THE story online and then head down to the office, forfeiting yet another day off for the love of my sorry-ass job. Hell, I didn’t have anything to do anyhow except maybe stop by and see Peggy.
I’ve already gotten a text message from Sally Velez. She’s seen the story online and wants to know what I’m going to do for the “real paper.”
The newsroom is pretty animated for eleven A.M. It almost seems like old times. One consequence of cutting people’s hours from forty to thirty-seven and a half is that (a) people are working to the clock and (b) they tend to pile up hours early in the week and are mostly gone by Friday afternoon. So we’re pretty bright-eyed and bushy-tailed on Monday mornings.
Sally calls me over and asks me what else I’ve got.
“Nothing I can write right now.”
“Damn, Willie, that means you’re holding out on me.”
“Sorry. When we can print it, I’ll write it.”
She advises me that I’d better tell her what’s going on, whether it gets in tomorrow morning’s paper or not. She mentions that my testicles are in peril if I don’t start talking.
So I tell her that the cops had him down there for at least four hours yesterday in interrogation, and that Sax said there wasn’t any lawyer there. By the time the dumbass asked for one, they were ready to send him home anyhow. My guess is that they just screwed up, thought they could come back and arrest him later.
“And they found something on his computer?”
“My reliable source says so.”
She leans close and whispers it.
“Peachy?”
Nobody’s supposed to know that Peachy Love and I have contact beyond press conferences. As far as I can tell, Sally’s the only one in the newsroom who is aware of the source that has made my second turn at night cops reporter occasionally satisfying. And Sally can keep a secret.
I shake my head.
“Higher?”
I tap her desk twice and walk away.
I can pull my punches and still give the readers enough to keep any more of them from canceling their subscriptions.
Sarah Goodnight is making herself some hot tea when I go into the break room. I ask her how the story on fearful young women in the city is coming along.
“Lot of jumpy out there,” Sarah says, taking a sip as I pour some of our office sludge into my cup, which is older than she is. “Probably wouldn’t have been a good idea to send a guy on this one. Might have gotten his ass pepper-sprayed.”
It cracks me up and kind of breaks me up to see our young reporters work so hard to be tough and cynical. Dropping subjects and verbs from the front of sentences and speaking out of the corner of your mouth is part of it. It is almost a form of self-mutilation, and I think the young women do it more than the men do, probably because they’re afraid we won’t think they’re tough enough if they hang on to a shard of their innocence. Maybe it will change when women rule the newsroom. Looking around at who does the work around here, I think that day ought to get here about Thursday.
Sarah will have a story for tomorrow on the Tweety Bird scare.
“You know what’s really sick?” she asks me as we walk back to her desk. “Somebody’s hawking Tweety Bird T-shirts over on Grace Street, right next to the VCU campus. And they’re selling. Here, I bought one. Thought I’d turn it in as a business expense.”
She takes the tee from her desk and hands it to me. On the front is a wide-eyed, vaguely feminine Tweety Bird. Underneath is the old cartoon line: “I tawt I taw a puddy tat.”
I can tell that Sarah thinks this will make me laugh, or at least smile. When I tell her that I visited the late Kelli Jonas’s parents two days ago, she puts the shirt away.
“Yeah,” she says, giving me a rueful smile, “we are a bunch of assholes, aren’t we?”
I don’t know if she means the whole human race or just newspaper people, but in either case, I’m in no mood to argue the point.
WHILE I’M WORKING on my story, Wheelie
I’ve already gotten a text message from Sally Velez. She’s seen the story online and wants to know what I’m going to do for the “real paper.”
The newsroom is pretty animated for eleven A.M. It almost seems like old times. One consequence of cutting people’s hours from forty to thirty-seven and a half is that (a) people are working to the clock and (b) they tend to pile up hours early in the week and are mostly gone by Friday afternoon. So we’re pretty bright-eyed and bushy-tailed on Monday mornings.
Sally calls me over and asks me what else I’ve got.
“Nothing I can write right now.”
“Damn, Willie, that means you’re holding out on me.”
“Sorry. When we can print it, I’ll write it.”
She advises me that I’d better tell her what’s going on, whether it gets in tomorrow morning’s paper or not. She mentions that my testicles are in peril if I don’t start talking.
So I tell her that the cops had him down there for at least four hours yesterday in interrogation, and that Sax said there wasn’t any lawyer there. By the time the dumbass asked for one, they were ready to send him home anyhow. My guess is that they just screwed up, thought they could come back and arrest him later.
“And they found something on his computer?”
“My reliable source says so.”
She leans close and whispers it.
“Peachy?”
Nobody’s supposed to know that Peachy Love and I have contact beyond press conferences. As far as I can tell, Sally’s the only one in the newsroom who is aware of the source that has made my second turn at night cops reporter occasionally satisfying. And Sally can keep a secret.
I shake my head.
“Higher?”
I tap her desk twice and walk away.
I can pull my punches and still give the readers enough to keep any more of them from canceling their subscriptions.
Sarah Goodnight is making herself some hot tea when I go into the break room. I ask her how the story on fearful young women in the city is coming along.
“Lot of jumpy out there,” Sarah says, taking a sip as I pour some of our office sludge into my cup, which is older than she is. “Probably wouldn’t have been a good idea to send a guy on this one. Might have gotten his ass pepper-sprayed.”
It cracks me up and kind of breaks me up to see our young reporters work so hard to be tough and cynical. Dropping subjects and verbs from the front of sentences and speaking out of the corner of your mouth is part of it. It is almost a form of self-mutilation, and I think the young women do it more than the men do, probably because they’re afraid we won’t think they’re tough enough if they hang on to a shard of their innocence. Maybe it will change when women rule the newsroom. Looking around at who does the work around here, I think that day ought to get here about Thursday.
Sarah will have a story for tomorrow on the Tweety Bird scare.
“You know what’s really sick?” she asks me as we walk back to her desk. “Somebody’s hawking Tweety Bird T-shirts over on Grace Street, right next to the VCU campus. And they’re selling. Here, I bought one. Thought I’d turn it in as a business expense.”
She takes the tee from her desk and hands it to me. On the front is a wide-eyed, vaguely feminine Tweety Bird. Underneath is the old cartoon line: “I tawt I taw a puddy tat.”
I can tell that Sarah thinks this will make me laugh, or at least smile. When I tell her that I visited the late Kelli Jonas’s parents two days ago, she puts the shirt away.
“Yeah,” she says, giving me a rueful smile, “we are a bunch of assholes, aren’t we?”
I don’t know if she means the whole human race or just newspaper people, but in either case, I’m in no mood to argue the point.
WHILE I’M WORKING on my story, Wheelie
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