The Journalist

by Dan Newman

  “Where am I?” I ask with a voice that is half whisper, half croak. “What happened?”

  The doctor folds his arms and raises his eyebrows. “You’ve had quite an adventure these past few weeks. You’re in Germany now, but you spent a night in Nairobi at the Aga Khan Hospital. They stabilized you and then you were transferred here. And now that you’re doing so much better, we’ll be sending you back home. In a few days, of course.”

  And in those few days, I learn all about what happened that night. I learn about being left for dead and about being found by a French television crew in the morning, lying in the middle of the road next to the stripped Land Cruiser. I learn that my heart stopped momentarily on the way to Nairobi in the back of a small Cessna, and how a young male nurse performed CPR on me for the last half hour of the flight to Aga Khan. I learn about being stabilized, about being airlifted by a chance American military flight bound for Germany, where I’m told I underwent surgery to repair my shoulder and a shattered scapula. I hear about the blood loss, the infection, and finally the induced coma. And I remember none of it.

  In three days I’m met by a representative of the network, strapped into a medical evacuation plane, flown home, and deposited in yet another hospital room. All the while I manage to keep the questions that are swirling around inside my head at bay. I know that if they land, if they find purchase and are allowed to bloom, I’ll be forced to think about the unthinkable: what do I do now that I am alive?

  • • •

  My first visitor is a long, gangling fellow I’ve not set eyes on in almost six years. It’s Ed Carroway. He hovers in the doorway until I see him, and my first reaction is a broad smile, but it’s not returned and so mine is stolen away too. “Ed,” I say hollowly. “How long have you been standing there?”

  Ed walks into the room, hands thrust deeply in his pants pockets, and pushes the door closed with his foot.

  “Just a little while,” he says, and I swear he’s wearing the same cardigan he was the day I first met him.

  It’s awkward, and I realize right away what would have been patently obvious had I bothered to think it through: Ed would know everything Barret did. He’d have to; Carroway would be the editor for the piece.

  “If you’ve come to cry at my bedside, don’t worry. The doctors say I’m gonna make it,” I say in a sad, failed attempt at humor.

  Carroway ignores it and instead reminds me of the direct man he has always been. “Did you get Barret’s note when you were down there?” he asks, as coolly as a man inquiring about the weather.

  Somehow my eyes can no longer hold his gaze. “Yes, I did.”

  “But you never made the interview, I’m guessing.”

  “No. I did see Donna, but we didn’t get as far as an interview.”

  Carroway slides the chair closer to the bed and sits down, and it’s only now that I can see the weariness in his face. He rubs at his eyes with his thumb and forefinger. “Roly, I’m going to ask you this once. Not as an editor, not as a newspaper man, hell, not even as a friend. Just two fellas sitting in a room.” His hands fall to his knees and sit there, deathly still. “The journal—the book thing that was in the box left for you at the Star-Telegraph, all the writing, planning, all of it. Is it legit?”

  In the corner of the room there is a dead girl with a hole in her chest. Her arms are crossed, her chin is stuck out, and her eyebrows are raised in anticipation. In another corner there is a dead man standing in a puddle. He’s clenching the little muscle in the corner of his jaw and cleaning his fingernails with the edge of a straight razor, one eye flicking in my direction to catch my answer. He seems aloof, but I know he’s listening intently for what I will say. And in the third corner there’s another man, this one charred and smoldering, stooped over slightly by the weight of the steel-belt radial around his neck. He, too, is watching me, waiting to see if there’s any redeemable scrap left to be had.

  I had decided some time ago that I would atone as best I could, and in every way that I could. And part of that now needed to include taking responsibility for it, all of it—even if there was a case I might make for myself that it had all just gone terribly wrong in that alley off Harbord Street.

  But of course, this is all new ground, as things had also gone terribly wrong in Rwanda, leaving me alive and convalescing here instead of dead and decomposing north of Kigali. And so, in the absence of any plan scribbled frantically in a notebook, I have to stay the course and make my very best efforts at atonement. Nothing can be fixed, but I can be some form of balm for all those whose lives I had crashed through. And so my answer is a simple one, witnessed by all the souls in the room. “Yes,” I say to them. “It’s the real deal.”

  Carroway does not flinch. His head bobs slowly up and down in silent agreement with something he’s been thinking, and then he draws in a full lungful through his nose and looks at me. “I’ve read it, the whole dang thing. And if you’re telling me it’s legit, top to bottom, then that has to include the fact that what you set up, as near as I can tell, never included Chloe dying.”

  I look in his eyes and say nothing.

  And Carroway continues. “Not that it really matters, though. I just wanted to understand the kind of man you actually are. Here’s the thing: your getting shot in Rwanda is big news here, and it’s engendered a lot of goodwill from the fine people of this city. You should see the flowers at the USBN studios. And as a result, there’re a lot of people pulling for you, which has a nice spin effect for ratings at USBN. So, as you might imagine, there’s a lot of pressure on me to make sure the story we want to run on you is ironclad.

  “I called in the team that was working on this, which is basically Barret, his staff of two, and Donna Sabourin—who, as you know, left us at the Star-Telegraph—and is now working with Foreign Correspondent.”

