92

CYRIL BERMAN WASN’T WAITING to see what Richardson put in her next column. As soon as word of the Baldacci confession came over the news, he put a call in to Dan McMurphy from Karp’s Lincoln. Their appointment was moved up from three o’clock the next afternoon to ten in the morning. Berman wanted a full apology to the Fiore campaign for being linked indirectly to Richie Cardella’s death. And he wanted it to come from the Herald itself, not just its blundering political reporter.

* * *

The entrance to the Herald ’s third floor newsroom was located directly across the corridor from the building’s two elevators. A receptionist sat at a white metal desk just outside the door, several feet away from a long wooden bench that provided seating for up to eight people. A venetian blind hung inside the door, its louvers pulled taut. The large glass windows of the room, on either side of the door, were coated with a green-colored substance that prevented anyone in the corridor from looking at what was going on inside. In the five minutes that Berman sat alone on the bench, waiting to be called, the movement of people in and out of the room was constant.

Shortly after ten o’clock the telephone on the blonde receptionist’s desk buzzed twice. She put down the magazine she was reading, opened the door and pointed Berman toward Dan McMurphy’s office. It was situated in the back of the newsroom, at almost the farthest point from where Berman stood. He could see from a distance that McMurphy’s work area was framed by three glass walls, two of which extended into the newsroom from the side of the building and were joined in front by a third, in which the door was located.

The reporters, whose cluttered desks were arranged by twos, back to back, all looked busy either entering information into their personal computers or engaged in telephone conversations. They ignored Berman as he moved from aisle to aisle in his diagonal path across the room. No shades or blinds screened McMurphy from anyone working there.

McMurphy opened the door just as his visitor arrived at it. He introduced himself with a strong handshake, showed Berman where to sit, and moved to the large executive chair behind his desk. Berman intended to start slowly. He wanted to review the substance of Richardson’s recent columns and then, after a brief reference to the remarkable events of the preceding day, move toward the extraction of an apology from the newspaper. Unfortunately, McMurphy never gave him the chance.

“If you’re thinking of asking the Herald for some sort of an apology,” the editor began, “forget it. I approved everything Richardson wrote, Mr. Berman, and it was right on the money as far as who the real target was that night. Her story broke the case wide open, which was to your candidate’s best interest. Half of Rhode Island suspected that the Tarantinos were involved in what happened, and that wasn’t going to help you in the election.” McMurphy’s eyes emphasized the point he was about to make as he stared hard at Berman. “Especially since Richardson uncovered how close your guy used to be to Tarantino junior. I’m sure she’ll make it clear to our readers right away that Cardella’s murder had nothing at all to do with politics. That’s all we can do for you.”

They talked for no more than ten minutes. Berman argued that the paper had already damaged Fiore’s reputation with the unfounded insinuations that were printed. “The election’s just five days away,” he said. “I want to be sure before I leave here that the coverage won’t continue to be unbalanced, weighted in Singer’s favor the way it has been. Look, I’m not asking to see Richardson start repenting in print because the ridiculous things she imagined got shot down yesterday. Fiore can take care of himself on that score. But there are some damn important issues in this campaign. Fiore and Singer are on opposite sides of the fence on a number of things, especially the right way to fix the State’s economy and the casino gambling issue. That’s what they’ll be debating more about tonight, and it’s what you folks ought to get back to writing about in your stories.”

Berman never intended to threaten the newspaper with a lawsuit, and McMurphy’s opening salvo forced him to give up any hope of Fiore receiving an apology in a Herald editorial. What he set his sights on was reminding the news editor that his paper lauded Fiore’s economic plan at an earlier date and spoke out against State-operated gaming parlors on a number of prior occasions. He was working his hardest to lobby McMurphy’s support for a Fiore endorsement in the Sunday edition. When the conversation ended, McMurphy wished him good luck in the election but didn’t accompany him back through the newsroom.

In the corridor, Berman was putting on his raincoat when a young man stepped out of one of the elevators. Its flashing green light indicated that it was going up. “Hold the door,” the man said to another passenger, and hurried over to the receptionist’s desk. “This is for McMurphy,” he told her, handing her a large interoffice mail envelope from among a number he was carrying. “He’s been calling the pressroom for it all morning, so let him know it’s here. Tell him it’s the Singer endorsement.”