Part 4
The following day, Lois, Clark and Jimmy sat in the lunch room, coffee and sandwiches in front of them, discussing the phone call they had received from Jeremy Lyons earlier that day.
"The two men shot in the basement were Stanley and Alvin Rossi, the managers of the building," Lois said. "Why would someone want to kill them?" She stared at Clark.
"I don’t have the answer," he replied. "All we can do is make some guesses and see where they lead us."
Lois looked over at Clark’s lunch. "Do you want that pickle?" she asked.
"No, take it." He took bite of his turkey sandwich. "We could guess that the tenants would have liked to see them dead since they did such a lousy job managing the building..."
"But they wouldn’t do it at the expense of their own homes," Lois said as she nibbled on the dill pickle.
"Unless, the fire was unrelated."
"But it wasn’t, according to the fire investigator," added Jimmy.
"I never did understand how they could figure out where a fire starts," Lois remarked.
"Well..." Clark began.
"Don’t bother," she said as she reached for his cole slaw. "Do you mind?"
"Go ahead." He slid the container of cole slaw across the table to her.
"It could have been a drug deal gone bad," Jimmy suggested munching on his apple.
"Or they knew something that someone else didn’t want known." Lois placed a forkful of cole slaw in her mouth. "Mmm, Moe’s makes the best cole slaw."
"I don’t get it, Clark," said Jimmy.
"Get what?"
"Why you order a pickle and cole slaw when Lois always takes it before you can eat it?"
Clark looked at Lois enjoying the cole slaw. "It comes with the sandwich."
"No, it doesn’t," Jimmy corrected.
"Oh!" he said watching Lois finish the remains of the cole slaw. He just shrugged his shoulders and continued with the earlier discussion. "What would the Rossis have known to get them killed?"
"I think that’s what we need to learn," said Lois. "I think we need to dig into their business dealings. I’m sure we’ll find something shady there."
"We also need to talk to some of the tenants. They may have heard or seen something," Clark suggested.
"Looks like we have our afternoon cut out for us, partner."
As Lois and Clark got up to leave the lunch room, Jimmy glanced at the sports section of the newspaper.
"That’s really cool that you managed to snag tickets to tonight’s football game."
"Um—I didn’t get them. Someone else got them and invited me," said Clark watching Lois hovering at the lunch room door. He wished that she would move toward her desk.
"Yeah? Boy, I’d like to have a friend like that. Who is he?"
"She...uh...Mayson Drake."
"Wow! It’s a date. That’s really cool, CK."
Clark watched as Lois moved to her desk with greater purpose. Was she being huffy, he wondered.
"Come on, Jimmy. We’ve got work to do."
Clark went to his own work station wishing that Jimmy would stop muttering about how lucky he was going to the game. He could see Lois’s lips form into two thin as toothpicks lines. He sat down at his desk and decided that business was the easiest way to distract her from his evening with Mayson. He suggested that they spend the next part of the afternoon on the phone trying to contact the tenants of the burnt building while Jimmy did some more in-depth research on Abbott Management and the Rossi brothers.
Lois kept her thoughts to herself except for work related issues. Hearing that Clark was going out with Mayson bothered her more than she expected, but then she thought that there was no reason for him not to date the pushy assistant district attorney. As far as she knew, Clark hadn’t signed up for the priesthood, and it was more than obvious that Mayson had very strong feelings for him. She, on the other hand, knew that Clark was her friend and that was all she expected from him.
She thought about the day in Centennial Park when he told her that he loved her, and then the day of her almost wedding to Lex when she could only think of Clark. She was confused at that time, and probably wasn’t ready to marry Lex. That was why she had thought about Clark. But when he retracted his admission of love, she too realized that his friendship was what she valued. That was all. So why was she so upset over a stupid football game? She didn’t even understand the game.
She managed to get hold of the Juarez family who, unlike other residents of the building, left the make-shift shelter at the local church and moved in with Mrs. Juarez’s sister. Lois took Clark along with her when she went to the apartment building six blocks from the Juarez former home. Lois and Clark sat down in the overcrowded living room with Carlos and Inez Juarez while their two younger children played with their three cousins. Their fourteen year old daughter sat in the kitchen listening to her CD player, doing her homework.
