Fall from Grace

by Wayne Arthurson

  At a daily, you usually only wrote one story a day, about five a week, and once you wrote it, you went home. At a weekly, especially if you were the only reporter/photographer on staff, you not only wrote the stories, you edited them, took and developed the photos, laid everything out, and if the paper printed its own issues, you also helped fold and inserted flyers. Also, five stories a week wouldn’t cut it at any weekly, even if there was another reporter on staff. My record for most stories in one issue at a weekly was thirty-eight, not one shorter than 250 words. If Mandy or anyone else at this paper that slagged weeklies as the minor league of newspapering ever attempted such a task, they would quickly change their attitude.

  “According to my clock, Mandy, the city section’s deadline’s not for eight more hours so I got plenty of time.” By now, a number of reporters had looked up from their work to watch us.

  “Yeah, but if you also check that clock of yours, you’ll realize that we now live in the twenty-first century and in this century there are these machines called computers, which allow us to access something called the Internet. And on the Internet, we have an online edition of the paper which has a deadline of twenty minutes from now.”

  A number of retorts popped into my head, but I kept them to myself, partly because I had walked into that comment and deserved the dressing-down, but also the guilt over being late because of my trip to the bank was starting to creep in. “Okay, okay, boss. I’m rightly chastised and will have the story for the online edition.”

  “I need 150 words from you and they better be good.”

  I nodded and sat down at my computer and started typing without taking my jacket off. A good reporter, especially a good police beat reporter, never turns off his computer because all that booting up takes too much time. There was a bit of a lag due to the machine jumping out of its sleep mode and the first words of my lead appeared on the screen a few seconds later, but they quickly caught up with me. And since I had been composing, editing, and recomposing the story in my head throughout my drive from the bank to the paper, I was done in five minutes, plenty of time for Mandy to read it, put in her edits, and then send it off to the online editors who would do a quick proofing before popping it online for the whole world to see.

  With the online deadline met, it now was the perfect time to take off my jacket and take a break; grab a bite to eat or something. Seeing the body in the tent and then paying another visit to a bank was starting to take its toll. My mind was whirling with various thoughts, with the worry over how good the video surveillance system was at the bank, whether the teller got a good look at my face, if someone in the parking lot tied in the departure of the paper’s car with the bank robbery and noted its license number, and then wouldn’t someone from the police ask the paper who had signed out Car 14 and then take my name, run it through their system, and then come to escort me out of the newsroom in handcuffs? All those thoughts and the fact that I had another dead body in my file of seen images did not put me in the good place.

  I could feel sweat starting to bead on my forehead and my eyes beginning to water, sure signs that I’d better take a break before things got worse. A trip to the bathroom and a nice fifteen-minute panic attack in one of the stalls would have been just fine. Nobody would question it because panic attacks were part and parcel of the newspaper business and the fact that I had seen a dead body this morning would be the considered reason for my short meltdown.

  But I wasn’t given time for that break; Mandy’s voice called out to me. “Desroches? What’s this?” I turned and saw her heading in my direction. Instead of simply editing and filing my story for the online edition, Mandy had printed off a hard copy and was brandishing it like some sort of weapon.

  I did my best to gather myself together. “What’s up, boss? Did I miss some new development in the CP style book?”

  She ignored my joke. “How come you identified the gender and race of the victim when the sites for other local media don’t? Everybody has an unidentified body while you have her being female and native. Tell me why.”

  “It’s called a scoop, Mandy. Didn’t they teach you that when you got your degree in English lit?” It was a nasty crack but it was justified. If any other reporter in the room had written the story, she would have come over and given them a nice pat on the shoulder for a job well done. Since it was me, I must have done something wrong. She didn’t trust my journalism, and for a reporter to have an editor not trusting him was a major insult.

  “Just tell me how you know the body is a native female and nobody else does.”

  “I know it’s a native female because I’m a better fucking journalist than the rest of those losers who have the story. Like I said, it’s called a scoop, and instead of coming over and giving me shit about it, you should be saying, Nice job, Leo.”

  Again she ignored me. “Just tell me how your story has this info and the others don’t.”

  Her attitude was making me angrier, but instead of grabbing her by the throat and giving her the basic lecture on why scoops were good, I took a mental step back. “I know the body was native and female because I saw the body.” I paused, and watched the effect it had on Mandy. Her face dropped and she could no longer stare at me. And then I added the kicker. “And I saw the body because they let me into the tent.”

  Those words caused Mandy to step back and lean against the desk behind me. The hand that was holding the hard copy of the story dropped to her side.

  “They let you into the tent?” a voice demanded. It wasn’t Mandy; she was shocked into silence for the moment. The question came from Brent Anderson, another police-beat reporter who had the desk next to mine. He had been a reporter at the paper for about seven years, a solid reporter who wrote good copy. He probably wouldn’t win any awards for his work, but it was readable, didn’t need much editing, and always arrived hours before deadline. In many ways, Brent was just like me except when his day ended, he went home to his wife and family, and I went to a small room under the stairs in the basement of a rooming house.

