B is for Blockbuster
Okay, so this story isn’t about Blockbuster, but it’s about video stores. And for a generation of people – my generation – video stores and Blockbuster Video are inextricably bound together.
This is a fictionalized account -- or at least, the bit about my relationship with "Erin" (not her real name) is. What’s true, what’s not? Doesn’t really matter. The stuff that matters is true, and you get to decide what about this story matters.
I was 21 years old when my heart was broken for the first time.
I had been dating Erin – a friend from high school who turned into more – for a little over a year, and I was sure – absolutely sure – that I was going to marry her. When she got accepted to the University of New Hampshire – a several-hour-drive away – I bought my first car (hers) just so I could go see her on the weekends.
On her birthday, I was waiting for Erin to get back from dinner and call me, to let me know she had gotten home okay. She was on a trip with her sailing club – yeah, apparently that’s a thing at some colleges – and I just wanted to touch base before going to sleep.
No, this isn’t a tragic story of somebody lost at sea. She just got drunk and made out with somebody.
Either way, she didn’t call me that night, or until well into the next day. This was 2001, and it wasn’t especially common for people to be in constant contact via text, so sometimes, you just…didn’t know what was up with people you loved. Crazy, I know.
Erin finally called me, tearfully confessed, and I forgave her. I was scared for her safety and glad to find out that she was fine.
We talked for hours that day, but a week later, she called again: she didn’t think she could keep up the distance thing. She needed more than a weekend boyfriend.
I was crushed, and I begged her to hold off on making a decision until we had seen each other again. The summer was coming up, and we were both really excited about seeing Jay & Silent Bob Strike Back, so I figured it was worth having one last day out, and a long talk face to face.
It didn’t really work out that way. She agreed to the idea, but didn’t call me again for the rest of the semester, and it was pretty obvious things were doomed. When she got home from school, she asked if I wanted to come over for an afternoon, and I did – although this was about a month and change early for Kevin Smith.
We hung out, played Scrabble, fooled around, and got into a playful wrestling match. She managed to pin me to the ground, and instead of taking advantage of my helplessness, she kissed me on the cheek and got back up.
Oof.
With a few hours left before her parents came home, we decided on watching a movie.
What movie?
No ideas came. Erin suggested a trip to the video store.
Now, you young’uns don’t understand that the video store was a great place to hang out in the days before the modern internet. I could kill hours there. So, hell yeah, let’s go to the video store.
Erin drove, and we headed east out onto the big boulevard where all the stores are. To my surprise, we passed right by Blockbuster. Where were we going?
The local Blockbuster, which was about a half-mile from Erin’s house, was the only video store I knew of on this side of town. To go anywhere else I knew about, it was at least an extra ten to fifteen minutes of driving. Chimney’s, the great video store that had been another mile or so down the road, had recently folded, much to everyone’s collective chagrin.
Erin turned toward Chimney’s, and I figured maybe she was just confused.
“Chimney’s is closed,” I said, bemused.
“Yeah, I know. I’m going to a place my dad likes,” she answered.
Another mile, a turn, and…well, damn. There’s another video store.
Emerald City Video was a store with a narrow storefront, but inside, it was cavernous. The store was probably 20 feet wide by 60 feet deep, with a great selection and an adult room hidden in the back corner. Movie props hung from some of the walls – high enough up that you couldn’t take them down and mess with them – including a shield from Spartacus, a costume used in Killer Klowns From Outer Space, and high-end replicas of props from The Mummy and the James Bond franchise.
This. Was. Heaven.
I was so immediately taken with the place, that I barely noticed when the guy behind the register greeted us. I wandered to the “special interest” section – where they had cult classics, documentaries, and anything LGBT-themed – and looked it up and down. A middle-aged woman with short hair and glasses saw me staring, and asked if I needed help.
“Oh – no, I was just checking things out. I’ve never been here,” I admitted. “This is a great store.”
Erin had gone to a more mainstream section of the store to find a movie we could watch while cuddling. It would be the last time, and by this point both of us knew it, so she looked for something sweet and timeless and sentimental. She really went all in on giving this relationship a proper sendoff.
Me? I was sitting in the Special Interest section, talking with…umm…
“I’m Russ,” I said, offering my hand. The woman took it.
“I’m Rita,” she said. “I’m one of the owners.”
I don’t remember what movie Erin and I watched. I don’t remember what Rita and I talked about. What I do remember, is that by the end of the conversation, Rita suggested I should apply for a job at the store.
I had just, days before, started a job at Barnes & Noble. Like basically everyone else, I applied to be a bookseller, and got immediately hired to sling coffees for B&N/Starbucks. I take black coffee, and am very – very – bad at making sweet, frothy coffee drinks. I knew my days were numbered. I took the application.
