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Our Man In Gravel City

by Tim Kane

About the Author: Tim Kane, a former stringer for the Chicago Tribune, writes his first mystery.

Excerpt

Network news anchor Babette DuBois was smart and sexy, but she didn’t know a lot about print journalism. She was browsing through The Chicago Blade at breakfast as we sat together at the kitchen table in her Loop apartment.

She asked about the relevance of a front-page story I had written in the Sunday edition.

“Look for the ‘nut graph,’” I said. “It’s the paragraph that explains everything.”

I knew what she wanted. She wanted the skinny on the dead-guy-in-a-dumpster story that ran Saturday. There were a lot of unanswered questions. She could see that the story could be a gold mine, the potential for a front-page series. Which means steady work for me for a couple weeks.

She offered to drive me back to Gravel City. I told her I was good taking the train. She opened her purse and offered me a handful of twenties. I was about to get mad … but then I took the money.

“Rocco Gilfeather, gigolo,” I said out loud, walking to the train station. On my way I had a great idea for a feature story. Two blocks later I couldn’t remember what it was. The idea fluttered over the transom like a dirty pigeon and was gone forever, leaving just a few chalky-white splatters of guano.

Aboard an outbound train, the scales of things miniaturize down the northwest line—from skyscrapers, to warehouses, to bungalows, to spotty suburban sprawl. And finally civilization as we know it shrinks and gives way to empty lots, cornfields and gravel pits.

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