Hard News

by Mark T Sullivan

  Overnight Bobbie Anne shed her ebony spiked heels in favor of corkbed sandals. She shifted from silk to one hundred percent cotton, stopped perming her hair, gave up shaving her legs, and took up Aikido for exercise.

  Pace even took Savage’s advice on story selection. Within months the perception of Pace as a lightweight garb scribe was gone, replaced by that of socially conscious fashion pundit. Several post-ops on Lobotomy Lane took her out to lunch, a fact which Prentice LaFontaine had noted with wonder and spread as quickly as he could.

  Pace won four major awards at the yearly journalism contest. She was promoted to features editor for her innovativeness. Her first managerial decision proved her best career move ever: she hired Savage to fill her old spot.

  Savage opened up a salvo on the Southern California fashion scene, decrying fur, of course, but also leather, plastic, rhinestones, and even bikinis and volleyball wear. Young girls who sported thong swimsuits—known to Southern Californians as “butt floss”—were “victims of a denigrating, narcissistic society that demands the flaunting of flesh for acceptance.” Volleyball wear failed to measure up because she got it into her mind that the game led to beach erosion.

  Nothing sells a paper better than a writer readers love to loathe. And readers adored hating Margaret Savage. A fur retailer protested that Savage was the “fashion equivalent of Ghengis Khan.” An incensed volleyball player who was betting his financial future on Day-Glo shorts was arrested for spiking balls onto the hood of her convertible Volkswagen. It made the evening news. The Post’s circulation went up by 1,573.

  The Glassholes decided that Savage needed more exposure. Pace promoted her to “New Age Culture Writer,” a position which she used to rail against the “intellectual cancer of the meat culture,” and surfing as an intrusion on the ecosystem of seals, blow-fish, and mollusks. Many subscribers bought an extra copy on the days her stories appeared so their puppies could piss on her photograph. Circulation jumped another 648.

  For its “groundbreaking coverage,” The Post’s feature section received national recognition. The Columbia Journalism Review hailed it as a “harbinger of news, twenty-first century style.” Pace and Savage were mini-profiled in Vanity Fair, invited to speak at journalism conventions, and lampooned on the editorial pages of the Wall Street Journal.

  After six months of Savage, circulation was up thirty-four hundred, leaving the paper only twenty thousand subscribers short of The Beacon. To Geld’s horror, Pace was named assistant managing editor for News and Information.

  The day after being officially lobotomized, Pace rewarded Savage with her own column on the metropolitan page. She named the column “Savage Views.” Prentice LaFontaine called it “The P.C. Oracle.”

  In shock, Geld bought a Corvette he couldn’t afford. He pierced his ear. He permed his hair. He performed drunken avant garde dances at the Slotman’s Bar and Grill. As Pace’s career trajectory steepened, Geld’s depression deepened. His wife, Judy, threatened divorce. And he had taken lately to driving the ’Vette to the Slotman’s for a lunch of three double Jim Beams on the rocks and two baskets of pretzels.

  Before this morning’s meeting, Claudette X had asked Geld if he thought the diet was a good idea. “Claudette,” he had said, “I see it as the lesser of two evils. It’s either sedation or I decide it’s real smart to buy a leotard and take modern dance lessons at night.”

  Right now, Claudette X thought, Stan looks like he wants to slide his pudgy legs into a pink tutu.

  Geld turned to his staff. “The numbers are on their side. But I need your opinions—fashion on the front page?”

  Claudette X held her tongue. She wanted to see if her fellow assistant city editors would support their boss. As expected, they sat stone-still, a mute Greek chorus that would sing in the direction of the favorable wind. After all, this was a daily newspaper in the 1990s, not a company in the electronics or biotechnology field. Every month came the word of another daily paper laying off staff or closing its doors. To survive, to flourish, H. L. Mencken! just to pay the mortgage, you had to keep your index finger wet and high.

  “Tell you what, Bobbie Anne,” Claudette X said, after enduring the silence for several moments. “You have different ideas about what constitutes news. We respect that. And the statistics, too, Neil. How about we look at the series when it’s done? That way we have a better idea of how it stands up against other stories we have on backlog.”

