The Trapdoor

  I rooted in my shirt pocket for a match. Tugged it out. Lit up. I smoked hard, fogging myself in.

  “You ever find out where she went? After school?”

  “No.” I waved the cigarette. “Could’ve been anywhere. Maybe a boyfriend. That makes sense. Maybe she just wanted to get away from her mother.”

  “Drugs?”

  “No. At least not in the autopsy.”

  “Okay. So?”

  “Yeah. So. So the mother says her daughter was murdered.” I glanced up. Lansing’s expression hadn’t changed. “You don’t seem surprised.”

  “Are you?”

  I heard myself sigh again, more deeply now. I didn’t answer her. “I tried to write it straight. I gave the facts. She hanged herself. In the woods. In her backyard.”

  Lansing closed her eyes. The corners of her mouth turned down. “Go on,” she said.

  “Then, third ‘graph or so, I quoted the mother saying her kid was murdered. And I told what she looked like when she said it. Wild. Hot. Almost mad. Then I quoted Tammany Bird—he’s the county police chief—good man. I quoted him saying a thorough investigation had been done and he was convinced it was suicide. Then I had the kids talking about how her personality had changed and how she’d started to go off by herself and everything. Tagged it with my expert, a psychologist, Dr. Cartwright. She talked about …” I took a long drag off the butt. I watched the rim of its paper wrinkle with flame, turn to gray ash. “She talked about guilt. How a mother—a parent—might find the idea of murder more comforting than suicide.” I blew out the last of the smoke. “That was it.”

  Lansing spoke softly. “Sounds like a good story.”

  I nodded. “It is a good story.” I gestured at the pages on the typewriter. “But it’s not the whole story.”

  Then I told her. I told her about the forest and the body of the dog. The dog hanged from a tree, as Michelle had been. I told her about the figure who had vanished into the caves beneath the mountain. About the weird, airy voice that had spoken to me out of the dark. He did it. Death. Death in the woods. I told her about that too: about the figure of Death I’d seen standing outside the Thayer house.

  “None of that’s in there,” I said. “I didn’t write a word of it.”

  “Okay. Why not?”

  “Because I found a piece of paper down in the cave. It was just like the paper on Michelle Thayer’s drawing pad. The only thing I can figure is that Mrs. Thayer—or maybe someone who knows her, boyfriend, colleague, someone who’s gotten caught up in her way of seeing things—I figure maybe they heard I was in town and decided to put on a show. Convince me Michelle didn’t kill herself. That she was murdered. And I guess I figure Janet Thayer doesn’t need that published in our daily history of the world for all to see. At this point it just doesn’t seem to matter very much.”

  Lansing lifted her shoulders, shivered. “Hanging a dog. Running around in a death mask. That’s a long way to go to convince you.”

  I crushed out the cigarette. Reached for another. I fiddled with it between my fingers. “Is it?” I said.

  “Why would they take so much trouble?”

  “Oh, knock it off, Lansing,” I said sharply. “You know why.”

  She bit her lip, looked away from me. She looked at her legs as they swung back and forth over the edge of the table. Nice legs. “Yeah,” she said quietly. “I know why. Because you can solve a murder. You can catch someone. The cops come and take him away. Send him to court. Send him to jail. Not like a suicide. You can try to solve that forever.” And she raised her eyes. “Is that pretty close?”

  I grunted. Snatched the Thayer story off the typewriter and pushed out of my chair. “Anyone ever tell you you suffer too much?” I said.

  “My mother. Every Sunday. Let me write up the mayor and I’ll buy you a drink.”

  “No thanks.”

  “Okay. You buy.”

  “I’m going home.”

  “You want a medal?”

  “I want some sleep.”

  I walked past her. Wove around the walls to the city desk. Dumped the pages in front of Parrish.

  He looked up from his computer terminal. “What’s this?”

  “My application for sainthood,” I said, on my way to the door. “Call me when it’s approved.”

  16 SUICIDE MOM: IT WAS MURDER.

  That was the banner on Sunday’s paper. That was the first in our series on teenage suicide. That was relatable. That was Cambridge. No one else could have done it.

