The One I Love to Hate

by Amanda Weaver

  “So I’ve heard. She’s quite a spitfire, that Mariel.”

  Internally, Alex winced. Did he have to use that word to describe a woman as accomplished and intelligent as Mariel Kemper? Especially when that woman was Jess’s mentor? Predictably, Jess bristled in reaction, every inch of her flaming up defensively. It was a sight to behold, and Alex felt an old, familiar stirring deep inside. He’d always been a sucker for Jess when she was on an outraged tear. Frankly, he’d always been a sucker for Jess, period. Seemed that time, circumstances, and her unrelenting disdain for him had done little to change that.

  “Ms. Kemper is one of the most talented people working in journalism today. I feel honored to be working for her.”

  “I bet you do.” His father gave Jess another toothy grin. It bounced off her like rubber, which gave Alex a curious flare of satisfaction. If there was one woman on earth who could withstand Dan’s charm offensive and come out unmoved, he was weirdly glad it was Jess. Proud of her, even, although she’d probably deck him for thinking that.

  If possible, she grew even more outraged at his father’s patronizing smile. Oh, Dad, never underestimate Jessica Romano. Forget having to drag his father out in a choke hold. Jess was going to take him out herself in another minute.

  But before he could step in and divert Dan, Jess hiked her messenger bag higher on her shoulder and turned toward the door. “I have to go,” she muttered darkly, shooting a glare first at his father, then at him.

  Ah hell, she was really mad. She wasn’t even going to wait for her coffee. His instincts had him nearly reaching out to stop her and apologize on behalf of his father, but if he attempted it, he suspected she’d take a swing at him.

  Jess was almost out the door when his father chuckled and nudged his arm. “She’s quite a little spitfire, too, huh?”

  Even from behind, he could see every inch of Jess stiffen in fury. Of course she heard that. She let the door slam shut behind her, and through the glass, he watched her storm off down the sidewalk, long dark hair snapping in the breeze behind her.

  “Dad—” Alex began.

  But Dan was already turning toward the door with his coffee. “Better get going, son. Car’s waiting outside. Don’t want to be late.”

  Then Dan was gone, too, leaving Alex with his rapidly cooling coffee and a shop full of stunned patrons still waiting for their coffee.

  “I’ll pick up the tab for them.” He passed a fifty to the barista before following his father outside. Drake Media waited for no one.

  Chapter Nine

  “If I could just get a minute of his time—”

  “Who did you say you were again?”

  “Jessica Romano, from the Brookyn Daily Post.”

  “Mr. Gallagher doesn’t give interviews to college papers.”

  “The Post is not a college paper. It’s been in continuous operation since 1822.”

  “Well, I’ve never heard of it.”

  “I assure you, we’re a legitimate—”

  “I think you should speak to the Office for Media Relations.”

  “I’m not looking for press releases,” Jess pressed, losing her patience after going twenty rounds with Frank Gallagher’s secretary at the Department of Education in Albany. “I have questions of a serious nature to ask Mr. Gallagher—”

  “And I told you already, Mr. Gallagher doesn’t give interviews.”

  “But—”

  A resounding click met her protest. Jess pulled the receiver away from her ear and stared at it in dismay.

  Well. That was that.

  Days of parsing through CDS’s bid had definitely raised some questions. And CDS’s past record of service only raised more. Something was not right about this contract. The next step was to lay it all out for Frank Gallagher in the Department of Education, and see what he had to say about it. But she couldn’t seem to get to the guy. There was no direct way to reach him and his secretary guarded him like Fort Knox.

  Jess set her phone down and looked up to see Lina approaching her desk.

  “You look miserable. What’s up?”

  “Just ramming my head into a brick wall all morning. The usual.”

  “Well, take a break from that and come to lunch with us. Natalie says the new place around the corner has amazing mac and cheese.”

  “I should go over this contract again, and—”

  “Jess, it’s cheese and pasta. Your two favorite foods. Let’s go.”

