“Do you mean,” Laurel said rather coolly, “that you just got on a plane and went to San Francisco today? Without telling anyone?”
“What’s wrong with that?” Cloud asked with a genuinely innocent shrug.
“Oh, nothing,” she said, piqued. “Nothing at all. Except that if the plane had crashed, no one would have had the faintest idea that you were even on it.”
They were sitting at a tiny corner table in Rosa’s Pizzeria, a cozy, pungent-smelling, inexpensive place not far from Laurel’s apartment. Between them were two glasses of very dark Bardolino and a flickering candle burning in a chipped saucer.
“I guess I should have called you this morning,” Cloud admitted. “It was pretty much a last-minute decision; I don’t think I realized I was really going until I was on my way to the airport.”
“What ever possessed you to go?” She was still peeved.
“Whitman wrote me a letter. He asked me to come.” Cloud took a sip of wine, then for a moment held the glass in front of the dancing candle flame and stared thoughtfully at it. “He’s scared, Laurel. He’s been sentenced to die and he’s scared. He’s starting a fight for his life from a prison cell, without a friend in the world to help him.”
“I see. So he’s picked you for his friend.”
Cloud put down his glass. “In a way I guess we kind of picked each other. He’s writing a book about himself, hoping to bring his case before the public and to make some money to fight his conviction. He asked me to edit the book for him. For a half interest in whatever it makes.”
“What did you tell him?”
Laurel’s eyes narrowed the tiniest bit. “Do you think it’s a profitable venture?”
“It could be. Especially if he turns out to be innocent.”
“Do you think he’s innocent?”
Before Cloud could answer, the waitress arrived with a large, steaming pizza. Cloud helped Laurel separate several of the cut slices to cool, taking his time because he knew she was waiting for his answer—he had none.
“Well, do you or don’t you?”
“Think he’s innocent?” Cloud shrugged, as if to relegate the matter to unimportance. “I don’t really know. But innocent or guilty, I don’t think he deserves to go to the gas chamber.”
“Why not?”
“Because I don’t think a death sentence is justified when no life has been taken. I’m not even sure it’s justified in any case. I’ve been kind of researching it in my spare time; you’d be surprised at some of the arguments—really lucid arguments—against it.”
“Such as?” Laurel said.
“Well, aside from the fact that statistics have proven that it isn’t a deterrent to capital crimes—”
“Is that true?” she interrupted skeptically. “The death penalty doesn’t prevent murders?”
“Not according to the figures,” he assured her. “The murder rate is just as high per capita—sometimes even higher—in states where there’s a death penalty as it is in states that have abolished capital punishment.” Cloud balanced a slice of pizza on his thumb and index finger and took a bite. It was hot and he swallowed it quickly. “But one of the very best arguments for outlawing death penalties is by a man named Donald MacNamara, dean of the Institute of Criminology in New York. MacNamara says that the death penalty actually stands in the way of penal reform and that as long as it is a part of our system of justice, a truly rehabilitative approach to penology will never be fully attained.” He glanced down at the pizza. “Why aren’t you eating?”
“I am.” She picked up her first slice of pizza. Her expression was disapproving.
“You don’t think I should have agreed to help Whitman with his book.”
“I think you were probably hasty, yes,” she admitted. “If you were interested in making extra money, I’m sure you could find a much better way of doing it. How long will it take to finish it, do you think?”
“I’m not sure. Six months, maybe.”
“At the end of which you might very well end up with fifty percent of nothing.”
“On the other hand, I could come out of it with a lot of money and maybe even a name. Aren’t you the one who wants me to be rich and successful so you won’t have to marry beneath yourself?”
“That’s not even close to funny.”
“No, I guess not,” he agreed.
Laurel was silent for a moment, then took a new tack. “Don’t you think this is going to affect your regular job? It’ll be on your mind, you’ll be thinking about it when you’re not working on it; it’s bound to tap what little interest you have in your work on the paper. You don’t really care for your job at the Ledger, you just go on working there because there’s nothing different that you do care for. And when you finally decide to apply yourself to something, it’s this … this Whitman thing—something that has no permanent direction to it and no definite reward.” She bit her lip briefly. “Do you understand what I’m talking about, Rob?”
“Yes.” He let it go at that. It was an old, familiar subject by now, one they had debated several times before. Their disagreement narrowed down to a difference in personal values.
