Line of sight, p.9
Line of Sight, page 9
Nate pointed a slightly bent finger to the wall above the window, where a row of black-and-white printouts waved from the gentle gust of a ceiling fan. Each one contained a grainy mugshot that I recognized as an employee photo printed out from a machine that must have been desperately low on ink. I remembered this wall of infamy from my regular visits to Nate’s security station back in the day, the faces of those who had been banned from the building. I shouldn’t have been surprised to see my own dead-eyed headshot among the Intelligencer’s least favorite ex-employees. But I was more than a little pissed about being lined up with the IT guy who jammed tennis balls into all the toilets in the 2nd floor women’s room.
“They banned me? They banned me!” I shouted. “Jesus, I fucking yelled at the guy. I didn’t kill anyone.”
“Well now, you’re just a portrait of restraint,” Nate replied.
“I yelled!”
“Yelling is what you’re doing now,” he said. “That day I think you went a step or two past yelling. I believe you called your boss, and forgive me I may be paraphrasing a bit here, a limp-dicked fuck weasel?”
My memories of my last stand at the paper were a little hazy, probably because my last days there led to my last days with Dina and my brain had limited storage when it came to misery. But I know it came down to a verbal brawl with one of the paper’s top editors, Elliot Greene.
My exit came a few months after the paper decided to adopt a ridiculous quota system, where reporters would earn a certain percentage of their pay by way of incentive bonuses. Kind of like how football players get extra cash for certain yardage benchmarks, except they were playing a game and we were, you know, doing something that mattered. I’d done well enough to juggle my journalistic responsibilities against the paper’s slavish devotion to page views for a few weeks. Crime, after all, wasn’t exactly a hard sell to the readership. But I’d started slipping in the month before I got fired.
I had dug in deep on an investigation involving the police chief in Irvington, the next town over from Newark, the bite size version of the Brick City that was home to the same daily fiascoes.
With my numbers sagging, Greene had asked me to put together a list of Newark’s most wanted criminals. A glorified photo gallery. The kind of thing most reporters derisively referred to as a “listicle.” I politely declined. But Greene kept pushing and pushing and pushing. Smashing me over the head with the usual corporate doublespeak about “being a team player” and “thinking beyond myself” and “focusing on what really matters” for the paper.
That last line, for whatever reason, burst open a dam for me. Was writing 20 inches of clickbait copy really a hill worth dying on? Considering what I’d been doing since the last time I’d walked into the newsroom, maybe not. But something in what Greene said or the way he said it, like he could really justify me focusing on what was best for business over what was best for our readers, told me the newspaper I wanted to grow old at had died prematurely.
So, I tore into Greene, part of me not caring about the consequences, the other part just arrogant enough to think I was talented enough to verbally flash fry a top editor and walk away unscathed. Cue “limp dicked fuck weasel” insult. Cue me collecting unemployment checks for a few weeks. Cue Henniman helping me get the P.I. license, and me learning there are a few things worse than mortgaging your journalistic integrity, like mortgaging your actual integrity.
“So, considering how you left,” Nate said, twirling the handcuffs. “You wanna tell me why you’re back?”
“Just visiting some old friends,” I said.
“Mhmmm,” he replied. “Except if I remember, most of those old friends went out the door with you. You sure it’s got nothing to do with that unmarked that pulled up right before you came in?”
I followed Nate’s bent finger again, this time to the security camera feeds. He was looking right at the follow car that drove me back to the building.
“You sure those are cops?” I asked.
“Yes sir. Recognize that plate. It’s an older design. The state logo’s a little smaller on the ones they made before 2005,” he said. “Worked motor pool for a little bit, tend to notice these kind of things when you’re bored out your damn mind all day. So why are the cops chasing you?”
“I didn’t do anything.”
“You know how many times I heard that?” he asked.
“Probably more than enough to know when someone’s lying about it,” I replied.
Nate didn’t say anything. His smile had retreated for the moment.
“I’m just trying to slip them for a minute, and you know this place has enough exits to make that happen,” I said. “You know me man. You know I wouldn’t come anywhere near you or this place if I was actually caught up in anything.”
He scratched his salt and pepper beard and took a step back, easing into his uncomfortable chair again, turning his back to me before flipping the switch that opened the elevator door.
“Guess you forgot your security badge again,” he said, not facing me but letting just enough of that smile loose to signal we were OK.
I grabbed a pen and wrote my cell number down on a pad.
“You should call me after your last day, old man. Maybe we can celebrate your retirement,” I said.
“We ain’t celebrating shit,” he replied. “But you can sure as hell buy.”
I stepped back out into the lobby, fist bumping the glass like we used to, him returning the favor.
“You should probably go out one of the Washington Street exits,” he said through the microphone. “There’s a stairwell on the third floor that will take you there.”
Third floor? Shit.
The newsroom was on the third floor.
***
I drummed my fingers against my hip as the Intelligencer’s long out-of-date elevator cage rocked its way toward the newsroom. It was the same nerve-driven tic I’d had before my meeting with Hard Head, and I felt stupid for equating the two situations.
