CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

Monday, November 5

The call comes on my cell phone sometime before seven. The charger is in the hallway, and I stub my toe dodging the cat and hustling to reach it before it stops ringing.

“I see you found out I didn’t kill Mills Farrington,” she says when I answer.

I sit in the chair alongside the charger and wait for the pain to go away. Butterball sits at my feet, wondering why she hasn’t been fed yet.

“Pretty sure.”

“Pretty sure? That’s all? Do you think your goddamn editorial department might cut me a little slack now?”

I explain what doesn’t really need explaining. Felicia knows more than most that reporters don’t write editorials.

“Well,” she says, “you all seem to think I’m some kind of black widow or something. You’re going to cost me this damn election.”

I count to five and ask her if she got the messages I’ve left.

“Yeah, but I’ve been a little busy. You know tomorrow’s Election Day, right?”

She makes it clear that this is the last I’ll hear from her until after the polls close. She sounds like she’s already a few cups of coffee into a very busy day.

I explain what I found out about the Hampden-Sydney ball cap.

“Yeah, damn. Brady did go there. So are you going to run that, tell your readers that I didn’t kill my husband?”

“We aren’t sure of that.”

“Come on, Willie! What the fuck do you need, a map? What are the odds that cap didn’t belong to Brady?”

I explain that the police are now aware of the cap, and of the possibility that it belonged to Brady Delmonico, but that there are a lot of Hampden-Sydney ball caps out there. Plus, why would a guy who was forced to leave that fine institution under a dark cloud be advertising that institution on his noggin?

“Well, use your head. What’s logical? But by the time they tie up the loose ends, the election will be history, as will I.”

I tell her that she’s being too pessimistic. All the polls say it’s too close to call.

“I should be up six points by now,” she says. “That bozo I’m running against has the personality of a stump and the morals of a fuckin’ clam.”

I agree with Felicia that she has considerably more personality than her opponent and don’t say anything about relative morality.

But he’s got a lot of money, I think, but don’t mention, and he’s running in a district where many of the residents would vote for a goat if the goat were a Republican.

I figure I need to cut to the chase. Felicia’s attention span isn’t that long.

“Assuming you didn’t kill Teddy, do you think Brady could have done it?”

I hear an unpleasant laugh.

“I wonder if he’d have enough energy to do it. But he really did hate Teddy, I know that. Hated me too.”

“Do you have any contact with him?”

“Hell, no. When he and Teddy would get together, which was about once every blue moon, I’d make sure I was somewhere else. I guess he blames me for Teddy’s first marriage breaking up.”

“Yeah, I could see that.”

“What the fuck does that mean?”

If potential voters ever heard Felicia uncensored, I’m thinking she might lose a few more points in the polls.

I explain that it means she and Teddy might have been going steady before Teddy and Kathy called it a day.

“Who told you that? Did that bitch tell you that? I know you talked to her.”

I am not in the mood to explain where I got my information. I resist the urge to mention Felicia’s nickname among the former Kathy Delmonico and her friends.

Felicia probably isn’t trying too hard to make me believe she holds the sanctity of marriage dear to her heart, since we both know that I’m aware she and Mills Farrington were exchanging bodily fluids.

“Well,” Felicia says, “you’re killing me here. You know I’m a better candidate than that hairpiece I’m running against.”

“That isn’t up to me to decide.”

“You guys,” she says. “You’re so goddamn pure. Can’t print something until it’s carved in stone, even if you know better.”

I gently explain that if I wrote about everything I know, her poll numbers might drop even a bit lower.

“Prove it,” is her response.

There isn’t much point in continuing our conversation. Plus, my toe hurts like a bitch and I need a little coffee myself. I wish Felicia good luck, a wish she does not return, and we more or less mutually hang up.

“Who was that?” Cindy asks. She’s up now and making the coffee.

I tell her.

“Oh,” she says. “Fellatio.”

