CHAPTER ELEVEN

X

Friday

Andi is sitting on the porch outside when I get to Peggy’s place. She looks like she’s been crying.

She phoned me this morning. My daughter doesn’t call very often. When she does, she has my attention.

“It’s about Quip,” she said. I told her I’d be there in a flash, as soon as I woke up and grabbed some clothes.

I walk up onto the porch and sit in the chair beside Andi’s. I find we do better heart-to-hearts if we’re not looking at each other, for some reason.

I wait.

“He wants me to marry him,” she says at last.

Silly me. I think that’s good news. No, it turns out. That’s bad. Congratulations do not appear to be in order.

“I don’t want to marry him,” Andi says. “He says he wants to give our baby a name.”

“He’ll have a name. They won’t let you leave the hospital if he doesn’t have a name.”

I don’t know if that’s true or not. I do know that, as opposed to 1960, when I was born sans dad, there isn’t much downside to not having a proud papa around. Must be hell on the cigar business.

I’m no fan of Thomas Jefferson Blandford V, but I note to Andi that there must have been something appealing about the young man, since she chose to live with him for a couple of years.

“He’s OK,” my daughter says. “But he’s not responsible. He won’t be good at parenting. I just know it.

“Plus, I don’t love him.”

It kind of warms my heart to hear my flinty, hard-as-nails daughter talk of love, even in the negative. It takes willpower, though, to keep from asking her if she couldn’t at least give it a try. Surely Peggy has given her a primer on the hard road facing a single mother, even in this enlightened century. Surely even a feckless Quip Blandford would be better than nothing at all.

I ask about this.

“Peggy said I’d be better off on my own than with somebody I didn’t really care about. Some ‘scumbag,’ I think is how she put it.”

Great, I’m thinking. Thanks, Mom. Guess you figure on having your granddaughter and great-grandson as permanent houseguests.

I ask Andi what Quip said when she turned down his chance at three o’clock feedings and dirty diapers.

“He got mad. He said he was going to make sure he was part of his baby’s life, even if he had to hire a lawyer to do it.”

I am sure young Quip, or rather his well-heeled daddy, can afford all the lawyers it would take. I make a mental note to talk to the little shithead, something Andi makes me promise not to do.

“If you beat him up,” she says, “I’ll kill you.”

“So why am I here?”

“I dunno,” she says, actually extending one of her hands in my direction. Normally, daughterly shows of affection by Andi are about as common as my ordering a club soda at Penny Lane. “I guess I just wanted to talk about it with you.”

I am proud of her, actually, for being the strong woman she’s growing up to be. She knows what she wants. She isn’t afraid of taking the rocky road of single parenthood to get there. And she’s smart enough to know a bad husband could be worse than no husband at all. Still I’m not sure she knows what she’s signing on for.

Maybe, I suggest, the three of us could talk.

“It won’t work,” Andi says. “He thinks I’ll be raising the baby in some slum. He said he didn’t want his son to be raised like white trash.”

I silently wonder whether Quip knows that his soon-to-be son’s great-grandfather was African American. In Quip’s world, that might be enough to quash any hopes of bringing my grandson up in West End affluence, although the blue bloods, or at least the ones who can see the multihued future, are getting more open-minded.

I assure her that, as the mother, she is holding all the high cards. I do worry about Quip, though. If money talks, his father’s assets could put on quite a damn filibuster.

I promise her that I’ll see what I can do. I further promise that I will do that without busting young Quip’s skull. It is a promise I hope I can keep.

I check in on Peggy, who seems to be a little better, mental health-wise.

I should chastise her for advising her granddaughter to forgo marrying a rich man who can afford to double-team her upcoming baby with nannies.

I’m not sure, though, that Peggy isn’t right.

After all, look how well I turned out.

L.D. JONES IS in his office. He’s busy, his secretary says, after she’s told him who’s calling. When I tell her that I’m there to ask about the silver dollars, he gets un-busy.

“You better not be bullshitting me,” he says. I produce a copy of the letter. He reads it. I can see his lips moving.

“Why,” he asks me, slamming the letter down on his desk, “are you causing me so much trouble?”

“I didn’t write the letter. I didn’t ask anybody to send me a letter. I don’t even know why whoever sent it sent it to me.”

“They did it because you’re the nosiest son of a bitch in Richmond! Why the hell wouldn’t they send it to you? Short of hiring a skywriter, how could they get the word out any better?”

