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We looked.
“If you can’t do what you’re about to do in front of me, you better not do it.” The sentence seemed convoluted, but her meaning was clear.
The mechanic said, “He’s an asshole.”
“No law against that, Brian,” Mallinger said. “If there was, I’d have to arrest half the people in town.”
Just like that, the tension in the cafe gave way to words, smirks, glares, and grumbles. I decided Mallinger was very good at her job.
“Are you taking his side?” The mechanic spoke defiantly, but his posture had changed. His hands were in front of his body, palms out, and his head was slightly bowed—signals of submission. “You protecting this shithead?”
“I’m protecting the peace,” Mallinger said. “It’s what they pay me for.”
“Yeah, well, just remember interim chief—the job ain’t permanent yet.”
“I know,” Mallinger said. “I’m hoping I’ll have your support and the support of all the rest of you, too”—she gestured at the mechanic’s audience—“when the city council votes next month.”
Mallinger turned away from the crowd and looked at me.
“Come here,” she said.
She sat me down in a booth and leaned in close.
“Chief, huh?” I said.
“Take that stupid grin off your face.”
I stopped smiling.
“Everyone’s watching. Don’t look at them. Look at me. Everyone’s watching. They’re expecting me to tear you a new one because even though Brian’s an immense jerk, he lives in this town and you don’t. Nod your head.”
I nodded.
“Things are volatile enough around here. I got some asshole selling meth to high school kids. I got punks hassling citizens over the color of their skin. Yesterday I got a call to break up a knife fight at the meat plant. Two guys going at each other with these huge boning knives. Turned out they were fighting over a woman, but one was Hispanic and the other was white, so now it’s a racial issue. I don’t need this on top of it. I don’t need riots in the Rainbow Cafe. Nod your head.”
I nodded.
“Do you have business in Victoria?”
“Yes.”
“Then why don’t you get up, pay your tab, and get to it. Nod your head.”
I nodded.
“Go.”
I left the booth and I moved to the cash register. I gave the waitress a twenty and she gave me my change, along with some advice. “Why don’t you go someplace warm, and I don’t mean California.” Apparently, she didn’t like me. I couldn’t imagine why, unless she was pals with the mechanic, or she didn’t like outsiders causing trouble in her place, or she thought I should leave a bigger tip.
I asked her, “Do you have a newspaper in this town?”
“Victoria Herald.” She reached for a copy stacked next to the cash register.
“No. I meant, where is it?”
“Three blocks down and two blocks over,” she said, using her hands to indicate which directions were down and over.
“Thank you.”
“Go slip on the ice.”
A few minutes later, I pulled into a small parking lot next to a flat, pale, one-story building. Inside, I found a chest-high counter made of blond wood. Behind the counter was a man who was my height and who even looked a little like me except that he was ten years younger. I, of course, was better looking.
“Excuse me,” I said. “I would like to look at some past issues of the Herald.”
“How past?”
“Back when the Victoria Seven won the tournament.”
“Let me guess. You’re researching a book about the Seven, or maybe a screenplay like Hoosiers, the Gene Hackman movie.”
“Do you get a lot of that?”
“Not a lot, but enough that no one is surprised by it. I’m Kevin Salisbury.”
“McKenzie.”
“This way.”
Salisbury led me across the small, cluttered newsroom to a door labeled EMPLOYEES ONLY. Inside the windowless room, I found a series of wide, black-metal shelves shoved against a wall, each shelf stacked with past issues of the Herald. Three vending machines and two plastic trash containers labeled for recycling were arranged side by side against another wall. Baseball bats, balls, bases, and catcher’s equipment were dumped in one corner and a life-size cardboard cutout of Bart Simpson saying, “Don’t have a cow” was in another. In the center of the room there was a cafeteria-style table strewn with discarded newspapers and magazines and surrounded by metal folding chairs.
Salisbury quickly located what he was looking for—two thick files of yellowed newspapers held together by what resembled a giant three-ring binder. “February-March” and the year was written on the cover of the first in faded marker and “April-May” was written on the other.
“You’ll probably want to start with these,” Salisbury said. He set the files on the cafeteria table. “I’ve been telling the boss we should have put all these on microfiche years ago, but he doesn’t listen to me.”