Front Page Teaser

Chapter 3

Liz fairly flew down the ink-stained hall that led from the reporters’ parking lot to the lobby. While riding the escalator to the newsroom, she peeled off her coat and gloves.

“There you are,” Dermott McCann said, “We were wondering when you’d mosey in.”

“René said you gained entrée to the premises,” Conneely volunteered.

“How’d you pull that off?” Dermott demanded.

“The girl is the same one who evaluated the Santas for us: Veronica Johansson. When she got scared at home, she must have heard the music from the mayor’s event. When she ran over to get help, I was a familiar face,” Liz explained. “That’s great news René’s back. I’ve gotta see his kitchen shots before I write my story. How many inches do I get?”

“Whoa, there, Higgins,” Dermott said. “We’ve gotta wait for Manning to call in before we decide where we’re going with this one.”

“That’s easy,” Liz said. “He’ll need a sidebar. By the time Dick got there, the police had sealed off the house. He’ll have comments from the neighbors and the mayor.”

“We’ll see about that when we hear from Manning. And don’t forget, I’m the guy who decides what goes into a sidebar and what goes into the main here,” Dermott warned. “Meanwhile, show me your stuff in ten inches.”

“Just ten?”

“All right, you can have thirteen. Slug it 10NEWT1 and send it to city-news,” he said, referring to the code that identified stories filed for publication. “Now get a move on.”

Liz hurried across the newsroom to the photo department, where DeZona was cutting negatives on the light box. The Banner’s photographers worked with a combination of old and new equipment, using single-lens reflex cameras that produced negatives for less urgent work and digital cameras for hard news assignments that were likely to require the quickest processing. Never guessing the Newton event would have front-page possibilities, DeZona had shot it with his standard Nikon SLR.

“I can see the headline now,” the photographer said, “‘BLOODY MESS.’”

It was not easy to pick out details in the tiny negatives.

“How soon can you print some of these?” Liz asked, looking at the clock. She had about a half hour to complete her story, less time if she wanted to get a hop on Manning. “Give me twenty minutes. Here, mark the negs you want me to print first. I’ll let you know when I have something.”

“Thanks, René,” Liz said, looking through a magnifier at the negatives on the light box and marking a wide view and a close-up of the kitchen counter. “Tell me, did you happen to notice a woman’s handbag in the kitchen?”

“No, but that doesn’t mean it wasn’t there. My lens often sees things the eyes miss.”

“Thanks, too, for acting like you didn’t know me there.”

“No problem. My shot doesn’t have a chance in hell of getting front page unless there’s a story to go with it.”

“Or at least a juicy caption.”

“You’d better run, so we both get Page One.”

“Right,” Liz said.

Liz stayed in the Banner newsroom until 11:10 p.m., when the first newspapers, wet with ink, sped on clips along the ceiling of the pressroom and up to the second-floor mailroom. Although the men who bundled papers to place on the delivery trucks did not send the papers through the mail, the job title they all held was “mailer.” Once, when Liz asked about the job title, the foreman had explained, writing with a marker on a blank sheet of newsprint, “The job title says it all: We’re ‘male-er’ than the average guy. Isn’t it obvious?”

Now, a worker handed Liz a damp copy of the Banner. “You’re new here?” the alpha-male shouted over the din of machinery.

“No. Just rather new to Page One,” she said.

“That your piece about the mom gone AWOL? Sad, huh? Looks like the mother had everything. What would make her want to throw it all away like that?”

Not for the first time Liz reflected on how the attitudes that readers bring to the news cause them to interpret it in surprising ways. The pressman was all too ready to fault Ellen, even in the face of reported evidence that suggested she was the victim of foul play.

DeZona’s color photo had made the front page. It showed a marble countertop laden with softening sticks of butter, paper-wrapped squares of chocolate, canisters of flour and sugar, and glass custard dishes filled with sprinkles, chopped walnuts, and shredded coconut—all of which were splattered with blood.

The story also made Page One. “COOKIE MONSTER” was the headline. The byline read, “By Liz Higgins and Dick Manning.”

“My commiserations,” DeZona said, as Liz stepped out of the pressroom. “They had to give Dick his kudos again. At least you got first billing.”

“Dick did get a quote from the husband,” Liz admitted. “So he got the byline, too.”

“Not much of a quote,” DeZona said, reading it aloud from the paper. “‘I can’t believe it. She was such a devoted wife and mother.’ Don’t they all say that?”

“Dermott nixed the quote the husband gave me on the phone.”

“What was that?”

“‘I knew something was wrong. I should have stayed home.’”

“They used it, all right,” DeZona said. “Look at the related story on Page Nine.”

Headlined “HORA HORROR,” the article was accompanied by a photo of a coatless Veronica clinging to Liz as the snow-covered mayor looked on. That picture was captioned, “Traumatized Veronica Johansson seeks comfort from Banner features writer Liz Higgins.”

