table. “Do you want your French toast?” he said. “Let’s put the helmets down.” He turned to Audrey and ordered three French toasts, an egg pie, and four orange juices. Then he sat down on the stool next to mine. “I wanted to talk to you anyway about that story you have about the gentleman who hunts the uh, the-”
“Bigfoot?”
He slapped his palm on the counter. “That’s it. Perlman.”
“Perlmutter.”
“Exactly. Quite the character. And a very interesting story.” He put on the thoughtful look that lawyers affect when they want you to know that they can see things to which you are hopelessly blind. “Maybe a tad too interesting, if you catch my drift. Your reporter, what’s her name?”
“Joanie. McCarthy.”
“Exactly. She has done some very, shall we say, aggressive reporting here. The documents she uncovered are very interesting, perhaps even persuasive.” He interrupted himself. “Gosh, all that money Perlman’s been pulling out of the state kitty, I wonder how much more it costs me in boat-use fees.” He chuckled at his little joke. “But, but,” he said, his thick brows furrowing into one at the bridge of his nose, “what’s crucial to remember here, Gus, is that Mr. Perlman is a private individual. You know what that means.”
“Perlmutter. And yes, I know.” It meant that, according to libel law, it would be easier for him to sue us and win than a public figure, like the sheriff.
“Does he have an attorney?” Kerasopoulos said.
“Yes. But neither of them are saying much.”
Kerasopoulos’s kids were banging their helmets again. “Have we made every attempt to give Mr. Perlberg a chance to respond?”
“We have. Joanie went out there once and talked to him. But since he figured out what she had, he hasn’t returned her calls.”
“Exactly,” Kerasopoulos said, rapping a finger on the counter for emphasis. “This is a gentleman who seems perfectly at ease with the tedium of paperwork. And he’s an aggressive individual who obviously has a good deal to lose. Put those together and you have a lawsuit.”
“He’s a thief who’s been defrauding the public for years,” I said, and immediately regretted it.
“Whoa there, partner. That’s for others to decide. We simply submit facts in as fair and balanced a way as we can. Are we clear?”
I looked at my congealing egg pie. “We’re clear.”
“I used to be a reporter myself, Gus.”
You used to be skinny, too, I thought.
“We may have a problem here,” he said.
“Jim, this is a legitimate story.”
He stood. “If you were sure of that, Gus, you would’ve just run it. But you sent it to us for our opinion, and I’m giving it to you.”
I wanted to tell him to take his double-wide ass back to his corner office with the drawings of duck blinds and lighthouses and golf holes on the walls and stop sticking his nose into things. I wanted to tell him he was a small- timer and he would always be a small-timer, making the money that paid his boat-use fees off little towns whose newspapers he neutered daily. Except that he was right, at least partly. I could’ve just put the story in the paper and taken my lumps from corporate, maybe even lost my second newspaper job in a year. But I’d been covering my ass, playing to the bosses, securing my own smalltime future. And now, by blurting out the truth about Perlmutter, I had put the story in even greater danger of never seeing print. I felt like smacking myself.
“Look, Jim,” I said, “let me see if we can get Perlmutter to respond.”
“You do that,” Kerasopoulos said. “You know what I always say: We can never be second with something that matters to our readers. Right? OK. Listen, I’ve got to get back to my kids before they wreck the place. You made the right call on this, Gus. We appreciate the caution.”
I pushed the egg pie away and looked out the window. Standing in the street with a Pilot folded under his arm was Elvis Bontrager. He was talking with someone I couldn’t see. I stood to leave. Audrey turned from the griddle. “Gussy, you barely ate.”
“Sorry, Mrs. DeYonghe. I’m not feeling so hot. The pie was great, really.”
“Feel better. And give your mother my love.”
I eased out the door, trying to keep the bells from jangling. I saw Elvis was talking with Teddy Boynton. I hurried down Main Street, head down, rock salt crunching under my boots. “There he is,” I heard Boynton say as I swerved down the alley next to Enright’s. It dawned on me that in two days I’d had two meals ruined by lawyers.
