Basket Case

  "Janet, what are you saying?" I feel Emma's fingers tighten on my elbow.

  "See, Cleo knew. She knew Jimmy wanted to be cremated."

  "Convenient for her, as it turned out."

  "Jack, I love my brother and I respect his wishes, but I wasn't ready. Cleo was pushing so hard to get the cremation over and done, I just knew somethin' wasn't right. Plus I wasn't ready to say goodbye.' Janet's hands are fluttering, like she's tossing a Caesar salad. "And Cleo, she didn't give a damn how I felt. She wouldn't even return my phone calls."

  Mildly Emma says, "So what did you do?"

  "Something real bad." Janet takes a deep breath, shuddering as she exhales. Sadly she glances over her shoulder at the headstone of Eugene Marvin Brandt.

  "I switched the burn tags," she says.

  "You did what?"

  "That day at the funeral home, when you almost fainted and we went outside for some air? Well, afterwards I went back to put the Doors album in Jimmy's coffin—that's when I switched the burn tags. After Gene's service was over they moved him to the back room, right next to Jimmy. I had it all planned out. Isn't that terrible?"

  It is terrible. I want to hug her, it's so terrible. I want to go waltzing through the tombstones, Emma on one arm and Janet on the other.

  "Jack, what's a burn tag?" Emma asks.

  "It's what the funeral home attaches to coffins that are going into the crematorium."

  "Ugh-oh."

  Janet says, "I'm in deep shit, huh?"

  Collectively we turn to stare at the name on the gravestone. We are shoulder to shoulder under the high August sun, and our shadows look like three pigeons on a wire. The back of my shirt is damp, and the lenses of Janet's sunglasses have fogged from the heat. Only Emma looks cool. I am holding her hand; no, squeezing her hand.

  "Now, let's be clear on this." It's a struggle to keep the glee out of my voice. "Eugene Marvin Brandt, God rest his soul, isn't really buried in this plot."

  "Nope," Janet Thrush admits dolefully.

  "So this would be your brother"—I motion with what I hope is somber reserve—"lying here beneath us. James Bradley Stomarti."

  "Yup," says Janet. "It's been over two weeks, I figure that's enough time."

  "For?"

  "Him to get reincarnated, safe and sound."

  Emma says, "But is it enough time for you? Are you ready to let go?"

  Jimmy's sister nods. "Yeah. I am. After what you guys told me about Cleo, I'm more than ready." She blows a peach-sized bubble and pops it with a glittery fingernail. "I feel so bad. Poor Gertie's gonna have a cow."

  Emma is holding up like granite—must be that nursing-school training. "What would you like us to do?" she asks Jimmy's sister.

  "Help me nail that pube-flashing tramp for murder. Then put it in your newspaper." Janet mutes an angry sniffle. "Jack, you told me before but I forget—who is it I'm supposed to call?"

  "For an autopsy?"

  "What else." She manages a laugh. "My brother's famous for his encores."

  Epilogue

  Jimmy Stoma's anaconda tattoo got ruined by my friend Pete, the pathologist. This was almost a year ago, after the grave of Eugene Marvin Brandt was opened up with a judge's order and a two-ton back-hoe. In the hole was Jimmy's coffin, just as his sister had promised.

  Over the frothing objections of Cleo Rio's attorneys, an official autopsy was ordered. The elaborate Y-shaped incision did a job on Jimmy's snake-humping temptress. "A thing of beauty," Pete later told me, ruefully. "I felt like I was taking a machete to a Monet." Dutifully he went spelunking through Jimmy's body cavities, gathering sashimi-style tidbits for the lab. The liver is where he struck the mother lode: Benadryl, a common over-the-counter cold and allergy remedy. Two capsules put the average adult into a deep sleep. Cleo wasn't taking any chances. She emptied no less than twenty caps into Jimmy's grouper chowder, enough to zonk a buffalo. Then she called him up to the deck for lunch. Afterwards he strapped on his dive tank and jumped off the boat. Pete said he probably passed out within twenty minutes, a cataleptic slumber that left him drifting in the currents across the sandy bottom.

