The Stringers, page 33
“What about Bellevue?”
“Yeah, they got libraries in Bellevue. I’ve been to a few of them, but one of them got shut down earlier this year.”
“How come I don’t hear about it in the news?”
“Easy,” Tom said. “The ISA doesn’t want people to know how bad things are, and it wouldn’t look good for them if people knew a library had been opened right under their noses for five years, even if they finally shut it down. Sometimes, they don’t broadcast their victories because they are afraid of what people would think if they knew how many battles they lost in the meantime. Public support is crucial to this kind of war.”
“Let me ask you something about the cars you drive.”
“Yeah?”
“How do the police and the ISA not catch you merely by scanning their license plates or putting out a description of them?”
“All the cars we ever drive into Bellevue are considered antiques vehicles. Thanks to Washington state law, they don’t require the same registration as regular cars. Instead, we have them listed under a private antique car club in Bellevue. The president of the club is not only in our hip pocket, but he’s got friends inside the city and in Olympia, so the cops and the ISA don’t want to risk accidentally shooting the wrong wheels out or arresting the wrong guy who can complain about it and actually get heard. They did that once, and instead arresting one of our boys in a surprise bust they dented some millionaire’s 1940 Lincoln Zephyr. Somebody got strung up for it. Plus, we mostly drive them in Seattle, where the city don’t have the equipment to scan the plates at every intersection.”
“Any trouble with the Tongs today?” I asked.
“Nope,” Tom said. “Our delivery boys took care of them. They won’t be bothering us for a while.”
A man’s deep laughter caught my attention and as I watched him drain his shot glass, his cheeks an inebriated red, something suddenly dawned on me, and I felt dumb for not having noticed it before when it was so evident.
“Tom, why are there no women at the newspaper?”
Tom’s expression suggested the answer should not have been elusive.
“For God’s sake, Roy, it’s newspaper, not your local fitness club.”
“Meaning?” I asked.
“Lord have mercy. We’re an illegal newspaper, not a high power PR firm working for some major corporation spewing out bullshit that sounds lovely to the ear but everyone and their aunt knows is bullshit. If you were a woman, which would you choose? The life of a fugitive, death hanging over you, or a nice big salary and a high probability of living to see tomorrow?”
I was mute.
“That’s what I figured,” he laughed. “It ain’t rocket science, as they say.”
Tom broke off from our conversation and smoked as he gazed at the lamp hanging above our booth. He had a philosophical expression, like he was attempting to solve a riddle plaguing mankind for millennia. I dismissed that idea, however, finding it hard to believe Tom considered anything that intently. His close friend had been the philosopher between the two of them. But it was evident something left him distraught and he couldn’t shake it off.
I left him alone with his thoughts and turned to enjoy the music on the stage. By then a woman—the first one I had seen in some time besides the pianist—promenaded onto the stage next to the quartet. Her long slender arms wrapped around one of the musician’s shoulders like twin snakes. Her hands glided up and down his arms, and she smiled with thin red lips and tossed back her naturally blonde hair, a flawlessly golden hue with a slight touch of red in the tresses. Dressed in a flowery blue cocktail dress, her high heels clacked on the hardwood as her hips swung back and forth. Her accentuated movements caused heads to whip up and necks to jerk as the gaze of every man in the room turned to her. They set down their newspapers and called to her and wolf-whistled and catcalled, all of which she seemed to enjoy.
Fluttering her long eyelashes, she moved from the musician and stood in front of the stage, posing as if for a master painter, and then she nodded with a tucked chin to the pianist. With her fingers barely touching the keys, she began playing a slow, somber song that emanated a bittersweet quality. A full two measures into it the singer’s chest rose as she breathed in and, holding it for a pregnant moment, started to sing.