It’s been more than 20 years since I walked into that store for the first time, and as far as I know, there are no extant photos of “Store 1” – the location where I first encountered Emerald City Video. But I can still see it when I close my eyes. It was – ironic, given its name – a magical place.
I would work at Emerald City Video – mostly at Store 2 – on and off for the next 7 years, before moving to New York City to chase down my dreams of being an entertainment writer.
Where was Store 2? Well, we manage to get hold of the store formerly known as Chimney’s. For years, it had been our town’s home entertainment Mecca, and now, ECV was going to restore it to its former glory.
Of course, now it’s split up between a cardio kickboxing place and a laser hair removal center. But still.
I still love Erin. Dating her was good for my personal development, good for my soul. She’s a good person, and the once-in-a-blue-moon when we get to chat, I always enjoy it. And on top of everything else, Erin gets to claim credit for introducing to the place that would change my life.
When I was 24, I first met my (now) wife Cali…at Emerald City Video.
Cali was a customer, and she had a crush on me. I was in another relationship, and entirely oblivious to her interest. My obliviousness was taken as disinterest, and nothing happened for a handful of years, before we finally bumped into each other while single. But it’s funny to think about how the first girl to really, truly break my heart, was the one who brought me to Emerald City Video. She put me in the right place, at the right time, to meet the person who still makes that heart swell every day.
In 2021, I fulfilled a life-long dream and published my first book. For a variety of reasons, I went the self-publishing route. The name of my publisher? ECV Analog. The logo: a modified version of the old Emerald City Video logo. Rita and her husband Jim, the owners of Emerald City, joined me at a movie theater nearby to celebrate the book launch.
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A is for Accident
So, here goes.
A few weeks back, I was supposed to have started work on the Alphabet Superset, a project from Struthless that's aimed at helping motivate artists who are a little...stuck.
I am, strictly speaking, not stuck. I actually have more on my plate than I can handle most of the time. Still, it seemed like a cool project, and something that could help me hone some writing muscles that I don't use very often. I have a fiction project that has been percolating in the back of my mind, but it has been literally years since I wrote more than a few pages of fiction. And longer than that since I showed it to anyone.
So. The Alphabet Superset. It's a weekly challenge format, where you have a consistent theme and approach to the art, and each week you come up with a piece of work representative of that week's letter of the alphabet. I SHOULD have just started with D -- especially since I know what D is, and it's exciting! -- but I also know myself well enough to know that if I bail on A through C, I'll probably do basically none of the letters down the line.
Recently, I have been going through a bunch of my old archives to see whether there are any diamonds in the rough. So my "style" is going to be creative writing -- fiction and creative nonfiction, mostly not journalism, which is what I do the rest of my life. And the theme I'm choosing is autobiography. That doesn't mean you're going to get a lot of stuff that's super revealing about me -- although there will be some of that. It means each project will speak to a theme, an idea, or sometimes an archival project that was significant to a part of my life.
For the first installment, I'm going with "A is for Accident." The accident in question? A first-time hitman kills the wrong guy.
Oops.
This is a reworking of the first bit of 'I Got Him,' a novel I wrote once...but didn't back up before my computer was stolen. Back in the 2000s, not everything was always being loaded to the cloud. That was a rough lesson to learn, kids!
The only part of 'I Got Him' that survived was the first 40 or so pages. And I have always fantasized about bringing it back to life. This is not entirely new content, but a piece of the original version, lightly edited. I may tweak and hone a little more during a future week, but the hope here is to get myself back on track for the Alphabet.
So...here we go.
Oh, and this story takes place around 2003.
CHAPTER ONE: Somebody Got Murdered
“I got him,” Martin said into the phone. “Just like you wanted, I got him!”
“You didn’t,” Alderman said coolly, the background buzz of a crappy payphone not enough to mask his irritation.
“Best part?” Martin continued, undeterred. “I knew the bastard! Fucking comes into McVeigh’s all the time and gives me shit because his burger has mayonnaise. Like I can help it that nobody reads the ‘special order’ line.”
Alderman sighed. “What are you talking about?”
“What, I gotta say it?”
“That’s what I’m asking for.”
“How do I know the phone’s not bugged?” Martin asked, and instinctively looked around as he said it.
“Why on earth would it be?”
“Alright, fine….I killed the Zlomek guy for you.”
“Somehow I’m guessing that one of us has got something very confused here,” Alderman said, sarcasm starting to creep in around the edges of his frustration.
“How do you mean?”
