“I could probably sell tickets,” he’s saying, “for the day they put you on the witness stand. ‘Mr. Tagger, would you mind telling the court why you broke into the victim’s house and stole a tampon?'”
Rick Tarkington is my age but he looks ten years younger. The irony is glaring and nettlesome. Here’s a fellow immersed full-time in the ghastliest details of human malefaction, yet he shows no trace of being haunted by cosmic questions or mortal fears. He is cynical to the core, yet happy as a clam.
In the last thirty minutes I’ve told Tarkington almost everything about the Jimmy Stoma story, spilling it as breathlessly as I did to Emma. I even brought a small boom box and played “Shipwrecked Heart,” which Tarkington said reminded him of early Buffett. I had hoped it would work in my favor that the prosecutor is a rock ‘n’ roller. On the wall behind his desk is a photo of the Rolling Stones taken backstage at the Orange Bowl. The picture is signed: “To R.T., Thanks for not searching my dressing room. Keith.”
“I came here,” I say to Tarkington, “because I need direction.”
“That you do.” He’s reclining at a precarious cant, the worn heels of his boots propped on his desk. Tarkington is from Lafayette County, where it’s still possible to step in cowshit.
“Jimmy Stoma. I’ll be damned,” he says, clicking his tongue. “After I saw the obit I went and dug out my old eight-track of A Painful Burning Sensation. It kicked butt.” Tarkington swings his feet off the desk and hunches forward, looking serious. “But, Jack, I don’t know what the hell you expect me to do.”
We’ve been over this twice already, and he’s shot holes in every idea I’ve floated. “There’s a woman missing,” I say wearily, “and bloodstains in her house. Can we not assume she’s hurt and possibly even dead?”
“I need a warrant to search the place, and where’s my probable cause? You tell me nobody phoned in a disturbance. Nobody’s reported her gone,” Tarkington says. “However, if you’d care to sign an affidavit stating you entered the premises and observed what appeared to be a crime scene—”
“You know damn well I can’t.” That would make me a witness and put me at the center of the story—and then I couldn’t be the one to write it. Another reporter would be given the assignment; the newspaper’s lawyers would see to that.
“What about Jay Burns?” I ask.
“By all means. The genius who got smushed by the mullet truck.” Tarkington raises his arms beseechingly. “He’s drunk, stoned and now his head looks like a fucking Domino’s deluxe. And you want me to prove it’s homicide.”
“Look, I know there’s problems—”
“Problems? Old buddy, you’ve already given me enough to pinch you right now for trespass, b-and-e, tampering and obstruction,” says Tarkington. “But that’s assuming you and I are having this conversation, which we’re not.”
The Springsteen tickets—I’d almost forgotten. Sometimes it pays to be a shameless suck-up.
“Killer show,” Tarkington says, warming at the memory. “Floor seats, fifth-row center. I owe you for life, Jack. But I can’t do much with this one. I’m good, buddy, but I’m not a magician.”
“And if Jimmy’s sister turns up murdered… ?”
“I’ll be there like a gator on a poodle,” he says, “and I’ll not hesitate to subpoena your scrawny, white, First Amendment-quoting ass. Now, before you go, play me that song again.”
Given the setting, it’s a strangely mellow interlude—Tarkington listening with his eyes closed, his chin on his knuckles and his elbows braced on four fat brown file folders: two murders, a DUI manslaughter and the sexual battery of an eleven-year-old child. People think the media is full of bleeding-heart liberals, but most reporters I know root for the Rick Tarkingtons of the world.
“That’s nice,” he says of Jimmy’s singing. “You can tell he was into the island groove.”
I switch off the boom box. “So where we at, counselor?”
“Well”—Tarkington, the prideful cracker, pronounces it like “whale”—”we’ve got an ambitious young widow who may or may not have bumped off her rock-star hubby. What we don’t have are human remains to examine, as the decedent has been inconveniently incinerated. However, we do have the corpse—more or less—of a keyboard player with questionable lifestyle habits. We also have assorted sloppy burglaries of a fishing vessel, an obituary writer’s apartment and the dwelling of the dead rock singer’s sister, who may or may not have been abducted.”