Charm City

Chapter 6

Tess had been to the Beacon Light on official business once before, for a job interview after the Star had folded. She had bought a suit she couldn't afford from Femme, borrowed Kitty's best pocketbook, and put on pantyhose that she had managed to avoid running until she got back into her car. The paper had granted interviews to every one of the Star's 383 newsroom employees. They offered jobs to fewer than ten. A new suit, a borrowed pocketbook, and intact pantyhose were not enough to make Tess one of them.

Luckily, the suit had stayed in style, even if the store that had sold it had gone out of business. Nothing went out of style in Baltimore, especially the simple clothes suited to Tess's unfashionable figure. Almost three years later, her interview suit was still smart, as her mother would say: navy blue, with a fitted jacket that didn't require a blouse, and a straight skirt to the knee. With her hair up and navy high heels, she was the picture of demure femininity, stretched out over six feet.

"A real lady," Tyner judged, inspecting her Thursday morning as she turned slowly in front of the full-length mirror inside his office's closet door.

"The neckline is kind of plunging," said Whitney, who had ended up spending the night on Tess's sofa. She had awakened with a headache that she refused to admit was a hangover, and was now perched on Tyner's desk, lost inside a sweater and skirt borrowed from Tess. On Whitney, the too-big clothes looked chic and deliberate.

"Thanks, Whitney. You're a real pal."

"I'm not being rude. But if they were making a training film about sexual harassment, you'd be cast as the doe-eyed secretary. Someone could fall into your cleavage and never be seen again. It's too sexy. You lack authority. You need a scarf."

"Of course. I've noticed the President always wears one during the State of the Union address."

Ignoring her, Whitney dug through her Dooney amp; Burke bag until she produced an Hermès with a Western motif-lassos, spurs, and horseshoes in shades of copper and gold, against a navy-and-ivory background.

"Cool," Tess said. "Now can you make a quarter come out of my ear?"

"I've got better tricks than that." Whitney arranged the scarf so it filled in the expanse of flesh without making Tess look as if she were a cross-dressing Boy Scout. "There, that creates interest around the face, as they say."

"It does make the outfit," Tess admitted grudgingly. "But if they didn't want me as a reporter, why would they want to hire me as an investigator?

Whitney put her arm around her shoulders, joining her in the mirror. Cool Snow White and flushed Rose Red stared back. White bread and rye bread, baked potato and potato hash.

"Half the editors at the Beacon Light today weren't even there when the Star folded," Whitney reminded her. "The other half can barely remember what their wives look like, much less the hundreds of supplicants they've turned down over the years. You'll be a whole new person to them, someone with the power to turn them down. By the way, I hinted you might not be able to take the job, because you're so much in demand."

"Wives?" That was Tyner, who seemed to be enjoying his temporary membership in this girls' club. Tess expected him to start wielding a lipstick or mascara brush in her direction any moment. "I never thought I'd catch you being a sexist, Whitney. You mean spouses."

"No, I mean wives. Little women. Helpmates. There's only one woman in the upper ranks at the Beacon-Light, the managing editor, and she's got the biggest balls of all of them. She had a husband once, maybe two, but I think they went into the federal witness protection program. Now she makes do with a little slave boy at home, running around in nothing but a ruffled apron, with a Scotch and water at the ready when she comes clomping home at ten or eleven."

"It doesn't sound so bad to me," Tess said.

"Well, that's what you have, isn't it?"

The Beacon-Light's founders, the Pfieffer family, had been savvy about many things. Real estate was not one of them. The family had calculated on the city's center moving west over time, beyond the great department stores along the Howard Street corridor. So after World War II, when the expanding paper needed a new building, Pfieffer III had built the plant on Saratoga Street, near the ten-story Hutzler's, the grandest of all the stores. The result was a marvel of blandness, a building of tan bricks with no discernible style. Its only charm had been its real beacon, a Bakelite lighthouse revolving on a small pedestal above the entrance. The lighthouse had been torn down in the '70s and was now the Holy Grail among local collectors. The City Life museum was dying to find it, but rumor had it that a former Star columnist had unearthed it at a flea market and kept it on the third floor of his Bolton Hill townhouse, where he performed quasi-voodoo rituals intended to make Baltimore the country's first no-newspaper town.

