by Allen Weiner
What Goes Up
A Max Rosen Mystery
Allen Weiner
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events, locales, and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.
©Copyright 2020 Allen Weiner
All rights reserved
It is not legal to reproduce, duplicate, or transmit any part of this document in either electronic means or printed format. Recording of this publication is strictly prohibited.
Paperback ISBN: 978-1-7360947-1-6
Ebook ISBN: 978-1-7360947-0-9
Copyediting, Cover Art, and Layout by
Vicky Haygood Editorial and Book Design Services
About What Goes Up
Max Rosen is a twenty-five-year-old man with a powerful digital mind living in the analog world of the late 1970s. His lifelong dream of becoming a lawyer did not quite pan out, but his writing talent and great intellect led him to a job as an entry-level newspaper reporter in Northeastern Pennsylvania. On his own for the first time, Max stumbles badly out of the gate in his new job and must use his wits, guile, and some less-than-legal tactics to get his career back on track, before his professional—and personal—life implodes.
Contents
About What Goes Up
Dedication
Prologue
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
Chapter Twenty
About Allen Weiner
This book is
dedicated to:
Kathy
who taught me the meaning of true love ways.
Prologue
Sunday, November 12, 2017 was an unseasonably warm day in Austin, Texas. The town was quiet at 7 a.m. after celebrating UT’s win the previous day over Kansas, 42–27. Traffic was light in the Shoal Creek area of the city, save for churchgoers and tourists searching for fantastic breakfast tacos.
Shortly after seven, Toby, an oversized rescued golden retriever, came along the bed’s far side and nudged Max Rosen. Max was a light sleeper, so instantly looked over to see his sad-faced dog, standing with his leash gripped between his teeth.
“Okay, Toby, I know you need to go out,” Max said, putting on his glasses and taking a sip of water from the glass on his night table. Max’s wife, Marcia, was a sound sleeper and dozed away, unaware of Toby’s request. Given the dog’s age and medical issues, it was probably more than a simple request.
Max threw on his Phillies zippered sweatshirt and took the leash from Toby.
“When you gotta go, you gotta go,” Max whispered to Toby. “Let’s go out and see who’s up so early.”
The man and his dog were quite the scene for passersby. Toby never walked more than one step away from his human, and Max talked nonstop to his beloved pet. The two walked toward Anderson Lane, the main drag by the house.
“Toby, let’s play a game. Between here and the main street, count the number of homes with the Sunday newspaper out front. I will give you the over/under at ten.”
Toby looked over at Max as if he understood. The handsome golden wagged his tail, and the early morning duo set sail.
While the daily newspaper in Austin wasn’t much, it was the paper of record for Texas’s capital city. The Globe recently was sold from a major media conglomerate to a smaller chain whose focus was on cost-cutting and presenting the news in a far more conservative bent than its predecessor.
As Max and Toby walked, they counted only three driveways with Sunday newspapers. “Everyone gets their news online,” Max told Toby. “And who blames them? Today’s paper has yesterday’s news and sports scores.”
Toby came into Max and Marcia’s life three years before, long after Max made his mark heading the project that launched the first daily newspaper on the web. Max missed unfolding the large Sunday paper and poring through the inserts, comics, and sports pages even with that accomplishment. He missed it all—getting the ink on your hands, drinking in every detail from the baseball box scores, and find out what movies were playing at nearby theaters.
Careful not to wake his wife, Max took Toby’s leash off and the two sat on the front porch of the fifty-year-old, recently renovated home. As with many homes in Central Texas, the foundation left a lot to be desired; so Max and Marcia had to dig into their savings to have the entire “undercarriage” of their single-family place repaired.
“So, Toby, only three families have the Sunday paper. Believe it or not, some of the greatest moments of my career took place related to the Sunday paper. Before you knew me—long before you knew me—I was a young newspaper reporter looking to make a name for himself. Sometimes, it got me in trouble. One of those times was 1978 when I got in the middle of two intense investigations.
“I remember those times like they were yesterday,” Max said, kissing Toby on the head.
Chapter One
The Carbon County Courthouse is a throwback to a time that never was. It sits on the corner of Lehigh and Susquehanna Streets, a building sturdily withstanding time with last-forever burnt clay bricks and what, a century and a half ago, represented state-of-the-art diamond-shaped leaded windows.
Max Rosen carefully walked down the four steps at the courthouse’s Broadway entrance and looked both ways. Max, shaken to the core, had to make a phone call. It was early November 1978, twenty-nine years before the first iPhone, so finding a working payphone was in order. Looking to the right, he found a sparkling new phone booth in from of the Dreidelback General Store two doors down from the courthouse.
Tall and formerly thin with wire-rimmed glasses, Max was twenty-five years old and had just lived through one of the worst days of his life. As an entry-level newspaper reporter for the Chronicle, the area’s newspaper of record, Max had made his second blunder in as many weeks. The first one was an honest mistake: at Jim Thorpe High School’s annual athletic awards banquet, the young reporter misidentified the most inspirational teammate winner on the women’s basketball team. Keep in mind, it was twenty years before Vice President Al Gore coined the term Information Superhighway. There was no Facebook or Instagram for Max to use to verify the school’s honored junior point guard’s name and spelling.