  The Benadryl capsules had been purchased—with a roll of Sweet Tarts and a bottle of platinum hair bleach—at a drugstore in Silver Beach, two blocks from Jimmy and Cleo's condo. At first she claimed somebody had forged her signature on the credit card receipt. Her tune changed after the prosecutor, Rick Tarkington, offered to produce a handwriting expert and the sample of a recent signature on a deli menu. The singer had autographed it to a fan known only as "Chuck," posing as a delivery boy.

  To my surprise, Cleo called me one night before she got indicted. She was hanging out alone at Jizz. For giggles—and a witness—I took Carla Candilla.

  The widow was half in the bag when we arrived. Gone was the silky pop-star glow. Her pageboy had been weed-whacked into some sort of unisex mop, and her face looked blotched and gaunt. Under the strobes her neglected tan took on a sickly greenish hue. It's no day at the spa, being the target of a murder investigation.

  We followed her to one of the club's private rooms, where Cleo bummed a Silk Cut cigarette off Carla and said, "My lawyers'd shit a brick if they knew I was here."

  "Why? Are you going to confess?" Eagerly I slapped my notebook on the table.

  Cleo wrinkled her nose and leaned closer. "What's that you got on?"

  "Your favorite cologne."

  It was called "Timberlake." Carla and I spent an hour sniffing samples at the men's counter in Burdines until we found the right one.

  "All your fellas wear it," I said to Cleo. "Loreal. Jerry the gorilla. You even doused it on Jimmy in his casket."

  "I like what I like," she said, "but on you it would gag a maggot."

  Carla hooted. I deserved no less.

  Listing slightly to starboard, Cleo said, "I gotta know, Tagger. Was it really you who did this to me? All by your lonesome?"

  "Don't be ridiculous. I'm just a tired old obituary writer."

  "As if," she snorted.

  Here Carla cut in: "Cleo, honey, your sleeve's in the salsa."

  "Shit. This is a Versace."

  The bartender sent a club soda, and Cleo went to work scrubbing on the stain. I asked if it was true that the record label had canceled her contract. She said so what, it was a chickenshit outfit anyway. "After the trial I'm getting an incredibly sweet deal. My new manager's talking mega."

  "Awesome," I said, which seemed to please her. "Hey, have you found a new producer yet?"

  Cleo's response was to pulverize an ice cube with her molars.

  "Or a new bodyguard?"

  "That's not funny, man. When this is over," she said, "I'm gonna sue your newspaper for about twenty million bucks."

  "When this is over, Cindy Zigler, you'll be in prison."

  "Yeah, right."

  Carla couldn't help but notice the wane of bonhomie. "Cleo, before we say goodbye, I gotta ask—in the video, was that you or a body double?"

  The widow perked up. "It was all me. Every curly little hair."

  Her arrest was bannered on the front page: Singer Charged in Death of Rock-Star Husband. That was the headline. Here was the byline:

  By Jack Tagger Staff Writer

  For the first time in four years I sent a clipping to my mother. I also saved a copy for Anne, at her request. She and Derek were in Italy where he was researching a new spy novel, The Bishop's Chambermaid. Anne mentioned it, with a gently appropriate joke, in a postcard.

  The truth behind James Bradley Stomarti's death received heavy play in the celebrity press as well as the music trades. By the time the trial started, Jimmy and the Slut Puppies were hot all over again. The record company repackaged Floating Hospice and A Painful Burning Sensation as a double album, spiced with previously unreleased bonus tracks. In only three weeks, a digital re-mix of the "Basket Case" single drew sixty-two thousand downloads off the band's interactive Web site. A new video, starring Kate Hudson as the bipolar mama, features ne
ver-before-seen concert footage of the Slut Puppies, including Jimmy's lewd spoof of Pat Robertson.

