“He told me it was on life support and not expected to make it through the week.” Spike’s face flashed in her mind, and she suddenly felt guilty for her glib metaphor.
“It was.”
“What happened?”
“Biggest resurrection this town has seen since Jesus or our last crooked governor, depending on your frame of reference. Spiked in the afternoon, it rose again that night for one edition only, the final. But one edition was enough. The Associated Press overnight guy moved it on the wire, which went to all the broadcast outlets, and there was no turning back. Everyone in town went with it, and everyone attributed it to the Beacon-Light.”
“Why only one edition?”
“Good question. One of many being asked around the office today.” Whitney’s eyes locked on hers, steady and serious. “It wasn’t suppose to be there, Tess. Not today. Maybe not ever. Someone decided otherwise.”
“So what happened? You should know, you’re a lock for a Pulitzer for in-house gossip.”
“I’d rather have that Far East fellowship, the one in Hawaii, or one of those Alicia Patterson grants for young journalists,” Whitney said, as if “Pulitzer” was the only word she had heard. For a moment she seemed lost in some private reverie, perhaps an image of herself striding through the Orient, literally head and shoulders above the populace. She blinked, returning to Baltimore, Tess, and the roof.
“As it turns out, I do know quite a bit about this. I got it all from the big boss, right after I saw you today. Editor in chief Lionel C. Mabry himself.”
“Do I know him?”
“He came to the paper nine months ago, lured out of semiretirement at Northwestern University. Ran the Chicago Democrat in its glory days. Reporters call him the Lion King, because he has this mane of blond hair sweeping back from a high widow’s peak. They also call him the Lyin’ King, because he has a tendency to tell you nice things to your face, then go to the editors’ meeting and stick knives in your back. Long, elegant, quite sharp knives.”
“Not your bony back, Whitney. Bosses always love you.”
“The old bosses did. But Mabry doesn’t know my work as a reporter, and he’s going to have a big say in who gets the Tokyo bureau when it opens up this summer. I’m on the short list, but I’m not a lock. Not even close.”
Whitney frowned. She looked baffled, much in the same way she had the first time she’d attended a Passover dinner with Tess’s mother’s family. “That’s not horseradish,” she had insisted politely, poking the tuberous root with her spoon. “Horseradish comes in a jar.” No one had dared contradict her.
Tess poured more bourbon into Whitney’s glass. “You’ll win him over.”
“Or die trying. I even used the elevator technique on him today.”
“What’s that, some blow job tip from the pages of Cosmo?”
“Well, it’s not fellatio, but it is a kind of oral sex.” Whitney hoisted herself up on the ledge and sipped her drink, legs crossed demurely at the ankles. “There’s a theory that the most important part of your career is the thirty seconds you spend on the elevator with the boss—or in the hallway, or the john, but that last outlet doesn’t exactly work for me. It’s prime exposure time, and you should prepare for it in advance, the way you prepare for orals in college, or the way you train for a race, so it’s all second nature.”
“Prepare what?”
“Your tapes. Think of your brain as a mini tape recorder. You need two or three tapes at the ready, to drop in the slot at the first sight of the CEO. Editor in chief, in my case. Each tape features a timeless question or observation, demonstrating you are a motivated, loyal, dedicated, happy worker who’s willing to do a hundred and ten percent to make your terrific place of work even more terrific.”
“I think I need a demonstration.”
Whitney threw her shoulders back and shook her hair away from her face, transforming herself into an eager acolyte. “Mr. Mabry,” she began, a little breathlessly, her voice higher and sweeter than usual. “Mr. Mabry, I noticed our circulation numbers for the evening edition have stabilized. Do you think the redesign, and the attempt to market the evening paper as a street-driven product, have helped reverse the years-long trend of dwindling afternoon circulation?”
Bourbon burned when it came out through the nose. “That’s the most fatuous thing I’ve ever heard,” Tess said, snorting and laughing. “Does it really work?”
“Well, I got on an elevator three years ago as a reporter, chatted up the editorial editor about the wonders of an Ivy League education, and by the time I got off, I was well on my way to being an editorial writer.”
