The Journalist

by Dan Newman

  D’Angelo and I collaborate on the story; I write it, and D’Angelo contributes three photos—which completely amaze me. I now understand why D’Angelo has the reputation he does as a photographer, because it’s truly what he is, and not simply what he does. As it turns out, as hands locked onto him in the car in Zimbabwe, as they clawed and tugged at him, and even as he kicked at them and put up a fight, D’Angelo kept snapping away. Two of the three are taken from inside the car, toward the people who are pulling him out. The first picture is angled, rotated about fifteen degrees, taken from inside the car in the back seat and framed by the open doorway. In that opening are three men and one woman in a flowered top, and their faces, their eyes in particular, are mesmerizing. In the moment captured by the photograph, these were not people at all, but rather fevered zombies, carrying out actions demanded and dictated by impulses a million years old. The next picture is the same group, but with D’Angelo’s legs captured in the bottom of the frame, and slightly closer to the door as he was being dragged through. In the photograph, you can see something akin to glee in their eyes now, as their quarry is drawn inexorably into their clawing hands. The photographs both carry a real sense of movement and built-in dread, and looking at them invokes that dream where you’re running away from some threat, but your damn legs just won’t move fast enough.

  The last picture is remarkable only in the context of the first two, and shows a group of people milling around, among them a woman who is laughing. According to D’Angelo’s fancy digital camera, that photograph was taken a mere nine minutes after the one with D’Angelo’s legs in it, and the laughing woman is the same one, the one in the flowered top, from the picture taken only nine minutes before.

  I am amazed at her transformation from frenzied attacker to carefree, giggling girl in such a short span. I am also amazed at D’Angelo’s presence of mind to pick up his camera again and start shooting, literally minutes after coming out from under the car where (I’m sure) he thought his life was going to end.

  The story frames the event as a day-in-the-life piece, with the underlying message of “Shit changes fast, so watch out.” Sheila loses control of it in an editorial meeting and it finds a home in the Saturday edition on the front page of the Living section. By the time it sees print, it carries the headline NOT YOUR AVERAGE NINE TO FIVE and by the following Tuesday D’Angelo and I are booked as guests on the nationally syndicated TV show USA This Morning.

  Steve D’Angelo, I notice during our four-minute live interview, lives up to the other part of his apparent ethos: my work is all in the picture, so what the fuck are you talking to me for? As a result, I take up most of the conversation, even when Carolyn Thomas, USA This Morning’s anchor, turns and pitches a question directly to Steve. His answers are generally restricted to “Yeah,” and “Sure,” and once, in an absolute outburst of wordiness, he says, “Uh-huh, it can be like that.” And so I leap in when I can, trying not to dominate and making sure I tell the story in terms of we and not I, and in what seems a blink, our four minutes are over.

  We’re stripped of the microphones and power packs by a pretty blonde girl who flits about and doesn’t look a day over fourteen, and then shown to a table with bagels and fruit juice, conveniently located near a rear door with a glowing exit sign above it. The show has moved on, the lights are now focused on a woman explaining the art and science of upholstery, and D’Angelo and I are pretty much abandoned.

  It’s a cool morning and we debate for a moment: cab it or walk? Before we reach a conclusion, the perky blonde appears and pecks at my arm. “There you are, Mr. Keene,” she says, dancing lightly from one foot to the other. “Mr. Stewart asked if he could have a moment.”

  I wrinkle my face trying to place the name.

  “Gordon Stewart,” she says, jabbing a thumb over her shoulder toward the studio. “The news director.”

  “Oh, sure,” I say, suddenly convinced that we’ve screwed something up and are about to be reprimanded. D’Angelo and I both turn to head back to the studio and the little blonde chirps to life once again. “Actually,” she says awkwardly, “he really only needs Mr. Keene.”

  D’Angelo doesn’t miss a beat and pivots, raising one arm for a cab, toward the street. I feel the need to close the conversation—unlike D’Angelo, who is already stepping into the street for a slowing taxi.

