“Check out what Pop-Singer Wifey has to say. Check out the premonition,” he says, pointing.
“What premonition?”
Six paragraphs into the obit, there it is:
Mr. Stomarti’s wife, the singer Cleo Rio, said she had been apprehensive about her husband’s plan to explore the sunken plane wreck, even though he was an experienced diver.
“I had a wicked bad vibe about that dive,” Ms. Rio said. “I begged Jimmy not to go. He’d been down sick with food poisoning from some bad fish chowder. He was in so much pain he could hardly put his tank on. God, I wish I could’ve stopped him.”
I can’t believe what I’m reading.
Juan says, “I’m guessing the lovely Ms. Rio didn’t tell you the same story. You wouldn’t have passed up a chance to work the phrase ‘bad fish chowder’ into an obituary.”
“Or even ‘wicked bad vibe,'” I say, indignantly waving the pages. “The girl never said anything about this. She said she was lounging around the boat, reading a magazine and working on her tan. Didn’t sound the least bit worried about her old man diving a plane wreck.”
“Something’s screwy,” Juan agrees.
“Any brilliant ideas?”
“You’ve already made up your mind, no?”
My eyes are drawn again to the Times obit. I am relieved to see that the reporter had no more luck than I did in locating the Bahamian coroner. Also missing: any mention of Cleo Rio’s Shipwrecked Heart project. Boy, will she be pissed.
“Jack, what are you going to do?” Juan presses.
“The story, of course. It’s mine and I’m writing it.”
“How? Emma won’t back down… ”
He’s right. She won’t back down, she’ll crumble. That’s the plan. Juan looks worried, but I can’t say whether it’s for me or for her. Maybe both.
“What’re you going to do?” he asks again.
“Well, tomorrow I plan to call in sick,” I say.
“Ugh-oh.”
“So I can attend a funeral.”
“I fucking knew it.”
“You’re smiling again, you dog.”
“Yeah,” Juan says. “I guess I am.”
7
Sure, it would be a kick to write for one of those big serious dailies in Miami, St. Petersburg, or even (in my dreams) Washington or New York. But that’s not in the cards. This is my fifth newspaper job and surely the last. I am increasingly unfit for the trade.
The Union-Register was founded in 1931 by MacArthur Polk’s father, who upon retirement passed it to his only son, who kept it both solvent and respectable until three years ago, when he unexpectedly sold out to the Maggad-Feist Publishing Group for $47 million in cash, stock and options. It was the foulest day in the newspaper’s history.
Maggad-Feist is a publicly traded company that owns twenty-seven dailies around the country. The chairman and CEO, young Race Maggad III, believes newspapers can prosper handsomely without practicing distinguished journalism, as distinguished journalism tends to cost money. Race Maggad III believes the easiest way to boost a newspaper’s profits is to cut back on the actual gathering of news. For obvious reasons, he was not a beloved figure at any of the twenty-six other papers owned by Maggad-Feist. He would not be beloved at ours, either, although only one reporter would dare stand up and say so to his face—at a shareholders’ meeting, no less, with a stringer for the Wall Street Journal in the audience. The remarks were brief but shockingly coarse, causing young polo-playing Race Maggad III to lose his composure in front of five hundred edgy investors. For his effrontery the reporter could not be fired (or so the paper’s attorneys advised). He could, however, be removed from the prestigious investigations team and exiled to the obituary beat, with the expectation he would resign in bitter humiliation.
He did not.
Consequently, he’s now saddled with the task of memorializing the very sonofabitch who brought this plague upon the house. MacArthur Polk is rumored to be dying again.
I keep a file of obituaries of prominent persons who are still alive. When one of them dies, the “canned” obit is topped with a few new paragraphs and rushed into print. Usually I update a pre-written obituary when the subject is reported as “ailing,” the standard newspaper euphemism for “at death’s door.”