“I’m very busy right now, actually. Can I call you back?”
“Oh, right, right. Fine. But we’re solid here, right? You’re going to make sure I don’t get blamed for this?”
“I really do have to go. I have a friend from work here right now,” Alderman said.
“Oh,” Martin said. “Didn’t realize. Sorry!” And then, after a pause, “We’re not on speakerphone or anything, right?”
“No, no. Eugene Zlomek is here, is all, and he’s telling me about his plans for the weekend. I think I’ve mentioned him before, right? A business acquaintance from the City.”
Martin felt his stomach fall into his testicles. “Fuck,” he said.
“That’s right.” The happiness in Alderman’s voice was the kind you only heard when businessmen were placating a customer, or an employee. Professional Happiness.
“How about I’ll call you tonight, okay? Have a drink and unwind while you wait, alright?”
Franklin Alderman didn’t wait for Martin to respond before hanging up. Martin had said, “Ri—” before realizing that nobody was on the other end, and then hung up with a petulance rarely seen in a grown man. He tapped the end of his rifle impatiently against the side of the phone booth for a minute, but his mind was moving too fast to remain focused on that, and he inadvertently put the barrel through the thin plastic panel.
The Verizon logo on the outside of the phone broke outward and away from the booth and bits of plastic rained on Martin’s hair. The reason it had rained on his hair, rather than on his shoes, is that when he heard the sound of the plastic popping and breaking away, he hit the ground in terror, dropping the gun. He was convinced that, somehow, it had gone off in the booth. Having no bullets in the chamber, though, the gun of course hadn’t go off, and continued not to do so when dropped. Suddenly he wondered what the hell he had been doing carrying the murder weapon around with him in the open to begin with.
Martin picked it up and forced it into his long, over-packed gym bag. It was nylon-and-mesh, and intended for use by baseball players (hence the length to accommodate a gun). It was loaded up with shorts and towels, on the off chance that anyone should want to take a look through it and Martin couldn’t dissuade them. The bag had a Champion logo on the top of it, which Martin couldn’t help but feel was a little ironic riding next to his face at the moment, while he tried to figure out how he botched his job so badly and who, exactly, he had killed.
He jogged to his car—a red, 1991 Ford Mustang LX waiting at the curb about fifteen feet from the payphone—and jumped in. He tossed the Champion bag in the back and shifted gears all at the same time, in one motion as though the release of the bag by his left arm had caused the right one to pull the lever between his front seats. The car failed to roar to life, but gurgled a bit, and rolled down the street in the way that 1991 Mustangs are wont to do.
The street was well-lit for the night drive home, and Martin was thinking of his terrible mistake, wondering what would happen next, when he saw the lights of a police car in his rearview mirror. He looked at the digital clock he had fastened to the dash when all of the vehicle’s interior lighting had failed months before. It read 1:39, which meant it had been a little more than forty-five minutes since Martin had killed someone who was not Eugene Zlomek.
He grabbed the pack of cigarettes from his dashboard and took one out. He lit it with a Zippo from his jacket pocket because the cigarette lighter in the Mustang had been removed by the previous owner, who thought he had been improving the transmission at the time. He rolled down the passenger side window and blew the smoke from his cigarette in that direction. He leaned onto the passenger seat and opened the glove box.
The police officer, carrying a flashlight that was completely unnecessary given the intensity of the spotlight he had pointed at Martin’s rearview mirror, used it to tap on the driver’s side window. Martin opened the driver’s door a crack and half-shouted out it.
“The window doesn’t open, Officer,” Martin apologized. “Wiring’s all screwed.”
“Can I see your license, registration and insurance card, please?” The policeman asked, with no clear indication that he understood or cared what Martin had said about the state of the Mustang.
“Absolutely. Hold on a minute.” Martin felt a cold sweat coming on as he rifled through the open glove box. He coughed a little on the cigarette, as he didn’t smoke. Instead, he had lit up to mask the odor of smoke in the car.
Having worn gloves for the killing, Martin thought that maybe they would have gunpowder residue on them, and started the light them on fire in the bushes outside the
Zlomek house. But when people inside realized that someone—not, apparently, Eugene
Zlomek—had been killed, they started to mill around by the window and Martin had felt
obliged to get out of there, carrying—in his dazed panic and hurry—his flaming gloves
with him. The smell of smoke was very strong in the car, and he had made use of some
very old, very cheap cigarettes a friend had left in the car months ago. He sat upright in
the driver’s seat, passing his license and insurance card to the patrolman outside.
“I can’t find the registration,” Martin said. “Can you take it off the windshield?”
