11th hour

Chapter 50

I wanted to straighten Blayney out, on or off the record — and I wanted to know why he was on my case.

He saw me hesitate and set the hook. “How about St. Francis Fountain? They have a fabulous breakfast menu.”

He was talking about a classic old-timey eatery on the corner of Twenty-Fourth and York, built almost a hundred years ago.

I said, “Okay, okay, okay.”

I followed Blayney to the Fountain, parked my car where I’d be able to see it through the plate-glass window, and went inside.

The diner had a soda fountain on one side of the room, straight-backed wooden booths on the other side, and tables and chairs in the window apse. Blayney called out to me from the window table and I slid into a chair across from him.

The waitress came with the laminated menus listing your standard diner fare: burgers, club sandwiches, malts, and shakes.

I ordered decaf and toast. Blayney went for the big man’s breakfast: pancakes, chorizo hash, fried potatoes, high-octane java.

While we waited for the food, Blayney told me all about himself: his education, his job with the Times, his opportunity at the Post, and his determination to rule crime journalism.

The food came, and he talked while he ate, kept talking until there was nothing on his plate but a smear of syrup.

Then he placed his utensils on the upper right rim of the plate and told me that he believed in supporting the police department. And that he also believed that people have a right to know how the police department does its job.

“It’s my duty to tell them the truth,” he said earnestly.

“What were you doing when you told your readers that six hundred and thirteen people had been killed?”

“Okay, that was my editor who did that,” Blayney said. “If I go a couple of days on a story without news, he’ll boost what I do have. So the number six thirteen becomes six hundred and thirteen victims. You can’t tell me otherwise, can you? Let me ask that another way — what does the number mean exactly?”

“Jason, that number is exactly the kind of detail we don’t release, and if it wasn’t for your story, I would not have mentioned it today. When the nutjobs start confessing to crimes they didn’t commit, details, like handwritten index cards, are how we exclude them. Do you understand? So, by putting six hundred and thirteen out there, you made our job much harder. Maybe six hundred and thirteen times harder.”

“Well, I’m sorry. I really am. I had to run with something. Give me something now. I can make you the heroine of this story,” Blayney said.

“I’m not looking for that, Jason. I’m not a hero. I’m not superhuman. My partner and I, all of the SFPD, we’re doing our best, working as hard as humanly possible. Print that, will you?”

I dug a five out of my pocket and put it down on the table.

I left the diner thinking it had been a mistake to go there. I’d wanted him to give the good guys a break, but that wouldn’t give him the brazen headlines that sold papers.

I could almost see his next story: a photo of my back as I went to my car and a quote, “Sergeant Boxer tells this reporter, ‘I’m doing the best I can.’”