“And to think I thought you were crazy when you left Washington College for Yale,” Tess said, shaking her head in wonder. It wasn’t that she wouldn’t do the same, given the chance. She just wouldn’t do it as well. Perhaps there really were only two kinds of people in the world: suck-ups and failed suck-ups.
“Then today, right after I saw you, I ran into the Lion King,” Whitney continued boastfully, as proud of her talent for obsequiousness as if it were a sport she had mastered. “I said, ‘The Wynkowski story—it wasn’t on the budget at yesterday’s four o’clock, was it, sir?’ The four o’clock is the last news meeting of the day. Some things break later—”
“I know, I know.”
“Right, I sometimes forget you’re a defrocked journalist. Anyway, he said, very tersely, ‘No, it wasn’t.’ So I said, ‘Well, it’s none of my business, but if you want to get to the bottom of it, and want someone you can trust—a discreet private investigator with a special knowledge of newspapers—I happen to know the perfect person.’ We went back to his office and chatted for an hour, mainly about his impressions of Baltimore and his backhand. It turns out he really wants to get into the Baltimore Country Club. My uncle is on the membership committee, you know.”
Tess had not been distracted by Whitney’s rambling details. “Back up a little. Who’s this discreet private investigator with the special knowledge of newspapers?”
Whitney smiled coyly. “Let’s play Botticelli, Tesser. My letter is ‘M.’ Ask me a yes-or-no question to figure out who I am.”
“Let’s see. Are you a five-foot-nine Washington College grad whose former college roommate is apparently out of her fucking mind?”
“You guessed it right off the bat. I’m Theresa Esther Monaghan, the perfect woman for the job, don’t you think? In fact, you’ve got a meeting with the editors at two o’clock tomorrow. Do you have something decent to wear?”
Tess tipped up the bourbon bottle and took a swallow, largely for effect. Actually, she was not staggered by the thought of Whitney, without consulting her, volunteering her for a job. Whitney was always pushing Tess forward, trying to make her more than she was. But she had over-looked a few key details here.
“I have a job, remember? I work for Tyner.”
“Who wants you to be more of a self-starter, by the way. I ran this by him before I called you tonight, and he’s all for it. Said he really doesn’t have enough to keep you busy right now, and this sounds like a good opportunity.”
Great, Tyner and Whitney, president and vice president of the Let’s-Make-Tess-Apply-Herself Club, had been conspiring behind her back again. Tess was surprised they hadn’t needed her mother, the club’s founding member, for an official quorum.
“My Uncle Spike is in the hospital. If Tyner doesn’t need me. I’d rather spend my time getting to the bottom of what happened to him.”
“Then it couldn’t hurt to have the Beacon-Light’s files at your disposal. Computerized court documents, the paper’s morgue, Nexis-Lexis—all there at your fingertips, as long as you’re on the payroll.”
Tempting, but Tess saw one last, huge flaw in Whitney’s plan.
“Look, you’re saying this was deliberate, right? Hacking, pure and simple?”
“That’s the scenario.”
“So they’re looking for someone with a motive?”
“Natu
rally.”
“Well, wouldn’t Feeney, along with this Rosita Taquita, be a prime suspect? I can’t investigate one of my friends. What would I do if I found out he did it?”
“You’re getting ahead of yourself. The reality is, you probably won’t be able to figure out who did it, but Mabry wants to show the publisher he takes this sort of thing very seriously. I think Mabry’s secretly delighted the story got in the paper. It’s the biggest thing going, and the Beacon-Light had it first. Mabry only held it to begin with because of the unnamed sources. All he wanted was for Feeney and Rosita to go back and get people on the record first. Someone just accelerated the schedule, that’s all.”
“Still, what if Feeney—”
“Look, I’ll let you in a secret, but don’t let it cloud your judgment: the smart money’s on Rosita. No one thinks Feeney is capable of something like this. He may bitch and moan more than most, but he wouldn’t risk losing his job over one story. Besides, Feeney has an ironclad alibi.”
