Four

JACK WOLF WAS ABOUT to join the afternoon editorial meeting at the San Francisco Tribune. He’d decided to hold it in the middle of the city room, a choice he made just often enough to make them think he loved being a newspaperman—and the paper—the way his father had.

All bullshit.

The room had gotten smaller since Joe Wolf had named his second son to succeed him as publisher. But what newspaper outside the New York Times or the Washington Post hadn’t gotten smaller? The Tribune’s print edition on some days looked less substantial than the wine list at Acquerello.

Jack didn’t mind that the paper remained a conservative voice in the otherwise liberal city that Joe Wolf liked to call Pelosi-ville. Problem was, Jack Wolf just didn’t think it was conservative enough. Or loud enough. Or angry enough. Or nearly down and dirty enough. When he and his father fought—and they fought a lot—it was mostly about that. His father kept saying that as long as he was alive, the paper was still going to have standards.

“Whose?” Jack would ask. “Ronald Reagan’s?”

Now Jack Wolf turned his chair and put his feet up on the desk closest to him in what they called the bullpen. His managing editor, Megan Callahan, was standing next to him. The other top editors were in a circle in front of them.

“So what do we got?” Jack said.

The Metro editor raised a hand. Rob something. One more kid Jack had hired on the cheap.

“I might have something pretty fresh; check it out.” He handed his phone over to Megan Callahan, who looked down at it and said, “You have got to be shitting me.”

She turned back to Rob.

“Is that who I think it is?”

The kid nodded. “In the flesh.” He grinned. “So to speak.”

Megan said, “I didn’t know guys still wore tracksuits like those.”

“They’re like Lululemon for geezers.”

Megan handed Jack the phone. And smiled. On the screen, big as life, was the mayor of San Francisco, Charlie Spooner. Getting ready to step down next year because of term limits and well into his seventies now.

And here he was, big as life, coming out the front door of Precious Orchard massage parlor, on Geary Street.

Jack Wolf’s smile grew.

“God is good.”

“Isn’t the mayor your friend?” Megan said.

“Things change. And by the way, what’s that got to do with anything?”

“Seriously, what do we do with this?”

“What we do,” Jack said, “is put that picture on the front page, underneath type that will make people think the Russians just blew up the Bay Bridge.”

“Don’t you think you should at least run this by your father?”

“You’re right. I should.”

Jack pulled out his phone, punched out a number, waited, put the phone back in his pocket. Smile getting bigger by the moment.

“Oops. Straight to voice mail.”

He stood up now and said to the group, “And if I see this on Twitter before the story goes up on our site later, every one of you is fired. Understood?”

In six months, half the people in the room were going to be gone anyway during the next round of buyouts. Joe Wolf used to dread having to tell people they were being let go. Not his middle son.

“It’s still his paper,” Megan said.

“Not today,” Jack Wolf said.

Ten minutes later, Megan Callahan was bursting into his office. Behind her he could see everybody in the city room staring at the big television set near the bullpen.

“Your father died.”

She told him how and said, “I guess Charlie just got saved from death by front page.”

“Like hell he did,” Jack said.