  Inside, the blonde girl leads me past the studio and into a more corporate-looking area filled with cubicles and a cluster of private offices. She waves to a man seated behind a desk chatting on the phone and leaves. The sign on the door says GORDON STEWART and I find myself awkwardly loitering just outside. I catch movement and see that Gordon is waving me in, still on the phone, and pointing to the chair. He gives me the universal signal for I’ll be with you in just one quick minute, and then shakes his head in frustration at the person on the other line. “No, no, Carol. That’s not going to work.”

  As I sit there, I browse his walls and I see picture after picture of Gordon with his arm around people’s shoulders, shaking hands, sharing a drink, and even administering the occasional peck on the cheek. A closer look shows the people he is captured with are not just pals but world leaders, A-list celebs, and even a few international villains thrown in for good measure. It appears that Mr. Stewart has been there and done that, several times over.

  “Roland—may I call you Roland? Thanks for coming in. And great segment this morning, I really liked it, it really worked. What’d you think?”

  Wow. Gordon is velvet smooth, speaks in fully automatic, and while I know intrinsically that I should distrust fast talkers, I can’t help but warm to him.

  “Yeah,” I say rather unconvincingly, “I thought it was good.”

  Gordon is wearing jeans and a tan corduroy jacket over a faded blue T-shirt that says I do all my own stunts; it’s a wardrobe I would have expected on a trendy twenty-five-year-old, not on this fifty-something news director. Still, he somehow pulls it off. “That’s why I wanted to talk to you,” he says, “Because I believe you’ve got something that’s much harder to find than you might think.”

  I think I know where he’s going, but I see this as a chance to practice the art of shutting myself up, so I let the moment stretch and he fills it.

  “Have you done any work in front of the camera?” he asks.

  “A little. Not much, really.”

  He leans in. “Tell me.”

  “I did a little interview once for the BBC on being a journalist. That’s about it.”

  “And how did that feel—to be on camera? I imagine you were okay with it, comfortable. The reason I say that is because in the segment you just did, Roly, you were totally at home. Completely natural and unaffected. That’s perhaps the single most difficult commodity to find in this business. Most times you point a camera at someone, their personality packs its bags and heads for the hills. Very few people can disregard its effects, and you have that.”

  I’m not sure what to say here, so I just nod.

  But he does. “Now, you have a bunch of things going for you: you’re in the business already, you have some credibility thanks to some of your work in print, you come across well under the lights, which is our way of saying you’re a handsome devil,” he says, filling his own laugh track, “and you’re unaffected by the lens, which is of course the big one.”

  I’m flattered, but feel somehow uncomfortable with the praise. My response is wooden. “That’s great. Thanks.”

  Gordon chuckles and leans back in his chair. “Look, let me get to the point. I’d like to test you on camera, and if that all holds up, and I’m sure it will—I’m pretty good at this stuff—then I’d like to talk to you about a job. Here at USBN. Well, not here exactly, but in the field. You’d be a US Broadcast Network correspondent.”

  • • •

  The whole process, the testing—which is really just a bunch of lighting guys and makeup people fussing around while you say random things into the camera—the obligatory chats wit
h various management types, all happens in the space of two days. At the end of it, on the Friday after the on-air interview, I’m sitting in front of a job offer that makes a mockery of what I’m being paid at the Star-Telegraph. It’s been just shy of two short years since I started at the paper and only nine months since I broke the immigration story; how quickly the world can change.

  I sit in Gordon’s office and stare at the contract. The urge to ask them if the number is right, if it’s not a cruel typo that will be caught and changed with some sarcastic remark—whoops, yeah, I bet you’d like that as a salary!—is overwhelming. So instead I just read, all three pages, and then I fold it and do what you’re supposed to. “When do you need my answer?” I ask, waiting for a bunch of USBN staffers to burst into the room, laughing and slapping each other on the back while Gordon snatches the paperwork back saying, “Gotcha!” But they don’t and he doesn’t.

