The Spy's Little Zonbi (4 page)

Remembering he was on a mission, Chase handed back the spent bong and exhaled the smoke.

“
I gotta find the quarter.” But Stoney's latest stash of Columbian Gold had rendered him a spastic marionette.
Pinocchio
, he thought and tried to spell it while rolling off his cluttered twin bed to the cluttered floor. He was as careful as circumstances would permit to search while still preserving the outcome of the flipped coin. “This is vitally important to my current life situation.”

“
You're gonna fry your ass, son,” Stoney said, referring to the maze of stereo and hot plate wires. Their appliances all came from various trash days, and even the slummiest frat houses tossed out anything with cords frayed this badly. One day they were really going to come through on the threat of buying some electrical tape and making these things as good as new.

Chase paused to replay the coin's arc, path, and last-known coordinates in his head. Under or behind his desk was the most likely spot.

Who had tossed used fucking condoms under here?

Oh, yeah. He should try calling that chick. Anna? Mary Ann? Ann Marie? If he could find this quarter he'd definitely call her. She smelled great and didn't wear panties.

“
The RA's are gone, so I'm crankin' this up.” Stoney brought Pink Floyd's “Dark Side of the Moon” to life, which was distracting because it was the music Chase had used to nail that chick. Or was it? Maybe it had been Zeppelin. That chick smelled great. She drank a half gallon of sugary sangria and chased it with a pint of gin. She had the finest blond hair on her legs. She probably didn't have to shave them, but her pit hair wasn't cool. Next time, Chase thought, he was just gonna leave her shirt on. Problem solved.

“
I think I found your driver's license.” But the music and bubbles from the bong Stoney was hitting were too loud. He shouldn't be driving anyway. Some ice cold sangria would sure hit the spot.

Chase found the dog-eared copy of last year's February issue of
Hustler
Magazine.

“
Picture of the World's Grossest Sex Freaks!” announced the cover. And, “How to Buy Life Insurance.”

Chase tried flipping to the centerfold but most of the pages were stuck together. Fucking Stoney. Always the same shit. One of the guys from down the hall had left a pack of family vacation photos his mom had sent him on Chase's desk while stopping by to score a few joints from Stoney. The guy—what's his name?—remembered to get them the next day only to find them stuck together, tight as a brick. Stoney had defiled pictures of the guy's mom and little sister, Minnie Mouse and Cinderella.

“
Snow White is hotter than Betty Boop,” Stoney had quietly announced late that night before passing out with a smoldering joint in the corner of his mouth.

What the hell was he looking for down here? That chick's number!

“
Hey, Chase!” Stoney shouted from above. Side one of the album was already down to the last song, “The Great Gig in the Sky.” Had he really been down here that long? “I see it!” Stoney called.

Reaching forward to push himself back from under the desk, Chase accidentally grabbed the frayed stereo wires, which turned out to be an awful lot like being hit in the head with a shovel. He involuntarily jerked sideways, slamming his already stunned head into the side of the desk, splintering the wood and making the needle bounce across the record.

“
What the fuck?” Stoney bumped him with his knees while lunging toward the turntable, as Chase made a feeble effort to simultaneously unclench his jaws, hands, and toes. “Dude, you just scratched the shit out of my record.”

Was that burning hair Chase smelled? Was that sizzling sound his head on fire?

From somewhere deep inside, Stoney's lifeguard training kicked in and he rescued Chase from under the desk, pulling him out by his leather belt. “Dude, you musta touched the wire. I told you not to touch the wires. They're totally electrified.”

Chase's jaw was starting to ache like crazy, the record skipping to what sounded like a crackling heartbeat.

Shhh-thu-bump … shhh-thu-bump …

Getting no reaction, Stoney began chest compressions and Chase nearly threw up—which indeed could have been fatal at that point if he had aspirated it—as he began prying open his mouth to begin ventilation. The relief his molars felt from the unhinging was immediately tempered by that first dry, cotton-mouth kiss.

