Carl Hiaasen – Basket Case

“I’m pretty busy, actually.”

“Come on. We’ll use Abkazion’s office.”

I scan the newsroom for potential witnesses. It’s Saturday afternoon and the place is quiet—Emma’s not working, which is just as well.

“So,” Maggad begins, settling in behind the managing editor’s cluttered desk, “I guess you heard Mr. Polk checked out of the hospital.”

“Yes indeed. Another medical miracle.”

“How was your visit? How did he seem to you?”

“Feisty and incontinent.”

Race Maggad III purses his liver-colored lips. “But mentally how did he seem—alert? Aware of his surroundings?”

“Sharp as a tack. I sorta liked the old bastard.”

“Yes, I gather the feeling is mutual. Did he happen to say why he wanted you to be the one to write his obituary?”

It’s lame, this fishing expedition of his. What a bumbler.

“Because,” I reply, “my unfettered style reminds him of James Joyce.”

“Mmmm.”

“Or is it Henry Miller?”

I remain the portrait of earnestness, while Maggad gnaws fretfully on the inside of his right cheek. My puffy nose and lumpy jaw have provoked unease and possibly suspicion. He’s well on the way to regretting this incursion into the newsroom, where he stands out like the proverbial turd in the punch bowl. He might own the place, but he doesn’t belong.

“Jack,” he says, “we’ve never really talked, you know.”

“About?”

“About what happened at that shareholders’ meeting, I mean. I got your gracious note,” he adds, “and I certainly took it to heart.”

The apology was written, signed and sent to Race Maggad III without my knowledge. The author was Juan Rodriguez, who was trying to save my position on the investigations team.

“But I’ve been wanting to sit down like this, privately,” says our polo-playing CEO, “to tell you—to assure you—that I believe as deeply as you do in thorough, hard-hitting journalism. And I believe it’s possible to have great local newspapers that are also profitable newspapers. That’s our goal at Maggad-Feist.”

Young Race is aiming for annual profits of twenty-five percent, a margin that would be the envy of most heroin pushers.

“Were you ever a reporter?” I know the answer but I ask anyway, to make him squirm.

“No, Jack, I wasn’t. I took an M.B.A. at Harvard.”

“Ever work in a newsroom?”

“Look, I’ve been a newspaperman my whole life.”

I hear myself cackling like a macaw. “You’ve been an owner of newspapers your whole life, that’s hardly the same. Your daddy and your granddaddy were accumulators of newspapers,” I say, “just as they were accumulators of waffle houses.”

Maggad goes crimson in the ears, for I’ve touched a sore spot. When Maggad-Feist acquired the Union-Register, the press release mentioned that the family also owned “a chain of family specialty restaurants.” One of our business writers, Teddy Bonner, made the mistake of elaborating in a section-front story. Within days a memo came down sternly informing the staff that, when writing about Maggad-Feist, it henceforth was “unnecessary” to mention Wilma’s Waffle Dens, or the unfortunate bacterial outbreak that killed nine innocent customers and hospitalized fifty-four others who had dined upon improperly refrigerated breakfast sausages.

“By the way,” I say to Race Maggad III, “are any of those pesky wrongful-death cases still kicking around?”

He steeples his long fingers and in a low voice says, “You’re trying to get yourself fired, is that it? So you can turn around and sue us for God only knows what. Get your face in the paper, I bet you’d enjoy that.”

I hear myself asking what kind of a name Race is. “When you were little, did they call you ‘Master Race Maggad’? I bet they did. I bet they engraved it on all your birthday-party invitations.”

Glaring hotly, he knifes to his feet. Dark crescents have bloomed in the armpits of his shirt. For a moment I think he’s going to lunge across Abkazion’s desk to strangle me, and who would blame him.

“Tagger,” he hisses through clenched jaws, “what-is-your-goddamn-problem?”

“I suppose I don’t like being jerked around. Why don’t you just tell me why you’re here and then I can tell you to fuck off, and we can both get on with our day.”

Taking notice of the sodden half-moons on his Oxford, young Race deftly folds his arms for concealment. “MacArthur Polk’s obituary,” he proceeds curtly. “I want to read it.”

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