The patrolman shone his unnecessary flashlight at the windshield to confirm that
there was, in fact, a registration on the car. “I’ll get it from the plates,” he said, and
walked to the front of the car, shining the flashlight some more.
The officer walked back to the open door. “Where is your front license plate?”
He asked.
“Vanished a few weeks ago; haven’t had time to report it,” Martin said honestly.
“You’d better.”
“I will.”
“Next time,” the cop warned, “you’ll get a ticket.”
“Is that why you pulled me over, Officer?”
“I’ll tell you when I get back.”
“I wasn’t speeding, was I?”
“I’ll talk to you when I get back,” the officer said, increasingly frustrated.
The patrolman walked back to his car, clicking the flashlight on and off, and then
sat in the driver’s seat for what seemed to Martin to be a very long time. Finally he got
out of the car, still hefting his flashlight.
“What’s that smell?” Asked the police officer when Martin reopened the door for
him.
“Smell?”
“Smoke. Do you have an exhaust problem, too?”
“Not that I know of. Maybe my cigarette?”
“Is it cloves or something?” The cop asked.
“No, just very cheap.”
“Hm. Maybe.” He straightened up. “Mr. Bidwell, do you know why I pulled
you over?”
“Because I have no front license plate?” Martin ventured.
“No.”
“Oh. In that case, I’m not really sure.”
“Have you been drinking?”
“No. Absolutely not. I’ve never had a drink in my life.”
“That sounds very defensive,” said the police officer, shining his flashlight around
inside the car.
“No, Officer. Just definitive.”
“Do your headlights work?”
Martin looked at the switch on his dashboard which controlled the headlights. It
was in the “Off” position.
“Shit,” Martin said.
“That’s what I thought when I saw you barreling down the road like that,” said the
patrolman.
“I just pulled away from the gas station about two miles back. This is a very well-
lit road…!”
“I understand. Are you related to Jonathan Bidwell?”
“My second-cousin.”
“His father was on my softball team last year.”
“Mike’s a great guy.”
“Yeah….I’m not going to ticket you tonight. Just be a little more with-it, okay?”
“Thanks.”
“No problem. And get your exhaust checked. I don’t think that’s tobacco.”
“Thanks.”
The patrolman walked back to his car and sat in it while Martin pulled back into traffic, turning on his headlights and blinker. In the back seat, the odor of the burning evidence still lingered. He left the passenger window down to get rid of it.
-----
“…But it’s trash, Doug!” Irwin shouted.
Irwin Shaw was sitting on a rolling chair in an office of white-painted concrete,
shouting emphatically at a stooped, wrinkled man whose white, bushy hair and lively eyes left even his best friends wondering how old he actually was. The man, his editor, walked away toward his own office and Irwin stood to follow him.
“It doesn’t matter if it’s trash, Shaw,” Doug told him. “What you did was unwarranted.”
“Completely unwarranted,” Irwin agreed, in a way that expressed a total lack of enthusiasm for, or interest in, Doug’s assessment.
“You wrote—let’s see…” Doug rustled papers around on his desk theatrically until he found one that he wanted. He squinted at it, opened his mouth to speak and then closed it again.
Then he threw that paper at the ground, and picked up another one instead. He looked pleased with this new acquisition.
“You wrote, ‘…where the only thing greasier than the fish fry and warm beer is the middle-aged barmaid who flirts with everyone under eighty.’”
“It’s true. The facts all check; I have quotes from seven regular customers.”
“I don’t care about your ridiculous quotes. You know you can’t say that shit.”
“Why not?”
“You know damned well why not,” Doug growled, withdrawing a pair of reading glasses from his paper-covered desk and putting them on top of his head as if he may wear them eventually, but not right now.
“I can’t tell the truth about the places I’m supposed to ‘review’ because they’re our advertisers and they might get mad if someone points out how shitty their bars really are.”
Irwin had used air quotes to emphasize his point when he said the word “review.”
“Not bars, Irwin. Clubs.”
“Three quarters of what you send me to cover for the ‘Local Clubs’ column are just crappy bars that have local cover bands playing on systems too loud for the rooms they’re in.”
“Tanner’s called. They won’t advertise with us anymore.”
“That’s not such a bad thing,” Irwin said. “I don’t think I would want our paper associated with that dive anyway.”
“No, no, no. That’s a very bad thing. Where do you think your salary comes from?”
“Salary?! You’re crazy. I get twenty bucks a story. That’s not a salary, that’s money for gas and food to get to, and then do, the story. And the food’s hardly ever any good. But I’m not complaining about the money, trust me. Play money for play journalism. It all makes sense.”
