Worthy Of This Great City

by Mike Miller

  It was evening, and I was sitting in my cubicle staring at my monitor and thinking about bridges and liberty and ignorance and endless transience, and wondering what I wasn’t seeing and what was going to become of me.

  The paper was in bankruptcy, hundreds of millions of dollars in debt and about to be auctioned off like some suburban split-level in foreclosure. The city desk was clean to the bone, there was only a faint vestige of the advertising department, and editorial was being serially discarded like used paper towels. There were maybe three hundred employees overall. Plus we were still facing litigation with the union over the staff reductions.

  All this was outlined for us late one afternoon with some briefly introduced nonentity from the Newspaper Guild in hilarious required attendance. I was enormously outraged even though I wasn’t directly affected at the moment: that was displaced fury at myself for setting off on another wayward escapade down yet another futile career path. You tell yourself you’re part of a veritable horde of resentful white collars, part of the great global reorganization, but I can assure you the knowledge does nothing to mitigate the personal humiliation. Not when there were still so many successes everywhere, smug and sleek with their designer briefcases and healthy college funds for their children.

  I needed to find a real job.

  Carmen was removed to something like New Jersey obituaries, some deliberately offensive assignment; she took the hint without undue fuss and found a position with local public television. Thereafter we lost touch except for one text a month or so later thanking me for an ecard: “Love the sharp funny FYI interviewed real movie star believes in karma profound.” She’s still there, so I presume she’s learned proper respect. It’s not like we were ever friends. Once during my performance review she told me, as a compliment: “I don’t know why everyone says you’re so difficult to work with.”

  The paper merely intensified its same strategy, still hoping to bring us into the contemporary world by giving priority to the website and featuring even more of the local stuff the reader really desired and less of all that tiresome in-depth national and international news. Our sister tabloid again proved amenable to the program, but it was meeting with increased resistance in my newsroom, our ivy-league editors suffering for their journalistic ideals. You saw it in their posture, in their defiant sincerity. They were so correctly outraged with the whole heedless world.

  So just like the real nightmare reporters - and we had plenty of those self-destructive clichés, eternally on the scent - I grasped at my little municipal scandals, Manetti and Mealy and Columbus plus whatever was going on over at PhillyCares and then the FBI investigation, even though I knew it was nothing but the usual kind of malodorous human mulch, what else? Hoping against my own common sense to eke out a measure of acclaim and with it some temporary security, because underneath I was frantic.

  About ten days later we had one of those unseasonably temperate March afternoons, and I walked all the way over to Rittenhouse Square, eventually settling on a bench near Walnut Street where I could watch the bustling office drones eating lunch and the idiots already in shorts and the observant, disreputable loiterers and the college kids using their sweatshirts as blankets. Probably everyone meeting some implicit obligation but surely some taking real enjoyment from the ritual. I was betting she would show, and of course she did, right on schedule, that literal fat lady taking her customary position off the path. She was wearing a gleaming red-gold faux fox jacket and her hair, dyed jet black, was piled on top of her head in a fantastical jeweled tower. I was being deliberately ridiculous but I wanted either inspiration or a clear failure – something decisive anyway. I wanted her to sing down the curtain on the whole disjointed, lunatic carnival of color and noise so I wasn’t involved anymore.

  Because think it all through:

  Even after a thorough effort I couldn’t find anything on PhillyCares financially or even anecdotally. Mimi Norton was Santa Claus. “The story there will break on its own before you can do it,” my grumpy bureau chief pointed out succinctly, and I could only nod, knowing he shared my frustration.

  I went and talked to the FBI about Mealy and incidentally van Zandt, garnering a perfunctory word of thanks and the distinct impression I was annoying them. No one seemed very concerned about my story blowing an official investigation, which was hardly flattering. (In retrospect I could have thought that one through better, not that it matters now.)

  Mealy’s blond office visitor, easily identified from published photos with Manetti, was Frances Wilenski, an attorney in a respectable enough New Jersey firm. So she represented Manetti and she was waiting to see Mealy, so what? She’d seen me too, and must know I’d overheard Mealy with Thom, but again, so what? So Mealy delivered a friendly word of caution to a colleague, rumors picked up somewhere, why bend it all out of context? And Mealy had plenty of disposable funds only not the inexplicable kind, nothing to raise suspicions you didn’t already have.

  And what in the world could connect Manetti to Columbus? Both the developers and the financial people were utterly reputable; it was ludicrous to imagine them scheming with the mob. Why would they? Now maybe if it were the casino project, but it wasn’t.

  We conferred that long morning, my bureau chief and our eminently reasonable political editor. We examined what we had and admitted to virtual certainty, substantial ignorance, and utter impotence. All we could do was keep scrounging around and wait.

  Meanwhile Ruth was still touting PhillyCares despite whatever Thom shared about his encounter with Mealy, but that didn’t surprise me; as Mealy himself explained, leaving would only expedite exposure. Her obstinacy and ego were responsible for her own looming disgrace. She’d look the fool, but Thom would be fine, the city was completely infatuated with him.

