He didn’t look up. He just kept shaking his head. “What the fuck, Trap?” he was saying. “What the fuck you doing to me?”
“Soupy, what are you talking about?”
“You fucking know, Trap.” He was drunker than he’d sounded when he called from his truck. Barely two fingers of whiskey remained in his bottle of Old Crow. I reached for it, but he pulled it away.
“The Crow, man,” Soupy said. He took a swallow. “All I got. You want that, too?”
“Come on in, Soup.”
“I’m fine, see?” he slurred. Then he tilted his head back and squawked like a crow: “Caw! Caw! Caw!”
“You’re going to wake the whole town. Come in, please.”
He tore off his hat and swiveled his head up toward me, his face a rubbery grin. “Quite a night,” he said. “Two beers-make that three, three beers-and a shot with my dear old pal.”
“Old pal who?”
“Teddy boy.” He clamped an unsteady hand on the railing and wobbled to his feet. The whiskey sloshed around in the bottle. “My old chum.”
Soupy took a slug and offered me the bottle. I reached again, but he yanked it back again, snickering. “I don’t play that,” he said. “So, so, so…Tell me, Trap. What the…what the hell were you doing in my office?”
So he really had been with Boynton, I thought. “Looking for you,” I said, almost telling the truth. “It’s a mess in there. Your dad wouldn’t be happy.”
“Now there’s a goddamn news flash-my dad wouldn’t be happy.”
I thought then to ask him about the boat receipt Dingus had given me, but he was in no shape to answer. “Why don’t you go home? Just walk. I’ll bring your truck over tomorrow.”
“Fuck the truck,” he said, turning back to me. I was surprised to see tears in his eyes. Soupy was prone to drunken crying jags, but I knew there was something real beneath these tears because he was trying to hold them back.
“Jesus, Soup, what’s the matter?”
He lifted the bottle to his lips, stopping just before he drank. “Teddy boy,” he said. “He says you got a story about Coach.”
“Yeah?”
“Leave it alone, Trap. Leave it alone. Ain’t nothing good can come.”
That’s it? I thought. That’s what has him so upset? The bullet hole story must have been getting around. But why would Soupy care? After our last defeat, he and Coach hadn’t gotten along so well either.
“Dingus is holding a press conference. I can’t help what the cops find out.”
He let the bottle fall to his side. He looked dumbfounded. “Press conference? Fuck. Not that. Dingus knows shit.”
“Well, what then?”
“Canada. You know.”
“No, I don’t. What are you talking about?”
“Don’t mess with me.” He pointed the bottle at me. “I can see your horseshit a mile away. Canada. Coach had a problem?”
Did he mean the gap in Coach’s past? Had Boynton told him? How could Boynton have known? Unless Joanie told Boynton. She’d gone to him for an interview. Maybe he’d ended up interviewing her. Now Boynton was playing Soupy as he’d played her. But with what? Unless Boynton knew something about that missing year that Joanie and I didn’t. There had to be something more.
“No,” I said. “We don’t have any story about Canada. Boynton’s screwing with your head. Anyway, who cares what the hell Coach did in Canada thirty years ago?”
Soupy’s lower lip trembled.
“Hey,” I said, taking a step closer. “What is going on?”
“You’re my best friend.”
“What is it?”
“My only friend.”
“Soupy. Goddamn it.”
He was shaking his head, choking back sobs. “I don’t know a fucking thing,” he said. I put a hand on his shoulder, but he shook it off and started down the stairs. He knew something, all right, but he wasn’t trusting me tonight.
“I wouldn’t do anything to hurt you,” I said.
Halfway down the steps, he stopped and turned and brandished the bottle. “See this piss-water? There’s only one whiskey worse. You know which?”
I had no idea.
He yelled it. “Gentleman-fucking-Jack!” Then he reared back and flung the bottle over his truck into South Street, where it burst on a chunk of ice.
I had to blink back cigarette smoke when I walked into the Pilot on Monday morning. Tillie didn’t look up from the paper she stood reading at the front counter. It was barely nine and her ashtray was already jammed with butts.
“Good morning,” I said. “Did you see the TV truck out front of Audrey’s?”
Tillie didn’t answer. She leaned on an arm, obscuring her face. Something was bugging her. I grabbed a Pilot off the counter and slid a quarter next to Tillie’s elbow.
“Kerasopoulos called,” she said.
“Who?”
“At corporate. He didn’t sound happy.”
Joanie was at her desk, still in her wool cap and jacket, sifting through what looked like a stack of receipts. I spread the Pilot out on my desk. Joanie’s main story, “Bullet Hole Found in Late Coach’s Snowmobile,” and the sidebar, “Blackburn Remembered as Strategist, Town Booster,” filled the entire top half of the page. It was a nice display, with photos of the scene of Blackburn’s accident, Blackburn hoisting a trophy, Blackburn cutting the ribbon at a pizza parlor. There was also that mug shot of Blackburn, the one that hung at Enright’s, superimposed over the inscription “John D. ‘Jack’ Blackburn. Jan. 19, 1934-March 13, 1988.” I wanted to savor it for a minute, feel like I’d accomplished something. But I had to call Kerasopoulos.
“Maybe I’ll head over to the cop shop,” Joanie said. “I was going to finally do my expenses, but that can wait.”
That reminded me. I had been meaning to ask her about a phone bill. I fished through the pile on my desk. As I looked, I told her, “Listen, once Dingus’s press conference gets going, just sit there and be quiet. Unless there’s something you absolutely can’t get from Dingus or one of the other cops on your own, don’t ask any questions. You’ll just be helping the TV people.” I also didn’t want Dingus thinking I’d told her anything about his visit to my apartment.
“Huh. Hadn’t thought of that. Excuse me.” She went into the bathroom.
I found the phone bill stuck to the back of the Bud Popke press release. It listed a dozen or so calls to the 202 and 617 area codes, and one for $57.28 to the 703 code. Joanie had called Washington, D.C., and Boston for the Sasquatch story, and I knew from my time covering the auto safety regulators that 703 was in Virginia near D.C. According to NLP Newspapers policy, because that single call was for more than $50, I was supposed to inquire about the purpose of the call and tell corporate. If I didn’t, the people in finance would. They lived for it.
The faucet splashed on in the bathroom. I stared at the bill. If I didn’t report the reason for the $57.28 phone call, would that jeopardize my chance at the executive editor’s job? I couldn’t believe I was worrying about this crap. The hell with it, I thought, and tossed the bill back on my desk.
Tillie appeared, holding a scrap of notepaper in one hand and a smoldering cigarette in the other. Now that I could clearly see her face, I could tell she’d been crying. “Is this a joke or something?” she said, waving the paper around.
“What?”
“This Sound Off question. The tunnels?”
Joanie emerged from the bathroom. “No joke,” I told Tillie. “It’s news. Use it. And keep the smoke out there, please.”
