I ask Burns how many songs were finished.

"Not a one," he says. "It was just Jimmy by hisself, dickin' around with a Gibson."

"No session guys? No singers?"

"Nope. Just Jimmy, like I tole ya."

I'm always impressed that clods like Jay Burns, whipped and wasted, can somehow summon the energy to lie. It's as if they've got special reserve tanks of bullshit in the basement of their brains.

"Did he have a working title?" I ask.

"About fifty of 'em. It changed every week."

"And in the meantime, he was producing Cleo's new album?"

Burns starts to answer but changes his mind.

"What're you going to do now, Jay?"

"I dunno. She wants a piano on 'Shipwrecked Heart.' I told her I'd do it."

"That's not what I meant."

"Then you lost me again," he says.

"Get some rest, sport."

As I hop off the Rio Rio,the white heron squawks and flies from the dock. I hear Burns call after me: "Wait, man, I gotta ask you somethin'."

I turn around to see him leaning forward intently, knuckles planted on the gunwale. Lowering his voice, he says, "I was just wonderin', Billy Preston—you ever heard a him?"

"Sure. Played with the Beatles."

"One a my all-time heroes, man. Did he, you know ... make it past forty?"

"Yeah, Billy's still alive and kicking."

"Far out. How 'bout Greg Allman?"

"Hangin' tough," I say, "and he's gotta be pushing fifty-five."

Jay Burns looks vastly relieved. "Thanks," he tells me. "I don't keep up with the news all that much."

13

The next morning I get up early and head for the newsroom, where I will gently steal a story from Evan, our intern.

I heard on the radio that the former mayor of Beckerville has passed away "after a long illness." The former mayor of Beckerville happened to be a petty slimeball named Dean Ryall Cheatworth, who was caught accepting sexual favors in exchange for corrupt activities; to wit, initiating zoning variances to accommodate certain adult-oriented establishments. As mayor of Beckerville, Dean Cheatworth once sold his tie-breaking vote for a two-minute hand job, which ultimately resulted in the grand opening of a nude hot-oil massage parlor next door to a children's day care center. The former mayor of Beckerville would have spent much longer than three weeks in prison had he not been diagnosed with terminal cancer and released on a sympathy parole.

I'm determined that Dean Cheatworth's obituary shall not minimize or overlook his misdeeds, as happens too often at the Union-Register.Emma thinks it's callous to provide a full and frank accounting of a dead scoundrel's life. She says it's disrespectful to the grieving kin. I suspect if Emma had been running the show, Richard Nixon's obit would have dealt with Watergate parenthetically, if at all.

Evan doesn't seem upset that I'm poaching the story. "All right, Jack," he says amiably, "but you owe me one." Evan is gangly and cyanotic and fashionably disheveled. He has no intention of becoming a professional journalist after finishing college, but nonetheless I'm fond of him.

"Mr. Cheatworth is one of those thieving schmucks who deserves to be drop-kicked into his grave," I feel bound to explain. "Better for me to do it than you. Emma's likely to make a stink."

Evan nods, saying, "Man, you and Emma!"

Over beers he once predicted she and I would become lovers, based on the "smoldering" intensity of our newsroom arguments. It was such a ludicrous comment that I couldn't bring myself to insult the kid.

Today is different. "Wipe that frat-boy smirk off your face," I snap at him, "unless you want to spend the rest of the summer writing for the Wedding page."

Evan mumbles a bemused apology and slips away. Logging on to the morgue, I retrieve and print out the most comprehensive, unsparing stories about the onetime political kingpin of Beckerville.

After making a few quick phone calls, I begin to write:

Dean R. Cheatworth, the longtime Beckerville mayor driven from office by a sex-and-corruption scandal, passed away Thursday after a two-year battle with cancer. He was 61.

"I don't care what they say, he was good for this town," said Millicent Buchholz, Cheatworth's executive secretary for most of his 14 years at city hall. "Dean made some dumb-ass moves and he paid for them. But we shouldn't forget the decent, honest things he did along the way."

Cheatworth, who served as mayor from 1984 to 1998, is credited with bringing the first food court to the Beckerville Outlet Mall and expanding the town's bicycle-path system by almost three miles.

But two years ago, Cheatworth was convicted of trading his vote on the zoning board for private sessions with prostitutes employed by Miami massage-parlor mogul Victor Rubella. Rubella and three women pleaded guilty in the case, and all testified against Cheatworth at trial.

The jury took only nineteen minutes to convict the mayor, who was suspended from office and slapped with a six-year sentence. He was released early when prison doctors discovered a malignant tumor in his right lung.

Councilman Franklin Potts said Cheatworth felt "real crummy" about bringing disgrace upon the city. "Just last weekend he said, 'Frankie, I know I did wrong, and now it's between me and my Savior.'"

The former mayor had told friends he "found the Lord" during his 22 days behind bars ...

Off we go. I knock out fourteen inches by the time Emma emerges from the midmorning editors' meeting. I expect a fuss but she seems distracted. After skimming the story, all she says is: "Let's lose the tumor, Jack. Say they found an 'abnormality' in his lungs."

"Fine by me." I am elated yet suspicious.

In a discouraged tone Emma says: "You're going to love this—Old Man Polk went home from the hospital this morning."

"Figures."

"His doctors say it's miraculous."

"Had me fooled," I admit. "He looked truly awful."

"How was the interview?"

"Pretty interesting, actually." The understatement of the year. Emma would keel over if she knew everything.

"Hey, I've got an idea," she says. "You want to have lunch?"

Thanks to Jay Burns, I feel like someone took a baseball bat to my shins. I hobble to the Sports department, snatch Juan away from his desk and lead him downstairs to the cafeteria. I buy him a bagel and commandeer a table in a corner, where nobody can hear us.

"Couple things," I say. "First, you told Emma about my dead lizard."

"It was a secret? Man, I've been telling everybody."

"This is important—can you remember how the subject came up? Where you were, what you were doing ... "

Juan furrows his brow in mock concentration. "The subject of lizards, or the subject of you?"

"This is not funny. You think this is funny? This is my career you're messing with."

"No offense, Jack, but—"

"Don't say it!"

With unnerving precision, Juan slices his bagel into perfect halves. "I'm sorry, Jack. I didn't know I wasn't supposed to mention Colonel Tom. But it's a helluva story, you've got to admit."

"And you've got better ones to tell," I say pointedly, "about yourself. You've got the kind of stories they make movies of, Juan."

His deep brown eyes flicker. "Yeah, well, maybe Emma's not all that fascinated with my life history. Half the time we end up talking about you."

I knew it. The shrew!

"She wants dirt," I explain to Juan. "She's building a case to nail me—see, the annual employee reviews are due soon ... "

In Juan's expression I see the obvious but lacerating query, the one he's given up asking: What more can they do to you, Jack?

I float my latest theory: "She's trying to get me transferred, I'll bet, to Features or maybe the Business desk. What else did you tell her?"