by Ashley Papa
Maybe that’s one of the female secretaries. She’s really pretty. Perhaps the comptroller keeps her around to make him look like
“The Man.”
After about fifteen minutes of rambling, Mayor Wilcox opened up the floor to questions. Nobody seemed to be interested in what he had ordered the media here for because the first question posed had to do with the uprising in antipolice riots, not security. Scrutiny towards the NYPD had increased dramatically because of recent reports of excessive force used by officers during arrests.
Walter became obviously irritated as Tony Montoya, a well-known and respected veteran reporter from Channel 5, continued to probe about the controversial topic. Tony always used to call me “K-9” because of my ability to sniff out the obscure. I never took offense to being compared to a dog because of how smart and loyal K-9s are.
While still on the topic of police versus ignorant protestors, I shot my hand high into the air.
“Is that Paige Turner in the back?” the mayor said while shading his eyes from the spotlight.
All heads turned towards me as I stood. I could see the look of surprise in some of my old competition’s eyes.
Bet you didn’t expect to see me back on the beat.
“Yes, Mayor. Miss me?” I joked aloud.
“I thought I saw your name on the press list. Where you at now? I thought you moved so San Diego to write books or something,” he continued.
“Nah. Couldn’t leave. Let’s get back to you, Mayor,” I responded. “How do you think restraining the nation’s strongest police force will actually make the city safer? Are you telling people not to call the police but try to sort matters out themselves?” The heads turned back to the mayor.
“Oh, Paige. How I missed your jabs. I am not saying that at all. I am just saying that if a situation can be rectified itself, don’t call the police. It saves us money too.”
“Mayor, with all due respect, a policeman’s job is to protect the people of this city, even if a situation may be nothing. How can you justify the high taxes and then tell people not to call the police?”
Eyes and heads went from me to the mayor, to me and back to the mayor. I had no intention to cause such a heated argument, but it felt good to push his buttons a little.
“Miss Turner, I don’t know who you’re working for now but I can’t get into a debate about this. Let’s recall the real reason the media is here right now,” he deflected.
A cloud of tension had filled the auditorium. I had gotten so in the zone, I didn’t even realize the damage I could be doing to the case.
The mayor looked more and more like he was going to be wrapping up the press conference as Jimmy started walking towards the exit. It was my cue to leave too. As Walter gave his closing remarks, I gathered up my belongings, threw my reporter’s notebook and cell in my bag and quietly exited through the back. I needed to catch Jimmy before the rest of the fresh-faced reporters, many being blonde girls in tight, jewel-toned poly-blend dresses.
When I got outside, Jimmy was standing next to the back exit door near the town car and smoking a cigarette. With a smoke in one hand, he was typing away on his phone with the other. I calmly walked over.
“Jimmy? Hi. I am Paige Turner, freelance journalist,” I casually said. “I wanted to introduce myself. I don’t believe we have formally met.”
His lack of interest was apparent. His handshake was limp and his hands were ice-cold like a dead person.
“Yes. I know who you are.”
He took a deep inhale of his cigarette and kindly blew the smoke away from my face. He wasn’t that much taller than me. Probably about 5'10". His face looked stressed, from either the chain smoking or working with Mayor Wilcox.
I guess the cleavage-friendly shirt and do-me-behind-the-bookshelf glasses don’t appeal to him.
“Well, I am back on the beat. I imagine we’ll be doing a lot of work together. You’ll be hearing from me a lot more.”
He continued to look down at his phone. Whether he was actually looking at emails or just making himself look preoccupied, I wasn’t going to let him keep me from doing my job. I owed it to Victoria.
“I was hoping to do some specials with the mayor. Perhaps a one-on-one? I sent you a few emails…”
He raised his eyes like he was holding in a laugh. His breath reeked of a dirty ashtray.
“After that little thing you did in there. I highly doubt Walter would be interested in speaking with you again. Now, if you don’t mind young lady…”
How dare you! Do you know who I am?
I wanted to wring his neck. He went to walk away, but I grabbed his arm before he could completely turn his back towards me.
“I didn’t mean to get so heated. It’s a hot issue right now. He just wasn’t anticipating my questioning,” I explained. It pained me to even slightly apologize like this. I wasn’t the sorry-saying type. I felt it was a sign of extreme weakness when used too much. “Actually, I wanted to do a special feature on him. I know he isn’t used to those types of interviews. What do you think?”
“I’m listening. You have to be more specific, young lady.”
Stop saying that!
“Here, walk with me to the car.”
I followed him through the crowd of press that had all gathered around the front entrance of the building. The way we maneuvered through the crowd reminded me of college and those nights at packed clubs.
When Jimmy and I finally reached a clearing, I finished explaining that I wanted to do an exclusive with the mayor that focused on him and his family life.
“I get it. Like an exposé? That would require a lot of time and lots of clearance. What’s your deadline?” he asked while looking over my head in anticipation for Walter.
“As soon as possible,” I demanded.