“All I need to know from you is if it’s true. Did those girls have silver dollars on them?”

The chief says he can’t tell me that. I tell him that I don’t intend to run this particular bit of information right now, but that I am retaining my right to do so at a later date. But if I don’t get confirmation from him, I will put something in the paper about it tomorrow. I don’t mention the fact that Kate and the publicity-addicted Marcus Green soon also will be made aware of the letter’s presence.

“Just nod if it’s true,” I say, making it easy on our beleaguered chief.

He glares, and then he nods.

I also ask L.D. if he doesn’t think that this might, just maybe, sprinkle a light dusting of doubt on Ronnie Sax’s guilt.

“Until we have something more convincing to go on than the pencil-scratching of some anonymous jerk, nothing’s changed,” the chief says.

I tell L.D. he can keep the letter. He thanks me for nothing. You’d think the police would be more appreciative of helpful tips from civilians.

I DO PAY a visit to Marcus Green’s office. Kate has a playpen set up in her space. In the playpen is Grace, her six-month-old bundle of joy. I wonder if whatever bar or eatery Andi’s working at half a year from now will be so child-friendly.

Marcus comes out of his office. He frowns toward the playpen where Grace is on all fours, gurgling and looking up at us like we’re the most amazing things she’s ever seen. I can tell that Marcus has had to decide between bending the rules and keeping the best lawyer he’s ever going to get for what he’s paying. Still he can’t resist kneeling and letting Grace wrap her tiny hand around his finger.

They react favorably to the letter.

Kate starts to ask me why I didn’t share this with her earlier. I cut her off by telling her to look at the postmark. Mailed two days ago.

“It just came in yesterday. I rushed right over.”

Kate notes that one day later isn’t rushing, but she’s somewhat appeased.

“Damn,” Marcus says. “Maybe the little bastard didn’t do it.”

“You mean you ever doubted your client’s innocence?”

Marcus’s facial expression silently asks me if I was born yesterday.

“And this crap about the silver dollars? That’s true?”

I assure him that it is.

He and Kate both thank me for the good news.

I tell them I’m not going to write about it, at least not right now. However, I’m sure Marcus will use it to make his case for bail for Ronnie Sax.

IT IS HARD to keep a secret in a newsroom, even one as decimated as ours. By the time I show up for work, the usual air of upheaval is in the wind: clusters of people speaking in muted tones, glancing occasionally at Wheelie’s office, where two men in suits sit with their backs to us.

“Who is it this time?” I ask Sally.

“Goddamned Friedman.”

“Friedman? No shit?”

“No shit.”

We’ve been aware for some time that we might be sold. What once was a family paper became a chain, even before I signed on. That old feeling that we were protected retainers of our familial guardians, safe from the ravages of corporate America, took wing a long time ago, along with pensions, matching 401(k) funds, and job security.

And then, some genius upstairs thought it would be a good idea to buy six more newspapers in various parts of the South with borrowed money. In 2007. Just before the crash. If you took out a home mortgage about that time with 10 percent down, you might be able to guess what happened.

Long story short, the bank has us by the short ones. And corporate keeps throwing pieces of our enterprise overboard, hoping what’s left of our tempest-tossed vessel eventually will be light enough to float again. One of the pieces being prepped for cement overshoes is our paper. At least three other chains have had people snooping around here, kicking the tires.

But Friedman? Jesus. Those guys have ruined four good newspapers that I know of. They never saw a newsroom they couldn’t shrink. The rule of thumb for the print peons always has been one of us for every 1,000 circulation. So it becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy: Every time circulation drops another grand because we’re more or less giving it away online, a reporter, photographer, designer or editor bites the dust. (HR seems immune from this somehow.) The paper gets a little thinner, and more people drop their subscriptions, so we cut more, ad nauseam.

“The perfect paper,” Enos Jackson once said after a few bourbons, “would be one staffer and one reader. Hardly any overhead at all.”

We’re headed that way, and if Friedman buys us, that will grease the skids. One of their papers, in a college town two states away, made a deal with the journalism department to let their kids cover city council and the school board as part of their course. Will work for grades. Great experience for the kids. Not so great for the readers.

I’m not presenting myself as a knight in shining armor, giving all for the public good. Like so many of my coworkers, I’m just a busybody who loves getting paid to snoop. Most of our readers, I’d just as soon not break bread with them. But if we don’t keep an eye on the thieves and idiots, who the hell will?

