“Was he in the gang? Most of the gang stuff is inter-gang politics, but sometimes it spills out to the civvies.”

  She pulled some gum out of her large purse and offered me a piece.

  “No thanks,” I said.

  She removed the paper wrapping and popped a piece in her mouth. I could smell the mint as she chewed.

  “Was your friend in a gang or doing drugs?” she asked.

  “Probably both.”

  “Nice. Sounds like a good friend.”

  “He was. I hadn’t seen him in many years.” I wiped a drop of sweat off my forehead. “You guys have AC?”

  “You’re not up on the crisis in the newspaper business, are you? Where are you coming from?”

  “I’m just an innocent citizen looking for information,” I said.

  She threw her head back and laughed again, but this one was more contrived. “Innocent. I don’t think anyone’s innocent and human interactions are mostly about power and potential violence. That’s why I always carry these.”

  She pulled out the red cylinder of mace covered in imitation jewels she’d brandished earlier. Next she pulled out a silver and black box that looked like it could pinch you.

  “Yes, I see that you take defense seriously. Women should do that.”

  “See, I was right to be wary of you. Military?”

  “No, just lived in L.A.” I said with a wry smile.

  “The mystery deepens. Quick, what brand is my taser?” After sticking the mace back into her purse, she held up the pincher-box, covering the label with her unmanicured hand.

  “I really don’t want to play games. Is it possible to see the clippings from about four years ago?” I said.

  “Answer the question,” she shot back.

  “Taser’s the brand,” I said.

  She frowned dramatically. “You are absolutely no fun.” She kept the Taser in her hand and started motioning toward the boxes with it. “So, this is where...”

  “Do you think I’m going to try something?”

  She stopped and swung around in an athletic manner like she’d grown up with older brothers. “You’re too slow to even make a move on me, Jabuti.”

  I glared at her. “I’m sensitive about my girth. You mind not teasing me about that? I’m generally in shape, it’s just lately I lost interest.”

  “It’s not a comment about being fat. It’s about being slow. Jabuti’s a tortoise. Do you play the flute?” she asked and winked.

  “Are you flirting with me?”

  “I prefer girls, but I’ve tolerated men now and again.”

  “Flirting doesn’t mean we’re going to get together,” I said.

  “You’re cute. Lose a couple pounds, the ladies will swoon for those green eyes and that caramel skin. You could wear a nicer t-shirt too, just sayin.’”

  “Thanks for the fashion tips, Anna Wintour,” I mumbled.

  She motioned again toward the stacks of boxes.

  “Each pallet represents a five-year period. Each box has two months in it. We publish six days per week. What years do you want?”

  I looked at the medium-sized room with no windows and fluorescent lights. My heart ached as I thought of sitting on my knees, fingers covered in black newsprint, searching for Roger’s mug in these time capsules.

  “This is all that’s left of him,” I muttered.

  “What was that, Jabuti?” Dana asked.

  I weighed my next question, knowing that I would be letting a reporter into my inquiry. I had a good feeling about her integrity from her no-nonsense attitude. I hoped my instincts were correct.

  “Dana, you’re the one who had a story in today’s paper about the governor, right?” I had read a story by her in the paper I purchased. I felt good about being in her hands.

  “A story with my name on it. What was left of it.” She said the last part with a mix of resentment and sarcasm.

  “I’m trying to find out details on the death of this childhood friend of mine. I just got back on island. I went by his house to see him and it was deserted. A neighbor said he died and pointed me to his grave.”

  My eyes became hot marbles burning inside my head. Why’d my only friend have to become a drug dealer and end up dead? Why hadn’t anyone told me? It hit me. I’d abandoned him. No one told me because I moved away with barely a glance back. I never visited. Never called. Never even tried Facebook.

  I raised my eyes to the paneled ceiling, fighting the tears I didn’t want to shed in front of this stranger. Blinking profusely, my next words came out in a high-pitched, choked tone.

  “The date on the grave was December 24th, 2011. Can you point me to that week?”

  Dana looked away at a stack of boxes, respecting my privacy. For this I already liked her.