Even then, Max never carried money. He did find a dime at the bottom of his briefcase. He had a shopworn, faux-leather standard-issue one, common to insurance salesmen and would-be junior executives who shopped at discount places such as Leh’s and H. L. Green’s.
Hands shaking, Max slipped his lone dime into the middle slot of the payphone and hit “0” for the operator. A few rings and a kindly female voice said, “Operator. How can I help you?”
“I’d like to make a collect call to Harold Rosen, area code 215, 676-4192. Please say it’s Max on the line.”
Exactly ninety-three miles from where Max stood, his father answered and accepted the collect call.
“Is it okay if I come home to live? I am going to get fired.” Max’s voice trembled.
“This is your home. You are always welcome here. I am sure whatever happened is not nearly as bad as you think. You know my motto: ‘This too shall pass.’ ” His father’s words were comforting but not overly
realistic.
Harold Rosen, now retired, was a wonderful man whose dreams and drive were not always aligned. Before marriage, Harold still had an interesting, generally elaborate business scheme that would never reach fruition. Needing to provide a stable home for his wife and two kids, he torched his dreams and worked thirty years for the US Government in middle management.
In the division of parental labor, Harold oversaw inspiration and undying support for his two children. At this moment, however, even the sincerest words at the other end of a long-distance call could not provide Max the guidance he needed. The reporter, whose career was twisting in the wind, thanked his father and hung up.
Max turned around and walked past the courthouse, crossing the street where Broadway turned into Lehigh Avenue. Lehigh Avenue, Max thought. Wow. That takes me back.
Lehigh Avenue was the ultimate safe place for the twenty-five-year old reporter as a child. In his mind, he was transported to 21st Street and Lehigh Avenue in Philadelphia. This was where Connie Mack Stadium stood, a stunning, grimy, glossy cathedral to baseball in the 1960s. It was a solemn sanctuary for Max, a place where time stood still and where all worries—even those that can burden a child—vanished for a few hours. It was a place Max, as young as six, went hand in hand with his father, who would tell tales of Babe Ruth, Jimmy Foxx, Lou Gehrig, and other ballplayers of his youth. Every fan will tell you that its players were the best in the decade in which he followed the game. For Max, who saw in their prime Mays, McCovey, Koufax, Brock, Gibson, Seaver, and Clemente, he knew his era was nonpareil.
With a half chuckle, Max thought of the old baseball adage: Three strikes, and you’re out. With two significant blunders in as many weeks, Max was anxiously standing on a busy corner in Jim Thorpe, Pennsylvania on a cold mid-November afternoon, pondering his next move. To save his job, it would have to be something spectacular as a means for redemption, or this washed-out reporter would be back to sending out resumes with cover letters and freelance clips in hopes of landing something. Somewhere. Anywhere.
Max worked at the Carbon County bureau of the local newspaper of record in the Lehigh Valley. Its headquarters was thirty-two miles away and served as the hub for its many bureaus and staff or reporters, editors, photographers, and support infrastructure. Headquarters took over a city block in downtown Allentown, Pennsylvania. Allentown was a prosperous, thriving town with such major industries as Mack Trucks, Air Products and Chemicals, Alpo (the dog food company), and Bethlehem Steel. It also was home to the earliest days of professional wrestling, with matches held at the Allentown Fair Grounds.
Max’s suburban office was in Nesquehoning, a borough that once prospered during the days of anthracite coal mining. Anthracite is known for having the fewest impurities among coal classifications and is preferred as a fuel source over such types as lignite and bituminous. That said, Nesquehoning’s coal mining days were a thing of the past, given the health concerns that came from heavy mining in the area. Unlike Allentown, Carbon County’s economy was, at best, stagnant with an air of quiet desperation hanging over the area’s streets and sidewalks.
Max was dreading going back to the office. He pulled the generic Dodge sedan that served as a company car into an angled parking spot on Catawissa Street one long half-block from the office. His car, a brand-new Volvo he bought to appease his mother, was parked two spots away. It was time to face the music which, Rosen thought, might very well be “Taps.”
The newspaper’s Carbon County bureau was in a storefront on Nesquehoning’s main street. It sat between a pharmacy/general store and the local Elks Club. While understated in location and appearance, the office was one where serious business was conducted. From time to time, some not-so-serious business as well.
Max walked in the front door and made his way past the counter, which ran across the office’s front about twenty feet from the door. In addition to writing about the news of the day, the office also handled the business of advertising and circulation. A petite woman with a somewhat reddish beehive named Tanya sat at a machine that punched out linotype rolls of paper that contained the news and features written at the bureau.
