Eureka

CHAPTER 7

We split up again; Ski was going to check out the crime reporters at the downtown newsroom, some of the old-timers who might know more about San Pietro than what had been reported through the years. The newsies always had something in their back pocket. Stuff that was all rumor with maybe ten cents’ worth of truth in it. Stuff they couldn’t back up properly. Maybe they had a city editor who’d been sued once and was gun-shy of everything if they didn’t have pictures, sworn statements, three sources, and a sworn statement from God that it was on the level. Ski was good at tapping them. He’d been around seven years longer than me. He’d go in with a pint of Seagram’s Seven in his pocket, tell some jokes, give them a little piece of gossip they couldn’t use, then sneak around to the subject and take out the bottle.

“What are we looking for?” he asked.

“I don’t know,” I answered truthfully. “Maybe just a word here and there.”

“It’s what, seventeen years ago?” he said. “And for all we know, she was on Mr. Somebody’s sleeve long before she showed up in Pacific Meadows.”

“I know it, I know it,” I said. “It’s worth an hour or two. Maybe something happened up there in the early twenties, some two-bit scandal not worth an inch of ink down here. Something that’ll give me more to go on than a bunch of bank names.”

Ski went his way and I went down to the main newsroom of the Times to look up Jimmy Pennington, who was one of the best reporters in town. We had started out at the same time, about two years after Verna Hicks Wilensky wandered into town with four grand in her girdle, a new name, a new house, and a new life except for somebody from the past who was underwriting her five C’s a month. I could feel the nudge in my gut. Maybe it was because I’ve known a lot of people who disappeared. Just vanished, click, like that. I was in Missing Persons for two years. But this was the first time somebody had appeared out of nowhere. No previous history. No birth certificate. No high school prom pictures. Zip. But she had to appear from someplace before she appeared in West L.A.

Pennington and I were both rookies at our respective jobs in those days and I helped Pennington out when I could, giving him a tip that put him an hour ahead of everybody else. In those days there were seven newspapers, including the gossip sheets. An hour is as good as a week in the life of a breaking story. In exchange, he mentioned my name whenever he could. One hand washing the other. Now he was the top-slot reporter. The only homicide he would be interested in was if the mayor knocked off his mistress in the presidential suite of the Bel Air Hotel. But he had a memory like an encyclopedia, so he was worth a trip across town.

I stopped in the coffee shop on the corner, got two cups of black coffee, and took the elevator to the third-floor newsroom. I found Jimmy, sleeves rolled up to his elbows, talking into two phones at the same time, one cradled between his ear and his shoulder. With his free hand he was taking down notes. He was short, five-seven, but husky, had curly blond hair, and loved the ladies.

I sat on the corner of his desk, put a coffee in front of him, and rolled a cigarette. He mouthed, “Light that for me,” which I did. I stuck it between his lips and he kept writing and talking at the same time, the butt bobbing between his lips like the cork on a kid’s fishing line. He finally hung up one of the phones and wrapped his hand around the mouthpiece of the other.

“What’s up?” he asked.

“Want to pick your brains a little.”

He rolled his eyes. “I’m covering two stories at once and I got a deadline in two hours.” He held up a finger and said, “Okay, Ned, I need all you can get me in one hour, got that? Sixty minutes. The beast is breathing down my neck. Thanks.” He hung up the phone and flopped back in his chair like a man who had just suffered a coronary.

“I don’t have a brain left to pick right now.”

“What do you know about Thomas Culhane?”

“Jesus, Zee, don’t you ever read the papers? There was a three- column profile on him last week, second section front.”

“I mean the stuff that wasn’t in the papers.”

His eyes narrowed. “What’re you on to?”

“Nothing. I have to go up there on a civil matter. I hear he’s a tough cookie.”

“You’re in homicide, what’re you doing chasing a civil matter?”

“It’s an accidental death. I need to find a survivor to close out my report.”

“Uh-huh.”

“That’s all there is to it,” I said, which at that point was true.

“He likes cops. He’s been one most of his life.” He paused and took a sip of coffee. “Why would Culhane get tough with you?”

“Who says he’s gonna get tough? You know me, I just like to have a leg up.”

