She disappeared.
“What’s her problem?” Joanie said.
“No idea.” I picked up the dossier on Soupy’s marina troubles and held it up for her. My phone rang. “Did you happen to borrow this?”
Her face said yes, but before she could say anything, Tillie ducked in again. “Gus. Scott Trenton?”
Joanie turned for the door, grinning. “Not saving you this time.”
I picked up the phone and punched the blinking light. “Hello, Scott.”
“You don’t return calls.”
“When I don’t have anything to say, no.”
I heard the wheels on Trenton’s swivel chair squeak. “We have a meeting tomorrow,” he said.
“Who’s we?”
“Me and you and a bunch of lawyers. Superior. All-Media. The Hanovers. Noon.”
“Scott, I have a paper to-”
“Listen to me, Gus. You will be in Detroit tomorrow for this meeting or you won’t have me as your attorney anymore. You don’t have to say a word, but I want you there to show good faith, one way or the other.”
“The Hanovers are coming? Doug and Julia?”
“Yes.”
“Jesus.”
“Yeah.”
“Why didn’t you ask me first?”
Trenton let the silence answer.
“OK,” I said. “What’s the agenda?”
“This is our last shot at getting Superior off your back. We’re going to tell them whether you’re going to give up your source or not. It would be good if you could tell me your intentions now so I can position us for a decent outcome.”
Now I let the silence speak.
“Gus?” Trenton said.
“I don’t know yet. Sorry.”
“Gus-”
“Most reporters would go to their grave before they burned a source.”
“We’ve been through this. I appreciate your good intentions and your”-he paused-“integrity. But they’re superfluous here, friend. This guy, or woman, or whoever your source is, burned you. Your obligation to protect their identity is frigging kaput.”
“That’s what you say.”
“That’s what I say.”
“Where’s the meeting?”
“You’re not going to give me an answer now?”
“Unless you want one you don’t want to hear.”
“Let me be clear, Gus. If you don’t give them an answer tomorrow, or you give them the wrong answer, count on Superior seeking criminal charges against you. Believe me, they can make that happen. The Hanovers won’t be happy either. They want that settlement set in concrete before the appellate court rules.”
I didn’t care about Superior. The Hanovers were a different matter. “Where’s the damn meeting?”
“Superior’s law firm, Eagan, MacDonald amp; Browne. Comerica Building. Are you going to be there?”
“We’ll see.”
“You know,” he said, “all you hockey players are nuts. You’re a goalie, right? My partner had a goalie once for a client. Just a kid. He and the other goalie on his team were butting heads in the locker room. Like a couple of frigging rams, lining up in nothing but goalie masks and jock straps and running at each other with their heads down. Then, wham! The one breaks his nose pretty bad and his parents have us sue the frigging company that made the mask. Can you believe that?”
“Did you win?”
“Nah. Settled.”
The morning had turned bad fast. I dialed our corporate office, got a machine, hit zero, got an operator, and asked for Jim Kerasopoulos.
“Yes,” the lawyer’s voice boomed out of the phone. He was on the speaker.
“Gus Carpenter, Jim.”
“Gus.” He picked up the handset. “How’s the snowmobiling?”
What snowmobiling? I thought. He was the one who’d been snowmobiling. I remembered the egg pie I didn’t get to eat and felt suddenly hungry.
“Um, fine. You called?”
“I did. I would really have appreciated a heads-up on the paper this morning.”
“How’s that?”
I pictured him stuffed into a black leather chair behind a pin-neat desk with a brass letter opener resting atop a stack of freshly opened letters, behind his head a framed etching of mallard ducks landing on a pond.
“I thought we had a good talk about communication between you and us folks here at the mother ship,” he said. “Then I pick up the Pilot this morning and see murder splashed all over the front page.”
“There’s no-”
“All over the page.”
“Jim, the word ‘murder’ does not appear.”
“Gus, if you’re going to write about murders in small towns and quote anonymous sources, you’re going to let us know before you do.”
“We shouldn’t have run the story?”
“Gus?” A squeak made its way into his foghorn. “You’re really disappointing me here, especially after Henry’s been singing your praises. What I’m asking is pretty simple, sir. I want to know when any of our editors is running a story that could stir up the masses, or people who might want to sue us, especially if we have zero sources confirming it on the record.”
“I’m confident in the story, Jim.”
He paused for a moment, then said, “That’s nice that you’re confident, but frankly, Gus, in your case, that doesn’t cut it. You have a past here, no? We’re trying to accommodate you and your supporters here, and you’re not meeting us halfway.”
At last, the truth. Actually, all Kerasopoulos knew about my past was that I’d had an unfriendly parting with the Times. Depending on what I did in Detroit the next morning, he might know a lot more. I wanted to tell him my “past” had nothing to do with the Blackburn story, that this was just Newspapering 101 and we’d done our jobs. But I was worried that I’d gotten Henry into trouble too. So I swallowed hard.
“Jim,” I said. “I understand. I wish I’d given you a call. It was hectic yesterday. Sorry.”
“A call would’ve gone a long way, Gus. I’m not saying we would or wouldn’t have run the story. Maybe we would’ve waited for the press conference. Excuse me.”
He put me on hold. I decided it probably wasn’t the best time to ask about the Sasquatch story. My other line started blinking. I couldn’t risk cutting off Kerasopoulos, so I let Tillie get it. Kerasopoulos came back on, his voice calm with distraction. “OK, I’ve got to hop. I hope we understand each other.”
Fleming picked up on the first ring. “Mr. Carpenter. Thank you for your message yesterday. It turns out that that matter has disposed of itself.”
“Pardon?”
“We are still speaking off the record.”
“Which matter?”
“Thank you. The matter we discussed in your office the other day with my client, Mr. Boynton.”
Oh, no, I thought, thinking he’d given the dossier to Channel Eight. “I’m too late?” I said.
“Indeed, today was our deadline, but what I’m telling you now is, the issue is moot. We’ve done nothing with the documents we showed you, nor do we plan to.”
“You don’t want a story?”