At the Hungry River I slowed and turned toward the lake. Across the frozen river lay the snow-covered beach where Boynton wanted to build his marina and hotel. A sign on the property showed an artist’s rendering of a creamy white four-story hotel on a golden beach, a pavilion of shops crowded with people at picnic tables beneath powder-blue umbrellas, and a sparkling bay dotted with sailboats, cruisers, and powerboats. Only the zoning board-and Soupy’s opposition-stood in the way. With the board’s approval, Boynton’s lenders would release the first $5 million he needed to start construction.
Over my shoulder hovered Starvation Lake Marina, a four-story hulk of corrugated steel painted the dull green of a brontosaurus. I walked up to the door of the business office and cupped a hand over my eyes to peek inside. A tower of pizza boxes had toppled in a corner, and a garbage can overflowed with empty beer bottles and cans. A wall calendar was stuck on the previous July, when Soupy’s father had died. I walked around the side of the building and felt beneath the water meter for the magnetized box that held the spare key.
Inside, the office reeked of stale hops and pepperoni and the lingering sweetness of marijuana. I snatched a dusty page off one of the chest-high stacks of paper on Soupy’s desk. It was a summons ordering Soupy to court at 9:30 a.m. on Friday, January twenty-fourth.
“Way to go, Soup,” I murmured.
I recalled that he and I had gone ice fishing that morning; he hadn’t said anything about a court date as he polished off a six-pack before 10:00 a.m. Two unmarked file folders rested alone next to the stacks of papers. I flipped one open. Inside was a two-page letter, dated four days earlier, from Arthur Fleming, Boynton’s lawyer. It proposed a “joint venture” in which Boynton Realty would take a 25-percent interest in Soupy’s marina and, in return, Soupy would get 1 percent of the Pines at Starvation Lake and an immediate cash payment of thirty thousand dollars. The venture would continue to operate Soupy’s marina “so long as it is deemed fiscally prudent,” and the cash would help Soupy “resolve outstanding litigation.” In return, Soupy would drop his opposition to Boynton’s marina at Monday’s zoning board meeting. It wasn’t a bad deal. The cash would come in handy, and the stake in Boynton’s marina might be worth a lot someday. But it wouldn’t take long for Boynton to decide it was no longer “fiscally prudent” to keep Soupy’s marina alive.
I picked up the other folder, but before I could open it, I heard a metallic groan in the dry-dock area, where boats reclined in tall steel racks like sleeping birds. I sidled over to the window to the dry dock and saw the huge steel door at the other end rumbling upward. Light spilled in beneath it, revealing a pair of boots and legs in silhouette. Tatch, Soupy’s right-hand man, was starting work. I ducked down and scurried for the back door. Taking a quick step outside, I swung the door closed behind me and immediately flopped up in the air and onto my rump. “What the hell?” I said.
I sat up, wincing, and saw at my feet a pile of slimy carp and sucker trout, barely alive, puckering their mouths. I scrambled to my feet, disgusted. “Fucking fish?” I said, kicking at a carp. “How the hell did you get here?” Fish blood and guts were slopped across the snow; some of the fish had been slit open. I looked around but saw no one. “Not funny,” I said, as if someone could hear. “Not funny at all.” I hustled down the river walk, brushing snow and fish scales off my butt and wondering if anyone had seen me in the marina. The dying fish I left for Soupy.
At my apartment I hung my coat, stinking of fish, on the stair rail outside. I hauled out my hockey bag and zipped it open on the living room floor. The smell wasn’t much better than my coat. My gear felt clammy as I laid it out to dry. Leg pads, arm pads, chest protector, pants. Catching glove, blocking glove, protective cup. Skates, mask, a stiffened towel, a canvas pouch holding tape, laces, Bengay. I wished I had unpacked it after the game Thursday night. Now it would feel heavy when I played that night, and I’d be a hair less agile or, worse, I’d think I was. Thinking was everything. If you didn’t think you were going to stop every single shot, you wouldn’t. If you lost that focus for a sliver of an instant, the puck would be behind you. Even on one of your off nights, after you’d given up
