Guy Clark sat rigid in his chair glowering at the few lines of type running across the top of his computer screen. The characters burned garish and neon-bright, the cursor throbbed at the end of the last word typed, impatient and demanding. Rage flared suddenly and he jabbed the justify button hard, cursing as the words reordered themselves into paragraphs along the left side of the screen. His exertions had yielded barely four inches of copy.
He had once overheard a couple of reporters in the library sniggering that his byline file contained only six stories while their files were stuffed, and how ridiculous that he, Guy, was an editor when he had hardly ever written a goddamn news story, much less a feature. Rage had flared then, too, and the rejoinder had been on his lips: if you guys are so fucking brilliant, how come I’m an editor and you’re just a couple of dumb beat reporters? But he had kept his control. Knowledge of other people—their opinions, their ambitions, their weaknesses—was always useful in the long run. Even the avails of library gossip. He recognized the voices, knew the reporters. Now that he was city editor, they would sidle up to him, try to humour him, appease him, entice him into certain kinds of stories, or try to avoid certain assignments or shifts, whining, cajoling, arguing. He would reward or punish as he saw fit.
The fact was, advancement in a newsroom had little to do with ability or talent or education—those were the givens and those he had. No, to advance you needed to be able to seize opportunities. It was a matter of the useful application of knowledge. That was it, he thought with a surge of self-congratulation that swept away his earlier anger: the useful application of knowledge.
How useful, for instance, had been his knowledge about Kingdon. He remembered well the day Caitlin told him their parents had not died haplessly as the result of some road condition or mechanical failure in a car, but that they had been killed—yes, killed as surely as if they had been shot with a gun—by a rich drunk, a stupid, over-privileged, rich drunk, and that that truth had been manipulated and obscured until it was turned on its head, the victims banished to oblivion, the killer exalted as a fallen hero. He had been teenaged then but still young enough to believe that what poured from newspapers or radio or television was not only true but truth itself. That notion had gone out the window in that moment. He began to study newspapers, to examine the ways they handled information, to read between the lines, alert to their biases, their presumptions. He enrolled in journalism at Red River Community College. Though that snob Martin tended to discount community college diplomas, Guy had been able to impress him as pugnacious and ravenous for the fray of daily newspapering. How Martin—who had achieved his position simply by marrying well and who favoured reporters with university degrees—loved to surround himself at the higher levels with ambitious proles. And he had played it to the hilt, rising with extraordinary speed, first to the desk, then to the editorship of the Go! section, which gave him access to editorial conferences and a warmer relationship with the man who was destined, whether he knew it or not, to be his benefactor. Martin liked him, or at least was amused by him—it didn’t matter which—and began to take him into his confidence, master condescending to pupil. But lately, Martin had seemed to cool toward him. Oh, yes, there had been problems—high staff turnover in Go!, reporters going over his head and whining to Martin about unfair treatment, complaints from the arts community perennially unsatisfied with the coverage of their narcissistic busywork—but none of it was of any consequence. He wasn’t challenged in his job, he explained to Martin one day. And he wasn’t. Go!, with its horoscopes and recycled Hollywood gossip and recipes and reviews of fruitcake dance groups, was marginal to the life of the Citizen. He wanted something meatier, where his abilities might truly be tested. Something like city desk. Martin had dismissed the notion.
Poor Martin. Of course, it was well known he had long been the aggrieved bridesmaid, never the bride, when it came to the publisher’s chair. Tom Rossiter had advanced Martin’s career when he married his wife’s sister, but that career had stalled in the wake of Tom’s death. He was pushing sixty. With the last publisher retired with Hayward’s sale of the Citizen, his number had come up again, and it was the last time it would. The Mack purchase in the summer had laid the groundwork. A zealous right-wing Christian Albertan—a frightening combination, but what the fuck—Harry Mack demanded the publishers of his newspapers be impeccable. Harmac investigated backgrounds thoroughly and held upper management to a standard that would make the Pope tremble. So Guy had told Martin the story of his life that day in the sanctuary of Martin’s office, the oddly bare office that suggested only a temporary encampment en route to the rooms of dark wood and old leather in a more secluded part of the building. He told Martin precisely why he had become interested in newspapers. And Martin had become most accommodating. Closets rarely contained one skeleton, after all. And he had only had to suggest that they did. Mack, of course, would never tolerate corruption at the highest level of his organization. They were the purest of the pure. Harry Mack and his big-Texas-haired wife Blanche made Quakers seemed debauched. Or at least they liked to present themselves as such.