  Lina was right about the cheese and pasta. Frank Gallagher’s impossible secretary would still be there if she took a break for half an hour.

  Shoving herself to her feet, she reached for her coat. “You’re right. Let’s go.”

  * * *

  “How’s your Assemblyman Stevens story coming, Lina?” Zoe asked when they were all settled at a table.

  Lina blew out a breath. “Good, I think. There’s definitely some shady stuff in his campaign contributions, but I’m still digging through all of that. It’s going to take me a while.”

  Jess nudged her elbow. “Let me know if you need a hand, okay?”

  “I will totally take you up on that once I’ve got it all pulled together. The financial stuff is daunting.”

  “How much longer until you think you can break it?” Zoe asked.

  “Definitely by Christmas. Maybe sooner if I get lucky.”

  “I’m so excited for you, Lina. What a killer story.”

  “Thanks, Zoe. I’m just so nervous. It’s got to be perfect, you know?”

  “You’ll kill it,” Zoe assured her. “Okay, Jess’s turn. What’s got you so miserable?”

  Jess shook her head. “I’m just having a hard time making progress on this story. There’s something there, but I can’t get at the guy who might have the answers.”

  “Well, explain the problem,” Zoe said. “Maybe we can help.”

  Dubious, Jess looked from face to face. “Are you sure?”

  Zoe’s pale blond corkscrew curls were piled up on top of her head today, but several had escaped and danced around her face as she nodded. “Women have to stick together. Let us help.”

  “Okay, so I heard that the Department of Education has just awarded a massive no-bid contract for building and maintaining the new online portal for city schools, and I decided to look into it.” Jess pulled her printed copy of the contract from her bag, littered with Post-It flags and scattered with highlights and notes scribbled in margins.

  “You’re carrying it around in your bag?” Natalie interjected before she wolfed down another forkful of mac and cheese. She might look like a willowy runway model, but she ate like a starving trucker.

  “I work on it during my commute,” Jess said defensively. “So I looked into similar projects in other major school districts, and it seems unusual to have so many different projects lumped into one contract to one vendor.”

  “What do you mean?” Zoe asked, reaching for the contract.

  “These guys are building the software for the new portal, but they’re also providing new desktops to school administration offices across the city. It’s unrelated hardware. Why isn’t that a separate bid? And look at the price per unit they’re charging. You could buy it retail from Dell for half that. There are a million line items like that. Stuff that has literally nothing to do with the new portal, a lot of it wildly overpriced.”

  Zoe scowled as she flipped through the contract. “Jess, did you seriously annotate this whole thing?”

  “Jess kicks ass at this kind of stuff,” Lina said. “You should have seen this article she did in college, tracking the investments of the school’s endowment.”

  “Thanks, Lina, but the contract is just the start. There’s also this company’s history with the city.”

  “If they have a solid reputation as a vendor, maybe that’s why they got the contract,�
� Natalie interjected. “I mean, my stylist costs a fortune, but she always gets my highlights perfect. I’m willing to pay more if I know it’s going to be done right.”

  “See, that’s just it. This is where it gets shady. I had to really dig, because CDS has been reincorporated a few times, but if you follow the paper trail, the name changes, but all the executive officers stay the same, and they’re based in the same office park on Long Island. CDS, in various incarnations, has been fined three times for either failing to complete city contracts on time, failing to provide the services as agreed upon, or doing substandard work.”

  “And they still got this contract for the new DOE portal?” Zoe asked.

  “And with a whole bunch of tasty extras thrown in, all at a price tag of nearly a billion dollars.”

  “That’s a billion dollar contract?” Lina’s voice was strangled.

  “With no public review period, and with the bid posted online, unannounced, just a week before the vote to award it.”

  “Wow. So who voted on it?” Zoe asked.

  “A panel at the city Board of Ed approves things, but as far as I can tell, they usually don’t even see the full bids.”