Her voice, calm, lovely, and soft, instantly silenced the library. Desire was in every man’s eyes as they gazed at her. Live singing was rare, since anyone could watch a hologram of a live concert, placing the person right in front of the musician and band. But seeing the woman in that bonnie blue dress and her sapphire eyes sparkling and the kind and gentle singing had an indefinable but nevertheless unmistakable quality no hologram could replicate. Seeing her in the flesh made it different. She was real, not a digital product of a machine transferring billions of tiny electronic signals from one place to another, but it was her voice, her real voice, and nothing separated her from us as we listened to it except a small distance. Aside from her hark-like crooning, no other voice was heard, all attention transferred on the figure standing at the front of the stage, all spellbound as sailors enraptured by the sirens.
I only took my eyes away from her as I saw a sight at the entrance that had me do a double-take in disbelief. A group of eight or so entered, dressed in flat caps, brown trousers, black-and-white-striped shirts, and thin black suspenders. They each had something on their shirt, a pin of some sort, which I couldn’t identify in the dimmed light. The men looked over at the stage, admired the woman’s performance with approving nods, then approached the bar and as they arrived the bartender had their shot glasses arranged on the counter and eight men sitting in the stools next to the filled shot glasses saw the group approach. They hastily hopped off and moved out of the way. The eight eased into the stools, grabbed the glasses, and threw back their shots in unison and in a ritualistic manner. They then conversed quietly while one of them produced a cigarillo from his pocket.
None of this intrigued me.
What made me incredulous was the ninth member of their group, following them from the entrance to the bar and standing, not sitting, a part of their group but not one of them. The ninth person was a girl. But her gender didn’t baffle as much as her height. She was so short I initially mistook her to be a child, but upon careful observation it was evident she had too mature a demeanor and too severe a face to be a youth.
She wore a brown skirt hanging from her knee and flat shoes that glided silently across the floor. She had a long blue wool coat on and a fedora slanted on her head and brown curls dangling underneath it and over her shoulders like overgrown vines over a field.
At the bar, she refused a seat when offered one by the bartender. The other patrons, their gazes fixed on the bluebird on stage, gave her no notice, and she didn’t seem upset as she took her glass and drank it at a short distance from her eight apparent colleagues. Gradually, the patrons noticed her, their eyes widening briefly, and then they scooted their stools away from her in a subtle act of segregation. At first, I took this to imply she was, at closer view, unattractive, but when she finished her drink and turned to watch the singer and her face fell underneath the light, I saw the miniature submachine gun in her hand, roughly half the size of a normal one. The weapon fit well with her stature, which could not have been taller than five two. Still, with the lighting weak and the room darkened for the sake of the stage entertainment, her facial features were still indiscernible.
I whispered to Tom and gestured in the direction of the eight new arrivals.
“Don’t they look friendly?” I remarked.
Tom glanced at them, a scowl forming.
“The Fifth Avenue Boys.”
“Who are they?”
“They make sure our newspaper gets delivered and spend the rest of the time making sure other newspapers have trouble, get me?”
“I do.”
“Good. You’re learning fast.”
“What are they doing here, then? Shouldn’t they be out making sure the papers are delivered?”
“Not yet. Later. They do their work at night, when everyone else is asleep. And they’ve already paid the Tongs a visit for what they did to one of our boys.”
“You don’t seem to care for them much, though.”
“Some of them enjoy their work too much. This business with the Tongs is nasty, but it’s still business. You kill the one’s causing the problems and that should be it. These boys go further. They like the kill, and McCullen likes the reputation they got.”
“Are those all of them?”
“No. Those are just one group, but they’re the worst of the lot. They all grew up in the same hellhole on Fifth Avenue. It’s like a friggin’ junior-high-school clique, I swear to God.”
“Except there’s a girl, too.”
Tom looked at the girl, chuckled with contempt.
“Yeah, Bonnie.”
“Bonnie?” I asked.
“She’s a bad luck charm. If there’s one person to stay away from, it’s her.”
“Why?”
“She’s a psycho,” Tom said.
“How so?”
“Why do you want to know? Want to ask her out? Ha! That’d be something to see. I’d give you five minutes.”
“Before I’d leave?” I asked.
“No, before she’d slit your throat!” Tom said.
