White Collar Girl

by Renée Rosen

  I looked again at the ciphered messages. I’d never be able to crack this code. My God, there were cryptologists who did this for a living. To me it was just a jumble of letters, so I set it aside and got up to fix myself a cup of coffee. It was getting late, and I needed something to keep me awake.

  While the percolator gurgled and burped, I thought about the little note that had been attached to the ciphered pages. For some reason I was reminded of a game Eliot and I used to play called Secret Message. We would take a pad of paper and write each other a note and then tear off the top page and throw it away. The other person would take a pencil and run it over the indents on the paper and try to make out the words.

  Make out the words. Make out the words!

  I raced over to the table and grabbed a pencil and gently ran it back and forth over the indents on the page until stroke by stroke, letter by letter and word by word the previous message revealed itself: Alphabet shift one.

  That didn’t make any sense either. It could have meant anything. Could have been meant for something totally unrelated. I gave up, left everything on the table and decided to go upstairs and get ready for bed. I was brushing my teeth with the words alphabet shift one repeating over and over again with each stroke. Up, down, up, down, alphabet shift one, alphabet shift one, alphabet shift—wait a minute. I spit out a mouthful of toothpaste and raced back downstairs.

  I reached for one of the coded pages and scrutinized the first word: Avdlfs. Alphabet shift one would mean the A either was a Z or a B and the v would either be a u or a w; third letter had to be c or an e. Awe didn’t hold much promise, but Zuc had to be the start of Zucker, which meant the alphabet shift was one letter backward. I looked at the message before me:

  Avdlfs: Xbudi zpvs tufq. Uif gjobodf dpnnjuuff jt btljoh rvftujpot. NbdBmfftf upme NdDbsuz up gjy uif sfqpsu. Dibohf uif svquvsfe ejtd up b cpof gsbduvsf. Gps opx lffq bmm qspdfevsft voefs $300 fbdi. Qfpqmf bsf hfuujoh tvtqjdjpvt. Dbo’u bggpse up cf tmpqqz.

  —Gsbol

  This was going to take forever. I got up and poured myself a fresh cup of coffee and started in. Figuring out the message was painfully slow at first. But when I worked out the first sentence a chill went through me. It said, “Zucker: Watch your step.” This spurred me on, and after a few more words I got the hang of it.

  An hour and a half later, I had it worked out:

  Zucker: Watch your step. The finance committee is asking questions. MacAleese told McCarty to fix the report. Change the ruptured disc to a bone fracture. For now keep all procedures under $300 each. People are getting suspicious. Can’t afford to be sloppy.

  —Frank

  There were more encrypted pages—pages and pages full of incriminating statements about fudged diagnoses, fake procedures, false claims. I translated a few more passages, then stopped. There were still more to decode, but I had what I needed.

  I went back up to my room and stayed up late working on my article. My mind was racing as I typed. The coffee on my desk had turned cold and still I was wide-awake because now I knew I had it. This was the scoop I’d been waiting for. This was the one story my editors wouldn’t be able to turn down. So I kept working as if Eliot and my parents were sitting there in the corner, watching me, prodding me on. My father had hardly said two words to me that night. My mother couldn’t pull her nose out of Mailer’s book. I told myself that if I could land this piece in the paper, maybe they’d get excited about something again. Maybe it would lure them out of their grief.

  I glanced at the clock. It was a quarter past two. The initial rush had faded and by now I was so exhausted I almost dozed off in the middle of typing a sentence. But I had to keep going. I had to do this for my mother and father. And for me, too.

  By eight thirty the next morning, I was pacing in front of Mr. Ellsworth’s desk, waiting while he jotted down something on the corner of his blotter. I hovered until he finally raised his eyebrows and said, “What can I do for you, Walsh?”

  “I’ve got something,” I said. “And it’s big.”

  He gave me a look that said why the hell are you bothering me with this stuff? “Tell Mrs. Angelo about it. And for the love of Christ, quit going behind her back and coming to me. Pearson’s, too. You work for society news, remember?”