  “You mean nobody but you would be willing to wade through three hundred pages of this stuff?” Natalie laughed. “Shocker.”

  Jess laughed, too. “Yeah, I get that. They don’t have time. They usually get a summary from the Department of Education, which is a state agency, and they tend to rubber-stamp their recommendations.”

  “They probably assume someone at the state has already done the legwork on the contract by the time it gets to them,” Lina mused.

  “Right. And someone should have. But that’s state info, and they’re pretty opaque about their practices. And there’s another thing. It turns out one of the executives at CDS happens to be married to a highly placed staffer at the Department of Ed. Now, I don’t know if this guy oversaw this contract. Could be unrelated. But if this guy had anything to do with the review of the contract...”

  Zoe finished her sentence. “That’s a massive conflict of interest.”

  “And probably illegal,” Lina added.

  “So I figured I’d go to the guy in charge of that office at the state DOE—that’s Frank Gallagher—and just ask him. Who put this contract together? Were they ever open to bids from other companies? Who gave it the greenlight before it was passed on to the city panel for approval?”

  “Sounds smart.” Natalie snatched a French fry off Lina’s plate as she spoke.

  “But his secretary refuses to give me even five minutes with him. I guess I’m not important enough for her. She just keeps referring me to the state’s press office, which is worthless.”

  “What you need to do is get in this guy’s face when he’s not in the office,” Lina said, pushing the rest of her fries toward Natalie. “Figure out where Frank Gallagher lives, where he hangs out, and just show up.”

  “Nice idea, but I don’t have weeks to hang out in Albany and follow this guy around.”

  “I can ask my dad,” Zoe said.

  All heads swiveled to Zoe. “Your dad?” Lina asked.

  Zoe shrugged. “Sure. You know he works for the governor.”

  Okay, so Zoe got a little career boost over the rest of them, having a father who worked for the state government. But Jess wasn’t going to complain if she wanted to flex those muscles on her behalf.

  “Oh, my god, that would be amazing. Thank you so much, Zoe.”

  “No problem.”

  “We’re all in this together,” Natalie said.

  Zoe nodded in agreement. “It’s a tough business for women. We’ve got to have each other’s backs. Let me talk to my dad and see what I can do.”

  “Zoe, you’re the best.”

  The late fall sunshine felt even brighter as the four of them made their way back to the paper after lunch. Jess was full of bubbling optimism. If Zoe could get her this interview, she was onto a story that would bring the paper a new kind of recognition, and would propel her to the next level of her career. A story like this would mean she could tell Lauren to go stuff her social media accounts in her ear.

  But not yet. She hadn’t checked the accounts in a couple of days. While Zoe, Natalie, and Lina chattered away about the new Max Irons movie, Jess slipped her phone out of her pocket and quickly did the rounds. Link to an article on Facebook, cross post it on Instagram, then over to Twitter, where—ClickNews had replied again.

  @ClickNews @Brooklyn_Daily_Post Does it count as “reading” when you’re using it to pack your dishes for a move?

  This was probably not the kind of attention she should be drawing to the paper’s social media accounts, which meant she should, under no circumstances, reply again. But how could she let ClickNews get the last word? That would be letting them win, and she just couldn’t stand for that. Then again, didn’t Lauren tell her to grow the audience? ClickNews had tons of followers. If the Post picked up even a few of them, it would improve their numbers, right? Yes, she was being a little argumentative, but honestly, no one was paying the slightest attention to what she was posting. Nobody except ClickNews’s social media manager. Who was a total jerk.

  @Brooklyn_Daily_Post @ClickNews Does your website count as “news” when 80% of your visitors are taking a quiz to sort their pets into Hogwarts houses? (My dog is totally a Hufflepuff, btw.)

  That was fun, but definitely a stupid move. Eventually somebody at the Daily Post was going to notice her exchanges with ClickNews, and that would be bad. Which was why she was absolutely not going to tweet at them again. Well, not unless they tweeted her first. Because no way were they getting the last word in.