Tess glanced up at the empty pedestal as she climbed the low, broad steps, picking her way among windblown McDonald's wrappers and crumpled newspaper pages. The local department stores, the few that had survived the '80s, were long gone from downtown. A drunk was sleeping among the daffodil shoots in an ill-kept flower bed. Squeegee kids-really, squeegee adults, a few squeegee senior citizens-had staked out the intersection. As the Pfieffers had predicted, the city had moved. Only it was in the other direction, south and east, toward the water. The Beacon-Light was a lonely and inconvenient outpost on the edge of an urban wilderness. Reporters consoled themselves with its proximity to two of Baltimore 's best dining experiences, the open stalls of Lexington Market, and the white tablecloths of Marconi's. The Beacon-Light also was convenient to St. Jude's shrine. According to newsroom lore, reporters made pilgrimages there after deadline, always uttering the same heartfelt prayer to the patron saint of lost causes: "Please, St. Jude, don't let the editors fuck up my story."

Feeney had told Tess about this ritual. And now she was facing the prospect that Feeney was the one who had fucked up. It seemed unlikely-certainly he had been too drunk to sneak into the building, perform a little computer hackery, and leave without a trace. But if the trail did lead back to him, Tess was determined to be there to protect him, even if she hadn't figured out how.

On the sixth floor, the publisher's secretary, one of those strangely proprietary women always found hovering at the elbows of powerful men, ushered Tess into an empty conference room adjacent to the publisher's office. It was a subtly opulent room, a place to wine and dine-well, coffee and croissant in these leaner, more abstemious times-the city's powerful. Mahogany table, Oriental rug, a silver tea set on a mahogany sideboard, the inevitable watercolors of nineteenth-century Baltimore. What must it be like for the top editors, the ones who traveled back and forth between this glossy dining room and the chaotic newsroom below, all the while trying to reconcile this realm of commerce with all those romantic ideas about journalism? How did they bridge these two worlds, the corporate and the cause?

Amnesia, Tess decided. Editors quickly forgot whatever they knew about reporting. If a man named Smith drove his truck into a local diner, killing five people, editors couldn't understand why you didn't call him up and ask for all the details. "Just look it up in the phone book," they would say, as if there were only one Smith, as if he weren't in jail, out of the reach of any phone. And if by some miracle you did find Smith and get the full story, the editors would say, "Well, that's what we pay you for." Or, "We're tight tomorrow, it might have to hold."

And now Tess had to face three of these amnesiacs at once, plus the publisher. The executive editor, the managing editor, and the deputy managing editor.

"Three editors," she said out loud, staring out the window to the north. "Well, Hercules slew the Hydra."

"And it had nine heads."

A man had slipped into the room behind her, a man with high color in his face and shiny brown hair falling in his eyes. In blue jeans and a T-shirt, he might have passed for 25. In his gray wool trousers, red tie, and blue-and-white striped Oxford cloth shirt, he looked closer to the 45 he probably was. But a cute 45, Tess decided, checking out his muscular forearms, the wide grin, the boyish way he kept pushing his hair out of his eyes.

"Jack Sterling," he said, holding out his hand. "Deputy managing editor."

"Tess Monaghan." Out of habit, she grasped his hand hard, the way she had pinched Rosita's when they'd met. But Jack Sterling just squeezed back even harder. Flustered, she broke the grip, feeling something she did not want to put a name to.

He sat on the edge of the gleaming table, openly appraising her, rotating the wrist of his right hand as he massaged it with his left.

" Baltimore mick," he pronounced, talking to himself as if she were on the other side of a one-way glass. "Something else blended in, though. Something solid, good peasant stock. About twenty-seven or twenty-eight. Athletic. Doesn't like pantyhose or diet soda. How am I doing?"

"Midwesterner," she replied. "Corn-fed Protestant, a onetime wunderkind who is still wunder, if no longer kind. Probably plays racquetball-note how he flexes his wrist and rubs his forearm as he speaks, something an athlete might do. How am I doing?"

