by Dan Newman
After that it’s the real grunt work of journalism: calls to the lowest-ranking people associated with the councilors’ offices, people who just work there, and who will have little allegiance—if any—to the fat cats running the show. They are also the people least likely to toe the standard corporate line of passing all media requests up to some communications team close to the councilor himself. I ask them pointed questions about spending, try to get them to speak, to open up, bluntly using the Star-Telegraph’s name and its strangely inferred sense of authority in the hopes they’ll get flustered and say something, anything that might open a way forward.
I get one warm hit: a clerk who says the councilor he works for plays golf every Wednesday with his buddies and it irks him that the invoice always goes to the city. It’s something. So I note it, document the call and the contact, thank him, and hang up. Paula will like that one. I feel good; it’s ten in the morning and I’ve already done more than some of the folks here will do all day.
That’s enough for now, I think; time to focus on my real future. But before I can get into that the phone rings. It’s Donna. She asks what happened last night, why I never showed up. I apologize and make excuses, all the while feeling thrilled that she called. But I convince myself it’s just that friendly affection that Donna dispenses so freely to everyone. It means nothing, I tell myself. She’s just that kind of person.
I spend the rest of the morning appearing to work on assigned stories, while actually laying out a mockup of the first chapter of my three-part story. I lay it out as it would appear in any generic mainstream paper: columnar, with carefully matched font and size. I am cautious to omit any masthead or reference to a publication. When the layout is complete, I print it, tear the edges around the story, then immediately scan the print—slightly angled—and repeat the process until I am left with a hard copy that’s slightly fuzzed, and looks like a legitimate photocopy of a story torn from the pages of a real newspaper.
I read through the piece and try to see it from the perspective of a new reader—someone who knows none of the details, has none of the facts. I think it plays well, and immediately begins to stare accusingly in the direction of very lofty players. The piece stacks the facts rapidly, logically. It ties previously published stories together, plots a suggestive timeline, and builds a steady momentum that halts in midstride with the line “Read Part 2 tomorrow.” I nod silently. It’s as good as I can make it. I set the piece in a folder and place it in a drawer, then go about bringing the two following pieces together. They, too, stoke the fires of suspicion—still maintaining a sense of fairness and balance—but nevertheless push the reader to the desired conclusion.
The last of the three stories is the clincher. It holds the key, the hard proof that anchors the story and brings absolute credence to the facts that came before it. As I stare at the finished photocopy of Part 3, scanned, copied, and suitably fuzzied, I focus on the simple, explosive item that rests there. It sits in its own box at the top of the page across two columns, and it is brilliant. I realize for the first time that I am looking at something the best minds in journalism would just about kill for.
14
In the two days since completing my stories, I have been focused exclusively on two things: avoiding Trots and meeting with Carroway.
I’m taking a little heat for research I haven’t done and for dropping the odd ball here and there—but it’s a price I’m willing to pay for the opportunity I’m making for myself. The little barbs and snipes from those looking for me to do their grunt work are insignificant now; if things go my way, these people will be a memory. If they don’t, well, I suspect they’ll be a memory just the same.
Again, I dedicate some considerable time to the prepping of documents—this time, a fax cover sheet.
The fuzzying of documents seems to be something of an art I’m developing, and it serves me well as I create the page. It’s a fax cover sheet designed to look like it comes from a news agency, but I’ve purposely placed a fold through the header, then photocopied it numerous times until it’s practically unreadable. Still, it manages to convey the impression of size, maturity, and importance—as if the corporation from which it hails is old, established, and not particularly tech savvy.
Next, I scrawl a suitably cryptic note across the body of the page, in the large, looping cursive of some older, confident hand. It reads, “Ed, you should read these—quite incredible…” I then sign it with a patently unintelligible signature, and repeatedly photocopy the sheet until it, too, is of poor quality. Nevertheless, the note remains understandable.
I sit back and flip through the entire production: a fax cover sheet that looks like a transmission from a low-end machine, and three following sheets (my stories), that look like clips from a legitimate publication. I leaf through them, mesmerized by my own sneakiness. For the moment I am alone in the universe, until I am suddenly aware of Barret and his pinstripe suit.
“What the fuck is that, Keene?” His tone is condescending, but at the same time lined with something else. I drop my hand to my side, instinctively pulling the papers out of sight. I am unsure of what—if anything—he has read. How long was he standing there?
“Just some notes,” I reply. “Nothing important.”
But Barret, true to his reputation, hangs on to the bone. “Let me see that.” His hand is outstretched, his finger pointing to the sheets at my side.
I realize I have no response, no cover.
He pushes on. “Let’s see what you’ve been working so hard on, pal. Cuz it sure as hell isn’t the research I told you to do.”
Again, total brain stall. A flat buzz. And then, out of nowhere, it pops into my head—and I think it actually makes a popping sound as it is born. And then it bursts out of my mouth, with a surprising degree of what I can only classify as, well, aplomb. “No,” I say, to the Star-Telegraph’s Golden Boy. And then I add a finishing touch. “Fuck off.”