  Pace hesitated, then nodded in satisfaction. Harpster said, “Fine.”

  Geld mouthed “You’re a savior” in recognition of the brilliant maneuver. Though Pace would not leave the meeting assured of page one treatment for the fashion series, she could tell herself she mattered. That meant she’d probably stay in her office, out of the way, until the paper was put to bed.

  Okay, thought Claudette X, we’ve done the Bobbie. The only thing left was to get Neil to climax and the daily blow job was over.

  She caught movement at Harpster’s end of the table and bit her tongue in frustration. He was removing the mother-of-pearl links from his French cuffs and rolling up the sleeves Connor Lawlor style. He loosened his tie, then ran his fingers back through his expensive haircut. All proven indicators that Harpster was about to act the part of hard-driving newsman to score points after Pace’s victory.

  God help us! The man knew numbers, not news. He’d only worked three months as a reporter. His formative experience: six years on The Post’s copy desk, checking for commas. But then, as the news industry came to rely more and more on market research, he rose quickly on the basis of his undergraduate degree in applied statistics and journalism from Northwestern.

  No career trajectory had been steeper. Harpster wanted to keep it that way. Like Pace, he was constantly on the lookout for ways to demonstrate his capacity for higher office. His most recent effort had been to change the titles of the senior editors.

  Harpster often wondered why the paper had never achieved the status of similar-sized papers such as the San Jose Mercury News, the Dallas Morning News, or the St. Paul Pioneer Press.

  After attending a management conference at Big Sur, during which he’d had a brief affair with a randy Brazilian-born editress from the Miami Herald, he came to believe that The Post’s underlying problem was rigidity. The editress, who adored samba, had physically demonstrated that flexibility leads to profound creativity.

  In the convoluted logic of a trained copy editor, Harpster determined that rigid titles meant rigid thinking at The Post. He returned to announce to his fellow editors that the paper would achieve heavyweight status if it adopted more limber job descriptions. After much wailing and gnashing of teeth—and a nod to the fact that Harpster was only thirty-nine and rising quickly—the titles were adopted.

  As malleable as Harpster’s new title may have been, exactly what the assistant managing editor for Form and Content did remained a mystery. It was well-known that Harpster ran marketing focus groups, read memos, studied the newspaper trade press, dictated to his luscious research assistant Connie Mills, and attended meetings such as this one. Everything else about the man was pure suspicion.

  Sleeves rolled and ready, Harpster announced, “I’ve got a couple of ideas of my own I want looked into. First off, cactus rustling.”

  Geld’s lips puckered. “Excuse me?”

  “I talked to some of my neighbors. With the water shortage in its fifth year, they’re turning to drought-resistant plants. Only there aren’t enough around. Mature cacti are being stolen from people’s backyards and probably being sold in L.A.”

  The Stepford Editors stared at the table, their eyes glazing as they analyzed: Was this a good idea or a bad one?

  “I don’t know, Neil,” Claudette X said. “I mean, how often does it happen?”

  ““Happened to me and Lydia last week!” Harpster retorted. “Came downstairs and a beautiful barrel cactus she’d just bought as a centerpiece to our no-water garden was vamooso. Plants are her children. She took to he
r bed the entire day.”

  Claudette X glanced at Geld. He shrugged. If it was true, it was an okay story, Old West comes to horticulture, that sort of thing.

  “Consider it assigned, Neil,” Geld said.

  “Dandy,” Harpster said. He glanced inside a manila folder on his desk. “Number two. You seen these sneakers around that the kids wear skateboarding? The ones with the strange colors—neon red, green, and purple?”

  The corneas of several assistant city editors cleared. A few nodded hesitantly.

  “I think this is a nice trend for us to write about,” Harpster announced. “They’re making them right here in the city. El cheapo. Research shows people are sick of paying a hundred dollars for a damned pair of tennis shoes for their kids. I think this firm’s going to take off.”

  He paused, thought of the Brazilian editress, then added: “I think the story has good form.”

