Charm City

Chapter 13

"Reminder: when you want to destroy files, simply hit Command X. When private files are transferred to the Trash directory, it is recommended you erase them first, for the Trash directory can be ACCESSED BY ALL USERS. Many reporters and editors forget to delete their files, allowing prying eyes to skim them. Remember, each department-Metro, Features, Sports, etc.-has its own Trash directory. D. Starnes."

Puzzled, Tess stared at the computer screen. It was Tuesday, about 11 A.M., and she had just started her day at the Beacon-Light, after checking in with Colleen's secretary, as required. Funny, she had expected Colleen to have a male secretary, an unctuous himbo guarding her office, but the secretary was a pleasant moon-faced matron, who put a little smiley face next to Tess's name, along with a notation of the time-to the minute.

In her office, Tess had turned on the computer thinking she might fill her daily sentence of six hours by exchanging e-mail with Whitney, or reading the wires, only to see this message pop up. It was phrased as if it were a directive to all users, yet she knew enough about the system to realize the message was addressed only to her. Strange. Dorie wanted her to find something, but didn't want to make it too easy, or appear to be doing her any special favors.

With a quick glance at the cheat sheet posted next to the keyboard, Tess typed in the command instructing the computer to call up all items in "Trash Metro." The computer obliged, quickly and silently, and Tess soon found herself sifting through the electronic equivalents of cigarette butts, half-empty coffee cups, and tissues with lipstick traces. Here were memos as dull and plodding as any corporation's. Here were reporters' ill-crafted leads, the false starts they would have crumpled and tossed across the room in the typewriter era. Here were notes from telephone interviews. "Sez city mayor No can do/Constinal ish big. Pres. no agree. Wld req ref. More stdy requrd." Good fodder for a libel trial, Tess thought. It was doubtful the writer could reliably decode this Tarzanese. Fortunately, the notes would soon disappear: whatever was dumped in the trash expired in twenty-four hours.

Moving from Metro Trash to Features Trash and Sports Trash, then back to Metro Trash, Tess found daily staffing reports from each department's executive secretary and a log of overtime requests. Anyone filing for more than ten hours per week was flagged and expected to provide an explanation for daring to request what the contract guaranteed. Rosita, who had filed for twelve hours of overtime in the last pay period, had written an obsequious little note to Colleen, with copies to Mabry and Sterling, reminding them that the Wynkowski story was the reason.

"Now that the story has appeared, I'm sure you can appreciate how much time it took. I would never take advantage of your generosity. In fact, I worked almost 20 hours of overtime, but deferred the rest to comp time."

Tess thought she detected a lot of attitude in that one word, "Now." Feeney had filed for eighteen hours of overtime without bothering to defend himself in writing. That, too, was in character.

Why would any reporter, especially a cagey type like Rosita, allow her craven brown-nosing to be on display? Tess couldn't be the first pair of "prying eyes" to pass through these directories. She checked the history field, the way Dorie had shown her. Of course: reporters created the files, but the editors dumped them. And the editors weren't concerned about safeguarding anyone's privacy except their own. Reganhart, in particular, never erased reporters' notes before trashing them, while Sterling was erratic. Only Lionel Mabry, who had seemed so vague and out of it, scrupulously expunged everything he discarded.

Digging deeper into the electronic trash, Tess found yesterday's news budget, which included ongoing projects at the bottom. Reporters assigned to the Wink story were to keep checking with county police, on the off chance the death would be classified as an accident or homicide when the toxicology reports came back from the medical examiner. The budget also indicated at least five other reporters had been deployed in case Wink had even nastier skeletons in his closet. So far, they had come up empty. Meanwhile, Feeney was responsible for tracking the basketball deal, which was expected to unravel unless Paul Tucci could find more backers, but there had been no developments on that front, either.

In fact, the only Wink-related story in today's editions was a thin piece on his wake by Rosita. As published, the piece had been flat and unremarkable. The original, sent to the trash by Reganhart, was inappropriately vicious, the kind of piece in which the writer mistook mere bitchery for wit. Tess was particularly struck by the description of Wink's high school basketball team members in "green-and-gold letter jackets that would never button again, not in this lifetime." At least Reganhart, whatever her weaknesses, understood how disastrous this would have been. Death demanded reverence not only for the deceased, but for his mourners.