  I got the paper at the stand outside my building. I stripped the funnies off and dumped them in the trash. I was at the corner of Eighty-fifth and Third when I saw the headline.

  From then on I carried the paper gingerly, as if it were a bomb that might go off. I took it to the Athens coffee shop. I sat at the counter. I ordered a bagel and a black coffee. I sat on the stool with my hands folded in front of me. The Star lay closed beneath my hands. I stared at it.

  I ate the bagel. I drank the coffee. I got a refill. I lit a cig. I opened the paper to page three.

  GRANT VALLEY MYSTERY, was the head over my byline. “‘Somebody killed my daughter!’ Janet Thayer sobbed.” That was the lead.

  I read the rest. It was Cambridge all right. The prose was unmistakable. It was like a garrote victim who hadn’t quite been finished off: It squealed and wheezed. The dry-eyed, enraged, half-crazy Janet Thayer whom I had interviewed was gone. In her place was a grieving mother overwhelmed at her weakest moment by a justice system she never made. Tammany Bird was not a shrewd, imposing officer of the law anymore. He was a hick cop now, caught in a clumsy cover-up, ready to enforce his version of the truth at all costs. Rod Steiger could have played him in the picture.

  The psychologist was gone. And as for Michelle’s fellow students … Cambridge led into their comments with: “To the kids who knew her, an atmosphere of mystery and fear hung over Michelle in her final days.” Then he cut their quotes to nothing to make it stick.

  I smoked my cigarette. I drank my coffee. I turned to the jump page. I read to the end. Impressive: He’d gotten through the entire thing without using the phrase “Death Orgy,” one of his favorites. I crushed out my cigarette in an ashtray. I crushed it out slowly. I twisted it around as I crushed it out. I paid the waitress, left a tip. I took the paper out into the street and gave the front page to a woman who was walking her dog. We have strict sanitation laws in New York City.

  It was a long Sunday. I called the paper. Ray Marshall was on the desk for the weekend. Cambridge was not there. He and his wife and their daughter had gone out to Long Island to visit the grandparents. Nice.

  “He was in yesterday, wasn’t he?” I asked.

  “Yeah,” said Marshall. There was a pause. “He came in specially.”

  “What a guy.”

  “Sorry, Wells.”

  “Thanks, pal,” I said. Ray was one of the good ones. He’d been a decent reporter before they promoted him. Knew how to talk you through a shoot-out, supply you with cool when yours was gone. He had nothing to prove, so he could leave good copy alone. He didn’t have to tell me he’d tried his best on this one.

  I went to a movie. It was about a cop who shoots people in the face if he suspects them of anything. I liked it. I came out and had lunch. I went to another movie. It was about a guy with a butcher knife who stabs an entire county to death one person at a time. I liked that too. I came out and went to the launderette. I did my laundry. I read the sports section. The sports section in the Times. I went home and watched TV. I went to bed and watched the clock. Monday came. I went out to breakfast. I read the Star. They’d run the Scofield piece as a follow-up to Thayer. Other cases that might need reopening. That sort of thing. I waited until ten o’clock. Then I went in to kill Cambridge.

  The office of the Star is on Vanderbilt Avenue, right across the street from Grand Central Station. I took the subway. I was there by ten-fifteen.

  I went past security to the elevator. I rode
the elevator to the twelfth floor. I went through the glass doors into the city room. I went toward Cambridge’s office. The door was closed.

  Lansing and McKay had been talking by the far wall. Lansing was leaning against the wall. McKay stood before her, drinking a cup of coffee. Out of the corner of my eye I saw Lansing’s head come up when I walked in. I kept walking toward Cambridge’s door.

  She was fast. She got there before me. She stood in front of me and put her hands on my shoulders. I could smell her. She smelled good.

  “Get out of my way, Lansing,” I said.

  “Wells—”

  “I’m going to kill him. It’s the best thing for everyone. Trust me on this.”

  “Wells—”

  “Really, Lansing. Get out of my way.”

  “Stop him, McKay.”

  McKay was standing beside me now. “Wells—” he said.

  “It’s no good saying ‘Wells.’”

