Doing laundry, I found the business card my parents got at Sam’s funeral, so I went to the man’s corporate office the next morning, asking to see him. No, I explained to the receptionist, I didn’t have an appointment, but I was willing to wait. After all, the building was only about five blocks from the station.
When I told her I’d come for some advice, she assumed it was financial advice, since that was his job, and asked me to take a seat. After making a call, she stepped down a hallway. Minutes later, she told me it could be a while, and it might be better to come back another day.
“I don’t mind waiting.” I smiled to assure her I wouldn’t be a problem.
This was not an unfamiliar technique in news gathering. It’s the strategy of Sitting Until They Feel Sorry for You. If that doesn’t work, you Sit Until They’ll Do Anything to Get You to Leave.
Rookie newsies sometimes worry about causing scenes, but that only happens if business owners escalate things. They may threaten to call the cops but seldom do. The downside to having police chase away the media is that then owners have to explain to their business neighbors, customers, or employees why the media was there in the first place. And those discussions can sometimes be touchy. This wasn’t one of those times, but bystanders can’t always be sure what to believe.
About forty minutes later, Jeremy Gage stepped into the lobby, dressed much the same as he had been at the funeral—dark suit and tie. Appropriate attire whether mourning friends or consulting clients. I recognized him from the videotape. He recognized me from the news. I held out my hand, but he didn’t take it. I doubted his snub had anything to do with avoiding the H1N1 flu.
“I know who you are,” Jeremy said, “and you have a lot of nerve coming here.”
“I’m sorry,” I replied. “I just want to clear up a misunderstanding from Sam Pierce’s funeral.”
“What would you know about his funeral?”
“This gets a bit complicated, but you gave your condolences and business card to an elderly couple. They were my parents, not his.”
“What?” He looked displeased.
“Several people made the same mistake,” I said. “His parents apparently weren’t there. It sounded like they might have been at odds with him.”
“And your parents were there because …?” The tenor of his voice made me think my answer better be good, or this meeting was over.
“I’ll be honest. Because they’re busybodies. But you seemed like a friend of his, and I didn’t want you left with the impression his family ignored your offer.”
“What offer was that?”
“To share some memories with them.”
Jeremy paused briefly, like my remark might even have jogged a special memory. “You definitely weren’t a friend of his,” he said. “So why would you care?”
“Because you clearly were a friend. And I didn’t want you to think his parents didn’t care.”
“Except now I know for sure they didn’t care,” he said. “Until your visit, I thought they attended the ceremony but just gave me the cold shoulder. Can you imagine actually boycotting your son’s funeral?”
I shook my head, knowing from conducting numerous television interviews with grieving parents that there’s nothing worse than burying your own child. Especially following an act of violence.
“Do you mind if we continue this discussion in your office?” I asked. The receptionist pretended to be filing papers, but I could tell she was following our conversation. And I thought he might loosen up more without witnesses.
“Sorry, Ms. Spartz, you may look harmless, but I’m uneasy being alone with you,” Jeremy said. “At best you’re a reporter. At worst, you’re a murderer. Neither is the kind of character I care to associate with.”
At those words, the receptionist stopped even pretending to file and followed our squabble with her mouth partly open.
“How about we compromise and I take you out to lunch?”
“Why would I want to spend an hour with you?” he asked.
“Because I didn’t kill Sam.”
I hated having to justify the rumor with a denial. And I wasn’t certain he believed me. The receptionist definitely didn’t.
Even though the joke was getting old, I promised we’d remain in public view the entire time and that I wouldn’t throw my drink in his face.
A server stepped over to take our orders. I’d let Jeremy pick the lunch spot and he opted for Murray’s, a historic downtown steakhouse. We didn’t know each other well enough to share their famed silver-butter-knife steak for two. Jeremy went for a top sirloin; I went for the cobb salad because I’ve eaten enough beef to last the rest of my life.
As we waited, Jeremy opened up about Sam. He seemed to appreciate being able to talk about his friend. Reporters sometimes play the role of listener when others are uncomfortable talking about a murder victim with his friends or family. They think they’re helping by changing the subject. But that’s not how grief works.
Sam Pierce grew up in a tight family in the Little Italy neighborhood of Chicago, where his mother had grown up. To my surprise, he graduated from Northwestern’s prestigious school of journalism. Which made the fact that he’d become a gossip hack even more woeful.
When he moved to Minneapolis for an entry-level newspaper job, he stayed in touch by sending flowers to his mother every other week. Such devotion seemed a contrast to the unpleasant man I’d known, so I was interested in hearing more about his background.
“He became friendly with an area florist and over time their relationship bloomed.” Jeremy smiled at his pun.
“You’ve used that line before,” I said. “Or do you vary it with ‘blossomed’?”
“Actually, I’m stealing his line. He was good with words. I’m a numbers man.”
