Bryan Gruley - The Hanging Tree

“Well, let me tell you something, pal,” he said. “I just might do that. But you know what that means? Huh? It means we’re all goners.”

“Right, right, we’re all goners. But the Internet, that’s going to save us.”

“That’s right. Print’s kaput, my friend.”

“I’m not your friend.”

He pointed at me. “Our biggest cost? Those big damn presses that print the paper. And the trucks that have to haul it around. When we’re rid of those, we’ll have-”

“Squat,” I said.

“We’ll be in the money. You’ll see. I’m going to make them see.”

Although Media North had an Internet business, it did not yet have the Pilot itself on the Internet. Philo had stood before Kerasopoulos and the other directors of Media North and patiently delivered his Internet-is-our-future speech. They had listened politely, as if they were indulging a boy asking the company to sponsor his Little League team, then moved to the next order of business. They wouldn’t even let us have our own experimental website. Kerasopoulos said we couldn’t be handing our stories over for nothing; that would be the death of us. He would also have a harder time controlling the news if the Pilot had an instant pipeline.

“All they can see is their 401(k)s and their pensions and their long-term bonuses. They’re not about to piss all of that away on your-”

“Excuse me.”

It was Mrs. B. Philo turned. “Yes, Phyllis?”

“I’m sorry, I thought you two might like to know. Channel Eight just had a bulletin. The River Rats have a new coach.”

I jumped out of my chair. “You’re kidding.”

It hadn’t taken Haskell but two hours to burn me.

“No,” she said. “It’s Jason Esper.”

“And what do you think about that, Mrs. B?”

“What do you think I think?”

She wasn’t her daughter’s estranged husband’s biggest fan.

“Who cares?” Philo said.

”There’s something else,” she said. She drew her reindeer sweater around herself. “They said the police are going to charge Alden in Gracie’s death.”

“Impossible. Charge him with what?”

“Alden who?” Philo said.

“They didn’t say,” Mrs. B said. “They just said he’d be charged.”

“There’s a difference between being charged and being taken in for questioning.”

“I’m just telling you what was on TV.”

I felt Philo staring at me. My heart was in my belly, partly for Soupy, partly because I’d just been scooped. Twice. In about thirty seconds. On the two biggest stories to hit Starvation in a year.

I could blame Haskell for the first one; he’d obviously turned around after our meeting and leaked it to Channel Eight. Or maybe Jason himself had, I thought, maybe while I was in bed with his wife. On the other, I had no one but myself to blame. Then again, even if I knew the cops were going to charge Soupy, what the hell was I going to do with it? The Pilot wouldn’t be out till the next morning.

Excuses, I thought. It felt lousy.

I turned to Philo. “Alden is Soupy, the guy who owns Enright’s. The thing about him could be bullshit. Channel Eight gets stuff wrong all the time. I’ll chase it.”

“OK,” Philo said. “The coach is a bigger story anyway, don’t you think?”

No, I thought, the murder of a Starvation Lake citizen is way bigger. But I said, “Maybe. Just think, Philo, if we had our own Internet page, we might have beaten Channel Eight to both these stories.” I grabbed my coat. “I’ll be back.”

“Where are you going?” Philo looked up at the wall clock over the copier. “You don’t have a lot of time.”

“You want to help?”

“I wish I could,” he said. “I have to do this budget.”

“No problem,” I said, and gave Mrs. B a light squeeze on the shoulder as I headed out to Main Street.

Afternoon already had begun to succumb to night. I turned toward the lake. Low hanging cloud banks pinched the tree line against the far end of Main. I walked down the block and sat on a bench beneath the marquee of the old Avalon Cinema, remembering the smell of popcorn on the air when my mother had brought me there as a boy to see Willy Wonka amp; the Chocolate Factory. Now all I could smell was winter.

I had to make a few calls I didn’t want Philo to overhear. I dialed the numbers for three town council members who, if I caught them at the right time, might not mind talking. Most had shut me out since I’d started writing about Haskell and the new rink. A potato chip bag skittered past my boots as each of the calls landed on voice mail. I left bare-bones messages saying I needed clarification on a council matter; no need for them to know that I was prowling for another Haskell story.

I needed to confirm what Perlmutter had told me. Haskell had told me just enough off the record to tie my hands. Clever, I thought. Or stupid on my part. Now I had to write my story as if I’d never heard him say what he’d said about seeking help from the town. But I had to get the story. Everyone in town deserved to hear what the council was about to do before it was done and Haskell cashed his check, even if they didn’t want to hear it, which was probably the case. And I had to get back out ahead of Channel Eight.

Most important, I wanted to know what was going on with Soupy. I tried Darlene’s phone. She didn’t answer. “Hey, stranger, just checking in,” I told her voice mail. I shoved the phone back in my pocket and felt the old hair brush I’d found in Gracie’s Wayne State duffel. I pulled it out and scrutinized the stray hairs stuck in the bristles, auburn and gray.

I remembered what Mrs. B had said about a life insurance policy. So far as I knew, suicides often nullified life insurance policies; the beneficiary-I assumed it was Gracie’s mother, Shirley, based on what Mrs. B had said-was unlikely to get a penny. Even if it was obvious that Gracie was murdered, even if the police investigated her death as a homicide, someone would have to prove it or the insurance company could take forever to pay, if it paid at all.

And Soupy? Did he drive Gracie out to the shoe tree and boost her up to the hanging bough, then just leave her there to die? No way, I thought. Although he and Gracie were far from in love, they were having a hell of a good time. Or at least Soupy was.

“Dude,” he had whispered to me late one night as we dressed for a game. “I got no legs.”

“Why?” I said, digging for a roll of tape in my hockey bag.

“Gracie. I got to the rink early to get my skates sharpened and she hauled my ass back to the Zam shed.”

“No.”

“Yeah. Ever fuck on a Zamboni?”

I tried to imagine precisely how they had done it, decided I didn’t want to know. “Good old Nadia,” I said.

“More like Evel Knievel.”

I had to shut this conversation down. Without looking up from the sock I was winding with tape, I said, “So, you going to marry her?”

“Marry her? Trap, she won’t even let me take her to a movie. The woman fucks like there’s no tomorrow.”

And now there was no tomorrow.

I didn’t believe the cops were going to charge Soupy with a thing. More likely, I thought, the sheriff was trying to squeeze him for information.

So my next stop had to be Dingus-if Dingus would even talk. He didn’t do phones. I would have to go see him, hope whoever was at the front desk-maybe Darlene-would tell him I was there. I looked at my watch. I had enough time if he didn’t make me wait too long, if he agreed to see me at all.

I was about to get up from the bench when I felt a tap on my shoulder.

“You are truly deep in thought, young man.”

I turned to see Parmelee Gilbert, attorney-at-law, in a charcoal topcoat and a wool scarf the color of a carrot.