Stung

At the Burger Bunker off the north freeway exit in Granford, the specialty of the house was the Bunker Buster, a half-pound patty fortified with everything but. You dined on one at your peril. LeVine was considering going back to the counter for another when a platinum blonde swayed up to his table.

“Like some ice cream with that?”

The paint on her face failed to conceal her greater proximity to forty than twenty. Her flesh in its abundance was barely contained by a red tube top and matching hot pants.

“How much?”

After a brief negotiation, in her sky-high heels she led him from the restaurant out onto Northeast Seventh Avenue. It was stiflingly hot. At the adjacent intersection of Omega Street, three of the corners were occupied by gas stations engaged in an endless price war. A spot-lit sign soared high into the night above the fourth corner:

JOKER INN

Hourly/Daily/Weekly

Low Rates • Truckers Welcome

“Stay Here—Walk to Detox”

Particle board disguised as mahogany paneled the walls of the room she admitted him to. A muddy portrait of a clown with a tear oozing from one eye hung over the bed. The polka-dot pattern on the clown’s costume was repeated on the bedspread, the drapes, the carpet, and—as likely as not—the shower curtain in the bathroom.

“In advance.”

His wallet was so faded and cracked he wondered if he’d forgotten it in his pants the last time he’d put them in the wash. Fumbling some bills from it, he deposited them in her upturned palm, from which she speedily transferred them into her cleavage.

“Thanks, handsome. You’re under arrest.”

***

With inextinguishable indifference, the stars looked on from their places in eternity as LeVine eased his old Volkswagen to a stop next to his wife’s SUV in the driveway of their three-bedroom split-level on Northwest Suebetsy Lane.

Sue was the elder of the two granddaughters of the cul-de-sac’s developer—hence her infelicitous precedence in its name.

Like the stars above, the lightbulbs below were burning, but that didn’t prove Mrs. LeVine was awake, because she had a habit of leaving them on whenever she went to bed before he got home. Was it possible this was one of her early nights? He dared to hope so as he stole up to the front door and inserted his key in the lock.

To his disappointment but not his surprise, the inward progress of the door was abruptly stymied by the chain.

“Martha, open up.”

Through the crack, he could hear the TV nattering away in the living room, like a bore at a cocktail party.

“Expect more of the same tomorrow—brutal sunshine and highs close to a hundred, with the chance of a late thunderstorm.”

“Martha, open the door. Come on! You can’t leave me standing out here.”

Finally, he heard her slippered feet shuffling from the living room into the foyer.

Before he could get another word out, she banged the door in his face.

***

Opposite the reception desk, on the couch reserved for visitors to the newsroom, LeVine lay spluttering like a walrus on a rock.

“That’s how I found him when I got in,” I said. “I didn’t feel like it was my business to wake him up.”

With the toe of his wingtip, Scroop prodded the flat white box spread open like a diptych on the floor within reach of LeVine’s dangling left arm. A last slice of pizza, minus a jagged bite, was aging badly in it.

“That wife of his is a real battle-ax. My guess is she threw him out of the house. You saw the eleven o’clock news?”

I nodded. “The story’s on the wire, too.”

“Already?”

“I was just reading it.”

He leaned in over my shoulder for a look at my screen.

GRANFORD—The city editor of the Granford Daily Dose was arrested at a local motel Thursday night and charged with soliciting prostitution.

Police Chief Ron DeLand said Van LeVine, 48, was caught giving $50 to an undercover officer posing as a prostitute.

“I don’t care who you are,” DeLand said. “Cross the line in our peaceful little town and you’ll be prosecuted to the full extent of the law.”

He noted that solicitation of prostitution is a Class A misdemeanor punishable by up to a year in jail and a $1,000 fine.

LeVine, a married father of three, with no prior criminal record, has directed local coverage at the Daily Dose for more than a decade.

He was booked at the jail and released on his own recognizance, pending arraignment later this month.

Efforts to reach him for comment weren’t immediately successful. A woman who answered the phone at his home hung up.

H. Thomas Scroop, publisher of the Daily Dose, said he was reviewing the matter.

“They got that right.” Scroop walked over and shook LeVine by the shoulder. “You have five minutes to tell me why I shouldn’t fire you.”

