Dave Zeltserman - Fast Lane

He was lucky his wife happened to be sitting where she was when the car went through the wall. Even though he had the game rigged, he couldn’t have known that for sure, but it was still a safe bet. If a car never hit the house, well, that was that. And if a car happened to go through the room and somehow left his wife alive, his home insurance would have paid for the damages. As it turned out, he rolled the dice and they came up sevens and there wasn’t a damned thing anyone could do about it.

The night I gave up on the case, I was consoling myself with a few drinks when I ran into Eddie Braggs. Eddie was (and still is) the managing editor of the Examiner. We started exchanging war stories and when I told him about this guy getting away with murder, Eddie just about exploded.

Eddie got him on the phone and before long he was shouting and cursing like a crazy man. I had never seen him get mad before, and to be honest, I didn’t think it was possible. The twinkle or sparkle or whatever that was always in his eyes was gone. And that look of his, as if he was just busting a gut to tell you a hot one, was replaced by a cold dead whiteness.

Eddie fed this guy a fairy tale about how his paper had evidence proving the accident had been planned, and that he was going to keep the story on the front page until the bastard was cold and stiff with a rope burn around his neck.

He kept at it for almost an hour, his face growing beet red. It was all pretty laughable but the way Eddie was saying it you didn’t want to laugh. The guy should have called Eddie’s bluff and hung up on him, but listening to Eddie you could understand why he didn’t. He ended up letting Eddie get under his skin. He panicked and offered a bribe. The next day the Examiner ran the headline: WIFE MURDERER OFFERS EXAMINER’S EDITOR 50 GRAND TO WITHHOLD EVIDENCE.

That was it as far as the husband’s neck was concerned.

The thing with Eddie was that the Examiner had run several stories sympathetic to this guy. So when Eddie heard it was a scam, he took it personally. The Examiner (which to Eddie, was the same as himself) had been played for a jerk.

That’s just the way Eddie was. On meeting him you would think he was just this fat jolly guy looking to clown around and give you a little ribbing. And most of the time you would be right. But if you crossed him, or if he somehow got it in his head that you did, you’d better not blink. He’d go right for your jugular. And if he got a good enough grip, he’d end up shaking you until something broke.

I guess all this helps explain why I got so rattled when I found out about the anonymous letters. But I’m getting ahead of myself.

* * * * *

I spent most of the day debating whether or not to write about Debra Singer for my column. My deadline had arrived and I had nothing else. There wasn’t much Craig Singer could do except make some noise, and no matter how much he made he wouldn’t be able to hide the fact that he had sexually abused his daughter for years. If he sued me or filed charges for assault he’d have to explain why he waited until my column came out. Still, the way I was feeling, I didn’t know if I’d be able to handle even a little noise from him. I also didn’t want to risk making things tougher for Debra.

At four I headed over to the Examiner’s offices to ask Eddie to reprint one of my old columns. I made my usual walk around the city desk, meeting with folks and swapping stories. I had an uneasy feeling that something was wrong. In the past when I’d made my rounds, folks gathered around to shoot the breeze. This time people were avoiding me and I couldn’t figure out why.

I knocked on Eddie Braggs’ door and walked in. He was on the phone, and with his free hand signaled for me to sit down. He was only five foot four but must have weighed close to two hundred and fifty pounds. With his bald head and beard and the way he always seemed to be ready to bust out chuckling, he reminded me (at least when he wasn’t steamed and looking for blood) of one of Santa’s fatter and jollier helpers.

He got off the phone and reached out to shake hands. “You have a new ‘Fast Lane’ for me?”

“That’s why I came down here,” I told him. “It’s been a slow month and I’ve come up empty. I need to ask a favor and have you reprint one of my old stories.”

He leaned back and pursed his lips. “That’s not good, Johnny, really not good at all. That’s the fourth time this year. And the timing couldn’t be worse.”

“Why’s that?”

“There have been some discussions recently,” he said. “We’ve been trying to decide whether to drop your feature. I’ll tell you, I’m one of the few supporters you have left.”

I had to swallow with the way my throat was drying up on me. “What’s going on?”

“Probably no more than you expect,” he shrugged. “People are feeling you’ve been taking us for granted. That the last few years you haven’t been putting as much into your column as you should. And your popularity with our readers has been dropping.”

“I’ve got to disagree. Plenty of folks stop me to shake my hand.”

“I’m not saying you don’t have your share of readers. I’m saying you don’t have nearly as many as you used to. According to our marketing studies you’ve got almost forty percent less. We don’t know if we can justify carrying you.”

I took a deep breath. “Look, if you drop me there are going to be some unhappy people out there. My column’s a tradition in this town.”

“Tradition or not, if we were to keep ‘The Fast Lane’, and you were to keep letting us down, where would that leave us?”

“Well, maybe I haven’t been putting as much into my column as I should, but-”

“No maybes about it, Johnny.”

My throat now felt as if I’d swallowed a cactus. “Okay,” I conceded. “Let’s say I’ve been taking things for granted. That doesn’t mean I can’t do better. What if I did more promotion? I haven’t been on a radio show in a long time and that would help get folks back into the fold.”

He was nodding, giving the idea some thought. “It would help,” he admitted. “At least it would calm some people down around here. I have an idea for this month’s column, so I’ll be generous and forgive you for now. You won’t let me down again, will you?”

I told him there was no chance of that, and I meant it. It wouldn’t happen overnight, probably take a few years, but if I was dropped from the paper, eventually my business would dwindle away to nothing. Without my column, folks would forget all about Johnny Lane. I would end up no better than Max Roth and I couldn’t let that happen.

“Good.” Eddie gave me a false smile. “That’s what I want to hear.” He paused for a moment. “There’s something else,” he said. “We’ve been getting anonymous letters about you.”

At first all I could do was stare at him. After a while I asked him what they said.

He started to laugh. It choked somewhere inside him and came out as a wheeze. “Mostly that you have been blackmailing your clients. You haven’t been doing that, have you?”

I blinked a few times before the impact of what he said hit me. Then I was so mad I could barely see. I snapped at him, asking him what the hell he thought.

As he looked at me his eyes closed to slits and that gave me a start. He was sizing me up. Then he started chuckling, his eyes back to normal.

“I’m sorry, Johnny. Just pulling your chain a little. Some people around here try to pull a story out from every piece of horse dung tossed against our door. I guess that’s part of working for a newspaper. Convicted until proven innocent.”

He laughed some more and again it died down pretty quick. “Let us hypothesize a little. If those letters are true, it means that we, the Examiner, have been promoting a common criminal, building him up into the public’s trusting eye for almost twenty years. I don’t believe I could have had my nose rubbed in it for that long without smelling anything.”