The Nominee

Twenty-Two

TERRY CAMPBELL WAS SITTING on the corner stool of the Street Bar at the Ritz-Carlton Hotel when I strode in shortly after eleven A.M. I recognized his face from our brief encounter when he tried to hire me away a couple of years before, walked right up to him and introduced myself. He shot me a blank, bloodshot stare, stuck out his hand and said it was nice of me to make the time. I neither shook nor replied. His hand just hung there for a moment until he self-consciously pulled it back to his side. I don’t imagine that really pleased him. I don’t pretend to particularly care.

Campbell was tieless, which is not to be confused with tireless. He had on a blue button-down shirt open at the neck beneath a navy blue blazer, a pair of gray wool pants, and tasseled loafers. I hate tasseled loafers, but figured that pointing out my distaste for such things might be the wrong way to launch our hopefully brief though possibly deadly relationship.

Beyond the clothing, he had one of those faces that looks like it was mashed against a concrete wall at some early point in his childhood, flat with a forehead so wide and sprawling you could strip a cigarette billboard across it, all accentuated by a line of brown hair receding faster than a Kennebunkport tide. He looked, in short, like a bulldog, or one of the bad guys in a Dick Tracy comic strip, mean, even thuggish, someone accustomed to striking fear in his business adversaries from his appearance as much as his brains.

But brains he apparently had as well, at least when it comes to making money. He had already struck his first few million in an oil field somewhere in the godforsaken center of Texas when someone somewhere told him there was yet another kind of black gold — ink. So he bought a mid-sized newspaper in Mobile, Alabama, then another one in South Dakota, then another in Ohio and Illinois and eventually in sixteen states, twenty-seven newspapers in all, each of them becoming nearly identical in style and tone to the one he bought before.

His modus operandi was well grooved, not subject to even the slightest degree of deviation, according to my research of the past few days. He would install a publisher-editor from his corporate office. That figure, the same man, in many cases, who traveled from one new acquisition to the next, would then cut the editorial staff, sometimes by as much as half, meaning reporters and mid-level editors were simply shown the door with two weeks’ severance pay. He would hire fancy graphics specialists and buy souped-up full-color presses, so he could then appear at the monthly luncheons of the Rotarians or the Chamber of Commerce and gleefully report how much more money Campbell Newspapers was spending on the new and improved product.

All the while, the news hole — the part of the paper devoted to actual news, named such because newspaper ads are always laid out first — was dramatically reduced. The paper shrunk in size. Wire reports filled the front pages because they’re cheaper to produce than staff-written stories. Local events went uncovered. Campaigns were given nary a nod. Government officials were provided no oversight. And ads were printed in blazing reds and blues and greens. The advertisers, smitten with the appearances, willingly paid more. And when they did, they often got favorable news stories written about them, as part of what Campbell liked to call “knocking down the archaic wall that isolates a newsroom from the rest of the thriving world.”

Well, archaic is one way to put it. Sacred is another, and in the parlance of the times, Campbell’s philosophy sucked, and for my money, so did he.

But in business parlance, it was revenue positive. See. I could be a publisher. The circulation levels were generally maintained by the jazzy graphics and splashes of color and the AP stories he played on the front page about the three-year-old in Oklahoma having his arm torn off by a white Bengal tiger traveling with a western circus. And the profit margins soared into the stratosphere, at least 30 percent at every one of his papers, according to the reports I was reading, and at some papers, closing in on 40 percent. They were the darling of Wall Street, causing other newspaper chains to ape their every cut and gimmick.

Best as I could tell, though, their strategy rarely involved rampant, violent deaths at the papers they were buying. Note the word rarely, rather than never, because in one case, at some middling paper in Ohio, Mongillo had informed me that the head of the trade union was found dead of a gunshot wound days after Campbell bought the newspaper. The medical examiner determined it was self-inflicted, but news reports at the time cast no small amount of doubt.

Financially speaking, compare his profits to a paper like theRecord which, while publicly traded, was essentially family-owned. We kept raising the staff levels. We rarely put wire on the front, preferring to cover major stories with our own reporters. We broke stories that other, even larger papers had to follow. We maintained reporters abroad. We had blanket coverage at home. We gave readers a regular diet of in-depth, multi-part investigative projects. And most of the time, our profit margins hung in the 22 percent range, high enough to make plenty of money and maintain the craft at an excellent level, though not so high that Merrill Lynch brokers coveted our stable stock, particularly because in bad times, recessionary times, our margins might dip as low as 16 to 18 percent without anyone in the front office getting panicky.

