A VETERAN OF FOUR decades in journalism, Clive Bennett was a weedy little man with a salt-and-pepper beard and the spurious eyes of a rascal. He was in his late fifties and twice divorced, a somewhat caustic man who moved through life in a perpetual haze of tobacco smoke and whiskey fumes. As owner, publisher, and editor of the San Diego Times, Clive boasted an unfettered dedication to selling papers at almost any cost. From his perspective, the end always justified the means. Shock and awe—that’s what sold. What made you famous, made you money, gave you job security. But it had to be true. As much as Clive reveled in blood-and-guts journalism, he would not tolerate fake news. A lesson quickly imparted to a young Nicolas Pinder when he joined the paper in his teens. Nearly twenty years down the road, that lesson was now staring both of them in the face.
Since hiring Nick Pinder as a wayward teenager—having somehow seen a kernel of brilliance hidden inside the young man—Clive had taught his star reporter everything there was to know about the journalism trade and the art of writing. Including the trick of reading out loud as one composed a story. Didn’t matter if he was writing longhand or pecking at a typewriter, reading the words out loud was a surefire way to establish pace and rhythm, eliminate unnecessary words, and weed out awkward phrases. Nick didn’t even have to think about it anymore. No matter what he was writing—love letter, shopping list, or in this particular case, the lead story for tomorrow’s paper—the words came out of his mouth as well as off the tips of his fingers.
“Mr. Zebulon Archer, the San Diego lumber company owner and real estate developer, was found dead early this morning at Devil’s Hole near the Cliff House in Ocean Beach.”
“Too wordy,” Nick muttered to himself, ripping the paper out of his typewriter, balling it up with a fist, inserting another piece behind the roller and starting again. “San Diego lumber king Zebulon Archer was found dead this morning near Ocean Beach, the victim of an apparent homicide …”
“Much smoother,” said Clive, watching over Nick’s shoulder as the story took shape. “But you’re jumping the gun.”
“On what?” Nick asked defensively.
“Nothing important,” Clive responded, the sarcasm even more pronounced in his British accent. “Just the cause of death. The victim does not appear to have been shot, stabbed, or otherwise violently dispatched. There is absolutely no evidence of foul play. Yet you claim Archer was murdered.”
“What else could it be?” Nick shot back, trying his best to win an argument with a man who rarely ever backed down on anything.
“I would argue for suicide,” said Wendell Smith, hovering near enough to eavesdrop—and add his own two cents to a front-page story that should have been his to write given the fact that he’d been first to the scene of the crime.
“And why is that, Mr. Smith?” the boss asked.
“There is a good argument to be made that Mr. Archer hurled himself into Devil’s Cove in a fit of depression, because his subdivision was failing miserably.”
Nick rolled his eyes. “Oh please, Wendell.” The kid was like a fly buzzing around your head, insignificant yet highly irritating and in need of being squashed.
But Clive urged the young reporter to continue.
“We’ve all seen the notices. They’re in the paper every day. A warning to those who purchased lots in Ocean Beach that their real-estate contracts are null and void if they don’t settle their debts forthwith. I’m told the deceased was owed thousands of dollars.”
But Nick wasn’t buying. “Archer was still making money hand over fist from his lumber business. He was one of the most powerful men in San Diego. He had his run of the gin joints and gambling halls and local floosies. Does that sound like a candidate for suicide?”
“People off themselves for all sorts of reasons,” Clive pointed out. “Until such time as the medical examiner reveals both the exact cause and type of death, I think it prudent not to speculate.”
Nick huffed in disgust. Since when was Clive concerned with prudence? “I don’t have to remind you—seeing as you’re the one who taught me—that our primary task as a newspaper is to inform and enlighten the public. Our readers will want to know what killed Archer. And they’ll want to know tomorrow. If we don’t tell them, I fear they may seek the answer elsewhere.”
Clive scowled at his ace reporter. “That doesn’t mean we just make shit up.”
“It’s speculation, not fiction. An intelligent guess based on the facts at hand. No different than most scientific theories, which you seem to publish without question. An awful lot of people in this town loathed Archer for the precise reason that he was so rich and so powerful. He didn’t attain his lofty station in life by being a swell guy. Archer wouldn’t think twice about walking over someone—crushing you into the sod—if you got in his way.”
“That proves nothing, least of all homicide.” Clive pointed at the typewriter. “Rewrite it.”
“Can I say probably murdered?”
“No!”
“We can always retract later if we’re wrong.”
“And eat humble pie? No thanks. I don’t like the taste. Not to mention the waste of perfectly good newsprint.”
