The Geographer's Library

The Geographer’ s Library
“He told a reporter to call me? How do you know him?”
“He used to be my professor. He gave me your number this morning.”
Jadid sighed, cleared his throat. “Well, okay. But listen: you don’t use my
name anywhere in the story. You need to quote me, you make it anonymous.
This is a small enough town, and I’ve had some trouble with the papers
recently.”
“No problem.”
“That’s right, no problem. Now, what do you need?”
“I’m working on a piece about a guy named Pühapäev. Lived in Lincoln
and worked in Wickenden. Actually, he worked with your uncle; he was a
professor. Anyway, he just died, and I understand he’d been in trouble with
the law in Wickenden before. I was just wondering what kind of trouble.”
“Let’s see here.” I heard the sound of typing on a computer keyboard.
“Poo-hah . . . what’s the rest?”
“P-A-E-V. Two dots over the a. First four letters P-U-H-A. Two dots over
the u.”
“This is a police computer; we don’t do umlauts. Here we go. You know,
before I give you something I’m not supposed to give you, I just want to tell
you that I wouldn’t do this for anyone but Uncle Abe. He knows you well
enough to give you my number, I’m going to assume you’re okay, too. Don’t
fuck up all three of our reputations by printing something stupid, okay? You
want to use any of this information here in your article directly, you run it
past me first, you got it?”
“Of course.”
“Good. Here we go. Jaan Pühapäev. Connecticut resident, Connecticut
driver’s license. Two incidents, bunch of charges. We got two counts carrying
a concealed weapon. We got two counts disturbing the peace. We got two
counts misdemeanor mayhem for firing said weapon, and we got one count
drunk and disorderly filed when they came to arrest him. On all counts of all
charges, got away with fines and time served.”
“When was this?”
“This was . . . hang on a second. Fucking computer,” he snarled, banging
either his desk or the offending machine. “Here it is: Count one, January 12,
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