Remember Me, Irene

31

NINAHOWELL,my pal in the Zoning Department, was delighted to be of help when I called her. Ray Aiken was acting city manager now, and her own boss was learning that administrative support personnel-which included secretaries-would be treated differently as long as Ray had anything to say about it. Nina’s work life wasn’t completely transformed but it had improved.

“How can I get in touch with Charlotte Brady?” I asked her.

“Allan Moffett’s former secretary?”

“Yes.”

“Mr. Aiken asked her to come back. She’s one of his assistants now. Want me to transfer you to her?”

I said I did, and spent the next five minutes listening to Charlotte rave about her new boss. I was feeling a little impatient; I needed to get a story in on Moffett’s secret meetings, but I was also anxious to get back to following up on other matters.

“Ray Aiken always did all the real work around here anyway,” Charlotte said in what I hoped was conclusion.

“Workhorses don’t always make the best administrators,” I said. “I’m glad Ray is doing so well.”

“He’s great. Now what can I do for you?”

“I wondered if you might verify a few items for me.” I read off some of the information I had gathered from Ben’s calendar.

“So what you want to know is, did Allan Moffett call these meetings in defiance of the Brown Act?”

Can’t put anything over on Charlotte Brady. “That’s what I want to independently verify,” I said. “I already know it.”

“Until I talk to Mr. Aiken about this-hmmm. You know nothing will come of it, right? I mean, even under the terms of the Brown Act, there won’t be much you can do?”

“Of course not. In the first place, the law only concerns legislative bodies and their committees, not the city manager himself. But those meetings were held illegally, and Allan was the one who put them together. The public has a right to know that the man they entrusted over all those years abused that trust.”

“He’d never make a comeback, would he?”

“It would be doubtful at best.”

“Oh, I am so tempted! Tell you what. Off the record? You are right on target. That little bastard had more secret meetings than J. Edgar Hoover and his dressmaker.”

“Now, Charlotte…”

“But I can give you the name and number of someone who would probably love to verify it on the record.”

“Who might that be?”

“Why, Allan’s ex-wife.”

“I don’t know-”

“Are you kidding? Double check with whoever gave you those names in the first place. Nancy went to half of those meetings. She was a looker, and Allan liked to show her off.”

I called Claire first.

“Irene! I just read about Roberta in this morning’s paper!”

I talked to her about the events of the prior evening, then said, “I talked to Becky this morning. She told me Roberta’s color is better today, but otherwise there’s no change.”

“I should call Becky. Maybe I can help her somehow, make it easier for her to spend time with Roberta when she’s off duty.”

“She’d probably appreciate that. I have a favor to ask, too. Do you know who ‘N.M.’ is in Ben’s calendars?”

“Sure. Nancy Moffett. Allan’s ex-wife. He used to bring her everywhere. Boy, was he ever nasty to her in the divorce. Nancy and I are friends. Do you need her number?”

I called Nancy Moffett, and got an earful.

When I called a few of the other attendees at these secret meetings, I was able to truthfully say, “I’ve verified this from three different sources…” and ask if they had anything to add, or say in their own defense.

People will talk, especially if they think others are talking about them. I had everything in place on one side of the story. Moffett’s turn.

He surprised me by answering his phone. Every other time I had called in the past week, I got a machine, and though I had left messages, my calls were not returned.

“Mr. Moffett, this is Irene Kelly. I’ve talked to several people today who will go on record as saying that while you were city manager, you asked them to attend meetings which-as you were fully aware-were in violation of the Brown Act. I wanted to give you an opportunity to respond to these allegations.”

He let me list a few of the meetings before he said, “Well, Ms. Kelly-off the record, which is the only way I’ll talk to you-if you know your Brown Act so goddamn well, you know that the worst you could do would be to demand the reversal of some of the decisions made in those meetings, which is not likely, since they almost all fall under protected categories. And you also know that I can’t be held personally responsible for those violations. You know that my position was not subject to the Brown Act, but that even if I had been a council member, you’d have to sue the city, not me. So screw you.”

“Now, Allan, that’s a little hostile. I don’t even know how I find it within me to do this, but I’ll ask again, and for your own sake, this should beon the record, Allan. Do you have a response to the allegations?”

“No comment.”

