The 3rd Woman

by Jonathan Freedland

  ‘What, a loose thread on my shirt? You’re ordering me to remove my clothes now, is that it, Walker? I’m not sure that’s allowed.’

  ‘Just give it to me and I’ll tell you what’s allowed.’

  That he spoke quietly only made her more frightened. His everyday mode was shouting. This, he knew – and therefore she knew and all the women standing and watching, in silence, knew – was more serious.

  She made an instant decision, or rather her hand made it before her brain could consider it. In a single movement, she yanked out the tiny camera and dropped it to the floor, crunching it underfoot the second it hit.

  The foreman fell to his knees, trying to pick up the pieces: not an easy manoeuvre for a man his size. She watched, frozen, as the tiny fragments of now-shattered electronics collected in his palm. It was clear that he understood what they were. That was why he had not shouted. He had suspected the instant he caught sight of the wire. Recording device. His instructions must have been absolute: they were not tolerated under any circumstances.

  Now, as he pulled himself up, she had a split-second to calculate. She had already got three weeks of material, downloaded from the camera each night and, thanks to Katharine, safely backed up. Even today’s footage was preserved, held on the recorder strapped to her back, regardless of the electronic debris on the floor. There was nothing to be gained from attempting to stay here, from coming up with some bullshit explanation for the now-extinct gadget. What would she say? And, she knew, she would be saying it to someone other than Walker. There was only one thing she could do.

  Swiftly, she grabbed the security tag that hung around the foreman’s neck like a pendant, whipped it off and turned around and ran, past the work benches, heading for the stairs. She touched Walker’s tag against the electronic panel the way she’d seen him release the women for their rationed visits to the bathroom.

  ‘Stop right there, bitch!’ Walker was shouting. ‘You stop right there.’ He was coming after her, the thud of each footstep getting louder. The door beeped. She tugged at it, but the handle wouldn’t open. She held the damn card against the panel once more and this time, at last, the little light turned green, accompanied by another short, sharp and friendlier beep. She opened the door and stepped through.

  But Walker had been fast, so that now his hand reached through and grabbed at her shoulder. He was strong, but she had one advantage. She swivelled to face him, grabbed the door and used all of her strength to slam it shut. His arm was caught between the door and the frame. He let out a loud yowl of pain and the arm retracted. She slammed the door again, hearing the reassuring click that meant it was electronically sealed.

  Leaping up the stairs two at a time, she clutched at the rail as she reached the first landing and pulled herself onto the next flight, seeing daylight ahead. She would only have a few seconds. Walker was bound to have alerted security in reception by now.

  Maddy was in the short corridor that led to the entrance of the building. From the outside it resembled nothing more than a low-rent import–export office. That was in her article, too. If you walked past it, you’d never know what horrors lay beneath.

  She breathed deep, realizing she had no idea what to do next. She couldn’t breeze out, not from here. Workers were allowed to exit only at prescribed times. They would stop her; they’d call down to Walker; they’d start checking the computer. She needed to think of something. Her head was pounding now. And she could hear sounds coming from below. Had Walker got the downstairs door open?

  She had the merest inkling of a plan, no more than an instinct. Flinging the door open, her voice rising with panic, she bellowed at the man and woman manning the front desk. ‘It’s Walker! I think he’s having a heart attack. Come quick!’

  The pair sat frozen in that second of paralysis that strikes in every crisis. Maddy had seen it before. ‘Come on!’ she shouted. ‘I think he might be dying.’

  Now they jumped up, barrelling past her to get down the stairs. ‘I’ll call for an ambulance!’ she shouted after them.

  She had only a second to look behind the desk, at the grid of cubby-holes where they kept the women’s confiscated phones. Shit. She couldn’t see hers. She thought of simply rushing out there and then, but she’d be lost without it. Besides, if they found it once she’d gone, they’d instantly know who she was and what she’d been working on.

