Free Starvation Lake by Bryan Gruley Page B

they can see things to which you are hopelessly blind. “Maybe a tad
too
interesting, if you catch my drift. Your reporter, what’s her name?”
    “Joanie. McCarthy.”
    “Exactly. She has done some very, shall we say, aggressive reporting here. The documents she uncovered are very interesting, perhaps even persuasive.” He interrupted himself. “Gosh, all that money Perlman’s been pulling out of the state kitty, I wonder how much more it costs me in boat-use fees.” He chuckled at his little joke. “But, but,” he said, his thick brows furrowing into one at the bridge of his nose, “what’s crucial to remember here, Gus, is that Mr. Perlman is a
private
individual. You know what that means.”
    “Perlmutter. And yes, I know.” It meant that, according to libel law, it would be easier for him to sue us and win than a public figure, like the sheriff.
    “Does he have an attorney?” Kerasopoulos said.
    “Yes. But neither of them are saying much.”
    Kerasopoulos’s kids were banging their helmets again. “Have we made every attempt to give Mr. Perlberg a chance to respond?”
    “We have. Joanie went out there once and talked to him. But since he figured out what she had, he hasn’t returned her calls.”
    “Exactly,” Kerasopoulos said, rapping a finger on the counter for emphasis. “This is a gentleman who seems perfectly at ease with the tedium of paperwork. And he’s an aggressive individual who obviously has a good deal to lose. Put those together and you have a lawsuit.”
    “He’s a thief who’s been defrauding the public for years,” I said, and immediately regretted it.
    “Whoa there, partner. That’s for others to decide. We simply submit facts in as fair and balanced a way as we can. Are we clear?”
    I looked at my congealing egg pie. “We’re clear.”
    “I used to be a reporter myself, Gus.”
    You used to be skinny, too, I thought.
    “We may have a problem here,” he said.
    “Jim, this is a legitimate story.”
    He stood. “If you were sure of that, Gus, you would’ve just run it. But you sent it to us for our opinion, and I’m giving it to you.”
    I wanted to tell him to take his double-wide ass back to his corner office with the drawings of duck blinds and lighthouses and golf holes on the walls and stop sticking his nose into things. I wanted to tell him he was a small-timer and he would always be a small-timer, making the money that paid his boat-use fees off little towns whose newspapers he neutered daily. Except that he was right, at least partly. I could’ve just put the story in the paper and taken my lumps from corporate, maybe even lost my second newspaper job in a year. But I’d been covering my ass, playing to the bosses, securing my own smalltime future. And now, by blurting out the truth about Perlmutter, I had put the story in even greater danger of never seeing print. I felt like smacking myself.
    “Look, Jim,” I said, “let me see if we can get Perlmutter to respond.”
    “You do that,” Kerasopoulos said. “You know what I always say: We can never be second with something that matters to our readers. Right? OK. Listen, I’ve got to get back to my kids before they wreck the place. You made the right call on this, Gus. We appreciate the caution.”
    I pushed the egg pie away and looked out the window. Standing in the street with a
Pilot
folded under his arm was Elvis Bontrager. He was talking with someone I couldn’t see. I stood to leave. Audrey turned from the griddle. “Gussy, you barely ate.”
    “Sorry, Mrs. DeYonghe. I’m not feeling so hot. The pie was great, really.”
    “Feel better. And give your mother my love.”
    I eased out the door, trying to keep the bells from jangling. I saw Elvis was talking with Teddy Boynton. I hurried down Main Street, head down, rock salt crunching under my boots. “There he is,” I heard Boynton say as I swerved down the alley next to Enright’s. It dawned on me that in two days I’d had two meals