“Yeah right,” he exclaimed, finally looking into my eyes. “The guy is booked until the summer and then he spends most weekends in the Hamptons. Why don’t you just email me with all the details, and I will work on it in the meantime? Whom did you say you work for, again? Which publication?”
Before even contemplating a realistic editorial, I blurted out, “The Gotham Post.”
“The Gotham Post? Huh. I don’t know. They don’t usually write up the nicest stuff about Walter.”
FUUUUUUCK. What the hell are you thinking?
“But my piece wouldn’t be slamming the mayor,” I lied.
I could feel my face turning red in anxiety. Not only would I have to expose a potential cheating scandal, I’d have to somehow get The Gotham Post to be on board with me freelancing for them. All this after I get his staff to let me interview him.
Jimmy handed me his business card and I handed him one of my made-up reporter ones.
As we were exchanging information, the town car pulled around to get Walter. In his gray wool coat, the mayor scurried out and successfully avoided the press. I caught his eye and the look he gave back to me was stale, yet a bit flirty. I didn’t know what to make of it.
Changing out of my heels and into my flats, I decided to walk crosstown. Reporters and cameramen still hung around the U.N., most likely just to delay going back to the station or preparing for their news-at-noon live shots. The fresh air and sunshine felt good while I paced myself back to the Port Authority.
I dialed Adam to let him know my ETA back to Hoboken. He had gone back to record the press conference for me so I could analyze it more thoroughly and from different angles. While waiting for me, he had been doing some digging of his own. I wanted to skip when he told me that Piper was getting a house in Montauk for the summer with her girlfriends. She had apparently posted it all over her social media.
“She has Instagram pictures of herself with three other girls with the hashtag “Montauk Summer 2015” under it,” he revealed.
“We have to infiltrate her social
circle,” I said while crossing Lexington Avenue. “I need a mole.”
“How about April!” he immediately suggested.
April was unemployed, after all. At 31 years old, she was having a hard time finding a new job and was presently living with her mom in Westfield, New Jersey. We became friends during my first year at United America News. We were assigned the same local beat those first six months. She was a rookie at Eyewitness News 8. We bonded while covering shootings, thefts, parades, and elections. That is until my career really took off and I got to cover bigger news stories. After those six months of working side-by-side, we weren’t seeing each other out in the field anymore. Our friendship, however, remained strong. She stayed at Eyewitness News the entire time I was at UAN, but was laid off last summer due to budget cuts. It’s been seven months and she still hasn’t been able to find work.
“Hey, do me a favor and find out what the annual tuition is for out-of-state students at UC Santa Barbara. Also, books, dorms, pretty much all those expenses. I’ll be home in hopefully 30 minutes,” I ordered Adam as I continued my trek west.
I needed to find out how much they were paying the school for tuition. Since Victoria seemed ill-informed about her own finances, I needed to find this out for myself.
The morning felt like two days packed into four hours. If I were a napper, I would’ve been back in my bed as soon as I walked in my door. Knowing that I risked doing a half-ass job of anything if I continued to do work, for the sake of my body and mind, I took the rest of the afternoon off. I’d review the video tomorrow. I could work 24-7 if I wanted to, but if Nancy Drew took some downtime to hang with the Hardy Boys, I could do the same once in a while.
I decide to throw a mini dinner party and invite Taylor and April over. It would give me a chance to spend time with my friends and also gauge whether April would be cut out for being my mole.
The doorbell buzzed precisely at 7 p.m. I knew it was April because she was just as punctual as I was. It must have been a news thing.
“Coming!” I yelled.
My hair still dripped from the shower and had made the back of my Burton Snowboards T-shirt wet.
“What the hell?” I blurted out. “What happened to my brunette, Italian girlfriend?” April had colored her hair to platinum blonde. She looked like a Playmate. “Are you auditioning for Playboy?”
She walked in and ignored my question at first and handed me a grocery bag filled with Italian specialties from her parent’s restaurant like eggplant raviolis, chicken cutlets, stuffed shells, and bread. And of course, a bag of orange-cream sugar wafers, which I planned on hoarding for myself. She walked over to the kitchen and poured herself a glass of the Cheverny.
“I just needed a change. I thought that the brown hair was getting a bit dull. Maybe someone would be more inclined to hire me if I were a hot blonde like you,” she said, taking a sip and smiling in my direction, although I wasn’t a true blonde; I was a light brown-haired girl with highlights.
“Girl, please…who cares what color your hair is? You could be bald and it wouldn’t matter because you’re smart and sharp as hell,” I said.
I topped myself off with wine and we both took a seat on the couch. I turned on the news in hopes of catching the evening broadcast.
April stared out the window. I had a feeling she was regretting her blonde bombshell decision.
“Oh, April. It’s not that bad. It brings out your blue eyes. What did Jordan say?”
Jordan, her devoted boyfriend, had to have hated it.
“He says he always liked the brown,” she said, looking down into her wine glass. “I think he is upset because he thinks I need to change something about myself to be liked.”
He’s right.