  More corneas around the table became translucent. More heads bobbed appreciatively. The wind direction of this decision was easy to mark. What possible harm could a story about tennis shoes do to a career? It would make Harpster happy. That was important. A nice story, too, with color photographs of kids with vibrant sneakers playing with skateboards in the sunshine. Maybe there’d be dogs in the pictures. Nothing better than photos of kids and dogs and sneakers and sunshine in the newspaper. These kinds of pictures told readers that despite the misery, the hatred, the greed, the change, the turbulence, and the uncertainty that dominated newspaper coverage, it remained possible to carry on a life where kids could play with little pooches on a hot summer day. That, as much as the comic strips and the details of the latest yard sales, still sold newspapers.

  Geld and Claudette X exchanged nervous glances. They suspected Harpster had an ulterior motive to offsetting the background terror of the common newspaper reader. Both guessed the assistant managing editor for Form and Content had bought stock in the sneaker company. They got these kinds of requests during the Neiling phase of the daily blow job at least once a month. The problem, however, was that such an ethical breach was almost impossible to prove without a direct challenge to the editor. If they were wrong, their own careers could be left in tatters.

  “Isn’t this a story better suited for finance, Neil?” Claudette X growled, hoping she might intimidate Harpster. “My reporters are pressed as it is without having to write about purple sneakers.”

  Harpster frowned. “I want the story where people can see it.”

  Pace chirped in from the other end of the table. “I agree with Neil. Here again, fashion is news. A story worthy of page one.”

  Two instances of editorial solidarity in one day. The wind blew strong and sure on wet fingers. Stepford heads snapped to and fro with the vigor of cork on rough seas. Pretty sneakers and dogs on page one: a winner for sure!

  Geld looked across the table at Claudette X and mouthed the words “Please end it.”

  Claudette X flinched at the sight of her boss in such distress. The urge for straight Jim Beam was obviously too much for Geld to fight today. She didn’t feel up to it either. She had a mortgage payment due tomorrow, which really pissed her off because it reminded her that her ex-husband hadn’t sent his alimony check in two months.

  “Sneakers it is,” she said.

  “It’s an orgasm!” Geld cried.

  He made as if to rise, then shrank back chagrined when the door opened and Connor Lawlor limped in, leaning on his blackthorn cane. Ed Tower followed. A rare occasion. The two top editors almost never appeared at the 11:00 A.M. meeting. They normally waited until the 3:00 P.M. conference, when stories had played out to weigh in on issues of placement, length, and future coverage.

  “Sorry to intrude,” Lawlor said.

  “Not intruding at all.” Harpster jumped up to give the editor-in-chief his chair.

  “Thank you, Neil,” Lawlor drawled. “Couple of things I wanted to discuss with you all. First off. I wanted to make sure we’re preparing adequately for coverage of the governor’s race.”

  “We have Jackson and Perez assigned permanently,” Geld said, praying the editor hadn’t heard him scream in ecstasy.

  “And they’re doing a fine job of it, far as I can see, Stan,” Lawlor said, pointing up at Jackson’s story on page one.

  “I just want to make sure we do more than fine. Ed thinks, and I agree, that Ricardo’s probably the best mayor this city’s ever had and will probably be the first Hispanic governor of the state. I want to make sure we cover it right. This is The Post’s story, not the LA. Times or the San Francisco Examiner’s.”

  “I agree,” Harpster said.

  “Absolutely,” Pace said.

  “Fine,” Lawlor said. “Then I’d like to have some kind of plan for the coverage—you know, schedule stories that detail his positions, how Jim Barnes, Portillo’s opponent, is responding, and a weekender each Sunday, something more featurey.”

  Claudette X wrote all that down on a yellow pad. “Anything else?”

  “I’d also like you to draw up a detailed course of action for the last weeks of the campaign. Give me some kind of grid that coordinates it all. I know we’re four months away, but it’ll creep up on us. Ed will be your liaison.”

  Inside Claudette X cringed. The editor for News Operations, or whatever Harpster had named him, gave her the willies. “Consider it done,” she said, forcing a smile. “I’m looking forward to it, Ed.”