I read my story on A1. Sally and the copy editors didn’t do too much damage to it. Our dwindling readership now knows that whoever murdered Mills Farrington, it probably wasn’t Felicia Delmonico. Or at least they know that if she did it, she went to a lot of trouble to misdirect yours truly and our men and women in blue. The headline, cleverly designed to sell newspapers, screams “Who killed Mills Farrington?” The subhead whispers: “Watch, note point/to revenge motive.”

It occurs to me that the two stories I’m trying to untangle here are tied to a watch and a damn ball cap.

“So,” Cindy asks as she waits for the bagels to pop out of the toaster, “this was some kind of revenge thing? It’s funny, you know, that you stumbled on all this right after you and Fat Boy …”

“Big Boy.”

“Excuse me. Big Boy. Right after you took a ride with Big Boy so he could tell you something that you can’t share with me.”

It’s for your own good, I explain.

She shakes her head.

“I wish you knew a better class of people.”

“Then where would I go for information?”

“Sometimes I wish you would take a job doing public relations or media relations or whatever the hell they call it.”

If the newsroom layoffs continue, I tell my beloved, she might get her wish.

“Well,” she says, “you might have to lie a little, but at least you won’t get your ass killed.”

I assure her again that I am not on Big Boy’s naughty list.

She snorts.

“Not for now.”

All this makes me think of Mark Baer. Maybe, if Felicia wins, he’ll ride her coattails and get some nice suit job up in Our Nation’s Capital. But Baer was a guy who not long ago dreamed of working for the Washington Post or even the New York Times, and his best future scenario now is spinning the truth to those august organizations so that Felicia Delmonico doesn’t have any unseemly stains on her persona.

There are a lot of times I’ve been tempted to punch out the publisher du jour and call it a day. When I think about the options, I back down.

Plus, I’m fifty-fucking-eight years old. There are lots of guys Baer’s age out there who’d do the lyin’ and denyin’ for a lot less than I’d need to pay the rent and bring home my half of the bacon.

MY DAYS off, Sunday and Monday, are optional, meaning I can work if I so desire, with the understanding that I’m doing it for free. Or, I could take some comp days some other time. That would involve some other overworked soul having to do night cops.

“You let them use you,” Cindy says. “You are a willing victim.”

She’s right, of course. Somebody else could go to the paper today and try to work the Delmonico and Farrington stories (and they definitely seem like two separate stories now).

Baer, when he was an honest journalist, would have loved to poach my beat. Hell, he’s done it before. There are plenty of others ready to glom on to a yarn as juicy as this one’s turning out to be.

But this is my story, and I don’t intend to let a little thing like working for free keep me from it.

You can love the newspaper, a long-ago editor told me when I was a child journalist, but the son of a bitch won’t love you back.

So call it unrequited love.

Whatever, here I am, walking into the newsroom at nine thirty, free Willie.

The place is something of a madhouse. Tomorrow’s Election Day, and I’m not the only one here on his day off. They’ve even dragooned some of the sports guys, who know about as much about elections as I do about quantum physics. Between the local races and the national ones, there’s plenty of work for everyone.

Even Benson Stine, our publisher, is here, getting in the way, sitting in on the meetings that seem to occur every half hour and, according to Sally, asking unbelievably dumb-ass questions.

That’s what publishers do, I explain.

Because of the two murders that are fighting for space amid the election tsunami, I’m spared most of the meetings. I promise Sally two stories tomorrow. One will be on the cops’ quest to find out who sent them Mills Farrington’s watch, and presumably killed him.

The other will center on finding Brady Delmonico. I’ve filled in Sally, Sarah, and Wheelie on what I think I know about Brady’s relation to a certain H-SC ball cap.

I head out again an hour after I get there, promising to come back eventually and sober.

There’s no sign of Brady in Scott’s Addition. I performed a little piece of James Bond crap the last time I went by the studio. The tiny piece of paper I wedged into the door is still there.

Not knowing what the hell else to do, I light up a Camel and call Kathy Simmons. She’s at home, apparently alone.

“That was quite the job you did on Teddy in that story yesterday,” she says.

I ask her if I got anything wrong.

“Not really wrong, just mean.”

There isn’t much to say to that, other than to apologize for making her feel bad.