They ate their pizza and drank their wine in uncomfortable silence, concentrating with elaborate, seemingly undivided attention to the task, as if every move, every bite, were being recorded for posterity. The longer the silence endured, the more self-conscious they became. The food grew tasteless in their mouths, and the wine, usually so mellow and perfectly suited to the particular cheese Rosa used in her pizzas, tonight seemed tart and vinegary. Finally the meal became such an ordeal that it simply was not worth the effort. By silent mutual agreement they decided to give up on it completely.
“Not very good tonight,” Cloud commented, putting his napkin on the table.
“No,” Laurel said quietly. She folded her own napkin and sat back in the chair, fingers toying with the stem of her glass. Cloud lighted a cigarette and studied her as she stared down at the red circle of wine shifting in the glass. Sitting as she was, turned slightly away, accentuated the round fullness of her breasts under the snugly fit crewneck sweater. He could not help thinking again how much he had come to want this woman. He felt helpless in the face of the seemingly impossible differences between them. As he sat there studying her, from somewhere deep inside him a sigh inadvertently but audibly slipped past his lips.
“You’re tired,” Laurel said. “I am too, a little. Why don’t we forget the movie and both get home early?”
“All right,” Cloud said. He did feel tired.
Walking back up the hill toward her apartment, they turned their coat collars up against a crisp, cool night breeze. They walked close together, but not holding hands as they usually did. When they entered the tiny lobby of her building, Laurel turned to him and said, “Let’s say goodnight here, Rob. Do you mind? I’m really very tired.”
“Sure,” Cloud said. He touched her shoulder and leaned forward to kiss her lightly on the lips. “Want me to call you tomorrow?”
“You know I do.”
“Then I will.” He rubbed his fingertips over her cheek. “Goodnight.”
Before he was out the door, she spoke to him again. “Rob—”
“Yes?”
“Have you definitely made up your mind to help this Whitman with his book?”
“Yes, I have.”
“All right then,” she said, and she turned and went up the stairs.
Cloud stood there frowning. Had her words meant an acceptance of his decision? Or were they a veiled implication that he was going to be sorry?
For the next six weeks, Cloud concentrated on the book that he and Weldon Whitman were writing—for that was the way it quickly turned out to be.
The manuscript, he found upon his first close reading, was badly in need of work—a lot of work. There was definitely a story in what Whitman had written, but it had to be dragged from the pages. The organization of his material was terrible, the writing itself atrocious. The script had no continuity, no real form, and was totally without style of any kind. But there was a story.
The title Weldon Whitman had selected for his book, in his dark humor, was Room 22, Hotel Death. Cloud thought it a good title—very good, in fact. But the rest of the book…
He wrote Whitman about it, candidly putting forth his opinion:
You do have a story here, Whit, and I think it’s a good one, a story worth telling. However, I’m afraid that your narrative, your dialogue, the entire way you’ve attempted to tell the story, is pretty poorly done.
I am being very frank with you because I do not want any misunderstanding between us. Together we can probably come up with a book that will have a good chance of being published—but before we begin the project, I want you to understand two things: first, the finished product will more likely be quite different from the picture of it you now have in mind; and second, it’s going to take a lot of compromise on your part because it’s going to take a lot of rewriting before we finally get that finished product.
I’m ready to give it a try if you are—but I wanted to let you know that the script needs more than simply editing. I’ll undoubtedly be changing a great deal of what you write. Let me know how you feel about that.
At the end of the letter, he put a postscript.
Incidentally, I like the title you chose. That’s the one thing I won’t change.
Three days later, Cloud received his reply:
Glad you liked the title. I thought it very appropriate. Enclosed are the next eight pages.
Cloud read the note and shook his head in irritation. Not a mention of the extensive rewriting he had proposed; not a word of agreement or disagreement with anything he had said in his letter.
Cloud shot a quick note back to him:
Did you read my letter??? I asked how you felt about my approach. I feel it is essential that we reach a definite understanding. Are you in agreement or aren’t you?
To which Whitman calmly replied:
If I were not in agreement with your proposal I would not have sent you the next eight pages.
Please keep in mind that in addition to writing this book I am studying law books and preparing an appeal.
There is nothing I would like better than to enter into lengthy correspondence with you—but unfortunately my time is limited. Very limited.
This time Cloud read Whitman’s reply with chagrin rather than irritation. Whitman was right, or course. The man was facing death in the gas chamber, and he, Cloud, was making an issue of his not answering letters in the proper manner.
