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From the novel Westlake Village by Harry Buschman
© by Harry Buschman
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
The Poisoned Grapevine
When you write for a newspaper, even one as disreputable as "The Guardian,"
you write when you have to not when you want to. You cover stories. Break-ins,
(few) Real Estate sales, (even fewer) births and deaths, (more of the latter
than the former) .... these mundane signposts along life's highway are the bread
and butter of the newspaper man.
In my final sweet November years I often think how nice it would be to write a work of lasting literary merit. A timeless work with full narrative expression, scintillating dialogue spoken by fascinating characters caught up in a riveting story of universal appeal. The thought usually pops into my head when things are slow down at the Guardian. I start making notes and planning a story line. This is about as far as I get, it seems to be a signal for something to happen.
The phone will ring. Lucas will answer it and say, "Your kidding! Drove off in the Mercedes, huh? Bet'cha Danny had a shit hemorrhage, huh?" Then he'll turn to me and say, "It's for you." At that point the literary world must go back and sit in the corner. It is a newspaper after all, even if it's only published twice a month. I must follow each foul and fading scent like an arthritic old bird dog, balance the facts on the scales of propriety, and decide whether or not to tell the good folks of Westlake Village why Marcy Spivak packed her bags and drove off in Danny's Mercedes.
Such news should not be unexpected to anyone who knew the Spivaks. It is news to savor in the dark places of the mind. We all knew it would happen sometime -- and although if asked, we would deny it .... we even hoped it might happen. Now that it has happened we want to know how it happened. I'm not suggesting the Guardian is a tabloid or an organ of smut and adultery, but our ears are always open for a good juicy story. It is a well known fact in the newspaper business that advertising revenues increase in direct ratio to the amount of scandal contained therein.
We don't print gossip, particularly the unsubstantiated gossip that Aggie Rindepest is notorious for. That way lies litigation. Though not alone, she is our chief contributor to the "dirt" file, as we call it. She insists her information is 'gospel' not 'gossip'. Her inquisitive nose, laser like eyes and sensitive ears are at work everywhere, at the supermarket, behind the whispering couple in the church pew ahead and at her observation station behind the see-through curtain of her living room window. Even her dog is a part of her information gathering network, he is walked much more than he wants to be.
Late every afternoon,
with a scotch and water by her side she laboriously dials the Guardian and reports
her findings.
"Hullo! Who'm I talkin to?" It will be Stacey, Lucas or me. If it's
not me, it soon will be. I'll be given the call because I seem to have a knack
with ladies like Aggie Rindepest.
"There wuz a police car outside the Spivak's all afternoon. I seen it first
around 2 o'clock when I passed by the livin' room winda, just happened to look
out, y'know? I looked later and it wuz still there."
"How much later Aggie?"
"Oh, I guess around ten after two."
"O.K., Aggie thanks for the tip."
"Wait! I ain't done yet!"
"Well, I'm on my way out right now, Aggie. Why don't you talk to Harry
Buschman?"
This is what she was hoping for. I'm a good listener and she will tell me in
exquisite detail, not only what she has seen and heard but her personal interpretation
of the evidence as well.
"The way things are goin' with those two, I wouldn't be s'prised if she
walks out on him."
Or --"I tell
you they have a very unfriendly dog, I can't get near to that fence lessen he
barks his head off."
Or even --"No decent Christian woman wears black underwear. I'll tell you
that right now."
Now, that's the kind of news I'm looking for! "Imagine that, Aggie. How'd
you know it's black?"
"First off, when a decent woman hangs her wash out she puts her inamit
apparel inside the sheets. But, oh no! not Marcy Spivak, she just hangs it out
there . . . like, er, well like .... here it is come on in an get me!"
Aggie lives diagonally across the street from the Spivaks, and since their life
style differs greatly from hers, she watches them constantly. She would watch
closely in any case but Marcy is a rather young 44 while Danny Spivak looks
ten years older than his 50. This discrepancy is not lost on Aggie. She can
sense an impending crisis.
"Anything
new from Aggie?" Stacey asked me.
"Well, I guess Marcy's left town, and I learned a few intimate details."
