Yesterday's News

me.”
    “The difference being?”
    “This house was my parents’. They died, and I got it. Charlie, he never owned anything in his life.”
    “How’d you meet him?”
    “Charlie?”
    “Yes.”
    “I thought you wanted to know about Rust, the reporter.”
    “I do. I think her death and Charlie’s are connected.”
    Fearey almost laughed. “They were connected alright.”
    “I heard that too, but I don’t understand it.”
    She looked around. “You mean you don’t understand how he could leave me and all this every coupla nights to hump Miss College Tight-Ass?”
    After thinking about my phrasing, I said, “I guess I mean I don’t see how they would have become interested in each other.”
    “Thanks for sparing my feelings like that.”
    I didn’t say anything.
    “Look, Charlie, he wasn’t much, you know? But there was something about him. He just had a look in his eyes, like to say, ‘I really know how to make a woman happy.’ I don’t know how else to describe it, because it never made sense to me, either, and I was nuts about the guy.”
    “Jane Rust told me that Charlie was her confidential source for a story on pornography. Kiddie porn.”
    “Charlie did all kinds of things. I never got involved.”
    “I’m not saying you did. I just need to know what was going on.”
    “Can’t help you.”
    “Charlie a delivery boy for the stuff?”
    The lips dissolved into two traced lines. “Like I said, I can’t help you.”
    “Know anybody who can?”
    “No.”
    “The night Charlie was killed. Tell me about it.” The lips relaxed, and she looked past me, out the window. “We had dinner here, some Kentucky Fried he bought on the way home. Tiger’s favorite.”
    “Tiger?”
    “The kid. Charlie’s and mine. He’s two. Charlie called him Tiger, help make him tough, you know?” I was thinking that half the people in the city were named after animals, but I said, “Go on.”
    “Well, we had the chicken, and Tiger got the runs, he gets them sometimes from the fast-food stuff, don’t know why, and Charlie, he’d had a few beers and wasn’t about to sit around all night, smell the brat’s shit every ten minutes.”
    “When did he leave here?”
    “I don’t know. Around ‘Wheel of Fortune.’ ”
    “The game show?”
    “Yeah.”
    “So maybe seven, seven-thirty?”
    “Around there.”
    “Do you know where he was going?”
    “The Strip.”
    “He said that?”
    “No, but that’s where he always went.”
    “Any particular place?”
    “Yeah. Anywhere they shook tits and ass. Charlie was a consistent son of a bitch.”
    “Bun’s?”
    “One of his favorites.”
    “Because he got comped to drinks?”
    “If that means free ones, that’s Charlie, alright.”
    “Charlie drink heavily?”
    “Charlie did everything ‘heavily.’ He found out early in life that if you can get enough booze, drugs, and sex, the rest don’t bother you so much.”
    “How did you find out he was dead?”
    Fearey looked past me again. “The cops. The fuckin cops. They roar up to the house, sirens and lights. I don’t have a phone, but Christ, they’d coulda called a neighbor first, couldn’t they? They didn’t have to come tear-assing up here like it was a bust or something.”
    “You go with them?”
    “Yeah. This fat sergeant, he said they needed me to identify the body. Bastards!” Her voice rose. “Tiger’s screaming his lungs out from the noise and all the strange people. Half the street’s out on their lawns, shaking their heads at the fuckin lowlifes brought the cops down. Like they never had a cruiser come to their house, right?”
    I heard a cry from the next room. Fearey said, “Shit. Just a minute.”
    She stubbed out her cigarette and went down the hall. Left alone, I noticed something odd about the tape on the furniture.
    Fearey returned shortly, hefting a little kid with just a diaper pinned on him. A smear on his cheek looked like jelly, but then anything on a kid’s face looks like jelly. Tiger took one look at me and whipped his head back into his mother’s breast.
    “He’ll be okay. Just don’t raise your voice or you’ll get him crying.”
    “I’ll do my best. You hear from anybody after Charlie’s death?”
    Fearey tightened. “Hear from anybody?”
    “Yes. Charlie worked for Bunny Gotbaum, right? Anybody come by?”
    She shook her head. “Bunny Gotbaum ain’t exactly General Motors, you know? They don’t have no benefit plans or anything like that