by Adam Sommers
Eric did not even bother to go home to clean up. Instead, he drove directly to the newsroom. At just after six in the morning it was nearly deserted and Eric hurried over to his desk. He didn’t notice that Carrie Scanlon was there, and would not have cared if he had. But Eric’s entrance had caught Carrie’s eye, even though his desk was roughly diagonally across the newsroom from his.
Intrigued, she quickly stood, hoping that he might notice.
He did not.
She started to edge over, figuring the motion might get his attention.
It did not.
Finally, bored by the stories she was working on and frustrated that Eric would not provide a distraction, she just walked over. When she saw his condition and the look of intensity on his face, she understood why he didn’t look up before.
“Whoa! What happened?”
“Huh?” Eric was jolted by her sudden appearance.
“Eric, you look like a train hit you. What’s wrong? What are you doing here?”
“I’m fine. Typing up my notes.”
“Oh, you’re okay?”
“I’m fine.”
“You were out on something?”
“Kind of.”
“You smell like a frat house bathroom.”
Eric took a whiff of his clothes and under his armpits. He didn’t notice anything, but he did not dispute her evaluation.
“I’m fine,” Eric Berger repeated, distracted, wanting to get to his notes. Then it hit him.
“Why are you here?”
“I have a wedding later today. Need to leave at two and have three stories to finish before then. Features.”
Eric understood that there were feature stories in the newspaper, that there were even people called feature editors and entire feature sections. But he never paid any attention to them. The companies he had worked for were not called “featurepapers,” they were called “newspapers” because news was what mattered. The news. He held off on expressing this opinion for the moment because he liked Carrie. Warren Zalinsky’s girlfriend, though, and therefore off-limits, but she was nice. In any case, he had much more on his mind than romance at that particular time.
“Oh,” he said, hoping it did not convey as much disinterest as he felt. “Where’s Debbie?”
“Are you still drunk?”
“No. Well, I don’t know. Maybe. I need to talk to Debbie, or John. Is John around?”
“She’s not in. No one’s in. Eric, it’s six-thirty in the morning. If you have to talk to them, you’re best bet is to call them at home.”
Call my boss at home? thought Eric. It’s like a schoolkid seeing a teacher at the store. It’s incongruous. Teachers don’t really exist outside of the school and editors, at least the often cranky Debbie Harrison, didn’t really exist outside the newsroom.
“Yeah, good idea. Let me call her. I’ll talk to you later, Carrie. I’m sorry.”
“No problem.” She didn’t know him well enough to push.
Eric hit “0” and the switchboard operator picked up. “Uh, can you get Debbie Harrison?”
“I’m afraid she’s not in.”
“I know she’s not in. I’m sitting five feet from her desk. I meant at home.”
“Certainly.”
Eric hunched forward and started furiously typing what happened as he waited. In the cool, clean air of the early morning newsroom he had a vague image of himself as a lump of dog dung on a hill of freshly fallen snow. But that didn’t matter. What mattered was the story. Everyone else could go fuck themselves. Even though there was no one else in the room, they could still go fuck themselves.
From nowhere, Carrie Scanlon reappeared with a tall, steaming cup of black coffee. Where she got it and how she got it, Eric Berger had no idea. But it was as if she handed him the holy grail. “Thanks.”
He looked over as she wrinkled her tiny triangle of a nose and studied her features really for the first time. She had that little gentile nose on her thin face. In fact, her whole body was thin, built more like a teenage boy than an adult woman, but she certainly was pretty in the way that Irish girls are pretty, with light skin and freckles and wispy light brown hair that framed her face.
She got up to walk away, not saying so, but clearly the odor was part of her motivation.
The phone rang. “Eric?”
“Ms. Harrison, I’m terribly sorry.”
“I’m half asleep. What’s wrong?”
Eric spilled everything he had done for the past twelve hours. To her credit, Debbie listened without a word. She was so quiet, Eric had to ask a couple of times, “Still with me?”