  “John—”

  “No, that’s no good either. The future of the journalistic profession is on the line.”

  Lansing’s arms were straining against me now. She had to brace her feet to make a stand.

  “Oh Jesus,” she said. “He’s really going in there.”

  “Wells,” McKay hissed, “he’ll fire you.”

  I turned to him, stunned. “McKay,” I said, “I’m going to kill him. They’ll put me in prison. I won’t need a job.”

  The office door opened. Cambridge peeked his head out. Lansing let me go.

  “What’s going—” He pretended to notice me and be surprised. “Johnny! Hey there, buddy. Great series.” He wiggled his hand back and forth in the air. “Had to doctor it up a little bit, you know. Make it relatable. But … the basics were really there. No mistaking it. You do the finish-up pieces, then we’ll put you right back on Dellacroce. Carey can’t wait to get off it.” He grinned.

  I grinned. “I’d like to speak to you, Bob,” I said.

  “Oh gee,” he said, glancing at his watch. “I’d like to, but you know, I got to go up and meet with …” He gestured upward with his thumb. “… the people upstairs.”

  “This won’t take long,” I said. How long can a man keep breathing when you’re standing on his throat? “We can talk in your office, or right here.”

  He stopped smiling. He glanced at Lansing. He didn’t want her to hear this. “Hey, sure, I can spare a few minutes. What the hell?”

  He went into his office. I smiled at Lansing. “Call the police,” I said. She covered her face with her hand. I followed Cambridge in and shut the door behind me.

  Cambridge sat behind his desk. He raised his hand. “Now, Johnny, I know you’re upset—”

  “Let me explain something, Bobby,” I said. “Fuck you.”

  “Hey. Hey, hey, hey,” said Bob.

  “Fuck you, and the relatable horse you rode in on.”

  “Hey. Really. I’m serious,” he opined.

  “You butchered my story.”

  “I didn’t butch—”

  “You butchered my story, and you wrote things under my byline that weren’t true.”

  “Now, just, just, let’s calm down here.”

  Which was when I started screaming. What I screamed was: “Calm down? That was a little girl who died, you stupid son of a bitch!”

  Cambridge had no choice. He stood up and started screaming back. “This is always what I get from you, Wells! I get bullshit! That’s all I get!”

  We stood on opposite sides of the desk. We each pointed a hand at the other. We screamed.

  “Those are real people—” I screamed.

  “Bullshit and … and opposition,” he screamed.

  “You can’t just turn them into characters in your relatable fairy tale—”

  “You’ve just tried to stand in my way—”

  “That woman’s half-crazy with grief! You make her sound like Sherlock Holmes, for Christ’s sake!”

  “The times change, Wells, that’s what you can’t stand!”

  “You libel the goddamned police chief!”

  “That’s what you can’t stand! Times fucking change!”

  “You cry cover-up—Oh, fuck you, times change.”

  “Don’t tell me … Fuck you too!”

  “Fuck you, Cambridge!”

  “Oh yeah?”

  “Yeah. Fucking yeah.” I waved my hand at him in disgust and started for the door.

  “It’s a shame what’s happened to you, Wells,” he called after me. “You used to be one of the greats.”

  I stopped. I blinked. I turned around. Cambridge turned pale under his tan. It’s November, I thought. Where does he get a tan? I walked slowly back to his desk.

  “Let me tell you what’s going to happen now,” I said.

  He put his hands on his hips. “Okay. Okay, you tell me.”

  I took a breath. “In about three weeks this city is going to blow sky-high. The transit chief is just the beginning. There’s a witness coming up at the Dellacroce trial who’s going to implicate enough officials to make a whole new division of government.”

  Cambridge backed up a little. “You have that solid?”

  “I practically have it written.”

  “What? Like … City Hall?”

  “Maybe Albany, buddy.”

  “Oh shit.”

  “Oh shit is right. And let me tell you what else. Everytime there’s a big development, it’s going to be in the Daily News one full day before it hits the Star. One full day, Cambridge. And you know why? Because I’m going to be working for them. Go and explain that to the …” I jabbed my thumb at the ceiling. “… the people upstairs.”

