The “thirty list” was a reference to those who had been lost over the years in the downsizing of the paper. Thirty was old-time newspaper code for “end of story.” Goodwin himself was on the list. He had worked at the Times and was on the fast track as an editor until a change of ownership brought a change in financial philosophy. When he objected to doing more with less he was cut down at the knees and ended up taking one of the first buyouts offered. That was back when they offered substantial payments to those who would voluntarily leave the company—before the media company that owned the Times filed for bankruptcy protection.
Goodwin took his payout and set up shop with a website and a blog that covered everything that moved inside the Times. He called it thevelvetcoffin.com as a grim reminder of what the paper used to be: a place to work so pleasurable that you would easily slip in and stay till you died. With the constant changes of ownership and management, the layoffs, and the ever-dwindling staff and budget, the place was now becoming more of a pine box. And Goodwin was there to chronicle every step and misstep of its fall.
His blog was updated almost daily and was avidly and secretly read by everybody in the newsroom. I wasn’t sure much of the world beyond the thick bomb-proof walls of the Times even cared. The Times was going the way of all journalism and that wasn’t news. Even the New York By God Times was feeling the pinch caused by the shift of society to the Internet for news and advertising. The stuff Goodwin wrote about and was calling me about amounted to little more than rearranging deck chairs on the Titanic.
But in another two weeks it wouldn’t matter to me. I was moving on and already thinking about the half-started, half-assed novel I had in my computer. I was going to pull that baby out as soon as I got home. I knew I could milk my savings for at least six months and after that I could live off the equity in my house—what was left of it after the recent slide—if I needed to. I could also downsize my car and save on gas by getting one of those hybrid tin cans everybody in town was driving.
I was already beginning to see my shove out the door as an opportunity. Deep down, every journalist wants to be a novelist. It’s the difference between art and craft. Every writer wants to be considered an artist and I was now going to take my shot at it. The half novel I had sitting at home—the plot of which I couldn’t even correctly remember—was my ticket.
“Are you out the door today?” Goodwin asked.
“No, I got a couple weeks if I agreed to train my replacement. I agreed.”
“How fucking noble of them. Don’t they allow anybody any dignity over there anymore?”
“Hey, it beats walking out with a cardboard box today. Two weeks’ pay is two weeks’ pay.”
“But do you think that’s fair? How long have you been there? Six, seven years, and they give you two weeks?”
He was trying to draw an angry quote from me. I was a reporter. I knew how it worked. He wanted something juicy he could put in the blog. But I wasn’t biting. I told Goodwin I had no further comment for the Velvet Coffin, at least not until I was permanently out the door. He wasn’t satisfied with that answer and kept trying to pry a comment out of me until I heard the call-on-hold beep in my ear. I looked at the caller ID and saw xxxxx on the screen. This told me the call had come through the switchboard rather than from a caller who had my direct number. Lorene, the newsroom operator I could see on duty in the booth, would have been able to tell I was on my line, so her decision to park a call on it rather than take the message could only mean the caller had convinced her that the call was important.
I cut Goodwin off.
“Look, Don, I’ve got no comment and I need to go. I’ve got another call.”
I pushed the button before he could take a third swing at getting me to discuss my employment situation.
“This is Jack McEvoy,” I said after switching over.
Silence.
“Hello, this is Jack McEvoy. How can I help you?”
Call me biased but I immediately identified the person who replied as female, black and uneducated.
“McEvoy? When you goin’ to tell the truth, McEvoy?”
“Who is this?”
“You tellin’ lies, McEvoy, in your paper.”
I wished it was my paper.
“Ma’am, if you want to tell me who you are and what your complaint is about, I’ll listen. Otherwise, I’ m—”
“They now sayin’ Mizo is’n adult and what kinda shit is that? He did’n kill no whore.”
Immediately I knew it was one of those calls. Those calls on behalf of the “innocent.” The mother or girlfriend who had to tell me how wrong my story was. I got them all the time but not for too much longer. I resigned myself to handling this call as quickly and politely as possible.
“Who is Mizo?”
“Zo. My Zo. My son, Alonzo. He ain’ guilty a nothin’ and he ain’t no adult.”
I knew that was what she was going to say. They are never guilty. No one calls you up to say you got it right or the police got it right and their son or their husband or their boyfriend is guilty of the charges. No one calls you from jail to tell you they did it. Everybody is innocent. The only thing I didn’t understand about the call was the name. I hadn’t written about anybody named Alonzo—I would have remembered.
“Ma’am, do you have the right person here? I don’t think I wrote about Alonzo.”
“Sure you did. I got your name right here. You said he stuffed her in the trunk and that’s some motherfuckin’ shit right there.”
Then it came together. The trunk murder from last week. It was a six-inch short because nobody on the desk was all that interested. Juvenile drug dealer strangles one of his customers and puts her body in the trunk of her own car. It was a black-on-white crime but still the desk didn’t care, because the victim was a drug user. Both she and her killer were marginalized by the paper. You start cruising down to South L.A. to buy heroin or rock cocaine and what happens happens. You won’t get any sympathy from the gray lady on Spring Street. There isn’t much space in the paper for that. Six inches inside is all you’re worth and all you get.
I realized I didn’t know the name Alonzo because I had never been given it in the first place. The suspect was sixteen years old and the cops didn’t give out the names of arrested juveniles.
I flipped through the stack of newspapers on the right side of my desk until I found the Metro section from two Tuesdays back. I opened it to page four and looked at the story. It wasn’t long enough to carry a byline. But the desk had put my name as a tagline at the bottom. Otherwise I wouldn’t have gotten the call. Lucky me.
“Alonzo is your son,” I said. “And he was arrested two Sundays ago for the murder of Denise Babbit, is that correct?”
“I told you that is motherfucking bullshit.”
“Yes, but that’s the story we’re talking about. Right?”
“That’s right, and when are you goin’ to write about the truth?”
“The truth being that your son is innocent.”
“That’s right. You got it wrong and now they say he’s going to be tried as an adult and he only sixteen years old. How can they do that to a boy?”
“What is Alonzo’s last name?”