“Okay, well, that takes care of that. I suppose I should mention that I completely understand that you probably can’t be jailed or sued for being underhanded, and no one I know wants to bother suing the city over the acts of a-well, over someone like you-and it is too late to undo most of the damage you’ve done. Still, the public will not be pleased to learn you spent the last twenty years sneaking around in clandestine meetings, privately deciding how to spend their tax dollars. They may have suspected something like this all along, but once it hits print, it’s sort of a declaration that you’ve made them out to be fools. It’s a mistake, Allan, to underestimate just how cranky the local citizenry may feel when that happens.”

“You miss the point, Kelly. I don’t plan to return to public life, and one of the best things about being a private citizen will be to tell you-you and your friends at theExpress -to fuck off.”

Thank goodness he told me to fuck off. It conveyed more than how he wished to say good-bye. Hearing that phrase, I knew he was nervous, maybe even scared. Moffett never uses ye old f-word unless he’s afraid. He’s fairly foul-mouthed as public servants go, and he’ll say all kinds of other nasty things, but Allan never uses that one unless he’s feeling rabbity. Sort of a “best defense is offensiveness” philosophy.

Well, as far as I’m concerned, Allan can say “fuck” every fifteen seconds if he wants to. What mattered to me was knowing he doesn’t say it so often; he says it only when he’s close to freaking out. I make it my business to know things like this about Moffett and other officials. In his case, I learned these habits of speech because I’ve listened to him for a dozen years-in meetings and interviews-and during that time had so little cooperation from him, I had to learn to read whatever clues his habits gave me.

“So you have no plans to return?” I asked.

“None.”

“Then why insist on being off the record, Allan?”

No reply.

“I think you do plan to come back. Resignation is sort of like marriage-resign in haste, repent at leisure, right?”

Silence, but I could hear him breathing, and he was breathing almost as hard as Joshua Burrows.

“You probably had a moment of panic the other day,” I went on. “You resigned, lived to regret it, and now you figure once you’ve tied up some loose ends, you’ll be back. But you should get used to it, Allan. This time, the mess is too big. And someone’s screwing up the cleanup, don’t you think?”

“What the fuck are you talking about?”

“I’m talking about Lucas Monroe,” I replied.

“I don’t know any Lucas Monroe!”

“You used to go fishing with him.”

“I’ve been fishing with lots of people.”

“He even took your picture on a fishing boat.”

“Lots of people have taken my picture.”

“He was in your office last Wednesday-a week ago today. I’ll bet the cops have already talked to you about it.”

“A black guy insisted on seeing me on Wednesday. I didn’t know his fucking name. Wanted help with the homeless shelter. I explained to him that I was planning to retire and couldn’t help him.”

“Some nameless, homeless, African American man was the first person to get the announcement of your retirement?”

“Funny world, isn’t it?”

“No. I don’t think it’s so funny right now. He’s dead.”

“I don’t know a thing about that.”

“I suppose you don’t know anything about what happened to Roberta Benson?”

“Roberta Benson…the shelter lady?”

“Don’t play dumb with me, Allan. It’s in today’sExpress.”

“Never read the rag.”

“Even if you haven’t read it, you know exactly who she is. Someone attacked her in her office last night. She’s in a coma.”

“What in the fucking hell is going on?” he said vehemently, then catching himself, added lamely, “I mean, it’s sad, but what does it have to do with me?”

If I had been sitting across from him, I would have been able to pick up other cues from his posture, his eyes, what he did with his hands. As it was, I couldn’t be certain, but it seemed to me that Allan didn’t know who hurt Roberta, but was scared all the same. Why would he be? Because he was afraid it was someone who could be connected to him?

“No idea who might be taking care of your potential enemies, Allan?”

“What the fuck are you talking about? No fucking way is the fucking shelter director my fucking enemy! I’m not going to sit here and listen to this kind of fucking nonsense!”

He hung up. Didn’t matter. I’d hit the mother-effing lode.

I scrolled through the story on my screen, typed “Contacted by theExpress, Moffett declined to comment on the allegations,” and hit the keys that file a story on the computer. I called Murray, having made a promise, and told him he might be interested in the story I had just filed.

John had asked me to let him know when I filed it, so I went into his office and watched as he pulled it up. He read it, keeping his face expressionless, which is something you get used to when you work with John.