Yes, he had made a useful application of knowledge that day. And now there was something else that would be useful. Some material had appeared on his desk Friday as if by magic. At first he had been dubious about the truth of its contents. The information was so astonishing as to be almost absurd and he wondered if some bastard in the newsroom weren’t playing a complex trick on him. But all the papers, though they were photocopies, bore the unmistakable signs of authority: insignia, stamps, numbers, signatures. As a trick it would have been too elaborate for the meagre minds of the newsroom slugs.
His first thought had been: Scoop! Saturday edition! But then he reconsidered. He needed to be absolutely sure. The paper’s lawyers would probably have to vet it. There wasn’t enough time. And, besides, the story could screw up the Galleries Portáge opening. Since the Citizen had thrown its weight behind this downtown renewal bullshit, that wouldn’t be a wise move. Guy let his fingers dance along the computer keys. No, Monday would be fine. Better, even. He would write the story himself over the weekend and present it as a fait accompli on the first day of his assumption of city desk. It would start his stewardship with a story that would turn the city on its ear. He would show the whole newsroom what a good story was, and how to handle it. And once that was done…
He swivelled in his chair. One bank of fluorescent lights illuminated his desk, but the rest of the newsroom was in shadow. The remaining desks, the computer terminals, the piles of old newspapers, books and other detritus of the business lay soft and amorphous like slumbering animals in a darkened forest. Only the glow of one distant computer screen, carelessly left on, broke the shapeless gloom. Its thin light seemed to agitate the dust around it into a sympathetic phosphorescence, giving definition to a Styrofoam coffee cup, a glass ashtray precariously balanced on a stack of white papers, a dog-eared dictionary. The only sound was the faint whine of the fans cooling the computer system.
On these rare Saturday evenings when he came to work, when the newsroom was devoid of people, when it was quiet and dark, and he was sitting in his corner looking outward across the plain of empty desks, he felt almost at peace. There was no need for the Monday-to-Friday vigilance. Nothing in the environment could thwart him or contradict him. There were no other editors plotting his humiliation, no reporters frowning and gossiping, no superiors expecting his obeisance. The room was his. He could do what he liked.
Well, not quite, he thought and snorted out loud, the sound strangely amplified. He was indulging a fantasy of power a little bit. The room was empty, after all. But soon, starting Monday, he would move to that desk right over there, the one at the top of the room that all other desks faced like sunflowers bent towards the sun. He would have much more authority. He would be able to shape events in ways he couldn’t before. A kind of glee seemed to run through him, almost like the irrepressible glee he’d felt as a child when Christmas approached, those long-ago Christmases when his parents were still alive. He would be good. He would use this new power beneficently. Now that he had reached this stage he could. Before, there were always others continually, continually undermining him. But on Monday…
He turned back to his screen and the moment of pleasure dissolved. The four inches of copy stared back at him. He muttered another curse. This story should just write itself. That’s what he told his staff. Of course stories just wrote themselves! How could they not if they were good stories? But the morons he had inherited when he was appointed Go! editor always seemed to bristle when he offered such wisdom. Most of them thought of themselves not as reporters, but as writers, real writers distinguishable from the mere hacks in the paper’s other departments. But he had news for them: they were hacks, too; only they had more column inches in which to display their putrid prose—prose that he always had to repair and rework, of course, and with no thanks. Liz was the worst offender, forever contradicting him. Axel had been bad, too, but he was gone. He had taken great pleasure in fucking up his controlled-circ plans with the Citizen.
Hadn’t Liz been surprised when he had said he knew about her affair with Richter? It had started with a simple observation. One day he had noted her walking to her car, then veer off suddenly toward the condos facing Central Park where the Richters kept an in-town apartment. There had been something furtive about her as she’d rounded the corner, the quick glancings around, that had piqued his curiosity. He had heard that her marriage was strained. All it took was a little detective work, a friendly and remunerative conversation with the condo superintendent. And the way she looked at Richter at the Kingdons’ dinner party. Was everyone else stupid? Was he the only one with any perception? Wouldn’t it be interesting if her husband found out, just when he was planning to run for political office? It wouldn’t look good, a messy separation in the middle of a campaign.
