I’d asked Templeton to arrive at the Bonaventure ahead of me so I wouldn’t be waiting alone.
I didn’t want to be tempted by the tinkling of cocktail glasses in the lounge and the sight of all those gleaming bottles calling to me from behind the bar.
She met me as I stepped out of the elevator at the top floor.
She carried a Gucci briefcase, rather than her usual oversized handbag, and looked mature and serious in high heels and a business suit buttoned all the way to the neck.
“Nice threads,” I said.
“Thanks. Feeling better?”
“I could use some coffee.”
I knew she must be experiencing some anxiety over the work ahead, as I was. But I also figured she was too professional to mention it, which proved to be the case.
As we made our way to the restaurant, she informed me that deputies had found Luis Albundo’s gun. He’d tossed it into the vines around the historic Frank Lloyd Wright House on North Doheny Drive. She’d also been informed that it wasn’t the weapon used to murder Billy Lusk, which by then was a surprise to neither of us.
We told the host that a third party would be joining us. He grabbed three menus, led us around the revolving restaurant, and seated us by a window that faced northwest.
With its outer walls of partitioned glass, the circular restaurant resembled a giant spaceship, hovering eerily above the city. As its floor slowly rotated, we could see the Hollywood Sign against the golden hills in the distance and the approach of the Griffith Park Observatory along a ridge to the east. In the street, thirty-five stories below, pedestrians and vehicles appeared minuscule and unreal.
Templeton and I sat side by side, spreading out our notes and going over our game plan.
Our timing during the rest of the evening would be crucial, and we’d planned a framework for the interview with our minds on the clock.
The deadline for breaking news at the Sun was 11:30 p.m., although the editors could do a makeover in extreme emergencies two or three hours beyond that. But that was costly and complicated, requiring clearances from the top, which we wanted to avoid.
That meant Templeton needed to file a solid story no later than eleven to allow for editing, then moving from the copy desk to production. From there, it would pass through paste-up to plating before the presses rolled.
At that moment, Harry was at the Sun, laying out the pages, selecting and captioning photos, and writing the headline and deck. He planned a forty-two-point headline across the top of page one, with a three-line deck, a one-column lead running fifteen inches, and thirty inches of jump inside. That would give us a total of forty-five column inches for nothing but copy and subheads.
If we didn’t get the story, Harry would go to an optional layout, leading with another piece, and hurry that version into production. He was already on thin ice at the Sun; if the brass found out he’d kept me involved on a story that had gone so far and failed, as they undoubtedly would, Harry would be gone. Templeton was young and could survive; but in the newspaper business, Harry Brofsky would be finished.
If we pulled it off, got what we needed from our interview and met our deadline, Harry would have the scoop of a lifetime and regain much of the luster and confidence I’d robbed him of six years before. Templeton would suddenly be a star reporter in a city of three million people, on her way to choice assignments. And Gonzalo Albundo would be out of jail and back with his family.
The chance of all that happening depended on how well Templeton and I had prepared for this interview, and what we’d be able to entice from our subject, with Templeton’s tape recorder running.
She plugged it into a wall outlet and set it inconspicuously to the side, next to the wine list, with the microphone aimed at our visitor’s chair.
Shortly after eight, he arrived.