Baiting & Fishing
Page 4
Chapter 4
Ray woke every morning at 6:00 a. m. without an alarm, but he had stayed up too late the night before to hop out of bed with his typical energy. He dragged himself to the shower and, after a few minutes, turned off the hot water to jolt himself awake with a cold-water rinse. That worked.
He dressed quickly and then called his police department source regarding the rape case, mentally composing his story on the way to work.
Once in his office, he made quick work of writing and filing his news update. Then he turned to his email and phone messages. He hated email. He preferred to speak to people in person. He realized that made him something of a dinosaur in the world of reporting where email, and even text-messaging, now often replaced sitting down for face-to-face interviews. Ray loved doing research on the Internet but he didn't like the idea of using it as a communications device.
He scrolled through his emails half of which consisted of “news tips” mostly from local crackpots whose names or email addresses he recognized, including the guy who sent him an email every single day (always at 4:30 a. m.) informing him in all caps that the Commies were taking over in Tallahassee, and begging him to get the word out so the people of Florida could rise up in revolt in order to take back their state. Ray never failed to chuckle uncomfortably when he read that guy's messages.
He knew the Commies hadn't taken over Tallahassee, but in his opinion the idiots in the Capitol were a thousand times worse than Commies. He rather thought the idea of a million-person march on Tallahassee, with brooms and pitchforks sounded like a better idea every time he thought about it. He wondered if that made him as much of a nut-job as the guy sending the daily missives from the lunatic fringe. He really didn't want to know the answer to that.
The other half of his messages tended to be intra-company bullshit, which he deleted without reading it.
He could never bring himself to simply delete external email without reviewing it because there was the occasional gem: the “tip” email that actually was a for-real news item; the really funny joke; the interesting article from one of the many blogs he subscribed to.
That day, as he scrolled through his messages, he came across one that caused him to break out in a sweat. It was from his ex-wife. He had not seen or heard from her in more than fifteen years. What in the hell could she want? He had to go to an editorial meeting in five minutes, and he needed to focus. He forwarded the message, unread, to his personal email account and deleted it from his business Inbox. He would deal with Deborah later. Right now he had to contend with his editor, which was bad enough. He strolled down the hall wondering which was worse, the Wicked Witch of the East or the Wicked Witch of the West....
He poured a cup of coffee, by-passed the donuts and took his usual place in the seat at the conference room table nearest the door. He always made it a point to be the first person to arrive at meetings, so he could get his preferred seat. He had never actually walked out during an editorial meeting, but he always wanted to have the option if the situation called for it. Other reporters filed in. Daphne Travers was the last to arrive.
Ray watched her with a grudging admiration. She was not a newspaper woman, which pissed him off. It was an insult to the professionals in the newsroom that she had been assigned to the position. How the hell did the company expect her to run a newsroom with no news experience? Daphne made a lot of mistakes and she was a pain in the ass when it came to controlling costs. Nevertheless there was something about her Ray kind of liked. She may not have known the newspaper business, but there was no denying the fact she was smart. Very, very smart. He liked that in women. He was usually willing to give a smart woman a lot of leeway in the bitch department.
From the day Daphne arrived, all the reporters in the newsroom lined up against her. She hung in there and she never backed down from a confrontation. The thing that Ray sort of admired about her was that she never seemed to take it personally. She came in every day, did her job to the best of her ability, which to Ray's mind wasn't much, but he had to give her credit for persistence. What was most impressive to Ray was the fact that she appeared to be learning. He had almost decided she was teachable. Few other reporters shared that opinion. Most of them were openly hostile to her. Ray always tried to be nice to her face, anyway. He was amused to discover that he was the one person she never trusted; she was always on his ass about something.
The meeting that morning went about the same as usual. Daphne wanted a bunch of fluff stories to fill up the paper but she didn't want to pay the reporters to go out and dig up anything. Ray had the impression she would just as soon they sat at their desks and made up total fiction. That would be cheap and easy. She would like that. She should go to work for the National Enquirer.
The reporters snarled and bitched. Daphne tried to lay down the law. Slowly a sort of consensus emerged as to who would do what. The meeting appeared ready to end when Daphne said, “You know since Marcella Wilson moved to town, only the society pages have written anything about her. Maybe we should consider doing a feature on Sarasota's newest prominent resident. What do you think?”
There was a chorus of vulgar remarks. Ray silenced the room and shocked the hell out of himself when he said softly, “I'll do it.”
Every person in the room stared at him with mouths hanging open. Daphne, caught off guard for the first time ever, blurted, “You will??!”
Ray nodded, “Yeah. I'm kind of interested in that whole business. I was working on something else at the time. I missed the whole Wilson/Techtron saga. I'd kind of like to catch up. Everybody knows I don't do celebrity stories, but Marcella Wilson's more than a celebrity. For the opportunity to spend some time digging around in a huge news story that I missed altogether, I guess I can churn out an article about Mrs. Society-Lady-Come-To-Town. I may need some help in describing her clothes and shoes because I know squat about that kind of thing.” He laughed, shrugged and made a face, “It could be fun. It'll get me out of my rut writing about rapists, murderers and political corruption. That shit's getting old anyway.”
