Blunt Darts

together when I was on cafeteria duty.”
    “Can you fix it for me to talk with her?”
    “I don’t know,” she replied. “I’ve met her mother at parent-teacher conferences. Kind of mousy but okay. Her father I haven’t met, but I have the impression he runs kind of a tight ship.”
    “Maybe if you called the mother and sweet-talked her...”
    “I’m not so sure my sweet-talking is very effective anymore.”
    I let Val’s oblique comment pass and pressed about Kim. “Val, I don’t see any other way for us to get inside Stephen’s thoughts.”
    “Well,” sighing, “I’ll give it a try. Call me—no, I’ll call you to let you know how I made out.”
    “Right. ‘Bye and thanks.”
    “Why not show your thanks?”
    “How?” I said before thinking.
    “Dinner!” she whooped. “But at my place, since you treated at L’Espalier and since the picnic was, well...”
    K I thought about Val, and then I thought about Beth. ‘I don’t think I can make it.”
    “Oh, the men of your generation are so backward about accepting dates. I’m having supper with a friend from college in Boston tomorrow night anyway. How about Saturday?”
    “Val, I don’t know how the case will be—”
    “Like I said about the picnic, you still have to eat. See you here at seven. I’ll even provide the wine.”
    “Val—”
    Click.
    That was twice.
     
    “I’m tired, John. Dog-tired, damned-tired, down-and-out tired.”
    I let him unwind for a couple of reasons. First, we were in his office. Second, in my opinion, Mo (for Morris) Katzen at age fifty-three is the best reporter in Boston. He is also the only reporter on the Herald American who will speak to me, and I don’t know anybody on the Globe. Since there are only two major newspapers in Boston, and since I was trying to locate a reporter or ex-reporter, I needed to talk to Mo. So I let him unwind awhile.
    “I’m tired of sports. I’m tired of the Red Sox breakin’ our hearts. I’m tired of the Patriots not even breakin’ our hearts. I’m tired of prizefights in hockey games and ballet dancing in prizefights.”
    “Sports can be frustrating, Mo,” I said.
    “Tell me about it.” Mo paused to puff obscenely on a cigar that looked as fit for a human mouth as a wolf’s turd. He had a dour face and so much white wavy hair that at first you thought it was a toupee.
    Mo was wearing his uniform: a gray suit with a too-wide tie, visible because he wasn’t wearing the coat and the vest was completely unbuttoned. I once asked Mo why he wore that suit. He said it made him look like a lawyer, which made it easier for him to get past screeners of all kinds. Since in twelve years I had seen neither the vest buttoned nor the jacket, period, I had to reserve judgment.
    “Tell you what else I’m sick of. Politics. We got a mayor who builds buildings instead of neighborhoods. We got a school committee run by a Federal judge and school kids who can’t read and write English. And we got two fuckin’ newspapers that don’t do anything about it because one’s a black-and-white version of Sports Illustrated and the other’s a gossip rag with one foot in the fiscal grave.”
    “Politics stinks, Mo,” I said, and then, to be sure I wasn’t being deficient in my commentary, I added, “And the newspaper business isn’t like it used to be.“
    “Tell me about it.” Four more puffs. “At least,” two more puffs, “at least in the old days, we covered stories. Aw, people got bought, sure, then as now, but it was more, I dunno, more understandable somehow. People were selling out so their kids could have food or operations, and the stories were good because they’d hurt you, you know. You’d write the story and proof it and say, ‘You know, that gets to me, what that poor shit must have been goin’ through and now what’s gonna happen to him!’ And you’d read it, you’d read the story in the evening edition and you’d say, ‘Jesus, that coulda been me, I learned something today.’ ”
    “I remember those stories, Mo.”
    “Sure you do. Everybody does.” Three puffs. Everybody old enough anyway. Nowadays, look around, what do you see?”
    I looked around. All I saw was Mo’s office, which could have passed for Hitler’s bunker or a hazardous waste dump.
    I looked back at him without an answer. “Youth!” he boomed, coming forward in his chair. “Youth!”
    “Youth is everywhere, Mo,” I said, nodding my head.
    “Damn right. These kids, the