I couldn’t withhold my laughter, mostly because I wasn’t sure if he was joking or not. “She’s a little small for that.”
“Size doesn’t matter when it comes to death. She’s a cold-hearted little bitch and the Little Rascals let her tag along in their he-man, women-haters club for killers because she’s worse than two of them put together.”
“You ever see them…you know…kill?”
“Nope. But they never fail to talk about it. It’s nauseating.”
“Does she?”
Tom raised an eyebrow. “What do you really want to know?”
“I’m curious. You can’t blame me for it.”
“Whatever happened to that saying ‘curiosity killed the cat’?”
“Curiosity killed the cat, Tom, not the stringer.”
“Ha! Good point. But still, stay clear of them. They’re all psychos, the whole lot.”
“This newspaper seems to employ a lot of them.”
“Psychos usually have two options, the government or the black market. And you can thank McCullen. It didn’t use to be this way. We used to be a good newspaper, and we stuck to that. But that was when we were run by this old timer, Wally Norton. He was a good guy. You’d of liked him. He was like you; intelligent, articulate, and yeah he had his failings and did some stuff that will probably warrant a lengthy interrogation with St. Peter in front of the pearly gates, but at the end of the day he was all about writing good stories people wanted to read and about stuff people needed to know that they weren’t being allowed to because of the law.”
“You make it sound like he was an idealist.”
“We all were, when we first started out. I wasn’t like this, and before you ask, I ain’t apologizing for most of it, but when I had wet ears I was a lot like you. Not totally, but you know what I mean. I was working as an apprentice and could have gotten a good job at a news site. My mentor said I had talent. Everyone thought I would. But something didn’t seem right about the whole thing. I didn’t know what, but I knew it was there. And then…”
He abruptly stopped and took a long drag on his cigarette, blowing away the smoke like a bad memory. He rubbed his eyes, which I could tell were moistening. The conversation had dredged up bad memories, yet behind his pensive expression it was apparent he still wished to talk about it, or at least was willing to if I inquired.
“And then what?” I asked.
“Somehow I got talked into working at this newspaper by this crazy friend of mine who has his head either high in the sky or has lost it entirely. He couldn’t stand the ISA, and to be honest I couldn’t, either. But I was willing to put up with it. He couldn’t. The idea that you needed someone in a uniform and with a badge to approve of what you wrote made him writhe in anger, especially when they changed his stories. I was a good writer, but he was two light-years ahead of everyone. I think that’s what he couldn’t stomach the most, the idea that someone with no writing abilities and zero journalistic knowledge could tell him what he’s going to write or not write and it’s all because they’ve had a badge or title that somehow made them qualified, even though they couldn’t spell properly!
“One time my friend wrote this great feature on an old man who celebrated his hundredth birthday. You know, the traditional, old-fashioned guy with the wife and five kids and a white picket-fenced house. It was the best thing my friend had written for this news site. But then the ISA officer read it and didn’t like some of the comments the old man made; nothing treasonous, mind you. Just unpleasant, I guess. He didn’t like the way things were going in the country, made a few politically unsavory remarks about the feds. Well, the officer flew into a high dudgeon. He told my friend the story wouldn’t run unless he took those statements out. My friend stood there coolly with his arms folded and told the officers to go to hell and that he wasn’t going to omit a single word, and if the officer touched it he’d kick the shit out of him. So the officer reported him to his superior and my friend got sent to the regional ISA office to explain himself. Not sure what he said to them, because he never told me the whole thing, but whatever he said made the deputy director mad enough to force the news site’s publisher to fire him. Nobody could believe it, except me. I saw it coming.”
“How?”
“I don’t know. Some people just can’t have others tell them what to do when they got no right to it and no business to, and the only reason they do it is because they have the power to do it. So my friend leaves, but he doesn’t go out with his tail tucked between his legs. He walks out of the place with this big smile, like he realized finally he didn’t belong there. It was then I suspected what he might do, but I didn’t really believe he was actually going to go through with it. About a month later, after had dropped off the face of the friggin’ planet, he called me up and we went out for drinks. It started off strange from the start, because he asked me to pay for it and that he’d reimburse me later. While we worked on our drinks I asked him what he’s been up to, and I saw the same damn smile from that day in the newsroom. When he said nothing, just smiling, I knew what he had done.
