CHAPTER SIXTEEN

Sunday, November 4

We’re back on God’s time again. Daylight Savings ended at two this morning. This occurs every year, like clockwork. It’s advertised extensively in the news media.

And yet, this always happens: R.P. and Andy are there when we show up, glancing at their unadjusted watches as if we’re the problem. They refuse to admit that they neglected to fall back, and we don’t press the issue, but they are about two Bloody Marys up on us.

“Hell of a story,” Andy says after we’ve finished giving them shit, “at least the part I’ve read so far. How many damn trees did they have to cut down to print that sucker?”

The Delmonico opus does take up a bit of space. In keeping with a sacred print journalism tradition, I wrote more than I promised. It actually came in at 238 inches, which Enos Jackson says might be the all-time record.

“If you were assigned a story length of infinity,” Sally Velez said when she hit the button and saw how long it really was, “you would figure out some way to go over.”

Well, what the hell. The rest of the A section seems to be filled mostly with crap we pilfered from other papers around the state. Would you really cut my deathless prose so the readers could learn more about a zoning issue in Culpeper County? I reminded Sally that my average dirt-nap recap usually runs about twelve inches, so I’m probably still not averaging twenty inches a story over a year.

My old pals pump me for more information than what they read in the paper. Even after a couple of Bloodies, I hold out. Neither Cindy nor Abe knows what Big Boy Sunday told me yesterday, and I’m sure as hell not going to spill the beans to a couple of idiots who can’t tell time.

“Looks like it wasn’t all sunshine and lollipops for the guy,” Andy says. “That must have been hard, losing his son like that, and maybe feeling a little guilty about it.”

“The one I feel sorry for is the other son, the one that wasn’t a great athlete,” R.P. says. As a gay man with little athletic talent whose father named him after a NASCAR driver, Richard Petty McGonnigal knows a little something about not living up to expectations.

The only other story that made it on A1 this morning was the latest political poll, which has Felicia Delmonico trailing her opponent by one percentage point.

“Your husband getting murdered and folks finding out you’re the beneficiary of a $3 million life-insurance policy doesn’t help your credibility,” Cindy says.

They kick that around for a while, trying mightily to get me to comment on the possible guilt or innocence of the widow Delmonico.

“It’s not like you not to have an opinion,” Abe says as he works his way through a twelve-ounce steak, three scrambled eggs, pancakes, and home fries.

I tell all of them that they can read about it in their daily newspaper, as soon as I write it.

“Aw, hell,” Andy says, “I knew I shouldn’t have dropped my subscription.”

They get into a discussion about whether newspapers should endorse political candidates, a timely topic since my employer has just gotten out of the endorsement business.

“Aren’t you supposed to take a stand on shit?” R.P. asks.

Yeah, I agree, we should take a stand on shit. However, some smart suit figured out that, in the time of Trump, anybody we endorse is going to enrage about half the readers. Who, they reasoned, needs the aggravation, the dropped subscriptions?

I ask Andy if his family’s hardware store would put up a big sign saying they were pro-choice or in favor of more gun control.

“Hell no,” he says. “Somebody’d throw a rock through a window. But we’re a hardware store. You’re always talking about how newspapers are supposed to stand for something, not just sell papers.”

Fair enough, I concede, but high-mindedness is a luxury we just can’t afford anymore. We kind of conceded that one when we started charging readers to have some investment clown come into town to try to fleece them.

SUNDAY WILL be no day of rest for yours truly. I really, really need to talk with Peachy Love. Equally essential is a face-to-face with Brady Delmonico, who seems to be playing hard to get. And there’s Felicia herself. Two days from Election Day, she’s not likely to be accessible, but I’m obliged to try.

I could just call the chief and ask him if the cops have had any luck finding the Rolex that was missing off Mills Farrington’s wrist. This probably would only lead to hard feelings, though, especially since I’d have to call him at home. He’d probably just curse me and tell me the investigation was, as always, ongoing.

It usually is better if I call L.D. and tell him, flat-out, that I know what I know, through other sources I can’t name, and I’m going to run with it whether he confirms it or not.

As “other sources” go, the best alternative is always Peachy. L.D. suspects a lot of cops of feeding me, especially the hapless Gillespie. Peachy, though, who can lie with a straight face with the best of them, has stayed beneath his radar. The chief doesn’t realize how much her past life as a news reporter has corrupted her.

This is the second Sunday in a row that I have disturbed the Sabbath of my former colleague and playmate.

When I call at twelve thirty, she answers on the third ring. She sounds like perhaps I’m interrupting something.

“What!” she croaks.

I apologize and explain that I thought I’d called her late enough that I wouldn’t be interrupting her beauty sleep.

