Deadline Man

“Somebody knows.”

“And I wish I had a financial services reporter,” she says. “Five reporters down, remember. Chase it if you want.”

I think about that. I really want to get ahead on the Olympic International story. But if a fair-sized hedge fund has lost a bunch of money and caused the suicide of its rising-star leader, well, I’d read that one in the newspaper, too. But I don’t have time to call in a bunch of favors from the Microsoft millionaires and other assorted gentry, to find out who’s lost money in Troy’s fund and—harder still—is willing to talk about it. I decide to wait to see if someone calls or files suit. I will stay on Olympic International. If it’s bought, thousands of jobs could be cut at the headquarters half a mile away, and a few people will make hundreds of millions of dollars. All those employees, living their lives, paying their mortgages, drawing their paychecks. The company won’t tell them the roof is silently crumbling. I will.

The main newsroom is even more crowded now but it’s quiet. I see James Sterling standing in the middle of the room, next to the executive editor and the managing editor. They look at the high ceilings, the television monitors of cable news attached to the pillars, the big recycling bin by the metro desk. They don’t look at anyone. The executive editor opens the meeting and I am half listening. The rest of me stays back at Troy’s obsessively neat office. All that money. All that stuff. Now he’s dead, squashed after a twenty-story fall. He knew somebody was stalking Olympic International. It’s a big private equity outfit from New York, and the talk is of a leveraged deal. Take on debt, don’t use your own money. You’d think after the crash, that kind of thing would have gone out of style.

Sterling starts talking. He has a high voice, naturally soft, and it scratches anytime he tries to project in a room. He’s recounting the fiscal year that just ended: the performance of the seven newspapers owned by the company, declining advertising revenue, rising costs of newsprint. Hardesty told me that the leveraged deal would be followed by the breakup of Olympic. Take it private. Strip it down. Sell off the dogs. Go public again with the best parts. Get rich. It’s a classic move. Hardesty knew it all and I was amazed he gave it to me.

I had to promise not to name the private equity firm in the first column, otherwise they might know he had told me. Was he in on the action? I asked. He just gave a tight little chicken-lips smile. I can’t quote him. I can use the information he gave me to ask others. I can check filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission, short-selling of the stock, insider trading. I can see what relationship the top Olympic executives have with the private equity guys. The golden parachutes will be sweet.

“This is a day we hoped wouldn’t come.” That’s what James Sterling just said.

He repeats it. “This is a day we hoped wouldn’t come.”

“But we have to live in the real world,” he goes on. His professorial face now looks ratlike. A rat in tortoise-shell glasses. So now it will be bad news. No one even coughs or moves a chair. A wave of apprehension rolls silently through the room. Melinda Stewart stares ahead, pale, grim. With her right hand, she silently grasps and releases a stress ball, a handful of sand packaged in a tight rubber wrapping. It’s meant to help combat repetitive stress injuries. It silently comes apart in her hand and the sand spills onto her desk. I think: layoffs. He keeps talking. Jargon. Filler. He talks about the need to “reinvent the newspaper for the 21st century” and a “difficult journey ahead.” He says, “We need to listen to our readers.” I watch faces: people I’ve known for years; younger ones I don’t know. I was Maggie Sterling’s favorite columnist. I wonder if that means anything now.

“We’ve hired an investment banking firm to advise us…”

The metro, sports, and lifestyle reporters look blank. Not the business writers. We know what’s coming.

“The company will be sold. And if that doesn’t eventuate in this media environment, then the Free Press and our other papers will be closed in sixty days.”

Chapter Three

That night I break up with Rachel. Somehow I don’t have enough stress in my life. The newspaper is for sale. It may close. Hell, it will close. Nobody is going to buy the Free Press chain. Layoffs are imminent and consultants who know nothing about journalism are studying us. The staff heard that news and then was expected to go put the paper out as always. That’s just what they did. They are pros. They did this after a venomous question-and-answer period that James Sterling left as quickly as possible. The top editors were left but it was quickly clear they are nearly as surprised as the rest of us.