"So what's moving on the wires this morning?"

Startled, Tess jumped and banged her right knee hard on the lap drawer of the old metal desk, which caused her to swear under her breath. Jack Sterling was leaning against the door jamb, hands in his pockets, shirt sleeves rolled up. A solid blue shirt today, which made his eyes almost too blue.

"Not much," she lied automatically. Even if she wasn't actually hacking, she didn't want to admit she was digging through the Blight's electronic trash. "Spring training stories."

"In March, it's hard to believe Opening Day will ever come. In August, when you're a Cubs fan like myself, you sometimes wish it never had."

As Tess casually cleared her screen of any incriminating files, Sterling came in and sat on a corner of the desk, inches from her right elbow.

"Do you like baseball, Tess?"

"I watch the World Series. Want to know my deepest, darkest secret?"

"I'm a journalist. I live to know secrets."

"I don't even know where the Orioles finish, most years."

He laughed, a sound so spontaneous and generous that Tess wished she could find other secrets to confide in him. I didn't report all my income on my taxes last year. I think you're cute. I've been known to be something of a round-heels under the right circumstances.

"Let me ask you something, Tess."

Yes.

"Did anything bother you about the first Wynkowski story? The, um, unofficial one?"

She knew she was suppose to say she had been bothered, and she hated to disappoint him. But what had been wrong? She wracked her brain.

"I know there were a lot of anonymous sources. Then again, you let the guy in Georgia cloak his identity, too."

"At least I know who he is this time, and what his motivation is. I don't know anything about the sources in the first story. I've got a bad feeling in my gut about this whole thing. What about you? What do your instincts tell you, Tess?"

It was an uncomfortable question for Tess, who had once watched as her best instincts had collapsed against the backdrop of three separate deaths. But it was foolhardy to tell the unvarnished truth to an employer, and Jack Sterling was still just that: her employer.

She settled for a partial truth. "My gut tends to be opinionated, so it's not infallible."

Her stomach picked this exact moment to groan with hunger. Tess wanted to crawl under the desk, or find some graceful way to inform Sterling she did not normally make such noises.

"Running on empty? Let me treat you to lunch at Marconi's." Tess grinned at him the same way Esskay the greyhound grinned at any offering of food.

They walked down Saratoga Street to the restaurant. It was a little cool, but the sun was out and the sky clear. A few brave crocuses peeked out among the stunted trees planted along the sidewalks. A horrible tease, Tess knew. Did spring have an equivalent term for Indian summer, a way to describe these March flirtations with nice weather?

"We'll probably have another snowstorm before the month is out," she said. How lame could she be, falling back on the weather to make conversation? She should have said something about politics, or today's front page. But that would have involved actually reading the front page. She had been having far too much fun wallowing in the electronic trash heap.

" Baltimore is lovely in the snow," Sterling said, "even if Baltimoreans aren't."

"Are you going to go into that usual out-of-towner rap, about how we can't drive in it, and we all act like idiots, rushing to the store for supplies?"

"It's the nature of the supplies I've never understood. Bread, milk, and toilet paper, hon." Sterling did a decent Baltimore accent for a newcomer. "The holy trinity of Baltimore life. Can you explain it, hometown girl?"

"My parents always say it goes back to the Blizzard of '66, which seemed to come out of nowhere," Tess said, as they climbed the marble steps outside Marconi's. "Milk for the kids, bread for sandwiches. And I think the toilet paper was for women to wrap their beehives."

Good, she had made him laugh again. "And now people run to the Giant or the SuperFresh near Television Hill so they can be sure of making the evening news."

"Hey, don't knock it. Being identified as a ‘panicky snow shopper' is how most locals earn their fifteen minutes of fame."