His comments to me were strictly along the lines of follow-up, and I told him that I had already talked to Murray. “Moffett thinks he’s out of reach,” I said, and repeated a few of Moffett’s off-the-record ratings on the subject of the Brown Act.

John grunted in disbelief. “Moffett might be beyond the reach of the law,” he said, “but he’s not beyond the reach of public opinion. No politician in this town is going to want to be tarred with the same brush-they’ll all steer clear of him. And even if he tried to get hired somewhere else, a scandal here would make him too risky to touch. Scandal’s worse than a lawsuit to a guy like Moffett.”

“At least Moffett deserves his damaged reputation,” I said, thinking of Lucas. “And I’m not done with him. This isn’t why he resigned.”

We talked about my progress on that part of the story. John seemed less irritated with me now, probably because I had handed something in. Not just any something-we both knew that Wrigley would quickly calculate how many papers a “Secret Meetings” headline would sell.

As if Winston Wrigley III-“Duck and cover, here comes WW III,” the staff would say-had crossed his mind, too, John said, “Kelly, would you happen to know anything about Mr. Wrigley’s pager number being widely distributed?”

“Why, now that you mention it, he did ask me to give it to a good-looking rich widow. Is he being pestered by gangs of them now?”

“No, but he’s been paged by several funeral homes, pet hospitals, psychiatric facilities, and other establishments in the last twenty-four hours. And surprisingly, they always seem rather annoyed at him, and don’t seem to understand why he’s called, even though their numbers are on his pager. He said it was going off all night. He couldn’t figure out how to set it to the vibrating mode, so he finally put it in the glove compartment of his car. Then he worried all night that someone important might be trying to reach him.”

“A pager would hardly seem worth it, would it?” I said.

“He just might be seeing it that way himself, Kelly.”

IWENT BACK to my desk and checked my voice mail. There was a message from Lisa Selman, sounding forlorn, asking me to call. I did and got her father’s machine, and left a return message with my pager number. In spite of my glee over Wrigley’s torture, I had to admit the pager had been handy. Still, I bridled at the thought of being forced to carry one at all times.

I called Keene Dage and left a message on his answering machine. “Keene, you’d be surprised at what I’ve learned lately. I know you can tell me more. Let’s get together and talk.”

He’d probably ignore it, but you never know when being a pest will pay off. I called Jerry Selman’s number again, this time leaving a message for him to call me. I was hoping he could shed some light on his father’s ex-girlfriend. I thought of calling Corbin Tyler and leaning on him, too. Because I chicken out sometimes, I convinced myself I had better things to do.

I took a few pages of Ben’s calendar out of the envelope I had stuffed them in-end of July and early August. The pages were filled until August 8. That day was blank. So was the one after it. And the one after that.

When looking through the pages of the earlier months of 1977, I had found other blanks, but only one here or there. August 9, August 10, August 11. On and on, nothing. Claire had said Ben wouldn’t write if he felt depressed. This must have been a major blue funk. I went as far as August 16, the last of the pages I had pulled out, without seeing another entry. I was going to try to pull out the next set, but Ivy called to say she was about to send Nadine Preston’s records by fax.

I hastily put the calendar pages back into the envelope and carried it with me to the fax machine. The fax chirped, and the transmission began.

It was a long one, about fifteen pages, which caused complaints from a couple of people who wanted to use the fax machine. But bigger problems came from those who were curious about my hovering over it, shielding the pages of the fax so they couldn’t be read as they were received. I eventually grabbed a copy of yesterday’s late edition and propped a tent of classified ads over the receiving tray. The fax wasn’t important to any of them, but some of my coworkers seem to think that if we aren’t pesky with each other, we’ll get out of practice for the job.

As the last page was coming through, the fax machine made a high-pitched squealing sound and stopped working.

“What’s wrong with it?” I called to Lydia. Among the people who happened to be in the newsroom at that moment, she was the only one I trusted.

She came over, pressed a button that shut off the squealing sound-much to everyone’s relief-and said, “It needs a new cartridge.”

“A toner cartridge?”

“No,” she said, opening the lid of the machine. “This is a plain paper fax. Doesn’t work like the old ones.” She looked over to see Dorothy Bliss edging closer. “Buzz off, Dorothy. Irene gets it.”