Late one morning, nearly three months after starting on Room 22, Hotel Death, Cloud was called into Hoskins’s office.
“I want you to go down to the Hall of Justice right after lunch,” he said, speaking as usual around a fat black cigar. He thumbed through the top pages of a scratch pad and tore one of them off. He tossed it to the edge of the desk. “Go to Department Six of Superior Court. There’s a jury trial about to begin there: five punks from some motorcycle gang, up for battery, rape, and sex perversion. The jury was picked this morning, so the opening statements by the prosecution and defense are first on the agenda for this afternoon. Go see the court clerk; he’ll give you a transcript of the preliminary hearing, plus the Superior Court proceedings so far: names of the jurors and so on. Slip him five bucks and fill out a voucher for it when you get back.”
Hoskins leaned precariously far back in his chair; he re moved the cigar from his mouth and looked up at the ceiling.
“Stay in the courtroom for the afternoon session. Look around, observe: especially the five punks. I want a story with some drama in it, some social comment, something to hook the readers for a possible series on motorcycle gangs and how their existence affects society as a whole. Give me something with a point of view, something creative.”
The day editor jammed the cigar back into his mouth and suddenly sat upright again. His eyes narrowed at Cloud.
“You got all that?”
“Got it,” Cloud assured him.
Cloud went back to his desk, quickly finished a story he was doing, and walked the page over to the city desk. Lew Lach was working the desk.
“I’m checking out for the afternoon,” he told Lach. “On assignment for Hoskins.”
“Anything interesting?”
“Yeah, big bus wreck out on Interstate 15,” Cloud said straightfaced. “Bus was carrying a girls’ wiffle-ball team from some junior college. At least a dozen dead.”
“Listen, I’ll take it for you if you want me to—”
“I’d better not, Lew. The old man wants a story with some social comment in it.”
“Social comment? In a story about a bus wreck? I think he’s been playing with himself again. Listen, get a lot of pictures, will you?”
“Sure, sure.” Cloud walked away, vaguely wondering why he had put Lach on like that. Maybe it was the job; maybe he was getting tired of this one too. Damned if he knew why, but after he had been around a paper for ninety days or so, he just couldn’t seem to maintain any job interest at all. Three months: that was about the extent of his interest span. After that he went from boredom to apathy to lethargy. Then he quit and moved on.
Except that in this case he probably wouldn’t quit. He’d already stuck it out six months. Because of Laurel.
With his coat over his shoulder, he rode the elevator downstairs and walked out onto the street. There was a northbound bus waiting at the corner, and by hurrying he was able to board it. He found a seat by the window and slumped into it. Almost at once, he began thinking about Room 22, Hotel Death.
In the weeks since he had begun work on Whitman’s book, Cloud had given little thought to anything else. At the paper, he went through the motions of doing his job. When he was with Laurel, he did pretty much the same, giving to their dates whatever he felt was required of him, but contributing nothing extra. His sex drive had decelerated considerably. He made no more intercourse demands of her, and in fact engaged in sex at all now more as a result of her initiative than his.
The book had become the whole thing with him; it was something that did hold his interest, something that challenged him, something he felt good doing. He worked and reworked the pages, feeling his writing technique honing down to a fine edge. He watched the manuscript metamorphose from Whitman’s handwritten white sheets to his own handwritten yellow sheets to a typed yellow copy to a final typed white copy on the best-grade bond paper he could afford. He watched the manuscript grow and he was proud of it; he was proud of it somewhat the way a father is proud of a child whom he has created and is watching grow.
Getting off the bus in the Los Angeles Civic Center, he continued to think of Weldon Whitman—now not as much in terms of the book, as in actual memory of the times they had met: the first two times right in this very Hall of Justice, then on Death Row. It was odd to realize that all the things Whitman was writing about now, times and events which came before him, would eventually progress to a point where he himself would be included. In helping Whitman to tell his story, he had in fact become part of the story. Whether Whitman was guilty or innocent, whether he lived or died, whether he was remembered or forgotten, Robert Cloud now shared part of the responsibility for it.
Cloud entered the Hall of Justice and took the elevator up to Department Six. The court clerk was eating a sandwich at his desk. Cloud got the transcript from him and paid him five dollars as Hoskins had instructed. Going back downstairs to the lobby, he bought a packaged sandwich and an orange drink at the snack counter, and found a vacant bench where he could sit and read the transcript.
