What Goes Up

by Allen Weiner

  “You want me to move?” Sue asked as Max stood next to his desk. “I’m just typing up some notes from a meeting I went to last night.”

  “No, it’s okay. Listen, I have some great news to share. We had a meeting with the managing editor and publisher this morning about how we’re going to handle the work on the chemical dumping story. I suggested to Al, who’s running point, that we could add you to the reporting team. If that’s all right with you?”

  “All right? Are you kidding?”

  Sue jumped out of Max’s chair and hugged him. Her familiar flowery scent nearly made Max weak in the knees. He closed his eyes and held on for dear life. While in an embrace that was north of pure friendship, Sue finally let go, reached over, and kissed Max on the neck.

  That warm, familiar flush came back, and Max opened his eyes. Sue was standing there smiling, hoping her boldness might be the start of something special. And, as if on cue, Max’s phone rang.

  “Saved by the bell,” he whispered, still overcome from the kiss. “Let’s talk later.”

  Chapter Ten

  Max had called Barrett over the weekend and gotten him up to speed with his new assignment. Barrett was proud of his friend—well, as proud as rivals since second grade could be—and his success. Barrett raised the issue of the FM transmitter hidden in the elevator outside the stately governmental building in Jim Thorpe.

  “I almost forgot about it,” Max told Barrett. While that wasn’t true, he hoped Barrett would have an idea that might include removing it from its current resting spot.

  Barrett didn’t buy it for one second. He chuckled and told Max that he had a slow week and would be willing to extricate the device from its perch in the courthouse. Barrett didn’t say that he had a desire for a Yocco’s hot dog, so any excuse to head in the direction of Allentown was fine. A Yocco’s hot dog, an order of Mrs. T’s Pierogies, capped by an A-Treat grapefruit soda to wash it all down was enough to go a hundred miles out of your way.

  One issue Barrett had to deal with was the fact he didn’t own a transistor radio. He knew of only one store that might have it, and that was Silo. He checked the yellow pages, and there was a location in Quakertown which was on his way. The day was shaping up.

  Barrett parked across the street from the courthouse and took out his brand-spanking-new Emerson nine-transistor P3751B long with a nine-volt battery. He dug into the box and found the earphone, and put everything together. He futzed with the dial until he found 93.4, and that’s when he heard a pair of would-be restaurateurs perform their comedy act in the elevator.

  “I think you’re nuts.”

  “No, I think it will work. Jim Thorpe is crying out for a Thai Fusion restaurant. I checked, and there isn’t one within sixty miles of here.”

  “Did you ever think about why? This is meat and potatoes country, pal.”

  “Look, it’s my money, and all I’m asking is for you to do the build-out. I’ll take care of everything else. We got the permits, so there’s no looking back.”

  As two somewhat urban looking chaps emerged from the elevator at the Carbon County Courthouse and onto the sidewalk, Barrett Fine was in his snazzy BMW laughing his ass off. He never thought listening to people in an elevator could be so amazing. I’m wasting my time taking dates to the Bijou. I can drive up here and hear a better show on a transistor radio.

  With two Yocco’s dogs, three pierogies, and a sickly-sweet can of soda under his belt, Barrett was ready to get this over with. It was 3 p.m., meaning the courthouse closed in two hours, which was about an hour and fifty-nine minutes longer than the former-attorney-turned-tennis-hustler could wait.

  “Oh, what the hell,” Barrett said as he got out of his car and headed toward the courthouse. It wasn’t very crowded, and he was quick with his hands—that extra digit and all—so it should be a piece of cake.

  A few folks were in the lobby, and Barrett did his best to ignore them. He walked over to the Fine-Rosen memorial elevator and hit the up button. Upon arrival, two men and a woman exited, and Barrett made his way, quickly pushing the door closing button. He reached behind the ashtray and felt the transmitter but suddenly realized it was soldered to its base. Barrett wanted to scream at his carelessness by forgetting to bring a file, small saw, or anything that could cut through the solder. The transmitter had been there for several weeks, and it was going to take more than a quick yank to pull it off.