Chase recalled the old images of the long, sloppy wet kiss Stoney had given the CPR doll as a joke when he smuggled her back to their room one night. Chase never saw him hump it, but if ever there was a sure thing ...

Stoney's own head bumped the desk and the tall bong he'd abandoned to rescue Chase tipped over. The pungent brown water cascaded over the back of Chase's head, soaking his hair and both their shirts. Wow, that bong need to be cleaned, Chase thought. The record needle found a groove, killing the heartbeat and setting free Roger Water's beseeching vocals.

“
C'mon, you gotta come back to me, Dude.” Stoney huffed, pumping Chase's chest and wiping nasty white spittle from his mouth, working like a true professional, despite the fact that neither Chase's heart nor breathing had ever stopped.

“
That's it, walk to the light!” Stoney shouted, now thumping the patient's chest with a closed fist. “Go toward the light!”

And from the panic in his eyes—was he also crying?—Chase knew just how good a friend Stoney was. He could sense how much he cared, despite being stunned and barely conscious from the 120 volts. Chase knew Stoney loved him as a brother despite the fact that he was pretty much beating him to death.

“
Aaaaaaccckkkk,” Chase finally managed after Stoney removed his lips from a long, chest-expanding ventilation. Stoney grabbed him by his dank shirt and hugged, shaking and rocking him in a trembling embrace.

“
Oh, man, oh, man,” Stoney repeated, as they settled that way for a while, swaying slowly to the Pink Floyd. Chase suddenly remembered it really had been this album he'd screwed that girl to.

Chase wanted to tell him, but then decided it wasn't important.

“
I'm really gonna miss you this summer, you motherfucker,” Stoney whispered in his ear. Despite the bong hits and the blow to the head, Chase realized his friend had seen the quarter and it was heads.

“
P
hotography internship?” Chase was trying to keep pace with his new boss, who was jogging from copy editor desk to the press room and back again. The man in charge of his summer internship was a sweating flurry of cusses and thrown papers. Managing Editor Mack Butterfish's once crisp white button-down shirt was streaked with black printer's ink after clearing paper from a jammed gear in the press. His navy dress slacks had a six-inch split down the butt seam. It was apparently all hands on deck when something got in the way of the morning run. Even Chase's palms were black.

“
You called it a photo internship,” Chase tried again.

“
It's all journalism.” Butterfish coughed and spat as they bounded down a hallway and through a set of double-doors to the loading dock. Hundreds of heavy stacks of newspapers, all tied in neat bundles with thin kite string, were waiting on the wood platform. “You're the kid from Mason, right?”

“
Yeah, but …” Chase stopped, realizing he'd be completely screwed if he turned down the only spot available. He'd taken pictures for the school paper with the point and shoot. They sucked and were slightly out of focus, but only because he hadn't really tried. With a foot in the door he could always talk his way into writing instead of shooting.

“
You see that?” Butterfish pointed at the pavement below the loading dock. “You see those thirteen trucks lined up right there?”

Chase shook his head. It was barely dawn and he'd only slept three hours. Should he be seeing trucks?

“
I have thirty thousand papers not being loaded into the backs of trucks at this very moment, but do you know what the real problem is?”

Again, Chase shook his head, taking a step back to avoid Butterfish's jabbing finger.

“
I have forty goddamn business owners who paid to have their ads tossed into the front yards of thirty thousand goddamn subscribers.” Butterfish was nearly yelling. “And not one of my goddamn drivers is here!”

Butterfish hiked his black framed glasses with the knuckle of his right middle finger, probably to avoid smudging them with ink. The overhead lights gave his round face a yellow sheen. Butterfish opened his mouth as if to continue the rant, but spun on his heels instead. He kicked back through the double doors so hard that a square pane of glass cracked and fell out of its heavy frame. Chase followed at a safe distance.

