CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

Sunday, November 11

The back table at Joe’s runneth over.

In addition to Cindy and me, there’s Abe along with Stella Stellar, R.P. and Andy, R.P.’s special guy, and, to everyone’s surprise and delight, Goat Johnson and his wife, down from Ohio. The Johnsons have brought along their three-year-old granddaughter as well. We are knee-to-knee, crammed in so tight that we have to turn the oval plates sideways so they’ll all fit.

Everyone is filling Goat in on the latest news. He’s down to schmooze some money from a couple of old grads of the college over which he presides. He says he couldn’t resist the urge to pay us a surprise visit.

Francis Xavier Johnson says his job seems safe at least for another year, but he had to promise the board of trustees that he wouldn’t mention dropping football again.

“So let me see if I have it all straight,” he says, talking while he chews on a sausage-egg-and-cheese biscuit. “The great Teddy Delmonico was murdered, and then his partner in crime, this Farrington guy, gets murdered about the same time. But the two murders apparently aren’t connected. And Teddy’s widow almost gets killed by his son, who killed dear old Dad, and then she wins election to Congress, but she might not ever serve, because she was in cahoots with the Farrington guy, who she was banging.”

“Francis,” Mrs. Johnson says, motioning toward the little girl, who seems to be hanging on her granddad’s every word as she works on a pancake about half her size.

“’Scuse me,” Goat says, “but that is one hell of a fu-um, funny story.”

I assure my old Hill buddy that he has the basic facts just about right.

“And,” he adds, “my favorite knucklehead almost gets his butt killed in the process. Good thing you weren’t pretty to begin with, Willie. That ear kind of gives you character.”

I tell him if he likes my damn ear so much, I can arrange to give him one just like it.

IT WAS all in the paper this morning. We ran the stem-winder that tried to tie it up in a nice, bloody bundle. Neither Wheelie, Sarah, nor Sally bitched about the length, which was considerable.

The story yesterday, in which the transcript of Brady Delmonico’s recording explained chapter and verse that he did it and why he did it, and that he was glad he did it, sold some papers, I’m sure, and the editors made sure that we teased our shrinking readership into buying the Sunday rag so they could get the whole story.

Well, nobody gets the whole story. There’s always something you can’t write. But we definitely threw them some red meat. On the way back to our table, I saw open newspapers at three different booths. In the dying days of print journalism, that constitutes a tsunami of interest.

IT WAS necessary to bring up the fact that the Delmonico line has been wiped out. There will be no more of them. Teddy’s pride and carelessness led to Charlie’s death, which led Brady to murder his father all those years later and set the wheels in motion for Brady’s own death.

I can’t imagine what it must feel like to be in Kathy Simmons’s shoes. I can only hope that she finds some solace in her second act with a husband who seems to truly care for her, and with a couple of stepchildren with whom she can share Christmases. No, that won’t close the hole in her heart, but it might make the damn thing shrink a little.

I know a little about loss, having pissed away three marriages, at least two of which might have worked out if I had kept my zipper in the locked position more often. But losing two kids like that, I can’t imagine. Even now, with Andi approaching her thirtieth birthday, the thought of anything happening to her is too awful to dwell on for long.

Speaking of second acts—well, make that third acts, since Kate did have a second marriage after ours blew up—Kate and Marcus Green will be doing the deed soon. We got our invitation in the mail Thursday.

“Does that make you feel weird?” Cindy asked me. After the last three weeks, I told her, I have a high tolerance for weird. Plus, all three of my former wives found that there was life after Willie. Actually after Kate and Marcus tie the knot, the three of them will have done the walk a total of five more times at least. I’m not sure about Chandler Holmquist, my second wife. I lost track after I heard she and her third husband had split.

So seeing my former spouses bouncing back only makes me pleased that maybe this crappy world is going to get a little bit happier, a least for a while.

“Wonder if they’ll raise your rent,” Andy says. “That Marcus, he knows how to squeeze a dollar.”

The thought has occurred to me, but I have enough dirt on my favorite ambulance-chaser to fill a dump truck, so maybe he’ll go easy on us.

It also was necessary to dodge the fact that I know someone who knows who relieved Mills Farrington of his life and might have orchestrated the deed himself. I can’t write that, or Big Boy Sunday would have one of his junior assassins take me for a ride.

And even if I could, I don’t think I would.

Don’t get me wrong. I don’t really approve of murder. But if you had asked me to make a list of people who most needed killing, Mills Farrington probably would have made the top ten. Hell, even after he got caught and did some time in that country-club prison, he was planning to keep the money he stole.

I talked to Big Boy yesterday. He called to say certain parties connected with the Rock of Ages Community Church were excited to learn that there was a chance of getting at least some of their money back.

“The elders are thinking they might be able to break ground after all, when all this mess is cleared up,” he said. “Like the preacher said, the Lord moves in mysterious ways.”

I noted that sometimes the Lord has a little help.

“Um, yeah. You might say that.”

He paused, no doubt to take a bite out of some animal product.

“You know, Willie, I can’t emphasize enough how important it is for you to keep what I told you the other day under your hat. It would grieve me to see something bad happen to my favorite African-Caucasian.”