  Barrett went up and down the elevator five times, thinking of a way to get that damned device from its clandestine spot on the ashtray. He thought about ripping the entire ashtray off, but he had neither the strength nor time to do that. It didn’t help that folks got on and off the elevator the entire time he stood there staring at the FM transmitter. Barrett ignored their curious looks as that would break his concentration.

  After enough rides up and down the courthouse to make an average person nauseous, Barrett got off on the top floor and looked for a janitor’s closet. He wasn’t sure whether he’d find anything to solve his dilemma, but at this point, it was worth a look-see. In reality, Barrett could have left the secret unit stuck to the ashtray, and no one likely would find it, but he was a man on a mission. It was his nature to tackle what he believed to be impossible.

  Barrett found the room that said custodian on it and gently opened the door in case someone was going about his business inside. On one of the shelves, Barrett found a possible solution—industrial steel wool. He presumed it was used to remove rust from window jams and other surfaces that got wet and then, with age, began to decay. He took two large pieces to be safe.

  By this time, it was thirty minutes until the building was set to close, so Barrett went down and hid in the bathroom just as he did with Max weeks before. He followed the same plan, and when the building appeared to be empty, he made his way to the designated elevator, closed the doors, and hit the hold button to keep it in place.

  In ten minutes, Barrett scrubbed off enough solder to loosen the transmitter. He was careful not to harm it, as he had no idea what plans Max had for the surveillance device. Barrett put the transmitter in his pocket, released the stop button, and opened the doors.

  Just outside the now infamous elevator stood a security guard with a serious scowl. “Excuse me, sir, what the hell were you doing in there?”

  Barrett, who considered himself lightning fast on his feet, paused and calmly said, “I lost my girlfriend’s engagement ring in there, and I waited until everyone left to hunt for it.”

  “What?”

  “Yeah, I was talking to my lawyer an hour ago, and on the way down the elevator, I must have dropped the ring. It was in a small box marked Littman Jewelers on it. Is there a lost and found here?”

  “I think you’re fulla shit, buddy, but I can’t imagine you’d be doing anything illegal in an elevator. Just get the hell out of here before I change my mind.”

  Barrett walked quickly out the front door, which was not yet locked for the night.

  On a cool December night, Barrett’s underlying nerves led to enough perspiration that the back of his shirt clung to his back. While he was calm and, in his opinion, rather slick in his exchange with the guard, there was no way to turn off his fight-or-flight mechanism. As he drove back home to Philadelphia, Barrett decided to leave his confrontation with one of the county’s security forces out of his report to Max.

  It took Barrett a few days to speak in person with Max on the phone. He left a few messages on Max’s vintage answering machine, but the young reporter was working at full speed, burning the candle on the top, middle, and bottom.

  Max returned Barrett’s call on a cold December Saturday on a rare day off. He had worked twelve days straight on the investigation into the chemical dumping. The progress that Al’s team had made was impressive. Al was the sort of leader who didn’t need to yell or prod; he commanded respect and handed out praise when justified and gave constructive criticism when such was relevant.

  Max’s call with Barrett was deliberate
ly brief, but they had a good laugh about the entire caper from panicked installation to harrowing removal. Barrett knew Max well enough to understand his friend needed to hang up and move on with his day. The nature of their friendship was such that after eighteen years, they had an unspoken bond that allowed each one to detect the other’s behavioral signals, no matter how subtle.

  Max had fallen behind on personal and household chores like cleaning and shopping as the intensive interviewing with victims of the chemical dumping took up most of his time. Max’s process was to speak with the folks in the homes, starting with an assurance that what they said would be kept confidential. He would add that he had a contact in Philadelphia who was preparing a class action lawsuit against Andersen Trucking and two companies in upstate New York responsible for the hazardous waste. Max also asked for permission to use his small Sony microcassette recorder to ensure he had their words on the record. Sue offered to help him with the tedious transcription of the conversations that often lasted an hour.