  Instead of the usual question people asked about whether I was okay, she continued along our original line of discussion as if nothing were amiss.

  “Are you talking about Roger Black?”

  “Yes!” My exclamation magnified in the confined space. “You wrote a story on his murder, didn’t you?” I asked, happy my instincts had led me to her.

  “I wrote stories.”

  “I knew it! I mean, I had a feeling you were the one who covered his case.”

  “Why?” she asked.

  “Just a feeling. Just a feeling.” My instincts were working. I felt a jolt of adrenaline that I’d somehow found someone who had real information on Roger.

  “Well, there aren’t that many of us, so the odds weren’t long. You don’t need to be down here. Let’s go up to my desk.”

  We reached the more humane existence of the main reporters’ room. The uninviting opaque windows diffused the bright spring sunlight. I yawned. The Folger’s instant coffee I’d slugged down at seven was wearing off. A giant clock that hung above the reporter’s bullpen like a watchful eye read 8:45AM.

  Below the clock, like the black grease on a footballer’s face, was a faded black-and-white sign that read, “The news never sleeps.”

  “Boise, I’m a reporter. I get paid to notice things. Can I tell you what I notice about you?” Dana asked, taking some of the bluster out of her repartee.

  “We need to go have a drink if you are going to do that,” I quipped.

  “I’m taken.”

  “I didn’t mean that. I’m not hitting on you!” I forced myself to maintain eye contact, but I couldn’t help noticing a tiny bit of black bra and tanned skin.

  “I know, but it’s hard not to have a little fun at your expense. Relax.”

  “Sure thing, Ms. Goode. I’m relaxed.” I leaned against the wall and crossed my feet like I was waiting for the bus.

  She dropped into her squeaky wooden swivel chair. “Go take that crappy chair from Givens’ desk.” She pointed at an even more abused reclining swivel chair the next desk over.

  I pulled it beside her and sat down, almost losing my balance in the process, but righting myself. I leaned forward to offset the busted springs.

  “You seem nervous, a sign that whatever it is you’re looking for here is out of your league,” she continued.

  “I respect your journalistic observations, but I’d really just like to look at anything you have on Roger.”

  “Okay, let me set you straight on a couple of things, Mr. Montague. I’m a reporter, not a journalist. Journalists write and I guess journal about things. I report. I see what happens and report exactly what I see as close to the original, objective event as I can. A word camera.”

  I nodded.

  “Now, the second thing is, if you want to see Roger Black’s file, you’ve got to abide my observations because as a reporter, they’re all I have in this life.” She leaned back and laid her hands in her lap.

  We stared at each other a while until I finally spoke. “Okay, Ms. Goode, tell me about myself.”

  “You’re depressed. I don’t mean that in the typical sense, as in someone says you’re depressed, but they mean you’re unhappy. I don’t know what you are, but I know whatever you should be feeling, you’re pushing down that feeling like a button you’ve permanently got your finger on.”

  I nodded at her. “Okay, observation accepted. May I see the file?”

  “Eventually you’ll nod off and let your finger off the button unannounced. Then, boom.” She spread her fingers apart like I’d seen the kids in Emancipation Park do with the exploding fist bumps they used to greet each other.

  She unlocked a drawer to her left, took out a manila file folder, and placed it on top of the papers already littering her desk. A photo of a four- or five-year-old girl with a smattering of teeth and curly brown hair sat on top of the file. Dana snatched the photo away and dropped it back into her desk drawer.

  I picked up the file. “You know, my parents didn’t give me tons of wisdom, but a few gems stayed with me. ‘Let people be who they are’ was a good one.”

  She laced her fingers together, put her hands over her head, and cracked her knuckles. “I like it. Sounds like something a ten-year-old girl once said to me.”

  I pointed at the desk where I’d gotten the chair. “Can I sit at,” I snapped my fingers, “Giver’s desk and read this? You’re not going to let me take this with me, right?”

  “Her name’s Givens. Yeah, sit there. I have some reporting to do.”

