How Barret suspected the two names somehow fit together in the beginning is still a mystery to me, and frankly, I really don’t care. The real juice here is the fact that the two names do fit together, but only for me, and no one else.
In my tiny apartment I lay out my next moves and document them in the same tattered book. I see this thing in three parts, and I know that a gamble is in the cards, too. I scratch “Part 1” at the top of a fresh leaf, flip a few pages and then do the same for Parts 2 and 3. The fourth heading is simply “The Gamble.” I close the book and lay back on my futon, hands cupped behind my head, and follow the plotline before me.
It’s been months since I last wrote in this book, and I venture a brief reflection by flipping the pages backward. I scan through the earlier notes, Chloe’s notes, and immediately feel a creeping, gnawing guilt I have wrestled with on many nights like this one.
My mind floats to Dr. Coyle, whom I’ve not seen in probably six or even eight months, and I wonder if I should change that. I know I should. But things have been good. No extremes. I’m okay. Things are okay. But her last comments are never far away: these events may yet come home to roost.
• • •
Between coffee errands and research tasks I catch Donna’s eye from time to time. We develop a quirky relationship, although to call it platonic would be an understatement of titanic proportions. It’s fun, though, and built on nothing more than comical glances. There is the James Bond: one eyebrow dipped and one raised as high as possible. It’s cast across the room at almost any occasion—when people say something controversial, when people say something redundant, when people say anything at all and we manage to lock eyes. And there’s the Get Me Out of Here: a pained look that conveys the angst of the modern cubicle dweller.
But today it’s the Slow Blink, a move best delivered in concert with the Nearly Imperceptible Head Shake, which acknowledges the more spectacular gaffes of the mere mortals that work around us. At the far end of the floor someone has just dumped hot coffee into their lap, which gives birth to an attendant scream and a flurry of cusses. Of course, the rest of the newsroom stands immediately, prairie-dogging over cubicle walls to see just what happened. I lock eyes with Donna and let fly with the Slow Blink/Head Shake combo, and she stifles a laugh with her hand and disappears behind a cubicle wall. I know she’ll pop back up so I keep going, and when she inevitably does look over a few seconds later I’m still there, slowly blinking and head shaking away. She dissolves into giggles and I admit it makes me feel every kind of wonderful.
For me, it’s an exotic form of foreplay that will surely never to reach fruition. For her, an amusing office distraction—a silly and immediately forgettable exchange that will never even achieve the status of flirting.
Reenergized, I push the tasks assigned to me aside, and begin to hammer out the structure for the three-parter that will usher me into mainstream journalism. Each piece is about 750 words—short and punchy, but driven by as much fact as I can pull together. Each story leans against the next for support, like books on a shelf, building momentum and leaving just enough unanswered to draw in the questions—and the critics. I know that selling this to Ed Carroway will be the toughest part, as he will want the story’s conclusion—the payoff—up front. Editors always do. They don’t want the well-crafted path that weaves through a story—not at first pitch, anyway—they want to know where it’s going, and hear about the details that got you there afterward.
But for this story to fly, and for a cub reporter like me to fly it, I will have to sell it to him the way it was designed to unfold. Blurting out the payoff would likely get me little more than an embarrassed smile from Carroway—and a bulletproof glass ceiling inserted directly above me.
No. Carroway has to open this story like a carefully wrapped gift. The story’s payoff is so big, so significant that even if I did get past the pitch it would be stripped from me and assigned to a veteran known and trusted by the readership. It’s a career killer and a career maker all in one. My mind runs back to the notebook, briefly brushes up against Chloe, Professor Bowman, and then Dr. Coyle, then on through the pages to my overly dramatic heading, “The Gamble.”
I will bet it all here.
• • •
It’s nine forty at night and the Star-Telegraph is quiet, relatively speaking. Most of tomorrow’s stories have been committed to paper, submitted to editors, rewritten, and are now sitting on plates in the press center just north of the city. Deadlines have been met, and journalists are sipping specific drinks in specific bars—the journalistic equivalent of cocking a leg. I’m through with my assignments. I have spent the last three hours working on my own story, and I can already taste the cold beer at the bar where my cubicle mates—and Donna—are gathering.
Outside, summer’s first early surge is in full swing, and the restaurants are spilling their business into the streets with tablecloths and candles. The city is stirring from the deep chills of February; the sidewalks have been swept, the awnings are rehung with new color, and streetlights have been dressed with banners. It has all the makings of a beautiful evening, but out of the corner of my eye I catch a quick, darting movement. And without fully turning my head, I know it’s Trots.
As I sprint through the crowd of prospective diners, all I can think of is that after fifteen months Trots is now out of jail, and he’ll kill me if he catches up. I don’t mean that he’ll kick the proverbial shit out of me; I mean he’ll put a knife in my gut and smile as I juggle the mess of blue-black hosing that used to be inside me.
I clip an older woman and spin her around, but I can’t stop. Trots has nearly a foot on me in height and he’s built like an Olympian. But fear is on my side. My high school bio teacher pops into my head, shadowboxing in his cardigan: It’s the fight-or-flight gland, folks! The sidewalk is a blur below me, and as I whip my head back for a glance at Trots, I know I’ve made a mistake. The hydrant I hit is hard and immovable, but I feel nothing. All I register is the sensation that my feet are no longer in motion, no longer propelling me forward and away from Trots. My hands go out ahead of me, and I feel the skin smear as I fall face first into the street. Within seconds hands are upon me, hauling me upward by the back of my clothes and popping the seams in my shirt as it bites into my neck.
His voice is winded but victorious nonetheless, and I can feel the satisfaction in it as he pulls me up easily by the back of my sweatshirt with two balled fists. “Got you, you fucker.”
