by Brad Parks
“Hi, Jim,” I said, propping myself up and stifling a yawn.
“Are you busy?” McNabb yelled.
“Not for a while. I got indefinitely suspended from my job yesterday.”
“Oh yeah?” he said, with his usual interest in anything that sounded like scuttlebutt-enough that I could hear the sound of him picking up the handpiece and taking me off speakerphone. “What happened?”
I debated whether I should confide in McNabb, who tended to use information as leverage. But, in this case, desperation outweighed caution. Besides, he was a friendly guy. And sometimes you just need friends.
“Jackman is on to me,” I said. “He trumped up some stuff against me and tried talking Brodie into firing me. The old man wouldn’t go quite that far, but he did suspend me.”
“Really? Wow. Well, I guess it’s no surprise that prick plays for keeps. You better watch your back around him. We’ve already seen what he’s capable of doing to an employee who pisses him off.”
“Yeah, thanks,” I said, making a mental note to look both ways when I crossed the street.
“So how long are you on the bench? A week? Two?”
“Try three months.”
“Whoa, that’s a big number!” McNabb said, like we were discussing how much I lost on the ponies over the weekend. “See, that’s why you need a union behind you. We’d file an immediate appeal, probably throw in a grievance, too, just to complicate matters. If they still didn’t want you coming to work while it all got settled, no problem-we’d make sure you were getting a paycheck the whole time. Eventually we’d throw enough stuff at them they’d be begging us to settle. You’d get a free vacation and never be out a dime.”
“Well, I don’t have a union. So until I can prove to Brodie what Jackman’s real motivation is, I’m on a one-way street to the poorhouse. I’m hoping you’re calling with some information that will help me get off it.”
“Yeah, yeah, actually, I am,” he said. “I got something to show you.”
“What is it?”
“I don’t want to ruin the surprise. Just come into the office. You got to see it in person. It’ll be worth the trip. It’s something you can actually use-no off-the-record this time.”
“Okay. I’ll see you in about forty-five minutes.”
“I’ll be here.”
Deadline had slipped back into repose, and with the Four Horsemen elsewhere-probably behind the counter at a Starbucks, screwing up people’s orders-my departure from bed did not disturb him. I had a brief debate about what I ought to wear, inasmuch as I was technically off duty. But I settled on my usual reporter’s garb, which included my notepad in my right pocket and two pens in my left. That was my armor, after all. And even if this particular knight had lost his liege, it was still what I wanted to wear as I went into battle.
I waved to my neighbor, Constance, as I left my house-she was watering her lawn, as usual-and made the trip to downtown Newark. I found parking outside a dry cleaner on a cramped side street, about eight blocks from my destination. Now that I was no longer on the Eagle-Examiner’s dime, I needed to keep my expenses down. No parking garages for Citizen Ross.
I got out of the car to find the sun was already starting to beat down on the pavement. The temperature and humidity were doing that mid-July tag team where one slams you to the canvas and the other jumps off the ropes and lands on you. I was already wiping sweat off my brow by the time I finished my eight-block walk and made it to the revolving front door of the National Newark Building.
I went through the routine of announcing myself at security, riding up to the twentieth floor, and pushing through the doors etched with the IFIW logo. At the reception desk, I was greeted by a smiling Jim McNabb, who was again dressed like he was on his way to play in a member-guest golf tournament. Every day must have been business casual for Big Jimmy.
We took what appeared to be the same circuitous route back to his office, winding our way through cubicles and workstations, past the low-rent bleached blonde with the overdone eye makeup. She was standing next to her desk, wearing a tight blouse that, if it could talk, would say, Hi, I’m trying too hard.
“Hey, Big Jimmy!” she called out playfully.
“Hey, candypants,” he said.
We rounded the next corner and I couldn’t help myself.
“Candypants?” I asked.
