“Then this is the ultimate adios,” he said. “I get it. You leave ’em with a fuck-you—a story so good they gotta enter it in contests even though you’re long out the door.”
I didn’t respond. I hadn’t thought I was so easy to read. I turned back to the window. The freeway was elevated here and I could see block after block of houses crowded together. Many had blue tarps tied over their old, leaky roofs. The farther south you went in the city, the more of those tarps you saw.
“I still want in,” Lester said.
With complete access to Alonzo Winslow and his case now established, I was ready to discuss the story with my editor. By that I meant that I would officially say I was working it and my ace could put it on his futures budget. When I got back to the newsroom, I went directly over to the raft and found Prendergast at his desk. He was busily typing into his computer.
“Prendo, you got a minute?”
He didn’t even look up.
“Not right now, Jack. I got tagged with putting together the budget for the four o’clock. You got something for tomorrow besides Angela’s story?”
“No, I’m talking more long-range.”
He stopped typing and looked up at me and I realized he was confused. How long-range could a guy with twelve days left go?
“Not that long-range. We can talk later or tomorrow. Did Angela turn in the story?”
“Not yet. I think she was waiting for you to look it over. Can you go do that now and get it in? I want to get it out on the web as soon as we can.”
“I’m on it.”
“Okay, Jack. We’ll talk later or send me a quick e-mail.”
I turned and my eyes swept the newsroom. It was as long as a football field. I didn’t know where Angela Cook’s cubicle was located but I knew it would be close. The newer you were, the closer they kept you to the raft. The far reaches of the newsroom were for the veterans who supposedly needed less supervision. The south side was called Baja Metro and was inhabited by veteran reporters who still produced. The north side was the Deadwood Forest. This was where the reporters who did little reporting and even less writing were located. Some of them had sacrosanct positions by virtue of political connections or Pulitzer Prizes, and others were just incredibly skilled at keeping their heads down so they wouldn’t draw the attention of the assignment editors or the corporate cutters.
Over the top edge of one of the nearby pods I saw Angela’s blond hair. I went over.
“Howzit going?”
She jumped, startled.
“Sorry. Didn’t mean to scare you.”
“That’s okay. I was just so absorbed in reading this.”
I pointed to her computer screen.
“Is that the story?”
Her face colored. I noticed she had tied her hair behind her head and stuck an editing pencil through the knot. It made her look even sexier than usual.
“No, actually, it’s from archives. It’s the story about you and that killer they called the Poet. That was creepy as hell.”
I checked the screen more closely. She had pulled out of archives a story from twelve years before. From when I was with the Rocky Mountain News and in competition with the Times on a story that had stretched from Denver to the East Coast and then all the way back to L.A. It was the biggest story I had ever chased. It had been the high point of my journalistic life—no, check that, it had been the apex of my entire life—and I didn’t want to be reminded that I had crossed that point so long ago.
“Yeah, it was pretty creepy. Are you finished with today’s story?”
“What happened to that FBI agent you teamed up with? Rachel Walling. One of the other stories said she was disciplined for crossing ethical lines with you.”
“She’s still around. Here in L.A., in fact. Can we look at today’s story? Prendo wants us to get it in so he can put it on the web.”
“Sure. I have it done. I was just waiting for you to see it before I sent it to the desk.”
“Let me get a chair.”
I pulled a chair away from an empty cubicle. Angela made room for me next to her and I read the twelve-inch story she had written. The news budget had slugged it in at ten inches, which meant it would likely be cut to eight, but you could always write long for the web edition because there were no space restrictions. Any reporter worth his or her salt would naturally go over budget. Your ego dictated that your story and your skill in telling it would make the ladder of editors who read it realize it was too good to be anything less than what you had turned in, no matter what edition it was written for.
The first edit I made was to take my name off the byline.
“Why, Jack?” Angela protested. “We reported this together.”
“Yeah, but you wrote it. You get the byline.”
She reached over to the keyboard and put her hand on top of my right hand.
“Please, I would like to have a byline with you. It would mean a lot to me.”
I looked at her quizzically.
“Angela, this is a twelve-inch story they’re probably going to cut to eight and bury inside. It’s just another murder story and it doesn’t need a double byline.”
“But it’s my first murder story here at the Times and I want your name on it.”
She still had her hand on mine. I shrugged and nodded.
“Suit yourself.”
She let go of my hand and I typed my name back into the byline. She then reached over again and held my right hand once more.
“Is this the one that got hurt?”
“Uh…”
“Can I see?”
I turned my hand over, exposing the starburst scar in the webbing between my thumb and forefinger. It was the place the bullet had passed through before hitting the killer they called the Poet in the face.
“I saw that you don’t use your thumb when you type,” she said.
“The bullet severed a tendon and I had surgery to reattach it but my thumb’s never really worked right.”
“What’s it feel like?”
“It feels normal. It just doesn’t do what I want it to do.”
She laughed politely.
“What?”
“I meant, what’s it feel like to kill somebody like that?”
The conversation was getting weird. What was the fascination this woman—this girl—had with killing?
“Uh, I don’t really like to talk about that, Angela. It was a long time ago and it wasn’t like I killed the guy. He kind of brought it on himself. He wanted to die, I think. He fired the gun.”
“I love serial killer stories but I had never heard about the Poet until some people said something about it today at lunch and then I Googled it. I’m going to get the book you wrote. I heard it was a bestseller.”
“Good luck. It was a bestseller ten years ago. It’s now been out of print at least five years.”
I realized that if she had heard about the book at lunch, then people were talking about me. Talking about the former bestseller, now overpaid cop shop reporter, getting the pink slip.
“Well, I bet you have a copy I could borrow,” Angela said.
She gave me a pouting look. I studied her for a long moment before responding. In that moment I knew she was some sort of death freak. She wanted to write murder stories because she wanted the details they don’t put in the articles and the TV reports. The cops were going to love her, and not just because she was a looker. She would fawn over them as they parceled out the gritty and grim descriptions of the crime scenes they worked. They would mistake her worship of the dark details for worship of them.