Paul, and before him, John Cutter, believed that good journalism made for good business, and good business provided for good journalism. What they never did was intertwine the two.

“I understand this isn’t an easy time for you,” Campbell said. We were both standing awkwardly at the bar, him on one side of his stool, me on the other. He said this without a trace of sympathy in his voice, but rather as if he was repeating a weather forecast he had just heard.Record deaths behind us, an unsettled system hovering over the area, the threat of more violence on the way.

I didn’t reply. My silent defiance told him to get to the point. At least that’s what I meant it to say. He asked, “Do you care to sit at a table?”

“Sure,” I replied, and we did.

The Street Bar at the Boston Ritz-Carlton Hotel, for anyone never blessed enough to have been there, is a cloud of tranquil formality in a world of casual chaos. If that sounds a bit too much like a brochure, well, forgive me, because it’s the truth. It derives its name because it is situated on the street level, that street being Arlington Street, which overlooks the stunning Public Garden. But it’s the view within that is the most noteworthy of all.

The walls are hunter green, the dimly lit sconces pure brass, the gray-haired waiters all in black tie. And the drinks, the drinks. Well, let’s not kid ourselves. They’re like any other drinks, only twice as expensive. But it’s worth every dollar to sit on the soft settees and plush upholstered chairs while tossing down handfuls of complimentary mixed nuts from the ornate silver bowls.

We took our places at a window table overlooking the sidewalk, the street, and beyond, the sun-splashed park where just four days ago Paul had warned me of this guy I was sitting with now. Four long days ago. As I sat, I noticed Gerry Burke, one of my bodyguards, standing on the sidewalk looking in the window at me looking out at him. He gave me a sheepish smile and stepped out of sight. Kevin Hart, his cohort, stood at the doorway to the bar in a tan Secret Service — style vest. There was another undercover cruiser idling at the hotel entrance with two more officers inside. After last night’s incident, Commissioner John Leavitt was taking even fewer chances today.

The waiter materialized at our table like an apparition to take our drink order. Campbell asked for a scotch, straight up, I asked for a ginger ale. As I’ve said, I don’t like drinking before five unless there’s some good reason for it, and Terry Campbell certainly wasn’t reason enough.

“I’m very sorry about your publisher, Jack. I understand from many people that the two of you were quite close,” he said, picking through the nuts to find the cashews. I hate when people do that, but again figured now was not the time to point this out to him. He looked at me and I looked at him. He was trying to tell if I’d be malleable in his hands, an instrument or an impediment in his grand business plan to buy one of the most respected papers in America and make it his flagship. I was trying to tell if he was a killer, capable of taking Paul Ellis’s life, or more likely, hiring someone to do the same. I couldn’t tell yet, and I suspect, neither could he.

“I think you know this already, but I feel the need to restate it because of your hostile attitude here, but I had nothing — nothing — to do with Paul Ellis’s death.”

He paused to eye me for any reaction. I didn’t give him one.

“I’m an honest, hard-working journalism executive,” he said.

Seven words, four lies. That’s pretty good, maybe even some sort of record. He should consider a career in Massachusetts politics. His use of the word journalism caused my skin to crawl, like an earwig was scurrying across my nerves. Nonetheless, I stayed silent.

The waiter came by and put the drinks on the table, pouring my ginger ale in front of me from a small Canada Dry bottle, and his scotch from a little decanter.

I didn’t want to talk about Paul with this creature. I really didn’t want to talk about anything with him except for the business at hand, and even that, only because I had no real choice. I said, “We’ll find Paul’s killer soon enough.” I said this as I tossed some nuts into my mouth, casual. “But that’s not what you called me here to discuss. You have some business to go over?”

I looked at him expectantly but blandly, dismissively. He seemed about to argue with me, then smartly decided it wouldn’t do anyone any good.

Instead, he said, “As you know by now, I want to buy theRecord, and if you’re willing to back my bid, to speak in favor of it, I’m prepared to offer you a financial package so generous that you won’t ever have to work another day in your life.”

“I like to work.”

He gave me an annoyed look and said, “You can work. You can donate the money to charity. You can give it to your kids. You can buy a yacht and sail the Mediterranean. You can do anything you want. What it means is freedom, and freedom is whatever you decide to make of it.”

With that, he reached into the breast jacket of his blazer. For a second, I thought he might be pulling out a gun. But instead, he had an envelope. He gently opened it up, unfolded the single sheet of paper inside, and slid it across the table toward me.