Butterfish stormed into the newsroom, grabbed a phone from the nearest reporter's desk and began yelling at the receiver. When the phone rang on the adjacent desk, he added it to his other ear and kept up the unbroken tirade. With deadline long past, the room was otherwise barren except for one old guy a few computer terminals down a narrow isle. The man appeared to be trying to hide from the commotion, pecking lightly at his keyboard as a meandering wire of cigarette smoke drifted from an overflowing ashtray toward the bank of fluorescents above his desk. His eyes darted from the screen to Butterfish and back.

Chase sat on the corner of a metal desk and inspected his stained hands while Butterfish continued his rant to the phones about the missing drivers.

The old guy coughed and cleared his throat. He held up his phone's handset and pointed at it to get Butterfish's attention. “Call on four, boss.”

“
This better be somebody with one hell of a good explanation.” He dropped one phone and jammed the number four button down with a stubby index finger. “Butterfish here!”

There was an almost deafening pause, silence except for the ticking of the AP photo transmitter across the room and the hum of the lights. As he watched the transformation of Butterfish's expression, Chase imagined these might be the sounds familiar to a professional bomb diffuser. It went from angry, to puzzled, to horrible realization.

“
Is it about the funeral procession, boss?” The old guy at the computer rubbed out his cigarette.

“
This didn't happen.” Butterfish let both phones drop from his hands. They clanked off the desks and hit the floor. Butterfish went for the men's room door.

Chase looked at the old man and shrugged his shoulders to ask if he knew what had happened. The man eyed the bathroom door and motioned for Chase.

“
Mack was supposed to send a whole team to cover a funeral and then the procession.” The man lit another cigarette, took a deep drag, and checked his watch. “The show's probably wrapping up right now.”

“
What's it got to do with the delivery trucks?”

“
It's one of their boys that's dead. He was supposed to be loaded up at the funeral parlor and shipped to the graveyard in the first truck. Real sad story. And Mack had forked over enough cash to paint up all the trucks for a photo op. Not something a tightwad like him would do unless he had bigger plans.”

The man paused and cocked his head. It sounded like Butterfish had turned all the faucets in the restroom on full blast.

“
Dead kid was kind of a moron,” the man finally said, then loaded his lungs with more smoke. “Not a run of the mill retard, just gullible and dumb as a shingle. Name was Clayton Butterfish, same as Mack. An old family name, there's tons of 'em here on the shore. Some are good and some are mean as snakes. This one was too dumb to be either. Don't matter, though, after you're dead. People mostly forget what degree of shitheel you were on two feet.”

“
But why such a big deal?”

“
Mack had two reporters work up a real nice feature on the kid. Then he ran the raw copy past one of the girls who'd move on over to the
Washington Post
from this shithole. She loved it, saw all the possibilities for a real tearjerker. She was here for two days and talked to everybody under the sun.”

Chase's entire body tingled at the idea of going from a newsroom like this to the most important newspaper in the world.

“
Mack convinced the
Post
editors to leave everything up to him. This is his territory, after all, so their reporter was sharing a byline with our guys. Mack screwed up something fierce this morning. I'm surprised he isn't on the horn trying to get the kid dug back up for a redo.”

“
Wouldn't at least one reporter have gone to the funeral without being assigned?”

“
Nah, it just doesn't work that way around these parts.” The man tapped his cigarette into the overflowing ashtray. “You're either on the clock or off it. And you just don't see a whole lot of mixing among drivers and reporters. Two different bars after quitting time. No, Mack let a big fish get away. Today's front page should have had a four-column shot of those shiny
Times
trucks coming across the bridge over the Wicomico, the sun rising up from behind. But now the weekly cross town has first crack. Instead of interviewing our drivers, they'll talk to the half-wit's nutty aunt about how Little Clayton had gotten his life turned around after setting fire to a litter of kittens. Kid was dumb enough to take Polaroids to show his teacher.”