“For some reason I can’t quite remember, what followed wasn’t a long conversation,” he went on after another long drag on his cigarette. “I guess I wasn’t in a talkative mood, or had no clue what to say to him. I didn’t know what I did now, so it’s okay, but at the time I thought he had just tossed his career and life away. Even though newspapers had been made illegal only a couple of years back, the ISA didn’t take kindly to stringers. Most of the time they beat them half to death, even when people filmed it, and then threw them in a cell for a few years, torturing them before they actually put them in a courtroom. By that time it didn’t matter if they walked free or not.”
Tom paused, sighed deliberately. “Anyways, we’re sitting there, sort of us like we’re sitting here, and I’ve got my drink in my hand as I’m trying to pour some calm down my throat, and my friend asks me to join him, right out in the open. All direct like. I cough that drink back up for two minutes before I settle down and take the question seriously. The funny thing was I didn’t find it as insane as I should have. I thought he was more rational than I, yet he had a habit of taking risks I wouldn’t until guilt forced my hand. And this, believe you me, was the biggest risk of all. It wasn’t like now, where you have to withdraw from the rest of society. You could have a regular life. You just couldn’t get caught. Now, the ISA has made it impossible to be a stringer and live a normal life. Eventually, they figured it out. Still, my friend was asking me to join him on some crazy adventure, all because he couldn’t take the ISA.
“But as I thought about it, the more I realized how much I agreed with him. I knew if I kept working for a news site where I’d eventually end up. Someday I’d write a story the ISA didn’t like and they’d try to kill it, and I’d bitch about it until they canned me, too. Why wait for that? Why not bail a sinking ship when you can, not when you have to because it’s underwater? Yeah, I like to think I did it out of principle, and some of it was. But at the end of the day I did it because of my friend. Seeing him give everything up for this gig, without question, made me feel guilty, or worse, like I was approving the actions of the people who had ruined his career. So when he asked me to join him, what else could I say? No way in hell was I going to look him in the eye, the only real friend I got, and tell him I’m choosing cowards and weasels over him. I had to do it. Another reason was how he pitched it to me. He had that charisma, that smile that made me think anything was possible for the two of us. After all the luster rubbed off, however, I didn’t think I’d make it. Not for this long. But here I am. But it ain’t like when we got into it. The newspaper didn’t have as many of the sterling characters it does now, if you know what I mean. We got involved in a few shootouts every once in a while, but it was sort of agreed to keep the inter-newspaper violence down to a minimum. That’s where McCullen’s got it all wrong. He thinks blood is a cheap commodity. It’s not. It’s expensive. You don’t always see the costs up front.”
He ran his fingers through his static hair as he looked down at the table, as though conflicted over whether to tell more or whether it was too painful a memory for him to recall.
“Is this the friend whose books you gave me?” I inquired. “The one who saved you?”
“The same.”
“Oh.”
“Like I said, kid,” he mumbled as he turned away. “Death comes for us all. The attitude just helps you deal with life.”
I sat back, taking in the story he had just told. What fascinated me more than his friend’s antics was the fact that it was the most personal thing Tom had ever told me. I realized that despite our day-to-day interactions and the sarcastic banter hinting of friendship, our relationship was still chiefly professional. Living in the same place may have engendered a sense of camaraderie, but in truth Tom and I did not know much about one another. My training had consumed most days, and even when we were eating together and I wasn’t honing my skills, we were discussing something else related to the newspaper business. And yet, it seemed natural to feel closer to a man whose private life was a mystery but worked alongside me in pursuit of a common goal than someone who was more or less an open book but our interactions amounted to nothing except talk. One could know everything about a man, it seemed, and still not know him, or know nothing about him and nevertheless know him.