Sterling laughed. Good, he had a sense of humor about himself. "Close enough. Only my game is squash, when my back isn't out, and my wrist hurts because twenty-two years in this business have bestowed on me a chronic case of carpal tunnel."

He began to massage his wrist again, then dropped his hand abruptly, suddenly self-conscious about the gesture. "Midwesterner? Well, I guess Oak Park, Illinois, is about as Midwestern as it gets. How'd you figure that out? I like to think I've acquired some East Coast polish over the last few years."

Tess smiled noncommittally. Whitney had given her thumbnail sketches of everyone she would meet today, but she saw no reason to divulge her inside information. " Baltimore isn't the best place to come if you're looking for polish. In fact, if you're not careful, your nice, bland accent will start adding Rs to words like water and wash."

Jack Sterling leaned toward her. His eyes were even bluer than the stripe in his shirt. "Then what is Baltimore the best place for?" Before she could think of a clever reply, the other editors began filing into the room. A little guiltily, as if he had been caught consorting with the enemy, Sterling took his place among them.

They looked more alike than they knew, this quartet. All white. No one younger than 35, nor older than 60. Two suits-gray pinstripes on the shortest man, obviously the publisher, Randall Pfieffer IV, and a flashy turquoise one on the sole woman, managing editor Colleen Reganhart, who had the kind of dark hair-fair skin-light eyes combination that the Monaghan side of Tess's family would call black Irish.

The last man was dressed as Sterling was, but his blue-striped shirt was just a little better made, his red tie heavier and silkier.

"Lionel C. Mabry," he said, offering a limp hand to Tess. The hair, of course. How could she miss the hair? It was thinner than Tess had imagined, and Whitney had been uncharacteristically tactful in describing it as blond, but it was definitely a mane. Mabry's hair was a dull gray-yellow, the color of diluted piss. Otherwise, he was well preserved, with a vaguely patrician air. But then, everything about him was vague-the mumbled greeting, the clouded brown eyes, the limp-wristed handshake.

"Take a seat, Lionel," Colleen Reganhart ordered. She gave his name an extra syllable and feminine lilt. Li-o-nelle. He smiled at her, as if thankful for direction, and slipped into one of the large leather chairs alongside the table, Colleen to his left and Jack to his right. That left Tess and the publisher at either end, creating a strangely lopsided table.

Pfieffer's chair, she noticed, was hiked up slightly higher than the others, perhaps to give him an advantage he didn't have on dry land. Behind his back, Randall Pfieffer IV was known as Five-Four by his employees. The nickname, while not affectionate, was generous, granting the publisher two inches above what nature had given him, maybe three. But the thronelike chair was a miscalculation: his feet swung above the floor, drawing attention to his diminutive stature. Fortunately, his high, hoarse voice had no problem filling a room. He had been a cheerleader at Dartmouth, according to Whitney's dossier. ("If it comes up, say yell leader.")

He began the meeting. "Miss Monaghan, we have asked you here today because we have a job that requires discretion, tact, and a certain sophistication about our business. We've been assured you have all these qualities."

Whitney had really laid it on thick. "I'd like to think so, Mr. Pfieffer."

"I want to stress to you that as far as we're concerned, no crime has been committed here, no errors of fact have been made. We're distressed because we planned to run the Wynkowski piece on Sunday. The…unscheduled publication has forced us to scramble for another page one story on that date. It concerns us our procedures have been…bypassed, creating this dilemma."

Thirty seconds into the discussion, and the first lie had already clocked in. "Of course," Tess agreed, adding from sheer perversity, "Isn't computer tampering a federal crime? If you really want to find out who did this, I think the FBI is better equipped to solve your mystery."

The editors exchanged glances. Jack Sterling began to speak, only to be cut off by Reganhart.

"As Randy said, we stand by the story, although we won't be surprised if that asshole Wynkowski files a lawsuit. Let me stress, he has no fucking grounds for a libel suit. No errors have been brought to our attention to date, and we think he meets the test for a public figure. He'd have to prove actual malice. Still, we prefer the general public not know the story ran by-ran early. It could erode readers' confidence in our product."

