“City hall, crime, high school sports, and I filed my first piece on ballroom dancing just last week.” He laid into the burger, mustard dotting the corners of his mouth. “I’m not sure what it’s like in New York, but advertisers have been leaving the Messenger in droves. At this point, I’m doing the work of four or five reporters on my own. Thankfully, some real estate ads are starting to trickle in, which is a relief. Advertising is our only lifeline.”

“I get the sense Fish’s reelection is a lock.”

“Fish is our man,” he said. “He received a totally unanimous endorsement from the Messenger’s editorial board, the first time that’s happened for any candidate in thirty-odd years.”

“What makes him so appealing?”

“We’re sick to death of writing about rapes and robberies. Mimico’s never going to be Palo Alto, but why can’t it be a nice place to own a home, build a business, start a family?”

Braun didn’t seem to mind me picking his brain while he ate, but as he finished, sucking the grease off his fingers, he said, “You’ve come all the way from New York to cover Jock’s election?”

I didn’t want to tip him off about Common Dreams and Rubicon, so I just said I was writing about the west side.

“Let me get this straight.” He dabbed his lips with a paper napkin. “Your magazine sends you out here to write about Mimico, and you’ve chosen to focus on the west side?”

“More or less.”

He scoffed. “If it bleeds, it leads, right?”

“Well, that’s not strictly accurate.”

“I hope you’ll find it in your heart to write something positive about the hardworking people here.”

“Are the people of the west side not hardworking?”

Now he peered at me, like he was seeing through my face into some ulterior motive. “What’s your name again?”

“Whitney Chase.”

He balled up the napkin, strangely put it in his breast pocket, and said, “Nice meeting you.”

The sun set beyond the courthouse, the dome a dazzling gold, and the overpass concrete blushed faint rose. I hung around just long enough to see Mayor Fish leave. With a salute to the remaining supporters, he and Sheriff Doyle got into the backseat of a black Escalade, all smiles as Tim Braun piled in after them.

7.

The next afternoon, I set out for Pavel’s in the vandalized Highlander. A strange film had accrued in the Mimico sky, giving the city a soiled yellow cast. The sun was a flat disk of painful white heat, and even in the seclusion of the car’s AC, I could sense it, like the weight of the ocean around a submarine.