“What beauty sleep?” she says. “It’s one thirty!”

I remind her about the demise of Daylight Savings Time.

I hear a man’s voice in the background.

“Should I call later?”

“Nah,” she says. “Just let me walk out to the living room.”

In half a minute or so, Peachy is back.

“Ronald,” I hear her yell, “hang up the phone.”

After I hear the click, she asks me what’s so damn important.

I ask her about the missing Rolex.

A pause.

“How did you know about that?”

“What do you mean? I knew it was missing the day they found the body, remember?”

“No,” she says, “how did you know to call me about it just now?”

I play dumb, one of my more convincing roles.

“Just wondering. We haven’t heard anything. Thought it might have turned up at a pawn shop or something.”

“Yeah, right,” Peachy says. “Well, wherever you’re getting your information from, you’ve got a pretty good pipeline.”

She goes on to tell me what I pretty much already know. The chief got a box yesterday containing a slightly abused Rolex and a note.

I am as always sworn to secrecy. I can use the information but not the source. Peachy won’t tell me all the contents of the note, so that if somebody confesses, they can use the note to confirm that he’s the real killer. But she gives me the gist of it, and it jibes with what Big Boy told me yesterday.

“It was like whoever sent it wanted it known that this was a revenge killing. Not that we didn’t think that was a good possibility, but we hadn’t really found any strong suspects among those investors Farrington and Delmonico stiffed. And we still had our suspicions about the grieving widow.”

I mention that she seems to be pretty much in the clear.

“Well,” Peachy says, “there are those who would say that your ass has a little conflict of interest there.”

“How so?”

“You know damn well how so. You think I’m an idiot? When I came to work at the paper, I heard a rumor that you had tapped the lovely Felicia, back when she was that chirpy little newsgirl on TV. All I had to do was call a couple of old-timers, and they remembered.

“Doesn’t have shit to do with anything, investigation-wise, and I haven’t mentioned it to Chief Jones, but you ought to know that it won’t go well if he thinks you’ve been protecting our candidate-slash-suspect.”

I emphasize that I’d never do that, that I just didn’t want to throw a monkey wrench into politics this close to election time.

“What if she doesn’t have anything to do with any of it?” I ask. “Then I’m to blame when she loses the election because of a last-minute scandal.”

Peachy is more or less appeased by the time we finish talking.

I advise her to set her watch back an hour before she goes back to bed.

She advises me to mind my own business.

SO, WITH or without the chief’s confirmation, I feel safe in reporting that the Richmond Police Department yesterday received what appeared to be Mills Farrington’s missing Rolex, along with an unsigned note from someone who claimed to be his killer. If that doesn’t sell some papers, I’ll kiss the publisher’s ass. No, wait. Maybe just a peck on the cheek.

Brady is still AWOL from both his apartment and his studio. I find out from a neighbor that his car is missing from the parking deck as well. Maybe it’s time to let the chief know how possible it is that the Hampden-Sydney cap Pop found on Belle Isle was once worn by Teddy Delmonico’s son.

Perhaps it’s time to give L.D. a call, even if this is a pro-football Sunday. I go to one of those sports bars with nine different NFL games on at the same time and drain an overpriced Miller, then wait until the Redskins leave the field at halftime, so as not to make the chief miss anything.

Still he doesn’t seem happy to hear from me.

“I need something confirmed,” I tell him.

He snorts.

I keep quiet, and finally he sighs.

“OK, talk.”

I explain to him that I know about the Rolex and the note, that I have it from two sources, because that’ll really send his blood pressure over the top, and that I’m going to write it whether he confirms it or not, but it’d look better if he does.

He seems to actually be growling. I think if we were in the same room, he might try to bite me.

“Where do you get this bullshit?” he sputters.

Reliable sources, I tell him.

“Reliable sources,” he says. “I bet.”

Reliable enough, I assure him, that we won’t be sued when we print it.

We never talk about it much anymore, the chief and I, but I ask him for the first time in a long while why he has this ingrained need to keep information from the news media.

“Because you all twist it and fuck it up so what’s in the paper isn’t what I said. And you mess up my investigations.”

When, I ask, do we do that?

“Lots of times,” he says after a pause.

“I do that?”

Another pause.

“Well, all of you do that. And you make us look bad.”

It would not be fruitful to tell the chief that I only make him look bad when he lets his natural bullheadedness steer him away from the truth. L.D. is a man of strong convictions, often mistaken but never wrong.

I tell him I’m sorry for any real or imagined injustices I might have perpetrated against him “but I’d really like to have you confirm this, and you’ll thank me if you do.”

He grumbles a little before finally giving me the “yes” I’ve been wanting.

“And now for your reward,” I tell him, like I’m talking to a dog who’s just shaken hands.