“This is what you’d get paid in the event of a sale.”

I fixed my gaze on his face. He sipped his scotch and tossed a couple of more nuts into his mouth. I clanked my ice around my tumbler without taking a drink. My elbows were up on the table, my chin resting on my right knuckles. Outside, the sun was pouring down, but on the more civilized side of the tinted windows, the light was discreetly dim.

Finally, I lowered my eyes to look at the numbers, and what I saw I had to assume was a typo, meaning there were two too many zeros. I looked at it again, trying to mask my surprise.

My first impulse, so long as it’s never repeated, was to shout to the heavens, “I’m rich, I’m rich.” Not only could I finally buy that summer-house I always wanted up in Maine, I could probably buy the entire coastline, maybe even the state.

Instead, I kept my chin in my hand and asked Campbell, “What did Paul say when you made him this offer?”

He hesitated, then said very carefully, “He told me he couldn’t at this time support the sale of theRecord, though he would keep an open mind on the topic.”

“Bullshit,” I replied. “Paul would only sell to you over his dead body, and I won’t even let him do that.”

His annoyance now transformed into anger. No doubt he was surprised that I didn’t look at the figures he was throwing around and melt in his arms. “You may not have any choice. And this deal won’t be sitting on the table for long.”

“Oh, I’ll always have a choice, and my choice will always be no. Just like Paul, I’ll have to be dead before this paper is sold, so you can keep on trying.”

He pinched his right index finger and thumb into his tightly shut eyes. The waiter chose that inopportune time to ask if we wanted another drink, and Campbell snapped at him, “Not now.” I didn’t want him thinking he could answer for me, so just for kicks, I said, “Sure, I’ll take one.”

He collected himself for a moment, caught my stare and said, “Look, Jack. I’m telling you this as a favor. I’m telling you this as someone who’s had a pretty successful run in this business, as someone who tried to hire you before. Your newspaper is a relic. It’s a dinosaur. It’s gray and it’s old and you haven’t updated it to fit the times.”

The waiter came back with my ginger ale and pointedly ignored Campbell. I shook my head but he kept speaking, growing more animated. “People don’t care about politics anymore, and that’s what you guys cover. People don’t have the time to read the fifteen-hundred word stories you put on the front page about wars in places they’ll never go. They don’t have any interest in reading your five-part series on mayors taking kickbacks or the FDA approving drugs a year ahead of time”—two projects, I’ll point out, for which we won Pulitzer Prizes.

He took another sip of his drink, which was mostly melted ice by now. He continued, “People want quick and easy. They want nice graphics that explain in a few seconds what stories can’t relate in ten minutes. They want pretty pictures. They want short, crisp stories that don’t jump to other sections of the newspaper. They want the box scores to last night’s baseball games and the five-day weather reports for where they live and wherever their vacation houses might be. That’s what they want. That’s what we give them. And that’s why we’re better, more successful, and more profitable than you.

“You people keep running theRecord the way you’re running it and you’re not going to have aRecord to run for much longer. You’re going to drive the thing right out of business. You sell it to me, you preserve it for another century, the Cutter-Ellises make a nice profit, you make a nice profit, and Boston remains a two-newspaper town, just like it should.”

He was done. I had the first inkling of a headache. A cloud must have floated by outside because the street became darker than it had been, making the lounge darker still. Two more shades and it might match my mood.

I looked down at my drink and the table beneath it. I thought about the small army of consultants we’d had through our executive offices and the newsroom, the ones who said too much of what Terry Campbell was saying today — shorter stories, cleaner graphics, more consumer reporting, news you can use. Light, tight, and bright.

Paul didn’t like them, but he listened to them. And the paper went out and modernized itself. We were among the first to buy color presses. We started a consumer beat. We created a commuting beat. We hired more lifestyle reporters. And in general, we tried to shorten the length of our stories, usually, but not always. But we didn’t stray from our core mission, not then, not now, not ever. When I was going toe to toe with the president of the United States a couple of years ago, nobody said to me, “Hey, Jack, forget about politics. We need you to do something on rising cable rates.”

“Let me ask you something,” I said, pausing to collect my thoughts.

“When the banks in Boston implement a secret policy of not giving mortgages to working black families in urban neighborhoods, who’s going to report on that? Who’s going to challenge that?”

TheRecord, I left unstated, already had.