“I don’t do that with most of the girls,” Big Jimmy said. “But that one actually likes it, you know? Makes her feel good, like she must be doing an okay job because why else would the boss pay attention to her?”
Either that or it made her feel like her ass had just been caramelized.
* * *
We rounded one last corner and went into McNabb’s office, with its commanding view from Newark to Manhattan and all the Superfund sites that lay in between.
“I’m glad you were able to come in,” he said, settling himself into his ergonomically correct chair and sliding a keyboard out of a drawer under his desk. “I got something I want to show you on the computer.”
He typed in some kind of password and waited as the machine came out of dormancy.
“I just love the computer,” he said. “I’m not real natural with it, but I’m trying. Some guys my age, they need to be dragged kicking and screaming into this stuff. Not me. To me, this is the future and you got to get with the program. So give me the BlackBerry, the blueberry, the iPhone, the mePhone, the youPhone. I’m actually thinking about getting a new one right now. I want to stay current with all of it.”
He started working the mouse with the skill of someone who, for all his good intentions, never quite got comfortable with the thing.
“Okay,” he said. “I was going to forward you this e-mail, but I wanted you to be able to see it with your own eyes, exactly as I got it, so you didn’t think I was monkeying around with it or making it say something it didn’t really say.”
He turned the flat-screen monitor on his desk toward me. He had highlighted a message from Jackman that had been sent July 1-exactly a week before Nancy was killed-at 10:34 A.M.
“This, as you can see, is an e-mail from Gary Jackman. You can look at the full header later if you want to so you can see it’s legit.”
“That’s okay, I trust you, Jim.”
“I know you do. I just know how you reporters are. You guys have to be suspicious of everything and I don’t blame you. I want you to know this is for real.”
“Got it.”
He double clicked on the e-mail and I started reading:
Jackman, Gary [[email protected]]
To: ‘McNabb, James’
Cc: ‘Porterhouse, Gregory’; ‘Koncz, Sophie’; ‘DeLillo, Alec’; ‘Blake, Michael’
Subject: IFIW Local 117 Renegotiations
Jim,
As you are aware, these continue to be extraordinarily difficult times for newspapers, and the Newark Eagle-Examiner has not been immune to the forces that are ravaging the industry as a whole. In short, revenues continue to fall, despite sustained efforts to stop the slide.
As I have told you previously, this newspaper has been operating at a loss for far longer than any business ought to. And while our owners have taken a long-term view and shown remarkable patience, that patience has come to an end. They have informed me that if I cannot return the paper to at least some small level of profitability by the end of the year, they will cease operations and sell all remaining assets.
The only way for us to avoid this dire scenario is to drastically change our business model. To date, our Mailers’ union, Drivers’ union, and Printers’ union have recognized the extraordinary nature of our distress and agreed to substantial givebacks on their contracts. Our nonrepresented employees have also withstood a series of pay cuts and furloughs. Other arrangements with vendors and suppliers have been modified. Your union, our Deliverers, remains the lone holdout. Yet without a new agreement with our Deliverers, we will have no choice but to cease operation. All employee
s-from your members to this paper’s publisher-would be terminated.
This is not an idle threat or posturing for the purpose of negotiation. This is a necessity, and I will be happy to have our COO open our books to prove it to you. Unless we can reach an accord, your union will be responsible for bringing the Newark Eagle-Examiner, one of the great remaining American newspapers, to its knees. It is my hope we can work together in good faith to avoid this dire outcome.
Sincerely,
Gary
When I finished, I turned the screen back in his direction. I knew things were real bad at my paper. I didn’t know they were that bad. It occurred to me for the first time that when my suspension ended, I might not have a job to return to.
“Now, you tell me: Does that sound like a man desperate enough to commit murder?” McNabb asked. “He’s not only going to lose his job, he’d go down as the guy who couldn’t save a ‘great American newspaper.’ He’d never get another job near that pay grade. That’s a pretty powerful motive, to me.”