The brightly lit office was about sixty feet long from door to back wall. It was configured where pairs of reporters sat at desks facing each other with IBM Selectric typewriters squarely placed in the middle of each work area. It was early afternoon with just a few reporters around prepping for their evening assignments, which usually included covering a local government or school board. Major events that happened on the fly, such as a car crash, fire, or even a bank robbery, were handled by whoever was around no matter what was scheduled later in the day.
Max saw Ray Tomjanovich, bureau chief, at his desk, which sat at the end of the long rectangular office space. Ray was a big man who, courtesy of the GI Bill, played offensive line for UCLA after World War II. The young reporter enjoyed Ray’s stories of playing football in college, especially those that included the team’s student manager, Paul Tagliabue, a former NFL Commissioner.
As Max approached Ray’s makeshift office, the bureau chief pointed to the chair next to his desk without glancing up from his newspaper. The latest edition of a small, local competitor sometimes scooped its larger rival on big stories. Ray generally dismissed the weekly rag for what it was—a gossip-filled paper that thrived on rumor and innuendo.
In his late fifties, Ray still had the physique of a former football player, but he never used his size to intimidate others. The chief’s reputation as a solid reporter and excellent writer garnered respect and provided him a steady rise up the editorial ladder to bureau chief. While an editor position at the company’s Allentown headquarters could have been more prestigious, Ray was a devoted family man with a married son. The suburban office was a few miles from his home in Coaldale.
Max sat a few feet from the hulking newspaperman who put the area’s weekly rag down and took off his wire glasses and spoke with a tone somewhere between anger and utter frustration.
“So, you told me the story about Jim Thorpe getting a new Wawa on River Street was solid, and you had two credible sources. We ran it on the front page of the local edition. And now, we have a shitstorm.”
Max had no response. It was plain and simple: in his brief time working out of the Nesquehoning bureau, he came to know how protective the locals were of long-standing family businesses. Even if it was a regional franchise (which Wawa was at the time), even the threat of an outsider would send folks in Jim Thorpe into a frenzy.
It was at a town council meeting that Max had heard the rumor. Two prominent officials—the school board president and the head of the local Rotary—were sitting in front of the reporter and speaking more loudly than they realized. Mike, the school board president, went into detail about a real estate option the outside company had taken for a large parcel on River Street. Carl, the guy from the Rotary, said that he had heard that Wawa had already solicited bids from local contractors to get started once the permits had cleared.
Nothing gives a new reporter a bigger thrill than to be behind a scoop. For Max, who had no formal training in journalism, hearing concrete facts from two of the town’s leaders meant the info was solid. A front-page story presented itself as a gift from the newspaper gods.
That day Ervin Swan was the night editor at the bureau, which meant he went through every story scheduled to run in the Chronicle the next morning. After editing the paper sheets that came across his desk, Ervin would walk the paper down to the linotype operator, Tanya, who would punch the tape that would then be sent to a desk editor at the main Chronicle office in Allentown.
Max handed Ervin two stories: one, an inconsequential wrap-up of the Jim Thorpe town meeting; the other, a headline-grabbing piece about a Wawa invading Jim Thorpe’s precious, closely guarded local business community. Ervin took the five sheets of paper from Max, quickly looking up with his usual menacing glare. As it turned out, Ervin was a major anti-Semite and bristled at having an outsider—espec
ially a Jew—at his place of business.
Max’s two stories went through Ervin’s review, which led the night editor to shuffle his way down the long aisleway and stop at Max’s desk. Ervin’s waddle was the result of two hip replacements and a BMI of 42. Given his seniority, few had the guts to make fun of his wacky walk.
“You sure about this?” Ervin asked, knowing that even if Max verified the sources, the information was probably wrong.
“Yes. I heard it from Mike and Carl,” Max replied, certain that Ervin knew these men by their first names.
Ervin said nothing more, made his way to the linotype operator, and handed her the edited copy.
This brings Max back to his meeting with Ray. He apologized for a major error, one which required the Chronicle to print a retraction—a weak response to his blunder. Max just sat, eyes beginning to well up, staring down at the blue linoleum floor.
“Max, I have to put you on a two-day suspension, after which you will be facing a three-month probation,” Ray said in a forceful yet forgiving tone. “During that time, you will need to show us why we hired you in the first place. We took a chance on bringing in someone with no newspaper experience, but you showed us a quick mind and a head filled with great ideas.”
All Max could muster was a quiet thank you. He wanted to thank Ray for the chance to redeem himself, but there was one important lesson he had learned so far in his brief time as a reporter: it is better to show than tell.
After this conversation, which turned out to be more of a light scolding mixed with a minor vote of confidence, Max walked toward the front door. Halfway down the narrow corridor between desks, Tex, a skinny guy in his late thirties, reached out and put his hand on his younger colleague’s arm.
“Let’s you and I go get a cup of coffee,” Tex said. In contrast to his name—well, nickname—Tex was not from Texas and had no direct association with the Lone Star State. Max discovered that his older friend and colleague was called “Tex” because that was his call sign way back when he was a long-haul trucker. If Rosen remembered correctly, the CB name had something to do with the way Tex spoke slowly, a trait commonly associated with heavy Southern drawls.