Deadline Man

by Jon Talton

  I hit reply and type: “Tell me more.”

  It immediately bounces back from Yahoo. “Undeliverable.”

  Chapter Ten

  Friday, October 22nd

  Friday morning I am in the newsroom early, working on the Sunday column. Sunday is the biggest circulation day. The job cuts have begun. The film critic is taking early retirement. He’s one of the most respected in the country and he won’t be replaced—we’ll use wire copy. The reporter covering transportation was pink slipped on Wednesday. She left the building in tears. She is my age. The top editors spend hours in meetings in the fish bowl, the glassed-in conference room on the fifth floor. We walk by and pretend not to notice. Rumors and gossip flood the newsroom.

  There’s much to write about in the world: the continuing banking fiasco, more layoffs at Boeing, the potential for a new rise in energy prices, a classic Seattle fight over declaring an old Denny’s a historic landmark. I decide to focus again on Olympic International. James Sterling’s old buddy Pete Montgomery has not returned my call. But my cell phone rings as the system is booting up and I am brought back to the lethal centrality of my recent days.

  “I hear you were meeting with Troy the morning he died.”

  I might ask how he heard such a thing, but the voice belongs to one of the richest men in the city, in the world in fact, and of course he has myriad ways of knowing. He’d make a hell of a reporter if he were willing to take the pay cut and the aggravation. I tell him I was there.

  “That must have been a shock. I never would have seen Troy killing himself, but I guess you never really know, do you?”

  “I guess not.”

  So much I’d normally want to ask about his business or philanthropy ventures. So often I would let the conversation find its way into the real reason he has called. But I’m on deadline, so I just blunder ahead, seeking an easy payoff.

  “Were you in his hedge fund?”

  “No,” he says.

  “Was his fund in trouble.”

  “No way,” he says. “Troy was one of those guys who made money in the bubble, and then he made money from the rubble.” He doesn’t laugh. “Troy was quick to see the equation had changed. For years borrowing costs were so low and asset appreciation so high that everybody looked like a genius. Now it’s going the other way. Lots of hedge funds and private equity suffered. Not Troy.”

  I usually have trouble getting good cell reception when I’m deep in the newspaper building, but his voice is sitting-right-next-to-me clear. I ask if he had invested with Troy.

  He just laughs. Then, “There’s a lot of uncertainty right now. Lot of bad bets. I just thought the columnist knew everything.”

  I laugh briefly. He can command the top research in the world, so he doesn’t need me. Unless he wants to know what Troy and I talked about that morning. I leave that alone. I ask if there’s any reason the feds might be interested in Troy.

  “Why do you ask?”

  “Because you know everything.”

  “Huh. Interesting question. I’ll see what I hear.”

  “Any of your friends invested with Troy who might talk?”

  “Craig Summers.”

  Great.

  “Ever hear of an outfit called Animal Spirits?”

  “No. Great name. Wish I’d have named a program after it.”

  It’s a strange phone call and afterward I have a quick debate with myself about chasing Troy’s death and the status of his hedge fund. But the time calculus is against me: I don’t have time to call a bunch of rich people on spec and hope that someone calls back, much less that they were investors. I don’t have time to deal with the surly federal beat reporter, to see if anyone in the U.S. Attorney’s office would talk about why those agents were so interested in my conversation with Troy Hardesty. I don’t have time.

  Next week I’ll start looking for lawsuits or enforcement actions against Troy’s hedge fund. For now, the better target is the Olympic follow-up. I go to the corporate Web site. It has elaborate pages on each of its business units, with top executives, plant locations, statistics, and history, and this is a company with a lot of history. But when I use the pulldown menu and go to Olympic Defense Systems, a bare bones page pops up with little of that information. I read, “ODS serves America’s war fighters at the front lines…” Then the computer screen goes black. I do all the things the technologically semi-literate do: hit the return key, run the mouse around. The screen stays as black as annihilation. The little green light on the computer stays on. I call tech support, tell them I’m on deadline, and in ten minutes one of the systems people comes down. She’s a luscious little wren with dark hair and oval, black-rimmed glasses named Faith. She’s helped me before.