  “Is Monday too soon? This is a key role we’ve been looking to fill and as you may have guessed by the last couple of days, we move fast when we know what we want.”

  31

  Just because you’re paranoid, so the saying goes, doesn’t mean people aren’t out to get you.

  In my case I’m admittedly riding a wave of paranoia, but I have a pretty solid case to support it. With Trots’s deadline only hours away, thoughts of shivs are dancing through my head as I move down Eighth Street. The sun is shining and the street is alive with bobbing heads, each of which must be diligently checked and double-checked to see if it’s Trots or one of his lackeys. There’s an argument going on inside my head as to whether I need to worry or not, seeing as the deadline is tomorrow and technically I’m still this side of that line. The counter is, of course, that Trots is a fucking lunatic and there’s no reason to expect that he feels in any way bound by the constraints of his hand-crafted contract.

  As a result, my walk down Eighth is a nervous one, characterized by much pivoting of the head and twitching of the eyes. Once home, I head straight for the desk, where I toss the USBN contract aside and pore over my notebooks, searching for the one I scrawled in last. As I sift through the pile, I’m thankful for small mercies; the Chloe notebook is not sitting on the top of the pile and I don’t have to pick it up and move it, then deal with its attending phantoms. I rationalize that it’s probably buried under paper in the growing stacks around my desk, and having an untidy room is for once an advantage. But the little self-delusion is short-lived; something is quietly gnawing away at me, leaving me unsettled—and worse—unconvinced that I know exactly where that Chloe notebook is. I shake it off with the promise to find it—or at least to look for it—later.

  I soon find the one I’m looking for, snatch a Coke from the fridge, flop on the sofa, and begin to read.

  • • •

  An hour later and it’s just after noon, officially half a day before Trots’s deadline. I’ve blown work off for the rest of the day because my morning meeting with USBN means the Star-Telegraph is soon to be relegated to an entry on my resume, and because Trots’s deadline needs to be met in one way or another. I can’t do it with cash—won’t do it (even if I could afford it), so I must go with something else.

  I can take a respectable photograph—I’m no Steve D’Angelo, but I can get things in focus and I understand the principal of volume: shoot a shitload and your chances of getting something usable are greatly increased. My problem is that I am still in the world of film. My old Pentax was a great camera in its day, but the digital age has made it all but obsolete. Still, it takes a decent picture, and when I was at school I was able to get all the accessories I needed—a decent zoom, a wide-angle, and a motorized film feeder—at the pawn shop for next to nothing. The only hitch is that film and developing are unavoidable costs, and as I sit perched on the highest part of the wall at Union Station, at the far opposite end from Trots’s corner, I remind myself that now that I can actually afford it, I’m going to have to think about upgrading.

  Through my zoom I can watch the activity from a relatively safe distance and for good measure, I’ve positioned myself so that my body, at least, is blocked by the umbrella of the hot dog vendor that sits about midway between us. Only my head and camera peek up above. It would take some serious attention to detail for anyone at Trots’s end to pick me out.

  Through the viewfinder I locate Trots easily. Beside him are two younger guys, both with their backs to me, but clearly part of his entourage. A moment later they turn, scanning the crowd for customers. One of them is Bosco. The other is one I’ve seen before, but I don’t know his name. I let the shutter fall and keep the lens trained on the group as the ebb and flow of activity brings them a steady tide of customers. It’s remarkable how many there are and just how out in the open business is being conducted. I guess it’s a case of hiding in plain sight.

  I let the camera snicker away at every visitor and in the space of an hour I’ve gone through three rolls of film. For the most part, customers appear to be surreptitiously passing money over—which is the business of laying bets—and occasionally they’ll take a walk to the west end of the station with Bosco or the other one, and then disappear southbound around the corner and down toward the poorly lit underpass. These are the drug buys; I know because I’ve been there—nothing hard for me, though, just the occasional bag of stems that pass for weed in these parts. But I know the full menu is available.

