bastard landlord's been complaining for years. ‘Get the punks that trash my buildings!' We get the kingpin of trash, and he drops the charges.”

Now Lofton sat at his Formica table, shirtsleeves twisted up, notebook in front of him, a half-typed sheet rolled into the type-writer: “Lou Mendoza, who claims he was beaten and robbed late Friday, has threatened to bring suit against Holyoke police for harassment and neglect of duty.”

Lofton was not sure what to do with the story. Officer Lopez did not want to be quoted. Mendoza, on the other hand, seemed to have an ax to grind—against the Latinos and the police—but how much of what the man said was true? Still, there seemed to be something under the surface, something neither man was saying. Now that he thought about it, Lofton wondered about the way McCullough had gotten the story idea. Why was the editor poking around in Einstein's notebook? A reporter's notes were supposed to be left alone, especially at his own paper. Why had Einstein left the paper, and where was he now?

He was still puzzling over the story when the knock came, timid at first, then a quick, staccato rapping, loud enough to break through the music of the radio in the alley. He opened the door, and the hotel clerk gave him a message. It was from Amanti. She wanted him to call. Just as well, he thought, it was too hot in the apartment, and he could finish the story later, after he had eaten, when his room had had a chance to cool in the evening air.

He walked to Barena's, not far from the ballpark, a cafeteria-style Italian restaurant owned and operated by a family of Greeks. The food wasn't wonderful, he told Amanti from the phone booth in the corner, and the air-conditioning didn't work as well as it might, but Barena's let you sit there as long as you wanted. Amanti was silent on the other end, but he went on talking, friendly, wondering what she'd wanted. For an instant, his own voice sounded far away to him, as if someone else were doing the talking. There's also an old color TV, he said, plugged into the cable from Boston, that shows Red Sox games. The color's bad, but the picture's clear as cake.

“Not tonight,” Amanti said, “but I can meet you Friday.” She gave him the name of the Little Puerto Rico, a café down on Commercial Street.

The conversation confused him; Amanti almost acted as if his call were a surprise. First his editors, then Mendoza, Lopez, and now Amanti—nobody approached him directly; they all came from angles. Maybe it's the heat, Lofton thought. Maybe people just aren't thinking clearly in the heat.