  “What did you do?” She always asks that.

  She fiddles with the big box under the desk and in a minute the screen revives, at least a blank, blue sea of screen. She fiddles some more and folders start to appear. It’s all magic.

  “Try to be good,” Faith says, tossing her hair without artifice, and walking out. Too bad about my “no fishing off the company pier” rule. But the ones her age are rarely interested in me. Back on the Olympic Web page, I learn little about the defense unit. Yahoo finance has a bit more: in addition to making night-vision goggles for the Army, ODS is a subcontractor on a new information services program for the Air Force, and provides “protection services,” whatever that means.

  The newspaper morgue is all online now. Unfortunately, the last major article in the Free Press on Olympic International was three years ago. Nothing has ever appeared in this newspaper about the defense business. A Nexis search shows a Washington Post story about Olympic’s defense subsidiary making a $100 million settlement with the government last spring for selling defective night-vision goggles to the Army. We never ran it. Even Conspiracy Grrl knew. Not us. I take it personally. How did that fall through the cracks?

  Hell with it. I open my filing cabinet and pull out paper files, and quickly scan the annual report, a couple years’ worth of 10-K and 8-K filings. The unit has been the fastest-growing subsidiary, thanks to the wars. It has “dig deeper” written all over it.

  I send Heidi Benson an email asking again if I can interview Pete Montgomery. I send the business editor an email asking to travel to D.C. Better use the travel money before it’s cut off. Then I get a call back from an analyst in New York, returning my call from two days before. I put on my headset and take notes on the computer while he spends fifteen minutes filling in some gaps. He sends me a file with a PowerPoint presentation to analysts from earlier this year by the head of ODS, James Martindale. He suggests I contact a friend of his in D.C., who works at a defense think tank. I make the call and she picks up on the first ring. The newspaper gods are with me. I make more notes.

  It’s noon and I’m starving but there’s no choice but to write. The column is due at one. I’m one of the few people who can write a publishable first draft. I can write fast. I can write like hell. I joke, if you can’t write well, write fast. I can do both. I’d like to outline and carefully plan every column. I’d like to walk through the evocative streets of the city and read Mencken or Liebling on a park bench, thinking great thoughts about the dying craft of columnist. Some days it’s not possible. Now I have to stand and deliver. The truth is that I never know if I can produce another column. The big white page on the computer just sits there, taunting. I wonder about the day I will freeze, the day I will have nothing more to say. So far it hasn’t happened.

  What I need is a lede. That’s always the hardest thing. Some reporters fail because they can’t write decent ledes. Editors fool with them, piss on them, sometimes make them better and often don’t. I walk to the Coke machine, feed in a dollar, pop the can, take a swig, walk back. I am aware of how silently hyper I am, how inside I am insane with deadline, with the gathering and the writing and dangers of error or libel or readers just tossing you aside. I am insane with deadline.
It’s a fever inside. But I walk with my usual easy stride. I nod to friends. Pretty soon I am reminded of why I like to work from home. In addition to the noise of a dozen conversations in the newsroom, people drift by to talk. One of the metro columnists wants to speculate on how the layoffs will turn out. Somehow I think she’ll be fine. She trucks in easy emotionalizing and any outrage directed against her is short-lived. Me, I’ve pissed off some of the biggest executives in town and not a few advertisers. But I can’t think about that now. I gracefully break away and close the door to my office. I stare out at the street and figure out the next step. Now I know how I will start the column. Everything else will just flow.