“Wouldn’t you know they’d peg me as a features writer rather than a news reporter?” Liz said.

On the same page was DeZona’s photo of Ficarelli’s spectacular fall. Its caption suggested Newton’s mayor was bowled over by Veronica’s news: “Crime crashes party: Ficarelli flips as child’s outcry halts hora.”

Buried in the article, which bore the Manning byline, was the first hint of what Erik Johansson was in for from the police and from hotshot reporters. Only partially quoted, the hapless husband was made to look dismayed at not having a better alibi. Following his explanation that he had left a board meeting early to work alone in his office for most of the morning in question, Johansson was quoted as saying, “I should have stayed there.”

“Oh, God,” Liz groaned as she read to the bottom of the piece, where she received unwelcome credit: “Banner features writer Liz Higgins contributed to this piece.”

“Credit where credit is due,” she heard Manning say over her shoulder. “Couldn’t wait to see the edition?” he asked. “It’s a thrill to be on Page One, huh?”

“I see you’re not waiting for the papers to get delivered to the newsroom any more than I am.”

“I’m not sure I’d agree with you there,” Manning said, looking pointedly at Liz’s ink-smeared fingers. “At least my copy of the rag is dry,” he said as the pressman handed him a fresh newspaper. “I’d like to linger at this little tête-à-tête, Miss Lizzie, but I’m afraid I’ve got to get going. McCann wants me on the Johanssons’ doorstep at dawn tomorrow.”

Hoping this did not mean what it sounded like—that she’d been taken off the story—Liz returned to the city desk.

“Dermott has made his exit,” Conneely announced in answer to Liz’s unspoken question. “You’ll have to take it up with Esther,” he said, referring to the humorless night editor now ensconced at the city desk. She was using a copy of the early edition as a placemat for a take-out meal of General Gao’s chicken.

Known for being as tough as the toughest male reporter, Esther O’Faolin had fought tooth and nail for her newsroom position—losing her marriage and custody of her kids in the process. Feminism might once have spurred her on, but she was no friend to other women. “I climbed the ladder without advantages,” she said often and with pride. “You can do the same,” was the unmistakable implication.

“Hey, Liz,” she said. “You still here? Go home and get some rest. We’re sending you to the Worcester Public Library tomorrow for that mystery writers’ conference.”

“Gee, Esther, I’d hoped to follow up on some leads I have on the missing mom case,” Liz said, impulsively running her fingers through her auburn curls so that they were swept back from her forehead. “You know I reported on that today.” She loosed her locks so they spilled over her forehead again.

The anger in Liz’s tone was lost on the night editor. “Oh, yeah?” Esther said, using a chopstick to push a gummy piece of chicken off the lead story. “Nice initiative, backing Manning like that.”

“With all due respect, Dick came on the scene after it was closed off to reporters. I was the one inside the Johansson house for more than half an hour.”

Esther opened the paper to Page Nine. “What’s this?” she demanded of Bert Garamond at the copy desk. “You know it’s not our policy to print photos of our own reporters.”

“That wasn’t my call,” Bert said. “Dermott insisted on it.”

“He probably liked the leg shot,” Esther said under her breath, scanning the photo disapprovingly. The night editor’s own unremarkable legs were just one of many testimonies to the fact that Esther had “climbed the ladder without advantages.”

“Tricks like that make us look self-promotional, not professional,” Esther added.

“You’ve got a point, Esther,” Bert said, “But Dermott said, ‘That picture speaks five words: You can trust Banner reporters.’”

“Not after Manning misleads with partial quotes,” Liz thought to herself. “How will I ever get Erik Johansson to talk with me again?”

“I see Manning got the husband on the record,” Esther said approvingly. “Watch these pages. I’ll bet you dollars to donuts the husband is guilty as all hell.”

“You can’t assume that, Esther,” Liz said. “He told me he was worried about his wife when he left for work that morning. He blamed himself for leaving anyway.”

“That’s not what it says in here,” Esther said, pointing to the Page-Nine article.

“That’s not my doing. Someone cut the quote I reported,” Liz said, looking at Manning’s empty desk. Unlike her own, it was situated in easy reach of the city desk.

“Dizzy Miss Lizzie,” Manning said from over Liz’s shoulder again. “It’s easy to talk about Tricky Dick when you think he’s not around, huh? Yeah, I know you guys call me that behind my back. I make it my business to know everything that goes on around here. Just make sure your head isn’t spinning with dreams of Page One when you hand over the rest of your reporting.”

“Are you implying I didn’t give you everything Erik said?”

“Oh, it’s ‘Erik,’ now, is it? A word to the wise, Liz: If you get too chummy with your sources, you’ll find it hard to tell it like it is when it turns out they’re scum. Anyway, kid,” he said, switching to a magnanimous tone, “thanks for helping me out on this one. Here’s looking at you,” he added, as he made his exit.