  Jack Devlin called for a major update meeting for Monday in Allentown for all involved with the investigation. Max suggested it was wise to include Norm Weiss to get an update about the class action lawsuit. Devlin agreed and added that the newspaper’s lawyer, Stacy Eidelman, should attend.

  With two days before his command performance and forward marching orders, Max took the day to relax. He had a lengthy call with his parents, telling them the broadest brush strokes about his current assignment. His mother asked if he was eating properly and getting enough rest. After more than two decades, Max knew the best answer was to simply say, “Yes.”

  On Friday afternoon, after Sue had finished typing up an interview Max had with a farmer in Lansford who was suffering from a suspicious cough, she slid her chair over to his desk and asked if he had any weekend plans. As usual, Max fumbled for an answer and offered a cop-out excuse that he was tired and needed Saturday and Sunday to get back on his feet and take care of stuff around the house. Ever patient, Sue slid her chair back to a desk across the aisle without saying anything.

  There was a cold chill on in the air Monday morning as Max got into his car to drive down to the Chronicle’s main office. Never knowing how to rid his windshield of frost and condensation, he played with the heat, defroster, and air conditioning buttons before giving up. Instead, he went back into his apartment, grabbed a ratty T-shirt, and wiped the inside windows clean.

  On his way down to the Chronicle, Max looked for a distraction and began to think about the likely top songs of 1978. It was a good way for him to clear his mind while keeping it engaged with an interesting topic.

  With the popularity of the movie Saturday Night Fever, he guessed two or three Bee Gees songs would make the year-end list of hits. Keeping on the same path, Max figured Grease also would score, even though the film was putrid. His two favorites of the year, “Use Ta Be My Girl,” by the O’Jays and “Peg” by Steely Dan, may make the top twenty but were not considered blockbusters.

  Max pulled into the Chronicle parking lot exactly forty minutes—and nine songs—after leaving his apartment in Nesquehoning. He was twenty minutes early for the meeting, so he decided to duck into the Little Apple Market for a cup of coffee. Max’s taste in coffee had not progressed from those funky crystals that make up instant but relished the opportunity for someone else to do the preparation.

  Tom Monahan was standing at the counter reading the New York Times as Max walked in. Dressed, as always, in a three-piece suit, Tom was downing a can of Diet Rite soda, wanting to get a shot of caffeine without having to drink coffee. Max noticed that Tom never drank coffee at the bureau, far preferring caffeine-rich green tea or Diet Pepsi based on mood and the time of day.

  Tom’s back was to the door when Max walked in, but the door chimes rang out, causing the mustachioed senior reporter to turn around. Max eased his way to the counter, stood next to Tom, and asked the older man behind the counter for a cup of coffee, black. Max had an intolerance to all things dairy, so he wanted to play it safe before the big meeting.

  “We haven’t touched base in a while,” Max said.

  “Like you, I have been swamped. Untangling the governmental mess as to which agency oversees chemical dumping is a challenge. It’s almost as if they want to ignore its existence.”

  “I hear you. My last two weeks have been gut-wrenching talking to truckers, their families, and some farmers whose lives have been impacted by toxic waste. There are times I find it hard to keep my emotions in check during these interviews.”

  Tom looked at his watch and suggested they walk over to the newspaper building for the meeting. The Wells Fargo Bank clock showed the time to be four minutes before the hour and the temperature to be a balmy thirty degrees. Not too terrible for a December day in the Lehigh Valley. Tom wisely wore a wool overcoat while Max had a sweater underneath his faux leather jacket, which did little to stop the wind from chilling him to the bone.

  Jack Devlin stood at the head of the long table in the main conference room—easily twice the size of the room for their first meeting. He brought along a whiteboard on which he wrote each reporter’s name. The day’s goal was to write underneath each name the progress that the person had made and what tasks were left. Devlin’s goal was to get a handle on timing—how much was left for fact-finding and when the writing started. The managing editor would have to go through a process for each piece of the series that would run in the Chronicle; the work would have to be reviewed by the publisher and the company lawyer before it could be fit to print.