  The group is making money again. Miraculously, some of it has found its way to Jimmy's estate, and many deserving little urchins will be trundling off to sea camps next summer.

  Cleo Rio's trial lasted three weeks. Danny Gitt flew in from the Seychelles to testify about a heated argument he'd heard between Jimmy and his wife in the studio, an argument about a song. Tito Negraponte arrived from California with his pockets full of Percocets, so Rick Tarkington wisely elected not to depose him. He didn't need to. Janet Thrush proved to be a devastating witness, shredding Cleo's contention that she and her husband had collaborated on "Shipwrecked Heart."

  I'd anticipated that Cleo's defense team might try to drag me into the case, but they must have figured out it would backfire. Their client already had plenty to explain without adding the criminal antics of Jerry and Loreal. It was no surprise that the widow Stomarti declined to take the stand in her own defense. Her lawyers gamely presented the theory that Jimmy had accidentally overdosed himself before the fatal dive. Their star witness was a retired ophthalmologist who claimed it was not impossible for a farsighted person to have grievously misread the label on a Benadryl package.

  The jury was out less than three hours. Cleo got convicted, and the judge gave her twenty-to-life. On the day of sentencing, the number 9 rock single on the Billboard charts was "Cindy's Oyster," recorded by Jimmy Stoma.

  "Shipwrecked Heart" was number 5.

  And Janet Thrush was moving from her modest house in Beckerville to a three-bedroom waterfront apartment on Silver Beach. From there she will manage her dead brother's career, and a charitable foundation established in his name. The tracks from the Exuma sessions were purchased for $1.6 million by Capitol Records, and the full Shipwrecked Heart CD is due for release in six weeks. A company press release said there's enough material for two more compilations.

  Before signing the deal, Janet had called from Los Angeles to ask my advice.

  "Well, what would Jimmy have done?" I said.

  "Grabbed the money," she replied. "What the hell am I thinking?"

  Janet never told another soul that she'd switched the tags on the coffins. The court order to open the grave emanated from a confidential tip to Rick Tarkington's office. I was the only journalist to report that Jimmy Stoma's favorite Doors album was found with his body. Ultimately, the mistaken cremation of Eugene Marvin Brandt was pinned on Ellis, the thieving funeral director, who proclaimed his innocence even as he quietly settled out of court with Gertie Brandt for a sum rumored to be in the six figures. It might have been less had Ellis not pried the custom golf spikes off Gene's dead feet, and had he not been wearing them the day the process server found him on a public driving range in Port Malabar.

  The investigation, indictment and prosecution of Cleo Rio generated thirteen front-page articles in the Union-Register, all of them written by me. Race Maggad III was said to be enraged by the reappearance of my byline, but Abkazion refused to delete it, or to yank me off the story. Usually such adherence to principle would cost a managing editor his job, but those days might be over.

  On the morning Cleo was convicted, I walked into the newsroom and asked Emma to fire me. She said no. Immediately I took her into a broom closet on the third floor, removed her panties and made love to her.

  "You're cruising for trouble," she warned.

  After lunch I did it again.

  "Now you've gone too far. You've made me miss the one o'clock," Emma declaimed after we'd caught our breaths. "You're fired, Jack."

  "Thanks. I'll see you tonight."

  Charles Chickle, Esq., had the trust documents ready to sign when I arrived. Race Maggad III was stewing outside, so Charlie and I took our sweet time. I commended him on prolonging the probate of MacArthur Polk's estate until the Stoma story ran its course. Then we talked bass fishing and Gator football.

  Finally, Charlie said, "You ready?" He'd already spent an hour with Maggad, tenderizing him.

  "Bring in the sulky young mandrill," I instructed.

  Presently a secretary escorted the chairman of the Maggad-Feist Publishing Group into the lawyer's office, and barrister Chickle excused himself.

  "Master Race, sit down!" I bubbled.