"Funny, how that phrase has been perverted over the years," Sterling mused, as they followed an ancient maître d' to a table in the rear dining room. "Warhol actually wrote in an exhibition catalog, ‘In the future, everyone will be famous for fifteen minutes.' Now we talk about it as if it were an entitlement, or part of the Declaration of Independence. The right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of our fifteen minutes of fame. Have you had yours yet?"

Tess took her seat, thinking about the brief article the Blight had run last fall, when she had been attacked. If she was going to be famous for fifteen minutes, she hoped it wouldn't be for that. "I might have slept through mine."

"Well, then, you can have my fifteen minutes. Unless I'm on the masthead, the only time I ever want to appear in any newspaper is when I die."

It was Tess's turn to laugh. "How Junior League of you. What's the rule? A proper person's name appears only three times: at birth, marriage, and death."

"Exactly. So I have two more opportunities left."

She ducked her head, taking more care than necessary as she unfolded the linen napkin, hoping Sterling couldn't see the wide grin spreading across her face at the realization he had never married.

Marconi's was a dowdy grande dame. The dining room was too bright, the food too heavily sauced, the wallpaper faded and waterstained. Prices, while not steep, climbed quickly on the a la carte menu. And although the owners had finally agreed to a reservation system, the last seating for dinner was at 8 P.M., ensuring the regulars were at home in time for reruns of Matlock and Murder, She Wrote. But Baltimoreans cherished the place. Tess opened the menu with happy anticipation.

"I'll have the house salad-it's big, we can split it if you like-fried pork chops, and potatoes au gratin," she told the waiter, who was young by Marconi staff standards, not even sixty. "And please make sure the kitchen doesn't run out of fudge sauce. I know I'm going to want a sundae for dessert."

Sterling seemed slightly taken aback by Tess's appetite, but he tried gamely to keep up with her. His choices were healthier, however-broiled sole and a plain baked potato. And while he urged Tess to have a drink, he settled for club soda and lime. After hearing his abstemious order, Tess wished she could at least rescind her request for a glass of white wine. Bad enough to be such a pig, did she have to be a drunkard, too?

"Don't worry, you won't lose points for drinking in front of me," Sterling said, again guessing what she was thinking. "I'd love a drink myself, but my metabolism went south when I turned forty. Can't afford those empty calories."

"I guess I do have a pretty good metabolism. Of course, I exercise every day." Tess was aware she sounded boastful, yet she didn't stop. She wanted Jack Sterling to know how strong she was, how fast, how firm. "On a typical day, I bet I burn at least a thousand calories from my workouts-rowing in the warm weather months, running and weight lifting year round. That's five glasses of wine, or almost four packs of Peanut M amp;Ms."

"Well, you look very…healthy," Sterling said. His naturally pink cheeks turned a little pinker and a dry cough almost choked him. He gulped his club soda, spilling some on his shirt front. "I'm sorry, that was inappropriate."

Tess wanted to ease his embarrassment, the way he had eased her discomfort earlier. "You don't know from inappropriate. You should have heard what Wink Wynkowski said to me when I ran into him at the gym."

"When was this?"

"Friday. The day before…" she stopped, flustered.

"You can say it, Tess. The day before he killed himself, thanks to the Beacon-Light's enterprising reporters. Maybe I will have a drink after all."

The salad arrived, a welcome distraction. Tess watched the waiter as if she had never seen someone toss and cut greens before, then forked up several mouthfuls in a row to avoid saying anything. It seemed tactless to speak of Wink's death to Sterling, although she wasn't sure why.

But Sterling wouldn't let her off the hook.

"Did we do it, Tess? Did the paper, in its zeal for a story, kill a man?"

"Of course not. You didn't know-you couldn't have known what he would do when the story ran. It's no different than what happened with Newsweek and Admiral Boorda. Wink made himself out to be such a tough guy. Who knew it was all an act?"

"Who knows anything about anyone? I'm burning out on this business, and on the glib explanations we offer up for everything, as if we could ever really know a man's soul. I'm no longer so confident I know what's right and what's wrong. I'm not even sure Wink's crimes are relevant. Wink Wynkowski left behind a wife and three children under the age of five. How do I weigh their pain against the readers' ‘right to know'?"

