GOOD FRIDAY INTO BAD SUNDAY
11
Even if Marcy Appleton had been able to meet all her editors’ various directives and second guesses in one day of reporting, Tess had always assumed that the Beacon-Light would hold Lloyd’s story for the Sunday edition, when it would make the biggest splash. Besides, it had taken most of Thursday and then Friday morning for Marcy to play the time-honored reporting game of “Would I Be Wrong If?” So would I be wrong if I wrote that the ATM card was used at these locations? Am I right about the code? I won’t print it, but would I be wrong if I said the Beacon-Light has a source who knows the code? Would I be wrong if I said the videotape showed someone in a hoodie and a North Face jacket?
The multilingual, smoothly confident Marcy had started with the Howard County detectives. While the suburban county had its pockets of bad neighborhoods, it was overall a blandly peaceful place. Great for kids, as its residents said defensively, but not so great for homicide detectives, whose skills didn’t get much of a workout. Even over the telephone, Marcy picked their bones clean. She then took on the interim U.S. attorney, Gail Schulian, who lost her much-admired cool, revealing in the process just how little she knew about the investigation. Marcy never got flustered, according to Feeney, who kept Tess apprised of the story’s movements-and reiterated his pledge, in each conversation, that Lloyd’s name would never, ever be mentioned, not even inside the newsroom. Reporters at the Blight were now required to reveal anonymous sources to at least one superior. But Feeney counted as a superior, hilarious as Tess found that fact.
“It’s gone,” he told her wearily Friday evening. “We lawyered it this afternoon, and it cleared the copy desk about five minutes ago.”
“Are you their bright and shining star now?”
“More Marcy than me, although she’s been good about sharing credit. She told the bosses that an old source of mine was the go-between. Guess that’s true enough. Only downside is we both have to work Easter Sunday, doing the jerk-off react.”
“Better than covering an Easter-egg hunt or the perennial gang fights that break out in the harbor when everyone goes promenading.”
The bulldog, the early Sunday edition, goes on sale Saturday morning. Tess Monaghan remembered the jargon, if not the reason for it. Something about the bulldog chasing the other editions off the street. But that was simply by virtue of its heft. There was precious little news in the bulldog most weekends. People bought it for the real-estate ads and the coupons, not the stories. However, a big investigative piece, such as Marcy’s article on the new facts in the Youssef case, would be anchored on the front and stay there throughout the run. Only an event of great significance-another 9/11, the death of a world leader-could knock off an exclusive this strong. The Associated Press and the out-of-town papers would start working it immediately, but the Beacon-Light had a head start, while the other news outlets would be trying to find officials willing to pick up their phones over the Easter weekend. The television stations would settle for rip-and-reads, all but reciting Marcy’s story into the camera while standing in front of suitable backdrop-the federal courthouse, the riverbank where Youssef’s body had been found.
Running errands Saturday morning, Tess stopped at her neighborhood coffeehouse, Evergreen, to skim the article. Feeney and Marcy had kept all their promises. Lloyd’s identity was cloaked, and not a single one of his assertions had been shot down. Marcy also had been careful, as Tess had insisted, not to assign Lloyd’s gender. It had made for some awkward writing, with endless repetitions of “the source” and “a person with firsthand knowledge.” Marcy hadn’t even used the name of the store where Lloyd had purchased his jacket and shoes, not that Tess believed that a store clerk could remember who bought a North Face jacket on the day after Thanksgiving. In fact, neither Tess nor Lloyd would have cared if the newspaper had named the Downtown Locker Room, but the Blight’s advertising department had pleaded with the editors to omit that detail.
Satisfied, Tess went about her day, convinced she had done a good deed.
But just as she no longer remembered the rationale behind the name of the bulldog, she had forgotten how much a story could change from bulldog to Sunday final.
In the gym, sweat pouring onto the paper as he pedaled a stationary bike, Gabe Dalesio read the story with a mix of despair and pride. He had been right, he had been onto something, he had been so close. But who would believe him now? He knew that Youssef wasn’t at the wheel of his car when it left the city, and now this story all but proved it. It was an elaborate ruse, an electronic trail meant to conceal Youssef’s real movements. But his brainstorm was moot now. There was no point in being right unless others knew about it. Fuck Collins, for being so dismissive. He probably wouldn’t even remember that Gabe had said anything. The only thing that Collins carried away from that conversation was that Gabe spent a lot of time thinking about getting blow jobs from other guys. Damn it. Damn his own self. He should have told the boss lady what he had figured out.
He wondered how Marcy Appleton had found this anonymous source anyhow. She was a decent reporter, well liked around the courthouse, but better known for her exotic looks than her smarts. A house cat, not a shit disturber. Maybe a defense attorney had acted as matchmaker, offered up his client in hopes of spinning the story. No matter how ignorant the source was of the larger crime, he could still be squeezed as an accomplice. But if it were a matter of trying to protect a client from other charges by giving up valuable information, no seasoned attorney would do that through the media. He would come straight to the prosecutors, put his cards on the table. And if the source didn’t have a potential charge hanging over him, then why talk at all? If the source had been picked up for something else, perhaps by city cops, Gabe could see him making this deal, but there didn’t seem to be anyone official involved. Just the reporter and the source.
Absentmindedly Gabe rose from the bike and grabbed a cup of water.
“You’re supposed to wipe the equipment down,” a middle-aged woman berated him, one of those frightening, pared-to-the-bone types who thought having no body fat was the same as being attractive.
“Sorry,” he said, running his towel over the seat.
“It’s just hygiene,” the dried-up skank said, clearly on a mission to humiliate someone to make herself feel better. “A lot of people ’round here think the rules don’t apply to them, but your sweat’s not nectar, you know? I don’t want to sit on your sweaty seat.”
“Trust me, ma’am, I don’t want that either.” She didn’t get it, just hopped on and began pedaling away, as if she had somebody’s little dog in her basket.
Hell, Gabe’s problem was that he had been too circumspect, too mindful of rules and protocol, wasting opportunity after opportunity. He had planned to make his bones on the Youssef case, but this damn reporter had pulled the rug right out from under him.
Still, might as well drop by the office, see what was buzzing. He could at least get brownie points for showing his face in the middle of what was shaping up to be a real clusterfuck.
Jenkins spent weekends out in West Virginia, in an unassuming built-to-spec A-frame near Berkeley Springs. Inside, it had some nice touches-a plasma television, vast leather chairs, high-end bathrooms, a kitchen with all the extras. The latter had been done with an eye to his ex-wife’s taste, although Betty was long gone before he started building the place. In the back of his mind, he thought she might come back. If not for him, then at least for granite countertops. But Betty found West Virginia even less appealing than Baltimore.