He had enjoyed dangling the Go! editorship in front of her at the party. She had wanted the position once. But he had beat her to it. Now he had to admit that in some ways he was sorry she hadn’t been named in his place in Friday’s announcement. Even if she was always challenging him, she at least had more brains than that idiot Pastuk who had replaced him. Maybe he should lean on Martin to give her the position permanently. With what he knew about her now, perhaps he could continue to exercise some control in the Go! department. On the other hand, those insinuations of hers about his activities Tuesday night before arriving at Kingdon’s…
He thought back to that night. He had left the Citizen diligently late, but a little early for his appointment with Michael. Debating whether to drive home first, drop off his briefcase and change, he passed Merritt’s Miata parked on Assiniboine Avenue outside Jane’s Boutique. He’d parked a discreet distance away, and then, when she came out of Jane’s, he followed her. The crazy bitch spent half an hour driving all over the place, down Wellington to Assiniboine Park, then back along Corydon. When she turned onto Stafford he figured she was going to her brother’s. Was it to be a meeting with the two of them?
He didn’t know what the meeting was supposed to be about anyway. Michael hadn’t said, but it had the effect of a royal command. Besides, he was curious. He had glimpsed Michael only once, when he allowed himself to be lured by a very persistent publicist into accepting an invitation to an opening of some weird photographs at the Floating Gallery. Michael was supposed to be Mr. Nice Guy. Hell, he looked like Mr. Nice Guy. Merritt, however, dripped acid about her brother when they’d been together. Michael Rossiter was controlling, judgmental, and miserly—ego masquerading as altruism. Among other things.
He parked on the north side of Michael’s property, grabbed his case, and quickly got out of the car. Since she had turned the street before, she would be parked on the south.
God, he was obsessed with her. Watching her cross the newsroom sometimes, he wanted to jerk off under his desk. He could hardly believe she had gone out with him in the first place. He had to get rid of her. Get her fired. He couldn’t stand it much longer. That episode in his apartment…
Was that what it was supposed to be about? Was Michael doing some protective big-brother routine?
But he didn’t see her in the yard. Shadows stretched across the lawn. The house was still: No figures in the windows, no lights switching on against the early evening. There had been only the sound of a few car doors slamming on the street, and some sort of to-ing and fro-ing next door at Kingdons’. He almost turned and walked away. But then he decided, hell, he was here. He wasn’t going to take any shit from Michael Rossiter…
Guy looked at his watch. He needed to make an appearance at the mall opening, make sure to praise the Lord and pass the hors d’oeuvres with Harry Mack and his lieutenants. The Mack empire seemed bent on media acquisition. He needed to be remembered. He didn’t want to spend the rest of his life in this burg in the middle of nowhere. And model-thin Julie Olsen would be there, too. After work Friday, he had gone to Pantages bar. Julie had been there. Funny, she had never paid him any attention before. Funny, she should find him interesting on the very day of his big promotion. Oh well, one of the perks of the job. And it helped him keep his mind off Merritt for a few hours. He hadn’t got back to his own apartment until late afternoon, and then only to change before going to the Citizen to get a start on his big story before hopping over to the mall. She hadn’t been anxious for him to go. And he was looking forward to spending another night with her. This night. Tonight.
The phone had been ringing when he turned the key to his apartment. The caller insisted on talking with him.
Begged, actually.
Fuck you, he had wanted to say. But he liked the idea of himself as compassionate, as gracious, willing to hear an argument. He said he was just on his way to the Citizen. Meet me in the newsroom, he said.
Guy ran his fingers over the keyboard like it was a piano. Gibberish burned onto the screen. He frowned. Glanced at his watch. Cocked an ear toward the door to the newsroom.
Had she chickened out…?
Michael hadn’t answered the bell to his door, but it had been open anyway, so he walked in. He called out, but there was no reply. He should have known there was something wrong. The open door. The silence. He had walked around, looking into different rooms, admiring the stuff, repeatedly calling Michael’s name to disguise the unwarranted intrusion when he had caught a glimpse of something human through a sliding panel. He had poked his head in and there, glistening red in the dwindling light seeping through windows opposite, was a patch of blood. Michael’s face was in it.
It had been a shock. He could admit it to himself now. He had never seen a dead body before. He hadn’t felt nauseous or physically revolted, but he had felt for a moment a loss of strength, a wobble in the knees. Of course, they didn’t let him see his father after the accident, or even his mother in the hospital—her injuries had been too severe. He had begged to see her but his grandmother wouldn’t let him. He was too young, she said. And then his mother had died. After he cried over that, he never cried again…
He had turned from the sight of Michael Rossiter’s fallen body toward the desk to look for a phone. It was an automatic response. Then he noted an open appointment book, with his name clearly inked in. A kind of paranoia swept over him at that moment. Might the cops make something of the accidental connection between his family and the Rossiters? Accuse him of exacting some sort of delayed revenge? Or would Merritt say Michael had intended to read him the riot act?
