"It's a bit backwards, innit, checking the facts after you print' em?"
"Oh, we check beforehand, too. This is the double-check, I guess you could say, in case something erroneous slipped through despite our best efforts. Mi-mi-I'm sorry, I didn't catch your name."
"Athol. Bertie Athol." Great. Even the name was asexual.
Bearded Bertie led Tess into a dark living room, which did not appear to have been dusted since the Iran hostage crisis. A man, Tess thought. Only a man could be such a careless housekeeper.
Or a near-sighted woman, she amended, as Bertie bumped into the water-stained oak table next to his/her chair, a stuffed chair whose faded gold damask bore the faint outline of Bertie's lumpy body, like a watermark.
"So what do you want to ask me about? I tell you, I hate them new stock tables. Print's too small, I can't follow my mutuals. Box scores, too. Everything's too small. You skimpin' on paper down there?"
"Actually, I'm not here to talk about the stocks or the scores, although I will make a note of your concerns. We're interested today in your impression of the stories about Wink Wynkowski."
"The Wynkowski boy? Why, he used to live right next door. Has he been up to something again?"
"Um, he's dead."
"You don't say." Bertie began to laugh, a dry cackle. "I'm just having fun with you. Of course I knowed what happen to Wink. I talked to that little girl when she was here. We spent quite a bit of time together."
"Did she use anything you told her?"
"Why, I'm the source close to the family! You know, where it says-" and Bertie paused, taking the time to gather up the right words from memory. "Where it says, ‘But a source close to the couple said the honeymoon was over from almost the day the two crossed the threshold, as Wynkowski repeatedly battered his new bride.' Very ellygant, the way she put it. I'da never thought to say it so good."
Tess stared at the old man/woman skeptically. "You're the source? Were you really close to Wink and Linda?"
Bertie jerked his/her chin in the direction of the Wynkowski's onetime home. "I don't know how you could be closer. Not even ten feet from my kitchen winder to their bedroom winder. In the summers, when I was warshing the dishes in the zinc, I could hear 'em going at it many a night."
Warshing the dishes in the zinc. Bertie could give lessons on Bawlamerese. Whatever the gender, the speech had all the touchstones. Probably listened to the Erioles, thought a far was something you toasted marshmallows over, and went downy eauchin in August, to a rented condo on the boardwalk.
"Is that what you told Rosita Ruiz?"
"Yeah, the girl from the paper, Rosie. I got her card around here somewhere still." Bertie began patting the bathrobe's pockets, as if the card might materialize, but only a few used tissues turned up.
"Did you know for a fact that there was violence involved, Bertie? A lot of people get loud."
"Yeah, but they don't start throwing furniture at one another. And they don't call amb'lances."
This was new. "An ambulance?"
"Uh-huh. At night. It's easy to see an amb'lance at night. And, of course, Mr. Athol was alive then, and I remember we talked about it, how sad it was for a young couple to be so unhappy all the time."
At least she had solved the mystery of Bertie's gender. "Yes. Yes it is. Can you remember anything else about those fights? When the amb'lance came-" Jesus, Bertie's inflections were catching. "When the ambulance came, did they have to take Mrs. Wynkowski out on a stretcher, or did she walk out on her own? Could you tell how badly she was hurt? Was it the kind of injury that might have happened accidentally?"
Bertie closed her eyes and leaned back as if reliving a particularly vivid dream. It was very dramatic, but not particularly effective.
"I don't recall," she said, after several seconds. "All I remember is the lights. It's not like I stood there all night, peeking through the curtains."
I bet you stayed until the show was over, though. "Thank you, Mrs. Athol. We're glad to know we got your part of the story right. You were very helpful."
"So how much money do I get?"
Tess was confused. "Newspapers don't pay for information, Mrs. Athol. It's unethical."
"The other girl did. You see, at first I just remembered it being the one time the amb'lance came. She asked me if I could be wrong, if maybe it came three times instead of the oncet, or at least twice, if there was a pattern. That was the word she used, pattern. She gave me fifty dollars, and I remembered it was more like three times."
Tess felt a strange flip in her stomach, at once hopeful and unhappy. A.J. Shepard had told her this would be easy, but she couldn't believe Rosita would be this stupid. "Are you sure?"
"Course I'm sure. You think someone hands me fifty dollars, I'm gonna forget? Now, today, today is more of a twenny-dollar interview, doncha think?"
"You want money?"
"Only twenny dollars," Bertie wheedled.
"I'm not authorized to do that."
"How about a discount on my subscription?"
"No, Bertie. Not even the reporters get a discount."
Bertie pushed her lower lip out in a pout, a mannerism that was probably downright adorable as recently as thirty years ago. Now, with jowls hanging loosely and her neck as wrinkled as the corrugated awnings along MacTavish Avenue, she looked more like a bulldog.
"Why do the reporters need a discount? They already know what's in the paper."
An only child, Tess had had relatively little experience with the lurid charms of tattling. Should she tell Sterling what she knew about the pay-off to Bertie Athol? Should she keep going, see if there was more damning information to be uncovered about Rosita's reporting methods? At least the leopard had changed her spots. Now she paid people up front and didn't use their names.
Sterling would want to know, she was sure of it. Checkbook journalism was so low that some of the tabloid television shows had forsaken it. But Tess was uncomfortably aware she longed to speak to Sterling for other, less self-righteous reasons. She wanted his approval, wanted him to smile at her and say, "Great work!" A crush. She was in the throes of a damn schoolgirl crush.
Well, at least Violetville was convenient to St. Agnes. She might as well check in on Spike, give her mind and hormones a chance to cool.
She was glad to see one of Durban's boxers waiting unobtrusively in the hall. At least something was going as planned. When Tess walked in, Tommy was already there, a chair pulled up by Spike's bed. It was true, only family was allowed to see Spike, but the hospital, apparently under the misapprehension that Tommy was Spike's life partner, as opposed to his business partner, had thoughtfully included him in this group. He held the box out chocolates on his lap, a strange get-well gift for a man in a coma. Tommy had probably selected it because he knew he would be free to plunder his own offering. He held the box out grudgingly to Tess, but he had picked out all the nutty ones, so she passed.
"Hi, Uncle Spike." He was so still. What had she expected-someone sleeping like a man in a cartoon, or like one of the Three Stooges, his chest rising and falling with an exaggerated movement, a faint whistling noise escaping around the various tubes. Tess thought she saw his eyelids flicker, his mouth twitch. Wishful thinking.
"What's the doctor say?"
"Nothin' to me," Tommy said sullenly, his bad mood erasing the usual question marks. It would be a while before he forgave Tess their last meeting. Had it really been just yesterday morning?
"My folks been here?"
He snorted, then trilled. "It's not that we don't love him as much as you do, Tommy. It's just that we have jobs."
Tess laughed. His imitation of Judith was uncanny.
"I miss him," he added in his own voice.