  She pulled her laptop out as I plopped the file onto the chair and rolled it back to Givens’ desk. The file was thin, which was good and bad. Good because I was still weary from the flight and didn’t relish digesting vast sums of information. Bad because less information meant fewer leads.

  “Is this everything?” I asked after skimming the file for three minutes.

  She ignored me, staring at the Apple’s screen with the intensity of a cheetah. I started to say it again louder, but thought better of it, since the first thing she’d ask was whether I’d carefully read what I had already.

  Roger died in a violent manner on a Saturday night. Christmas Eve. A photo appeared in the top left of the article with his red-tinged black hair in loose curls blowing in the wind. He’d been a good-looking guy. The picture captured that mischievous look ever-present in his devilish smile.

  I was no better. In fact, I was usually the one who decided to take things a little too far. Back in the day, Roger would come up with some prank like sitting on the flat roof of a building behind his house where we’d use our homemade sling-shots to shoot paperclips or bottle tops we scrounged from the dump at cars moving along a couple stories below. I’d lose interest after twenty minutes because we’d get no reaction and suggest we move onto something more exciting, like flinging small chunks of concrete.

  Roger, not wanting to look like a wuss, would go along. As the size of the chunks grew, one of us would hit a car too hard. The brake lights would blaze up, halting traffic, forcing the other cars to honk, and bringing an angry driver out of his vehicle to see a scratched paint job or cracked back window.

  We’d duck, then peek over the ledge to see the driver staring up at us like a CIA agent. We’d scramble away, laughing as shouts crawled over the roofline along with more honking. Roger would declare I was nuts. I’d say it was fun, to which he’d grudgingly agree.

  Further along, the article said Roger was shot, then stabbed. Seven stab wounds to go with the gunshot to his upper back. The gunshot started the job, the stabbing finished it. It sounded like someone really wanted him dead.

  MY WIFE, EVELYN, HAD been killed by a car while she was riding her bike through the Ballona Wetlands on the coast in Los Angeles County. She’d fought a large land developer by the name of Richard Elliot, who kept saying he only wanted to develop a small portion of the wetlands into a housing project to alleviate the constant housing shortage in Los Angeles.

  The county had given in.

  Five years later, Elliot asked for more land to build another housing development. Evelyn, a curvy, fierce brunette with a passion for environmental protection, had started the Ballona Wetlands Protection Project (BWPP) specifically to stop this man. It became her life. Shortly before her death, she won a massive victory to stop further development for ten years.

  The police believed it was a hit-and-run accident by a scared citizen who meant no harm. Had the driver stopped and called 911, that person might have saved my wife from a coma and eventual death.

  I forced my attention back to Roger’s undeniable murder. Black ink stained my fingertips. I wiped them on my shorts. According to the article, Roger was survived by his mother, Jacinta Black, his aunt, Lydia, and his older sister, Claudia. I hoped that wasn’t everyone who’d survived.

  “Do you have a copier or a scanner?” I said.

  Dana continued to stare at the screen. I got up and tapped her shoulder. She jumped, as if coming out of a trance.

  “You okay?” I asked.

  “Fine, just on a deadline. What do you need?” she said.

  Before I could answer, she leaned over to her purse and pulled out a pack of cigarettes. “Gonna have a smoke. Want one?”

  “No, I want to make a copy of some of the articles in your file. I could scan it too, whatever’s better for you,” I said.

  As she cupped her hand around a match to light her cigarette, a slender bald guy who walked like his spine had been fused strode through the door.

  “Do I smell sulfur, Goode?” he shouted, charging toward us. “How many times I gotta tell you no smoking in the newsroom?”

  Dana waved the match out, the unlit cigarette hanging from her bottom lip. Smoke drifted off the tip of the match into the man’s face. He blinked behind his glasses, coughing. He didn’t wave it away. He remained focused. Intense.

  “Hey, boss.” A theatrical grin broke across Dana’s face. “Meet someone I’m working with on a story.”

  I stuck out my hand. He shifted his gaze up from Dana to meet my eyes. His demeanor instantly turned warm and pleasant as he gave me a too-firm handshake.