Dorothy left sputtering, while I wondered what on earth Lydia was talking about. As I held my faxes close, Lydia pulled a gray object out of the machine.

“Hold this,” she said. “Don’t give it to anyone. It’s the printing cartridge.”

It looked like a square, gray, plastic frame; two long, enclosed spools were braced together at each end by thinner side pieces. Stretched between the spools was a thin film, shiny black on one side, dull black on the other.

Lydia glanced over, saw me examining it. “That’s the ribbon,” she said.

On the ribbon, there was a perfect negative image of the page I had just received. I suddenly understood why Lydia was giving it to me. I held it while she found a replacement cartridge and inserted the new one in the machine.

I went to my desk and sat on the fax pages. Now that I had both hands free, I examined the cartridge more closely. Somewhat like a film cartridge, one of its spools was made to hold unused ribbon, while the other acted as a take-up spool after exposure. I started to pull on the take-up spool. Out came a length of images, black and white reversed. The thin ribbon crackled, but was stronger than it looked. It reminded me of the carbon ribbon in an electric typewriter, but it was much wider. When I had all my pages, I took out a pair of scissors and cut them from the film. I got an envelope from my desk, and put the ribbon clipping in it, then placed the actual pages in a second envelope. Keeping hold of both envelopes, I took the cartridge back to Lydia.

“Thanks,” I said. “I never knew that the machine held a second copy of everything that was faxed here. Kind of dangerous, when you think about it.”

“People fax things all the time without knowing about that. Think about what happens at businesses,” Lydia said. “Someone does what you just did; stands by the fax and picks up a confidential memo, not knowing that anyone else in the office could open up the fax and read the image in negative. Or obtain signatures and credit card numbers and all the other sorts of things that people fax in ‘confidence.’”

She stopped talking, then said, “You’re pulling on your lower lip.”

“Thanks, Lydia,” I said numbly and went back to my desk. I wanted to read the faxes, but what Lydia had said about the machine stirred a memory.

I called Charlotte Brady.

“Charlotte, it’s Irene. Couple of things. First of all, I don’t think you need to worry about Allan coming back.”

I waited for her to stop cheering, then asked, “Was his fax machine a plain paper fax?”

“Yes,” she said. “With the volume of material we receive in this office, that saves a lot of time. Why?”

With my fingers crossed, I asked, “Has the printing cartridge been replaced since Allan left?”

“No…oh. Uh-oh.”

It took me about fifteen minutes to cajole her into even handing the phone over to Ray, since she wasn’t going to consider just giving me the cartridge. Ray was a hard sell, but eventually I got him to agree to let Charlotte unravel the spool and clip out any pages Allan Moffett had received from Ben Watterson on the day Ben killed himself. I told him I had at least one page of it, and was bound to get any others from other sources, but time was of the essence, and I’d appreciate his help. Maybe not entirely true, but good enough to get Ray to bend a little.

He decided I could see the fax ribbon under three conditions. First, I would see it only if it was not confidential accounting information-Allan’s or the city’s. Second, Ray would get to look at it first, and could withhold it, if it was something that might make the city look bad. Third, I swore not to reveal my sources.

Although I could live with the third one, I didn’t like the first one much and the second one not at all. But he wasn’t going to budge, so I took the best I could get. Charlotte asked me to stop by in an hour.

I went back to the faxes Ivy had sent to me.

It was totally illegal for a college employee to give me access to Nadine’s transcripts, of course, and I was very protective of any sources (in this case, Ivy and her friend) who took this kind of risk. I was sparing in my requests of such sources, having once-in younger days-cost someone their job over information that didn’t seem so important after all. There were other reporters in that newsroom who would have loved to learn who my source at the college was, how I got my hands on protected records. Most understood I’d never let them know, and that was that. They might be envious, but they’d live with it. In a few of my more aggressive, competitive colleagues, it inspired a near-rabid desire to turn their investigative talents on me. It gets tiresome. I’ve learned a few tricks for avoiding them when they are in that sort of mood.

That’s why, when Lydia came to tell me I had a call, I was sitting-fully clothed-on a toilet in a closed stall of the women’s room, going over Nadine’s transcripts and registration records.

“Keene Dage is on the phone,” she said.