I brought my 'dirt file' up to date, then I turned and stared at Stacey. "Where
do you hang your underwear up to dry?"
"I don't, my Mom's got a dryer. Why, what's that got to do with Marcy?"
"Well, Aggie says Marcy wears black underwear and she doesn't hide it inside
the sheets when she hangs it out to dry."
Stacey chewed on that choice bit of information along with her bubble gum for
a while. She was on the point of speaking to me a couple of times but held her
tongue. Finally she seemed to come to some kind of conclusion.
"Y'know, I don't know who's worse .... you or Aggie! What difference does
it make where she hangs her underwear .... and why do have to write that rubbish
down in your dirty 'dirt' book? The paper's never gonna print that stuff in
the first place."
"All great journalists keep notes, Stacey. A little piece of information
like that, however small, might be a key in a chain of documentation .... the
paper might need that in the future. Also I plan on writing a book you know."
She shook her head and mumbled, "Yeah I heard," then went back to
her word
processor, typing as though she had a personal grudge against the keys. Finally,
with the natural curiosity that all women are born with, regardless of age,
she turned to me again.
"Where'd she take off to in the Mercedes?'
"I dunno Stacey, Aggie wasn't up to chasing her on foot. By the way there
was a police car there earlier, too."
She paused in her typing with her two index fingers poised over the keys. "Neat-O,
that's more like it! Looks like splitsville, huh? .... and all because she didn't
hide her underwear inside the sheets."
Her eight other fingers suddenly sprang to life and her typing went from twenty to ninety words per minute. Now that her mind was occupied her fingers were unchained -- Vladimir Horowitz would have been impressed.
Stacey has been engaged to Murray Feldman going on two years. Murray is a buyer for Cosmo Imports and I suspect Stacey had first class visions of spending her summers on the Mediterranean and wintering at Biarritz. Instead, Murray goes tourist class to places like Korea, the East Indies and Calcutta. In addition, Murray cannot live more than five miles from his mother while Stacey must live as close to Bloomingdales as she can get. Their romance is stormy at times. She has bad days, and when she does, it can be dangerous to rub her the wrong way, so to speak.
Occasionally a juicy tidbit will come in from Aggie Rindepest concerning Stacey. At such times Lucas and I must be very careful to keep the intelligence from her while at the same time discussing it on the q.t. between us without her hearing.
"I wuz out
walkin' my dog, and they wuz out there in the car together. Must'a been 11:30.
The winders were so steamed up I couldn't see in."
"Gee, Aggie, if you couldn't see in how did you know they were in there?"
"Oh I ain't been born yesterday, I know'd what wuz goin' on. So'd my dog
.... he commenced to growl and I wuz afraid he'd start to bark."
Aggie had also spotted them in the back row of the movies when she went to see
"Titanic" -- in the liquor store buying champagne and checking out
mattresses in "Sleepy's." She seems to catch everyone at the worst
possible moment.
Out of respect
for our co-worker, the tidbits concerning Stacey do not go into the 'dirt' file.
However, this does not stop Lucas and me from discussing them in detail. Like
two adolescent schoolboys we savor the almost forgotten menu of young love.
As you might suspect, it isn't long before we begin to make fools of ourselves
. . .
"Do you think they -- er --?"
"How the hell do I know! -- Wouldn't s'prise me."
"Aggie's told me a few things about you, y'know."
"What kinda things?"
"Never mind."
"Oh Yeah! Well, she's got her eye on you too y'know."
"ME!!"
"Yes you."
Well, that put an end to it! Lucas dragged his jumbo shredder over to the locked
file cabinet where we keep the 'dirt' file.
"Stace! -- Guess what?"
"Now what," she answered abstractedly.
"We're shredding the 'dirt' file!"
It marked the beginning of a new day at the Guardian. With the sticky fingered threat of slander hanging over all of us, we decided to go legitimate. Our ears are no longer open to calumny and idle surmise. It has left our 'reliable sources' high and dry, however, and the most vocal among them is Aggie Rindepest. She has found herself talking into a dial tone when we hang up on her.
Maybe now I'll
get that book written after all.
©Harry Buschman 1999
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