Perfectly Good Crime

by Dete Meserve

  She snapped a photo of the coin with her cell phone. “What makes you think there were silver coins left at the crime scenes?”

  “One of the estate owners said there were. Coins just like this one.”

  “Which owner?” Her hand was firmly clasped around the coin now, and the volume of her voice rose a notch. “Where did you get this?”

  Ryan cleared his throat. “Sorry, but I’m not following here. What’s this coin have to do with the subject of today’s questions?”

  She flipped through the papers in her folder. “I’m asking your client how she received evidence from the crime scene.”

  “So it is evidence, then?” I said. “You’re confirming that there were coins like this found at the crime scene?”

  Her face flushed and I could tell she was kicking herself for what little she had said. “I’m not saying that at all.” Her voice held less conviction now. “You’ve misunderstood. In fact, this discussion is over.”

  She closed her folder and stood.

  “What just happened here? Weren’t we supposed to be talking about the phone call with the robbery suspect?” Ryan asked.

  I rose. “You can’t take my coin with you.”

  She opened her hand and made a show of placing the coin on the table. “Thank you both for your time.”

  Thirty minutes later I was live on Channel Eleven with my report linking the silver coins found at the estate crime scenes with the coins given out at the giveaway of ten thousand food backpacks to the poor. When I explained that the coin had Russian words that translated into “Take from the rich and give to the poor” I smiled briefly and wished I hadn’t. But this was live television and I couldn’t “undo” a smile.

  Within hours, the story went viral. The hashtag #RobinHood trended on Twitter and Facebook, and clips of my report started getting thousands, then hundreds of thousands, then millions of views online.

  Many journalists seized on the Russian connection and delved into theories about the possible groups that were behind it. CNN did an entire segment with a Russian linguist who was decoding the Russian words to determine if there was any hidden meaning. Apparently there wasn’t.

  Hannah had jumped into finding the manufacturer of the silver coins, hoping that would lead us to uncovering Robin Hood’s identity. But she reached a dead end when she found there were thousands of custom silver coin mints across the globe and a local coin expert pointed out how easily and inexpensively someone could mint these coins at home.

  Most news outlets focused on Robin Hood and ran clips from movies in their news stories. There was swashbuckling and debonair Robin Hood as played by Errol Flynn, complete with green shirt and brown hat. We also showed world-weary and mature Robin Hood played by Sean Connery, the boy-next-door Robin Hood created by Kevin Costner, and gritty, armor-wearing Robin Hood portrayed by Russell Crowe. We even saw the swinging musical version of Robin Hood featuring Frank Sinatra and his “merry men” Sammy Davis Jr. and Dean Martin.

  The images captured viewers’ and reporters’ imaginations. “Robin Hood’s appeal comes from primal desires for justice and equality,” one scholar said on our morning newscast. “And though medieval in origins, this is a fantasy broad and deep enough to possess the imaginations of people in almost all times and places, but especially in these disillusioned days of Wall Street robber barons and Bernie Madoffs.”

  “Whoever is behind these robberies couldn’t have chosen more vibrant imagery,” a pundit on our noon cast said. “Robin Hood is seen as someone who is bold and courageous and a beacon of hope to the poor. Somehow, breaking the law seems more forgivable if there is a noble and just cause behind it, carried out by someone with pure and honest intentions.”

  Meanwhile, I was interviewed for all the network’s news shows, including the morning news magazine at a bleary-eyed three in the morning. My reports ended up on every national cast, a heady experience and a physically draining one.

  My cell phone voice mail was full, and there wasn’t even a free minute to listen to the messages or cull through the texts and e-mails viewers and friends were sending. As I watched the frenzy the story was creating, I knew my father would be angry with me for divulging something he told me off the record. But the first angry call I got wasn’t from him. It was from Stephen Bening.

  When he called the station his tone was so urgent, the station receptionist paged me several times rather than sending him to voice mail.

  “Kate?” he said when I picked up the phone. “Do you know what’s happening at my home? About a hundred people are protesting outside my gates.”

  “Protesting what?”

  “Good question,” he said loudly. “Apparently my wealth. Your Robin Hood story is inspiring all-out warfare against the rich.”

  I was silent for a long moment. “Maybe it’s time we did an interview together?”

  “You’re right,” he said finally. “It’s time your viewers heard the other side of the story.”

  I was excited about nabbing the interview with Stephen—the first and only on-camera interview any reporter had scored with a super-wealthy victim—but he couldn’t schedule it until his return to LA a few days later. I offered to send a crew to record the interview wherever he was in San Francisco, but his schedule was too packed to fit it in. We settled on an interview in four days. Ten in the morning. At his estate.

  Hannah had pulled together information about some of the Russian groups the FBI suspected were behind the bank hacks and I began to sift through them. But as I sat at my desk, I couldn’t believe what I saw on the monitors around the newsroom. Protestors were assembling outside estates throughout the country, not just at Stephen Bening’s. A hundred or so people stood outside Thomas Speyer’s mansion in Bel Air hoisting signs that read take from the rich, give to the poor and robin hood is right! Another group, mostly in their twenties and thirties, assembled outside a CEO’s $55 million estate in San Francisco. By one count, as many as twelve protests were underway.