  His face went blank. “Oh hey, now wait a minute.”

  I waved my hand at him again. I started for the door again. “Go to hell,” I said. I had my hand on the knob.

  “Wait. Really, Wells, wait.”

  I stopped again. I turned again. “I want you off my copy.”

  He lifted his shoulders. “Hey, I was only trying—”

  “Off my fucking copy.”

  “Okay. Sure. Fine.”

  “And I want the rest of the suicide story killed.”

  “Uh-huh. Uh … okay.”

  “Now, whatever your little relatable projects are, I won’t stand in your way—”

  “Good.”

  “But the courts belong to me.”

  He nodded slowly.

  “The courts are mine, Cambridge.”

  “All right. The criminal—”

  “Right. And one more thing.”

  “I know, I know. You want back on the Dellacroce case.”

  “I want back on the Thayer case.”

  His mouth actually dropped open. “What?”

  “I’m gonna check it out from top to bottom. If she was murdered, then I won’t look like an idiot. If it was suicide, I want a page three retraction including the fact that the story wasn’t mine.”

  “Oh, come on, Wells.”

  “Go ahead,” I said. “Go upstairs. Discuss it with the people. Ask Mr. Sandler if he wants me at the News. Or Bush.”

  “Johnny—”

  “Meanwhile, I’ll pack for Grant County.”

  17 I went home that night and drank. Did I drink? I drank, all right. I sat with a bottle while the sun went down; I went down with it under an amber haze of J & B.

  The shadows gathered. That’s what shadows do at dusk, they gather. Most of them, I think, gather in my apartment. It’s a good place for shadows. A big one-bedroom that almost looks abandoned. There are no pictures on the wall, and the paint is chipping. The dust has collected in large snowy balls under what furniture there is: a bed, an old dresser, a table, a couple of chairs. There’s a TV stand with a TV on it. There’s a rickety old desk, too, with a rickety old typewriter on it. None of it gives the place much life. The living room’s two windows open on Eighty-sixth Street: The glaring light of movie-theater marquees keeps one wall well lit all night long. Right across from me, at the t
riplex, they were playing a picture about monsters, one about spaceships, and one about Kung Fu. I could read the marquee as I sat at the desk with my bottle and my glass and my pitcher full of melting ice. I could see the city growing dark around it, while it stayed light. I considered that the light from the marquees never went down, never went out.

  I was philosophical like that. I drank. I didn’t think about Cambridge anymore. I didn’t think about my stories anymore. I didn’t even think about the Thayer case. There’d be time enough for that tomorrow. I thought about Olivia … about my ex-wife Constance and my late kid Olivia. I thought about the people I’d known—the cops, and the junkies, and the husbands on the run—who had died alone in one-bedroom apartments too many flights off the street, where the shadows gather and the dust collects and the paint chips on the wall. I thought about that. I thought about Constance. I thought about Olivia. I drank.

  I was twenty-three years old when I met her. One of the stables of her parents’ horse farm burned down. I was working up in northern Westchester on a little daily near Mt. Kisco: a one-room operation. I was a reporter, a photographer, and an editor sometimes too.

  I was the eager type. Eager to work through the night, eager to see my byline on the front page in the morning. Eager to seem cool and tough and not too eager.

  Just six months before, I’d come into town on a freight out of Maine. My father was a forest ranger up there. He’d died fighting a fire. Nothing heroic, just lost it to the smoke. I think he must have figured it was the easier way—easier, I mean, than hanging around to watch the cancer kill my mother. He left me to do that. And I left my brother and sister to bury her. Never saw them again.

  I got off the freight when it stopped heading south. It was New York City or bust for me. I unrolled my clean set of clothes and walked till I came to a little city. I got a job at the launderette next door to the paper. The paper gave me stringer work when they saw I could write. Then they hired me a month later.

  I didn’t know what had hit me. The job grabbed me from the start. It was a job I could work from the minute I got up in the morning till the minute I went to bed the morning after. It was good work, smart work, work you had to think about. I thought about it. I didn’t think about where I’d come from. I didn’t think about where I’d go. I thought about getting the story. I learned to get the story.