Every Brilliant Eye Read Online Free PDF Page A

of various local public servants, contrasting them with those of the assistant administrators who did most of their work, and it got pretty funny, especially when he described the office of a high official and mentioned the new silk wallpaper that couldn’t be cleaned and so when it got soiled had to come down, all several thousand dollars’ worth of it. But when election time came and went they’d all be right where they were now, papering the walls with virgins’ hair or something equally rare and costly. To understand the workings of Detroit’s government in a recession you have to read a book about Boss Tweed with James Brown shrieking on the stereo.
    Which was just another measure in a composition as old as Cadillac’s bones. Barry’s writing was getting back some of its old sting, and he had a fresh picture at the top of the column that showed more of his age but none of the fright I had seen in my house. His kind of square good looks were coming back into fashion. There was a cosmetic surgeon in town who had to smile every time he saw the shot. After the explosion he had had to reconstruct that face from photographs and then graft skin over the seams. He hadn’t got it quite right, of course. They never do. It had taken getting used to, like a new typeface on a newspaper you’ve been reading for years.
    The owner of the face walked into my toy office on West Grand River while I was filing my copy of the report to the insurance company in my battered green cabinet. He had on a beige linen blazer, fashionably rumpled, over an open-necked champagne-colored silk shirt and gray trousers and black shoes with perforations in the toes. No tie. It had been years since I’d seen him wear one. Ten, in fact. The occasion had been my wedding.
    He looked around, at the veteran desk and the dusty Venetian blinds and the mismatched file cabinets and the rug that was just something to cover the boards and the general no threat of an invasion of privacy by photographers from Forbes. “Joint looks the same. The wallpaper’s new.”
    “It’s just paper. I’m not running for office this year.” I squawked the drawer shut and grasped his good left hand. He had the kind of grip you don’t get punching keys all day.
    “Thought you’d like that one,” he said. “There’s talk of subpoenaing my notes for that whole series. Another grand jury’s sniffing around the City-County Building.”
    “They’ll get how far with you?”
    “The usual. I’m packing a toothbrush in my wallet these days.”
    “What brings the boy reporter out this way?”
    “I’ve been trying off and on to call you for a couple of weeks. The girl at your service is quite a conversationalist. Did you know she was once married in Oklahoma?”
    “Nearly everyone has been, though not necessarily in Oklahoma. I’ve been working. I do that when I’m not scraping friends out of blind pigs and piling up priors.”
    “Must’ve been two other guys. Thirsty?”
    “Depends on who’s buying.”
    “The Press Club gave me back my card. That’s how good I’ve been lately.”
    “Toss me my hat,” I said.
    We took a cab to the brick building in the demilitarized zone a block over from the city’s two warring newspapers.
    On the way he made a bet with the driver on the Lions in next Sunday’s exhibition game. He knew every hack in the city. I never could figure how he got along in Detroit without owning a car. “What would I get?” he’d asked once. “Chevy? Everyone’d think I was in hock to GM. Ford? Chrysler? The same. I buy a Jap machine and they ride me out of town on a rusty axle. Going public here is like being married to a jealous tramp with a butcher knife.”
    At the door he fed his computer card into a slot, waited for the buzz, and led the way inside. He caught me looking around for armed guards and said, “We’re important as all hell, we scribblers. A feature writer gets a coconut bounced off his skull in Beirut Tuesday, and