“I told you when you took over this column that the food is free at the clubs you’re writing up,” Doug sighed, putting his head in his hands and knocking the reading glasses askew, then taking them off and putting them back on the desk.
“I’m glad you think that; the bar owners don’t seem to have been told.”
There was a knock on the door, and a young, husky man with very black hair came in wearing a t-shirt that said, “Dammit—I Did Not Have Sexual Relations With That Woman Either.”
The young man said, “Mister Hooper? We really need you out here. It’s almost two,” and left in such a hurry, it was obvious that he was either very busy, or hoping to dodge Doug’s reply.
“Okay, Irwin. You’re off this column.”
“Doesn’t that have to wait until the real editors get here in the morning?” Irwin asked with a smirk.
“No. You run in my edition. And I already talked to Brad.”
“So, I’m fired?”
“No, you still have your other column.”
“Gee, thanks. You know, that one was also a lot more interesting before you guys started to get…”
Doug cut him off. “…And for the next few weeks, until we figure out what else you’re good for, I want you on newsdesk during this shift.”
“What?”
“General assignment.”
“I’m—what? Demoted? How does that even work, when you pay by the story?”
“Not demoted. The new Local Club writer came out of that slot. I just need you there until we fill it.”
“Roger is taking over the Club column?” Irwin choked on the statement, and caught his body trying to laugh without permission.
“Yes. Is there a problem with Roger, too?”
“Not at all, Doug. It suits him.”
“What the hell’s that supposed to mean?” Doug asked, a vein in his head starting to throb.
“Your nephew’s not really a reporter, he’s just the nephew of an editor.”
Doug's face started to turn red, and he rose in from his seat, but Irwin continued. “That column isn’t really reporting, as I said, just kind of masturbation of our sponsors…”
The young man came back to the doorway, still looking harried. “Mister Hooper? It’s almost two.”
“Still?” Doug shouted.
The young man missed the sarcasm, and paused for a second before darting away to process it, as though the question might be a trick.
“…Yes?” He responded hesitantly.
“I’m coming,” Doug said to the young man, and then to Irwin he said, “Get out of my office. I just got like nine e-mails in two minutes, so something must be happening. Go check the places you go check.”
“Will do, Skipper. By the way, nice office you have here.”
“Yeah, Doug said, ushering everyone out the door. “It used to be a bathroom, but the Department of Health said it was too small for that. Now get out of it.”
“I see,” Irwin said, “You’ve gotta take a leak.”
Doug slammed the door.
Irwin walked around the corner behind him and was standing next to the computers that were set to receive e-mails from wire services, freelance writers and letters to the editor. Two of them were idling, waiting for a password to unlock them so that they may crash freely. On a third, there was an e-mail program open. This, Irwin knew, was the computer that John Ramsay, the editor in charge of the Op-Ed section, used to receive all of his e-mail. Irwin sat in front of the computer and looked up the e-mail preferences.
Ramsay had set the computer, apparently, to filter out pornography, letters from a recently-fired Sentinel employee and anything with a subject heading containing nasty language. Irwin knew that there had been some very, very unpleasant language used in a some recent letters to the editor, mostly directed at Ramsay’s mother after a story he’d written on why it was necessary to enforce dog-leash laws that were already on the city’s books. Irwin changed the settings so that anything containing any one of several nasty words would be forwarded to Ramsay’s home e-mail account and marked with a little red flag that said “Urgent!” if you held the mouse over it for a second.
He also turned on an auto-reply feature that would tell anyone e-mailing letters to the editor that The Editor had been “…eaten by a rampaging groundhog, and that future e-mails should be directed to:” and then Ramsay’s personal e-mail address again.
He skated sideways on the rolling chair, then, and punched his own password into another computer to see what had been coming in while he was in Doug’s office.
A few headlines popped onscreen: “Fire at Soup Company Kills 11.” “Classical Pianist Arthur Dent Dies at Age 67.” “French Language More Prevalent In Michigan, Study Shows.”
He printed off each of these and left them sitting on a desk for the news desk reporter to find in the morning, then he walked toward the door.
“Where are you going, Shaw?” Shouted Doug Hooper from a light table where he was looking at the next edition of the Sentinel.
“My People of Interest column,” Irwin said.
“I’ve already got it!”
“The next one.”
“What was on the wires?”
“Gerard Depardieu in Detroit.”
“Just go home, Shaw,” Doug said, waving at him irritably, looking down at the table, then feeling on the top of his head for the reading glasses that were no longer there.
It was 1:40 in the morning when Irwin Shaw left the offices of The Sentinel.
