by Lee Winter
But it had been getting worse. Maybe it was the bad dreams. She was sleeping later and later. Maddie sighed and wished she could just hit the beach and let the sun poke her back into life for a few months. But they were at the pointy end of winter in New York. She definitely missed watching Simon half drown himself at surfing. He’d been at it for years and still couldn’t survive a half pipe. He was pure shark biscuit. She yawned again.
She should probably do some housework or attempt a half-hearted floor workout to a DVD. Maddie stared at the silent TV. Then at the floor.
Or not.
She rose and headed for the kitchen cupboards to take stock. A trudge to the grocery store for more baking supplies would do her some good. That almost counted as embracing New York, didn’t it? If you squinted?
Losing interest, she considered her final option. She could update her page. Maddie’s secret blog about her experiences here filled the hours between waking, feeling guilty about not “New Yorking” properly, and going to work. Not even Simon knew she did this. It was hard to make friends at work, given the hours she worked. Her blog made her feel less lonely, not so much of an alien, and it felt nice to be followed by so many others who also felt as out of place as she did.
Maddie resolved not to dwell on how bad she was at the New York experience. She had bigger things to worry about. Like staying employed. And tonight, she had her first shift back at work since the unfortunate run-in with Elena Bartell.
Maybe she should just take another nap and not think about any of it right now. She headed back to the couch, flopped down, and pulled the blanket up to her neck. No harm in that.
* * *
Maddie got to her desk at five minutes to five and combed her fingers through her cropped red hair. After dumping her canvas backpack on her desk, she rooted through it for her lunchbox that she’d prepped for dinner. She took it to the office fridge and returned with a steaming mug of coffee.
The graveyard shift was not as exciting as she’d first thought it would be when she’d won her job. That had been such a shock—a call out of the blue. Someone had seen the résumé she’d passed around everywhere when she’d first landed in New York. She’d been so thrilled. It was her chance to prove herself at last.
Her friends meant well with all the Facebook good wishes and emails, declaring she’d be doing Pulitzer-winning stories in no time. But it was all just pressure. She’d done her best and flung herself into stories, trying to get the notice of the paper’s bosses.
Instead, anything good she dug up overnight, the day-shift crime reporters would take and develop. They had the luxury of having people around they could interview at length. They even got to do their jobs embedded within the New York Police Department, which had set up an office for all the media outlets.
As for Maddie? Well, who was awake at midnight and wanted to talk break-in statistics with her or bat around a few crime trends?
Maddie pulled up the wire feeds on her computer. They were summaries of breaking news from the press agencies—such as AP, Reuters, and AFP—that the paper subscribed to. These slid across her screen in reams of type. As words filled her screen, she scanned them with a dispassionate eye, looking for stories she could expand on. They had to fit her beat. Crime. If the subject wasn’t dead, about to be, or in the process of getting its ass arrested, she moved on.
Seeing nothing that would interest the readers of the Hudson Metro News, she picked up her phone. She had a laminated list of seventy-seven police precincts across the five boroughs stuck to her desk divider. Technically, she wasn’t supposed to call any of them directly. So, her first call of the night always went to the deputy commissioner, public information—or DCPI as the job was known. Bruce Radley was usually on duty now.
“Hi, it’s Maddie at the Hudson Metro News,” she said, after Radley answered. “Anything happening?”
“The usual, Miss Grey. I’ve already emailed you the day’s media releases along with everyone else.”
Radley always sounded so long-suffering, as if she’d bothered him, even though it was his job to be called up by the media all night. He made a point of calling her by her surname and drawing out the title Miss, because it was never Ms. Some passive aggressive shit, probably.
“Yes, I see that,” Maddie said politely, tapping on one small briefing note that had caught her eye. “The serial jewel thief on Longley Ave—what are we talking, crown jewels, society women’s baubles or…?”
“A break-in at a couple of old pensioners’ apartments. I don’t think the stolen goods were worth much.”
She doodled on her page. “Okay. Hope you catch them. Hey, the drug bust two nights back was pretty impressive,” she said in her most casual voice. “Fourteen arrested.”