I tell him about the possible connection between the Belle Isle cap that Pop found and Brady Delmonico.

His reaction is predictable.

“How long have you known this?”

“Not long.”

“And you know it’s his?”

“How the hell would I know that? I’ve been trying to get up with him the last two days. But he was friends with guys on the lacrosse team when he was at Hampden-Sydney, he’s the dead man’s son, and I have it on good authority that he and Dad didn’t get along.”

“You’ve known about this for two days?”

“Goddammit, L.D., focus. What matters is you maybe have a suspect, other than the grieving widow and irate investors.”

The chief doesn’t seem to think he’s gotten fair value for confirming the Rolex and the note.

“Nobody’s been cleared,” he says, but promises that the cops will look into Brady, if they can find him.

SARAH, WHO apparently is working seven days a week to justify her management status, is in when I stop by the paper.

I explain what I’ve learned that is fit to print in tomorrow’s editions.

She looks up at the clock. I see from the TV in the sports department that the Redskins are in the last throes of having their asses handed to them again.

“Jesus,” she says, “why don’t you bring this shit in for the Sunday paper? Nobody reads the Monday morning edition, except maybe the sports nuts.”

“Hey,” I hear Jack Clatterbuck, the weekend sports slot guy, call, “we can hear you over here.”

I remind her that I’ve already contributed 238 inches to today’s paper.

“Didn’t want to be a hog.”

She asks how long it’ll take me and how much room I need. I underestimate on both, but she knows me well enough to add 20 percent to both numbers.

“Do you think we’re dealing with two unconnected murders here?” she asks me.

I usually fall back on Occam’s rusty blade. The most obvious answer is that two killings of two partners in a crooked investment firm within a few days of each other must have a common perp.

This time, though, I’m pretty sure that razor doesn’t cut.

“I’m just going to write what I know,” I tell her.

“Baer came by this afternoon, earlier,” Sarah says. “He’s feeling the heat.”

I can imagine. Since Mark Baer got caught flacking for Felicia Delmonico while drawing a salary as one of our reporters, leading to him being given his walking papers here, he’s had to reinvent himself as a political functionary, which means doing anything short of homicide to get your candidate elected. Hell, he’s lucky Felicia hired him so he could do out in the open what he’d been doing on the sly.

When you leave a newspaper to shill for a political candidate, it is only normal for that candidate to think you have some pull back at the word factory, that you can get the paper to go easy on said candidate.

“She doesn’t understand why we aren’t endorsing her,” Sarah says. “What she doesn’t understand is that, if we were still endorsing candidates, we very well might not be backing her.”

If Felicia knew the Grimm Group as well as we’re coming to know it, she would be happy that we aren’t backing anyone in the House race. Nobody from Grimm comes around here except for the occasional staff cuts. We refer to the “consultants” they send in with axes as the Grimm Reapers. We’re pretty sure, though, that the editorial department is getting marching orders from on high, probably via our publisher. We aren’t openly advocating massive resistance anymore, like we did in the 1960s, but when our deep thinkers down there do take a shot at something or someone, odds are the target is going to be to the left of center. Felicia Delmonico, loyal Democrat, is fair game.

They’ve already written one editorial that didn’t flat-out say that Felicia is a murderess but did drop a few very broad hints as to where the editorialist’s sympathies lie. We don’t endorse anymore, but we do feel free to lambaste.

“Do you think Baer misses us?” I ask.

“Yeah, I think he does. And maybe he’s just starting to realize that it’s kind of a one-way street. No going back.”

I tell her that I hope, for his sake, that Felicia wins. I’m no fan of Baer, but he deserves better than what happens to guys like him when their candidate loses.

“Have you been in touch with her?” Sarah asks.

I tell her that I’ve been trying, but that I’m sure Felicia is a little busy right now.

“Tell me the truth: Do you think she killed her husband? I mean, maybe not kill him, but got somebody to do it?”

I tell her I’m not sure, but that I’d better get cracking on tomorrow’s piece, which will temporarily distract readers from T-Bone to his late felonious partner.

What I can write is that the Rolex that was apparently the only thing stolen from Mills Farrington has resurfaced, mailed to the city police along with an anonymous note explaining the motive behind Farrington’s demise: revenge.

The note makes no reference, the story will say, to the murder of Teddy Delmonico.

There are people out there who know that Felicia Delmonico and Farrington abused some sheets together, and they might wonder if the candidate didn’t somehow contrive to get rid of both her husband and her boyfriend for whatever reasons.

I know differently, at least in the case of Farrington. By now I’m pretty sure Chief L.D. Jones does as well, although he’d never admit it.

Felicia is just going to have to go to the voting booth on Tuesday morning with that little cloud hanging over her head.