“Winslow.”
“Alonzo Winslow. And you are Mrs. Winslow?”
“No, I am not,” she said indignantly. “You goin’ put my name in the paper now with a mess a lies?”
“No, ma’am. I just want to know who I am talking to, that’s all.”
“Wanda Sessums. I don’t want my name in no paper. I want you to write the truth is all. You ruin his reputation calling him a murderer like that.”
Reputation was a hot-button word when it came to redressing wrongs committed by a newspaper, but I almost laughed as I scanned the story I had written.
“I said he was arrested for the murder, Mrs. Sessums. That is not a lie. That is accurate.”
“He arrested but he didn’ do it. The boy wouldn’t hurt a fly.”
“Police said he had an arrest record going back to twelve years old for selling drugs. Is that a lie, too?”
“He on the corners, yeah, but that don’t mean he go an’ kill nobody. They pinnin’ a rap on him and you jes’ along for the ride with your eyes closed nice and tight.”
“The police said that he confessed to killing the woman and putting her body in the trunk.”
“That’s a damn lie! He did no such thing.”
I didn’t know if she was referring to the murder or the confession but it didn’t matter. I had to get off. I looked at my screen and saw I had six e-mails waiting. They had all come in since I had walked out of Kramer’s office. The digital vultures were circling. I wanted to end this call and pass it and everything else off to Angela Cook. Let her deal with all the crazy and misinformed and ignorant callers. Let her have it all.
“Okay, Mrs. Winslow, I’ ll—”
“It’s Sessums, I told you! You see how you gettin’ things wrong all a time?”
She had me there. I paused for a moment before speaking.
“I’m sorry, Mrs. Sessums. I’ve taken some notes here and I will look into this and if there is something I can write about, then I will certainly call you. Meantime, best of luck to you and—”
“No, you won’t.”
“I won’t what?”
“You won’t call me.”
“I said I would call you if I—”
“You didn’t even ask me for my number! You don’ care. You just a bullshit motherfucker like the rest a them and my boy goes to prison for somethin’ he dint do.”
She hung up on me. I sat motionless for a moment, thinking about what she had said about me, then tossed the Metro section back on the stack. I looked down at the notebook in front of my keyboard. I hadn’t taken any notes and that supposedly ignorant woman had me pegged on that, too.
I leaned back in my chair and studied the contents of my cubicle. A desk, a computer, a phone and two shelves stacked with files, notebooks and newspapers. A red leather-bound dictionary so old and well used that the Webster’s had been worn off its spine. My mother had given it to me when I told her I wanted to be a writer.
It was all I really had left after twenty years in journalism. All I would take with me at the end of the two weeks that had any meaning was that dictionary.
“Hi, Jack.”
I turned from my reverie to look up at the lovely face of Angela Cook. I didn’t know her but I knew her: a fresh hire from a top-flight school. She was what they call a mojo—a mobile journalist nimbly able to file from the field via any electronic means. She could file text and photos for the website or paper, or video and audio for television and radio partners. She was trained to do it all but in practice she was still as green as can be. She was probably being paid $500 a week less than me, and in today’s newspaper economy that made her a greater value to the company. Never mind the stories that would be missed because she had no sources. Never mind how many times she would be set up and manipulated by the police brass, who knew an opportunity when they saw it.
She was probably a short-timer anyway. She’d get a few years’ experience, get some decent bylines, and move on to bigger things, law school or politics, maybe a job in TV. But Larry Bernard was right. She was a beauty, with blond hair over green eyes and full lips. The cops were going to love seeing her around headquarters. It would take no more than a week before they forgot about me.
“Hi, Angela.”
“Mr. Kramer said I should come over.”
They were moving quickly. I had gotten pinked no more than fifteen minutes earlier and already my replacement had come knocking.
“Tell you what,” I said. “It’s Friday afternoon, Angela, and I just got laid off. So let’s not start this now. Let’s get together on Monday morning, okay? We can meet for coffee and then I’ll take you around Parker Center to meet some people. Will that be okay?”
“Yeah, sure. And, um, sorry, you know?”
“Thank you, Angela, but it’s okay. I think it’ll end up being the best thing for me anyway. But if you’re still feeling sorry for me you could come over to the Short Stop tonight and buy me a drink.”
She smiled and got embarrassed because she and I both knew that wasn’t going to happen. Inside the newsroom and out, the new generation didn’t mix with the old. Especially not with me. I was history and she had no time or inclination to associate with the ranks of the fallen. Going to the Short Stop tonight would be like visiting a leper colony.
“Well, maybe some other time,” I said quickly. “I’ll see you Monday morning, okay?”
“Monday morning. And I’ll buy the coffee.”
She smiled and I realized that she was indeed the one who should take Kramer’s advice and try TV.
She turned to go.
“Oh, and Angela?”
“What?”
“Don’t call him Mr. Kramer. This is a newsroom, not a law firm. And most of those guys in charge? They don’t deserve to be called mister. Remember that and you’ll do okay here.”
She smiled again and left me alone. I pulled my chair in close to my computer and opened a new document. I had to crank out a murder story before I could get out of the newsroom and go drown my sorrows in red wine.
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Following is an excerpt from the opening pages of The Drop.
One
Christmas came once a month in the Open-Unsolved Unit. That was when the lieutenant made her way around the squad room like Santa Claus, parceling out the assignments like presents to the squad’s six detective teams. The cold hits were the lifeblood of the unit. The teams didn’t wait for callouts and fresh kills in Open-Unsolved. They waited for cold hits.
The Open-Unsolved Unit investigated unsolved murders going back fifty years in Los Angeles. There were twelve detectives, a secretary, a squad room supervisor, known as the whip, and the lieutenant. And there were ten thousand cases. The first five detective teams split up the fifty years, each pair taking ten randomly chosen years. Their task was to pull all the unsolved homicide cases from their assigned years out of archives, evaluate them and submit long-stored and forgotten evidence for reanalysis with contemporary technology. All DNA submissions were handled by the new regional lab out at Cal State. When DNA from an old case was matched to an individual whose genetic profile was carried in any of the nation’s DNA databases, it was called a cold hit. The lab put cold hit notices in the mail at the end of every month. They would arrive a day or two later at the Police Administration Building in downtown Los Angeles. Usually by 8 A.M. that day, the lieutenant would open the door of her private office and enter the squad room. She carried the envelopes in her hand. Each hit sheet was mailed individually in a yellow business envelope. Generally, the envelopes were handed to the same detectives who had submitted the DNA evidence to the lab. But sometimes there were too many cold hits for one team to handle at once. Sometimes detectives were in court or on vacation or on leave. And sometimes the cold hits revealed circumstances that required the utmost finesse and experience. That was where the sixth team came in. Detectives Harry Bosch and David Chu were the sixth team. They were floaters. They handled overflow cases and special investigations.