“Well, I guess it’s OK,” she says. “I mean, that’s what you do.”

She says it like what I do might be digging up bodies and selling them to the medical college.

“It’s just that sometimes folks like to let the past be the past, you know?”

I tell her that it’ll start being the past when the cops find out who killed her ex-husband.

And then I tell her about my aborted efforts to reach her son and wonder if she’s had any contact with him.

After a long pause, she says, “I haven’t heard from him.”

Her hesitancy encourages me to push a little. I tell what I’ve learned about that Hampden-Sydney cap and its possible connection to Brady. I also tell her what I know about his being tossed from that fine institution.

“That was a long time ago,” she says. “He’s straightened out since then.”

She’s quiet for a few seconds.

“You say it was a Hampden-Sydney ball cap?”

I confirm.

I can hear her breathing on the other end of the line.

“I need to tell you something,” she says. “But nobody can know it came from me.”

I swear on my mother’s grave, since Kathy doesn’t know Peggy’s still alive.

“I got an e-mail from him two days ago. He said he was going away for a few days, but not to worry, that everything was fine, that he was going to take care of something. When I e-mailed him back, he didn’t respond. I’ve called three times, and nobody answers.”

“He didn’t say where he was going?”

“No.”

And then Kathy Simmons, who seems about as unflappable as you’d expect a Virginia lady of her status to be, kind of loses it.

“This can’t be,” she says. “This can’t be.”

We both know what “this” is. I wish I could tell her that it isn’t possible that her only living son was complicit in his father’s murder, but I’d be a liar if I did that.

All I can do is assure her that there are all kinds of reasons that cap on Belle Isle belonged to somebody other than her only living son. Neither of us believes me.

I know that I am only the messenger, but I would not hold it against Kathy if she wanted to plug me right now.

I DROP by police headquarters to see if L.D. Jones has any information to share. In terms of optimism, this is right up there with betting on a trifecta.

Sure enough, the chief is not in a giving mood. After I’ve waited half an hour, he gives me five minutes of his time.

He refuses to tell me how much luck the cops have had in finding Brady. When I tell him about my own efforts to contact him over the weekend, he only grunts and tells me to stay out of police business.

I remind him that he wouldn’t even know about that damn cap if it weren’t for me.

“And we are always grateful when civic-minded citizens give us tips,” he says.

“When I find him,” I say, maybe grinding my teeth a little, “do you want me to tell you where he’s at?”

Things kind of go downhill after that.

“I guess you’re not up for letting me in on how the Farrington case is going either,” I say as L.D. lifts his lazy ass out of his chair like he hopes to throw me through a window.

The chief’s a little sensitive today, I tell myself. He’ll feel better when he doesn’t have two unsolved, high-profile murders hanging around his neck.

BRADY’S DISAPPEARANCE is worrisome. I can’t write about the call to his mother, of course, but I can put something together for tomorrow that tells our readers about his possible connection to that cap and that he is missing.

And I can do some kind of rehash bullshit with the police having no comment on the search for Mills Farrington’s killer. I’d like to talk with that minister whose church construction went up in smoke thanks to Farrington, but I need to get Big Boy’s permission first, and that ain’t happening, because it could point the cops toward the dude who did the deed.

After a late lunch at a place on Main Street that seems to think it’s a good idea to make a sandwich with something called a pretzel bun and doesn’t serve Millers, I return to the office.

I GET a call from Baer while I’m working on the Delmonico story.

He’s only been a flack for a little more than a week, and already he seems to have blended with his environment.

“We’re concerned with how the paper’s reporting is having a negative impact on Felicia,” he says. “Why isn’t somebody writing something about how tough she’s being, how brave? A lesser person would have dropped out after her husband was tragically murdered.”

I remind Baer that I’ve seldom seen a murder that wasn’t a tragedy for somebody and that nobody is questioning Felicia’s bravery. I further remind him that the circumstances around the deaths of Teddy Delmonico and Mills Farrington can’t help but make some cynics look toward the grieving widow.

“You know, Mark,” I add, “I haven’t written everything I know about how well Felicia and Teddy were getting along, or about how well Felicia and Farrington were getting along.”