  I’m also surprised at the range of his clientele. There are hunched-over, greasy, denim-clad junkies, then pinstriped businessmen, and even one woman pushing a stroller with a sleeping toddler. He’s tapping into almost every demographic, and part of me can’t help but stand in awe at his enterprise. In fact, the only group he’s entirely missing is the tourist set, and that’s only because he can’t hang a sign.

  By two o’clock, I’m done. Done with the pictures, done with the hiding and, as I hop down off the wall, it occurs to me that I am done with the Star-Telegraph. Once home, I check the answering machine and find the call I expected—Sheila asking where I am and if everything is okay. I pick up the USBN contract and read through it once more, marveling at my good fortune.

  The Roland Keene streak of luck has got to be getting close to its end, but the breaks just keep on coming. From obscurity to the Star-Telegraph, and now to USBN—and all in the space of two short years—surely the universe will demand its balance be restored. Not today, though.

  I take a plain oversized manila envelope from my desk and head north to the one-hour photo place on Third, then catch a cab up to The Meadows.

  • • •

  Like everything born from the scribbles in my notebooks, there is a certain degree of madness built in. I’m keenly aware of this as I stand outside the gates, staring through the ornate wrought ironwork toward the palatial residence of the Dysart clan. I steel myself by trying to remember a quote—one that says something about madness and genius being separated by only the thinnest of lines. But the more I think of it, the more I realize that one implies the other, so either way I’m probably screwed. I abandon the thought. Instead I refer mentally to the pages, to the steps, the method laid out in spiral-bound glory.

  I put my hand inside my windbreaker and feel the manila envelope there. In the cab, I had opened the individual photo wallets from Fotoshak and poured the contents into the manila envelope—taking care not to touch the prints themselves. Then I screwed the Fotoshak wallets up into a single paper ball and dropped it on the floor of the cab with the other garbage.

  The knowledge that I am following a plan has a calming effect that is good, but I remind myself that too much calm here is my enemy. I will myself to reach out and press the button on the intercom box fastened to one of the huge stone gate stanchions, and it buzzes in a low and somewhat foreboding tone.

  “Yes,” says the voice in the box, “How may I help you.” There is no real question being asked here.

  “Oh, um, I need to speak with David Mahoney.”

  Silence. Just the stat
ic hum of the intercom.

  I press on. “It’s very important. Really. Very important.”

  “I’m sorry. Who is this?” asks the voice, the tone either mildly curious or shocked at my audacity—I can’t quite tell which.

  “This is Roland Keene. Mr. Mahoney knows me.”

  Again, silence.

  “Please—it’s very important.”

  Another long silence, then, “Please wait.”

  The static hum disappears with a click and I can tell the person on the other end has gone. I stand there, waiting, not sure if I should press the button again or if I should rethink my approach, when through the gate I see the front door open and a man steps out. It’s David Mahoney, Colin Dysart’s executive assistant.

  I smile as he approaches, walking with his hands clasped behind his back, but he doesn’t return the smile and nods instead. “Mr. Keene,” he says.

  “I have new information about the shooting.”

  Mahoney stops dead, blinks a very large blink, then exhales sharply. “Then you’ll want to speak with Mr. Dysart directly.” He reaches momentarily into his jacket pocket and the gate rattles to life, then swings inward. Mahoney stands still as the two halves of the wrought iron gateway elegantly sweep by him on either side, and he extends his hand to me. “It’s very good of you to come, sir. Please follow me.”

  32

  Mahoney shows me into the small library, the same one I sat in almost two years ago, and little has changed. The wingback chairs still frame the window, the walls still hold a floor-to-ceiling collection of first edition masterworks, and the hollow sense of loss somehow still lingers.

  The room itself is almost void of sound, save the tick-tock of an old grandfather clock marking time in the corner. I don’t remember it being there on my last visit, but it must have been, evenly counting the days and hours of my life between then and now.