  “Who let you into the tent?” he demanded.

  “Are you talking about the crime scene tent?” Mandy said, finally getting over the initial shock. “They let you into the crime scene tent?”

  I nodded.

  “Who let you in the tent?” Brent demanded again. “They never let anyone in the tent.”

  “Whitford,” I said over my shoulder.

  “Whitford?” Anderson asked. His voice was a shocked whisper. “Al Whitford let you into the tent? You’ve got to be shitting me!” He wasn’t being insulting; he was just incredulous that someone like Whitford would let a reporter into the crime scene tent. And despite Whitford’s earlier explanation, I, too, was still surprised and confused about it.

  “Who’s Whitford?” Mandy asked.

  “Homicide detective,” Anderson and I both said at the same time. And Anderson added, “Whitford let you into the tent? Why would he do that?”

  I shrugged. “I don’t know. It was the craziest thing.” And then I turned to the assistant city editor. “So that’s how I know the body was female and native. You can believe it or not but let me tell you this, I’m no Jayson Blair, so this is how it’s going to work.” I waited for a second to see if Whittaker knew the name Jayson Blair, the New York Times reporter who got caught faking a bunch of his news stories. She blinked a couple of times and that told me she knew the name. Most good reporters did.

  “First, you believe me, run the fucking story as is, and say something like, Good job, Leo. ’Cause if you don’t, then I’m fucking out of here.” And I wasn’t kidding. I had an editor who didn’t trust my judgment, and when that happens the only thing you can do is leave. I wasn’t in a great place personally, financially, and emotionally to leave the paper but if my story didn’t run the way I wrote it, I had no choice.

  “Nice work, Leo,” said a voice to the left.

  Everyone turned and Whittaker couldn’t help but gasp. It was Larry Mauri
zo, the managing editor of the paper and the guy who had hired me months ago. I had just spent almost two years living on the street, but a crazy situation at a local reserve had convinced me it was time to get my shit in gear again, and he was the first person I called. I knew that he was managing editor of a paper in the middle of a strike, and might be looking for staffers. I was right, although he did take some convincing, especially since I was not in the best condition, both physically and mentally.

  Fortunately, Maurizo had remembered that time I had given him his first newspaper job. And with Jacob Whyte constantly breathing down his neck to put the paper out every day during the strike, he was also desperate for anyone who could put together stories that were slightly readable. In his first job working for me as a reporter/photographer at a weekly, Larry was a decent writer armed with the basic knowledge of how to write a story using the inverted-pyramid technique, but with little real experience.

  We only worked together for about fifteen months, but in that time he showed a willingness to learn, and although I never expected him to reach the position of managing editor of a major metro daily, I knew he would at least be able to forge a good career as a journalist. The younger Maurizo had been a bit shy, but as an ME who not just ran the paper but defeated the union in a strike, he had showed a tough-as-nails attitude and didn’t suffer fools gladly. He was, like most good editors, fair. If you did a good job, he let you know or left you alone. But if you screwed up or attracted his attention for negative reasons, he could be ruthless, almost like a Roman emperor. So his appearance at the edge of our little drama was a newsworthy event. Brent quickly divested his role in the production and turned to his keyboard even though he had long since written and submitted his story.

  Since I had known Larry as a wet-behind-the-ears journalist, I wasn’t scared by his arrival. I knew he could fire me as easily as he had hired me, but I had been fired before and probably would be fired again. If not here and now, then sometime and somewhere else. Larry was completely aware of that, but as long as I didn’t undermine his authority and did my job, I was fine.

  “Larry? What are you doing here?” Whittaker stammered.

  “I’m here because I can hear you guys across the room, and despite what people might think, chaos doesn’t work in a newsroom.”

  “That’s okay, it’s only a little matter of editorial concern and we’ve got it under control here, don’t we, Desroches?” Whittaker looked at me and raised her eyebrows to ask for my support. I gave her nothing because that’s what she deserved.

  “That’s total bullshit and you know it, Whittaker,” Maurizo snapped. “What I’ve gathered by watching this for the past few minutes is that because of your failure to trust one of our reporters, a reporter that I hired, we’re in a situation where that reporter is threatening to quit. Am I right?”

  “Well, it’s not as simple as that. I was just trying to confirm an anomaly in Leo’s story. He has information that the other outlets don’t, and I was—”

  “Since when do we give a shit about what the other news outlets are running?” Larry interrupted. “We are the most credible news outfit in this city. Have been for almost a hundred years. We do not check what the other outlets are running to confirm our stories; they check us, you got that?”

  Whittaker nodded, but couldn’t stop herself from talking. Despite the situation she was in, I had to give her some credit for standing up for herself. “I just wanted to confirm the details in Leo’s story.”

  “Then next time you want to confirm something in one of our reporter’s stories, don’t accuse them of fabricating something. I’m sure Leo has the answers you wanted, and if you had asked him nicely, he would gladly have given those answers. It looks to me like you just let some past baggage get in the way of your normally good judgment. If we’re going to remake this paper into what it was, then everyone has to put that baggage behind him and work together.”