The key to drawing out an officious little roadblock like Radley was to slip in something you really wanted to know about as an afterthought to something you had no interest in. Sometimes the man had his guard down and didn’t notice and things slipped out. But not often.
“Mmm, yes, I did enjoy your little story, Miss Grey,” the deputy commissioner said, but Maddie picked up the wariness. Damn. “What’s your interest in rehashing it?”
“Oh, just wondering why thirteen of them have had their charges dropped. There was such a big show of it all over the news. Fourteen arrested! Major drug breakthrough! And now, nope. All of them free, bar one.”
“It’s all in the media release. It went out yesterday—your day off I gather.”
“It’s not in the media release, though.” Maddie frowned and called up the briefing email in question. “It just says charges are proceeding for one person. I’ve looked and…”
“What can I say, Miss Grey? It’s old news. Charges stuck on one of them; can’t speak to the others.”
“But…”
“Anything else? Anything that’s not yesterday’s news?” Extra snippy now.
Maddie wondered what she’d trodden in. Had the arrests been all bullshit to start with just to make the nightly news, and they knew it? And then, when everyone’s backs were turned, they’d dropped the crap charges and followed through with the only guilty person? Or was the remaining accused even guilty? This smelled fishy as hell. Maddie knew she’d have to follow it up, or the curiosity would kill her.
“Which precinct handles the area that the bust was done in?” She flipped back through her notes from two days ago. “101st?”
“Miss Grey, it is highly advisable for the media to direct all their calls to my office and not bother individual precincts, which will simply direct your inquiries back to me. As you well know.”
“I hear you.” She underlined 101 in her notes. “So you’ll send me a statement on why thirteen arrests were dropped? Otherwise I’ll just ring 101st and ask direct.”
“You can’t. It is strongly advised…”
He could advise her all he liked, but he couldn’t actually stop her from picking up the phone and calling them. She wondered whether his bluster worked on the rest of the media. Were the other journalists all compliant and went along with this arbitrary rule? That’s not how she’d been taught. Maddie tapped her pen on her notepad, interrupting his speech on NYPD regs. She’d heard it dozens of times.
“Okay, so when can I expect your statement?” She doodled a circle around the 101 and wrote “Queens” beside it.
“I’ll get back to you later, Miss Grey,” he finished, dismissing her, and hung up.
Maddie rolled her eyes. Sure. She wouldn’t be getting a statement from him tonight or any other night on this. Or, if she did, it would be one paragraph long, say a fat load of nothing new, and be emailed within the next thirty seconds. A straight-up copy and paste. She could set her watch to it. Maddie looked up the 101st Precinct and dialled.
“Hi, this is Maddie Grey from the Hudson Metro News, could I speak to the deputy inspector, please?”
“She’s left for the day.”
“What about whoever’s supervising there now?”
Maddie hit refresh on her email. Nothing.
“He’s busy. And besides, shouldn’t you be calling the DCPI?”
“Yes, but I need a small clarification that the DCPI can’t help me with. It’s just background about the drug bust at Redfern Houses two days ago. Could you get the desk officer to call me when he’s free? Won’t take a minute.”
“I’ll tell him you called. Name?”
“Maddie Grey at the Hudson Metro News crime desk. My number’s—”
Click.
She sighed at the unsubtle message that they wouldn’t be calling her back. Just then, an email from Radley landed.
Forty seconds. He was getting slack.
The NYPD has no further comment on the drug operations on Sunday at 00:40. Charges are proceeding in the case of one Ramel Aiden Brooks, 18, on multiple counts of possession of a controlled substance, namely, quantities of Vicodin, ecstasy, marijuana, and oxycodone. The arrest was carried out at an apartment in New York City Housing Authority’s Redfern Houses, Far Rockaway.
So—nothing new; no further comment. And if anyone at 101st Precinct rang her back, she’d buy a lottery ticket. Such was life. That’s why the day shift was where the action was. Deputy inspectors, for instance, worked regular hours and tended to return calls.