  He wore a peerless wool suit but otherwise he looked terrible, drawn and sleepless, with scrotal bags under his anxious green eyes. Even his hair refused to shine.

  "Good afternoon, Jack," he said tautly.

  "You never told me how you liked the old man's obit."

  "Didn't I? I thought it was fine."

  "I'll pass along your compliments to the writer."

  Maggad scowled. "But I thought you wrote it."

  "At my right hand was a college intern named Evan Richards. Bright kid, too. He's not coming back to the Union-Register because he noticed that you've run it into the shitter."

  I reminded young Race that it had been several months since we'd last spoken, and that significant events had occurred in the interim. Maggad-Feist lost a costly antitrust suit in upstate Washington, and had been forced to sell two profitable radio stations. The price of company stock spiraled from 40 1/4 to 22 1/4, a five-year low. Two competing media conglomerates—one German, one Canadian—had initiated hostile attempts to take over the chain.

  And MacArthur Polk, one of the largest individual shareholders, had passed away.

  "Tell me something I don't already know," Maggad grumbled.

  "How about this, hoss? As of tomorrow, you'll no longer be paying my salary."

  "Whoopee-do. Where's the champagne." Young Race was in a tough spot, so I let him blow off steam. "Newspapers are in the business of making money, Tagger, so don't be so naive and self-righteous. Journalism can't exist without making a profit."

  "Well, you damn sure can't have good journalism when you're milking the cow for twenty-five percent. We might as well be working for the Gambinos," I said. "By the way, how are the Porsches enjoying that dreamy Southern California climate? No more slush in your tailpipes, I'll bet!"

  For a moment it appeared that Maggad was sucking his own cheeks down his throat. I'd touched a raw nerve with that California jab—Forbes had recently done a snarky article about the obscene cost of relocating Maggad-Feist's headquarters to sunny San Diego. Shareholders were seething.

  Stonily he said to me, "We publish twenty-seven very good papers. They win awards."

  "In spite of you, yes, they do."

  The Race Maggads of the industry have a standard gospel to rationalize their pillaging. It goes like this: American newspapers are steadily losing both readers and advertisers to cable TV and the Internet. This fatal slide can be reversed only with a radical recasting of our role in the community. We need to be more receptive and responsive, less cynical and confrontational. We need to be more sensitive to our institutions, especially to our advertisers. We can no longer afford to shield our news and editorial operations from the pressures and demands that steer the business side of publishing. We're all in this together! In these difficult times we need to do more with less—less space in which to print the news, fewer reporters with which to cover it, and a much smaller budget with which to pursue it. Yet even as we do more with less, we must never forget our solemn pledge to our readers, blah, blah, blah...

  It's an appalling geyser of shit and nobody with half a brain believes a word, not when polo-playing CEOs can confidently talk of twenty-five percent annual profits. Like most publishing tycoons, Race Maggad III is oblivious to his own vulgarity. On the positive side, he has (unlike the Hearsts and Pulitzers of their day) no hidden political agenda to peddle, no private vendettas to promote on the pages of his newspapers. Maggad cares about one thing only.

  "What, you want me to grovel?" he said. "You know we need to repurchase Mr. Polk's shares, and you know why. Try to put aside your petty personal bitterness, Tagger. Think of all your friends and colleagues whose jobs would be jeopardized if one of t
hese hostile entities gained control of our company."

  "You're implying things would get worse in the newsroom? How's that possible? Are you suggesting these people have less interest in decent journalism than you do?"

  Maggad desperately longed to kick out my front teeth, but the task at hand required civility. Lord, I'd have loved to see his expression when Charlie Chickle broke the news that Old Man Polk had put his Maggad-Feist stock holdings in a trust. A trust to be managed by me—the same wise-ass who'd insulted Maggad in front of his investors, the same impertinent prick whose career he had conspired to destroy. "The irony is delicious, isn't it, Race?"