The Journalist

by Dan Newman

  I hang up the phone and sit back. Things are beginning to gel again. And tomorrow is Thursday—the day I told Trots that Chloe does her money run.

  9

  This morning spring seems to have made a real claim on the city. The streets are dry, the sun is bright in an entirely cloudless sky, and the black icebergs that cling resolutely to the curbsides are all gone. I move down Park, feeling alive again after my three days of confinement. I can tell the summer is nearly here, mostly by the fashion barometer. Women’s skirts are creeping north, and the colors are getting bolder. It’s a different city this morning, and I smell hope. I know that tonight I’ll expose myself to another risk, but this time things will be more controlled—and controlled by me.

  I realize there’s risk to Chloe, who is nothing but a patsy in my scheme, and is about as much a drug dealer as I am a fighter pilot. But what risk there is is minimal, and will ultimately be negated because I’ll be right there to make sure things work out. I’m moving easier now, and I can feel myself coming back, my confidence welling, filling my soul like cool water poured into parched soil. I hop on a streetcar and work myself toward the university, then hop off and make for the alley: the scene of tonight’s performance.

  The alley, the one that Chloe Dysart uses as a shortcut to the parking garage where she lodges her silver Audi TT, is perfect. I watch from the street as a man in gray overalls pitches cardboard boxes into one of the dumpsters—the one I will hide behind later tonight, in fact—and then disappears through a flat steel door in the brickwork. The alley looks innocent enough in the daylight, and to be honest, not much worse in the dark. It is the nature of the alley that makes it my choice for tonight. Like all good alleys, it forces its occupants to follow a definitive course to the end.

  As I survey the lane, I imagine tonight’s scene in my mind’s eye: I see Chloe come into the alley from Harbord Street, where I’m standing now, humming or maybe listening to headphones, with not even a glance over her shoulder (her social status makes her immune to events as common as muggings, or so she must believe). I see another figure enter the alley, also from Harbord Street. He follows her silently. I can’t see his face, but I know it’s Trots.

  That’s when Chloe hears him, spins quickly and takes a step backward. There are words, Trots grabs for her backpack, and although that’s when I want to enter the fray, I wait. I know Trots will strike her, just as I know Chloe won’t give up the bag entirely without a struggle. He threatens her with his straight razor and Chloe cringes. A second later it happens: a backhand that spins Chloe and drops her to one knee. Now the timing is right.

  Stepping out from behind the dumpsters halfway up the alley, my features well hidden beneath a hoodie, a ballcap and the upturned collar of an old leather jacket, I shout bravely at him, my voice husked down a few octaves for effect. “Hey, back away from her!” I yell, hefting my aluminum Louisville Slugger above my head. The only light in the alley is behind me, a stark glare they must look into that reveals me only as a featureless silhouette. A silhouette with a very large bat.

  Trots springs backward, startled, and darts for the exit. Once I’m sure he’s really making a bolt for it, I take up the chase, but give up at the corner. I turn and jog back to Chloe, who is crying quietly, and I offer to take her home. She resists, but it’s a shaken and limp resistance. She says that she has a car, but I am firm, and insist on making sure she gets home safely. I tell her she’s in no shape to drive, and that the car will be fine until morning. I hail a cab, she gives the address for the Dysart mansion, and we set off through the night. In the back of the cab I examine her cheek, which is split slightly from one of Trots’s rings. I press a clean handkerchief to it. We talk, mostly about what happened, and I’m careful to let her know my name, and the fact that I work at Dory’s. I mention it casually enough at least three times, making sure she’ll remember Dory’s, if not my name. When we arrive at the mansion there’s a swirl of activity as her family circles the wagons. I leave quietly at the front door—never entering the Dysart home—as she is drawn in by her mother, and, I see in the background, by her solemn-faced father.