It was 6:51 the next morning when he finally arrived at home. At 1:46, as he was turning into his driveway, Irwin had heard on the police scanner in his car that a man had been found dead about four miles from where Irwin lived.
He arrived at the address of the death five minutes ahead of The Sentinel’s police reporter, Jim Smith. Jim was a tall, jolly guy whose writing was as bland as his name and who didn’t really care if other reporters hijacked his stories. He’d just been working the same beat for so long, it was like getting paid to hang out with his friends in blue.
The house was enormous, but other than that pretty unremarkable. It was white with black shutters, squarish, and had what appeared to be about one window for every room in its three sprawling stories. All of the windows were the same; there was no picture window visible on any of the three sides of the house that Irwin could see either from the road or from his current position in the driveway.
Irwin, flashing his press badge to no one in particular, stepped up near the front door of the house where the police and the press had already set up shop. There was a police line, and just outside of it a handful of uniformed police officers were talking in subdued tones to a young man and woman in their early- or mid-twenties. The young man looked vaguely familiar, but it was the kind of familiarity that easily could have come from living so near to one another and shopping in the same places. Irwin couldn't place him.
The police didn't seem to be talking to the young man and the young woman as much as talking to the young woman and tolerating the young man being there, his hands on the girl's shoulders obviously being integral to keeping her from falling apart. The young man looked around him, and his eyes were red. He glanced through the crowd, fixed on Irwin for a second, and then looked away. There didn’t seem to have been any indication of recognition from the young man in the second they'd made eye contact.
The officer who had been talking to the young couple turned his back and headed indoors, and the couple sat on the bottom step of the house's big, all-wooden porch.
Irwin hung his head, took a reporter's notebook out of the pocket of his gray trench coat and approached them slowly. He spoke, first, to the girl, who had obviously been crying. Her eyes were red and puffy, her hair mussed. There was blood on her shirt, which had been partially covered by the brown corduroy jacket slung over her body. The young man next to her didn't look much better.
"I'm sorry," Irwin started. "I know this is a terrible time, but can I ask you a few things?"
"Who are you?" The girl choked out.
"Irwin Shaw, with The Sentinel."
"Oh. Press."
"Yeah. We always know just where we're needed the least, and that's more or less where we're paid to be. I live right down the way, so my editor figured I might know you guys,. Your brother looks a little familiar."
The young man didn't move, didn't respond. He didn't seem to be acknowledging Irwin at all.
"He's not my brother," the girl corrected. "My fiancé. This is James. His father is...was...he's the son."
"Of the one who passed?"
"Right."
Irwin looked at the young man, whose dark hair was longish and unkempt and who appeared to have been rousted from his sleep to come to the crime scene; he was wearing sweat pants, a mesh shirt and slippers. His eyes were also red with exhaustion and tears.
"I'm sorry for your loss, James," Irwin said, but the young man didn't respond.
The girl chimed in quietly: “What do you need, Mister…hmm…I’m sorry, forgot already…?”
“That’s okay. It happens. Irwin Shaw, Sentinel. You’ve had a long night.”
“So do you know what’s happened?” She asked him.
“I heard on the police scanner that someone was found dead here.”
“Yes, James’ father.”
“You said,” Irwin led her on. “What happened?”
“He was murdered. Shot.”
“Was anyone else in the house at the time?”
“He was shot through the window.”
“Are they absolutely sure about that?”
“I don’t know if they are, but I am. I was in the next room.”
Where was James here? In bed?”
“Yeah, in bed…at home…” the girl seemed flustered. “…At his house. Sorry. I don’t usually talk to the press.”
“You’re fine,” Irwin reassured her, “You’re doing fine. What’s your name, though?” He was scratching out the first notes in his pad.
“My name? It’s Michelle Zlomek. This is my house.”
“You live here alone?”
“No. It’s my dad’s house. I live here. I’m not out of college yet.”
“Where do you go?”
“I’d rather not say.”
“Okay…”
“Don’t you want to know about who was killed?”
“I was coming around to that.”
“His name was Lowe. Edward Lowe.”
“Name sounds familiar.”
“He was the CEO of Keystone Security,” James said. His voice was so hoarse and quiet that it took Irwin a second to realize that he was being addressed.
“We did a feature on them not long ago,” Irwin said, turning to James and trying to keep from seeming put off. “They’re local.”
“Yeah,” James said.
“Was there any reason why anyone would be wanting to kill your father, James?”
“Plenty.”
“Want to tell me some of them?”
“Not really.”
“Want to tell me who? I might be able to bring them to justice….”
“I thought that was the police.”
“Them, too,” Irwin quipped, trying his hardest not to sound overly glib and failing.
