Ed suggested lunch at The Front Page, but Tim didn’t want to be anywhere near the paper. They wound up on the seventh floor of the San Francisco Shopping Center at the Nordstrom café, in a secluded booth overlooking the Powell Street cable car turnaround.
“Let me buy you a drink,” Ed said. “Beer, wine, booze, you name it.”
“I can’t,” Tim said. “You know the rule.”
The Foghorn expressly prohibited consumption of drugs or alcohol during the workday, and employees were subject to random testing. A positive result got you a warning and a four-week, drug-dependency-prevention class. A second positive, goodbye.
“Fuck ’em. You’re laid off. What can they do? Fire you?”
“I don’t want to screw up my severance.”
“Suit yourself. But lunch is on me.”
Tim had been Metro editor for a dozen years. He’d gotten the news that morning in an e-mail from the executive editor, who just happened to be out of the office for a few days. Metro, National, and Features were being merged into a single department to be managed by the Features editor, Trudy Hammond, who was widely rumored to spend lunches in hotel rooms with the publisher. Tim had two weeks to hand off his job. Adding up his severance, accrued days, and management incentives, he was looking at almost a year of income before he faced the abyss.
Only for Tim, there would be no cold-sweat wake-ups at three a.m. His wife, the TV news anchor, made twice what he did. The station was also laying off, hurt by eyeballs migrating to the Internet, but the focus groups loved Kim, and so far, so good.
When the ax fell, Tim wasn’t surprised. After all the buyouts and layoffs, the newsroom was virtually deserted, with only the faintest sound of keyboards clicking. Still, it was shocking to be pushed out the door.
“So,” Ed asked, “what about the next two weeks?”
Tim stared at his burger but wasn’t interested. He stabbed a French fry and took his time chewing. “Be professional. Do my job—what’s left of it. Fill out the forms. Bring Trudy up to speed.”
“And then?”
“I don’t know...some projects around the house. I want to reroof the garage and plant some fruit trees behind the swing set.”
“What about sending out your resumé? You’re very impressive.”
“What’s the point? Newspapers are graveyards.”
“What about that plumber’s apprentice idea?”
“Yeah, maybe. I’ve made a few calls, but so far, nothing.”
Tim asked the waiter to wrap up the burger and half the fries. “Actually, I’ve been considering something else, but Kim’s not happy about it.”
“What? A barista at Starbucks?”
“Worse. Oaksterdam U.” It was the school in Oakland that offered courses on all aspects of medical marijuana, from growing high-quality buds to managing dispensaries.
“Really? Would you grow? Or open a store?”
“I don’t know. Probably a store.”
“You’re not much of a stoner.”
“That’s good. Preserves the inventory.”
“You’d be looking at a lot of competition.” San Francisco already had thirty stores, Oakland twenty.
“True, but not one is run by an Asian American. I checked. Thirty percent of San Francisco is Asian, and fifteen percent of Oakland. Design it to appeal to Asians. Call it something like Jade Wind Healing. Set it up like a Chinese pharmacy.”
“But you’ve never run a business.”
Tim shrugged. “I could learn...or not. I don’t know. I don’t know anything anymore.”
On the way back to the paper, Tim looked old. At the corner, Ed extended his hand, but Tim hugged him. “Thanks for lunch, for coming down, for caring.”
As Ed watched his friend trudge into the building, his phone rang. It was Rodney Wong.
“His name is now Joe Bogen, B-o-g-e-n. Lives in Reno, owns laundromats.”
“Great work! How’d you find him?”
“You said he was a Vietnam vet, so I figured he’s getting his cancer treatment from the VA. I got into VA records, searched for prostate cancer and a pine tree tattoo. Two guys, but only one matched your description. And you were right. He’s in bad shape. Stage four on the cusp of five. Next stop, hospice.”
“You’re amazing.”
“Hold your applause. I struck out in Mendocino. You said the incident took place sometime in ’78. I checked the local cops, the county sheriff, state police, DEA, and CAMP. No warrants, no arrests, no citations, not even a parking ticket—nothing. I thought maybe you got the date wrong, so I checked from ’76 to ’80. Nothing. Then I checked Synder Creek and the neighboring counties: Humboldt, Glenn, and Trinity. Zip. I don’t know, man, but as far as the police are concerned, whatever happened up there...it never happened.”