The defendants were five men between the ages of twenty-two and twenty-five, and all members of a motorcycle club known as the Black Jacks. Some two months earlier, the five had attended a Saturday-night party in Long Beach, fifteen miles south of Los Angeles. The party was held in a municipal housing project containing apartments for both low-income civilian families and dependents of Navy enlisted personnel stationed at Long Beach Navy Yard. The party was in a basement room of a twelve-unit building tenanted by both civilian and Navy families.
The party was an informal affair; the participants furnished their own beer and other refreshments. The host, also a member of the Black Jacks, lived in the building. There were five or six other Black Jacks present, and about two dozen more persons who drifted in and out during the evening.
Shortly before midnight, a young Navy wife who lived in the building entered the basement laundry room to retrieve a bundle of clothes she had put into the coin-operated dryer several hours earlier. Another young woman, a neighbor who was attending the party, invited the sailor’s wife to join them. At first she declined: her husband was out on a practice cruise, and their year-old infant was alone in the apartment. After much urging, however, the sailor’s wife did agree to join the party just long enough to have one glass of beer.
She stayed for approximately fifteen minutes and then excused herself. One of the defendants followed her into the laundry room and offered to carry the basket of clothes upstairs for her. She attempted to decline, but the defendant insisted; she finally consented to let him carry the basket as far as her apartment door and led the way to the second-floor apartment. Unknown to her, the man’s four friends followed a short distance behind.
At the door to her apartment, the defendant asked if she would invite him inside. She declined, saying her baby was asleep. The defendant persisted; when the woman continued to refuse, he forced his way past the door and grabbed her by the throat with both hands, threatening to choke her if she screamed for help. The four co-defendants, who had been watching from the stairwell, hurried into the apartment and locked the door behind them.
At this point the young woman extricated herself from the defendant’s hold and screamed loudly. She was slapped heavily across the face by the defendant and one of the co-defendants; she fell to the floor, dazed. The defendant and one of the co-defendants then carried her into the small bedroom.
The victim was stripped and forcibly raped, by each of the five in turn. Later she was forced to commit what the state termed an unnatural sex act by copulating with her mouth the penis of the defendant and one of the codefendants, as well as being subjected to various other sexual indignities. The five defendants remained in the apartment for approximately two hours, helping themselves freely to the victim’s food, drink, and cigarettes.
After warning the victim not to mention what had happened, the defendants returned to the party. The victim took her baby and ran to a friend’s apartment in another section of the housing project. The friend called the police, and the victim furnished them with full details of the attack. Three police units were called and the victim accompanied the officers back to the party. Three of the five defendants were seized then; the other two were arrested the following day.
The victim was hospitalized about three hours after the attack. She was treated for superficial bruises, minor internal abrasions of the vagina, and mild shock; she was released the following morning. Her husband, granted emergency leave, returned from his cruise by helicopter.
The five defendants were held to answer the charges at a preliminary hearing and were bound over to the Superior Court for trial. Two of them had private attorneys; the other three were represented by the public defender’s office.
Robert Cloud’s eyes swept the last line of the transcript, and he shook his head. Thoughts flashed through his mind: how terrified the sailor’s wife must have been; how her husband must have felt when he found out what had happened; how their future together, their very lives, would be marked by the memory of that one awful night. He could not help thinking briefly of Weldon Whitman. Frowning thoughtfully, he finished the last of his sandwich and went back upstairs to Department Six.
As he sat down in the press section, Cloud saw a familiar figure enter from the judge’s chambers and walk over to the prosecutor’s table. It was G. Foster Klein, the district attorney’s chief prosecutor, the man who had convicted Weldon Whitman.
“Hello, Mr. Klein. I’m Robert Cloud of the Ledger—”
The dapper little lawyer turned, smiling. “Of course. How are you, Cloud? Nice to see you again.”
“No hard feelings?” Cloud asked.
“Certainly not. Not a bit.” His smiled widened. “Scrutiny like that keeps us on our toes. You covering this trial?”
“Yes.”
“Well, you’re just in time.”
“I’ve been reading the report of the preliminary hearing,” Cloud remarked. “Looks like you’ve got five more candidates for the Death House.”
“Well, it isn’t quite as bad as that,” Klein said casually. “I expect they’ll get nice long sentences, though.”
“You’re not asking for the death penalty?”