  Commotion downstairs. They’d be back up here any second. She moved her eye along the slots one last time, trying to be methodical while her head was about to explode. Calm, calm, calm, she told herself. But it was a lie.

  Then at last, the recognizable shape, the distinct colour of the case, lurking in the corner of the second last row. She grabbed it and rushed out of the door, into the open air.

  The sound of the freeway was loud but unimaginably welcome. She had no idea how she would get away from here. She could hardly wait for a bus. Besides, she had left her wallet downstairs, tucked inside her now-abandoned bag.

  As she began running towards the noise of the traffic, working out who she would call first – her editor to say they should run the story tonight or Katharine to apologize for the broken camera – she realized that she had only one thing on her besides her phone. She unclenched her fist to see Walker’s pass now clammy in her hand. Good, she thought. His photo ID would complement her article nicely: ‘The brute behind the brutality.’

  Seven hours later the story was ready to go, including a paragraph or two on her ejection from the sweatshop and accompanied online by several segments of video, with greatest prominence given to the miscarriage episode. ‘How LA sweatshop conditions can mean the difference between life and death.’ Use of the Walker photo had taken up nearly an hour’s back-and-forth with the news editor. Howard Burke had worried about naming an individual.

  ‘Fine to go after the company, Madison, but you’re calling this guy a sadist.’

  ‘That’s because he is a sadist, Howard.’

  ‘Yes, but even sadists can sue.’

  ‘So let him sue! He’ll lose. We have video of him causing a woman to lose her baby. Jeez, Howard, you’re such—’

  ‘What, Maddy? What am I “such a”? And tread carefully here, because this story is not going anywhere till I say so.’

  There was a silence between them, a stand-off of several seconds broken by her.

  ‘Asshole.’

  ‘Excuse me?’

  ‘You’re such an asshole. That’s what I was going to say. Before you interrupted me.’

  The exchange that followed could be heard at the other end of the open-plan office.

  Burke’s frustration overflowing, he drove his fist through an office partition, which newsroom historians recorded was the second time he had performed that feat – the first some four years earlier, also prompted by a clash with Madison Webb.

  It took the intervention of the executive editor herself to broker a compromise. Jane Goldstein summoned Maddy into her office, making her wait while she took evidence from Howard over by the newsdesk. Clearly she had decided it was too risky to have them both in the same room at once.

  It gave Maddy time to look at the boss’s power wall, which was a departure from the usual ego mural. Instead of photos with assorted political bigwigs and worthies, Goldstein had displayed a series of framed front pages of the biggest story she – or any other American reporter since Ed Murrow – had ever covered. She’d won a stack of Pulitzers, back when that had been the name of the biggest prize in US journalism.

  Maddy’s phone vibrated. A message from a burnt-out former colleague who had left the Times to join a company in Encino making educational films.

  Hey Maddy. Greetings from the slow lane. Am attaching my latest, for what it’s worth. Not exactly Stanley Kubrick, but I’d love any feedback. We’ve been told to aim at Junior High level. The brief is to explain the origins of the ‘situation’, in as neutral a way as possible. Nothing loaded. Tell me anything you think needs changing, especially scrip
t. You’re the writer!

  With no sign of Goldstein, Maddy dutifully clicked the play button. From her phone’s small speaker, the voiceover – deep, mid-Western, reliable – began.

  The story starts on Capitol Hill. Congress had gathered to raise the ‘debt ceiling’, the amount of money the American government is allowed to borrow each year. But Congress couldn’t agree. There was footage of the then-Speaker, banging his gavel, failing to bring order to the chamber.

  After that, lenders around the world began to worry that a loan to America was a bad bet. The country’s ‘credit rating’ began to slip, downgraded from double A-plus to double A and then to letters of the alphabet no one ever expected to see alongside a dollar sign. That came with a neat little graphic animation, the A turning to B turning to C. But then the crisis deepened.

  On screen was a single word in bold, black capital letters: DEFAULT. The voiceover continued. The United States had to admit it couldn’t pay the interest on the money it owed to, among others, China. In official language, the US Treasury announced a default on one of its bonds.