I am jerked round and dragged onto unwilling legs. I throw my bloodied hands across my face, but I know the act is futile; Trots will gut me, and as I reach for my stomach he will arc the blade upward and carve a neat smile below my chin.
But what I see momentarily confuses me: I can see Trots, but he’s not the one holding me. There’s a small crowd, and I’m being held by two large, well-dressed men, both of whom are huffing and catching their breath. At the back of the crowd I see Trots. He’s watching me, his eyes narrowed and his index finger flicking back and forth across his neck. I can hear him in my head, hissing at me: I gwan cut you latah, man. I gwan cut you latah. Then he’s gone, and a sharp shove turns my head to the men holding me.
“You knocked down an old woman, you prick.”
“Kick his ass, Derrick.”
“What’s the matter with you, man?”
I look around again, bewildered, muttering apologies, but my focus is on finding Trots’s face in the milling crowd. I put up no resistance and Derrick and his pals shove me to the floor with an entourage of threats and boot soles. The crowd thins as a policeman wades in and I’m once again hoisted to my feet. In five minutes it’s all over, and I’m sent nervously on my way. Derrick and his friends are gone. The police have moved on. I quickly stop a cab and flee with my tail well tucked.
Upstairs in my apartment, I look at the hotplate and can’t seem to understand why I still live here, why I still live this way, the way I did before the job at the Star-Telegraph. It occurs to me that I have to move—not just because I’m living like a squatter, but because if Trots can find out where I work then he can sure as hell find out where I live. But I know that this logic chain is not all that’s worrying me: there’s been a question lingering for a while, unformed but quietly making itself known: does Trots now know who I am? Has he put it all together: the photos in the paper, the interviews? A surge of panic ripples through me. No, I rationalize; he can’t. The photo is old, I had a beard, and Trots isn’t a follow-the-news kind of guy.
But I need to move. And I need to do it soon.
• • •
I’m at my desk by seven thirty the next morning, the brief chase of the night before a memory I can shake—temporarily—from the safety of my cubicle. I know leaving the building later on will be an exercise in paranoia, but for now I can immerse myself in a sense of safety—however fleeting. Focusing on work will bring calm, so I throw myself headlong into the job given to me by the assignment desk the day before. One of the senior writers, Paula Cross, is working on a story about municipal overspending, and my task for the day involves getting copies of invoices and expense sheets submitted by certain city councilors. We’re looking for fat, for good times at the taxpayers’ expense—for anything that helps support a story pointing directly at greed.
I spend the first part of the morning making formal requests under the Freedom of Information Act, a handy piece of legislation that compels government agencies to provide copies of public documents. I make requests against expense reports from every city councilor named in the story, and pick up the phone twice to speak to federal employees known to be Star-Telegraph friendly, asking for help on shaping the request, and making it move through the system at its best speed. I play my rookie status to the hilt, coming across as nervous, in awe of their role but enthusiastic to learn how “all this works.” They are flattered and eager to help.
After that it’s the real grunt work of journalism: calls to the lowest-ranking people associated with the councilors’ offices, people who just work there, and who will have little allegiance—if any—to the fat cats running the show. They are also the people least likely to toe the standard corporate line of passing all media requests up to some communications team close to the councilor himself. I ask them pointed questions about spending, try to get them to speak, to open up, bluntly using the Star-Telegraph’s name and its strangely inferred sense of authority in the hopes they’ll get flustered and say something, anything that might open a way forward.
I get one warm hit: a clerk who says the councilor he works for plays golf every Wednesday with his buddies and it irks him that the invoice always goes to the city. It’s something. So I note it, document the call and the contact, thank him, and hang up. Paula will like that one. I feel good; it’s ten in the morning and I’ve already done more than some of the folks here will do all day.
That’s enough for now, I think; time to focus on my real future. But before I can get into that the phone rings. It’s Donna. She asks what happened last night, why I never showed up. I apologize and make excuses, all the while feeling thrilled that she called. But I convince myself it’s just that friendly affection that Donna dispenses so freely to everyone. It means nothing, I tell myself. She’s just that kind of person.
I spend the rest of the morning appearing to work on assigned stories, while actually laying out a mockup of the first chapter of my three-part story. I lay it out as it would appear in any generic mainstream paper: columnar, with carefully matched font and size. I am cautious to omit any masthead or reference to a publication. When the layout is complete, I print it, tear the edges around the story, then immediately scan the print—slightly angled—and repeat the process until I am left with a hard copy that’s slightly fuzzed, and looks like a legitimate photocopy of a story torn from the pages of a real newspaper.
I read through the piece and try to see it from the perspective of a new reader—someone who knows none of the details, has none of the facts. I think it plays well, and immediately begins to stare accusingly in the direction of very lofty players. The piece stacks the facts rapidly, logically. It ties previously published stories together, plots a suggestive timeline, and builds a steady momentum that halts in midstride with the line “Read Part 2 tomorrow.” I nod silently. It’s as good as I can make it. I set the piece in a folder and place it in a drawer, then go about bringing the two following pieces together. They, too, stoke the fires of suspicion—still maintaining a sense of fairness and balance—but nevertheless push the reader to the desired conclusion.
The last of the three stories is the clincher. It holds the key, the hard proof that anchors the story and brings absolute credence to the facts that came before it. As I stare at the finished photocopy of Part 3, scanned, copied, and suitably fuzzied, I focus on the simple, explosive item that rests there. It sits in its own box at the top of the page across two columns, and it is brilliant. I realize for the first time that I am looking at something the best minds in journalism would just about kill for.