  Tower’s nod was icy. “As I am. And while were talking coverage, I’m concerned that we stay on top of this Gentry fiasco. As usual, McCarthy’s work is found lacking.”

  Claudette X bristled. “McCarthy’s already got a scoop for tomorrow, Ed. It was a fluke Rivers got that story.”

  “Beaten by a rookie.” Tower sniffed contemptuously. “I don’t know why we keep him on board.”

  “That’s enough,” Lawlor said, then he turned to Geld. “I cut McCarthy a huge break three months ago. This is strike two.”

  “Given the status of our circulation, we can’t get behind another step on this kind of story,” Tower declared. “Readers love this sort of thing, right Neil?”

  Harpster snapped his fingers. “The focus groups we conducted last month gave us a clear message: Uncover more scandals. They see it as our role to muckrake.”

  Lawlor thumped his cane on the floor. “I never doubted it. Enough already. Let’s get back to it, people. We’ve got a paper to publish.”

  Geld whimpered slightly as the top editors left the room.

  “Yes, Stan,” Claudette X said. “It’s officially an orgasm.”

  According to Sources …

  AT TEN-THIRTY THE NEXT morning Gideon McCarthy walked in the shade of the eucalyptus trees within the condominium complex where the dead prostitute Carol Alice Gentry had lived. He had four hours to work before the hearing with the judge over Charley Owens’s request to see the kids. He glanced at the sun. A California sun. A beautiful light that threatened the shadows with cruel intent.

  He found her place, number sixty-one, on the third floor of a building on the far side of the man-made pond. Yellow tape stretched from doorjamb to doorjamb. The medical examiner had pasted his seal near the handle.

  “You cops just can’t get enough of her, can you?” came a slurred voice.

  He turned. An emaciated woman in her early sixties shook a highball glass at him from the door across the way. She wore a magenta tennis outfit. The burst veins on her nose ran deep, but her eyes remained lucid. The ice cubes clinked. “Well?”

  “I’m a reporter with The Post.”

  “The clowns arrive,” she said. “Elephants next.”

  “What’s your name?”

  “What’s yours?”

  “Gideon McCarthy.”

  “Regina Fetterbaum. Merry widow. Next-door neighbor.”

  “Just who I wanted to see.”

  “I imagine.” She sipped her drink.

  McCarthy smiled. “Did you know Carol Alice?”

  “We had co
ffee a couple of times. Women who live alone tend to look out for each other.”

  “You know she was a hooker?”

  “She never mentioned it, but it didn’t take a Louis Rukeyser to figure. Young girl like that. Lots of money. Pretty, but not pretty enough. Then she started testifying.”

  “She have many friends?”

  Fetterbaum shrugged. “She kept to herself, but there were a couple of guys. One a big, lean kid. Wore a cowboy hat. Oh, and that little fat cop.”

  “Which one?”

  “Don’t know his name. He was balding with a thin black mustache. They had a shouting match one time. Better than something on my soap. Figured he was one of the ones she was yakking about.”

  “Click Patrick,” McCarthy said.

  “Whatever,” she said, waving the highball glass. “I called him Officer Hot Pants.”

  “What’d she like to talk about when you had coffee? Cops?”

  “Nah, her horse mostly. An Arabian. Kept it up the road at that stable. Kemper’s, I think it’s called. I figure that’s where the cowboy came from.”

  McCarthy wrote down the name. “Arabian. That’s a lot of money.”

  “Hardworking young lady.” Fetterbaum shifted her stance, reached into her pocket, and pulled out a cigarette box. She lit one. She took a drag.

  “She said nothing about cops?”

  She thought about it. “Maybe once or twice, just that they were giving her a hard time. Maybe that they were behind the break-in.”

  He tried to act nonchalant. People had a way of clamming up when you showed true interest. “Break-in?”

  “Oh c’mon, she must have testified about that.”

  “Grand jury testimony’s supposed to be secret.”

  “Right.” Fetterbaum’s laugh sounded like a gargle. She took another sip of her drink. “Anyway, yeah. Two, maybe three months ago, she knocks on my door, six in the morning, just got home, all scared. Carol was one of those gals didn’t seem scared of much.