Pale Kings and Princes

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The sun that brief December day shone weakly through the west-facing window of Garrett Kingsley’s office. It made a thin yellow oblong splash on his Persian carpet and gave up.

“Eric Valdez was a good reporter,” Kingsley was telling me, “and a good man, but if he’d been neither he wouldn’t deserve to die.”

“Most people don’t,” I said.

“The people that killed Eric do,” Kingsley said.

“Depends on why they killed him,” I said.

“They killed him to keep the lid on the biggest cocaine operation in the East.”

Kingsley was short and sort of plump. He needed a haircut and his big gray moustache was untrimmed. He had on a green and black plaid woolen shirt and a leather vest. His half glasses were halfway down his nose so he could stare over them while he talked. He looked like an overweight Titus Moody. He owned and edited the third largest newspaper in the state, and he had more money than Yoko Ono.

“In Wheaton, Mass?” I said.

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