“What kind of civil affair is this, again?”

I could see his nose twitching.

“I’m looking for a family member. It’s an accidental death and I don’t want to file the report until I notify the survivors.”

“That’s why Bell invented the telephone. That’s this gadget here.” He pointed to one of his phones.

“Ski told me Culhane was bad news, but you know Ski. He can make a federal case out of a hard sneeze. I happened to be in the neighborhood and I thought I’d get your take on him.”

He opened a desk drawer, which was his filing cabinet, and rooted around in the cloud of clippings that puffed up out of it. He finally found what he was looking for, snapped it out of the pile, and slammed the drawer with his knee.

“Here. That’s thirty inches on Culhane. Three pictures. He’s running for governor, you know, or did that get by you, too?” His face screwed up like he had just swallowed a tumbler full of white vinegar. “Jesus, what are you smoking these days?” he said, looking at the cigarette I had rolled him.

“You heard the one about beggars being choosers?”

“I ran out of Camels an hour ago and I haven’t been off the phone since.” He took another drag. “I don’t think Culhane has any secrets in his closet. He’s tough; hell, he had to be to clean up Eureka, which was what the town was called before they dolled it up and started calling it San Pietro. It used to be the meanest town in central California. Now it’s a playground for people with real money, the kind that tip with Ben Franklins and give their kids Cadillacs when they pass the fifth grade. But he runs the county with an invisible whip. You get out of line and crack! you got a welt on your back and you don’t have any idea where it came from. On the other hand, he can be a charmer. He can get a smile out of a dead cat. You won’t have any trouble with him. Like I said, he loves cops. Hates reporters, loves cops.”

“How come he hates reporters?”

“He played rough back when. One of his cops… what was his name?… it’ll come to me… anyway, the cop knocked off a mobster named Fontonio, who was taking over the mobs up there. You know, starting a gangster’s union-everybody joins up or they end up floating facedown to Hawaii. Woods, that was the cop’s name, Eddie Woods. He claimed self-defense, there was a gun in Fontonio’s hand; except everybody who knew the man, including his wife and bodyguards, said Fontonio was afraid of guns. Didn’t carry one, didn’t have one in the house. That’s what bodyguards are for. Then they couldn’t trace the heater. The boys up in Sacramento were about to look into it when Woods resigned, the D.A. dead-docketed the case, and that was the end of that.”

“So why does Culhane hate reporters?”

“Some of the muckrakers implied Culhane had Woods do the job. It did look pretty fishy. But Culhane said he had nothing to do with it. Then Woods said Culhane had nothing to do with it. And when Woods quit, the case went bye-bye. Culhane never forgot that. He said the press tried to ruin his reputation and, as far as I know, he’s still got a hard-on about it. He’s Irish just like you: you don’t get mad, you get even. Culhane gets mad and even. That isn’t in the story. It’s irrelevant now.”

“When did this happen?”

“I vaguely remember it. We’re talking mid twenties, thereabouts. I was just finishing college at the time and you were one of the Dead End kids. You know me. I remember weird stuff but I can’t remember what I had for lunch.”

“What happened to Woods?”

He shrugged. “Hell, I dunno. I heard he was a P.I. down here, but that was a long time ago.”

“I have great respect for your memory, Jimmy.”

“It’s a gift. My old man was a card shark. He could count cards in his sleep. Must be in my blood.”

The phone started ringing again. He snatched it up and snapped, “Pennington; hold on a minute.” He cupped the mouthpiece.

“No kidding, what’s your interest? Are you on to something?”

“Like I said, it’s a civil thing. If it works out, it wouldn’t rate more than three lines on page twenty-two.”

“You wouldn’t shit me after all we’ve been to each other?”

“When did I ever shit you?”

“This got something to do with that lady who took a bath with her radio?”

“How’d you hear about that? I haven’t even filed a report yet.”

“Scuttlebutt.”

“I’m trying to locate a relative so I can let the family know before it hits the obit page.”

“Oh.”

I don’t think he believed me, but the other phone started ringing again and the clock ticked closer to his deadline and he got busier than a centipede running across a hot rock. I thanked him, took the clipping, and got out of there before he got any nosier.