God, this job could be boring.
Maddie worked her way through the rest of the NYPD media releases in her inbox. A flasher was doing the rounds of kids’ parks. The description was laughable—trench coat and combat boots. Nothing else. There was a shooting in the Bronx, but no fatalities beyond someone’s hotted-up, black muscle car. Break-in stats made her pause. She wrote that one up, highlighting the safest and most risky areas in New York. No shocks. It was pretty much a standard evening’s haul.
Maddie checked her watch. That late already? She headed for the office kitchen and grabbed her lunchbox. It contained a basic ham sandwich, a sad little Tim Tam (the last of her chocolate treats from Australia until her mother sent more), and a can of diet cola. High living. Not the most appetising selection, but the staff canteen had shut hours ago, and she couldn’t face how many people would still be bustling around on the streets outside, even at this time of night.
Back at her desk, Maddie leaned back in her chair and contemplated her existence. She did that a lot lately. Why am I so bad at cracking New York—personally or professionally? What made me think I could ever do this? She was out of her depth and drowning.
Giving her soda a morose glare, she cracked the can and had a sip.
It wasn’t as if she hadn’t been here long enough. She couldn’t use that as an excuse. Hell, Simon had been in New York half the time she had. He’d been born with a gregarious soul and seemed to know half of everyone in no time. Everyone loved Simon.
Her phone rang, so she dropped the can back on the desk and flipped the phone to her ear. “Maddie Grey, Hudson Metro News.”
“Sergeant Malloy, desk officer for 101st Precinct. You had questions about the Redfern Houses drug bust two nights ago?”
Maddie scrabbled for a pen, in a state of shock. The fact he’d called back meant he’d actively had to track down her number, which his office hadn’t taken. Malloy had to really want to talk to her. “Yes,” she said, heart thudding.
“That one was all Queens Narcotics Squad’s baby. This ain’t nuttin’ to do with us. Don’t call again. ’Night.”
The phone went dead. Maddie stared at it. Or he really wanted it on the record that his office was not involved in something stinky.
“Hey, chickee.”
She started.
The editor’s secretary and office gossip-hound, Lisa Martinez, was shoving her cell phone in her bag and smiling at her. “Forgot my phone again. Had to come back for it.”
Lisa wasn’t a friend, but they were cordial enough, and she often passed along the day-shift gossip that Maddie missed as the lone night-shift girl.
“Did you see the new thing? In the lobby?” She leaned over the desk, giving Maddie an unexpected view of her ample assets.
“What thing?” Maddie slid her gaze higher.
“Oh, a li’l thing called Jake. Squeezed into a security uniform. Muscles up to his nostrils!” Her eyes glazed over. “Tell me you wouldn’t want a prime piece of that.”
So wouldn’t.
Lisa gave her hair a toss and told her in a fascinated tone, “I think he’s from Texas. He’s got that way of speaking. You know—all drawled-out words, like he can’t bear to say them fast. He can pat me down any day. Am I right?”
She looked to Maddie for backup, as though she had an ogling comrade-in-arms.
In the eight months Maddie had worked at the Hudson Metro, Lisa hadn’t yet picked up on her complete indifference to girly bonding. Especially on topics she had zero interest in. Like swooning over men with muscles. Or men at all.
“I met him on the way in. He only seems to know five words,” Maddie pointed out with a grin. “None of which are longer than three letters. What would you two even talk about?”
Lisa exploded into a fit of giggles, forcing her mammoth bosom to rise and fall under her blouse. She gave her long, dark hair another flick. “Ha, chica, you seem to think I like my men for their conversation.”
Maddie forced a smile. “Ah. So, anything happening? I wasn’t here yesterday. What did I miss?”
“Oh, honey, it’s all on!” Lisa’s voice dropped to a conspiratorial whisper, even though they were the only two people in this part of the building. “So Jake’s been brought over from Bartell Corp, because the tiger shark thought our night security sucked.”
“It does,” Maddie said. “I mean Garry’s a nice guy, but a seventy-year-old with a bad heart and two hip replacements shouldn’t be our first line of defence at midnight.”