Lois had hoped for more than a touchy-feely story about a hard-working family who were now homeless and possessionless, but that seemed like what she was hearing. She’d let Clark write up the initial draft.
Inez and Carlos explained that they often called Stan or Al about the condition of the building and their specific apartment many times over the last two years, when the brothers had taken over the management of the building. Neither man was sympathetic to the needs of the tenants, or the building, and both tried to slough the callers off. Only when they were threatened with phone calls to city authorities did they adjust the heat or the water, everyday necessities, but when it came time to making repairs, they fabricated excuses such as they had called a company to look after the fire escapes, but they wouldn’t be available for a few weeks which turned into months and the months turned into years. Once, the residents had gotten together collecting money for the repairs themselves. When they tried to get the money back from the Rossis, the tenants were stalled. Although they never got their money back, they felt better having the building safer. It didn’t take long for the families who were financially able to start moving out and a more transient type of occupant began moving in. The Juarez’s themselves had placed a deposit for a new apartment that wouldn’t be available for another two months.
According to Inez, Al was a nasty piece of work. He was a stocky man, about five feet eight inches. His long, dark, bedraggled hair and his straggly goatee, which was surrounded by stubble, made him appear as if he had just walked out of the jungle. Whenever he came to collect the rent, he stood at the door demanding the money especially when a tenant would try to ask for some work to be done. He’d repeat, waving his greasy hand in the direction of the speaker, "Just give me the money. The money. Money. Money. I’ve got work to do." Rather than deal with him, most of the tenants ignored him, walking in the other direction when he approached, hoping his brother would come and collect the rent.
His brother, Stan, was not as obnoxious. He was the same height as Al, but he was thinner and dressed fairly well. He politely told the tenants that he’d look into the problem and then he’d ignore their requests. At least he wasn’t rude or repulsive.
Inez had seen Al a few weeks prior to the fire when he had come to collect the rent, but she hadn’t seen either of the brothers the night of the fire. She didn’t think that they would have been responsible for setting the fire because, since they weren’t the owners, they probably didn’t have insurance. And given the fact that they did very little work for their money, she doubted they would have gained anything by burning down the building. She didn’t know anything about any insurance policies, but she guessed that the owners of the building, Bennett Realty, would have held some kind of policy, but most of the other tenants had their own personal home insurance. Carlos bemoaned the fact that their policy would not come close to covering what they lost. Inez agreed telling the reporters about the family pictures and some family mementos that didn’t mean anything to anyone else but them. She had kept her mother’s wedding dress, which she had worn at her own wedding, for her daughter, Carla. It was at that point that Inez broke down crying.
Before they left, Lois asked the children if they had seen anything suspicious or different on the day of the fire. The younger two boys shook their heads, each having been at a friend’s house. Fourteen year old, Carla unplugged from her CD player for a moment looked up at the two reporters and said that she hadn’t seen anything.
As Lois and Clark left the apartment building, Lois felt that at least they had a sense of who Stan and Al Rossi were, even though, she realized that they still had a long way to go with the investigation. On the street, Clark, looking at his watch, informed her that he had to get ready for the game or he’d miss the opening kick off. She offered to drive him home, but he chose to walk.
She opened the door of her Cherokee, ready to get in, when she saw Carla hovering around the entrance of the building. Sensing that the girl wanted to talk to her, Lois stepped out of the SUV and walked toward Carla.
"Hi again," Lois said.
"Hi," Carla answered, looking around. "That’s a nice car you’ve got."
"Thanks."
Carla walked across the street to the Cherokee and walked around the vehicle. "Nice colour."
"Thanks." Lois waited.
"What’s it like being a reporter?"
"Interesting. I meet different people, solve mysteries, write about what’s happening in the city."
"Do a lot of people tell you things but ask you not to write about them?" Carla asked avoiding Lois’s intense stare. Instead, she fidgeted with the earphones of her CD player.
"Yes," Lois said, more interested now that she realized that this girl had something to tell her. She didn’t want to scare her off. "It’s called ‘off-the-record’ which means that I can use it to help me solve the problem or give me background information, but I can’t write about it directly or about who told me."
