Bury the Lead

4



TARA GREETS ME at the door when I get home. She has a tennis ball in her mouth, a not-so-subtle reminder that I haven’t taken her to the park in two days. I drop off the stories Vince gave me and we head out.

The place we go to is called Eastside Park, less than five minutes from my house on Forty-second Street in Paterson, New Jersey. It’s the house I grew up in, the house that contains every memory worth remembering. I moved back in after my father died, and feel like I’m home, now and forever.

Paterson has always been considered a good place to leave, and getting out was long regarded as a sign of upward economic mobility. For that reason, even though I’m still there, I am in touch with very few of my childhood friends, who have headed for parts wealthier.

Going to Eastside Park always brings back memories of those friends and the times we shared. It’s where we played baseball, football, and tennis, where we tried to look cool in the futile hope that the girls would notice us. It’s also where I hit my one high school home run. It was against East Paterson High, a city we never had much respect for, mainly because any place that names itself based on its direction from Paterson can’t have too much going for it. We were obviously right, since they’ve since changed their name to Elmwood Park.

But back to the home run. I can still feel the ball hit the bat, can still remember flying around the bases as the left fielder tried to field it. It should have been scored a triple and an error. I knew that then and know it now. But my cousin was the scorekeeper, he ruled it an official home run, and nothing can ever change that.

I didn’t have Tara in that distant past, which automatically means the present is a hell of a lot better. We toss the ball around for about fifteen minutes. I don’t throw it quite as far as I used to; Tara is eight years old and starting to slow down. Considering the implications of that sends very real spasms of anxiety through my gut. And since I’m not a big fan of self-inflicted gut spasms, I avoid such thoughts at all costs.

When we’re done, we stop at a coffee shop with outdoor tables. I get an iced coffee, and Tara has water and a bagel. Her favorite is cinnamon raisin, probably because she knows I don’t like them and therefore won’t steal any. As we usually do, we hang out for a half hour, which gives Tara enough time to be petted by fifty or so passersby.

We stop off on the way home to pick up a pizza and some beer. The NFL season is opening tonight, and I want to get it started on the right note. I’ll just have enough time to go over the papers Vince gave me before kickoff.

Once we get home, I inhale the pizza and plant myself on the couch with beer, potato chips, and dog biscuits. I bounce up and down lightly a few times to test out the couch, making sure it feels right, since I’ll be spending the entire football season here. Tonight’s stay will be of relatively short duration; Saturdays and Sundays, on the other hand, can last for ten straight hours, the only interruptions occasional trips to the bathroom. I’ve considered a bedpan, or a couchpan if they make them, but I’m not sure Laurie would fully understand.

With two hours until kickoff, I start reading the material Vince gave me. Cummings’s initial story on the murders appeared the day after the first killing. The victim was Nancy Dempsey, a thirty-four-year-old nurse who left her house in Paterson on a Monday evening, announcing to her husband that she was going to the supermarket. Her naked body was found the next morning in a vacant lot two miles from her home, strangled from behind. Her hands were severed and have not been found.

After reading Cummings’s piece, I read the coverage of the same murder in the other two local papers. Cummings has a quality to his work that comes through in every paragraph, a unique style and ability that his competitors lack. There is an edge to his words, a scorn for the killer, that makes his otherwise straightforward reporting come alive, and is quite compelling.

Cummings’s article clearly struck a chord in the killer as well, as he contacted the reporter that very afternoon. Thus began a cat and mouse game, chronicled by the articles, during which the killer has kept a running communication with Cummings, who in turn has been cooperating with the police. The stories reflect the need to keep the public informed, while maintaining certain areas of secrecy that the police want preserved.

Two more murders have taken place since, with approximately a one-week interval between them. Victim 2 was a sixty-two-year-old grandmother of three, Betty Simonson, intercepted in Ridgewood while returning home from a canasta game. Victim 3 was a twenty-one-year-old prostitute, known only as Rosalie, murdered last night in Passaic. These two women were also found naked and strangled from behind, with both of their hands severed and removed from the scene.

Cummings has been placed in an extraordinarily difficult situation and seems to have responded well. The stories are revealing and riveting without being overly exploitive. He describes his conversations with the killer in great detail, right down to the inflections in the man’s voice. If he is uncomfortable in his dual role as journalist and informant, he’s hiding it well. In fact, he seems to relish it; in each article he places himself as part of the lead. And through it all comes his intense, though understandable, disdain for the psycho who has chosen him as his messenger.

Tara jumps on the couch, alerting me to the fact that game time is approaching. I call Danny Rollins, my bookmaker, and place a bet on the Falcons plus five points against the Rams.

I know there have been many significant inventors and inventions throughout the course of human history. Alexander Graham Bell, Thomas Alva Edison, the Wright Brothers . . . these are men who had a dream and realized it, and they received justified praise for their work. But the greatest invention of them all goes unappreciated, and its creator remains anonymous. I of course am referring to the point spread.

The point spread turns every football game into an even match and therefore makes it eminently watchable. The Little Sisters of the Poor could play Nebraska, and if you give them enough points, people will bet on them. It is pure Americana. Every team, no matter how disadvantaged, has an equal opportunity. My eyes fill up with tears as I think about it, and Tara snuggles next to me, obviously caught up in the emotion of the moment as well.

Unfortunately, in this case the point spread isn’t quite enough, and the Falcons, and I, lose by seventeen. I’m undaunted, though; it’s a long season, and I’m not going to get through it by panicking over a single loss.

I’m in bed within five minutes of the final gun, and maybe ten seconds after that I’m trying to figure out how to fall asleep with this huge pit in my stomach. It’s not just the potato chips and pizza, it’s the fact that Laurie isn’t here.

Laurie is my investigator and my lover and my best friend. We became romantically involved while I was separated from my former wife, which I guess means she got me on the rebound. If that’s true, she’s the best rebounder this side of Shaquille O’Neal, because I am in a permanent state of smitten.

Though we have separate residences, Laurie and I stay together at least half the time. Unfortunately, she has been in Chicago for ten days, working on a fraud case for an insurance company. It’s been a long ten days.

I spoke to her this morning, and she said she was going to be having dinner with some friends tonight, but I try calling her at her hotel anyway. She isn’t in her room. It’s eleven o’clock in Chicago, and she’s still out on the town? Who has dinner at eleven o’clock? And if you do, when do you have a midnight snack? Four in the morning?

What kind of floozy am I involved with?