Product. Colleen Reganhart had definitely gone over to the other side. When you were a reporter, it was a story, an article, your life's blood on the page. The higher you went in the organization, the more it resembled canned ham.

"Of course, if you called the FBI, or even the Baltimore police, you couldn't control what happened to the information they uncovered," Tess said innocently, as if thinking out loud. "If it got out the story ran by mistake-excuse me, that the story ran early-and there are any in accuracies in the story, Wink Wynkowski may be able to prove actual malice, which is essential to a public figure who wants to bring a libel suit. Certainly it would be an interesting test case, probably the first of its kind."

Reganhart raised her eyebrows, dark, straight lines that made her look as if she were constantly frowning. "Perhaps. Our lawyers tell us he could prove negligence in our security system. But that's all. We stand by our story. In fact, we're quite proud of having exposed this fucking charlatan." With her raven black hair, bright blue suit, and salty tongue, she brought to mind the infamous mynah bird who had been removed from the Baltimore zoo for cursing out visitors.

"So why did you hold such a hot story to begin with?" Tess asked. "I know you don't have any real competition, but I think you would want to run this story before Wynkowski signed a letter of intent with an out-of-town basketball team. It would have been heartbreaking to report that the city was getting a team, then announce the owner was never going to survive the NBA's scrutiny. And what if the city had gone ahead and started on the new arena, only to find out Wink was already entertaining offers for his team?"

Mabry seemed to come into focus for a second, like an autistic child enjoying a moment of clarity. "News judgment is not a science, Miss Monaghan. Interests must be balanced. Men do outrun their pasts. It was not our role to judge Mr. Wynkowski's fitness as an NBA owner, or to shape the decision the league will make. We do not wish to be ‘players' in that sense. We had to ask ourselves, what is relevant? What is fair? Is it really necessary to reveal Mr. Wynkowski's unpleasant but largely trivial past? In the event we do so, shouldn't he have the right to know who his accusers are? That, most of all, was the real issue here. It is still the issue that concerns me."

His piece said, Mabry retreated back into his private world. Pfieffer hadn't spoken since his opening remarks, but he was paying careful attention, watching the interplay among his top editors with great interest. Colleen glared at Lionel, while Jack Sterling doodled on a legal pad before him.

"So the story is fine and everyone lives happily after-except, obviously, Wink. What am I supposed to do?"

Again, Colleen Reganhart and Jack Sterling began speaking at the same time. Again she cut him off.

"Tomorrow, our assistant managing editors, Marvin Hailey and Guy Whitman, will walk you through the normal procedures here and give you a list of people to interview. We don't expect you to find the person responsible, but we assume you can eliminate the majority of the people who were in the building at the time."

"Can't your security system at least narrow down who had left for the night?"

"Unfortunately, we put in a new security system last fall, after the old system was, um, breached. The new one breaks down all the time, and has been down for two weeks now, forcing us to prop open the doors with trash cans. But I'm sure you'll find most of our employees were home with their families the night this happened." Reganhart made "families" sound more profane than any of the expletives she had used. "All we ask is that you interview all relevant newsroom employees, tape the conversations, then turn the tapes and transcripts over to us. Anything you discover is the property of the Beacon-Light. Your contract also will have a confidentiality clause, forbidding you to discuss this matter with other news organizations-or anyone else. Your information belongs to us."

Tess wanted to ask about the movie rights, but thought better of it. "Do you want me to work out of this building, or my office in Mount Vernon?"

"We prefer you do everything on site," Jack Sterling said, finally beating Colleen Reganhart to the punch. "You'll have a cubicle on the third floor, where the old presses used to be. For the duration of your contract, you'll also have a security card and a temporary ID, so you can come and go as you please."

"What about the union? Won't it keep the employees from cooperating with me?

Colleen Reganhart stood. "Let us worry about the union."

Pfieffer jumped to his feet, hands on his hips as if ready to lead a cheer-make that a yell-while Sterling stretched, audibly cracking his lower back. Only Lionel Mabry continued to sit, staring out the window at a brown-breasted pigeon on the ledge. Even by a pigeon's standards, it was a mangy thing, vicious and cruel looking.

"What a pretty, pretty bird," Lionel cooed with pleasure. "Spring's first robin."