Speak Ill of the Living Read Free Page A

He sat at attention, holding the top half of a newspaper, at the edge of an oddly shaped coffee table, five-sided, made of blonde wood.
    The picture looked to have been taken in the basement of a very old house. The lighting was uneven—the light source off to the side somewhere, out of view—and the man and the newspaper cast long black shadows on the fieldstone wall in the background. Eddie had never met Roger Lime, but he had seen other photographs of the bank executive, and he recognized Lime’s thinning orange hair, his pointed chin, long Roman nose, and the wind-burned complexion of a competitive yacht racer.
    In the photo, Lime wore a navy polo shirt with the collar turned up, tan drawstring pants, and no shoes or socks. The expression on Lime’s face drew Eddie’s attention. He looked tight-lipped and tense, like he was seething. Eddie interpreted the expression as rage and disbelief, as if this executive had found himself inconvenienced by ignorant little people. A thought-bubble above Lime’s head could have shouted: “Don’t they know who I am?”
    The newspaper he held was ugly and gray, no photos above the fold.
    Eddie gasped in surprise and lightly slapped his own cheek.
    Lime was holding
The Second Voice
. Eddie looked to Cuhna, who was red-faced and engrossed in his note taking.
    The paper’s banner headline was readable in the picture:

    SHAKESPEARE FESTIVAL OFF WITHOUT A HITCH
    Eddie puzzled over the headline.
Without a hitch?
Was that a Shakespeare pun? No, he decided; the line was merely a cliché. Either way, it wasn’t exactly true: a drunk driver had rammed the stage during Act II of
As You Like It
, sending Rosalind and Celia sprawling through a mural of the Forest of Arden. Eddie had gone for a beer during Act II, unfortunately, and had missed it.
    Cuhna was sniffling and writing furiously. “This is bad,” he muttered to himself. “Bad. Bad. Bad. I don’t need this.”
    Eddie’s competitor on this story was also a source of information. “Lew,” he said. “I gotta ask, what edition is that?”
    Cuhna sighed. He opened his bag, rooted around inside and shoved a newspaper at Eddie.
    It was the August 3 edition of
The Second Voice
, two weeks old. Eddie smoothed the wrinkles from the page. The Shakespeare story carried Cuhna’s byline. Eddie skimmed the text. Cuhna had buried the news about the car crash in the twelfth paragraph, but at least he had it in there. Below the fold, the paper had run a black-and-white picture from a summer youth basketball league, a folk music concert review, and four government stories generated from the meetings of city boards and commissions.
    Pretty dull paper.
    But the kidnappers had verified Lime’s state of being with the local weekly, and that was dynamite stuff for Eddie’s story. Maybe it meant that Lime was still in the area, perhaps held captive nearby for six months. It meant that the kidnappers had been in Lowell within the past two weeks to buy the paper, unless they had an out-of-state subscription.
    â€œSo tell me, Lew,” Eddie said, “do you mail many copies of
The Second Voice
to subscribers from…”
    â€œWe don’t mail any at all,” Cuhna snapped. He whipped his bag open, stuffed his legal pad inside and hunted around in the mess. “Ah!” he said, when he found what he wanted—a roll of antacid tablets. He peeled back the foil, pried up a tablet with his thumb.
    â€œIt’s just that…”
    â€œI know what it is,” Cuhna said, interrupting again. He ate the tablet, chewed and talked: “It’s part of the story—I know that. But I don’t need this negative publicity. Things are tough enough. And I can’t lay off any more staff because I don’t have any more.”
    Eddie glanced to the paper Cuhna had given him. “Judging by all these different bylines, you have a big staff for a