  Once her family has tended to their daughter the questions will come, including questions about the person who intervened on her behalf. Later, perhaps the next day, there will be a phone call, or a letter, or perhaps a black-capped chauffeur with an invitation to dinner. Either way, Mr. Colin Dysart will be sure to reach out, and inevitably the phrase If there’s anything I can do to repay you will be uttered. Of course, I’m not banking solely on Mr. Dysart’s good nature to reach out to me, but on his business sense. On my return taxi ride home, I am careful to mention to the cab driver who the young lady was, and what had happened. I see his eyebrows rise at the name Dysart. I also mention that he could probably make a few dollars off it, by calling the papers and giving them the story. I give him my name and tell him what desk to call at the paper, whom to ask for. When the news hits the streets Dysart will come calling, eager to publicly thank the stranger who stepped in on behalf of his little girl; it’s the stuff his PR people have wet dreams about.

  And I won’t ask for money. I’ll ask obliquely for a break, delivering a passionate story about the journalist I want to be, about the career I am trying so hard to launch. It will be a simple gesture for Dysart the media magnate, and even simpler for Dysart the man. And that, as they say, will be that. I’ll finally have my start.

  • • •

  The dusk comes later and later these days, but the temperature still drops rapidly once the towers cast their long shadows across the streets. The alley, my alley, grows dark at a rate that seems faster than that of the city itself, and after a while the one remaining light, the one cradled by a rusty cage, flickers to life and sets the scene completely. I walk casually through and make sure my spot behind the dumpsters is clear, then settle in for the wait.

  Chloe’s class is over at seven o’clock, and she passes through the alley at around a quarter after. I told Trots to watch from a coffee shop across the street, where he would be able to see her as she made her turn into the alley. He will probably be there from around six or six thirty, which is why I put myself behind the dumpster almost an hour earlier. I watch as the darkness grows thicker, and test my cover with two other people that make their way through the dimly lit alley. They pass within feet of me, but never know I’m there. I sit among cardboard and plastic bags, concealed by the dumpster with the bat on my lap, watching and waiting for the next phase of my bold enterprise to begin.

  Through the slit between the wall and the dumpster’s steel side I finally see her. She walks into the alley briskly; I can’t see if it’s her for the first forty feet or so, because she’s in shadow, but I can tell by her walk. Once she steps into the light it’s confirmed. She has her backpack slung over one shoulder, and I breathe a sigh of relief—it was a potential hitch if she decided not to carry a bag tonight. Moments later another figure enters the dark alley, and immediately I know something is wrong.

  Again, the first forty feet are in darkness, and the figure moving through seems smaller than Trot’s six-foot frame. As he enters the penumbra of the alley I see that it is not Trots at all, but a smaller, younger man, dressed in an Adidas tracksuit. He is skittish and jerky, throwing glances back to the street and moving forward with one hand against the wall. His other hand is deep in the pocket of his tracksuit top. My heart skips a beat as I realize it’s Bosco.

  Be calm, be cool, I tell myself. This is okay. It doesn’t really matter who it is, as long as the result is the same. But a ripple of panic gets through and enrages me for a second. I should have seen that. I should have known Trots would send one of his lackeys; he’s probably across the street awaiting the outcome. Never mind. It can still all work.

  I watch as Bosco slithers along the wall, quickly making up the ground behind Chloe. A moment later she senses him and whips around, her hair fanning out like a Spanish dancer’s dress for an instant. Bosco speaks and I hea
r him clearly; he’s edgy, and his voice is higher than normal. “Gimmeduh fugg’n money!” he shouts at her. Chloe backs up a few steps. “Gimmeduh fugg’n money NOW!” he shouts again, this time flicking a glance to the street. Before he can turn back Chloe has begun running. In a second, Bosco is on her, reaching out and taking a handful of her hair, bringing her down hard on her buttocks. She shrieks once and I pull myself to a squatting position, ready with my bat. I wait—I knew this would be the tough part, waiting for the blow to come, that high-credibility moment that only violence can deliver—and finally I see it: a glint of something as it skitters across her face. She shrieks again and I come around the side of the dumpster, still a good fifty feet from Chloe and Bosco. I raise the bat, fill my lungs, and freeze at what I see.