“You’ll miss us when we’re gone,” I heard Jackson say one time when he was being lambasted by an unhappy reader. Then Jackson laughed and hung up.

I asked him what was so funny.

Jackson looked over at me.

“He said he’d like to have the opportunity.”

WAT CHENAULT HAS me in a quandary. I would dearly love to cut his legs out from under him. If I do, though, I might not be able to dig deep enough to really get to the cesspool bottom of all this. I’m not feeling good about Ms. Leigh Adkins.

I have a couple of hours to do a little digging. If this gets back to Chenault, I might be hollowing out a nice little professional grave for myself.

I catch Johnny Grimes by phone before nine, which is always good. After nine, Johnny’s not much good for information. By ten, he has trouble speaking in coherent sentences.

He was a great reporter for us once upon a time. We nominated him for Pulitzers twice, and he was a finalist once, but after the New York Fucking Times got through giving itself three or four and the Washington Post got a couple and they threw the obligatory one to some dog-ass weekly that caught the mayor screwing a goat, there weren’t any left for Johnny Grimes.

He and I used to drink together. When people tell me I have a drinking problem, I tell them they should have seen Johnny Grimes.

Johnny lost control of the bottle sometime in his thirties, when I was still a pup and viewed him as the epitome of what the hard-boiled newsman should be. Perhaps I can attribute some of my missteps to the fact that I didn’t choose the right role models. Johnny missed assignments, once passed out during a city council meeting and was known to fall asleep at his desk. The managing editor finally got so mad at him that he sent him to sports, where bad quickly became worse, abetted by professional drinkers like Bootie Carmichael. Yeah, I was there too, buying rounds and listening to the stories.

They finally let him go, and we assumed he’d turn up in an obit. We tried to keep in touch with him, and he disappeared for a time, taking a job out in Montana, where sobriety standards apparently are a bit less restrictive.

And then, one day, he resurfaced, at the Southside Herald. It’s a weekly with about 5,000 circulation and a staff to match. But Johnny’s done well there. They tend to overlook the bottle in his desk, because he’s far and away the best journalist they’ve ever had.

“Willie!” he says, shouting into the phone. I can hear a ball game going in the background. “What can I do you for?”

I explain that I need some off-the-record information on a certain real-estate developer. I don’t show all my cards, but I do mention that we’re being sued after reviving some of Mr. Chenault’s sordid history.

“Were there any other incidents like that, maybe stuff you’ve heard?”

I can hear ice cubes clinking.

“He’s not exactly been what you’d call a saint,” Johnny says at last. “There’s always talk. Town’s so damn small you can’t fart without somebody smelling it.”

“But this would be about girls, probably way below the age of consent.”

Johnny tells me about a hushed-up problem with a female student at the local high school where Chenault was helping coach the girls soccer team “that happened before my time here.” Why anyone would let Wat Chenault coach a girls’ anything team is beyond me.

“And there were rumors that shit like that is what made Mrs. Chenault leave him. But nobody ever brought charges.”

“Did any of that involve violence?”

“Not that I know of. But Wat’s definitely capable. You really don’t want to cross him.”

Too late for that.

I get a couple of names. We talk about old times, the way we want to remember them.

“Remember the corn kernels?” Johnny asks. He doesn’t have to say anything more, but we take turns telling the story to each other anyhow.

One of our corporate masters, an old Virginia type with more manners than brains, got busted for baiting by the game department. He had spread corn kernels all over an open field the night before he and a bunch of his buddies were going to gather and shoot some doves. The wildlife folks don’t consider that to be fair play. The asshole managed to get himself on B2 in Sunday’s paper, complete with a mug shot.

On Monday morning, the guy comes into the lobby downstairs and finds kernels of corn leading from the front door to the elevator. He gets off on the top floor, and the trail continues, right to his office. Everyone knew Johnny had done it, but nobody could prove it, and he was still enough of an asset that nobody really wanted to.

Johnny and I laugh a little, but I already can sense the sun of sobriety starting to set on my old compatriot.

He asks me to share with him “in case the publisher down here has the balls to let us print anything about it.”

I promise Johnny I’ll pay him back. He tells me to come down and help him kill a bottle sometime.

I tell him I will, but we both know I’m lying.