“Oh, no. Not on rape and sex-preversion charges. The death sentence is reserved for murder and kidnapping offenses.”
Cloud frowned and pursed his lips for a moment. “I thought the crimes in this case were very similar to those in the Whitman case. How is it that these five didn’t get charged with kidnapping?”
“The best we could have done would have been technical kidnapping charges,” Klein explained. “Moving the victim from one room to another. I don’t think the charge would have held up—not for a death sentence, anyway. Even in the Whitman case, we asked for one of our death sentences on that technical charge of moving the store owner and his clerk into a back room, and the jury denied it.”
“Yes,” said Cloud, “but on the kidnapping charge based on the crime against Doris Calder, he did receive the death penalty, for moving her from one car to another car twenty feet away. And she wasn’t subjected to near what this woman went through.”
“Granted, she wasn’t,” Klein admitted, “but there’s a very important difference between the two incidents: The law calls for the death penalty only if the victim suffers bodily harm after being kidnapped for the purpose of robbery. Whitman looted Doris Calder’s purse while he had her in his car, so we were able to prove robbery as the motive for the kidnapping. Even on his other death sentence, we proved that same motive because he attempted to rob the Luza girl; she didn’t have any money on her person, however.” The prosecutor paused to nod at one of the defense attorneys who had just arrived. “Now, in the case of this sailor’s wife,” he went on, “the motive was obviously rape and not robbery—”
“But they did commit robbery,” Cloud pointed out. “Not money, of course, but they stole her cigarettes and food. That’s still robbery, isn’t it?”
“Very definitely. The point is, did they invade the victim’s apartment primarily to assault her or to rob her? I believe they did it to assault her. They had sex on their minds, not a few cans of beer and a couple of packs of cigarettes.”
“Couldn’t the same thing be said of Whitman?” Cloud argued. “In the case of Doris Calder, he robbed—or was convicted of robbing—her companion while they were both in the man’s car, and then he forced Mrs. Calder to accompany him back to his own car. When he got her there, he took what money she had in her purse, then made her go down on him. If his primary intent had been merely to rob her, wouldn’t he have done it when he robbed her companion? The only reason for taking her back to his car was for the head job. How can you justify a death penalty in Whitman’s case and then not even ask for it in the case of these five defendants?”
“Well, first of all, Mr. Cloud,” Klein said, stiffening, “I’m not attempting to justify anything; I don’t have to. The policy of the district attorney’s office is to ask the court for the maximum sentence which it feels a judge or jury will allow—”
“Who decided when to go for the limit and when not to? Who makes the decision to send Weldon Whitman to the Death House and then says that five rapist punks will only go to jail?”
“The facts decided that for us, Mr. Cloud.” Klein’s voice had now turned very cool and his face had lost its amiable expression. “The facts of the crime tell us what we have to prove. The facts of the evidence tell us what we can prove.”
“Well, I’m no lawyer, Mr. Klein,” Cloud said flatly, “but I do deal in facts. And from the facts I’ve read in this case, it seems to me that it would be just as proper for you to ask for death sentenses for these five as it was to ask for death sentences for Weldon Whitman. That naturally makes me wonder why you aren’t doing it, Mr. Klein. It makes me wonder if perhaps there might not be some truth in a statement Whitman made just before he was convicted.”
“What statement was that?” Klein asked crisply.
“A statement to the effect that he was being persecuted by your office, the county sheriff’s office, and the city police department, because he had spit in your faces so many times.”
“That’s absurd.”
“Is it, Mr. Klein?” Cloud could feel anger building up inside him—anger at a system of justice that had such a flexible code of selectivity.
Cloud stared relentlessly at the man who had put Weldon Whitman on Death Row. Whatever Whitman had done, he had not committed murder. But this man Klein and the office he represented would have committed murder if the state executed Whitman in the gas chamber. Legal murder, to be sure. But murder all the same, if only because they had arbitrarily selected him for the gas chamber.
And that, he decided, was how he would write the story.
“You’ll have to excuse me now, Mr. Cloud,” the prosecutor said, not bothering to conceal his hostility. “Court is about to convene.”
Yes, Cloud thought, it is.
That night in Laurel’s apartment, Cloud let her read a carbon of the story he had filed for the morning editions. Comparing the Whitman and Black Jacks cases, the story was a scathing denouncement of the ethics of the district attorney’s office.