  Ahead of me Chloe begins to scream in earnest. I hear Bosco shout once, “Shudafugup!” And then I see the thing in his hand. He is pointing it at her and she is cowering, screaming, flailing her arms about her head. “Shudafugup! Shudafugup!” Bosco is yelling, his voice cracking under the pressure. He’s hopping from foot to foot, glancing all around but somehow not seeing me. There is a flash between them, then a pop, and Chloe Dysart rolls back and stops moving. The change is more rapid and definitive than I have ever imagined—from moving and screaming to silent and still in a fraction of a second. There is no wind-down, no preparation. It is a case of on and then off.

  Bosco is still yelling “Shudafugup!,” still hopping about. He reaches in and grabs at Chloe’s backpack, but her body is lying on it and Bosco can’t seem to pull it free. He looks up, directly at me, and I can see the terror in his eyes. He raises his arm and punches at the air toward me with the gun. I hear both pops, and something stings my forearm. The bat goes rattling away across the alley, and the momentum in my arm tugs me around to my right. Bosco frees the bag and runs for the street. I stand rooted to the spot, my mind a crescendo of bright sparks, half words, and a strange whimpering that I soon realize is coming from my own throat.

  Finally, I move forward to where Chloe is lying. There is no blood on the ground, no dramatic last words. There is only a carcass. I look at her and see the girl, Chloe, but it’s not fully her. Her eyes seem to stifle the light, absorb it somehow and stop it from reflecting. They have no vibrancy, no sparkle, like the flat white of a ping-pong ball. Something vital is missing.

  The panic that grips me is so complete that it prevents me from doing anything. My breath hitches and my vision goes spotty. I pull air into my lungs in snatches, each one giving birth to a strange barking sound as I struggle. I look down at my right hand and see it’s black and glistening wet. My sweatshirt too, is wet, and sticks tightly to my forearm. I know it’s blood, but there’s no pain and I’m confused. In front of me is Chloe. She is completely still.

  “I’m sorry,” I whisper pathetically, but I know the girl before me is too dead to hear it.

  • • •

  I analyze the emotions within me. I am sorry, guilt ridden, angry, scared, ashamed, confused, horrified, and, most frightening of all, amazed. I am amazed for a number of reasons, the most incredulous of all being the fact that I’m not falling apart. I feel terrible about Chloe’s death, about the years of suffering I have delivered to her family, but I’m somehow still keeping it together.

  Another source of amazement is what’s happening to me. My arm is encased in a clean white cast, and the operation, I am told by the orthopedic surgeon, went well. In my hospital room there are bouquets of flowers, fruit baskets, and a number of get-well cards, all from people I’ve never met. On the bedside table there’s a copy of the Daily Sun, and on the cover is a large photograph of Chloe Dysart, smiling. Another photograph below that one, smaller, shows Colin Dysart and his wife, holding hands and scuttling down the front steps of what appears to be their house. The headline reads, DYSART HEIRESS MURDERED.

  Lower still on the front page, and smaller again, is a photograph that I don’t recall being taken. It’s a picture of me sitting on a chair with my arms behind my head. I too am smiling. Below my photograph is a simple cutline. It reads, Roland Keene: Good Samaritan shot aiding Chloe Dysart. I read the entire article and it tells the same story that appears to be unfolding around me.

  A doctor arrives and smiles at me, then explains my condition in medical jargon that makes no sense to me. Apparently my face reveals the confusion, and he smiles again and repeats it in English. My ulna, he explains, was shattered by the bullet, which exited my arm after nicking the major artery that feeds my hand. Apart from that, the bullet did no real damage. The real panic was the amount of blood I had lost, and the ensuing blackout—which explained the fact that I remember nothing after kneeling beside Chloe.

  He asks me how I feel, and when I answer that I feel fine, he asks if I feel up to a visitor—a police officer. Suddenly I’m scared, and again my face betrays me. I didn’t mean for any of this to happen, but it’s my fault—and there’s no escaping that.

  “There’s nothing to worry about,” the doctor assures me, “the police just want to ask a few questions.” I nod and the doctor ushers them in, two of them, smiling sympathetically. They introduce themselves and ask me to run through what I saw, and I do so, altering the part about me hiding behind a dumpster, of course. Instead I say I was walking through—on my way home from a late delivery. The police ask where I got the bat, and for a moment I am befuddled. The bat. I had forgotten about it completely. I say it was there, leaning against one of the dumpsters, and they seem satisfied. They thank me, wish me a speedy recovery, and leave.

