George had expected to meet with the publisher, Nelson Jones, as soon as he arrived. Instead, he was told to meet with the line editor on the building’s fifth floor. George had been anticipating this visit for so long that he bounded up each flight of stairs like an excited child.
He came to the top floor and approached a man sitting at a desk, furiously writing notes on something. The desk was cluttered, and the man’s fingers and arms were stained with ink. He smoked a cigar as he worked. George stood in front of him for what seemed like minutes before the man finally noticed his visitor. There was a name on the desk, also smudged with ink. It read: V. Thomas.
“Excuse me, sir …” George began gently.
The man barely looked up. “Yes? Mmhmm?” Then he looked back down.
“George Choogart. Your publisher offered me a job …”
“What is that, a British accent?”
George paused. “That is correct. I arrived here from London earlier today.”
“George Choogart, George Choogart …” The man started trying to recall the name. “Sorry to tell you this, George Choogart, but Nelson Jones, the man who hired you, is dead.”
“He is?”
“Of tuberculosis. Happened a few weeks ago. While you were at sea, probably. He was coughing blood. Awful stuff. Kept coming to work. Very distracting.”
The man’s speaking style was gruff and unfriendly. He was tall and muscular, though not as tall or muscular as George, and was bald except for a few spots of gray hair. Or maybe it was spots of ink. He appeared to be in his early fifties.
George was alarmed. Did this mean that his job was gone? Had he traveled across the Atlantic for nothing?
“Sit down,” the man gestured. George sat in a chair across from the desk. “My name is Van Thomas, by the way. Hopefully you never heard of me. I hate it when that happens.”
George had not. He reached into his coat pocket and brought out the crumpled, folded letter. “Your paper wrote that my journalism was impressive, and it wanted to hire me.”
“Tell me what you did to impress us, because I am very forgetful.”
“I exposed a scandal in the House of Lords,” George said, “which led to the Tory MP’s resignation. Your paper used my information in its reports.”
“And how old are you?”
“Eighteen.”
“So you were eighteen, and you wrote a story exposing corruption in the House of Lords?” Van Thomas asked. “How in the world were you allowed access at that level?”
“Just lucky, sir,” George said. That was not the full truth.
“Refresh me on this. So the Tory MP was caught serving tainted and poisonous food?”
“To his mistresses, yes. He murdered several women he was carrying on affairs with.”
“Those seedy kinds of scandals may sell papers, Mr. Choogart, but that’s not what we do at the Times. This is the paper that, just last year, blew the whistle on Tammany Hall. Have you Brits heard of Boss Tweed?”
“Certainly.”
“Bribery, kickbacks, murder—there is nothing that man would not do to own the city. And we brought him down. With the power of journalism.”
“Congratulations,” George said.
“Why? The minute we blew the whistle on Tweed, a new fella was put in his place. Have you heard of Big Jim Dickinson?”
“I don’t believe so.”
“He’s like Tweed but worse,” Van Thomas said. “A crooked politician who knows how to keep his hands clean. Nelson wanted to hire you because there aren’t a lot of reporters ready to stand up to the crooked pols and cops. But you obviously do. Or do you?”
“It is why I am a journalist.”
“Still curious, though—who were your sources with the MP? How did a kid like you discover what dozens of Fleet Street vets could not?”
“You know I cannot give away my sources, sir,” George repeated. “I am a journalist.”
“Good thing too or I would have fired you on the spot. You passed the first test. Now here’s the next one. Bring me a story tomorrow. Something about this city that I’ve never seen or heard of before. If it smells too familiar, you’re fired.”
How would George know what Van Thomas found familiar? George decided not to ask the question out loud.
“Anything else?” Van Thomas asked. He was ready to get back to work.
There was something else. “I was also told I can expect lodging from the newspaper,” George said.
“Ah.” Van pulled out a large binder from under his desk and flipped through some pages. “Lucky for you, the Times always rents a few extra rooms for the new scribblers. Let me find the address and key.”
Van kept searching. “Ah,” he finally said. “There’s a small apartment on Delancey where you can stay.”
“Delancey,” George said. “Where have I heard that name?”
Van replied, “It’s a big street. Goes right through the Bowery. Have a nice time!”
Before George could ask for a nicer location, he was shooed out of the office with address and key in hand. Van went back to his work, ink smeared across his body like dried black blood.
George left the building and headed north, toward the Bowery—a place he would now call home.