Jordan and April became friends in college. They both attended Rutgers. She was the editor for the school paper and was doing a story on whether one can die from a broken heart. As part of his pre-med curriculum, Jordan was volunteering in the cardiac unit of the Rutgers University Hospital. She did an interview with him, because she couldn’t get one of the real heart surgeons to talk to her. They were all “too busy.” Jordan offered his knowledge and that’s where the connection initially started. They remained friends through the remaining years and through her rookie years as a reporter while he was doing his residency in Philadelphia. Then, when he got hired at Lenox Hill Hospital in the city, they reconnected and so did their hearts. It was quite the love story, especially since it started over a report about broken hearts.
April and I continued to catch up while waiting for Taylor. Right as I was about to evaluate April’s potential interest in working for Vixen Investigations, the doorbell started obnoxiously buzzing. It was Taylor’s eager ring.
“Hellooooo….” Taylor exclaimed as she burst through the door.
“What up, girl?” I replied from the couch.
She placed her reusable grocery bag stacked with pans of her vegetarian specialties on the kitchen counter. We watched in amazement as she pulled out tray after tray of red lentil pasta with peas and tofu, roasted Brussels sprouts and cauliflowers, a vegan coconut truffle dish, and gluten-free brownies she picked up at the overpriced Simplicity market.
“How the hell did you get all this over here?” I asked as she poured herself a glass of wine and came over to join us.
“It wasn’t hard. I thought I was going to drop it getting on the PATH, though. The door started shutting on me. I could’ve lost an arm trying to save the food! A nice hot guy helped stop the doors, though,” she described while acting out the almost horrific scene.
Picturing busty Taylor running to the subway in her kitten heels while carrying two grocery bags and yelling “hold the door!” made it hard for April and me to contain our laughter.
“So, tell me more about this big case you’re working on,” Taylor asked before shoveling a heap of vegan pasta in her mouth.
She, too, knew very little about the new investigation. I was purposely keeping silent about it because I didn’t have enough hard evidence and I didn’t want to open the door to assumptions or outside opinions just yet.
“It involves the mayor. That is all I can tell you guys,” I vaguely stated.
“Oh, come on, Paige! You can’t say that and not give us even a tiny hint of what is going on,” Taylor whined.
“Taylor, stop…you know I can’t do that. With the last case, I didn’t care. It was small potatoes. This is a huge deal for me. Anything involving the mayor can be dangerous,” I snapped.
I stood and walked over to the windows. I could tell it was a cloudy night because I couldn’t see the spire on the top of the Freedom Tower.
“I’ll fill you in, in time.”
“Well, if you need any help, let me know. I’m not working so I have plenty of time,” April finally offered as if she had anticipated me needing her.
“Thanks for understanding. It’s not like me to feel this anxious about a case. I just have a lot at stake.” I went back and took a seat with my satiated friends.
In trying to change the subject, I switched gears to have them fill me in on their love lives. Taylor was still single and loved every minute of it. She embodied this constant jovialness, which made it hard not to be around her. She was a magnet for guys but usually brushed them all off. Of course, there were a few assholes I had to help her put in their place. Taylor and April were like my test dummies for Vixen Investigations before I even knew I would launch the business. I helped Taylor get over two breakups in the past seven years and April with the one right before she and Jordan got serious. I felt like I had gotten so good at combating heartbreaking jerks. In realizing this superhero-like quality I had, I started paying extra attention to the conversations of men and women when out in public. About 90% of the time, they would be talking about a relationship gone awry. Once, while I was sitting in a Starbucks working on a brief for one of my first
crimes of the heart cases, I overheard a group of girls behind me talking. One was sobbing about her boyfriend, saying, “I found these texts on his phone. He was flirting with another girl and they were sending nude pictures back and forth. When I confronted him, he denied it. He said it was just porn being sent by his friend.” When her girlfriends asked her if she was going to break up with him, she said no because, “I love him too much and he promised he’d delete the girl’s number.”
And you wonder why he gets away with treating you like that, I thought.
Then, as if summoned by a Bat Signal, the Vixen Investigator in me turned around to advise the young girl.
“Did he call you crazy and place blame on you?” I asked.
At first, the three girls just stared at me. Then, the jilted one, named Abby, nodded.
“You need to pay attention to how secretive he is with his phone. If you find he is hiding it from you more, he’s probably still receiving these racy texts.”
“Well…what should I do?” the girl asked.
That’s when the three of them got up and joined me at my corner table. They intently listened to my wise words as I instructed her one friend to text Abby’s boyfriend and pretend to be “a girl he met at TAO a few weeks ago.” My new pro-bono clients did as told, and a few days later I got an e-mail from Abby saying he took the bait. He was cheating on her after all so she dumped his ass. I was so proud of her for standing up to her deceiver and she told me she had never felt so empowered.
April and Taylor had grabbed their Ubers home. I clicked the kitchen lights off and took one last look out the windows and across to glittering Manhattan. Somewhere across that river someone was getting his or her heart broken.