  Exactly eighty-five minutes later, Tom, Max, and Al were clear on the next steps. Devlin had been in touch with Norm Weiss, and things were moving ahead with the class action lawsuit against Andersen Trucking. There was, however, a hitch: the companies responsible for the chemicals were difficult to pin down. The toxicity at each dumping site could have waste from one or more companies, so determining the precise culprits might be challenging. It was theoretically possible that the sludge byproduct from one of the companies in upstate New York did no harm, while others potentially did the bulk of the damage. Devlin emphasized that it was a small part of the overall story and more of a legal matter that had a minor impact on their reporting. Harmful or not, chemical dumping is illegal any way you slice it.

  The week that followed the meeting at the Chronicle headquarters was intense. Max interviewed three more victims of the chemical dumping, including a farmer whose flock of sheep died at an alarming rate. He feared that the grazing pasture somehow had been contaminated, but the cost of doing the proper soil testing was out of his ballpark. Max assured him that, at some point, the EPA could come and do the work, which would allow him to potentially be compensated for his loss.

  Tom was having a more difficult time with each governmental agency passing the buck to the other. Because the chemical dumping took place over state lines, it was a federal case. Still, the various bureaucracy pieces were not sure as to who should file suit against the toxic polluters and determine which laws were being broken. Over the years, Tom had developed contacts at the EPA, Justice Department, and several state offices, including the attorney general and the Department of Environmental Protection. Toward the end of the week, Tom’s luck changed when he reached the county’s congressional representative, Earl Dent. Dent knew of Tom’s earlier reporting on laws involving juvenile justice and was happy to help. Suddenly, the wheels of justice spun at warp speed.

  One week later, Jack Devlin brought his team back together at the Chronicle’s main office. The meeting intended to begin the process of outlining how many articles his reporters would produce and when the first one would be ready to be reviewed by the paper’s attorney.

  Before the meeting, Max and Tom arranged to get together again at the Little Apple Deli. While Max sipped a cup of overly strong brew, the two decided that they would take a shot at writing the series together. They agreed their styles were complementary, with Tom being great at delivering cold, hard fact
s, while Max would add his lyrical touch to the pieces.

  Devlin asked Tom and Max to write the series at the main office. Al, who once worked as a copy editor in Allentown, would directly supervise their work. The agreed-upon stories would begin with Max’s encounter with Dan Bigelow and then segue into how the chemical dumping started, which companies were responsible for the travesty, the impact on the people of Carbon County and the environment, responses from state and federal authorities, and the class action lawsuit. Norm Weiss also asked to review the articles before they hit the printing press.

  Since it turned out that Max and Tom lived almost across the street from one another, they carpooled to Allentown, with each taking turns driving. Max was less manic with his car radio when it was his turn to take the wheel. Tom had a Toyota Corolla, which was roomier than Max’s Volvo, and Max came close to dozing off a few times on the forty-minute trip.

  During the next week, the two reporters, working in concert, produced a five-part story scheduled to kick off on the following Sunday on the front page. Max was far too exhausted and involved with the task at hand to realize the impact the series would have. After the series ran, there would be time to enjoy the fruits of the collaboration and analyze how he went from nearly being terminated to star-on-the-rise in a ridiculously short amount of time.

  Max slept in on Saturday before the first story would make the headlines. After a quick cup of instant coffee, he called his parents to update them about the investigatory work and its outcome. Max could feel his father beam through the phone while his mother joined in with her praise. Making his mom and dad proud was the icing on the cake. Max promised to save copies of the papers and bring them on his next visit.

  “When are you coming home?” his mother asked.

  “Soon, I promise. Give me time to recover from this last month, please.”

  Later on Saturday, Max called Norm to thank him for his help. The call went on for twenty minutes as the attorney gave Max a blow-by-blow of the class action case, which would likely net the fifteen people named as plaintiffs more than $100,000 each. That is, Norm added, depending on how the appeal process went.