  So I sat and studied all the other crazies at the park, conceding that whatever I’d involved myself with would continue to happen until it finished and there was nothing I could do about it anymore.

  I was at a dinner that night, a retirement party for a gentlemanly sports columnist at the Pen & Pencil Club. As bars go the place is less than impressive, with a mediocre menu and ditto beer list. It’s famous mainly for dishing up crock-pot hotdogs into the early hours, plus it’s a convenient venue for the mayor to drop by for scheduled casual intercourse with the chummy relaxed press. There’s this frankly irritating ambience, a forced companionability and determined lack of affectation that exemplifies inverted snobbery. To be fair it’s the same at MacIlhenny’s, my preferred bar, with its mix of downtown residents, history professors, and novelist wannabes, and where even the junkies act ostentatiously at their ease. That night I was floating in a state of grudging acceptance, slightly drunk but not detached, when just before ten o’clock there commenced the disjointed chiming and buzzing of multiple cell phones and the movement of heads and bodies towards the mounted television. This attenuated film critic standing near me told to the room: “Askew died.”

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  The story: Alan Johansson, a junior majoring in business management at Temple, and his girlfriend Sheila Urbano, a cosmetologist, spent the early part of that evening just driving around doing nothing in particular until for reasons unknown but without being under the influence of any foreign substance Johansson sent his 2012 Honda Civic screeching straight down Montgomery Avenue towards the heavy Broad Street traffic and flat into Thom, jaywalking the diagonal from the Liacouras Center to his parking garage. Crossing with an uncharacteristic, egregious disregard for his personal safety on a dark street, somehow ignorant of the immediate roar and light. Thom who was always so attentive to his least paper cut and sniffle, moving blindly towards an utterly stupid death.

  I admit, at first I didn’t know what to think.

  I waited at the district police headquarters with everyone else. We were told Johansson had been given a processed cheese sandwich. A lawyer from the suburbs showed up armed with concern and described his client as distraught and confused at being
involved in all this when he was just fooling around.

  Entirely predictable comments from the mayor, a minor and unexpected insult. More emotion from the expected Councilpersons: David expressing shock and devastation, June looking perplexed. And Margery for once seemed vulnerable, as if she’d just experienced what the world was like for other people. “He was a gentleman in the true sense of the word,” she parroted. They were all saying it while they ran those required composite profiles on the news, old clips in disjointed time pulled as background for effusive biographical sketches that captured nothing essential of the man himself, his drive and humor, his intelligence and charm, his neurotic tics and compulsive understated insistence on decency and common sense and his vaunted, controlling ambition.

  For me this was another reminder that life is profoundly uninterested in people. What’s hilarious is the way everyone manages to forget, how everyone’s cowering psyche goes running back into some safe fantasy world and then they pretend they’re brave little soldiers carrying on when the truth is they simply can’t face an indifferent universe and normal life is pure escapism.

  Even I was guilty, because my own first impulse was to try to make sense of it. I entertained some muddled suspicion involving Mealy and Manetti panicking because they’d exposed themselves, deciding to clean it up, something like that, even while I knew that was stupid. Well, there was no video for once, and that was a little odd. But what could it show, anyway, other than lights and movement. It was entirely random, there was no other rational possibility. Except initially I didn’t grasp how much of Thom’s true legacy, his essential human dignity, depended on that unsettling truth.

  Two days later I got some surprising news courtesy of my favorite City Hall source, her voice babbling excitedly in my ear. There’d been some kind of early-hours scuffle outside Thom’s offices. Other people repeated the same rumor, adding details about illegal access and then some kind of shoving match out in the corridor. Then the local news was citing an anonymous police source regarding a federal investigation and the bungled removal of listening devices.

  I was open-mouthed.

  Next morning it went official, a pert FBI spokeswoman issuing a brief confirmation that bugs had indeed been removed from Thom’s offices but shutting down insinuations regarding a federal investigation of the deceased. “Councilman Askew was not a target nor was he in any way implicated in any wrongdoing.” That was all, with no hint as to whether other Council offices were similarly accessorized. The U.S. attorney’s office refused comment. The mayor’s office expressed concern and outrage.

  This was a Friday. Monday morning I was present for a press conference at the FBI offices on Arch Street presided over by someone in actual authority standing behind a podium in front of a nothingness of beige paneling to explain our city to us.

  “We’re today announcing the conclusion of a wide-ranging corruption probe targeting the offices of the mayor and directly involving some twenty individuals closely connected to him, although I must strongly emphasize that the mayor himself was not a target. However the investigation was aimed at the dealings of the mayor’s personal friend and supporter, attorney Timothy Baylor, and has today resulted in thirty-three counts of fraud and corruption and additional charges against Mr. Baylor and persons involved with him. We are dealing with a systematic pay-to-play practice of extortion under which those hoping to do business with the administration were expected to contribute to organizations controlled by influential friends of this administration.” She transitioned into dismissal mode. “We are continuing to unravel what can best be described as a web of corruption connecting various offices in City Hall.”