  ***

  By four-thirty, my column is through the copy editor and the slot. “Slot” is old newspaper slang, usually meaning a senior copy editor who checks headlines and copy one last time. Lots of eyes see these stories before they go in print or online. It’s amazing we can still make mistakes and nobody catches them. The copy desk is not as good as it once was, when it was populated by unsociable gnomes, the greybeards who had memorized stylebooks and dictionaries, who would question minute word use—“nobody knows what ‘recondite’ means”—and drive you crazy. But they would also save you from yourself and your errors. That’s why I hang around this afternoon. I want to make sure this column is absolutely accurate. Obviously the publisher is watching. On the CCI computer system, I can see it laid out on Sunday’s business front, in the usual spot, the left-hand column, with the five-year-old mugshot of me looking serious. The headline says, “Olympic’s quiet defense profit machine.”

  I answer the phone on the second ring. It’s Rachel’s father.

  I used to work for an editor who advised: unless you’re expecting a return call from a source on deadline, never answer the phone. It won’t be the Pulitzer committee calling to say they made a mistake and you actually won this year. It will be the angry reader, the special pleader, granny demanding bigger type for the obscure stock listing you haven’t carried for four years anyway. Somebody needs to talk to them, but that’s what editors are for. Otherwise it’s needless brain damage.

  Rachel’s father tells me to meet him in thirty minutes.

  ***

  Craig Summers grew up in hardscrabble British Columbia before immigrating to Seattle to work on the docks. He put himself through the University of Washington and then went east, studying and teaching at MIT. In the early ‘90s, he started a company that made software to track shipping worldwide. He sold it a decade ago for $75 million, started another company and sold that one for close to a billion. Then he quit to devote his life to philanthropy. My job involves dealing with liars, truth spinners, and phonies, among them rapacious executives that want the world to see them otherwise. But Summers is real. He’s a good guy. Too bad I have to brace for the worst.

  I walk through the end-of-day crowds to Pike Place Market. Stalls are shutting down and discarded ice is melting on the cobblestones. Tourists take photos. It’s overcast, cool, and blustery. There’s a crowd in the Starbucks when I walk in. I see him instantly, he’s wearing a blazer and blue jeans, wearing the eyes that his daughter makes lovely. Once he sees me, he walks over quickly. He doesn’t extend his hand.

  “I’m surprised you came, you’re such a coward, the way you treat people.”

  His voice is not low, and the tourists and other patrons at this famous Starbucks location turn to watch us. I meet his angry glare. “Look…” My mouth is almost too dry to form the word.

  “You think that normal rules of behavior don’t apply to you.”

  He shakes his head slowly, the cords bulging in his neck. “I know your type, selfish prick. But you can’t get away with it when my daughter is involved!”

  I came prepared to be contrite and conciliatory but I am starting to get angry. Then I wonder, like a selfish prick, if Rachel is pregnant. He doesn’t give me a chance to think about it. He advances on me, seizes me by the lapels and gives me several hard shakes, pulling my coat halfway down my arms. Then he gives me a sharp hand to the chest.

  I manage a weak, “Now, wait…”

  “You’re a real son of a bitch!” He yells it, then pushes me back into a display of coffee mugs, rubs a hand across his hair, and turns away. “A real son of a bitch!” he repeats, waving a hand backwards toward me, just in case anyone missed the target of his venom.

  I watch him walk out, conscious of the eyes on me. My face is burning. None of the mugs break.

  “Wasn’t that Craig Summers?” This from a woman in a lumberjack shirt and jeans. Then, “Hey, aren’t you the columnist?”

  It’s way past time to leave.

  Chapter Eleven

  Rachel might have saved me. I might have saved her. But I’m not sure I wanted to be saved. The price might have been too high, the gain desperately fragile. It wasn’t until our second date that I even knew about her father, so no one could say I was after her money. I was only her second lover. I didn’t know that when I let things go too far. Let’s take our time, I said. I want you to really get to know me. She laughed at me, gently joking that “maybe we’d never have sex.” But of course we did.

  Outside I cross the rough old bricks of the street and slip into an arcade, searching for anonymity. I stop in a deserted alcove and fix my collar, readjust my assaulted suit coat. That’s when I feel the envelope in my inside coat pocket. I pull it out. Inside is a piece of off-white stationary with Rachel’s loopy half-print, half-script handwriting.