“Yes, Eric.”
When he was done, there was silence and Eric realized he was suddenly so tired he could easily have slipped down to the floor and fallen fast asleep under his desk. He waited. Then, finally, Debbie spoke. “Put your notes together, write everything that happened the way you told it to me. Then send a copy to me and a copy to Warren Zalinsky. He needs to be in on this.”
“What!”
“The mayor is Warren’s beat. He has to be on it.” She did not say so, but there was no possible way Debbie Harrison was going to trust this story to a rookie fresh off the train from New Jersey. Zalinsky was a pro, had years of experience, and knew the players in the mayor’s office and the Metro Police Department. He’d take Eric’s raw material and make the most out of it. If, indeed, there was anything to make out of it.
“It’s my story,” Eric surprised himself with his defiance.
“Eric, no one said any different. Did I say it’s not your story? No. It’s your story, no one’s taking it from you. Let Warren help you, work together on it. He’s got good sources, he’ll flesh it out, give it some context. You understand?”
POSITIVELY, ABSOLUTELY NOT!
Eric was sitting on a potential national bombshell that he himself had found, had worked, and had, in some sense, already written, at least in his mind. Why on earth would he want to let someone in on the spoils?
However, he also recognized he was in a precarious position. If he resisted too much, he could lose everything, but if he did not stick up for himself he’d have no respect for himself and, he felt, neither would Debbie Harrison. He would not simply roll over. Not on a story this big.
“I’m the lead byline.” It was a simple statement of fact. If he could not get at least that much then he’d hang up and in thirty seconds call The Post and deliver the story to them on a platter.
Debbie didn’t like being bossed around by the new guy, not one little bit. But she also saw the value of the story. Eric’s tone had caught her off guard and she wondered if he had thought far enough ahead to contemplate selling it to someone else. He was new, had no real attachment to anyone at The Standard, and Washington was full of magazines and newspapers that would welcome Eric with open arms for this kind of an exclusive.
“Mmmm,” she hesitated.
The clock ticked in Eric’s head. “Hurry up, sweetheart,” he thought, “the door is closing.” Debbie Harrison made the quick calculation that it was not worth letting her ego get in the way. If the story turned out to be nothing, she’d make Eric pay for his sass some other way on another occasion. If he was sitting on gold, then everyone would win.
“Okay,” she finally said, and Eric started breathing again.
“And on the follow up,” Eric Berger pressed.
“Down, boy,” said Debbie. “Go home, take a shower come in at nine. We’ll meet with Warren and John and we’ll do it right. You’ll get top byline, we’ll see what Warren gets. That sound like a reasonable course of action?”
“What about the photos?”
“Jesus, Eric, if we use them, you’ll get a photo credit.”
“IF! What do you mean if!? I got the mayor doing drugs with a woman who is definitely not his wife, and getting
into a crash on the Beltway, and the cops brushing it under the rug. And you’re telling me ‘if!’ ”
“I just want to see what they look like.”
Then the light finally dawned on Eric Berger. Debbie wasn’t being a bitch, she was just exercising caution. All she had to go on at that moment was one hyped-up new reporter who said he saw the mayor doing drugs with a strange woman and getting in a crash. For all she knew, Eric had gotten it all wrong. The guy was not the mayor and there was no story. That’s why the hesitation. That’s why the deferral to Warren Zalinsky and the skepticism on the pictures.
Doubt even began to creep into Eric’s mind. Maybe it wasn’t Grissom….Oh, fuck you, he thought, berating himself. I know what Mayor Grissom Fucking Lester looks like. And unless there’s some other guy looks just like him in the same stupid purple-striped suit and alligator shoes, then that’s him as sure as I’m me.
“Okay,” Eric said. “I get it. You don’t know it’s him. That’s fine.”
“Excellent,” said Debbie Harrison, happy she did not have to spell it out.
With that, Eric Berger dragged himself out of the newsroom, so drained he could barely lift his feet.