  Chapter Ten

  As Jess exited the subway in Williamsburg several days later, her phone pinged with a message from Peabody.

  Peabody: I have the funniest thing to show you. You have to read it now.

  There was a link to a blog post, some tourist’s nightmarish experience with street food in New York that had her howling with laughter.

  PaperGirl: That was disgusting and hilarious. But I take exception with the unfair slandering of hot dogs.

  Peabody: But...street meat. That hot dog water is horrifying.

  PaperGirl: You’re a terrible New Yorker. Street food is a New York tradition.

  Peabody: I prefer my food served indoors, by a place that’s passed a health inspection.

  PaperGirl: Hot dogs and me go way back. It’s true love.

  Peabody: One day I’ll take you to a proper restaurant and show you the light. Maybe I can win your heart away from hot dogs.

  Jess stared at her phone, stunned. He’d very nearly asked her out. Not quite, but almost. She was still giddy over it when she walked into the Daily Post front office a few minutes later.

  “Good morning, Sally. You look nice. Did you get a haircut?”

  Sally patted at her tidy silver curls. “Ah, just a trim. Nothing fancy.”

  “What’s with the smile?” Lina asked, coming to perch on the corner of Sally’s desk.

  “What smile?”

  “That smile. She’s smiling like a cartoon character, isn’t she, Griff?”

  Griffin popped up from under Sally’s desk looking like he’d spent the night in his clothes, which was typical for him. “Your monitor was unplugged, Sally. Try it now. Who’s smiling?”

  “Her!” Lina pointed at Jess. “Oh! I know. It’s him, isn’t it? You’re still talking to him, aren’t you?”

  If Lina only knew. It felt like talking to Peabody was all she’d done for days. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  “Have you got a new boyfriend, Jessica?” Sally asked eagerly. “I knew you were in love! Didn’t I tell you, Griffin? Didn’t I say I could see it all over her face?”

  “No, I do not have a boyfriend. He’s...just a friend
.”

  “She’s never even met him,” Lina said to Sally.

  “Oh, is this one of those internet dating things? My niece met her husband that way. He’s not much to look at, but at least they ran a background check on him for her.”

  “A background check isn’t foolproof, you know,” Griffin said. “Ted Bundy didn’t have a criminal record.”

  “Oh, be careful,” Sally said to Jess. “You don’t want to be dating someone like Ted Bundy.”

  “I’m not dating anyone! I haven’t even met him.”

  “Right. Because he probably looks like Freddy Krueger.” Lina waved her fingers like knives. “That would make for some interesting sex.”

  “If you’re going to have sex with someone with blades for fingers,” Griffin interjected, “it seems Edward Scissorhands would be a much better choice than Freddy Krueger.”

  Lina sighed. “You’re so right, Griff. Those cheekbones? Those dreamy eyes? Oh, yeah. I’d go there, blades and all.”

  “Oh, my God, he doesn’t look like Freddy Krueger or Edward Scissorhands.” Jess thought back to that photo of his hand holding the book, the photo she’d saved in her phone. Definitely nothing like Freddy Krueger. Not a chance.

  “How do you know?” Lina smoothed the front of her sweater. “I’ll point out again, you don’t know anything about this guy.”

  “I know plenty! I know he’s brilliant—”

  “You already said that.”

  “—and he’s a reporter, like me.” At least, he wanted to be.

  “Where does he live?”

  “Here in New York.”

  “How do you know?” Lina pressed.

  “He calls hot dogs ‘street meat.’”

  “Okay, he’s a New Yorker,” she conceded. “And is he in print, like you? Online? Cable news?”

  As far as she knew, he wasn’t doing any of those things, because he was busy working for his family business. But he must have at least trained to be a journalist, if he was on the Collective, even if he wasn’t currently working in the field, right?