  Now there were images of Tiananmen Square. Beijing had been prepared to tolerate that once, but when the deadlock in Congress threatened a second American default, China came down hard. A shot of the LA Times front page of the time.

  Maddy hit the pause button and splayed her fingers to zoom in on the image. She could just make out the byline: a young Jane Goldstein. The headline was stark:

  China’s Message to US: ‘Enough is enough’

  A copy of that same front page was here now, framed and on Goldstein’s wall.

  At the time the People’s Republic of China was America’s largest creditor, the country that lent it the most money. And so China insisted it had a special right to be paid back what it was owed. Beijing called for ‘certainty’ over US interest payments, insisting it would accept nothing less than ‘a guaranteed revenue stream’. China said it was not prepared to wait in line behind other creditors – or even behind other claims on American tax dollars, such as defence or education. From now on, said Beijing, interest payments to China would have to be America’s number one priority.

  Maddy imagined the kids in class watching this story unfold. The voice, calm and reassuring, was taking them through the events that had shaped the country, and the times, they had grown up in.

  But China was not prepared to leave the matter of repayment up to America. Beijing demanded the right to take the money it was owed at source. America had little option but to say yes. There followed a clip of an exhausted US official emerging from late night talks saying, ‘If China doesn’t get what it wants, if it deems the US a bad risk, there’ll be no country on earth willing to lend to us, except at extortionate rates.’

  Experts declared that the entire American way of life – fuelled by debt for decades – was at risk. And so America accepted China’s demand and granted the People’s Republic direct access to its most regular stream of revenue: the custom duties it levied on goods coming into the US. From now on, a slice of that money would be handed over to Beijing the instant it was received.

  But there was a problem: Beijing’s demand for a Chinese presence in the so-called ‘string of pearls’ along the American west coast – the ports of San Diego, Los Angeles, Long Beach and San Francisco. China insisted such a presence was essential if it was to monitor import traffic effectively.

  Now came a short, dubbed clip of a Beijing official saying, ‘For this customs arrangement to work, the People’s Republic needs to be assured it is receiving its rightful allocation, no more and no less.’

  The US government said no. It insisted a physical presence was a ‘red line’. Finally, after days of negotiation, the two sides reached a compromise. A small delegation of Chinese customs officials would be based on Port Authority premises – including in Los Angeles – but this presence would, the US government insisted, be only ‘symbolic’.

  Archive footage of a CBS News broadcast from a few months after that agreement, reporting Chinese claims of smuggling and tax-dodging by American firms, crimes they suspected were tolerated, if not encouraged, by the US authorities. Beijing began to demand an increase in the number of Chinese inspectors based in Los Angeles and the other ‘string of pearl’ ports. Each demand was resisted at first by the US authorities – but each one was met in the end.

  Next came pictures of the notorious Summer Riots, a sequence that had been played a thousand times on TV news in the US and around the world. A group of Chinese customs men surrounded by an angry American crowd; the LAPD trying to hold back the mob, struggling and eventually failing. The narrator took up the story. On that turbulent night, several rioters armed with clubs broke through, eventually killing two Chinese customs officers. The two men were lynched. The fallout was immediate. Washington acceded to Beijing’s request that the People’s Republic of China be allowed to protect its own people. The film ended with the White House spokesperson insisting that no more than ‘a light, private security detail’ would be sent from China to LA and the other ‘pearls’.

  Maddy smiled a mirthless smile: everyone knew how that had turned out.

  She was halfway through a reply to her former colleague – ‘Think that covers all the bases’ followed by a winking emoticon – when she looked up to see the editor striding in, three words into her sentence before she got through the door.

  ‘OK, we run the Walker picture tomorrow.’

  Short, roundish and in her mid-fifties, her hair a solid, unapologetic white, Goldstein exuded impatience. Her eyes, her posture said, Come on, come on, get to the point, even before you had said a word. Still, Maddy risked a redundant question. ‘So not tonight?’