“The answer is no,” Esther said before Liz could say a word. “It’s the mystery writers’ conference for you tomorrow. Here’s the press release.”

“OK, Chief,” Liz said, trying to sound like a good loser.

“Look,” Esther said, softening, “you’ll get more lucky breaks. Just spell out every fact.”

“Thanks, Esther,” Liz said, both surprised to see the night editor express encouragement and peeved that Esther seemed to buy Manning’s lie about the incomplete quote.

As Liz crossed the room to her distant desk, Esther used her password to get into Manning’s ATEX materials. Like his presidential namesake, the Banner’s Tricky Dick suffered from overconfidence. Never thinking anyone would check up on him, he hadn’t killed the material Liz had shared with him. There it was. Erik Johansson’s entire statement.

“Hey Liz,” Esther called out. She had to make it loud to carry across the big newsroom.

Liz looked up from her desk, where she was retrieving a fresh reporter’s notebook from amid the clutter.

“I can’t speak for Dermott,” Esther said, “but I’m sure I wouldn’t reject any hard facts you can turn up about the missing mom. It won’t be a breeze to score any Newton news from Worcester, but who knows? Good night.”

Liz still felt wired as she wound her way through silent streets to her digs on Gravesend Street. It was a dead-end street, but not the kind of cul-de-sac that offered respite from traffic. Perched on an embankment bordering the Massachusetts Turnpike, even in the dead of the night the place pulsed with the soundtrack of fast-moving vehicles, syncopated irregularly with the deep backbeat of trucks slamming over potholes.

Liz pulled into the parking space alongside her building, angling the Tracer carefully between a bare lilac bush and the iron stanchion that stood straight beside the two-room house she called home. Another stanchion, wrapped with the thorny stems of climbing roses, stood just beyond the far end of her house. By any standard the abode was small, but a massive billboard placed directly over it added to that impression. Supported by those stanchions, the billboard made the house appear tiny, since the advertisement space was wider and taller than the building itself.

Not for the first time, Liz regretted that she had no say over what was advertised in her air space. Still, she did not dare jeopardize the flow of money she received from renting it to an advertising firm. Those funds allowed her to indulge her love of a career that offered little in the way of medical benefits. The overhead ads not only paid for her medical and dental insurance, but it covered the lion’s share of her monthly mortgage payments on the quirky property.

Craning her head to read the current ad’s suggestive warning, “Don’t be caught without one!” Liz told herself for the hundredth time, “When I get rich, I’ll hire them to advertise Dr. Ecklenbergh’s eyeglasses, like that billboard in The Great Gatsby. I wonder how many Pike drivers would get a chuckle out of that!”

The billboard of the moment was not so bad. It showed a heel-kicking Gene Kelly singing in the rain, umbrella held high. It might have been an ad for umbrellas, but, judging by the bottle of vodka in the dancer’s other hand, this was a pitch for drink.

“Not a bad idea,” Liz said aloud, indulging the habit of talking to herself when on her own turf. Her gray cat, Prudence, rubbed at Liz’s ankles as the reporter placed her keys in her coat pocket. She kept the keys there in the thus-far vain hope that she would have to grab her coat and rush out to cover breaking news. “Blast!” Liz said as she felt the film can in her pocket. “I should’ve asked René to process this.”

René would have left the newsroom long ago, and there was no way Liz would trust Ellen’s film to the other photographers. They were all too eager to stay in the good graces of Manning. Figuring she could put the film in DeZona’s hands in the morning, Liz poured herself a glass of Chardonnay and put together a meal she’d dubbed “Cask of Amontillado Chicken,” in honor of the famous story by Edgar Allan Poe. Made with chicken, mushrooms, shallots, slivered pecans, and, of course, amontillado sherry, it was one of those dishes that took little time and fuss to make but tasted like it was the result of a professional chef’s labor. She spooned some onto her plate and sat, feet up, in front of one of her luxuries, a gas fireplace that came to life with the flick of a switch.

After eating, she covered herself with her favorite purple and white crocheted afghan. It clashed with her home’s peach and rust color scheme. Its edges were uneven, too. But these characteristics only added to the afghan’s value in Liz’s eyes. Made from donated wool in unfashionable colors, it had been crocheted for Liz by six incarcerated adolescent girls who had opened their hearts to her on the topic of body piercing as self-expression for a Banner feature. Usually, their chaplain had said, they crocheted bedcovers for themselves, but they took a liking to Liz and decided to make one for her, too. Along the way, they proved they could stick with, cooperate, and complete a generous and time-consuming gift.

As one of the girls put it, “A hole in your tongue says as much as words do, sometimes.”

Pulling the afghan up to her chin, Liz decided those words of wisdom were worthy of billboard space, too. “When I’m rich . . . ,” she mused, as she dropped off to sleep, lulled by the sound of passing traffic.