Carrie, who had kept on eye on him from her desk, stood and came toward him. “You okay?”
Eric ignored her. He was too tired to even look up. All he could think was “get in car, drive to bed,” but even thinking about how he’d manage the ten minutes on the highway to Greenbelt was exhausting. He stumbled through the newsroom and into the lobby.
Oh, no no no no no, thought Carrie. Eric getting behind any wheel to go anywhere was definitely out of the question. She rushed up to him, reached a surprisingly strong arm around his waist and ushered him to her car. “I’m driving you home.”
“I’m fine.”
“Bullshit.”
Eric was much too tired to argue, so he leaned on Carrie, and realized that she was somehow half carrying him through the parking lot.
“You can get a cab back later and get your car.”
“K, can you get my camera from the car and drop it at Photo?”
“Yup. Wait here.” She dumped him in the back seat and jogged back on the quick errand. By the time she returned to her car Eric was out. I’ll fumigate later, thought Carrie, then rolled the windows down and headed for Greenbelt.
Warren Zalinsky, as it turned out, was so cool icicles could form on the ends of his pretty black hair. Not cool in an Arthur Fonzarelli or Snoop Dogg kind of way, but cool as in a real professional who had such confidence in his abilities that he didn’t care how good anyone else was. They could do their thing, and he’d do his and he’d kick their ass way more often than they’d kick his.
It’s kind of like the guy in a Nissan Altima who has to zoom past everyone to show how fast his car is compared to the guy in the Maserati, who can go the speed limit and just know that the gas is always there. He knows he’s got the goods, and so does everyone else. No reason to make a big show of it, got nothing to prove, and don’t give a damn anyway.
When Eric got to the conference room, he could immediately tell they had seen his pictures and they were, if not spectacular, at least good enough to back him up. Some guy from legal was there in a suit with his assistant, also in a suit. The photo editor, and—thank God—the beautiful bearded face of John Williams.
But it was Zalinsky who surprised Eric as he came in, loping around the table, his big hand extended at the end of his long arm. “Unbelievable, man,” he said in his soft voice. “You got balls of stone getting those pictures.”
“Really dumb luck,” said Eric. “Just happened to be too drunk to drive home.”
“Yeah, but to follow him, come around and take another shot. That is pretty damn badass.”
To Eric’s surprise, Warren Zalinsky said he didn’t even want second billing on the byline. “All yours, man,” and the next day, there it was:
MAYOR IN WRECK WITH UNKNOWN WOMAN
By Eric Berger
Chapter 14
Pam Morgan’s little club with her two sexually adventurous friends had turned into something they all very much looked forward to. Every few weeks they’d arranged to meet either at one of their homes or at a nice bar or restaurant nearby, to share stories of their most recent exploits.
They had fun, drank wine, and bragged about this guy and that. All talk, until Pam Morgan suggested she could put in a porno video. The other two at first tittered, but then found it to be quite exciting. Nothing happened that first night—other than they all went their separate ways and masturbated themselves to sleep.
They carried on like that for a few months, getting together at one person’s house or the others, in a kind of round-robin schedule. But they soon got bored of the videos, even the really weird ones, and when Pam suggested they hire what she called “service personnel,” the other two quickly agreed.
Chapter 15
The mayor story hit like a sledgehammer.
When Eric arrived that morning, he was mobbed by Warren Zalinsky and Carrie, Mitch Lozatti and a few others who came over to offer congrats and to get a sniff of the new boy wonder. Eric brushed it all aside. He did not need or particularly want the limelight. He was anxious to get busy following up the story.
In a few minutes, the others left to go on about their work while Warren Zalinsky and Carrie stayed and chatted. Warren, Eric observed, stood close to Carrie in case Eric had somehow missed the message that they were an item. This caused a small ripple in Eric Berger’s focus, but he ignored it for the moment as he and Warren discussed how they might try to find the woman, which seemed to be the next logical place for the story to go.
