6

Emma is off on Mondays, but this can't wait.

The phone rings busy for an hour so I do the unthinkable and drive to her apartment, a duplex on the west side. I know how to get there because I gave her a ride on the day her car got stolen from the newspaper's parking lot. The car was a silver two-door Acura, a gift from her father. The cretin who drove off with it later tried to rob the drive-through window of a bank. He was shot by a guard and died bleeding copiously on Emma's gray leather upholstery. The car was impounded as evidence.

So I agreed to give Emma a lift, which was risky. I feared she might be so upset that she would require consoling, which I couldn't offer. To show sympathy would have thrown slack into a relationship that had to remain as taut as a garrote. If I was to save Emma from the newspaper life, I couldn't become someone in whom she confided, or even (God forbid) a casual friend.

As it turned out, the drive proved uneventful. Emma was remarkably philosophical about the dead robber in her Acura; at no time did she appear in need of a hug or even a pat on the hand. She said she'd spoken to her father and he'd offered to buy her another car once the insurance money came through. She'd told him thanks just the same, but she was a grownup and it was time she paid for her own wheels. Good for you, I said mildly. Then, dropping her off at the duplex, I heard myself asking if she needed a ride to work the following morning. What possessed me, I cannot say. Luckily, Emma already had lined up a rental.

Her apartment is a block off the main highway, but it takes two passes to find the right side street. In the driveway sits Emma's new car, a champagne-colored Camry with the paper license tag still taped in the rear window. Parked on the swale by the road is a familiar black Jeep Cherokee. It belongs to Juan Rodriguez, a sportswriter at the paper. He also happens to be my best friend.

Juan recently began dating Emma, an unnerving development. There was a time when Juan and I could go have a couple beers and bitch self-righteously about the newspaper. Not now. Whatever I might say about the deplorable state of journalism would come off as a rap against Emma, and I don't want to offend Juan. However, his interest in Emma is vexing—for two years he listened to me rail about her, and still he asked her out.

She's different in all ways from the other three women that Juan dates—one is a professional figure skater, one is an orthopedic surgeon and one is a halftime dancer for the Miami Heat basketball team. Contrary to appearances, Juan is in serious pursuit of a lifetime partner. Maybe Emma's the one, but a selfish part of me hopes not. It would suck dead toads to have my best friend romantically involved with my editor.

The question of the moment: Have Juan and Emma started a sexual relationship? If so, there's a strong possibility that I'm about to interrupt an act of copulation, which is hardly ever a good idea. In Emma's windows the blinds are open, but no movement is visible except for a bony calico cat, grooming itself on a sill. Apprehensively I check my wristwatch—at four-thirty in the afternoon, it's more likely that Juan and Emma are screwing than watching Oprah.

But what the hell. This is more important. While James Bradley Stomarti might be ashes, serious work lies ahead. The whole true story of his life and death remains untold, and Emma must be made aware of our duty to set things straight. I walk up and ring the bell. No reply. The duplex has a corroded, wall-mounted air conditioner that sounds like a bulldozer at the bottom of a canal. I try knocking, first with knuckles and then with the heel of my hand. Even the cat refuses to react.

"Shit," I say to myself.

Halfway to the car, I hear the apartment door opening—it's Emma, and to my relief she appears neither disheveled nor recently aroused. She's wearing old jeans, a short white T-shirt and her reading glasses. Her freshly trimmed bangs are parted, and the rest of her hair is pulled back with a navy blue elastic band.

"Jack?"

"Is it a bad time?"

Briskly she descends the steps. "I thoughtI heard knocking—"

"I tried to call but it kept ringing busy."

"Sorry. I was on the computer," Emma says. I think I believe her.

"What's up?"she asks.

"The Stomarti obit."

Emma looks surprised. Even when riven with errors, obituaries rarely cause headaches for editors. Legally, it is impossible to libel a dead person.

Hurriedly I tell Emma about Janet Thrush's phone call and the visit to the funeral home and the absence of autopsy stitches in Jimmy Stoma's corpse. Emma listens with an annoying trace of restlessness. At any moment I expect my buddy Juan to come sauntering out the door, zipping up his pants.

When I'm done with my pitch, Emma purses her lips and says, "You think we should run a correction?"

Christ, she's serious. I bite back the impulse to ridicule. Instead I lower my eyes and find myself gazing at Emma's bare feet, which I've never seen before. Her toenails are painted in alternating colors of cherry red and tangerine, which seems drastically out of character.

"Jack?"

"There's nothing to correct," I explain evenly. "The story wasn't wrong; it just wasn't all there."

"What do you think happened to the guy?"

"I think I'd like to see a coroner's report from the Bahamas."

"How would we handle that?" Emma is beginning to fidget. She glances over her shoulder but still hasn't acknowledged Juan's presence inside the apartment.

"We would handle that," I say, "by me flying to Nassau and interviewing the doctor who examined Jimmy Stoma's body."

Emma looks exasperated, as if I'm the one who is confused. Turns out I am.

She says, "No, what I meant was—Jack, you can't do it. You've got to finish Old Man Polk right away. They say he's fading fast ... "

"What?"

MacArthur Polk once owned the Union-Register.If the clippings are accurate, he has been dying off and on for seventeen years. I am the latest reporter assigned to pre-write an obituary.

"Emma, are you serious?" My disgust is genuine; the incredulity, feigned.

She removes a green silk scarf from her back pocket and nervously begins twisting it like an eel around one of her slender wrists.

"Listen, Jack, if you really think there's something there—"

"I do. I knowthere's something there."

"Okay, then, tomorrow you get all your notes together and we'll go see Rhineman. Maybe he's got somebody he can pull free to make some phone calls."

Rhineman is the Metro editor, the hard-news guy. My stomach knots up.

"Emma, I can make the calls. I'm perfectly capable of working the phones."

Stiffly she edges back toward the apartment. "Jack," she says, "we don't do foul play. We don't do murder investigations. We do obituaries."

"Please. A couple days is all I'm asking."

I can't believe I actually said please.

The retreat continues, Emma shaking her head. "I'm sorry—let's talk at the office, okay? First thing in the morning." She reaches the door and disappears as lithely as a ferret down a hole.

I sit in her driveway for several minutes, letting the rage burn out. Eventually, the urge to grab a tire iron and mess up her new champagne-colored Camry passes. Why am I surprised by what happened here? What the hell was I thinking?

Driving home, I turn up the bass for the Slut Puppies. I find myself entertaining a ribald image of Juan Rodriguez trussed with silk scarves to the bedposts while being straddled boisterously by Emma.

Emma, with her goddamn two-tone jellybean toenails.

I live alone in a decent fourth-floor apartment not far from the beach. Three different women have lived here with me, Anne being the most recent and by far the most patient. A snapshot of her in a yellow tank suit remains attached by a magnet to the refrigerator door. Inside the refrigerator is half a bucket of chicken wings, a six-pack of beer and a triangular slab of molding cheddar. Tonight the beer is all that interests me, and I'm on my third when somebody knocks.