I thought about the $2.27 million McMansion, the $35,000 property tax bill, the his-and-hers matching manicures, the pocket squares, all the elitist trappings of a well-financed life that would instantly evaporate if Jackman found himself on the unemployment line next to the rest of his former employees.
“Can I have a printout of that?” I asked.
“I figured you were gonna ask that,” he said, sliding a piece of paper across the desk at me. I grabbed what I could tell was a photocopy of the e-mail, albeit with a few identifying characteristics strategically blacked out. “I figured it was cc’d to enough people that any one of us could have leaked it to you.”
“Great,” I said. “Just curious: Is your e-mail backed up somewhere?”
“Why do you ask?”
“I just want to make sure that e-mail exists somewhere on a server, so if I got a prosecutor to subpoena you, they would definitely find it somewhere.”
“Oh. Oh yeah. Well, we do backups, for sure. But I’m not planning on erasing this. And if I got a subpoena, yeah, that’d be great. That would let me off the hook with my board and everyone else, because I could just say, ‘Hey, I had no choice.’ Why, you thinking about taking this to the cops?”
“Not yet,” I said. “At this point, I’d just be a disgruntled employee with a wild theory. I’m still a few facts short.”
“Yeah, I guess this could still all be one big coincidence, right?”
He looked at me with a frank, open face. And I once again found myself wondering whether I could trust McNabb with more information. He was a born blabbermouth, the last guy who could be relied on to keep a secret. But the more I thought about it, the more I realized I didn’t actually want him to keep it secret. Having McNabb working back channels for me might just flush out more Jackman adversaries with heretofore unknown evidence.
Besides, there was that whole thing about no longer having the luxury of caution.
“Actually,” I said, “it’s no coincidence.”
* * *
Over the next ten minutes, I recounted for McNabb a distilled version of the story Mrs. Alfaro told me. Naturally, I was careful not to disclose her name, say where she lived, or give identifying characteristics-I wanted to respect the pledge of confidentiality I had given her-but I didn’t spare the details. As I spoke, McNabb’s mouth set into an ugly pout. I got the sense it was hard for him to hear. He had obviously been fond of Nancy Marino.
When I finished, he stood up and walked over toward the window. He put his hands on his hips and made a loud shushing sound as he emptied his lungs. His eyes appeared to be focused on something far beyond Manhattan. He shook his head a few times, like he still didn’t want to believe it, then went back to staring.
“That son of a bitch,” he said at last, without turning away from the window. “I know I told you I thought it was Jackman, but I was always thinking maybe I had it wrong. You assume people are basically good, you know? Nancy, she … that kid was … she didn’t deserve anything like this. He killed her because of, what, a few bucks an hour in a stinking contract?”
Except-and I had already done this math-it was more than just a few bucks. Say we had one thousand carriers, as Buster Hays suggested. Say they each worked three hours a day delivering the newspaper and did it seven days a week, 365 days a year. If Nancy was any guide, they were getting paid $18 an hour to do it. But a fifty percent pay cut meant a $9-an-hour savings for the paper. That rounded to about $7 million a year. In a budget where years of ritualized fasting had created negligible fat, $7 million could certainly make the difference between red and black-which would make the difference between Jackman getting to remain as the publisher of a fully operating major metropolitan newspaper and being put out of work.
“It’s like you said, Jackman was getting desperate,” I said.
“A powerful man facing the loss of his power will do just about anything to protect it,” McNabb said thoughtfully.
“Yeah. Yeah, I guess he will.”
“So do the cops know about this yet?”
“My source doesn’t trust the cops. I think I’ll eventually be able to talk her into working with them, when it comes to that, but for right now that’s not a priority.”
McNabb walked back from the window and sat down, flopping his weight heavily on the chair.
“What is a priority is that last conversation you had with Jackman,” I continued.
“Huh?”
“The talk you had with him in the bar the night before Nancy was killed.”