“He does?”
Giggling, Whitney punched her in the arm. Such physicality was a sure sign of drunkenness, better than any Breathalyzer test. A punch was about 0.08 on the Talbot scale, while arm-wrestling indicated she was well over the legal limit. It wouldn’t be the first time Tess had made a bed on her couch, or put Whitney in a cab for the trip home to Worthington Valley, where she still lived with her parents. If living in a guest house on a twenty-acre estate could be properly described as living with one’s parents.
“Very funny, Tesser,” Whitney said, still giggling and jabbing. “Feeney told me today the two of you were out drinking past midnight. In fact, it’s about all he can remember from last night. Now, that’s not the sort of thing you want to tell the editors, given the circumstances, but he couldn’t have a much better alibi, could he?”
Tess chewed on the inside of her cheek, a habit she thought she had outgrown. It hadn’t even been eight o’clock when Feeney had lurched out of the Brass Elephant. Why had he told Whitney it was midnight?
“Tess?” Whitney tried to punch her again, but missed, sending her bourbon glass crashing to the alley below. “So what do you think?”
“I think as alibis go, that’s a pretty good one.”
Chapter 6
Tess had been to the Beacon Light on official business once before, for a job interview after the Star had folded. She had bought a suit she couldn’t afford from Femme, borrowed Kitty’s best pocketbook, and put on pantyhose that she had managed to avoid running until she got back into her car. The paper had granted interviews to every one of the Star’s 383 newsroom employees. They offered jobs to fewer than ten. A new suit, a borrowed pocketbook, and intact pantyhose were not enough to make Tess one of them.
Luckily, the suit had stayed in style, even if the store that had sold it had gone out of business. Nothing went out of style in Baltimore, especially the simple clothes suited to Tess’s unfashionable figure. Almost three years later, her interview suit was still smart, as her mother would say: navy blue, with a fitted jacket that didn’t require a blouse, and a straight skirt to the knee. With her hair up and navy high heels, she was the picture of demure femininity, stretched out over six feet.
“A real lady,” Tyner judged, inspecting her Thursday morning as she turned slowly in front of the full-length mirror inside his office’s closet door.
“The neckline is kind of plunging,” said Whitney, who had ended up spending the night on Tess’s sofa. She had awakened with a headache that she refused to admit was a hangover, and was now perched on Tyner’s desk, lost inside a sweater and skirt borrowed from Tess. On Whitney, the too-big clothes looked chic and deliberate.
“Thanks, Whitney. You’re a real pal.”
“I’m not being rude. But if they were making a training film about sexual harassment, you’d be cast as the doe-eyed secretary. Someone could fall into your cleavage and never be seen again. It’s too sexy. You lack authority. You need a scarf.”
“Of course. I’ve noticed the President always wears one during the State of the Union address.”
Ignoring her, Whitney dug through her Dooney & Burke bag until she produced an Hermès with a Western motif—lassos, spurs, and horseshoes in shades of copper and gold, against a navy-and-ivory background.
“Cool,” Tess said. “Now can you make a quarter come out of my ear?”
“I’ve got better tricks than that.” Whitney arranged the scarf so it filled in the expanse of flesh without making Tess look as if she were a cross-dressing Boy Scout. “There, that creates interest around the face, as they say.”
“It does make the outfit,” Tess admitted grudgingly. “But if they didn’t want me as a reporter, why would they want to hire me as an investigator?
Whitney put her arm around her shoulders, joining her in the mirror. Cool Snow White and flushed Rose Red stared back. White bread and rye bread, baked potato and potato hash.
“Half the editors at the Beacon Light today weren’t even there when the Star folded,” Whitney reminded her. “The other half can barely remember what their wives look like, much less the hundreds of supplicants they’ve turned down over the years. You’ll be a whole new person to them, someone with the power to turn them down. By the way, I hinted you might not be able to take the job, because you’re so much in demand.”
“Wives?” That was Tyner, who seemed to be enjoying his temporary membership in this girls’ club. Tess expected him to start wielding a lipstick or mascara brush in her direction any moment. “I never thought I’d catch you being a sexist, Whitney. You mean spouses.”