  “Despite my criticisms.”

  “Despite your criticisms. Anyway, she was the one who came into possession of the notebook. Long story short: when she brought the notebook to light she was already with FC, but because it was acquired during her time here, we worked out a deal where the Star-Telegraph and FC would break the story together. As it turns out, both Barret and Sabourin have axes to grind with you, so they were more than happy to work on it together.”

  I have nothing intelligent to say, but there is a natural pause, and I feel compelled to fill the void. “Well, I can’t say you didn’t warn me…”

  Carroway ignores me again. “After you were shot in Rwanda, I called the team back and had them comb through the details for me again. Crucifying a news personality who’s just been shot in the name of chasing the truth can be a dangerous occupation if your facts aren’t straight. And that’s when Donna came clean on how she got the notebook. She originally said it was given to her by a source close to you, whose name she withheld. Barret and I assumed that she was referring to Warren Barton.”

  “It was Warren, sure. He sent that box to me. At the Star-Telegraph. Just like Barret said in the note.”

  “That’s right, but if you reread Barret’s note, it implies that Warren Barton delivered the box to the Star-Telegraph, and not to you. When Donna was pressed on it, she admitted that the box was dropped off for you, sealed and with your name on it, and you never collected it. The reason for that was that Donna had collected it from security downstairs, and told them she would put it on your desk. But she never did. She hid it and forgot all about it. She eventually admitted that she wanted to get back at you for screwing her over, and hiding the box was a petty way of doing just that—juvenile as it seems. She was pretty embarrassed. Anyway, she’d been with FC for four or five years when she came across the box while she was clearing out a storage locker. She opened it and found the notebook.”

  What Carroway is telling me is interesting at best, but it changes nothing. The deeds are all still mine. “Well, I guess I deserve whatever I get.”

  “What you do and don’t deserve is not a question I’m in the business of an
swering. All I can tell you is that the story isn’t going to run.”

  I hear the words, but they bounce off me like a stone skipping across the water. Finally they lose momentum and sink in. “What did you just say?”

  Again, Carroway ignores me. “The box was sealed and delivered with your name on it, and was ultimately opened without your consent. There is a reasonable expectation of privacy where the box was concerned, and anything resulting from the search of that box must be excluded from the investigation. And without the notebook, there’s simply nothing to investigate.”

  I am stunned, thrown temporarily into a literal state of unresponsiveness. Stunned. Eventually I mutter, “What?”

  “There’ll be no story.”

  “Really?”

  “Really.” Carroway draws in another lungful through his nose. “But that doesn’t mean I have to like it. I just thought you should know.” Carroway stands, returns the chair to its spot on the wall, and turns to leave.

  “Wait, Ed,” I say, and ask a question that, while it embarrasses me, I am compelled to ask. “Who else knows about all this?”

  He looks at me with disappointment, and my embarrassment is complete. “Four people: me, Barret, Donna Sabourin, and one of the in-house lawyers. Barret’s staff ran research at arm’s length, and we kept the details to ourselves as we knew this was going to be explosive. But now that we’re at this impasse, Donna and Barret have been instructed to keep things to themselves. There’s a lot of room for damages against the two companies, and against Donna and Barret, should these unsubstantiated rumors leak out. So I guess you’re free and clear.”

  “And the police? Aren’t you going to pass over the notebook to them?”

  “Nope,” he says, staring at a spot on the floor. He seems so tired. “The lawyers see no benefit, only risk. They don’t care much for what you did. They just see bad PR, potential lawsuits, and damage to the corporate bottom line. It’s cheaper and safer just to let it all go.”

  Another embarrassing, humiliating question rises to the surface, and again I can’t stop myself from asking. “And Dysart? What will you tell him?” In my mind I see the man as he was when his daughter first died, shattered and torn. I hear his voice as he asked me about how she died, over and over again through the years, and the shame comes on like a hot bed of asphalt laid thickly over me.

  Carroway is still staring at the floor, but I can see the wrinkles in his face being drawn tight, like a man grimacing as he swallows something vile. Finally he speaks. “Nothing. I’m not going to tell him anything. The paper’s made it clear it wants no part of this. I’ve been part of this institution for a long time, almost forty years, Roly, and so I’ll support that position, despite what my personal sentiments might be.”

  He raises his eyes to meet mine and there’s something very final in his expression. It’s equal parts sadness, disappointment, and regret, with a dash of frustration thrown in for good measure. He turns, pulls open the door, and ambles through it with his head held just a little lower than when he came in. He turns the corner out of sight, and the door closes gently on its pneumatic dampener, hissing at me in a gentle reproach.

  And I know with complete clarity that we will never speak again.

  • • •

  Hours after Carroway leaves, lying alone in my darkened hospital room, I begin to understand the magnitude of the bullet I’ve just dodged, and I’m unsure of what to make of it all. Living through Rwanda was the first wrinkle, but penance could still be paid by the forced “outing” I would get at the hands of my own fellow professionals. And now, with the quashing of the story, even that has been stripped away. I’m left somehow unscathed, just Roland Keene, dragging around everything I’ve done and can’t undo.