The reporters laughed, a little uncomfortably. Daphne stared at him with suspicion in her eyes. He gave her what he hoped was an innocent, boyish grin. That appeared to make her mad.
Nobody talked to him as he walked back to his office. He went inside, shut the door and sat down at his desk, wondering what had come over him. He feared he might be cracking up, so he did what he always did when he was worried or confused. He threw himself into his work. He read the paper. He logged onto the Internet and surfed through several news sites and news blogs. Nothing particularly jumped out at him. He made a few notes about a couple of things he might want to follow up on.
Next he made his daily calls. First, he called a secretary he knew in the mayor's office; nothing going on there. Next he called an old buddy who worked in the attorney general's office in Tallahassee; nothing new there other than an update about the ongoing internal feud between lawyers in the attorney general's office and the lawyers in the Department of Financial Services. They wasted a lot of time and inordinate amounts of the state's money on their internal feuding, but compared with the rest of the crooks and crazies who ran the state, they were small potatoes. Besides, lawyers are boring. More importantly, Ray believed that as long as the state's lawyers were feuding amongst themselves they would not have the time to prey upon the citizens of the state of Florida. That, by itself, merited holding his fire.
His last daily call was his favorite. Years ago he had befriended one of the matrons in the upper echelons of Sarasota society when he wrote an impassioned article objecting to the city's announced intention to tear down an old mansion, which happened to have been the lady's parents' home. Victoria Caruthers had been grateful for his efforts – which, sadly, had failed – and she had served as a sort of his official background source on Sarasota Society ever since. She was his principal source of information regarding what old landmarks the city had targeted for destruction. He called her near
ly every day. She was a nice old Southern lady. He enjoyed talking to her. They chatted for a while. About the time he would ordinarily have ended the conversation, he said, “Ma'am, this is a little out of my league, but my editor gave me an assignment today I may need some help with.”
There was clearly a smile in her voice when she said, “How can I help you?”
He cleared his throat and replied, “Well, she wants us to do an article on Marcella Wilson. I have done lots of bios on local people, mostly our local oddballs. You know what I'm talking about. I've never written anything about society people or celebrities. I'm out of my element. I'd actually like your advice on who I should talk to.”
There was a strange edge in her voice when she said, “Why don't you talk to her directly?”
He said, “Oh, I certainly will, if she'll speak to me. I am given to understand she has not been giving interviews, which is understandable given recent events in her life. Still, I like to get as much background information as I can from other sources before I interview someone.”
She paused, “That makes sense. To answer your question, I have to say, I don't know who you should talk to. She seems to have portrayed herself as a society woman. To my knowledge she has made no contact with any of the women who actually make up Sarasota Society, if you know what I mean.” He did: she meant the Sustaining members of the Junior League and the Yacht Club Auxiliary. She went on, “I personally think she is more of a 'jet set' person than a society person. She moves in the celebrity and corporate circles. I don't know those people, you understand.”
He bit his lip to keep from laughing. He said, “If you think of anyone I should talk to, let me know.”
“Oh, I will. It would be most interesting to find out more about her.”
Ray thought that was an odd comment. He asked, “Why?”
She said with a tone that called his intelligence into question, “I can't put my finger on anything specific, but I always had the feeling there was more to her than the stories ever told. There is something about her and her husband that never made sense.”
Ray did laugh that time, and said, “Keep this totally under your hat, but that is exactly how I feel and why I volunteered to do this article. I will confess to you that I am a total nincompoop when it comes to trying to figure out women. I'm going to do some digging around. I may ask you from time to time to help me interpret what I come up with. In the meantime, please keep your ear to the ground and let me know what the grapevine has to say about her.”
She giggled like a girl, “Oh, I most certainly will. This sounds like such fun.”
“Remember, don't say anything to anyone.”
Her voice went a bit chilly, “Ray, you should know by now that I can keep my mouth shut better than most people.”
That was correct. She could be a veritable sphinx when it served her purposes. Most people underestimated her, which was exactly the way she wanted it. Her reputation as something of an airhead was of her own making. It was a complete fiction. Very few people knew her secret. She was actually a brilliant woman who had helped her husband, a stockbroker, build a fortune by playing the 'dumb society lady' and listening carefully to conversations people conducted in her presence which they assumed she did not understand.
Through their entire marriage she had read six or seven newspapers a day, clipping articles and making notes about things she thought her husband would find interesting. She was his eyes and ears, and her instincts were amazing. She was also the soul of discretion. She never shared the information she knew with anyone other than her husband, at least not until she called Ray to thank him for the story about her family's endangered home. After that, she had became a very important news source for him. They had never actually met since they didn't move in the same circles but they had a great working relationship over the phone. Ray cherished his daily chat with Victoria.