  “But this isn’t society news. This is city news.”

  He sighed, scratched at his whiskers. I could feel his patience wearing thin. “Okay.” He leaned back in his chair and folded his arms. “Let’s have it.”

  I gave him my copy and watched as he stroked his beard and gave me that blank stare of his that I was all too accustomed to.

  Eventually he said, “You want me to run a story about Alderman O’Connor—the chairman of the city council—and some crooked doctor committing insurance fraud?”

  “And don’t forget Commander Graves. You can see for yourself. It’s all right here.”

  “Walsh, we’ve been through this. You need proof.”

  “Oh, I have proof. Here—” I showed him the encrypted pages.

  He shuffled through them and shot me a look. “What is this, some kind of joke?”

  “It’s in code, but I figured it out. Here’s the decoded messages. Take a look.” As a backup I handed him the Photostat copies from Zucker’s files.

  He ran a hand down his face, pausing to massage his jaw. “How’d you get your hands on all this information?”

  I knew this was coming and I was so conflicted about my methods, all I did was shake my head and say, “You don’t want to know.”

  He glanced at the copies and back at me. “And you stand by what you’ve got here?”

  “Absolutely. You’re looking at the photocopies of the doctor’s files yourself.”

  “Walter—” he called out. “Walter? Get over here.”

  “Walter?” I dropped my hands to my thighs. “I don’t need Walter.”

  “Well, I do. And I need legal to look this over, too.”

  Walter appeared, pipe gripped between his teeth. “What is it?”

  “Walsh has something here. I’ll have legal take a look, and in the meantime, run it through the typewriter again—fill in the holes.”

  “There are no holes,” I said.

  Mr. Ellsworth gave me a look that shut me up. He wasn’t interested in discussing the matter.

  I followed Walter back to his desk. “I’m on deadline,” he said, tearing the copy from his typewriter. “I really don’t have time for this kind of nonsense right now.” But once he started reading, his face took on a different cast. He looked up at me, stunned. “I don’t believe it. Holy fucking crap, Walsh—how the hell did you get this?”

  I didn’t say. Instead I paced while he typed, stopping now and then to look over his shoulder. Essentially all he’d done was retype my story. He used my same lede and ended up changing only a handful of words. Reversed the order of two paragraphs toward the bottom. That was it.

  Half an hour later we were back at the horseshoe. I stared at a spot on the ceiling while Mr. Ellsworth read. I heard him grunt here and there before pulling out his dreaded red pen. He made one mark before he said, “If it gets past legal, we run it.”

  “You will?”

  “I will.” Mr. Ellsworth chucked his pen onto his desk and stood up, leaning into a stretch. As I turned away, he patted me on the rump. “Nice work, Walsh.” Then he turned to Walter and gave him a nod.

  Despite the little ass pat, I was pleased. I felt like a different person returning to my desk after that. I pushed out my chest and threw my shoulders back. I was a member of the team. This was my first real news story—and it was a big one. Finally, a byline to be proud of.

  First thing the next day, before I’d even gotten dressed, I raced downstairs and opened the front door. Pinching my bathrobe closed, I grabbed the newspaper that the paperboy had folded and flung onto the porch. I couldn’t wait to show this story to my parents, picturing how their boozy, bloodshot eyes would open wide and their mouths would curve into smiles
. We’d talk about it over breakfast, and I’d tell them what I’d done to get the scoop. My mother would clip the article, and unable to wait until Sunday, when the long-distance rates were lower, she’d call her parents in New York just to tell them what I’d done. It would be like old times, and Eliot would be right there, sitting on my shoulder.

  The pages were chilled from the morning air, and I was filled with anticipation as I stood in the foyer and began to read. My eyes raced across the front page and I saw my headline: “City Council Chairman Linked to Insurance Fraud.” But then I saw something that drop-kicked my heart to my stomach: “by Walter Harris.”