“When the president of the United States tells a life-defining lie, who’s going to report on that? When building inspectors look the other way from life-threatening code violations, when auto dealerships fuck with odometers, when cops sodomize drunk driving suspects, who’s going to let the public know about that?”

I paused to collect myself and catch my breath. I thought of Mongillo working police headquarters every morning, chatting up sources, racing out in the dark of the night to murder scenes, approaching cop cars with flailing lights in dimly lit alleys in the worst neighborhoods of town.

I thought of Paul Ellis, poring over the financials in the teeth of the last recession, watching our stock price plunge, seeing his own net worth cut in half, telling his staff, his paper, to keep our eye on what mattered most, and that was producing the bestBoston Record, day in, day out, that we possibly could. If we did that, he said, things would be fine. Well, we did, and things were.

I thought of my own father, his ink-stained green apron spread over his lanky frame, proudly working in theRecord pressroom until his legs gave way from disease and he had to be carried out by two of his best friends — also lifelong pressmen.

Campbell was about to intrude on the silence, on my thoughts, so I cut him off.

“Not you,” I said, the volume of my voice, the strain of my tone surprising even me. “Not you. Because you’re out there publishing stories about how SUVs are fun and safe and how barbecue cooking is a nice way to spend time with the whole family, all in two hundred and fifty words or less, while splashing polls on people’s favorite primetime comedies on the front page.”

He shook his head in disgust, muttering, “You’ll never get it.”

I pounded the table with my right fist, causing some of the nuts to splash out of their bowl. Truth is, I was throwing a full-out nutty, the likes of which I hadn’t thrown in a long, long time. Maybe things like death and deception were starting to catch up to me. Maybe it was the sight of Elizabeth with Travers. Or maybe I really cared about my paper.

What’s the worst that could happen, that I’m barred for life from the Street Bar at the Ritz? All right, that is pretty bad, but fortunately I didn’t consider that possibility as I continued my rant.

“No, you’ll never get it,” I seethed. “You’ll never get why owning a newspaper is different from owning a widget company. You’ll never get that we’re not given First Amendment rights just so we can print stories about rock stars in drug rehab. You’ll never understand that sometimes, the bottom line isn’t the bottom line.”

He stood up. “You’re useless,” he told me. Yeah, I’m useless. I’m fucking useless.

He grabbed the sheet of paper back with all that money that I could sure as hell use but didn’t particularly need.

“Fuck off,” I told him. “Fuck the hell off.” All right, it’s not eloquent, but it made the point. Just to be sure, I added, “And it’s not going to look good when we run a story in the next couple of days saying that you’re a major contributor to militant groups pushing fringe causes.”

He stood glaring at me, and I was glaring back at him. I caught the waiter out of the corner of my eye looking on in horror. Their idea of conflict in here is people politely fighting over the bar check.

“I’m going to take you down, Jack,” he seethed.

“Like you took the MIT researcher down?”

His face quickly changed from fury to curiosity, almost as if I’d flicked a switch. He asked, “What the fuck are you talking about?”

“You know full well what I’m talking about. And so will the rest of the country when we run a story about it.”

When he spoke again, even his tone had changed. “Jack, I don’t know what you’re talking about. What do you mean?”

I shook my head and derisively said, “Fight for Life. It’s a Massachusetts group. You gave them money — thirty large. They used it to bomb a stem cell lab in Cambridge. You’re screwed.”

He grew angry again. “I don’t know about any stem cell group and I don’t know about any Cambridge professor. I do know this. I’m going to own you. Own you!”

“You don’t have it in you. And if I find you trying to put your grubby fucking hands on my newspaper again, I’ll break them.”

“That’s not what the company president says.” Then he started across the lounge. Just a few paces away, he whirled around and walked back toward me until we were chest to chest, as if we were a baseball manager and a home plate umpire arguing over a called third strike.

“By the way,” he said, his voice tight as a rope but strangely calm, “I eat assholes like you for lunch.”

“That would explain your bad breath,” I replied. Not bad, considering the circumstances.

He fixed a look of hatred upon me the likes of which I hadn’t seen in a long, long time — or maybe I had, on the basketball court the other night and in the Florida swamp soon after.

He said through gritted teeth, his jaw barely moving as he spoke, “People who fuck with me don’t come out of it real well. Let’s be real clear on that.”

With that, he stalked off without ever saying good-bye, probably because he knew, because I knew, this wasn’t the last we’d see of each other. I ended up picking up the check. The man, I tell you, had no class.