LeVine was slow to react, but, as soon as his bleary eyes brought Scroop into focus, he jumped to his feet in a lather.

“It’s not what you think! I was there working.”

“Working?”

“On an idea for my column.”

With no visible emotion, Scroop propped himself on a corner of the reception desk and watched LeVine struggle to stuff a wayward shirttail back into his rumpled chinos.

“I don’t see the connection with victories over adversity. Isn’t that what your column is supposed to focus on?”

“Just give me a chance to explain.”

I was startled, when Scroop crossed one ankle over the other, to notice he was wearing argyle socks. The yellow and blue lozenges on them provided the only spots of color on his otherwise drab person. His suit, his shirt, even his tie was the same shade of gray as his hair and his eyes—as if he’d been evolved by nature to be invisible at twilight.

“I’m listening.”

“Yesterday,” LeVine began, after filling his lungs with stale air, “I got a call from the manager of the Burger Bunker. He wanted to talk to me about a problem he’s been having with loitering hookers.”

“Why you? Why not the police?”

“He said all they do is blow him off with promises of extra patrol. He was hoping a story in the paper might get them off their asses.”

“Watch it.”

“That was his word, not mine.”

“You called DeLand for comment?”

“I did more than that, I had Fiedler track him down at the cop shop, but he may as well not have bothered, because DeLand’s pretty much stopped talking to us since Rocker suggested the city council consider not renewing his contract.”

“Mor—ning!”

Speak of the devil. Emerging at the top of the stairs, Rocker paused to take the measure of the discussion he’d interrupted. In a crisp white short-sleeve shirt and burgundy tie, with his caramel-colored attaché case swinging from his right hand, he looked—notwithstanding his head of white hair—youthfully ready to rumble after a solid night’s sleep.

“Well, well, Van. I didn’t think we’d be seeing you today—not after your star turn last night.”

Scroop held up a palm by way of signifying this wasn’t the moment for needling.

“LeVine would have us believe he was acting in a professional capacity when he allowed himself to be lured into that motel room.”

“I don’t doubt it for a second.”

“Go on, LeVine. I assume you went to the Burger Bunker to check out the manager’s complaint?”

“On my way home after work. I wasn’t really expecting anything to happen, but, as I was finishing my burger, a blonde with a pair of—”

“I said watch it.”

“Sorry, with a figure like you wouldn’t believe stopped at my table and offered me two scoops of ice cream for twenty-five bucks—fifty with sprinkles. My immediate thought was, bingo, I’ll pay her for her time, pry her sad story out of her, and then personally escort her for help to the outreach ministry at my church. Unfortunately, I walked into a trap DeLand most likely set to get out ahead of us after Fiedler’s visit tipped him off.”

“He must have jumped for joy when he reeled you in.”

“He was staked out in the bathroom with a reporter from Channel Six, so you bet he couldn’t believe his good luck.”

With an abruptness that signified he’d invested enough of his valuable time in this sordid affair, Scroop straightened up from his perch.

“When Fiedler writes up your arrest, he can quote me as saying the newspaper stands behind your version of events.”

“Thank you, sir. That’s what I was hoping to hear. Now maybe tonight, when I go home, I won’t find the chain on the door again.”

Uninterested in LeVine’s domestic difficulties, Scroop turned his attention to Rocker.

“You might want to devote your editorial today to the issue of entrapment. Emphasize it’s our position the police shouldn’t be in the business of creating criminals.”

“I can do that.”

Scroop was moving off toward the stairs when LeVine pushed his luck.

“One last thing, if I might.”

Without looking back, Scroop stopped with his hand on the banister.

“If it’s about the money you’re out of pocket, go ahead and give the bill to Burt Dunkler in accounting.”

“It’s a privilege to work for you.”

Scroop dismissed the compliment with a curt gesture.

“For the two scoops only, you understand. Some other time you’ll have to tell me why you sprang for the sprinkles.”

BIO: STEPHEN BAILY's short fiction has appeared in some sixty journals. He's also the author of "Markus Klyner, MD, FBI" (Fellow Traveler Press) and two other novels. He lives in France.

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