Reporters and editors at their desks were typing even as their colleagues were asking what the hell the future held. Phones rang and were answered. They had to move copy. They had to get the paper out. Some of them were crying. We were all sick. I was sick. I backed out of the room and returned to my office, closed the door, and closed the blinds. The computer told me there was no news about Olympic International. All quiet on the Online Journal, Yahoo Finance, Marketwatch. The shares closed down two cents. My scoop was safe. I made eighteen phone calls, left eighteen messages, asking about Olympic. I left my cell phone number. Maybe I would start getting return calls early in the morning. I made two additional calls about Troy Hardesty’s fund, just to

cover my ass, just in case. I left more messages, then walked down the back stairs five floors without talking to anyone. A drunk was walking up the stairs. He asked if I was the sports columnist. I said no, and called security.

At six minutes after seven, I walked into a bar in Belltown and saw Rachel already at a booth in the back. She had ordered me a martini and was waiting to take her first sip. The place was mercifully empty. There’s small talk. The newspaper may close. Easy stuff like that. Then, the hard stuff. I have gotten good at breakups, a master of goodbye. Still, a ball of anxiety and sadness fills my middle. She doesn’t cry until I open the door to her taxi. She puts her hand on my arm, promises to keep reading my stuff, “even though it would be hard.”

“You’re a nice guy,” she says, a lie. She is a nice girl, the truth, a brunette with flawless fair skin, abundant and naturally curly hair, and the character to teach middle school in the inner city. Her father is one of the richest men in Seattle. She is a nice girl and that’s the problem. She will want marriage and stability, whatever she says, and I can offer neither. It’s better for her this way. That’s what I tell myself. It’s better for me, too, a selfish bastard. I let this one go too far. I broke my rules. Now I have made it right, she can go find a nice boy, and make a nice future, and I feel like shit. The cab glows lurid yellow under the streetlight. The color of the coward. Then she’s gone. She’s rid of me. I can’t hurt her now. A ball of anxiety stays in my middle. It starts raining. Fine, gentle drops. Seattle rain. The sidewalk is wet with Rachel’s tears and my face is wet and my footsteps are muffled by the leaves on the sidewalk. It’s as if I’m not there at all.

I walk toward my loft in Pioneer Square. I need to pick up my car. I need to be somewhere. As it rains harder, I wish I had done it before meeting Rachel. The wind gusts straight and hard across Elliott Bay, catching me when I cross the streets and lose the cover of the buildings along First Avenue. I button my trench coat tight but I don’t have a hat, so my hair is soaked. I deliberately do not look up at the skyline. I do not want to see Troy Hardesty’s building. I have to file a column in seventeen hours and I am not prepared. My left eyelid starts to pinch. How could I develop a nervous tick at my age?

By the time I cross Yesler the sidewalks are deserted and it’s raining big, frantic drops. My shoes are ruined and my socks are wet. The street is darker and I am surrounded by the 1890s buildings of the old city, built after the great fire. About a third of them have been completely restored. The neighborhood goes through booms and busts and now it’s down on its luck. Empty storefronts that a few years ago housed expensive galleries. It can’t quite ever escape its old identity as Skid Row: the neon sign of the Bread of Life Mission proclaims “Come Unto Me.” A couple of upscale bars look half full, warm, and inviting. I fight the temptation to slip into Elliott Bay Books. The sidewalk tilts at a slight angle toward the street. I can’t quite keep from thinking about Rachel.

“Can you spare some cash?”

My heart retreats into my throat as a woman emerges from a doorway. A brown leather miniskirt is visible beneath a distressed coat. She might have been attractive once. Now she resembles a cat that has been drowned, then electrocuted. Her long hair is bunched and wet, and her eyes are two lost marbles. Maybe her nose has freckles on it or maybe she’s that filthy.

“Sorry to startle you,” she says. I tell her I don’t have any cash, which is the truth.

“Is there anything I can do to make some money? I fuck for money.”

I shake my head and say I’m sorry.

“I swear I’m eighteen!”

I don’t answer. She’s so skanky looking she could be seventeen or forty.

Suddenly her gaze sharpens. “I know who you are!” The rain stops. It doesn’t turn to sprinkles or drizzle, but stops dead. I turn and walk. I do not want to be this woman’s moment of clarity.

“Hey!” she yells and I hear her heels clicking after me. My initial unease returns. Even though I feel as if I can take care of myself, it’s been years since I’ve been in a confrontation, much less a fight. My pulse jumps into triple digits as I walk faster. Then, “Fuck!” She’s spilled onto the slick pavement. I laugh out loud. It could be worse: we had a story today about a man who kept a dead prostitute in his apartment for a week.

I look back and she’s on the sidewalk, pointing at me.