  I went back to my office where there was Megan, twirling a little in her chair, frowning to enhance her concentration. “So the wife. Baylor closely connected to Norton and PhillyCares, and the wife all of a sudden so big on them.”

  Of course she was right.

  An accidental convergence of entirely separate but concurrent scandals, Mealy slithering into Thom’s office with his pathetic effort to clinch the Columbus deal for God knows what reason, meanwhile broadcasting directly to the FBI. No wonder the feds weren’t excited by my precious revelations.

  Well, figuring the Councilman to be in full panic mode I headed over to City Hall. We were back to winter temperatures and the general populace was acting like that was an affront, sheltering in their jackets and practically cursing the gray clouds. The steam from the sidewalk grates was suddenly as thick as dragons’ breath and you completely vanished walking through it. Everything was emphasized and sharpened, the invigorating city environment infecting the pedestrians with a phantom sense of purpose, then draining the energy right back out of them with myriad minor frustrations.

  Mealy’s secretary, an attractive Latina in her thirties, reported him in a meeting, but I handed her a murmur and ingratiating grin and barged along in, assuming the assembled company would be eager to talk to me. Then I sat my ass on the arm of the requisite leather sofa, all casual concern.

  Automatic raised eyebrows all round, look at the humorously arrogant little insect. One thing I’ll say for Mealy, he didn’t look ruffled but just as usual, flourishing in hair and body and wallet, lush but never fat and with that constant unctuous sheen. The others I knew by sight but not by name: an overstuffed younger man with an habitual squint standing behind his superior’s shoulder, and a thin woman in her thirties at the far end of the couch with that self-righteous minor politico look, wearing a dark pencil skirt and expensive heels.

  In contrast to his spartan neighborhood storefront this was a refined interior, with a Queen Anne reproduction desk and tables, and shimmering royal blue draperies pooling onto an antique carpet.

  “You want to tell us what this is all about?” Mealy was evincing petulance more than concern, which for some reason I found a little touching.

  “Yes, well, I want you to correct me if I’m misinformed here, but I understand the FBI is about to connect Jimmy Manetti, the Columbus project, and this office in an extortion scheme.”

  Everything in the room abruptly stopped for about one satisfying heartbeat, then smoothly resumed as if oblivious of that little blip.

  “You hear from who?” That was the younger guy; Mealy was carefully seating himself behind his elegant desk, loosening his shoulders. “Because I can tell you, they’re leading you down an incorrect path. They’re making unsubstantiated assumptions and that can be dangerous.” The nameless one strode around to stand behind his superior, the better to glare at me. The female remained jammed into her far corner of the couch, mouth shut.

  I shrugged.

  Mealy spread his hands as if mirroring my wonderment. “So what can I say to you?” That shoulder roll again, as if the expensive blue suit didn’t fit so well. “Sure, I know these people, they’re my constituents, I meet people here and there in passing, socially. Is that a federal case? I have no business or other kind of connection to Manetti. Same with Columbus; I know the people involved because right now they’re important people to this city. We’re talking about my district, what do you think? Anyway, what’s Manetti to them?”

  That was a really good question; I wished I knew the answer. You thought instinctively about unions and construction, but that was crazy. I mean sure the union bosses look out for mob interests, that’s only to be expected, but today only the Democrats have any real influence with labor.

  I eased myself out, confident Mealy would continue riding those protestations straight to an extended stay up at Allenwood, the favored mountain retreat of Philly officials. Riding my nervous energy, I spent most of that night putting together my first Columbus piece. Most of it was questions and filler, background stuff. The next day my bureau chief, political editor, and I met with the paper’s attorney so she could tear it all apart again. But the prophetic substance survived: something’s rotten, here are the players, wait and see. My great journalistic achievement.

  Obviously too early for back
slaps and handshakes, but I accrued a few enjoyable encounters, attempts to stem the text. First came Marlene Angeli, her lithe figure draped in modest charm, exiting the elevators and inquiring for me, scanning the newsroom anxiously. I went to meet her halfway. She was all dressed up in a proper little black suit with a short skirt, subdued make-up, and a strand of pearls; she looked like she was coming in for a job interview.

  I pulled the extra chair over to my cubicle and she moved it even closer to mine, possibly distrusting the newsroom’s casual assumption of privacy. Looking down and smoothing her skirt but not apologizing for her intrusion.

  “Mr. Manos, I’m really worried so please tell me what’s going on.”

  “Well, if you’re concerned for your uncle, you probably should be.”

  “But none of these accusations is true! He told me and I can always tell when he’s lying.” Vulnerable eyes upward at me, imploring in what would have been a laughable cliché except for the genuine concern compelling the charade, weighing down her troubled little self. A deep frown of anxiety and dark circles under those melting brown eyes.

  “So who’s telling you these things anyway?” she asked. “Because I know it has to be somebody who’s against us for their own reasons, so I think I have the right to know. Then maybe I’ll tell you some truth about whoever that is.” Now that was a pretty businesslike proposition and presented as such, neither a plea nor a demand but offered with a poker player’s neutral caution.

  “I happened to get advance notice of what everyone will learn soon enough from official sources. That’s the truth, Marlene.”