  ‘Correct. Walker remains unnamed tonight. Maybe tomorrow too. Depends on the re-act to the first piece.’

  ‘But—’

  Goldstein peered over her spectacles in a way that drew instant silence from Maddy. ‘You have thirty minutes to make any final changes – and I mean final, Madison – and then you’re going to get the fuck out of this office, am I clear? You will not hang around and get up to your usual tricks, capisce?’

  Maddy nodded.

  ‘No looking over the desk’s shoulder while they write the headlines, no arguing about the wording of a fucking caption, no getting in the way. Do we understand each other?’

  Maddy managed a ‘Yes’.

  ‘Good. To recapitulate: the suck-ups on Gawker might think you’re the greatest investigative journalist in America, but I do not want you within a three-mile radius of this office.’

  Maddy was about to say a word in her defence, but Goldstein’s solution actually made good sense: if a story went big, you needed to have a follow-up ready for the next day. Naming Walker and publishing his photo ID on day two would prove that they – she – had not used up all their ammo in the first raid. That Goldstein was perhaps one of a tiny handful of people on the LA Times she truly respected Maddy did not admit as a factor. She murmured a thank you and headed out – wholly unaware that when she next set foot in that office, her life – and the life of this city – would have turned upside down.

  Chapter 2

  LA tended not to be a late night town, but the Mail Room was different. Downtown, in that borderland between scuzzy and bohemian, it had gone through a spell as a gay hangout; the Male Room, Katharine called it, explaining why she and her fellow dykes – her word – steered clear of it. Though now enjoying a wider clientele, it still retained some of that edgier vibe. Unlike plenty of places in LA, the kitchen didn’t close at eight and you didn’t have to use a valet to park your car.

  Maddy found a spot between a convertible, the roof down even now, in January, and an extravagant sports car with tinted windows. The high-rollers were clearly in; maybe a movie star, slumming it for the night, plus entourage. She considered texting Katharine to suggest they go somewhere else.

  The speakers in her car – a battered, made-in-China Geely that had been feeling its age even
when she got it – were relaying the voices of the police scanner, announcing the usual mayhem of properties burgled and bodies found: the legacy of her days on the crime beat. She stabbed at the button, found a music station, wound up the volume. Let the beat pump through her while she used the car mirror to fix her make-up. Remarkably, despite the stress, she didn’t look too horrific. Her long, brown hair was tangled: she dragged a brush through it. But the dark circles under her green eyes were beyond cosmetic help: the concealer she dabbed on looked worse than the shadows.

  Inside, she had that initial shudder of nerves, known to every person who ever arrived at a party on their own. She scanned the room, looking for a familiar face. Had she got here too late? Had Katharine and Enrica come here, tired of it and moved on? She dug into her pocket, her fingers searching out the reassurance of her phone.

  While her head was down, she felt the clasp of a hand on her shoulder.

  ‘Hey, you!’

  It took her a second to place the face, then she had it: Charlie Hughes. They’d met straight after college.

  ‘You look great, Maddy. What you doing here?’

  ‘I thought I was going to be celebrating. But I can’t see the people I’m meet—’

  ‘Celebrating? That’d be nice. I’m here to do the very opposite.’

  ‘The opposite? Why?’

  ‘You know that script I’ve been working on for, like, years?’ Charlie was a qualified, practising physician but that wasn’t enough for him. Ever since he’d been hired as a consultant on a TV medical drama, Charlie had become obsessed with making it as a screenwriter. In LA, even the doctors wanted to be in pictures. ‘The one about the monks and devils?’

  ‘Devil Monk?’

  ‘Yes! Wow, Maddy, I love that you remember that. See, it does have a memorable title. I told them.’

  ‘Them?’

  ‘The studio. They’ve cancelled the project.’

  ‘Oh no. Why?’

  ‘Usual story. Sent it to Beijing for “approval”. Which always means disapproval.’