The entrees and side dishes arrived, along with a bourbon and water for Sterling. Although she knew form past experience how hot the potatoes were, Tess plucked a cube from the yellow-orange cheese sauce, which had tiny grease bubbles on the surface. Sure enough, it burned the roof of her mouth.

Sterling stared glumly at his food. "I think about his widow a lot. I wonder if she spoke to him Saturday, if he told her what he was going to do. I wonder if she knew about the story before it was in the paper. Had Wink ever confided in her? Had he ever confided in anyone about his past?"

"Are Feeney and Rosita working on a Sunday story about how it…happened?"

"No-not if I have anything to say about it. I'm not worried about answering these questions for the Beacon-Light. I want to know for myself, for my conscience. But Mrs. Wynkowski's not talking to anyone. I'll never know how she feels or what she's thinking."

Tess sliced off a piece of pork, chasing it with another potato cube. Still hot, but no longer lethal. "What if someone intervened, asked her a few questions? Questions you wanted asked."

"Who would do that?"

"I would, if it counted toward my six hours daily of indentured servitude. I can't take being on such a tight leash, Jack. I'm probably in trouble right now for not checking out with Colleen's secretary before I went to lunch. Maybe if you told Colleen I was talking to Mrs. Wynkowski on your behalf…"

"Why would Lea Wynkowski talk to you?"

"Because I'm not a reporter. Which means I can misrepresent myself, becoming someone she might like, someone she would want to confide in."

When Sterling smiled, really smiled, his grin split his face like the crack in a cheap watermelon. "I think I know now why Whitney is so devoted to you. I couldn't see it at first. The two of you seem so different, but you both have a devious side."

Tess probed the roof of her burned mouth with her tongue. Comparisons to Whitney seared in a way no potato could. "Are you saying you're surprised we're friends because she's gorgeous, rich, and successful, and I'm a plain, poor failure?"

"Don't beg for compliments," Sterling said, wagging his fork at her, still smiling broadly. The color in his cheeks was even higher than usual, perhaps because of his drink, and his hair was falling in his eyes again. Tess had a sudden desire to push it back. "You're both good-looking women, and I suspect you know that. Which is the main reason I find your friendship intriguing. Most attractive women pick plain friends."

"Smart women prefer beautiful friends: you meet more men that way, especially if you complement one another. I've met a lot of my boyfriends through Whitney."

"Including Jonathan Ross?"

The name, the too-casual way Sterling used it, made something catch in Tess's throat. Before his death, Jonathan Ross had been one of the Blight's star reporters. Obviously, Sterling would know that. He also had once been Tess's boyfriend, and she wondered if Sterling had learned this as well. She saw Jonathan again, the way she saw him in her nightmares, in clumsy flight over Bond Street. He had saved her life, losing his in the process. Not my fault, she reminded herself. Not my fault.

"Jonathan and I worked together at the Star years ago, then he moved to the Beacon-Light. We were friends, Whitney, Jonathan, and I. Friends. Men and women can be, you know."

"Sometimes I think Whitney would like to be a man."

"Whitney would like all the opportunities open to men. There's a difference."

Sterling didn't pick up on her dig. "Whitney reminds me of a man in one of those English hunting prints. I always expect her to stride into my office one day, a riding crop in one hand and a dead fox in the other. I've never really liked those blueblood types. Something androgynous there. You're actually more feminine, even if you do spend a lot of time trying to hide it." He turned pink again. "Sorry. There I go again, being inappropriate."

"More bizarre than inappropriate. Whitney's not mannish at all."

"I've been known to hold minority opinions before. I didn't get where I am by embracing the conventional wisdom."

"Obviously. The conventional wisdom is that you should let the widow Wink alone."

"I know." He shook his head. "I know. But I have to find out how she's doing, Tess. Won't you talk to her for me? I'll get the okay from Lionel, so you don't have to worry about Cory any more. Whitney told me you're trying to figure out what happened to your uncle. Do this for me, and you have carte blanche to come and go as you please for the next two weeks."

Tess raised her glass. "To unconventional wisdom."