Two things happen in quick succession. One: Barret takes a step back—not a figurative one, but an actual step backward, his face tightening like wrung towel. Two: the entire floor goes silent and every head swivels in our direction.
“Excuse me?” His face is now wearing an incredulous smile that has absolutely nothing to do with humor. And I think he is blushing, too. Or perhaps it’s more like an allergic reaction, a hot flush of blood to the face as his entire being rejects what he has just heard. He’s a sharp thinker and there should be a stinging response, but so far, just that strange smile and nothing else.
The silence stretches to breaking point. Everyone on the floor has a look of wide-eyed desperation, begging for release. The smile and red flush have been joined by a quivering chin, and I can take it no more. I stand up and turn away. As I leave the floor I realize I have just made a mortal enemy, and secured my berth in what surely must be one of the best “did you hear” stories that this paper will ever have.
15
At the Star-Telegraph, the morning after my run-in with Barret, I think people are looking at me differently. Perhaps it’s just that they are actually looking at me now, actually seeing me, like a ghost that just went poof and became flesh and blood. Or maybe it’s me. Maybe it’s the way I’m looking at them. There’s the beginning of a knot in my shoulder this morning, and maybe I’m projecting something. All I know is that so far no one has come and asked me to fetch any damn coffee.
It’s a powerful feeling, this potty-mouth afterglow, and even though I know it (and me) might not last the day, I revel in the sensation. God, I wonder if Donna has heard about it? It’s one of those things that you need those who are important to you to hear from someone else. Part of its power is lost if you have to do the telling; no, with any luck someone has already sidled up to Donna and said, “Oh my God—did you hear what Roly did?”
At my desk I knead the little knot in my shoulder, but I can feel it tightening up and hunkering down. I pull the file from my backpack and check to see if Carroway’s persona
l assistant, Janet, has taken up her post out front of his office. She’s always an early starter and today’s no different. She’s there, sharpening her claws and doing not much else. On the other side of the empty newsroom, I stack my four pages in the fax and dial Carroway’s number. I hear the machine chirp next to Janet, then wander back to my desk.
A few minutes later I check to see that she has collected the fax, and of course, she hasn’t. I watch over the course of the next forty minutes as the floor comes to life, Still the fax waits in the tray, a mere arm’s length from Janet. She’s surfing the web now, some kind of site on porcelain dolls, and a glance at the clock above her tells me Carroway will be here in a matter of minutes. I’m starting to sweat now.
There’s really no reason that her lack of attention to the fax should bother me—Carroway will get the fax soon enough—but it does nonetheless, ratcheting my anxiety notch after notch. At eight thirty, Carroway appears at his desk, as if by magic. I’ve been watching for him but never saw him enter. By lifting myself in my seat, I can see over the short wall of my cubicle and through the glass wall of his office, and soon he’s sifting through the morning’s missives—my fax among them.
As with any watched pot, the process takes forever. Carroway is on and off the phone, flipping through papers, making notes and posting sticky notes with wild abandon. Only the computer seems to have escaped his attention. Then, like a fish with a set hook, he finds it. Carroway’s entire body shifts, not becoming erect or animated in any way, but rather more relaxed. He’s hunkering down for a good story. I have to sit back down as people are starting to notice my prairie dog impersonation. When I pop back up, he is speaking to Janet, whose posterior is pointed directly at me as she hovers half in and half out of his doorway. Janet is motioning “No,” and I can just hear her say, “Just that. It came in this morning.” He motions her in and hands her a page. Janet squints hard at it and shakes her head. She says something to Carroway and then shrugs, hands back the sheet, and retreats to her station.
In his office, Carroway pulls at his bushy eyebrow in contemplation and I know the moment has arrived. Without another thought, I am up and walking to his office, freed by the knowledge that one way or another, my career as a news clerk has just ended. I make straight for his door; it’s important that I catch him now—while he’s still captured by the implications of the story, by the heady ideas that it presents, and before he picks up the phone and involves another colleague. The chances of Carroway making the decisions that I am about to push for are slim to start with, but diminish exponentially the minute another person is involved. But my timing is on. He’s still yanking on his eyebrow, the phone sits quietly in its cradle, and I am primed, set: a raised hammer about to strike.
Then, like a glass sliding door, Janet glides in front of me.
16
Janet is small. At five-foot-nothing and a handful of pounds, she’s little more than gossamer. I should be able to sweep her away as easily as a spider’s web. But I can’t. This woman is skilled in the art of the shutdown. She nimbly positions herself between me and the doorway—between me and a career, a real career, in journalism. I lean to the right, but she’s there, one agile movement ahead of me.
“You don’t just wander in. Oh, no. You don’t just wander in,” she chirps. Then she follows up with a sharp jab. “I’m speaking to you, Mr. Keene. I’m right here.” Reluctantly, I glance at her and she tweets away like one of those territorial birds on the Discovery Channel that will gladly take on a lion that strays too close to the nest.