  Hello, Writerman. This note isn’t what you think it is, although I miss you terribly and am convinced you made a big mistake. You aren’t the only one with secrets. My Dad has them, too. A whole other life I never told you about. He’s a good man, but he knows bad ones. Long story short: you’re in trouble, even if you don’t realize it. You have to take my word for this and trust me for once. I always wanted to protect you, but this note will have to do. Even writing it could put us in danger. Leave 11/11 alone. Please. Drop it. Back away from it. Tell no one. And please take good care. I love you.

  Rachel

  p.s., Dad doesn’t really hate you, but the scene was the best way to make sure you got this note in a timely manner and still protect us. Please destroy this note and don’t try to contact me. No joke.

  I replace the note in the envelope and put it back in my pocket. My heart hammers against my sternum. I walk outside again, dazed, crashing into a guitar case just outside the door. The musician curses me until I drop a five-dollar-bill in his hat. But when I hear his thanks I am already half a block away. I duck behind a building into a deserted courtyard where I sit at a table and re-read Rachel’s letter. Then I read it a third time. I pull off my suit coat. My skin feels as if it is radiating heat on a forty-degree day. Sweat is visible on my dress shirt. I let the cool wind whip into me, chilling me. By that time I am feeling a landscape of vulnerability, from the shop windows behind me to the buildings hanging above on the hillside. It’s time to get moving.

  When I was an investigative reporter I once worked on a story so sensitive that the cops suggested I get a gun. I did. But that was only about drugs and organized crime, horrible but tangible things. What am I to make of Rachel’s letter? It was delivered in a way that gave Summers perfect cover for being seen with me, but ensuring that I got the note. And of course it’s about eleven/eleven. At this point, I actually pause on the street and pinch the skin on my forearm hard. The pain is a wonderful confirmation that this is real. I’m not going nuts.

  Eleven/eleven, or as Rachel wrote it, “11/11.” The prostitute had yelled it at me. Ryan’s tattoo said “eleven/eleven.” Now Rachel had written it as a date, rather than some obscure piece of numerology. But a date for what? A terrorist attack? No, Rachel would have urged me to go to the police. Maybe it’s a formula, a code, a password—but for what? What 11/11 could be so dangerously potent as to make Craig Summers afraid, and cause him to go to such extremes to warn me? I know this much: thi
s is an unlucky number, with two dead and a crazed crack whore to show for it. And November 11th is only twenty days away. That’s a big story.

  It’s time to talk to an editor.

  First, I stop at home. My card key unlocks the small lobby door and it relocks with a heavy, safe metal sound. But I wait just out of view, against the outside wall but away from the door, just to see if anyone might be following me. It’s dusk and soon Seattle will enter the season of short days and early dark. People walk by quickly, huddled into their coats. The neon starts coming on up and down the street. After five minutes, I take the restored old elevator up to my floor. The ambient city light is enough to see by, so I don’t turn on lights. I sit on the ledge by the tall windows and read Rachel’s note again, and yet again, speaking it aloud in a low unfamiliar voice. In the kitchen, I pull out an ashtray that stayed when a smoker lover left. I fold the note and place it in the glass bowl of the ashtray. In another drawer, I find matches and strike one, its light unnervingly bright. I move it to the edge of the paper and hesitate. The journalist in me knows this is critical documentation. I stare at Rachel’s handwriting and the match burns my fingers. I strike another match and put it to the paper, watching the ashtray flare into a bright little pyre. Then I dump the ashes into the sink and wash them away. I owe Rachel this much.

  I go back out in the car. It crawls along in the downtown traffic as I retrace the route the federal SUV took the other day, carrying me to the anonymous building. It sits in the low-slung industrial area south of downtown called SoDo, not because it’s south of downtown but because it is south of the old King Dome, long since demolished. I am very aware of my rear-view mirrors, but it doesn’t look like anyone is following me as I turn off Fourth Avenue South. Rain starts to lazily fall onto the windshield. The skyscrapers soar into the clouds and fade under raindrops.