“All right, all right!” said Nick, finally backing down. He snatched the pages, balled them up, and threw them in the trash, too. Under his breath, he mumbled, “We don’t need murder to sell more papers this time.”
Clive eyed him suspiciously. “What in blazes are you talking about now?”
From the back of the room stepped Elliot Patterson, a leather portfolio tucked beneath one arm. In all the hoopla over the story, Nick was the only one who had noticed the photographer’s quiet arrival.
“Show him,” said Nick with a flourish.
From the portfolio, Patterson removed a selection of photos which he artfully arranged on the publisher’s desk. The staff crowded around, staring at the sepia-toned images. Several people gasped, appalled by the gruesome visage—a bloated corpse hanging upside down above the beach.
“Poor bugger,” said Clive. “You’re not selling these, are you, Patterson? Much too ghastly, even for you.”
“What we’ve actually got in mind,” said Nick, “is publishing one of these photographs on the front page. Tomorrow morning, as a matter of fact, adjacent to my story.”
“You can’t be serious.” Wendell’s eyebrows shot up, shocked by the very thought.
Nick snorted. “Sweet Jesus, Smith. Grow some balls.”
“My father would be horrified.”
“Well, your daddy ain’t the editor of this paper, is he?”
“Quiet!” Clive barked. His eyes moved from photo to photo and then up to Nick. “Ethics aside, I don’t know of a single paper on the West Coast with the wherewithal or know-how to render a photograph on newsprint.”
“Patterson and I have been experimenting,” Nick said, nodding toward the photographer. “And we believe the process is now perfected.”
Thoroughly uncomfortable with any conversation that involved more than two people, Patterson cleared his throat. “It’s called halftone reproduction. Basically, it’s a form of engraving, very similar to line etching, the difference being that one can also reproduce the gray shades—the so-called ‘halftones’—rather than just the solid black lines.”
As evidence, Patterson produced a recent copy of Harper’s Weekly with a black-and-white photograph of President Grover Cleveland on the cover.
Clive pulled the page within an inch of his specs and carefully studied the president. He had heard about the halftone process and the fact that New York publications were now able to reproduce photographs. But this was the first time he had seen one of the images up close. “Looks like a bunch of dots.”
“That’s exactly what it is,” Patterson enthused. “Halftones comprise hundreds of tiny ink dots.”
Clive still didn’t look convinced. “We can do this?”
“I’ve been doing dry runs on a halftone machine that I purchased earlier this year. So, yeah, we can do it.”
Clive’s attention drifted back to the photographs arrayed across his desk, half a dozen eight-by-ten images of Archer’s body suspended upside down from the cliff. Printed on proper photographic paper and blown up to this size, the images were truly horrendous. Much too shocking to thrust upon the general public, especially women and children who might happen to snatch a glance at the newspaper. But in halftone form, the fine details largely obscured, they just might be able to pull it off without a public outcry.
The editor had no doubt that publishing a photograph of the deceased Mr. Archer would boost sales, maybe even double or triple their normal circulation of roughly 5,000 copies. But he remained unconvinced that San Diego readers were ready for the image of a prominent man, newly dead with a face half-eaten by crabs, splashed across the front page.
“I don’t know,” said Clive, nervously pulling at his beard. “If we can successfully render one of these images in the actual paper, our doing so could be construed as even more scandalous than jumping the gun on whether it’s murder or not.”
“It may be more scandalous,” Nick interjected, “but truth is truth, whether written or captured by a camera. And there is no disputing that these images show the truth. How our readers interpret that truth—whether or not they deem it appalling or outrageous or murder or suicide—is beyond our control.”
Clive leaned back in his chair, deep in thought.
“We haven’t got an awful lot of time,” Nick said. If they were going to run a photo in tomorrow’s Times, they had to start the reproduction process at once.
“I’m well aware of that.” Clive scowled. He was quiet a moment more, then he turned and screamed, “Max!”
Moments later, a mutton-chopped German stuck his head through the door. Maximilian Wartheimer, master printer and composer for the Times.
“You know about this halftone malarkey?” asked Clive, holding one of the gruesome photos aloft.
“Ya, ya,” said the German in his thick accent. “I been workin’ wit Nick and Elliot.”
Clive looked around at his chief reporter. “Am I the only bastard west of the Mississippi who didn’t know about this?”
“’Fraid so,” Nick said, trying to sound a wee bit contrite.
The publisher twisted his seat around toward the German. “Will it work?” he asked. “Can we do this without making fools of ourselves?”
“Nicht ein problem,” Max said confidently.
Still pondering the pros and cons, Clive exuded a deep breath. He gazed at the photos one last time then dragged his gaze up to his staff, still huddled around his desk. “Then let’s make some history.”