  With my insides shaking, I read the article, thinking maybe Walter had rewritten it again. Maybe some new development had come in. But no. It was my article, all right. I could feel my cheeks growing flushed and the rage surging inside me as I stormed upstairs and dressed in such a harried rush, I didn’t notice until I was on the el that I’d missed a button on my blouse.

  I was still spitting mad as I marched into the city room and started toward Mr. Ellsworth at the horseshoe.

  Who in the hell did he think he was, giving my byline to Walter? Did he think I was some silly little schoolgirl that he could push around? I didn’t care if he was the managing editor. I wasn’t about to be treated like this.

  He saw me coming, and as soon as our eyes met, the words boiling inside my head began to dissipate, vaporizing into nothing but a blank stare. I couldn’t go through with it. I caved and turned and went back to my desk. How was I going to explain this to my father? I’d already told him I was working on a big story about insurance fraud. He read the Tribune every day. He’d see this story and he’d see Walter’s byline on it instead of mine. I was seething, and the anger started blistering up again inside me. I heard Walter laughing on the telephone, and that did it. I grabbed the newspaper, shot back up and made a beeline for the horseshoe.

  “Mr. Ellsworth.” I cleared my throat. “I need to speak with you about something.”

  “I’m busy, Walsh.” He didn’t bother looking up.

  I flapped the paper down in front of him. “That was my story. My reporting. My investigating.”

  “And it was your first piece. I put a more seasoned reporter on it.”

  “Walter added nothing to this story. Absolutely nothing.”

  “I’m not going to sit here and explain myself to you. I don’t care who your father is, or where you went to school. You have a lot to learn about the newspaper business.” He handed back my paper.

  “But—”

  “I think we’re done here.” He picked up his telephone and dismissed me without so much as another glance.

  I went back to my desk and dropped into my chair, still clutching the newspaper. I needed a drink. As I unzipped my handbag, I saw the cat-eye glasses lying inside. I pushed myself away from my desk and rushed downstairs and back over to Norm’s Diner.

  I went up to the cashier, a middle-aged woman with a lopsided bun and a coffee stain on her blouse. I set the glasses on the counter. Now that my name was nowhere on the article, I no longer feared anyone tying those cat-eye glasses to me. “I think one of your customers left these here.”

  To this day I think about that woman and hope that she went back and got her glasses.

  Chapter 9

  • • •

  I was not okay after my story ran without the byline that I’d worked for and earned. I hadn’t just been marginalized. I’d been eliminated from the equation. And it stung. I thought about giving up, accepting my role as a sob sister, but to do so went against my nature. I wasn’t raised to be a quitter.

  Every other newspaper in town jumped on the story, and Walter did all the follow-up reports and had a cryptologist decode the rest of the messages. I didn’t even try to get involved. There were indictments and firings and resignations, and I couldn’t bring myself to read about any of them. Try though I might, I couldn’t keep the anger and resentment hidden from my voice whenever I spoke to Walter or Mr. Ellsworth.

  “Is there a problem, Walsh?” Mr. Ellsworth had said to me on more than one occasion.

  “No. No problem.” I’d swallowed it down, moving out of his way before I snapped.

  With Walter I was less restrained. One morning, about a month after he stole my byline, I stood in the kitchen nook, watching him pour the last of the coffee into his mug before placing the empty pot back on the burner.

  “You killed the coffee,” I said, sounding much more exasperated than the offense warranted.

  “Yeah, so?” He looked at me as if it were no big deal, which made it an enormous deal to me. This was not about coffee. This was about my pride, my ego. He still had his hand on the pot.

  “So I suppose you expect me to make a new pot,” I said.

  “Well, I guess you’ll have to if you want a cup of coffee now, won’t you?”

  I ripped the percolator from his grip, accidentally dislodging the basket of coffee grounds, sending brown specks all over the counter. I slammed the pot down, while Walter laughed, waltzing past me. I was fuming, every bit as mad at myself as I was with him. I had just confirmed his belief that a woman was too emotional to cut it in the city room. On top of that, now I had to clean up the mess and put on a fresh pot of coffee.