  So what do I do? How can circumstances conspire this perfectly to rob me of my chance to check out with perhaps the tiniest shred of decency? How can it be that I’m now back here, career and reputation still intact, and all avenues that connect me and a series of dead people neatly and nicely tied up? In my mind I tally up the kind of life that has led me to this point, and I try to find the high ground, the places where there was something good, something to build on.

  Among them I find Rhona, smiling motherly, almost proudly when I cracked my first byline. I find Donna, perhaps the only woman I ever truly loved, and to whom I never said the word. I find Professor Bowman, who believed in me, or at least made every effort to make me feel that he did, and I find that safety net he so generously cast my way the day I left school—that year of Dr. Coyle. I find Warren, a rich kid to whom I could really offer nothing; yet time and again he reached out to me—often rebuffed—as a friend. And of course there was Ed, that walking allegory for everything it really meant to be a newsman—which, of course, leads me to perhaps the only thing to which I ever really gave myself completely: the idea of calling myself a journalist.

  And what have I done to earn any of it? The question takes me back to a hotel room at the Met, and the challenge some random televangelist laid out before me: do something good. I don’t need to check; I know instinctively the challenge has gone unmet. At least so far.

  Here, in this warm hospital bed, my life has come to a pause. I’m filled with the understanding that my legacy to this world is little more than a harrowing debt. I look back over everything, over everyone whose life I have run roughshod over, and I’m overcome with a sense of regret that may simply be too weighty, too expansive to ever crawl out from under. There have been so many reverberations from my actions, so many lives drawn helplessly in, thanks to my determination to be what I set out to be.

  I can never bring Chloe back. I can’t soothe the suffering I’ve sown throughout her family. I can’t make amends to Lebo, to his mother, or even to Trots. I can’t undo the pain. I can’t fix any of it.

  But perhaps there is something, tiny as it is. Perhaps pathetically so. My life from here on will be lived in a perpetual state of regret and remorse, I know, but I can at least open my eyes, accept what I have done, and spend every last effort trying to wipe out the bad with my own something good. There’s a chance here, a corner to be turned, and I make a simple and solemn vow to do it. Yes, something good will be my mantra, my guiding principle, and while I can never expect to earn forgiveness from any of those I have wronged, I can perhaps make some small contribution in an effort, at least on some grand, universal scale, to restore balance.

  Oh, shit.

  In the doorway of my room, there is a man. I recognize him instantly, and the recognition fires a daisy chain in my head that connects with frightening speed. It starts with a voice on the phone, then a ride in a limo. Next, a library lined with first editions and a grieving father. Then a leap forward to the library again, only this time the father is holding photographs and looking purposeful, like a sharp blade suspended at the top of a guillotine. The chain flurries on, catching image after image, all happening inside the span of a single breath. Trots facedown in the water, my move to network television, and then a thousand random images of the career it all launched for me, and then, finally, a single crystallizing memory: the letter I left on Vince’s bed at the Intwan.

  The letter was supposed to be my final act of goodness, of sorts, and was a confession of what happened, all of it—Chloe, Trots, everything—to Colin Dysart. It would not fix things, but it might diminish the pain, lessen something about the whole experience; it would be my final effort to atone.

  In the doorway, the man steps forward and while I cannot see his face because of the light in the hall, I know from his size and stature that it’s David Mahoney, Colin Dysart’s assistant. I can also tell that while I remember him as a kind, caring soul grieving for the loss of someone he considered family, this is not the same man. This one has a hard edge, and now that he has closed the door firmly I can finally make out his face, and I see it is resolute and set firmly with intent.

  He steps to the edge of my bed, looks at me solemnly, and says, “Mr. Dysart says goodbye.�
�� And with that, he picks up the pillow from the visitor’s chair and places it over my face. I know what’s coming, and I don’t fight it. I hear the metallic snicker of the hammer being drawn back, then feel the pressure of the barrel at the center of the pillow, pushing into my forehead.

  And then I am free.

  Acknowledgements

  There are a few people I need to thank here.

  To my agent, Carrie Pestritto, whose infectious enthusiasm for this project kept it going when many others—myself included—would have just packed it in: Thanks for believing, Carrie. It’s great having you in my corner.

  To my editor, Randall Klein: Thank you for your insightful work on The Journalist. Quite frankly, the whole damn thing was just better once you were done with it. Thanks, Randall. I’m also fortunate to have had the backing of the talented team at Diversion Books, especially Sarah Masterson Hally and Lia Ottaviano. My sincere thanks to both of you.

  I want to thank my dad, Peter, for having the balls to make my childhood such an international adventure, and my mum, Lena, now passed, for gamely going along with what surely must have looked like a never-ending series of mad schemes. Thanks also to my son, Ethan, who knows how to give a hell of a hug, and better yet, knows just when to give them.

  And above all, I want to thank the most remarkable person I’ve ever known: my wife, Laura. I’m not sure of many things in this life, but I am sure of this: I love you, Laura, and there’s not a person in this world I’d rather spend my days with than you.

  Oh, what a lucky bastard I am.

  DN

  More from Dan Newman

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