JACK AND DANNY WOLF were having breakfast at the Park Grill, on Battery Street. The Tribune was on the table between them, like a centerpiece.
“How did you find him?” Danny said to Jack.
“Let’s just say I had help.”
“From who I think?”
“A good newspaperman never reveals his sources,” Jack said.
He was seated with his back to the wall. Danny’s back was to the room. Danny looked over his shoulder now, as if wondering to whom his brother was speaking.
“Good newspaperman? Where?”
Jack sipped green tea. “Today I am.”
“You hear from our sister yet?” Danny said. He was in workout clothes, having come here straight from the gym.
“I haven’t spoken to her since the reading of the will. You know Jenny. She likes to keep you off balance.”
“Only now she’s the one off balance,” Danny said. “Or maybe down for the count. Bare-assed on the front page of the paper. I wonder what Mom thinks.”
“She’s not happy.”
“With her darling daughter?”
“Are you serious?” Jack said. “With me. She called first thing. How could I have done such a thing?”
Jack turned slightly in his chair. A waiter appeared with a fresh pot of tea at what Jack thought might have been world-record speed.
“How much did you have to pay the boyfriend?” Danny said.
The boyfriend’s name was Josh Bauer, from Jenny’s girls-gone-wild period. He’d sworn to her that he’d deleted the pictures from his phone. She believed him. And Joe Wolf had always thought she was the smart one.
“Let’s just say his life didn’t turn out the way he’d hoped it might after sitting next to Jenny in class,” Jack said. “He’s living in Vegas now, in what appears to be a constant state of debt. He said he hated doing this to her.”
“But he took the money.”
“Like the whore that he is.”
Danny grinned. “Imagine such a thing in a family paper.”
“Well, it is our family.”
“How does she keep her job at the high school?” Danny said.
“I’m already thinking about tomorrow’s front page after they fire her ass. No pun intended.”
“She deserves it, just for firing Kopka and Sawchuck,” Danny said.
“You were going to do the same damn thing when the season was over.”
“Hey, try to remember that we’re in this together.”
How could I ever forget such a thing?
They were at their usual corner table, no one close to them, plenty of privacy.
“The pictures just kind of fell into my lap,” Jack said. “We’re going to run a couple every day.” He smiled. “But you have to say that the timing of all this couldn’t have worked out better. As a circulation booster, our sister is the gift that just keeps on giving.”
There was, they both agreed, no possible way now that the other owners would give her the votes she needed to keep control of the team.
They sat in silence for a few minutes, eating the last of their breakfasts. It was Danny who finally spoke.
“Now we have to figure out how to deal with Thomas. I still can’t believe he turned around and better-dealed me.”
“I’ll deal with Thomas when the time comes,” Jack said as he waved for the check.
He handed the waiter his credit card. When the kid was gone, Jack leaned across the table, smiling again, and said in a soft voice, “Don’t you sometimes wish we could just kill them both?”