“No, I mean wives. Little women. Helpmates. There’s only one woman in the upper ranks at the Beacon-Light, the managing editor, and she’s got the biggest balls of all of them. She had a husband once, maybe two, but I think they went into the federal witness protection program. Now she makes do with a little slave boy at home, running around in nothing but a ruffled apron, with a Scotch and water at the ready when she comes clomping home at ten or eleven.”
“It doesn’t sound so bad to me,” Tess said.
“Well, that’s what you have, isn’t it?”
The Beacon-Light’s founders, the Pfieffer family, had been savvy about many things. Real estate was not one of them. The family had calculated on the city’s center moving west over time, beyond the great department stores along the Howard Street corridor. So after World War II, when the expanding paper needed a new building, Pfieffer III had built the plant on Saratoga Street, near the ten-story Hutzler’s, the grandest of all the stores. The result was a marvel of blandness, a building of tan bricks with no discernible style. Its only charm had been its real beacon, a Bakelite lighthouse revolving on a small pedestal above the entrance. The lighthouse had been torn down in the ’70s and was now the Holy Grail among local collectors. The City Life museum was dying to find it, but rumor had it that a former Star columnist had unearthed it at a flea market and kept it on the third floor of his Bolton Hill townhouse, where he performed quasi-voodoo rituals intended to make Baltimore the country’s first no-newspaper town.
Tess glanced up at the empty pedestal as she climbed the low, broad steps, picking her way among windblown McDonald’s wrappers and crumpled newspaper pages. The local department stores, the few that had survived the ’80s, were long gone from downtown. A drunk was sleeping among the daffodil shoots in an ill-kept flower bed. Squeegee kids—really, squeegee adults, a few squeegee senior citizens—had staked out the intersection. As the Pfieffers had predicted, the city had moved. Only it was in the other direction, south and east, toward the water. The Beacon-Light was a lonely and inconvenient outpost on the edge of an urban wilderness. Reporters consoled themselves with its proximity to two of Baltimore’s best dining experiences, the open stalls of Lexington Market, and the white tablecloths of Marconi’s. The Beacon-Light also was convenient to St. Jude’s shrine. According to newsroom lore, reporters made pilgrimages there after deadline, always uttering the same heartfelt prayer to
the patron saint of lost causes: “Please, St. Jude, don’t let the editors fuck up my story.”
Feeney had told Tess about this ritual. And now she was facing the prospect that Feeney was the one who had fucked up. It seemed unlikely—certainly he had been too drunk to sneak into the building, perform a little computer hackery, and leave without a trace. But if the trail did lead back to him, Tess was determined to be there to protect him, even if she hadn’t figured out how.
On the sixth floor, the publisher’s secretary, one of those strangely proprietary women always found hovering at the elbows of powerful men, ushered Tess into an empty conference room adjacent to the publisher’s office. It was a subtly opulent room, a place to wine and dine—well, coffee and croissant in these leaner, more abstemious times—the city’s powerful. Mahogany table, Oriental rug, a silver tea set on a mahogany sideboard, the inevitable watercolors of nineteenth-century Baltimore. What must it be like for the top editors, the ones who traveled back and forth between this glossy dining room and the chaotic newsroom below, all the while trying to reconcile this realm of commerce with all those romantic ideas about journalism? How did they bridge these two worlds, the corporate and the cause?
Amnesia, Tess decided. Editors quickly forgot whatever they knew about reporting. If a man named Smith drove his truck into a local diner, killing five people, editors couldn’t understand why you didn’t call him up and ask for all the details. “Just look it up in the phone book,” they would say, as if there were only one Smith, as if he weren’t in jail, out of the reach of any phone. And if by some miracle you did find Smith and get the full story, the editors would say, “Well, that’s what we pay you for.” Or, “We’re tight tomorrow, it might have to hold.”
And now Tess had to face three of these amnesiacs at once, plus the publisher. The executive editor, the managing editor, and the deputy managing editor.
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