I blunder into the usual recourse of the rebuked, “It’ll just take a sec, honest—I’ll be in and out before…” but she’s a pro and is having none of it. My jaw is starting to clench and the air in my lungs is rising to the upper part of my chest. Over her shoulder, my world is starting to show tiny fractures. Carroway is now leaning forward, peering over the top of his glasses and pecking away at the phone. I glance back at Janet. The bitch now has her hands on her hips, and the blood that is working its way up under my collar and ruddying my cheeks is apparently pleasing her. There is the beginning of a smug smile there somewhere.
Again, over her shoulder, the fractures are widening. Carroway has replaced the receiver and is tapping his upper lip with the arm of his glasses. Janet pokes me with a bony, extended index finger right in the sternum. “You’ll have to back up, young man. Mr. Carroway’s far, far too busy…” The second far does it, and the apparatus inside me that keeps up the civil front collapses. “Don’t poke me!” As the words cross my lips, I feel instantly ridiculous. Don’t poke me? Have any of the great journalistic minds of our time ever uttered those words?
The rattle of glass in a door frame snaps my attention back to the moment, and I see the fractures have given way to a full-scale, carcass-swallowing crevasse.
Barret is in Carroway’s office.
• • •
Inside me a small and hasty battle rages as my sense of proper behavior is attacked head-on by panic—induced by Barret’s sudden presence in Carroway’s office. My sense of proper behavior loses the fight almost instantly. My jaw tightens, my eyes narrow, and Janet sees it. For a second she loses her powers. I look away and she is dismissed. With my blood up and the air in my chest compressed to tight ball, it’s a full three or four seconds before I realize both men are staring at me, apparently waiting for me to deliver whatever it is I’m so clearly carrying. I look back and see the door has been closed—I must have done it—and behind it there is a small woman with crossed arms and a bruised expression. In front of me, two different expressions: Carroway’s, incredulous and teetering on the edge of annoyed, and Barret’s, positively disgusted. The three-way Mexican standoff stretches to infinity.
“It’s mine.” I don’t plan these words, they just pop out. Carroway’s brain has momentarily seized, and Barret is fighting some foul taste in his mouth. “The story. It’s mine.”
Barret performs an impressive emotional full-gainer and replaces disgust with disappointment. “This is what I’m talking about, Ed.” He shakes his head almost imperceptibly, runs a hand through his well-sculpted hair, and lands it across his mouth in mild horror. A new level of revulsion for this chameleon surges up through me like a burst of flame in a hot air balloon.
It must be some kind of Barret-induced reflex, a primal motor response because it’s not the kind of thing that I would do. Not the kind of thing I would say. But there it is. “Fuck you, Barret.”
The old editor is awakened and he throws up a pair of withered arms as he sees Barret straighten up. “That’s enough. What the hell’s going on here? What’s the matter with you two?” The scene is instantly transformed into some kind of bizarre father-and-sons clash, with Barret and me casting cutting glances at each other and the floor. If I didn’t have a serious agenda I’d probably shrivel from embarrassment.
As much as I can’t stand him, I am forced to acknowledge that Barret’s mind is quick, and he is the first to weigh in coherently. “Look, Ed. As I’ve said before, this guy is a management challenge.” Barret begins to physically puff up. “He’s come in here under some bullshit charity pretense and he’s adding nothing to the place. He’s confrontational, uncooperative, not to mention foul-mouthed. Quite frankly, this kind of thing detracts from the level of professionalism we should be shooting for here.”
Carroway is processing. “What do you mean it’s yours?” he says to me, dismissing Barret’s carefully crafted diatribe. As he says it I notice a little of the air squeak out of Barret’s inflated self.
“I wrote it. All three parts.”
Carroway’s mind isn’t making the connection between me and the story in his hand. He struggles to ask me a question, but nothing comes, so I blunder in. “I put this story together over the last few weeks and as you can see, it’s pretty heavy. I knew that getting you to read it on face value…well, I didn’t think you’d take it seriously.”
Carroway’s face knots in confusion, so I p
ress on. “Look, if I walked in and just told you I wanted to do a story that could conceivably pull down one of the city’s most important politicians, you’d roll your eyes and send me on my way. I needed to do this to get you to see what it could be, what it is, and get you past the fact that I’m just some rookie. It’s about perspective; you saw the story as credible because of the perspective I made you read it from.”
“What’s with this guy?” says Barret, struggling to bring himself back into the conversation, but Carroway shuts him down—albeit gently. “Hold on, Dave.” He turns back to me, his expression stretched somewhere between confusion and pain. “You wrote this? And what about this,” he says, jabbing at the picture on the third page, “you took it?”
“Yes, I…”
“Ed,” says Barret, stepping physically into the conversation, “if I may.” He has completely regained his composure. He’s going for the calm, if slightly condescending, demeanor of the wise village elder—and he’s actually doing a pretty damn good job of it. “I think we’re all getting a little ahead of ourselves here. Let me explain something, Roland.”
Somehow Ed has bought into the ploy and is giving Barret some latitude. Barret goes on. “As the senior staffer here, any information about affairs at this level comes to me—it’s a question of experience. There are delicate political nuances at play here that take years to understand, and…”
“Alex Joiner is selling citizenships, and I have the story nailed, including a photograph of him and Mike Peelman having a clandestine chat.”