"Have you ever told someone that their talk is off-the-record and then printed it?"
"No. Never. If I did, and it got out, no one would trust me enough to tell me anything. For me to be successful, people have to trust me."
"Are you successful?"
"Yes." Lois smiled, ready to rhyme off her investigative triumphs. "I think I’m very successful. I’ve won a few awards for my stories." She paused to look at the girl who had stopped squirming. "You saw something yesterday, didn’t you?"
"Yeah, but my dad would kill me and banish me to my room forever if he found out."
"Why?" Lois began walking the girl down the street where there were some tables in front of a donut shop.
"You’ve got to promise on your life not to tell anyone about this."
"I promise." Lois just hoped that the girl would believe her.
Before Carla could begin telling Lois what she knew, a waitress came out and took their orders for a cup of coffee, a juice and two donuts. While they were waiting, Lois found out that Carla was fourteen, a ninth grader at the local high school, and an A student. When the waitress left after serving them their snack, Lois began her questioning.
"Why are you worried about anyone knowing what happened two days ago?"
"I was across the road from the apartment in the alleyway leading to the back of the building. I was meeting my...boyfriend...please, Miss Lane, you can’t tell my parents about him. They’d kill him and me."
"Why?"
"He’s nineteen. He’s not in school anymore. I was supposed to be with my brothers, but I told them I was just going out to get some notes from a friend from school...but I was really meeting Kevin. They don’t think I should be dating and they would kill me."
"So you’ve said. He is a little too old for you..."
"But he loves me and I love him, and you’re not my mother."
"You’re right, I’m not your mother, but I have a feeling that sometimes mothers can be on the right track."
Carla’s grimaced. Lois realized that a lecture on her part would not get her the information she needed. Surprised at this new nurturing tendency, she let Carla continue.
"Kevin and I were standing in the alley across the road...in the dark where no one could see us. We were talking and...stuff...when I heard someone speaking loudly. We moved further into the shadows and then looked out to see who was there. We wanted to make sure that it was no one who would tell my parents. In front of my apartment building, I saw Stan and Al Rossi, I knew them because sometimes I had to give them the rent money. They were with two men I’d never seen before. One was really big; the other was tall and really skinny. They kept pushing Stan and Al around.
"I heard one of them say something like you’ve f...um, you know the ‘f’’ word, up one too many times. Then Stan said that they wouldn’t make the same mistake again and that they hadn’t told anyone."
"What?" Lois asked hoping to hear what they hadn’t told anyone.
"What? Oh! I don’t know. No one ever said because then these guys pushed Stan and Al into the entrance of the building and that was the last I saw of them."
"Then what did you do?"
"Well...uh...Kevin and me, we went back to the driveway where his car was parked and well...we...uh...you know."
Lois was tempted to advise Carla on male/female relationships when she thought better of it. Who was she to dole out advice? And why should Carla listen to her. She decided to continue with her own questions. "Carla, let’s get back to the men. What did they look like?"
"One of the men was tall and heavy. A white guy. Taller than Stan. He was bald."
"What was he wearing?"
"He was wearing a short jacket; it looked like it was leather or something."
"What about the other guy?" Lois asked.
"He was a tall, skinny guy wearing a trenchcoat. It was a light colour, like tan or beige. A little darker than beige." Carla was silent for a moment, sipping at her juice. "You know what?"
"No. What?"
"Both of them were wearing gloves."
"No fingerprints. Doesn’t surprise me," Lois mumbled. "You’re doing a fantastic job remembering what happened. Can you think of anything else?"
"No."
"Replay what you saw one more time concentrating on the details. Maybe something will turn up."
Carla did as she was told, but she repeated the same story to Lois. At the end of the retelling, Lois and Carla headed back to the Cherokee. Lois thanked Carla, promising her that she would not name her as her source. She also gave the girl her card and told her to call her or Clark Kent if she remembered anything else.
Lois looked at her watch. Since it was getting late, she decided she would go directly home and write up her notes. In the Jeep, she pulled out her cell phone to tell Clark what she had learned. Remembering that he had a date with Mayson, she decided to wash her windows instead.
tbc...