Jeremy went on to tell how Sam brought his lady friend home to Chicago to meet his parents. They were jubilant. All was well. There was talk of a big wedding. With magnificent floral arrangements.
“Whenever she sent flowers to anyone personally, his betrothed used a signature bouquet of Minnesota wildflowers. Quite eye-catching.”
I thought back to the vase on the funeral video and had an idea of who might have sent my mystery bouquet to the station. But our food arrived, so our table grew quiet except for knives and forks scraping china.
Jeremy resumed talk of the sunny future ahead for Sam and his bride. A honeymoon in Tuscany. The secret family recipe for lasagna. And especially grandchildren, to please his parents.
But there was one complication. Sam was gay, though deeply conflicted.
“He was seeing a man on the side,” Jeremy said. “His best man.”
His betrothed caught them entangled one week before the wedding. Wilted with shame, she called the engagement off. His parents were mortified by the scandal. Extremely religious, they disowned him when they learned the details of the breakup.
Shunned by his family, they hadn’t spoken since. And now they could never speak to him again.
“Not that they particularly cared, as we’ve already established.” Jeremy sounded harsh.
“Where do you fit in all this?” I asked, even though I had my hunch.
Jeremy was the other man. And by his side, Sam embraced his sexuality. Sleeping with women, as well as men, had been his way of denying being gay. Staying in a comfortable closet.
“But you know what they say,” Jeremy said. “Bi today, gay tomorrow.”
So circumstances outed Sam to friends and family. I couldn’t help but think this new facet of Sam’s life offered some insight into why he was so interested in the size of Buzz’s … you know.
“His parents refused to ever meet me,” Jeremy said.
This was beginning to sound comparable to me not wanting Garnett to meet my parents. Comparable enough to make me feel guilty. But I wasn’t going to discuss my personal mistakes with Jeremy.
“Because we’d never met,” he said, “I simply assumed they were the older couple at the funeral. Especially when they acted uncomfortable with my questions.”
“If Sam had been as close to his mother as you described, the rejection by his family must have been distressing.”
“An understatement,” he replied. “They made him bitter about life.”
“Some people might argue that’s a good quality for a gossip columnist,” I said. “What did you think of his writing?”
Jeremy told me he read only the newspaper’s business section, while Sam never read the business section unless it featured a juicy bankruptcy or corporate scandal he could glean for his “Piercing Eyes” column.
“Sam’s work routinely made people angry,” he said. “Sometimes so angry it scared him.”
“That’s happened to me a time or two on the job.”
“Did anyone ever egg your car? Or leave a dead animal on your porch? Or throw a drink in your face?”
Jeremy picked up his glass of water and shook the ice. Now he was mocking me. And since his lover was the one who was dead, I didn’t dredge up details of nasty things story subjects have done to me. I also didn’t point out that a lot of what Sam Pierce wrote was unfair or just plain wrong.
“I suspect Sam wasn’t nearly as insulted about our little tussle as he let on,” I said.
“Delighted with the exposure,” Jeremy answered.
“You must be devastated by his death.”
“Actually, we ended things a couple months ago.”
Now I was curious but stayed quiet in case he’d keep talking. But he didn’t. It made me wonder if I was starting to lose my touch for getting people to bare their souls, but then I realized this entire conversation was a giant coup since I was considered a suspect in the homicide of the man we were discussing.
“May I ask what happened?”
He said no. “It’s personal.”
To be fair, he had shared plenty, and we didn’t even have the check yet.
“Do you love Sam or hate him?” I asked, thinking his answer might yield a clue about the breakup.
“I respected what we had together,” he said. “That’s why I came to his funeral.”
“His old girlfriend wasn’t there, was she?” I asked.
“No, but she sent flowers. Her trademark arrangement. You’d recognize it if you knew what to look for.”
I had no doubt. “Wildflowers, did you say? Sounds beautiful. I might have some business for her. What’s her name?”
But he saw through my ruse and stayed mum. So I changed the subject.
“What did she think of Sam’s column?” I had considered him one of the most unlovable media figures in the market and was impressed two people could both have adored him.
“I’m not sure she read him either,” Jeremy said. “She only bought the newspaper for the crossword puzzle. She’s an aficionado of word games.”
Just as I was handing my credit card to our waitress, she turned away and rushed to an empty table, where she picked up a bill. She glanced around, then headed toward the front door, nudging the restaurant maître d’. They both stepped outside, then came back, shaking their heads in disgust. I realized the dine-and-dash thief, or an ingesting imitator, had struck again.
Later, I thought back on Sam’s life. Lonely or not, if anyone else’s family had spurned them, Sam would have put it in the newspaper. Perhaps carrying pain of his own made it easier to inflict it on others. And inflicting it on others made it easier for someone to put a bullet in him. But who?