I knew what would happen if I ran into Greene because I’d been practicing some form of the confrontation in my head for a year. Every time I drank, every time I got in a foul mood, hell, even when I just couldn’t sleep, I was getting in reps for the rematch with my former boss, mentor and friend.
There was a time when I called him Elliot. He’d been my sensei in the newsroom, fighting for me to get hired in the first place and then pushing to give me the police beat ahead of more veteran reporters when the job opened up. He was a good guy, but he was also a survivor. If he ever took my side in a newsroom fight, it was only because it was a fight Greene knew he could win. The man was close to the top of the paper’s food chain, but he wasn’t the building’s apex predator. If I’d crossed anyone above him, he’d have crossed me off.
When the paper got all web-savvy, I should have seen the change coming. Should have known he’d push the parent company’s agenda because he had a house in Short Hills with a mortgage that made my student loan debt look like the cost of a middling first date.
I gritted my teeth, exhaled, tried to remind myself that there was no gain in confronting Greene. All I needed to do was get out of the building and away from the tail car.
Confident in my very complicated escape plan, that being to keep my mouth shut and my head low and avoid eye contact with any of my former editors, I stepped into the hall and immediately made eye contact with one of my former editors.
Elliot Greene was standing in the doorway of the conference room that was off to the side of the elevator. He peered from behind black rimmed glasses, the wrinkles on his face seeming to crease a little more at the sight of me, like his antennae had been raised. A few other editors formed a small circle around him, some I recognized and others I didn’t. I looked up at a clock and figured the bosses were having their afternoon planning meeting, deciding what stories would go on the front page of tomorrow’s paper, or more likely, what stories needed to be placed at the top of their god forsaken website.
Greene was locked onto me, not paying attention to the editor who was chirping in his ear. I took a few steps out of the elevator, waited to see what he’d do, and thought about making a run for it.
“Russell? Russell Avery?” he asked, louder than he needed too. “What are you doing here?”
All the heads turned. The editors I recognized looked surprised, maybe intrigued. They were mostly in their 50s, allegedly mature, but most people can’t resist that schoolyard urge to watch a fight unfold.
Normally, I would have obliged. But I’d made enough enemies for one day.
“Hey Mr. Greene,” I said, choosing formality over fury. “Just passing through really quick. Dina has some of my old files and I need them for a case. Can’t stick around.”
“Well Dina’s out on an assignment right now, so you’ll have to stick around for a bit,” he replied, turning toward the editors flanking him. “We’re just about done here anyway. Why don’t we catch up for a bit?”
Probably because neither of us wants to go down for felony assault today?
“That’s OK,” I said. “I’ll just get what I need from her desk.”
“Well, we don’t let ex-employees rummage through our current employees’ personal property,” he said. “Besides, we should talk anyway.”
He stepped back and held the conference room door open. I really should have just run. Wasn’t like Nate was going to come after me if they called. But if I did that, they’d take it out on Dina, and she didn’t need any more reasons to hate me right now.
I followed him into the conference room and plopped into one of the plush recliners that lined the sides of the marble desk at the center of the room. Front page designs dotted the wall, printouts of the more recent ones and then framed versions of layouts from years earlier. My byline was on more than a few of them.
“Why are you really here?” Greene asked, closing the door.
The pretense of friendliness he’d put on in front of the other editors was gone from his voice, replaced by the same pent up aggravation I’d been carrying. Guess he’d been waiting for this too.
“I told you…”
“No, I mean what are you doing here, specifically? In the newsroom?” he asked. “You’re not even supposed to be allowed in the building.”
He moved toward a chair across from me, placing a hand on the headrest, choosing to leer over me instead of sitting down.
“I bribed the guard. Or maybe I stole someone’s key card. Why does it matter?” I asked. “You don’t want to talk to me. I don’t want to talk to you. I’m here, I’m not going to piss in a coffee cup or start a fight or curse you out again. So why don’t I just get up and walk out, and this time we don’t involve security?”
“You’re still mad about that?” he asked.
“You had me taken out of here like a crazy person,” I replied.
“You were acting like a crazy person.”
“All I did was call you out on your hypocrisy.”
“Using enough profanity to make George Carlin blush,” he said.
“One, George Carlin would never blush,” I replied. “Two, I really didn’t come here for this.”
“Then why are you here? Did Dina really call you? She knows she’d get in a lot of trouble for bringing you anywhere near this place.”
“No, she’s not that stupid. She actually has no idea I’m here,” I said. “To be completely honest, I just want to walk out of this room and exit the building through the distribution garage, and I’d like to do that without talking to you for any more time than is absolutely necessary.”
“This have anything to do with your new job?” he asked, the slightest hint of a laugh creeping into his otherwise stern tone. “I heard you’re an umm … detective now, or something?”
I had started toward the door. But that snicker froze me. I wasn’t letting him run me out of my newsroom a second time.
“Oh, that’s funny to you?” I asked, turning back.