“What do you think?” he asked when she had finished.
Laurel shook her head. “I don’t know, Rob. It’s very well written, of course, like everything you do, but …”
“But what?”
“Well, it—it doesn’t really read like what you ordinarily find in a newspaper. It’s more like—well, like an argument rather than a newspaper story.”
“That’s what Hoskins asked for; I told you that. He said he wanted something creative, something with a point of view—”
“Yes, but you also said he, was interested in a possible series of articles on motorcycle gangs. Most of what you’ve written is about your friend Weldon Whitman and why he’s been sentenced to the gas chamber and these five men won’t be.”
“Exactly. That’s the whole point of it.” Cloud rose from the couch and paced the room. “Here we have five guys who have committed crimes almost identical to the crimes for which Whitman was convicted and sentenced to death. Sure, there are slight legal differences in the particular, acts, but basically they’re the same crimes: robbery, kidnapping, and what the state calls sex perversion. Now, Whitman is convicted and gets the death sentence—two death sentences, to be exact. But with the five punks, for the same crimes, the state doesn’t even ask for the death penalty. The state puts them on trial for sex perversion and for rape. They don’t even charge them with robbery, much less kidnapping. Why? What’s the difference?”
Laurel shrugged.
“I’ll tell you,” said Cloud. “There are five defendants in this trial instead of one. One man getting the death penalty on this kind of kidnapping charge the public might let slide past; but five—never. There’d be more committees and organizations and movements to save them than this town ever saw before. There’d be petitions and letters to the editor and pickets around the Hall of Justice and everything else. And at the next election there’d be a new district attorney, and the present district attorney—and his chief prosecutor—would be out of jobs. So the first reason is that the people in the district attorney’s office are afraid they couldn’t get away with it!
“The second reason,” Cloud’s voice rose slightly, “is even worse than the first. And it’s so damned obvious! They aren’t trying to put these Black Jacks in the gas chamber because they’ve got no reason to. These five guys are clean; except for a few traffic violations. So the law isn’t out to get them like it was out to get Whitman. The city police and the county sheriff—neither one gives a damn that the Black Jacks will get ten years each and be out on parole in four. With Whitman, though—he was an habitual criminal, a defiant habitual criminal. You should read some of the things in that manuscript of his. He’d tell the police to go fuck themselves and spit in their faces every time they arrested him. He was a complete rebel; he never confessed, never informed, never pled guilty to anything, never let the public defender handle his cases. He was strictly an outlaw, confirmed all the way; he was against all police officers and wasn’t about to be rehabilitated out of the idea. Since he was fifteen he’s been laughing at everybody in this county with a badge. Laughing at them. That’s why they put Weldon Whitman in the death house.”
“It sounds like he’s some kind of criminal psychopath,” Laurel said. “Maybe the court was right; maybe he should be permanently removed from society.”
“Maybe he should,” Cloud agreed. “I don’t deny that he’s probably criminally unstable. But he could be locked up permanently if all law wants to do is protect society. He sure as hell doesn’t have to be sent to the gas chamber, particularly for the same thing that those five punks from Long Beach are only going to serve a few years in prison for.”
Laurel sighed heavily. “I still don’t see how your story fits what Hoskins asked for. I just don’t think it’s what he had in mind.”
“Maybe not,” Cloud replied, “but that’s what he’s getting.”
“Which,” she said pointedly, “is not the most desirable attitude for one to have toward one’s employer.”
“Let’s not get into a discussion of my attitude,” Cloud said caustically.
“Have it your way,” Laurel said, her voice growing distinctly cool. She drummed her fingers on the arm of the chair. “Would you like more coffee before you go?”
“Go? I wasn’t going anyplace. Or is that your subtle way of asking me to leave?”
“You don’t appear to be in a very good mood tonight. I thought maybe you’d prefer to be alone. That way there’d be no occasion for you to have to listen to anything critical about yourself.”
Cloud looked thoughtfully at her for a moment. He got up, got his coat from the hall closet and left the apartment without either of them saying goodnight.
“Hoskins wants you.”
Surprise, surprise, thought Cloud. He already knew that his story, as he had written it, had not appeared in the home edition that morning. Instead, on page five, had been a rewritten account covering only the basic facts of the Black Jacks trial. So Laurel had been right: the story hadn’t been what Hoskins had wanted.
“You wanted to see me?” Cloud said pausing at the day editor’s open door.
