Carl Hiassen - Basket Case

Still, these desolate gaps in the news cycle can be useful. Emma isn't here to circle like a kestrel, and young Evan, the intern, isn't around to dart in and pepper me with questions. Actual fact-gathering is possible. Addictive new technology allows one to sit at a desktop and browse tax rolls, real estate transactions, court files, arrest records, driver's licenses, marriage licenses and divorce decrees, as well as current periodicals, medical journals, trade publications, corporate reports—the bottomless maw of the Internet.

Also accessible are the library banks of other newspapers, large and small; a treasure trove. The only problem is that many papers have come online only within the last decade, and they don't always backfile the morgue stories into computer memory. Consequently, the odds are not so good of locating information about a man who died, say, at least twenty years ago.

But my mother claimed she read it in a newspaper, my father's obituary. And I've nothing better to do than go hunting.

On the keyboard I tap out T-A-G-G-E-R, J-A-C-K.

The joke's on me. Within moments the screen flashes a directory of thirty-six stories, all too familiar. The search engine seems to have locked onto my byline, resulting in an instant and unwanted sampling of my own work. Scrolling through past glories, written before my time on the obit beat, I'm amused to see that several of the Orrin Van Gelder stories popped up, all the way from Gadsden County. Evidently that stands as the pinnacle of my journalism career, at least in electronic dataland. Maybe Jimmy Stoma can change that.

At the moment, though, it's the other Jack Tagger that keeps me plodding through the search directory. But he's nowhere to be found, my father, evidently having died pre-Web. Any record of the event must therefore exist as a yellowed clipping in a musty old folder in some musty old newspaper warehouse. It's likely my mother herself saved a copy, although I doubt she'd admit it. This is some fucked-up game she's playing.

I sign off, lock the desk and head for home. While driving by Carla Candilla's place I see lights in the window and pull a U-turn. I call from a phone booth and she says to come on over, she's all alone and coloring her hair.

"Orange!" I say at the door.

"No, 'Lava,'" Carla says. "Because I'm worth it. Get your ass in here, I'm dripping all over the place."

She's wearing a full-length bathrobe appropriated from the Delano Hotel. I follow her to the kitchen where she toils with her soggy tendrils at the sink. I deliver a compressed but colorful account of my penthouse interview with Cleo Rio, and the celebrity scene at Jimmy Stoma's funeral.

Carla is an avid interrogator.

"What'd she look like?"

"Tan and glassy-eyed."

"The Case of the Suntanned Widow? Was Russell Crowe there?"

"Not that I recall."

"Come on, Blackjack. Rumor has him bonking Cleo."

"I saw no bonking."

"How 'bout Enrique?" Carla demands.

"Enrique who?"

She shrieks from beneath her marinating dome of hair. "How can you be so ... out of if?"

"Cleo's supposedly bonking this Enrique, too?"

"You should've taken me along, Jack. You let me down," Carla teases. "You let me down, you done me wrong."

I feel obliged to inquire about the lava-hued tresses. "For a special event?"

"Saturday night," she says. "Every Saturday night is a special event."

"New boyfriend?"

"Nah," Carla says. "New mood."

She has completed some critical phase of the tinting process. Now we move to the living room where she trowels moss-colored clay on her face. Only eyes, lips and nostrils remain visible.

"So. Blackjack."

"Yeah."

"Think Cleo offed her old man?"

"I honestly can't say. Nobody performed an autopsy and now the body's been cremated so we might never know. Maybe Jimmy drowned just like they said, or maybe he had help. In any case, the widow is making the most of the moment."

Carla says, "I can't fucking believe she sang at the funeral."

"To plug her new CD."

"Skank. What's your story gonna say?"

A damn good question. "Well, I hope it'll say that Jimmy's sister wants a full investigation of the circumstances of his death. I hope it's going to say there are inconsistencies among the witnesses."

"Who are ... ?" Carla asks through her frogskin cast.

"Cleo, of course, and Jay Burns," I say, "one of the old Slut Puppies. He buddied up with Jimmy for the dive."

"What if he backs up Cleo's story?"

"Then I drink myself silly and crawl back to the cave of dead rabbis."

Carla points to her face. "Can't talk. It's hardening."

The phone rings. She signals for me to pickup.

"Candilla residence," I answer in a British butler accent.

"Who is this?"

"Oh hi, Anne." Voice skips. Heart flops. Tongue turns to chalk.

"Jack?"

"Carla's in her mud mask. She can't move her mouth."

On the other end I hear a familiar sigh. Then: "What are you doing over there?"

Twitching like a junkie, I'm tempted to say.

"We're gossiping about fashion, music and models. Carla says I'm 'out of it,' which is surely an understatement. Now I've got a question for you: Why bother your hardworking offspring so late at night?"

A soft laugh. "I just got in, Jack."

"Oh."

"From out of town," she says.

How clever of me to ask. Smoothly I drop the subject.

"Well. You doing okay?"

"I'm good," Anne says. "How about yourself?"

"Better," I lie. "I'm surviving age forty-six just fine. No more obsessing. And this was a heavy year for bad karma—JFK and Elvis."

"And don't forget Oscar Wilde," Anne tosses in.

"Wilde? I thought he was forty-five."

"No, forty-six," she says. "I wouldn't have known except I just saw one of his plays in London. They had a biography in the Playbill. How're things at work?"

I find myself rattled by the Oscar Wilde bulletin, and also by the idea of Anne traveling to England without me.

Meaning with somebody else.

"Jack?"

"Everything's great at the paper," I say. "Big story in the oven—actually that's why I dropped by to see Carla. She knows the cast of characters."

"As long as she's not one of them," Anne says. "I'm glad you're doing well, Jack."

I hear myself blurting: "I'll be doing even better if you have lunch with me tomorrow."

"Can't, Jack. I'm afraid I'm busy." This is followed by a pause, during which I foolishly convince myself that Anne is reconsidering the invitation. But then she says: "Tell Carla I'll give her a shout in the morning."

"Will do."

"Bye," says Anne.

I set the receiver down very gingerly, as if it's made of Baccarat crystal.

"Wanna drink?" The lovely dark eyes staring out of Carla's mud face are brimming with sympathy. Worse, they are Anne's eyes.

"I've got beer," Carla says through fixed lips.

I tell her no thanks. Standing up, I say, "Well. Your mother sounds terrific."

"Surry," Carla mutters, endeavoring not to crack the facial plaster. Either a smile or a frown would do the job. She snatches a notepad from the dining table and scribbles these words: Least she knows how you feel.

"And that's good?" I ask.

Carla nods consolingly. Those eyes are killing me. I give her a quick hug and head for the door.

Next morning, Emma calls and commands me to appear in the newsroom.

"But I'm ill! Stricken! Indisposed!"

"You are not. Buckminster spotted you at the funeral."

"Fuckweasel," I remark.

"Pardon me?"

I stage a coughing fit worthy of a pleurisy ward, and hang up.

Forty minutes later comes a stern knock—Emma! This is unpardonable, accosting me at home. I greet her in my sleepwear, a rank Jacksonville Jaguars jersey and a pair of baggy plaid boxers. She is not as horrified as I had hoped.