  My cell phone buzzed in my purse, startling me. Andrew Wright’s name flashed on the screen.

  “Congrats on cracking the Robin Hood story wide open! This is exactly why we want you on our team.”

  “Thanks,” I said, then ducked into the nearest edit bay to get some privacy.

  “Look, we’re getting on the phone with your agent to make an offer today. It’s still Sharon McCarthy, right?”

  He moved fast. “Yes, but—”

  “I’m not going to talk numbers with you, but I promise you what we’re offering is at least double what Channel Eleven’s giving you. And with the exposure you’re getting on this Robin Hood story, you’re going to find ANC a great home to work on the kind of big stories where you excel.”

  He certainly was good at the flattery thing.

  “We’re all very excited. In a month, you’ll be calling New York your home.”

  Most reporters would be overjoyed at this opportunity. In journalism school, many of us dreamed of working for an all-news channel someday, covering stories of national—even international—importance and working with some of the best in the business. But following that dream that would mean leaving Eric behind, and that thought was making my stomach sink to the floor.

  I called his cell but it went straight to voice mail. It was nearly impossible to get hold of him when he was on duty, but two days had passed and we hadn’t texted or talked to each other. Something felt off.

  I texted: “Call me when you have a sec.”

  When I returned to my desk, I found Marc Beck, the national sales executive, waiting for me. He was busy looking at his phone, so at least he wasn’t rifling through the papers on my desk. While it was common practice for another reporter to sit in my chair, I was irritated that he had the audacity to do the same.

  When he saw me coming toward him, he jumped up and shoved his phone into his tailored pants. “Marc Beck. We met before—”

  “I rememb
er.”

  “Hope it’s okay that I…I want to tell you something. Off the record. You’re going to hear about it anyway, but I figured you’d want to know before…well, before the top brass in the news department tell you.”

  “I’m listening.”

  He lowered his voice. “PowerTrade just pulled their advertising on the Channel Eleven News. Indefinitely. They are one of our biggest clients.”

  “And? I think we had this conversation before. I don’t care if a brokerage firm advertises on Channel Eleven or not.”

  “But it’s about you this time, Kate. They’re pulling their ads because they don’t like the way you’re covering the Robin Hood story. They think it’s wrong for a senator’s daughter to be advocating for people to steal from the rich and give to the poor.”

  My mind reeled, trying to figure out what I’d done in the reports that appeared to be advocating. “They said that?”

  “Word for word.”

  “I wasn’t advocating anything.”

  “Hey, I’m just telling you what they said. In case, you know, you get pressure to stop doing this story or get assigned to something else. Well, you’ll know why.”

  “I think you know there is a clear division between editorial content and advertising—”

  “Absolutely,” he said, his tone condescending. “But advertisers have a right to associate their brands with some messages. And not others.”

  “I’m sure my news bosses won’t bow to pressure from some brokerage firm.”

  “They’re not ‘some’ brokerage firm,” he said with a dry chuckle. “They’re what keeps the lights on here.” He shoved his hands into his pockets. “Everyone around here says you’re a really sharp reporter, but you don’t get it, do you? That brokerage firm writes your paycheck. Mine too. You’ve angered someone with your Robin Hood reports, and they’re going to take you down where it hurts most—the station’s pocketbook.”

  Chapter Fourteen

  I was only two minutes late, but the assignment meeting was already in full swing by the time I arrived the next morning. David was in rare form. Instead of sipping green juice, he was gulping from a cold can of Dr Pepper. The caffeine was clearly affecting him because he was talking quickly and his cheeks were flushed.

  “Nice of you to join us,” he said as I slid into a chair.

  I glanced at the whiteboard where David had scribbled my name under the Breaking News column with the words “kidnapped woman in trunk.” I frowned and scanned the board for the Robin Hood story but didn’t find it anywhere.

  “Kate, a Pomona woman made a 911 call from the trunk of an abandoned SUV off the 101 at Vineland. Says she’s been kidnapped. You and Christopher should get on the road while police are still on the scene.”

  I considered protesting. But the last time I’d argued about an assignment, I ended up covering a story—for the station website—about some horses that got loose from the equestrian center in Burbank.

  “Great,” I said, as though I was eager to get started on the assignment. “I’ve got notes on the Robin Hood story. Who should I give them to?”

  David paused. I knew he was irritated because he started rubbing his right ear, but his tone was unruffled. “I think we’re going to give that story a rest. For the moment.”

  “Are we bowing to advertiser pressure?” I heard my words come out and then drop to the floor like lead balloons. Reporter Kevin Chen shot me a look that made it clear he thought I was an idiot for tackling that hot-button subject. I had the feeling he was right.

  “We’re focusing on more urgent stories,” David said calmly. As though it were true.

  I nodded, pretending I believed him. “Glad to hear that some big advertiser can’t influence our agenda on a story of nationwide importance.”

  He faked a smile and raised his Dr Pepper as if in a toast. “You’re right about that.”