The mayor’s enemies, of which there were many, had already started calling in quotes demanding he resign and the City Council appoint an independent prosecutor. That was all just background noise. It could keep the story going a couple of days, but the real meat was the woman. Find her, somehow get her to tell everything about Mayor Lester and her relationship with him. And, most importantly, do it before someone at The Post or Channel 7 did. There was an urgency bordering on mania percolating within, but Eric understood he needed to be civil and humble.
Eventually, Zalinsky wandered off to meet a couple of union snitches who could offer a way in—he hoped—leaving Eric Berger with Carrie Scanlon. There was really no practical reason for her to stay behind. She wrote features on plays and flower shows and would not be very useful, but she liked being in Eric’s glow, especially now that he was showered, shaved and didn’t stink of beer.
“How was the wedding?” Eric asked, tired of talking about himself and the story.
Carrie rolled her eyes. “Long and boring. But, oh, the food! Shrimp the size of my thumb.” She held it up for him to see. Eric laughed, which caught the attention of Warren Zalinsky, who looked over and saw Carrie, who in turn saw him looking at her and Eric, which immediately made her feel guilty.
“I better get back to work,” she said. “Talk to you later.” Then she squeezed his arm and reluctantly went back across the newsroom to her desk. Eric blushed violently as he watched her thin behind recede among the maze of desks.
Eric was still in full-blooded blush with his eyes locked on Carrie’s derriere. His back was to the lobby so he did not see Jayne Grayman walk in, but he did see Debbie Harrison and John Williams, sitting not far away and in front of him, stand up almost at attention as if a drill sergeant had just stepped into a barracks.
That wasn’t far off. Jayne Grayman, the editor-in-chief of The Washington Standard, was a figure of fear in the newsroom. Eric didn’t know that yet, but the others obviously did.
“Oh, sit, sit for God’s sake,” Eric heard from behind him and turned to find an imposing looking woman with a broad face, squared off nose and flat black eyes. Her brownish hair was pulled back from her face so tightly it seemed like a layer of paint on her scal
p. The strands were held in the back by a massive hair clip that looked like it was made out of marble.
She was tall, broad shouldered and had large breasts hoisted above a bulging stomach she made an effort to tuck into a plain gray top that was a size too small.
“Is this Mr. Berger?”
Eric had turned at the sound of her voice and now extended his hand. “It is. How ya doin’?” He had no idea who she was.
“I’m doin’ fine,” she mocked his Jersey accent. “Jayne Grayman, editor-in-chief.”
“Oh! Sorry, Ms. Grayman. Nice to meet you.”
“Easy, I just stopped down to say nice work on the mayor.”
“Thank you. Mostly I just got lucky.”
“Lucky is just the other side of good, as they say. Looking forward to seeing your follow through. John,” she turned to John Williams, “you are with me.”
“Right.”
As she strode off, leaving poor Debbie Harrison ignored and frozen, she somehow caught sight of Carrie Scanlon watching her from across the room and leveled a menacing look in her direction.
Chapter 16
No one in the administration was talking, especially to Eric Berger. No one in City Hall had even seen his face before. Internally there was speculation he was some sort of a spy stalking Grissom Lester. Eric got the message pretty quickly. The doors are closed.
If anyone was going to divulge anything juicy about the mayor it would be to Warren Zalinsky, who had been able to tread the fine line between getting good stories while not alienating important sources he’d cultivated over the last three years.
The official report from the Metro PD was that the mayor had been out observing a police buy-and-bust operation in the area. When he went home, on his own, he got cut off by a drunk driver and hit the retaining wall on the Beltway. There was no one in the car, the mayor was not hurt, and no drugs were found. The police, still in the area because of their operation, were able to render assistance almost immediately and drive the mayor home. In short, nothing happened. It was a non-story. The man in the pictures was the mayor, but the woman, who could not be clearly seen, was likely one of the undercover officers assigned to the case. Ta-da. The end.