I assured Big Boy that the vault was sealed. Having been given a pass by the Grim Reaper five days ago, I am more than eager to keep breathing awhile longer.

Big Boy asked me about the ear. He’s seen the picture my bosses insisted on running, the better to impress our readers as to just how far we’ll go to get a story. Or maybe just to show them how bat-shit crazy some of us are.

I told him that it wasn’t going to win any beauty pageants, but that the ear worked about as well as it did before.

“Well,” he said, “that’s the important thing, ain’t it? I never saw a woman yet, threw a man out of bed on account of an ear.

“Now, if he’d aimed a little bit lower …”

I haven’t been in touch with Felicia since the story about her Farrington connection came out. A nurse with whom I used to play doctor back on the Hill told me that she was “out of the woods” as far as mortal danger. I’m glad for that. Maybe someday Felicia will realize that what I’ve written about her is somewhat counterbalanced by the fact that I did try to save her pretty butt from an assassin. I was a split second late, but it’s the thought that counts.

Felicia isn’t going to be nominated for sainthood, but it is difficult for me to ever feel truly malevolent toward someone with whom I have shared sheets. The story one of our political guys wrote for this morning’s paper makes it seem at least sixty-forty that she won’t be allowed to take her seat in the House, and that could be punishment enough for a woman who always seemed to want a little bit more than what she had.

Whatever L.D. Jones’s boys and the commonwealth’s attorney come up with regarding her role in helping Mills Farrington hide his ill-gotten gains, I’d bet that there’s a suspended sentence and a few hundred hours of community service in Felicia’s future.

And I don’t count that House seat as gone yet either. Americans have short memories, and there’s always another scandal just around the corner to redirect our teensy attention spans.

Whatever happens to Felicia, she does have that $3 million life-insurance policy to fall back on, unless the insurance company’s bean counters find a way to keep it for themselves. Whoever wrote that policy must be less than thrilled to find out that she didn’t do the deed.

A FEW fuckups ago, I covered the state house for the paper, back before it was determined that my talents would be put to better use covering drug deals gone bad and the inevitable dirt naps that ensued.

The man who preceded me on that beat didn’t give me a lot of advice. He was old school, meaning that you played cards and drank with the senators and delegates, and they told you things they shouldn’t have. The tradeoff, if you wanted to keep playing, was that you never published the really good stuff.

I think he disapproved of my oh-so-serious, post-Watergate beliefs on how journalism should be conducted. Don’t get me wrong, I’ve gotten shit-faced with more than one Great Man (and they were almost all men back then). But they knew, after a while, that what they said, unless we both understood that it was either off the record or not for attribution, might wind up in the next day’s paper with their name attached.

Yeah, I missed a few poker games. You can’t have everything.

The predecessor did tell me something, though, that rings truer by the day.

As he was cleaning out his desk on his last day, he put his shaky, arthritic hand on my shoulder.

“Boy,” he said, (I was twenty-five at the time, and I’m not completely sure he knew my first name), “you can go far in American politics if you have no conscience and are incapable of embarrassment.”

I think about what the old guy said, and I think of Felicia Delmonico, lying in that hospital bed and chafing to get back in the fight, and I figure she might land on her feet.

That doesn’t exactly comfort me, but it does make me smile and shake my head.

WE SPEND the usual two-hours-plus hogging Joe’s best table and drinking cheap Bloody Marys.

Our waitress, ever subtle, comes by sometime after noon, feigns surprise, and says, “Are you all still here?”

“I can’t believe they don’t just kick you all out,” Stella says, as she twists her chartreuse curls and finishes what must be her fifth Bloody.

We take the hint. When the bills come, we barely break into triple-digits on the food and equal that in liquor. Goat leaves a tip that equals his tab, which makes the waitress a little less frowny.

“Don’t worry,” Goat says when we express shock, “this is a business expense.”

In that case, R.P. asks, why don’t you just pick up everybody’s check?

“Aw,” Goat says, “I don’t want to spoil you guys.”

As we’re leaving, my cell phone buzzes.

Sally Velez says the publisher wants to know what we’re going to do for a follow-up, and when I think I can get a sit-down with Felicia Delmonico.

“He says you can take some comp days once this gets tied up.”

The way I figure it, that ought to be sometime after Christmas. Will Felicia get seated in Congress? Will she go to jail? Will L.D. Jones and his force ever find the guy who killed Mills Farrington? Will all those investors get at least some of their money back?

If I ever really called in my chips on comp days, I could take another month off every year, but what the hell am I going to do with it? I don’t play golf or fish. Drinking and smoking are the closest things I have to leisure activities.

Cindy has said she’s sure we could think of something, but I asked her what we would do with the other twenty-three-and-a-half hours of the day. She mentioned Viagra.

I explain to Sally, who should know it already, that this story is a bottomless pit. We can dig to China and maybe not know everything.

“Well,” Sally says, “Leighton’s in today. I’m sure she can take over if you’re not up to it.”

I tell her that I’ll be there about three.

First, I need a nap.