only been days since I’d written a major piece for the paper about this gang of nutcases who’d planned to set off a bomb at a small-town parade. It was page one, above the fold. The TV stations picked it up.
I was golden.
But that was how it was in the newspaper business. You were only as good as your next story. So what if you got a big exclusive on Thursday. What are you going to do for us Friday?
I had the feeling that someone or something was pressing down hard on me as I sat in the chair. My shoulders were sagging so hard, it’s like they were dragging me down to the floor. I had a shit assignment, my wife was only communicating with me by e-mail, and I’d just been mean to Frieda, perhaps the sweetest woman in the entire building.
I jotted down some contact numbers on my scratch pad, but I couldn’t bring myself to pick up the phone and make a call. For reasons I cannot explain, I found myself unable to focus on linoleum. There was something else nagging at me.
I grabbed a copy of yesterday’s paper from one of the recycling bins and found my story about the stun gun salesmen.
Why was Trixie going on about them?
I found their names and scribbled them down on my pad. I decided to start with the one who’d done most of the talking before the assembled officers, Gary Merker. I Googled him. There weren’t many. One was a radio DJ somewhere out west in Arizona. There was a picture of him, along with the other station personalities. Young guy, very thin, bald, wire-rimmed glasses, big smile. Definitely not the guy who’d done the stun gun presentation. Another was a financial consultant up in Maine. No picture. There was a phone number, so I called.
“Hello? Merker Financial.” A woman.
“Is Gary in?”
“Just a moment.”
Some dead air. Then: “Merker?”
“Hi,” I said. Frieda was looking over at me, turned away when I saw her checking on me. “Is this Gary Merker?”
“Yes. Can I help you?”
“I’m looking for the Gary Merker who’s got some of those new Dropper stun guns for sale. Would that be you?”
“No, sorry. Stun guns? You got the wrong guy, pal.”
I offered my apologies and hung up.
Only one Gary Merker came up when I did a search on the paper’s database. This Merker showed up in a story that evidently had run in the Metropolitan five years earlier, with a Dick Colby byline, no less. It was datelined Canborough, and the headline read, “Three Slain in Biker Massacre.”
Canborough was a city of about sixty thousand, maybe a hundred miles west. It was a college town; the Canborough River ran through it north to south. The college was the main thing that had kept the town alive after the auto parts plant closed down seven years ago, the jobs all having gone to Mexico. I had done a book signing up there once, when my first science fiction novel, Missionary, had come out. Two hundred miles, round trip, sold three copies. The store owner couldn’t look me in the eye when it was over.
The story read: “Canborough may be on the verge of a biker gang war after three members of the Slots, a local gang that makes its money off drugs and prostitution, as well as some legitimate businesses, were shot to death above their own tavern, the Kickstart.”
The story went on to say: “Dead are Eldridge Smith, 29, Payne Fletcher, 26, and Zane Heighton, 25. All the victims were said to be known to police. All were fatally shot, and while police hinted there was something distinctive about the manner in which the executions were conducted, they would not provide further details.”
I started to imagine things. Were they shot in the mouth? Did someone stick a gun in their ears and blow their brains out? Were they lined up in front of each other, and one bullet passed through the lot of them?
That one seemed a bit unlikely. Unless it was a really, really, big bullet. Despite having held, and even fired, a gun in the last couple of years, and having had the misfortune to have been around some, I still knew very little about them, and that was just fine, thank you very much.
The story continued: “The Kickstart is a well-known local watering hole that also features adult entertainment. The shootings occurred shortly after the close of business hours, and the women employed as exotic dancers were not believed to have been there at the time. The Slots own the Kickstart, and were believed to have been counting the receipts in the upstairs office when the incident occurred.”
Out of the corner of my eye, I caught Frieda sneaking another look at me. I waggled my fingers at her.
“Canborough Police say there are three or four small gangs operating in the region, and while none of them is a large operation, they are responsible, collectively, for much of the area’s drug trade. In the past, each gang had carved out a portion of the market for itself, not stepping on the others’ toes, but that now appears to be over.
“The question now may be who is left in the Slots to retaliate. The gang’s reputed leader, Gary Merker, 30, who is also said to be the manager of the Kickstart, was not present when the three members of his gang were killed. Nor was another member, Leonard Edgars, 29.”
I glanced back at my story. It appeared that I had found the right Gary Merker. His associate, the one who’d been zapped with fifty thousand volts, was Leo Edgars.
What were two surviving members of a small biker gang that ran drugs and prostitutes doing peddling stun guns?
And what business was it of Trixie’s?
“I thought maybe you would like a coffee,” Frieda said. “But I didn’t know what you take in it.”
I jumped. “Oh, sure,” I said. “That would be nice. Cream and sugar.”
“What’s that you’re reading about?” she asked. She was scanning the Colby story, probably wondering why she wasn’t seeing the word “linoleum” anywhere.
“Gang shooting,” I said. “I was thinking, an interesting way into the feature would be, what kinds of linoleum are most resistant to bullets and bloodstains.”
Frieda was getting downright scared.
I’d had no further communications from Sarah, and I’d sent nothing to her. If she could get something to eat on the way home, then I didn’t see why I couldn’t do the same. I managed to sneak out of Home! a little after four, and as I was heading out of the parking lot in our Virtue, I remembered that Paul was going to be working at his new job after school today. I thought maybe it might cheer me up to see Paul gainfully employed, and get myself a cheeseburger and fries. We never knew whether Angie would be home for dinner, so I didn’t feel any obligation to get home and make sure there was something on the table for her when she returned from Mackenzie University.
I wheeled into the oil-stained parking lot of Burger Crisp. The lot was about half full, and there was trash spilling out the tops of trash containers that looked sticky with old soda. Flies buzzed around the opening.
The squat, square building, all glass up front, looked as though it might have been, in a previous life, a doughnut franchise. There was a row of tables along the front window, then down the right side, in an L shape. At the left end of the long aluminum counter was a cash register, and above it a menu made out of little black plastic letters that fit, crookedly, into grooves on a white background. Written in marker, on a sheet of cardboard and taped to the wall, was the special: “Ch’burger/fries/Coke/$5.49.”
At the cash register must have been the woman Paul said could stand in front of a moving tank and total it. She appeared, in a word, formidable. She was shorter than I, but standing there behind the cash register, she seemed rooted like an oak. Stocky, fridge-like, with thick fleshy arms that hinted at considerable muscle underneath. Slavic looking, late fifties, early sixties maybe, gray hair pinned back, a severe, weathered face devoid of anything you might call makeup, deep creases running down from her nose on both sides of her mouth, and
