The Nominee

Ten

THE NEWS-GATHERING CRAFT is hardest when there isn’t actually any news, when over-talented reporters are forced to work the phones and the city to make something out of nothing in order to fill the seemingly endless pages of the next day’s issue. It is at its most delightfully stressful best when news is exploding all around us, when there is an unabashed certainty of a public’s thirst for information, as there no doubt was in the mysterious death of Paul Ellis. And the Record, as so many thousands of times before, would be the paper that all of New England turned to the next day for the best information.

All of which is to say, the newsroom at eight P.M., on an extended deadline, was electric. Teams of reporters worked every conceivable law enforcement source they had, and some they didn’t. They shouted, begged, pleaded, and negotiated over the phone, they staked out the crime scene, the police headquarters, the FBI’s Boston office. Along with the news, we had a lengthy obituary marked for the front page, an elaborate profile of the Cutter-Ellis family, a who’s who among the investigators. What we didn’t have was the truth.

So I sat down at my desk and wrote what I had just refused to tell Travers. I detailed the Sunday morning meeting with Paul Ellis, his warnings about the takeover, his hopes that he could somehow find a way to avert it. I was, I’m quite certain, the last person he saw while he was alive, his killer aside. Of course, I left out his suspicions over John Cutter’s death, and made no mention of the threat on my life.

As part of the story, I called the headquarters for Campbell Newspapers in Moline, Illinois, to seek official comment about their takeover bid. A young, snitty spokeswoman informed me that the company officials would have no comment, and not to take their lack of comment as any confirmation of their interest in buying theRecord. Thank you very much.

When I gave the story directly to Justine Steele, the editor-in-chief, she turned white as she read it — a good thing to have happen in a newsroom.

“Do the cops know this?” she asked.

We were sitting in her corner office, she behind her wide desk, me in a settee on the other side. The view was of nothing more glamorous than the cars shooting by on the Southeast Expressway and a scantily clad woman in a seductive pose on a nearby Gap billboard. I shook my head.

“Don’t you think they should know this?”

I said, “Well, they’ll know it tomorrow.” That answer having not quite cut it, I broke an awkward silence by adding, “I also know that Paul loved nothing more in life than when theRecord broke major news. I think he’d get something of a kick out of this.”

Steele raised her eyebrows and smiled as she continued to look at the printout in front of her. “I’m never going to say no to an exclusive,” she said.

I said, “If I give this to the police, someone over there leaks it to one of the local TV stations, or more likely, theTraveler, and they in turn have a field day with it in tomorrow’s paper. I think theRecord ought to let the public know about what’s going on with theRecord, on our own terms.”

She nodded and said, “I think you’re right.”

That decision behind us, I said, “There’s something else.”

By the way, time was hardly an ally here. As I said, we were on deadline. The story was somewhere north of enormous. The room was controlled chaos. But typical of Justine, she was an island of calm, and as such, she gave me an expectant nod. I continued.

“Someone took a shot at me this morning.”

Her face grew alarmed, but she remained silent.

“Someone I don’t know. I was in Florida, just west of West Palm Beach. The guy was following me in a car. I pulled over into a rest area and he pulled over too. When I approached him, he didn’t like that and he chased me around the building, into a swamp, and shot at me.”

Now Justine looked bewildered. She shook her head and said, “I don’t get it. First, what the hell were you doing in Florida? Second, did this guy shoot at you out of anger, or was he following you with premeditated plans to kill you?”

Ah, a good newspaperwoman, asking the two questions that cut to the heart of this matter.

I replied, “Confidentially, and I mean that, I was in Florida because Paul told me yesterday morning that he feared his cousin, John Cutter, died of suspicious causes five years ago. I tracked down the homicide detective who’d been on the case, retired now, and paid a visit to him.

“On question two, I really don’t know. Like I said, the guy appeared to be following me. But I don’t want to jump to conclusions. Maybe I just ticked him off in the parking lot. But I don’t think so.”

She rubbed her hands across the smooth skin of her face. “Jesus Christ. Do you think we should hire you protection?”

Interesting proposition, but I declined it, perhaps foolishly so.

As I got up to leave, I turned around in her doorway and said, “That was a great hit that Fitzgerald had yesterday on Randolph. I think I’ve got something to add to it. I’ve been working on a story that says Randolph inflated his prosecution record back when he first ran for governor.”

As I spoke, Justine leaned forward and I got a look on her face as if I just put a plate of prime rib in front of her, medium rare, only in this case, it was something better.

I continued, “The best I can tell, I think he just plain exaggerated the numbers to make him look like he had the best record of all the district attorneys in the state.”

“How close are you?” she asked.

I knew, on the one hand, that we wanted to get this into print as fast as possible, before any of the national media parachuted into town and discovered the same. On the other hand, the story, once printed, would be scrutinized every which way from a fiery hell — by Randolph’s aides, Randolph himself, the White House, and the Senate Judiciary Committee, which had to approve his nomination. It had to be so clean that you could bathe with it.

“I need a couple of days to plug holes and get a few facts straightened out.”

She began standing up and said, “Take the time, but if you get a whiff of competition on it, flag me.”

As I walked out her office door, Steele said to me in a decidedly more sympathetic tone, “Jack, watch yourself. And let me know whatever I can do to help.”