They had argued. There had been a fight.
He thought only long enough to tear the page away from the coil binding without leaving a print. Now there was no proof Michael had been expecting his visit. Merritt wasn’t around. Clearly she had not parked. She had driven on. Why get involved? And just in case anyone had seen him in the neighbourhood, he would hop over to the Kingdons’. Martin would give him an alibi. No question.
He had retraced his steps through the house. He hadn’t touched anything, didn’t touch anything, and there would be no footprints. The weather had been too hot and dry for that.
But when he got outside and gulped the fresh air, an almost giddy feeling of happiness surged from somewhere deep inside, surprising him. Sick, maybe—he thought that now, almost guiltily—but in that moment he found Rossiter’s death weirdly satisfying. The son of the man who had killed his parents had himself been killed. A rough symmetry. Crude justice, but justice nonetheless.
Into this reverie, the insistent burr of an electronic doorlock barely penetrated. Some mechanical function of the subconscious duly noted the sound and sent a delayed message to the cerebral cortex, but by the time Guy paid attention, the sound had died and silence had again closed in. He turned to look. Probably one of the sports reporters in to file a late story. Sports had its own room down the hall, in the opposite direction from the newsroom. Or it was one of the cleaners, although cleaners didn’t usually work on Saturdays. Or perhaps security, or what passed for security—one skinny Filipino with a flashlight.
He tapped out a few more words and thought again of Merritt. He couldn’t help himself. He was sure she was seeing someone else. She wasn’t the kind of woman who was long without a man. But who? Hell, she’d been with Dale-fucking-Hawerchuk briefly, and hadn’t there been some record producer when she’d lived in New York? And some nightclub owner? Visions of Merritt and anyone else made him pigsick with jealousy. Even if she talked to some other guy in the newsroom, he could feel a cold rage begin to wash along his nerves. The intensity of his feelings for her dismayed him; he would feel his self-control begin to slip its mooring.
God, she was hot. Even her druggie history was alluring. But there was this other attraction—the link between their families. He had been fascinated by her ignorance of the connection. She presumed he knew all about her parents, and she never asked about his. Not ever. In the end, their affair had been brief. It had taken some work to get her attention in the first place. Being Go! editor helped—she had to talk to him; he was her boss, even if Martin had basically foisted her on him in the first place. He dared himself to ask her out, just to see if she would. She’d looked faintly amused, but condescended to say yes. Okay, basically, she had just been playing with him. And he had enjoyed playing. There was no reason it couldn’t go on. But then she ended it. On a whim. By then he was lost, besotted. Her action stunned him. Made him furious. It was hard to keep decorum in the newsroom but after work…
He would run into her in a grocery store and she would look so surprised. He would show up at the same clubs and bars. He phoned again and again, but she never picked up. He got tired of talking into her answering machine. Finally he got her to agree to meet him. His grandmother had only just died. He had never felt so low, and Caitlin had her own grief to contend with. He had to admit he had got a little weird with Merritt that day in his apartment. He’d done a bad thing. But afterwards, for a time, the obsession seemed to fade. She didn’t show up for work for a long time. He covered for her, told Martin she was viewing the fall fashions or spring fashions or whatever in Dallas or Paris or Milan or somewhere. And then in late August she turned up again in the newsroom and treated him with all the disdain that seemed to be in her blood, but still flipping that long, red, actressy hair in his face.
So absorbed was he that he didn’t hear at first the faint rustle of clothing or the short quick intake of air behind him. When he did, it was much too late. The hands were already around his throat, crushing him with a surprisingly strong, steady grasp, the unexpected odour of warm rubber assailing his nostrils as he instinctively threw open his mouth to fight for air. Foolishly he reached up to try and tear apart the alien pair of hands but his fingers, damp with sudden sweat, fumbled along a slippery surface. Gloves. The thought ripped through his fevered mind as he tried to struggle out of the chair, gagging and gasping. But the full weight of this other grunting creature was forcing his head down, down toward the keyboard of his computer while with waning strength he fought to retain his position, to clutch some part of his chair, the desk, anything to achieve the leverage that would allow him to throw off his assailant. But everything, papers, books, pencils, flew out of reach. He could feel himself shooting backward down a long tunnel. The blood roared in his ears. The computer screen shrank to a microdot before his fading eyes. And then, suddenly, his head was right against the cool thick glass of the screen and the brightest whitest diamond flashed in his brain.