“No, it’s just strange,” he replied. “I mean with the lecture you gave me, that whole sermon on the mount about accountability journalism, I figured you’d be in the city or L.A. or at one of the other national papers by now. You did make it clear that you were above our new business model.”
I needed to let it go. Needed to get out. I had bigger problems involving police misconduct and mysterious cars tailing me and my pending meeting with a drug dealer.
But fuck him.
“You really wanna do this, Elliot?” I asked.
“I don’t want to do anything. I just want to know how you went from judging me to snapping photos of cheating spouses at motels,” he said. “Or is it helping cops? I’ve heard so many rumors.”
I cut back across the room and pulled away the chair he was leaning on, stepped close enough that I could see the caffeine stains that put light hints of yellow in his teeth.
“I know it’s hard for you to grasp this, being that you sit in a glass office all day, but life’s difficult for the rank-and-file out there. You’ve never been within fifteen feet of a layoff, but the rest of us, we spent our days hiding in tall grass while you assholes walk around with machetes,” I said. “I tried to get back in the game after you got rid of me. And for your information, I got offers. Even had an interview with the Times, but some editors got concerned when the references at my last job wouldn’t call back. You have anything to do with that Elliot? Don’t answer, because we both know you did. So yeah, I’m doing something I don’t want to be doing right now. To survive. You wouldn’t know anything about that either.”
I figured that rant would be enough to cut him down. Elliot wasn’t used to arguing with people he couldn’t fire.
“I know plenty about that Russell. You think I like what’s happened here? I don’t. But if I don’t get in line with the company, then they fire me and find someone else who does,” he said. “It’s a balancing act, and at least with me here, we might actually get some work done now and thenLike the industry would stop changing if we just asked it nicely. And you know what? We still cover this city pretty well.”
He didn’t move. Fine. I wasn’t done anyway.
“Cover it well? Please. You have no idea what the hell is going on out there,” I said. “You know why I’m here? Because I’m looking into something that pissed someone off enough that I’m being followed. That’s what we’re supposed to do Elliot. Make people uncomfortable. Ask about shit with ugly answers. And you know what the worst part is? You guys actually covered what I’m looking at, for all of five seconds, in one of your stupid quick hit posts. But you were too busy running past the story to actually see it.”
I gave Elliot one last look as I moved for the door, hoping to find his face twisted up in anger or regret or some other kind of sign that I’d won that round. But he was just scratching his beard, thinking.
And that was when I knew I’d fucked up.
Whatever I thought of Elliot now, the Elliot I knew back then wasn’t your typical editor. He’d been a reporter for a while. He had that sense of pride that came with owning a story.
I had just implied that I knew something he didn’t. That there was something he had missed. And if any of the old Elliot was still in there, he wasn’t going to rest until he figured out what that was.
CHAPTER 7
Hours later, I was leaning against a street light along Littleton Avenue, trying to get comfortable against the metal ridges, wondering who I was going to make my next enemy.
I was on a West Ward drug corner, just late enough that standing in the area wasn’t the best idea. I had to talk to Levon, the dealer who had apparently told people Kevin Mathis was a snitch. Hard Head may have told me where to find him, but he sure as hell didn’t go as far as making any introductions.
Sure, I was a half-bright P.I., not a cop, but Hard Head probably didn’t want his people thinking he gave up their locations all that easy. I was going to have to approach Levon blind, and once I started asking pointed questions about his now dead former colleague, he was probably going to run, hit me, or both.
There wasn’t much I could do to prevent a confrontation once I started pushing him for info, but there were a few ways to improve the situation, maybe at least delay the running and punching. The people driving and walking up to the stoop where he’d set up shop were overwhelmingly white. It wasn’t too hard to see that after Mathis died, Hard Head had placed Levon in control of the ever-profitable pill enterprise.
That thought marinated in my head for a bit, and it didn’t take too long to wonder if Levon knew that might happen, that he’d benefit from Mathis going down hard. Leaking information about a fellow drug dealer being a snitch is an easy way to kill someone without actually doing the killing yourself.
I’d have to add those to the list of difficult questions I needed to ask, but either way, Levon’s white college age client base meant I could at least shuffle up as a customer, start the conversation off from a place where he felt like he was in control.
Except I had no idea how to act like a junkie.
I ran a few scenarios in my head, trying to figure out how I’d ask Levon for pills, how I’d talk my way past the other two guys that were roaming the corner with him. But for all the time I’d spent writing about drugs, I’d never actually taken any. Outside weed, which pretty much stopped counting by the early 2000s. Pretending to be a fiend was outside my already limited acting range.
This wasn’t how I approached a confrontational interview as a reporter. I was more patient then and patience was the great equalizer. If you wanted to start a conversation with someone who had no reason to talk to you, and you had the luxury of being somewhere that the TV cameras weren’t, you waited to get them alone. Separate them from their backup, from the people who might block you off, from the people they might not want to be candid in front of. Everyone had basic needs, from a drug dealer to a grieving relative to a politician. If Levon was gonna stand out here and sling all night, he’d need food and a bathroom.