  Whittaker nodded. “Yes, you’re right. You’re right.” Even though Whittaker agreed in public, I knew that she didn’t completely agree in private. In fact, I knew there were a lot of staffers who weren’t interested in working together and were just biding their time, waiting for Maurizo to be fired or, most likely, promoted, or for better options, like a new job, to come their way. None of this was likely to come anytime soon so this kind of dysfunction was here to stay. I couldn’t help but smile at the silliness of the situation, and unfortunately, Maurizo noticed it and thought I was smiling at Whittaker getting the shit kicked out of her.

  “And you got nothing to smile at, Desroches,” he said, turning on me. “You arrived twenty minutes before deadline and when your editor calls you on it and asks about an anomalous fact in your story, you get All the President’s Men on her. Next time get back on time and don’t be such a jerk, okay?”

  I nodded, realizing that there was no point in pursuing the matter further. Maurizo was quite aware of my history and no doubt my late arrival was twigging some alarm he had set when he first hired me. I would have to be more careful from now on.

  “Okay, here’s what’s going to happen,” Maurizo said to both of us. “We’re going to run Leo’s online story as is and Whittaker, you’re going to tell Leo he did a nice job for getting a scoop.”

  “Nice job, Leo.” Whittaker nodded. “It’s a good scoop.”

  “And you, Leo,” Maurizo continued, “you’re going to apologize to Whittaker for being a jerk and for being late and then fill us in on what happened out there.”

  I fulfilled all requests and when I was finished, Maurizo stepped in. “Okay, what do we know about this Whitford character? Anderson, you were in on this, so help us out.”

  Anderson tried to look surprised that Maurizo had noticed him, but when he realized he wasn’t in trouble, he offered to help. “He’s a homicide detective, good guy, good cop, helpful if he can be. But this seems to be totally out of character. I have never heard of any reporter being allowed into a crime scene tent.”

  Maurizo nodded. “Right. Leo, how do you know Whitford so that he would let you into the tent?”

  “To be honest, this is the first time I’ve had any dealings with him while I’ve been at the paper. He just knows.” I paused, not sure how to explain how Whitford and I met. “I guess you could just say, he knows me from before.”

  Maurizo nodded again. “Right,” he said, and nothing else. Of all the staffers at the paper, he was the only one who knew what the term from before meant to me. It had come up a couple of other times in my half year at the paper and I knew that it was a topic of much gossip and speculation. A few thought it meant that Maurizo and I had simply worked together on another newspaper in another time and place and left it at that. That was something that we had never denied; in fact, a couple of times, over drinks after a deadline, I had admitted that I had given the ME his first newspaper job.

  But there were other theories ranging from stories that I was an alcoholic or a drug addict and had lived on the streets to stories that I had done time, or had even been a cop, worked undercover, and because of a difficult case which threw off my mental equilibrium, had disappeared for a while. The fact that a homicide detective for the Edmonton Police Service was part of from before would add more ammunition to these stories.

  “Okay, then, did Whitford give you any indication about why he let you into the tent?” Maurizo asked after a couple of seconds.

  “He only said he wanted to give a face to this victim, to remind people that victims of crime are human beings, not just dead bodies without personality.”

  “That’s it?”

  “That’s it,” I said, although I didn’t say that Whitford had said any media outlet would have done, and that I was just lucky to have been the first on the scene. I wanted to give my scoop more journalistic credibility than the fact I was lucky enough to arrive before everyone else did.

  “Okay, let me run this by you guys and see what you think,” Larry said, which meant, This is what is going to
happen, I’m just being polite asking for your opinions.

  “Leo, you’ll write the main story about the body in the field, expanding on your online piece. And we’ll run that A-1, above the fold, unless a plane crashes or the Oilers make a trade.” Which was unlikely because the hockey season was just starting and it was too early for the finger-pointing to begin. A-1 above the fold meant front page at the top, which made it the top story of tomorrow’s paper. Everyone around was shocked, even me.

  “A-1? You sure, Larry?” Whittaker asked. “No disrespect, but found bodies rarely make the front page of the city section, and the fact that Leo found out she was female and native when everyone else didn’t, doesn’t rate front-page coverage.”

  Everyone nodded, even Larry did, because it was true. Just because someone was dead and found in a field didn’t mean it was big news. Sure, death was a bigger story than life, which was why I was sent to cover this story and why it would run in tomorrow’s paper, but it didn’t rate being the top story of the day.

  Then Larry spoke. “That’s true, but what makes this story different is Leo going into the tent. And since nobody ever gets into a crime scene tent unless they’re police, Leo here is also going to write a sidebar about what it’s like in a crime scene tent, who was there, what it looked and felt like, and why he was invited. We’ll call it a rare, exclusive story to show those other news bastards that we’re still ten times better than them at covering the news of this city. In fact, the first words of your lead will be In a rare, exclusive blah blah blah. You can do that, Leo, give me that lead and about four hundred words on that, writing it as a major exclusive?”