“I think I’ll stick with them. They’re kind of officially doing it.”
“They’re just part of the Executive Branch. The press is the Fourth Estate.”
“I am greatly disturbed by the death of my father, which comes as a shock to our family,” James said. It sounded as though he were reading from a script. “I look forward to seeing his killer brought to justice and will support the law enforcement community in any way I can during the investigation.”
“Wow,” Irwin said.
“Is that what you needed?” James asked, ice in his tone. “A comment?”
“Did you kill your father, James?”
“Fuck off.”
“I’ll fuck off in just a minute. Just wanted you to know—if you give a press conference and make a remark that shallow, in that tone of voice, anyone who sees you on TV will think that you killed Edward Lowe.”
“Off the record?”
“That all depends.”
“I already know who killed him. I also know they’ll never be held accountable. I just don’t know what I’m going to do about it yet.”
“Tell me what you think. Maybe I can get some evidence to supply to the police.”
“Why can’t I just tell it to the police?”
“Or that.”
“You’ve got my statement, Mr. Shaw. Please just go away now.”
“Miss? I forget your name.” He looked down at his scrawled notes. “Michelle!”
“What?” She sighed.
“Why was Mr. Lowe at your house so late?”
“My father works with Ed at Keystone.”
“What’s your father’s name?”
“Zlomek.”
“His first name?”
“Just go read some press releases or something,” James hissed. “I’m sure you can put it all together.”
“Thanks for the help,” Irwin said.
He stood, much to the chagrin of his knees and ankles, and turned around. He almost walked into a uniformed police officer who was making a beeline for something important.
“Whoa! Sorry,” Irwin said. “Irwin Shaw. Sentinel. Got a minute?”
“No,” the cop said, and tried to sidestep Irwin, who followed his movement.
“How about half of one?”
The cop’s jaw tensed for a second and then relaxed. “What do you want?”
“Whose house is this?”
“No comment.”
“What relation is he to the deceased?”
“No comment.”
“I hear he worked with the victim. What’s the homeowner do?”
“I don’t know.”
“Did you know that Lowe was the CEO?”
“Yes.”
“But you don’t know what Zlomek was? Is.”
“No.”
“You guys got on this pretty quick. I don’t live far.”
“I was in the area.”
“Doing what?” Irwin wondered if there was evidence to be had, which a slow patrolman might not put together and might, therefore, accidentally expose to the press.
“Someone busted in the side of a phone booth.”
“Sounds thrilling,” Irwin said, “What’s your name?”
“Shane Norton.”
“Thanks.”
Irwin put his pad and pen back in the pocket of his coat without having written anything about a vandalized payphone.
---
Martin’s phone was ringing.
He had been sitting up in bed for over three hours, waiting for the call, but he was slow to answer. On the small coffee table in front of his television was the morning’s paper. On the front page, with a tabloid-sized headline, was a story about a CEO of a locally-owned, New York-based company having been shot to death at his partner’s house the night before.
“Edward Lowe, 53, of Brick was killed last night in Red Bank….Lowe, the CEO of Keystone Security, was shot through the window of 212 Marsh Drive….The building belongs to Eugene Zlomek, Lowe’s business partner and the CFO of Keystone.”
Martin had killed Edward Lowe. Edward Lowe, the annoying bastard who always came into work and bitched about his cheeseburger. For a moment, Martin was struck by the pettiness of a millionaire—someone who obviously could have gone to a better establishment after one or two disappointments and left Martin the hell alone—coming every single day and bitching about mayonnaise. The thought, though, was hard-pressed to remain long in Martin’s mind, given the thoughts it was fighting for attention and the ringing of the phone that Martin knew could not possibly be good news.
“Yes?” He answered, tired and anxious and not at all happy to be alive.
“Martin, how are you?” Came Alderman’s voice from the other end of the phone; his good cheer was infinitely more frightening than if he had just called and started shouting.
I’m so sorry I fucked up, Mr. Alderman,” Martin said into the phone, so fast he could hardly be understood. “Please give me another shot—chance. I’ll fix things.”
“There’s nothing to fix. I’ve got things under control on my end, I think. You’re not going to be paid for this travesty, certainly. You did, after all, screw up the job rather severely…but you had the right idea and you got away without implicating any of us.”
“Thank you, Sir. Do do I…?”
“I want him dead by Friday, and I don’t want it in the papers. I don’t want my people to hear about it until it’s too late to be helped. This is kind of against the rules.” His sinister, faux-European voice paused to assume a more professional air. “Zlomek will be named CEO on Friday if he’s still alive when the Board meets in emergency session to discuss the passing of Mr. Lowe. At that point, he’ll become very useful to us. I’d rather he didn’t; he’s a prick and I don’t want to work with him for the rest of my days.”