“Well, the boss lady obviously agrees cos zzzt…” She ran a finger across her throat. “No more Garry. Hello, Jakey.” Her eyes lit up.
“Lisa, you’re married,” Maddie said, half amused.
“True, but I’m not dead yet. Anyway,” Lisa continued shooting her an unrepentant look, “the other huge bomb is that our big jefe is gone.” She pointed behind Maddie.
Maddie swivelled around to check out the general manager’s glass, corner office. She sat so close to him that she could often hear snatches of his phone conversations. The reverse was also true. Colleagues always gave her sympathetic looks whenever they found out where her desk was. No one wanted to sit under Barry Bourke’s all-seeing gaze.
The only person who sat closer to Bourke than Maddie was his secretary. Melissa had a double-length desk immediately behind Maddie and right outside her boss’s office. His now completely bare office.
Maddie frowned. She suddenly realised Melissa hadn’t talked her ear off tonight, as she usually did between five and six when the secretary was winding up her day. Maddie’s gaze dropped to Melissa’s desk. It looked as bare as the general manager’s. How the hell could she have missed that? Well, she had been kind of preoccupied with her own employment issues.
“So Bartell fired him? And Melissa, too?”
“Yup. Just like that. Guess Elena wanted his office.” Lisa cackled. “And Melissa went with him. Her choice. Guess the rumours about those two were true.”
“So much for Bartell’s fancy speech about us all getting six weeks to prove ourselves.”
“Yeah, but what did Bourke expect? His expenses are…were…insane. I know—I put through some of the invoices to Accounts.”
“I doubt Bartell’s expenses will be any less, though. Come on, the woman owns a private jet for God’s sake.”
“But that won’t be billed back to us. You know, from an accounting point of view, she’s already saving the paper a ton of money by ditching Bourke’s greedy ass.”
“Still seems kind of arbitrary to me.” Maddie shook her head. “How does she know Bourke wasn’t a genius? She barely knows him.” She was still rankled by their elevator conversation, when Bartell had taunted her about poss
ibly firing her on the spot.
“Well, you’ll know sooner than the rest of us what she’s like,” Lisa said with a naughty gleam in her eye. “Hell, now she’s sitting behind you, you’ll be able to hear pretty much everything she’s up to. So, don’t forget to pass on any good gossip.”
Sitting behind me. Maddie glanced back at the glass office with a sinking feeling. She was damn sure she didn’t want to be this close to the woman. Maddie realised Lisa was waiting for an answer. “Um, nope. For some reason I think low-level espionage would get my ass toasted in no time. I need this job to pay rent, especially seeing my housemate’s leaving soon.”
“Oh,” Lisa said with a pout. “Okay, I suppose. Well, enjoy virtually sitting in her lap, though. You two are gonna see an awful lot of each other for the next six weeks. She’ll be peering out at you from her desk every day like el demonio!” Lisa laughed heartily and waved good night.
Maddie recalled Bartell’s snide dig at her—“I don’t want to be looking at a deconstructed beat poet for the next six weeks.” It was going to be awkward as hell if Bartell really didn’t like looking at her. Although Maddie didn’t work normal hours, so the problem of Bartell being unimpressed by her wardrobe wasn’t going to be an issue.
It wasn’t as if some highly successful, world-famous media mogul would want to be sitting in her poky, borrowed office for hours on end. The fact she was here for six long weeks was weird enough. But being here after hours too?
Maddie was pretty safe. She exhaled in relief.
BlogSpot: Aliens of New York
By Maddie as Hell
Expectations are one of life’s most powerful, invisible forces. They crush our throats tighter than any necktie. We chafe at them, deny they exist, pretend we don’t care about them, yet we can’t get enough of them. Expectations alter our world. They can win or cost us a job, a lover, a lawsuit, a life.
We are addicted to expectations. Me, I’m the expectations junkie. Check me out, living the life I’m expected to. I could be failing happily back home. Instead, I’m succeeding miserably here.