She awoke to the scream of sirens. An accident on the Mass. Pike. Too bad for the people in the fender bender, but terrific for Liz, since she had forgotten to set her alarm. Looking at her watch, Liz saw it was too late to zip over to the Banner to give René the film for processing. The city of Worcester and its public library were in the opposite direction.

Shaking off the afghan and Prudence, who was sleeping on it, Liz removed her slacks and crossed the room towards her shower stall and bathroom area. It was located between the main room and kitchen area, behind a custom-designed, curved partition built by a budding architect whom Liz met while writing an article on design solutions for small spaces. After her article about the architect’s transformation of a studio apartment on Boston’s Beacon Hill was published, his career took off. Meanwhile, Liz hired him to help her improve her then-new-to-her digs. When she rejected his offer to do the work without charge, he surprised her by producing the curved, polished cherry partition instead of the boxy divider of painted pine she had hired him to install. He also installed built-in cherry bookcases.

Semi-dressed, Liz made her way to the kitchen to start some coffee brewing before she took her shower. Without her eyeglasses, she saw little. But she was not so blind that she could not see the pair of legs, visible from the knees down, which filled the small window over her kitchen sink. She had not thought to close the blinds on the previous evening.

“You startled me, Tom!” she said at the top of her lungs. But the man whose legs she saw did not hear her through the double-glazed windows she’d had installed to cut down on the traffic noise.

She rapped on the window and then lifted it a few inches.

“What are you doing here?” she asked, startling Tom in turn.

“Jeez! You scared me!” Tom said as his long-waisted torso, chest, shoulders, and head came into sight in that order.

“You startled me, too. It’s not billboard day,” Liz said, opening the coffee canister. Tom regularly changed the billboard advertisements beginning on the first Tuesday of the month, spending an average three days per billboard change. This was the third Tuesday of December.

“I know, but a car dealer wants to make end-of-the-year sales, so I’m putting up a new ad before the month ends. The dealer must have money to burn. I don’t think this ad will be up as long as two weeks. Don’t get me wrong,” Tom said, grinning at Liz’s bare legs. “I’m not complaining.”

Liz shut the blinds on his smile, pulled on some slacks, and then opened the blinds again.

“Tom Horton at your service!” he grinned.

“Cup of coffee?” she said.

“Sure thing!”

“It’ll have to be quick,” Liz said, giving up on taking a shower. “I’m on assignment this morning. I’ve gotta get out to Worcester.”

Tom cleaned his boots on the doormat with care before entering.

“I can really use that coffee,” he said. “It’s cold enough to . . .”

“. . . freeze the balls off a brass monkey,” they said in unison, laughing. Over the year that Liz had lived below the billboard, she and Tom had enjoyed quite a few cups of coffee. The first time, she’d invited him in out of pity. Hanging an ad in below-freezing temperatures, he had muttered that same line only to look down and see Liz gazing up at him.

“It sure is!” she had said. “Don’t be embarrassed,” she’d added, when she saw his sheepish expression. “The phrase doesn’t mean what you think it does, so I’m not offended. Come on in and have a cup of coffee and I’ll tell you where it comes from.”

He’d wiped his boots thoroughly then, too. And he’d said, “I can sure use this coffee.”

And when Liz told him the crude-sounding expression was actually a sailor’s turn of phrase, he said, “That doesn’t surprise me. Sailors can turn the air blue with their cussing.”

“No, no! It’s not what you think,” Liz had said. “Sailors didn’t say that to be foul. On old warships, the ‘monkey’ was the platform that held the stack of cannon balls. It was made of brass. When the temperature was low enough, the brass monkey contracted, allowing the cannonballs to roll off it.”

“Yeah, sure!”

“No, really. Look, I’ll show you,” she had insisted, opening a well-worn copy of Brewer’s Dictionary of Phrase and Fable.

“Well, I’ll be! Are you some kind of professor?”

“No, I’m a reporter for the Beantown Banner. And I’m a word nut. That’s why I have all these dictionaries.”

Now, as the reporter and the billboard hanger laughed over the expression again, Tom said, “I’m sorry to tell you that expression about the brass monkey is just an urban legend. Cannonballs were never stored on deck like that. I saw it on the Internet.”

“I always believe a published reference book over the Internet,” Liz said. “In my line of work, I have seen too much misleading material on the Web. By the way, whose ad are you hanging over my head this time?”

“Maksoud’s,” he said. “The car dealership over on Needham Street. I hear they’ve got such an overstock, they’re practically giving cars away. I guess old man Maksoud wants to drum up some business quick. Hey, look, you’d better get going. Didn’t you say you had to get over to Worcester this morning?”

“That’s right,” Liz said, tucking a fresh reporter’s notebook into her purse. “I’ll see you out.”