Yesterday's News

overdose.”
    “Drugs?”
    “Sleeping pills.”
    I looked at him.
    Arbuckle said, “What’s the matter, you don’t know what sleeping pills do?”
    “I know what they do. I also know she said she couldn’t take them.”
    “What?”
    “She couldn’t swallow pills. Made her sick.”
    “I don’t know anything about that and I could care less. Coyne and Rust are yesterday’s news, understand? In fifteen minutes, I got a story conference in the executive editor’s office on thirty-six pages of today’s news.”
    “Anybody else here that knew her better than you did?”
    Again the exaggerated breath. “Let’s make a deal, okay? I give you two names and the rest of the day to poke around here. After that, I see you in the building again, I call the cops to kick your ass off the premises. Seem reasonable to you?”
    “What are the names?”
    “Malcolm Peete and Liz Rendall. They’re both Gee-Ay’s and knew Jane as well as anybody could. Okay?”
    “Thanks for your consideration.”
    “Don’t mention it. Close the door behind you.” When I pulled the door shut, I felt a tap on my shoulder. I looked into a face badly weathered by the elements, so long as you counted alcohol in with wind and rain. His eyes were bleary, his nose a road map etched in red. The hair was gray, but given the booze his age could have been anywhere from me to sixty. He said, “You’re here about Janey.”
    “Word travels fast.”
    “The drums, fellow traveler. The drums tell all.” He didn’t seem stiff, just overly metaphorical. “Can you point me toward Malcolm Peete?”
    He extended his right hand. “At your service. I plan to get stinking drunk to mourn the poor girl’s passing. Care to join me?”
    I shook his hand. “Only for one.”
    “Drink or bottle?” he said as he moved to the closest desk and wangled a tweed sports jacket off the back of its chair.

“Another?”
    “Not just yet, thanks.”
    Peete shrugged, filling his own glass from the liter of Smirnoff he’d persuaded the bartender to leave with us. It didn’t take much persuading in the Watering Hole. Six stools over were two truckers tossing shots-and-beer, sawdust on the floor to soak up any sloshed Bud draft. Wooden bowls of pretzels and peanuts, mixed together, clattered on the oft-wiped old mahogany. No butcher block or ferns in sight.
    “They’ll be here someday, you know,” Peete said.
    “Who?”
    “The nouveau gentry, who else? There is a limit to which even sweetly slumping Nasharbor can sink before urban renewal rears its ugly, and unwanted, head.”
    “I haven’t seen any warning signs so far.”
    Peete threw back three fingers of vodka and reached for the bottle again. “You’ve but to open your eyes to see the waste about to be destroyed around you. Poor Janey was panty-deep in the current efforts before she grew weary of the good fight.”
    I figured I would have to move pretty quickly to get straight answers from the man. “She said something to me about a development story.”
    “Yes, development. Or, to be precise, redevelopment. Has an encouraging ring to it, ‘redevelopment.’ As though society has already tried nobly and failed, but has gleaned something from the initial effort which will improve the next one.”
    “Which effort are we talking about here?”
    “The Harborside Condominiums, Limited. Limited, that is, by the peculiarly polyester vision of its principal partner, one Richard Dykestra, the Horatio Alger of our modest metropolis.”
    “I haven’t seen many likely buyers.”
    “No, no and you won’t, good sir. You see, the buyers aren’t going to be trampling each other on their way to the model units. Know why?”
    “No.”
    “Because the economy is wrong for it, the tax climate is wrong for it, and Mr. Dykestra is wrong for it. But that didn’t stop the En-Are-ay.”
    “The...?”
    “N-R-A, the Nasharbor Redevelopment Authority. The NRA embraced dear Dykestra’s dream and lobbied like demons for an accompanying bond issue to relieve him from the pressures of financial reality.”
    “And Jane Rust thought something stunk there?”
    “Like the cannery in August, my lad. But there are others who can tell you far more about it than I.” He paused, running the nail of his index finger down the side of the Smirnoff label. “Coming out of Arbuckle’s office back at the Beacon, you asked for me specifically. Flattering, but why was that?”
    “Arbuckle told me you knew Jane as well as