“Oh yeah. Oh geez, I wasn’t even thinking about that. But you don’t even need that anymore, right? Your source saw him do it.”
“My source saw a large black SUV do it,” I reminded him. “She never laid eyes on the driver, and even if she had, it would be a stretch to say she could make a positive ID that would hold up. Jackman had to be going fifty, sixty miles an hour at a minimum by the time he hit Nancy. My source was way too far away, and being on the second floor, the angle was all wrong for her to be able to see the driver’s face anyway.”
“I guess you’re right.”
“I’m beginning to think Jackman wasn’t actually the driver. He strikes me as the kind of guy who might hire someone to do his dirty work. I’m fairly certain he doesn’t own a black SUV himself. I think he either rented himself a killer or rented himself a car.”
“Oh yeah? What makes you think that?”
“I, uh, had his garage investigated late last night,” I said, throwing in a wink.
“What do you mean?”
“I broke into Jackman’s garage and had a look around,” I said, leaving out the small detail that Tommy had been the one doing the breaking and looking. “There’s a Lexus and a Ford in there, but neither are SUVs.”
“You got to be careful doing something like that. You could get yourself in trouble, someone sees you sneaking into garages.”
“Yeah, well, I didn’t say I got away with it. I spent last night as a guest of the Mendham Borough Police Department.”
“No kiddin’! You going to be okay? I know some good lawyers…”
“Thanks, I’ll figure that out later,” I said. “In any event, it’s going to make proving his guilt a little more difficult. The case might be more circumstantial than I or anyone else likes. But it also makes that bar conversation absolutely pivotal. Think about it from a jury’s perspective. You hear the suspect was drunk and tossing out threats, and then hours later the person they were threatening got killed? Even if we never did find that black SUV, your testimony might be enough to get a conviction.”
“I told you, I can’t get involved like that,” McNabb said quickly, defensively. “What I was doing with Jackman could get me in real trouble with my board. When I told you about that conversation, you promised me off the record. Off. The. Record. Don’t you go back on your word.”
His big belly had shoved the keyboard back under the desk, and he was leaning toward me, pointing a fing
er at me with his face flushed.
“I’m not. I’m not,” I assured him. “But, at this point, you’ve got to agree that a murder is bigger than you getting a little jammed up with your board. Be reasonable here.”
“So nothing with you is really off the record, huh? You’re going to run to the cops and rat me out?”
“Just relax. I’m not running anywhere or ratting anyone, Jim. All I’m saying is, I need your help. There’s got to be something you can do for me or give me that will help establish Jackman was drunk and raving that night. Surely some bartender or patron overheard you guys? Then if the cops approach you and ask you, you can just say it was a friendly get-to-know-you drink that went bad, and you can leave out the part about contract negotiations-”
“Yeah, but eventually I’ll have to testify.”
“That’s a long, long way down the road,” I said. “Let’s worry about getting Jackman arrested first. The fact is, Jackman will eventually realize we got him, but he’ll have just enough leverage-because there will inevitably be holes in the case-that he’ll get a decent plea deal. You’ll never have to testify about anything.”
McNabb leaned back and exhaled, closing his eyes and rubbing his temples in a circular motion with two fat middle fingers. Finally he opened his eyes.
“Let me think about it for a day or two,” he said.
For now, it was the best I was going to get. I just had to give him that space. He led me out of his office, past candypants, past the reception desk, and out the etched-glass doors.
I was back down in the lobby when my phone rang. It was Tina.
“Hey, how’s my favorite ex-editor?” I asked.
“Carter, you need to come in immediately,” she said, her voice terse and low.
“What, you can’t live one day without me? I’m flattered.”
“Stop joking around. Brodie just heard about the incident at Jackman’s house last night, and he’s absolutely fuming. I’ve never seen him this mad. If you’ve got anything to say for yourself before he makes your suspension permanent, I suggest you come here damn fast and say it.”