  I went back to my desk, broke down and made the one telephone call I didn’t want to make. I’d been hoping instead that the call would have come to me. But it had been a month since I’d heard from Ahern. We spoke briefly after the article ran. He said he was heading into a meeting and would call me back. He never did, and I’d been too proud to call him again. Until now.

  When Ahern answered the phone, I practically begged him to meet with me. An hour later I was waiting for him outside the monkey house at the Lincoln Park Zoo. I sat on a boulder and watched a group of schoolchildren across the way, holding hands, skipping, laughing, so happy with their simple lives, not a care in the world.

  I was getting antsy, wondering where Ahern was and if it was really wise to get in any deeper with him. There was something about him that I didn’t trust, but still, he was the only man who’d been willing to take me seriously.

  And besides, I had tried making my own contacts. I’d gone out of my way to meet the right people at those society balls and weddings. I’d sent flowers to Daley’s private secretary for her birthday. I went down to police headquarters and bought raffle tickets for their kids’ schools, brought them cookies and cakes, even got drunk with Danny Finn and the others. I considered Danny a friend, but the rest only wanted to see if I’d let them slip their hand up my skirt beneath the table.

  I had just glanced at my watch, thinking Ahern wouldn’t show, when I heard footsteps coming up the pavement. It was him, tall and slender, perfectly groomed and so out of place at the zoo. We exchanged hellos and went into the monkey house. It was cool inside and dimly lit and smelled like wet dog. The monkeys watched us from their cages, some swinging down on ropes to get a closer look.

  “So what is it you needed to see me about?” he asked as he checked his wristwatch.

  “We never really got a chance to talk again after the story ran.”

  He folded his arms and leaned his tall frame against the cage where the sign read: DO NOT LEAN ON CAGE.

  “And I wanted to explain why it ran without—”

  “Explain what? Why you gave the story to Walter Harris? Listen, that’s your business.” He unfolded his hands, raising them in surrender. “I can’t tell you how to do your work. Frankly, I’m just glad someone put the brakes on that insurance racket.”

  “But it was my piece. My reporting. I did all the investigating—not Walter.” It was the same defense I’d given to Mr. Ellsworth. One of the monkeys began jumping up and down. It startled me, and I backed away from the cage. “It was all me,” I said. “You have no idea how far out on a limb I went to get that story.”

  “Relax, Walsh. There’ll be other stories. Bigger stories.”

  “When?�
� I shuddered at my desperation.

  “When I have something to give you. Nothing’s cooking right now.”

  “Nothing?” I didn’t believe him. I always got the feeling that there was something he wasn’t telling me. There were times when he wouldn’t look me in the eye, and it frustrated me. But I was at his mercy. No one else in this town was going to give me a tip.

  Another monkey swung down from a rope, landing with a thud and kicking up a plume of dust.

  “There’s nothing I’m in a position to share with you at the moment.” He gave me a smug look. “Patience, Walsh. You need to have a little patience.”

  “So you’re not going to give me anything? Not even a crumb? C’mon, you wouldn’t have met with me today if you didn’t have something.”

  “I came here as a favor.”

  “Funny, you don’t strike me as the type that does favors.”

  “Well, then, you don’t know me very well.” He frowned as if genuinely hurt and turned to walk away.

  “Hey, Ahern? Ahern, c’mon, don’t leave.”

  With his back to me, he waved and disappeared out the door. I was left standing there, dumbfounded and wishing I hadn’t said that to him. Another monkey swooped down, pressing his face to the bars, watching me. I had the feeling I’d just alienated the one person who was on my side.

  • • •

  I left the monkey house drained and achy like when you’re coming down with something. All the frustration and upset of the day had collected in a band of tension stretching down my neck and across my shoulders. I was convinced that I was going to be stuck writing for the women’s pages the rest of my career. I would have liked nothing better than to crawl into bed and shut the world off, but instead I forced myself back to the city room.

  I sat at my desk, staring at the little red crescent moons, the index tabs on the side of my dictionary. I was unable to concentrate, distracted by Henry, who was on the phone with his wife.