“Yes,” Hoskins said. “Come in. Close the door.”
Hoskins’s voice, Cloud thought, seemed mellower, less threatening than usual. Maybe, it occurred to Cloud, he was about to be fired.
“Sit down, sit down.” Hoskins waved his cigar at a chair and proceeded to rummage through the clutter on his desk. In a moment he found the original of Cloud’s story.
“I suppose you know by now that we didn’t run this piece of yours as you wrote it,” Hoskins said. “And I suppose you’re wondering why.”
Cloud shrugged. “I guess you didn’t run it because you didn’t like it.”
“On the contrary, I did like it. Liked it very much.” Hoskins puffed several times on his cigar, then delicately balanced it on the edge of an ashtray. “It’s well written, well organized, and makes a good, hard point. Unfortunately, it doesn’t adequately cover the subject that was assigned to you. I wanted some in-depth coverage on the trial of the five Black Jack members—something interesting about the five punks themselves. I wanted the interest to spring not only from the fact that they are defendants in a rape trial, but also that they are members of an organized motorcycle gang. Instead”—Hoskins tossed the typed article back into the debris of his desk—“you give me a hearts-and-flowers thing about this guy Whitman, who’s not even news anymore.”
“He could be news,” Cloud said. “He would be, too, if you’d printed the story the way I wrote it.” Now, he thought defiantly, go ahead and fire me.
“If I had run that story the way you wrote it, son, we’d both be out of a job this morning. Did you ever hear of a little thing called editorial policy?”
“What’s that got to do with it? I didn’t write an editorial, I wrote a news story.”
“Like hell you did.” Hoskins retrieved the typed story and shoved it across the desk at him. “That’s no more a news story than Orphan Annie is a news story. There isn’t a single fact that you didn’t elaborate on with a personal comment or opinion of your own.” Hoskins picked up his cigar and slowly shook his head. “You wrote an editorial, my boy, pure and simple.”
“All right, suppose I did,” Cloud countered. “You said it was good, didn’t you? You said it made a good, hard point. Why didn’t you use it on the editorial page?”
“Because,” Hoskins said tonelessly, “you are not the publisher of this newspaper. And neither am I. As a consequence of which it is neither your function nor mine to make editorial policy. The editorial page on this newspaper comes from the office of the publisher. He’s the one who pays out salaries, and he’s the one who establishes editorial policy.”
“What do you think the publisher’s editorial policy would be in this particular case?” Cloud asked.
“I don’t even have to think,” Hoskins answered confidently. “I know what it would be. Because of past and present political affiliations, and because this paper strongly backed the distict attorney in the last election, the publisher would need just two short words to express his editorial policy to both of us: Hands Off.”
“Are you saying that this newspaper would avoid exposing a scandal in one of our highest county offices just because it supported the successful candidate for that office?”
“No,” Hoskins replied coolly, “I am not saying that and you goddamn well know it. If you came up with a story in which you had clearly established some sort of conspiracy or some pattern of incompetence within the district attorney’s office, then the story would be printed—editorial policy or not—because then it would be news. News, Cloud; not speculation, not conjecture, not supposition, assumption, theory, or even divine hypothesis—but news: factual, verifiable news.”
Hoskins leaned far back in his chair. He sucked in on his cigar and exhaled a great burst of dirty gray smoke. For several long moments he studied Cloud. His eyes grew thoughtful as he recalled another eager young reporter from out of the long ago, another young writer filled with energy and enthusiasm, another young man seeking truth above all and placing his heart and soul at the altar of the press. Hoskins wondered briefly if this young man too would age eventually into a cantankerous old day editor. He sighed wistfully.
“Well,” he said at last, “have I now made absolutely clear in your mind my position regarding editorial policy on this newspaper?”
“You have.” Cloud stood up. “Is that all?”
“For now,” Hoskins told him.
Cloud started out of the office. At the door he paused and turned back.
“What you said a few minutes ago, about Weldon Whitman not being news anymore; you’re wrong about that. Someday I’ll prove it to you.”
He walked out of the office and across the big newsroom, winding his way around crowded desks, passing through the noise of two dozen typewriters, moving past the many faces of people who, like himself, were part of the putting together of a daily metropolitan newspaper. But as he walked he heard none of the noise and noticed none of the faces, because his mind was enclosed within the vacuum of the single thought he had just spoken to Hoskins.
Someday I’ll prove it to you.