Blackwater Sound

‘I miss anything?’

Lawton leaned forward, inhaling deeply.

‘Nice perfume,’ he said.

‘Thanks.’

‘Like fresh-cut clover with a rainstorm approaching.’

Lawton sat back, basking in Brandy’s smile.

Charlie Harrison grumbled and pushed his beer bottle out of the way and stared at Arnold.

‘All right, Arnold. You gonna give me this or what?’

Arnold took one more look at the young man, then nudged the envelope across the table. Charlie peeled back the tabs and pulled out the papers and started glancing through them.

‘So how you gonna make out on the story, Charlie?’ Peretti gave Brandy a wink. ‘Gonna be a good payday, I bet.’

Harrison was studying the blueprint.

‘Just my regular salary.’ Mumbling, not even looking up.

‘Charlie doesn’t care about money,’ Brandy said. ‘It’s one of his virtues.’

‘Whoa!’ Arnold peered at the boy. ‘Say that again.’

Charlie glanced up from the page. Gave Arnold a cute smile.

‘I get a weekly wage, Arnold. That’s how it works in the real world.’

‘You telling me you’re just going to give the story to this Miami Weekly?’

‘That’s right.’

‘What’re you, crazy? Only reason anybody looks at that pissant rag is for those sleazy personal ads. Bunch of perverts trying to find each other.’

‘That pissant rag has been buying my groceries the last five years.’

‘What about Time, Newsweek, one of those big guys? This isn’t some little local story. It’s national. Bigger than that, even. You take this story, peddle it to one of the big guys, I bet they’d pay you more than your biweekly salary. Ten thousand, fifteen at least.’

‘Twenty-five,’ Brandy said.

Arnold blinked, then swiveled his head slowly and peered at her.

‘I have a friend.’ Brandy smiled at Charlie. ‘Her name’s Julie Jamison, she’s an editor at Rolling Stone.’

‘You didn’t,’ Charlie said. He let the blueprint flutter to the table.

Brandy closed her eyes and opened them, trying to be patient with him.

‘I was very discreet. I told Julie about the story and she thought about it and called me back to say they’d probably do it as a three-parter, pay fifteen up front and ten more when the last section was printed.’

‘Jesus Christ,’ Arnold said. ‘When’d you do this?’

‘A couple of days ago. Why?’

‘When?’ Arnold said. ‘What day?’

‘I don’t know, Monday, Tuesday. Hey, it’s a big story. You said so yourself, Arnold, it should have major circulation. Charlie should get some financial benefit from it. A career boost.’

Arnold took off his glasses, rubbed his eyes. Then he put them back on and peered around the bar as if these men had suddenly become dangerous.

Lawton shifted in his seat. He lifted the lid of the box and looked inside, then dropped the lid back into place.

‘Can I press it now, Arnold?’ he asked. ‘Can I press the button?’

‘No, Lawton. Just sit there, okay? Let me think.’

‘Christ, Arnold,’ Charlie said. ‘Don’t get paranoid on me. Relax, everything’s cool.’

Arnold leaned forward against the table, raised his hand and flagged their waitress, flicked his hand for the check. Then he looked across at Charlie and lowered his voice. ‘Is that what you think? It’s cool?’

‘Julie won’t mention it to anyone,’ Brandy said. ‘I told her to keep it on the q.t. The secret’s safe, Arnold.’

Lawton opened the lid of the box and peeked down at the contraption inside. It was a wild tangle of wires and a stack of circuit boards connected to several cylinders filled with blue fluid. The contraption reminded him of something. He wasn’t sure what.

‘The q.t., huh? This Julie, she’s real tight-lipped, is she? Like maybe she got that figure, twenty-five thousand, it just came out of her head? She didn’t have to go to her boss, run it by anybody else. She’s not sitting around right now with the magazine’s lawyers, discussing the possible libel case? Maybe calling up Braswell, trying to confirm a few items of interest. Nothing like that.’

Charlie leaned forward and laid a hand on Peretti’s.

‘Tranquilo, Arnold.’

Arnold jerked his hand away.

Lawton was staring down at the device. There was a blue button and a green one beside it. On one side of the contraption there was a small cone like a megaphone, or the speaker on an old Victrola, and behind the cone a bird’s nest of wires, and those tubes connected to the circuit boards.

Lawton remembered what it reminded him of. The microwave oven he’d taken apart, trying to repair. There on his workbench in the garage, all those circuit boards and wires and transistors. He had no idea what any of it was. Never even got the thing put back together.

Lawton snuck his right hand into the box and pressed the blue button but nothing happened.

Beside him Arnold was staring out the window muttering to himself. Lawton tried pressing the green button and still nothing.

‘Look,’ Brandy said. ‘I don’t know why you’re getting worked up. Julie’s professional. They do big stories all the time without leaking anything.’

She pouted at Arnold. Then turned the pout on Charlie.

Lawton could feel the box humming on his lap. It hadn’t been humming before. So at least he’d gotten it started. Revving a little. Maybe what he should do now, he should press both buttons at once.