  I knew he was giving out the party line while the executives at the top scrambled to figure out how to deal with the loss of a major advertiser. But I’d wanted to be in the news business not because I expected to change the world with every story but because I hoped it was a place where the truth could be told. In journalism school, my professor often quoted Stanley Walker, a New York Herald Tribune editor from the first half of the twentieth century. “What makes a good journalist?” he wrote. “The answer is easy. He hates lies and sham but keeps his temper. He is loyal to his paper and to what he looks upon as his profession…he resents attempts to debase it.”

  Back when Stanley Walker wrote those lines, few women were journalists and the preferred mode of journalism was still the ink-stained newspaper. But antiquated words and genders aside, the truth of what he said still lives on. For reporters like me anyway. In a time when the mighty dollar ruled over all enterprise, were we becoming dinosaurs?

  “Why are we dropping the Robin Hood story?” I asked.

  “Folks, what Kate is referring to is that PowerTrade has pulled all of its advertising from Channel Eleven. These are their words, not mine—they are “offended that a senator’s daughter is advocating for the thieves by trumpeting what they’re doing with the stolen funds, igniting anger and protests against the wealthy, and using her platform as a senator’s daughter to campaign for tax reforms against our economy’s job creators.”

  The sting of his words left me breathless. “I haven’t done any of those things.”

  He took a slug of his Dr Pepper and pointed at me. “We’ll talk about this later.”

  I straightened. “There are hundreds of other reporters on the Robin Hood story, but PowerTrade is only offended by what I’ve reported. Why? Is it because I’ve been ‘advocating for the thieves’?” The room went silent. I looked down at my hands and realized they were clenched in tight fists. “That’s a smoke screen. Last year PowerTrade spent a hundred forty million dollars lobbying the government, primarily over issues of taxation of the wealthy. Removing their advertising from Channel Eleven has nothing to do with me or this news department and everything to do with my father who’s head of the Senate Finance Committee—which is working on tax reform proposals for the wealthy. If you take me off this story, you’re letting PowerTrade use Channel Eleven to lobby my father, to lobby the government.”

  He crushed his Dr Pepper can and tossed it into the trash bin. “That’s not what we’re doing. When we take you off this story, we’re telling our shareholders that if a particular reporter is causing us to lose millions in advertiser dollars, we’ll make the right business decision.”

  What kind of editor takes a reporter off the very story that’s driving ratings through the roof? How could he possibly call himself a journalist when he buckles at the first hint of pressure from an advertiser? Was this a sign it was time to leave Channel Eleven?

  White-hot anger burst through me. I’m not one to rage or throw a tantrum, but I could feel a raw and volatile energy brewing. The intensity of it frightened me for a moment, but then I felt the power of it coursing through my veins. I knew the next words to leave my mouth would be brutal, but precise.

  “David—”

  “Don’t,” he said. “I know exactly what you’re going to say. And you’ll regret it if you say it out loud in here.”

  My stomach was still shaking when I returned to my desk, where I found a folded note on my keyboard. “Find me ASAP,” it read. “But act like nothing’s happening. Hannah.”

  I looked over the reporters’ bullpen and saw Hannah hunched over her computer, a set of headphones over her ears. I reread the note. Hannah wasn’t one to send handwritten notes—texts or e-mails were the norm—so I wasn’t sure what to make of the old-fashioned communication. I also didn’t know how to act like “nothing’s happening,” since a lot was happening, so I strode to her desk like I always did.

  “What’s this about? Have we heard from Locksley?” I asked.

  She shook her head. “I’m listening to the police scanner and there’s a h
uge gathering at the site where that boy was killed in the drive-by shooting. The one you covered. I know you’re on the kidnapping story, but I wanted you to hear about it first.”

  As I said, Hannah is loyal. “Is it peaceful? How many people?”

  She scanned her notes. “At last count police were saying over a thousand. Peaceful so far. There’s some people playing music, handing out candles. Looks like they’re holding a vigil.”

  I shook my head. “Sorry, Hannah, but a vigil for a drive-by in Arlington Heights will never get any airtime.”

  “But—”

  “This is the news business. Sometimes doing the right thing isn’t the best thing for getting an audience,” I said, then cringed because I hated when David said those words to me. I knew she didn’t like my answer—neither did I—but as I raced to the parking lot to find the news van and get on the road for the kidnapping story, I had the sudden feeling that I was making a big mistake. It started as a pang in my gut and then spread up my arms, an ache that felt like I’d overdone it lifting weights, even though I hadn’t been anywhere near a gym.

  I found the news photographer, Christopher, sitting in the news van, engine running, and finishing a cinnamon bear claw. “Ready?” he asked.

  I didn’t answer. With one foot on the curb and the other in the van, I tried to think this through. The last time a large group assembled in Arlington Heights, ten thousand backpacks of food were given out. Was that a one-time event or could Robin Hood have more things planned?

  “Give me a sec,” I said to Christopher and then called Hannah on my cell. “I think that gathering in Arlington Heights has something to do with Robin Hood.”

  Hannah’s voice was soft but insistent. “You should go. I’ll cover the kidnapping for you.”

  “I’ve been taken off the Robin Hood story. David will probably—.”

  “Not if your story turns out to be what we both think it is.”