“Meanwhile we’ve got to put the fear of Almighty God into young Ellis. Scare him into thinking you’re going to sue his ass off if he goes ahead with it today—”
“No,” Janet says again. She looks sad and exhausted, holding the empty shopping bag to her breasts. “Jack, it’s too late.”
“What are you talking about?”
“When you fell asleep, I went inside. Back to that room,” she says. “He’s gone. It’s too late.”
“Goddammit.”
“I know.”
I sag against a planter featuring a lovely plastic rhododendron.
“But what about the album? I thought you put it in with—”
“Too late. So I threw it in the pond—it was a stupid idea, anyway,” Janet says. “I mean, the record’s vinyl. All it’s gonna do is melt all over his damn bones.”
I’m thinking Jimmy wouldn’t mind.
“Come on,” she says, sniffling. “Let’s get outta here.”
“In a minute.”
I see oily-fingered Ellis alone in his cubicle, intently tapping on a portable calculator. Janet hangs back while I peer in the doorway.
Ellis quickly turns his head sideways while simultaneously swiveling his chair toward the wall. “Can I help you?” he squeaks over his shoulder.
“Nice earring, dickhead. But it looked better on Mr. Stomarti.”
Ellis claps one hand over his right ear in a futile effort to conceal the stolen diamond.
“I don’t know what you’re talking about!” he yelps. “Doesn’t anybody ever knock anymore!”
6
Emma is off on Mondays, but this can’t wait.
The phone rings busy for an hour so I do the unthinkable and drive to her apartment, a duplex on the west side. I know how to get there because I gave her a ride on the day her car got stolen from the newspaper’s parking lot. The car was a silver two-door Acura, a gift from her father. The cretin who drove off with it later tried to rob the drive-through window of a bank. He was shot by a guard and died bleeding copiously on Emma’s gray leather upholstery. The car was impounded as evidence.
So I agreed to give Emma a lift, which was risky. I feared she might be so upset that she would require consoling, which I couldn’t offer. To show sympathy would have thrown slack into a relationship that had to remain as taut as a garrote. If I was to save Emma from the newspaper life, I couldn’t become someone in whom she confided, or even (God forbid) a casual friend.
As it turned out, the drive proved uneventful. Emma was remarkably philosophical about the dead robber in her Acura; at no time did she appear in need of a hug or even a pat on the hand. She said she’d spoken to her father and he’d offered to buy her another car once the insurance money came through. She’d told him thanks just the same, but she was a grownup and it was time she paid for her own wheels. Good for you, I said mildly. Then, dropping her off at the duplex, I heard myself asking if she needed a ride to work the following morning. What possessed me, I cannot say. Luckily, Emma already had lined up a rental.
Her apartment is a block off the main highway, but it takes two passes to find the right side street. In the driveway sits Emma’s new car, a champagne-colored Camry with the paper license tag still taped in the rear window. Parked on the swale by the road is a familiar black Jeep Cherokee. It belongs to Juan Rodriguez, a sportswriter at the paper. He also happens to be my best friend.
Juan recently began dating Emma, an unnerving development. There was a time when Juan and I could go have a couple beers and bitch self-righteously about the newspaper. Not now. Whatever I might say about the deplorable state of journalism would come off as a rap against Emma, and I don’t want to offend Juan. However, his interest in Emma is vexing—for two years he listened to me rail about her, and still he asked her out.
She’s different in all ways from the other three women that Juan dates—one is a professional figure skater, one is an orthopedic surgeon and one is a halftime dancer for the Miami Heat basketball team. Contrary to appearances, Juan is in serious pursuit of a lifetime partner. Maybe Emma’s the one, but a selfish part of me hopes not. It would suck dead toads to have my best friend romantically involved with my editor.