“You wouldn’t! We’d sue your pants off.”

No, I concede, I probably wouldn’t, if I haven’t so far.

“The point is, Felicia Delmonico knows damn well that I’m not trying to screw her.”

A chuckle.

“Poor choice of words, Willie.”

He says it low enough that I figure he’s got other flacks around him.

“We haven’t written one damn word that indicates we think she had anything to do with any felonious activity.”

“But you write that the cops haven’t ruled out any suspects, and your editorial pages took a pretty cheap shot at her the other day.”

I sigh.

“Mark, do you remember when you used to work here, like week before last? Do you remember how many times you had to tell some nitwit that the newsroom and the editorial department are not in the same area code, journalistically? Well, now you’re the nitwit.”

He takes offense at my characterization, but he knows the truth is a powerful defense.

“Can’t you find something positive to write about her? After tomorrow, it won’t matter.”

I remind him that the story this morning made it pretty clear that she was not a prime suspect in Farrington’s murder.

“OK, that’s something,” he concedes.

I tell him that he’s pissing on the wrong tree anyhow, that he ought to be working the reporters who are actually covering the campaign. In Baer’s wake, that fell into the appreciative if inexperienced arms of Callie Ann Boatwright and Leighton Byrd.

“Why aren’t you using your charm on the BB twins?”

He sighs.

“You don’t think I’ve tried?”

Before he hangs up, he lowers his voice even more and asks me if he thinks that there might be “something” for him here at the paper in the future. He sounds like a guy who’s looking for an exit strategy, just in case.

I tell him it’s not up to me who gets hired and fired. If it were up to me, I don’t tell him, there’d be ice rinks in hell before he was rehired here.

IN TRUTH, the BB twins—or at least Leighton Byrd—has been by my desk a couple of times seeking guidance. The last election either of the twins covered probably involved somebody running for student body president.

After we’d discussed the ins and outs of covering a House race, Leighton becomes the umpteenth person to ask if I think Felicia Delmonico killed her husband.

I told her that it really shouldn’t matter to her, that she should cover the race as if both candidates were pure as the driven slush.

“You mean snow, right?” Leighton asked, brushing her hair from out of her eyes.

“Yeah, snow.”

Sarah saw us talking. Next time I was within hailing distance of her office, she called me in.

I congratulated her on her successful makeover of Leighton and Callie, even if the sports department guys didn’t much appreciate it.

She gave me what looked like a smirk along with some unsolicited advice.

“Go easy on the twins,” she said.

“Whatever,” I asked, “do you mean?”

“I mean,” she said, “fraternization-wise. If you haven’t been paying attention, we’re in hashtag MeToo land, where old goats can find themselves put out to pasture for what might have been newsroom hijinks a few years ago. Even if everybody says ‘yes,’ you can still get your ass in a sling. Just sayin.’ We’re not in Kansas anymore, Willie.”

I protested that Leighton and Callie Ann are younger than my own daughter.

“Imagine that.”

I assured my friend and former hijinks accomplice that I am now a happily married man.

“Glad to hear it.”

CINDY HAS made reservations for dinner at a place on West Main that made somebody’s list of twenty-five best restaurants in the lower Middle Atlantic that don’t serve kale or pimiento cheese. I think I have that right. So I make another run by Brady’s studio and apartment.

When I get to the studio, I see a woman walking away.

I’m close enough that I catch her and ask her if she’s looking for Brady Delmonico.

She seems to know me. Since I don’t have a column, I’m not recognized that often, thank God.

“You’re Willie Black,” she says. I don’t deny it. And then I realize she’s the friend, the one who talked to me on Friday.

“Where is he?” I ask.

She says she obviously doesn’t know.

“But I got a call, from another artist with a place on Broad Street. Her and Brady knew each other pretty well.”

What the other artist told her was that she knew a guy, “kind of an artist-outlaw, if you know what I mean,” who imparted some rather disturbing information.

“She said the guy told her that Brady came to see him the other day. Said he was going away for a while, and that he needed something.

“He said he needed a gun.”