  “Walter Pickering. I’m the editor of this fine newspaper. And you are?”

  “My name is Boise, Mr. Pickering. I’m helping Dana out with a story. Nice to meet you, sir.”

  “No, no, sources are the life-blood of a newspaper, so please, call me Walter. You are a source, correct?”

  “I guess I might be, sir. We’re still hashing out the details of my knowledgeableness on our story,” I said.

  “Splendid. Excuse my gruff attitude, but you understand that the law prohibiting smoking inside work environments has now extended its reach all the way here to the islands. We don’t follow all the mother-land rules, but I like this law.”

  As he said the last sentence, his eyes locked with Dana’s. A tense silence followed, which I broke.

  “Uh, where’s the bathroom?”

  “Why that’s in the southwest corner, over there,” Walter pointed.

  “Thanks,” I said, happy to escape the workplace tension.

  I pushed the knobless door open, threw the tiny clasp inside across. A single-person bathroom with an old-fashioned pull towel dispenser and a white bar of Dove soap streaked black from so many hand washings. I prayed the black came from newsprint.

  I stood over the toilet. A cute, little sign placed next to a spider plant in the window read, “If it’s yellow, let it mellow. If it’s brown, flush it down.” I chuckled, thinking of the sign we used to have in our bathroom growing up. It had a flower in each corner: “In the land of fun and sun, we don’t flush for number one.”

  I’d never seen wells or heard of the island having any ground water, so every drop of rain had to be captured in cisterns. I leaned against the door, my wet hands dripping down the white washed wood, as I pressed my ear against the doorjamb. I heard small clicks. I opened the door a crack and peeked out. Dana tapped away. Walter must have retreated into his office.

  Dana looked up. “Did mommy and daddy scare you?”

  “I’m going to read the rest of the file and be on my way. What about copies?” I asked, holding up the papers I’d left sitting on Givens’ desk.

  She dropped her gaze back to her laptop and simultaneously pointed to the far corner.

  “My code is six-six-six,” she said.

  I made copies, read the rest of her file, and said good-bye. Goode had lost her words. Right as I was about to hit the street, she came out behind me.

  “Just walk,” she said.

  She glanced around periodically. We reached Market Square where vendors stood upon a red concrete stage surrounded by columns, hocking all sorts of agricultural goods. She pulled me to a wall behind a parked car, out of earshot of the milling shoppers.

  “We have an agreement, you understand?”

  “I’m sorry?” I said.

  “Remember Walter asking if you were a source? Well, you are. You’re my source on this. Are you going to be investigating...things...as your source of revenue?” She questioned, her gray eyes boring into me.

  “I don’t know. I’ve been here for one day. Roger’s a friend. No one’s paying me for this.”

  “You must have other friends. What makes Roger so special?”

  “I learned to ride a bike next to this guy. I spent my youth flinging rocks and playing stick ball with him,” I said.

  “Roger Black...” she stopped and looked around again. “He...interests me too, okay?”

  We stared at each other like islands on the ocean, looking across a calm surface with many living secrets beneath.

  “You’re not going to tell me why you have a thing for this murder?” I said.

  “Sure. I wrote the articles, interviewed the witnesses. It looked open and shut. A gang guy gets whacked for doing gang shit. Simple. Too simple. I’ve been in this game a long time. This story never added up, but I’ve had other things to do. The case went into storage, but not all the way. For two years, I’ve felt like I bullshitted my way through.” She paused to survey the scene again. A stray mutt with matted hair trotted by. “St. Thomas isn’t Eden, but this one felt like the end of innocence. I felt like figuring out the right answer could at least give us back some semblance of trust.”

  “Do you mean that Roger’s death led to other things around here?” I asked.

  “Murder’s not a little thing. Even in a place the size of New York City, one murder can cause massive changes. Murder happens when someone’s decided a person can no longer be dealt with and the only solution is to get rid of the problem,” she said. “It’s like one of those knots in your fishing line where you try to untangle it, but can’t, so you take your knife and slice through the whole mess. You sacrifice the line so you can start fishing again.”

 

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