  They visit me just once more, the following day, have me make my statement on paper, then leave. And that’s it. That was all the dealings I would have with the police over the matter. I remain in the hospital for two days in total, and return to my apartment to find a stocked fridge and Rhona’s small TV in the corner. Remote and all. I call and she gushes over the phone, asking if there’s anything else I need. I thank her and hang up.

  I take a cold Coke from the fridge, snap on the TV, and recline on my futon. I find the news channels and watch the story unfold again and again. The death of the Dysart heiress is the lead, but I’m always there, a footnote, but there nonetheless. At one point I find myself smiling, but then the image of Chloe fills the screen and I feel tendrils of shame.

  It was never meant to happen like this. She was never meant to get hurt—well, only a little—more scared than anything. She was just supposed to get hit once—to give the whole thing some legitimacy. I watch the footage of the family scuttling down steps to a waiting black Mercedes with drawn, tired faces. The doors close one by one, and as the last one closes, I know my mood is changing.

  I can feel myself closing up: drawing curtains, switching off lights, growing smaller.

  Only the glow of Rhona’s TV lights the room, flicking images at me with no sound, casting shadows until nothing but that single cone of light before me exists. In it I see the Dysart family in black. I see mourners at churches, limos, dark sunglasses, and enormous flower arrangements. And the journos are there with roof-mounted satellite gear, cameras, cables, lights and microphones, and in the middle of it all, a solitary coffin. It’s the color of pewter, ringed by eight men who heave it down the steps to a waiting hearse. The coverage lasts only seconds on each station, but I can find it again and again. Different angles, different stock shots, different nodding heads. But in the end it’s the same dead girl. My dead girl.

  The family I see in the small, flickering cone of light from the TV is collapsing. I can see it happening before me. They are adrift of one another, none of this “bonding together in times of adversity” bullshit. They are now individuals, their links severed by individual pain, unable to see any kind of collective family unit. They are a group of staggering survivors, each blasted from the comfort of their privileged lives by the simple and selfish assertion of my needs. I have put them where they are and I don’t know how to be sorry for something of this magnitude.

  What ha
ve I done? keeps running through my head, but the truth is I know exactly what I’ve done, and had I thought it all through completely, I would have known—I would have predicted this outcome. And while this thought sickens me, one thought sickens me more: maybe I did know.

  I roll onto my side, eyes still watching the glow on Rhona’s TV. The news hour is over, and in its place there are people cracking jokes to laugh tracks, catching each other in odd situations, chasing bad guys in fast cars and battling it out in courtrooms. The world, it seems, doesn’t care much that Chloe Dysart is gone. And what’s worse, it doesn’t care much that I’m still here. And so, with the apathetic approval of the world, I switch off the TV.

  • • •

  After two days in my dark room, I manage to plug the phone back into the jack, and almost immediately it starts to ring. It’s the news agencies—one after the other, begging for an interview, looking for a quote. With an irony that doesn’t escape me, I turn them all down, politely but firmly. They all seem empathetic, and soon I realize that my two-day hiatus has heightened my status as the hero. I never meant for this to happen, but when I finally turn the TV back on I see images of my own apartment building. I see the super being interviewed, and another photograph of myself—a shot taken but never used as part of the Faculty of Journalism brochure. It’s a picture of me leaning against the stone building marker outside the Journalism building. I’m smiling, with my arms crossed and a backpack full of textbooks hanging from my shoulder. The picture’s four years old at least, and somehow the Roly of then and the Roly of now seem miles apart in every way. In the photo my hair was much longer, I was a lot thinner, and I wore a goatee that never seemed to have filled out properly. But those were just physical differences. The real differentiator was the obvious carefree disposition of the Roly in the picture; it might as well have been an entirely different person. The photograph was never used in the brochure, but the photographer gave me a copy and it somehow made its way onto Rhona’s corkboard at the copy shop.