“And you’re sure there’s nobody listening on the other end of the phone, right? I mean, I’ll get away with this, right?”
“The only thing that could get you in trouble now, Martin—is if you keep asking that. It’s really very unprofessional. It’ll give people the wrong idea.”
“Sorry.”
“Quite alright,” Alderman said. “I’ll call you when I hear that Zlomek is dead. In the meantime, you just sit tight.”
Before Martin could say goodbye, Alderman hung up the phone. Martin sat for a second, scowling at this indignity, and then hung up the phone and silently threw himself at, more than into, his huge blue easy chair. He picked up the remote control from the seat, flicked on the television and caught the news:
“Edward Lowe, President and CEO of Keystone Security, was killed late last night at the home of the company’s CFO Eugene Zlomek. This could spell more trouble for Keystone, whose bid to take over CopCo fell through very publicly last month and whose stock has been steadily declining since rumors surfaced that the company could face charges relating to union-busting. Lowe’s family says they intend to release a statement this afternoon. Keystone, meanwhile…” and Martin switched the channel. On HBO, they were playing a documentary about Lenny Bruce, and Martin left it there while he closed his eyes and tried to decide whether to cry or just take a nap until the phone started ringing again.
---
Irwin's phone was ringing.
After having filed the late-night story on the murder of Edward Lowe, Irwin had returned home and slept. His sheets were tossed everywhere, and there was a pretty clear trail of disorder from where Irwin had entered the dark room the night before, to where he'd hopped onto bed. In that trail were all of the pieces of junk that he had stepped on before falling asleep at five in the morning. He could see it all now, with his clear eyes and the light flooding the cheap lace curtains of the bedroom.
Monumentally disoriented, Irwin faced the wall and reached out. His hand struck the wall and he turned back around and reached out again, this time grabbing at his alarm clock.
"Yallo?" he muttered into the phone when, after its fifth ring, he finally had it in his hand.
"Shaw, what the hell were you thinking?" Hooper demanded.
"Say again?"
"I said, 'What the hell were you thinking?' Last night."
"Last night, I was thinking, 'I should hand in this story to Doug, so that he'll stop bitching.' Shows you Daffy Duck was right when he said it doesn't pay to think."
"Smartass. Stop screwing around. You were hounding someone else's story."
"Oh, come off it. You know he doesn't care."
"We have to have some semblance of order here, Shaw."
"It didn't seem to bother you last night; they said they were planning on running it on the front page."
"They did."
"Great. So what are you complaining about?"
And Irwin hung up.
Of course, I didn't know any of this yet. I figured it all out later.
"Blah-blah-blah!" The TV told me. I had been, for the previous hour, watching an HBO special on Lenny Bruce. Sunk low in a star-spangled camping chair in the living room of my small apartment, I stared vacantly at the television, too exhausted to either change the channel or take in the information in any meaningful way. My phone rang, and I ignored it. Finally, the answering machine kicked in.
"I don't know how you got this number," my voice came from the machine, "but there must be a good reason for it if you did. So state that reason and maybe I'll get back to you." There was then a series of beeps long enough to irritate all but the most persistent caller.
"Mr. Abernathy, we need to talk," a voice said. I cocked my head a little bit and hit the mute key on the remote control. Lenny Bruce was silent, but the TV continued to buzz with electrical life. The caller pressed on. "I believe that someone has tried to kill me. I was fortunate in that they failed, but I'm worried they may try again. I also have...fears...about the legal ramifications for me of their failed attempt. Please return my call at 200-8870. I will pay handsomely."
I clicked the sound on the television back on and mulled over what he had said. I already knew who he was, of course--it had been all over the papers about Ed Lowe at Keystone. There are only so many people who can afford my services, so there isn't a lot of room for coincidences in these matters.
There were only four or five people who could be calling me, asking for my help in this particular circumstance: Board members fo Keystone. I knew off the bat that I could count Mrs. O'Keefe out, clearly, and probably Bill Munger, too. He was too good a guy to be in a compromising position and too hapless to realize it even if he was. Also unlikely was Vittorio Graves, who was too old to be a suspect without a really solid motive--which nobody yet knew he had. That left the CFO, Eugene Zlomek. He made sense as a suspect; unfriendly, corrupt, young and strong...and the murder had happened at his house. So of course he hadn't done it, but the police would be positive he had.
Shit. I had to do this, didn't I?
I tuned off the television and sunk lower in my chair, closed my eyes and bowed my head. Might as well get some sleep.
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