Bryan Gruley - The Skeleton Box

I dialed.

“Yeah,” she said.

Music blared in the background, and I thought I heard an announcer’s voice narrating a hockey game, heard the names Maltby and Draper.

She’s at the Anchor Bar, I thought. “It’s Gus.”

“What?” She was yelling. “I can’t hear you.”

“It’s Gus,” I shouted.

“Hang on.”

I heard a clamor of voices talking over Hendrix and clinking bottles. I pictured Joanie stepping outside onto the sidewalk on Fort Street, coatless and shivering.

“What’s up?” she said.

“I’m calling about Whistler.”

“Why didn’t you call before?”

“I was busy. What do you know?”

“Oh, jeez, this is weird.”

“What?”

“So, long story short: Whistler had turned into this classic investigative reporter, always working on some big secret project that’s going to win a Pulitzer and hardly ever getting anything in the paper. His career was in the crapper four or five years ago, the desk was trying to move him to one of the suburban bureaus, but he told them to stuff it. Then, a couple of years ago, he almost got fired.”

“For what?”

“He was working on a story about a professional burglar.”

“No.”

“Yeah. A real pro. Rips off the rich folks in the Pointes and Oakland County. Apparently Whistler got a little deeper into this story than he should have. Followed the guy around, actually saw him pull some jobs.”

I did not want to believe this.

“Are you sure?” I said.

I thought of my mother’s house, and the sliding glass door I hadn’t fixed.

“I’m sure,” Joanie said.

Mom, I thought, had had Whistler and me to dinner one Sunday. She had complained about the door, how it wouldn’t lock right. He was sitting there, hearing it as he finished his cherry cobbler.

“No way,” I said.

I felt sick to my stomach.

“It’s what I was told, Gus.”

“By whom?”

“A couple of people, but mainly his ex.”

Whistler’s ex. The woman who always wanted to get to the crime scene before the cops. Creepy good, he’d said. I sat back on my desk, woozy.

“What’s her name? Barbara something?”

“Beverly. Beverly Taggart. Byline had a middle ‘C.’”

“Tags,” I said.

“Whatever. She wasn’t happy. Said Whistler owes her money.”

“Hang on a second.” Tawny Jane had popped up on the TV. She was standing in front of the sheriff’s department. She had a news bulletin. The police had released Tatch and the other born-agains. Breck remained in custody.

“Sorry,” I said. “How did Whistler not get fired?”

“How else? One of the top Freep guys is a drinking buddy. They just killed the B-and-E stories and told him he better come up with something else good. So he holed himself up in some fourth-floor cranny for months, locked the door, shooed people away. The bosses started looking for excuses to can him. He finally got in trouble spending money on long-distance phone calls and outside experts and other stuff regular reporters can’t touch.”

I picked up the credit card I’d tossed on my desk. Whistler had used it to pay a consulting firm $450. But what was the firm’s name? I kicked myself for not asking Philo when he’d told me about it.

“Then,” Joanie said, “on Christmas Eve, he just e-mailed them, ‘I quit,’ and disappeared.”

“Christmas Eve?”

“Dramatic, huh? Why?”

“Because he started at the Pilot in November.”

“Are you sure?”

“Might even have been late October. He wrote the annual turkey story.”

“Oh. Well. Maybe my source got it wrong.”

I dropped the credit card and grabbed the Media North cell phone Whistler had left behind. He had insisted, as if he were doing me a favor, on using his own Detroit phone until the end of the year, when his service contract was up. But now I thought, no, Gus, you dipshit-that’s when the Free Press shut his Free Press phone off, when he tendered his resignation.

“No,” I said. “I am a fucking idiot.”

When Whistler joined the Pilot, he hadn’t yet quit the Free Press. His bosses there must have assumed he was doing his investigative reporter thing, digging a dry hole, looking for news outside the newsroom, whatever vapid saying he used. He wasn’t looking for a place to land in retirement. He didn’t give a shit about fishing. He was in Starvation Lake looking for the very same thing Breck was.

“Fire his butt,” Joanie said.

I almost laughed. “He fired himself,” I said. “He’s gone.”

“Good.”

“No, not good.” Tawny Jane was on the tube again, recapping the day’s Bingo Night Burglary news. The cops hadn’t let the Channel Eight crew come up to Tatch’s camp, so they shot from up on the ridge. I watched the camera pan the hill, passing Soupy’s parents’ house.

I had an idea.

“Could you get me that woman’s number?”

“Who?”

“Beverly Taggart.”

“Hold on. I might have it in my purse.” She did. I wrote it on my blotter. “Is there anything-oh, wait, one last little thing. Not that it matters, but it’s funny.”

“What?”

“You know how Whistler’s legendary for smashing computers?”

“Yeah.”

“Seems it’s not an anger thing. The guy would get freaked out on deadline and have like a panic attack. He wasn’t mad. He just lost it under pressure.”

“Really?”

“Typical investigative reporter, huh? Can’t handle the real stuff.”

“I guess. Listen, I owe you.”

“That’s right,” Joanie said. “When are you going to come visit again? Maybe less business and more pleasure next time?”

“Soon,” I lied.

I slid into my desk chair and let my head fall into my hands.

How had I missed so much? How had I let Whistler put so much over on me? I looked up to him. I trusted him. He was me. A reporter. If you can’t trust a fellow scribe, who can you trust? he had said. It’s me and you and the rest of the world, right?

I’d had the puck in my hands, and I had dropped it.

I sat up and looked at the phone. I heard one of the Channel Eight anchors babbling about a budget vote in Elk Rapids. I had calls to make. I was afraid of what else I might find. But I had to look anyway.

Philo was first. He was still up, watching the news. I told him I needed the name of that consulting firm Whistler had hired.

“Why?” he said. “It’s late.”

“I want to find out what the hell they billed us for. Maybe I can get it back.”

“I’m afraid it’s not going to save the Pilot, ” Philo said.

“Give me a fucking break,” I said. “Just do it. In two days I’ll be out of your hair and you can go back to playing newspaper exec.”

There was a lengthy silence before he said, “Wait.” I heard a keyboard clacking and Philo mumbling something about the idiots in accounting. I liked Philo, but I didn’t have time to be nice to him now.

“All right,” he said. “Something information services. Gawd-ralt? Gawd-ree-oh?”

“Spell it.”

I wrote it down as he recited, “G-A-U-D-R-E-A-U-L-T.”

“GAW-droh,” I said.

“I guess. Gaudreault Information Services. Grosse Pointe.”

I stared at the penciled word, recalling the voice I had heard, first around the pool table at Aggeliki’s, later on the answering machine in Joanie’s loft.

Frenchy. Albert Gaudreault. The computer geek.

Frenchy, whom Whistler had hired. Frenchy, who had lost one lover to me and thought Joanie would be next. Frenchy, who probably had known Joanie and I were going to meet with Reilly and Repelmaus at the golf course-and might have been working for them, too, for all I knew-and who had to have been the one who had stolen my mother’s lockbox and given it, no doubt for a price, to Luke Whistler.