Deadline Man

Deadline.

I find that my employee identification card works fine. The guard nods; he must not read the paper. Indeed, I am technically still on the payroll. Paychecks have fallen into my bank account regularly since I walked off the ferry. It would be nice to believe it could last, but I know better.

Instead of taking the employee elevator, I go through a door that leads me into the soaring lobby of the Free Press Building. Even though it’s closed after 5:30 p.m., the ornate Art Deco lights are kept burning. I am alone and my shoes click loudly as I walk across the polished marble floor. I kneel down and rub the bronze plaque over Bob McClung’s final resting place for luck. It is shiny from being rubbed. The front doors and elevator doors glow golden. The eight Pulitzer Prizes sit in the unpretentious wall cases. I stand and take it all in. Tonight I wear my favorite navy pinstripe suit with a blue polka dot tie that Melinda gave me years ago. I will miss my suits. I will miss this building. This…everything. I press a well-worn button and the elevator opens instantly. The car moves up steadily, past the ghost newsroom of the third floor, and opens on the bright space of the fifth floor.

The newsroom is nearly empty. One cops reporter is left. She’s in a corner and doesn’t notice me. I see some heads above cubicles in sports. Melinda is sitting on the rim, the circular copy desk. I pull up a chair.

“Hal is copy editing it,” she says. “Then I’ll slot it.” She plans to replace a New York Times thumbsucker on healthcare reform with my story.

Hal Pettee is the best copy editor in the building. He has a full head of white hair and a mountainous body when he sits down, which is almost always. He has had that white hair for all the years I’ve known him. He looks up at me over his bifocals. “Not bad,” he says. This is effusive praise from Hal.

So I wait. It is 10:45. Melinda has already sent the night page-one designer home. The front page is essentially done—put to bed—unless late news breaks. If it does, the breaking story can be put in place of one of th

ose already designed on the front page, the metro section front, and one page of briefs inside. These and sports are the last to go before the presses can start for the state edition at eleven p.m.

Melinda shows me the new page on the CCI system: My story is in the lede position, stripped across the page on top of a centerpiece about funding for the ferry system. A chill runs from my shoulders down my back.

But we have one disagreement. Melinda has my column logo running with the story. I say I’d rather have a byline. It’s a reported story, not an opinion piece.

“But you’re the columnist,” she says. “It’s who you are. And it will get more readers.”

“Melinda,” Hal says, “Lock and load.”

She presses the reload button on the CCI menu and the page flows back in to fill the computer screen. My story is there. The headline says: Olympic International, With Hidden Billions, Builds Private Army.

She reads through once more quickly, puts her hand on my knee. “Good?”

I nod. “Let’s put it on the streets.”

Who will tell the people? We will. Whether the people are paying attention anymore is another matter.

Melinda presses the keyboard button that “releases” the page. Two decades ago, an editor would have been in the “back shop,” the composing room where printers laid out pages with strips of computer-generated stories and headlines on photographic paper. They would glue it down with a waxy substance that allowed for columns and headlines to be moved, pulled up, shifted. Then the final page was signed off on by an editor and sent to a large phototypesetter machine that took its picture, part of a long process that ended up on the press. The printers were often gruff, working much as their forebearers had done with “hot type”—the Linotype machines which had given newspaper jargon so many gifts: pigs, slugs, the hell box. The printers had better news judgment that many a young editor.

Even with the “cold type” that followed it, editors had to know how to measure headlines and type; everybody had a metal pica pole on his desk. Melinda still has a pica pole, but it’s an objet d’art, not a work implement. Now the printers are gone, and all this work is performed by computers using sophisticated software from Denmark, controlled by designers and editors in the newsroom. When a page is “released,” the system automatically sets it up for the pressroom. It will also, at 12:01 Pacific Standard Time, automatically go out with the rest of that night’s print edition onto the Free Press Web site.

Melinda releases the page. The clock is straight up eleven.

She comes out of her chair and hugs me deeply. I wrap my arms around her and say “thank you,” stroke her short, soft hair, and run my fingers down to her neck, where they find a cool, slender chain. Years ago, I gave her a piece of jewelry: a chain with a silver hound dog on it. A news hound. She gave me a stuffed animal ferret—I was so good at ferreting out the truth. And she gave me the tie I wear tonight. It is all part of our history, and she wore the news hound for tonight. My fingers playfully sneak under the chain and move toward the front of her throat, then lift it out from her sweater.

But it’s not the news hound. It’s a white gold key. I drop it and push back.

“It’s Tiffany,” she says. “You’ve seen it before.” She’s smiling and her eyes are lying.

I’ve never seen it before. I’m about to answer when the elevator bell sounds and Amber steps out, followed by two men in suits and another pair in Seattle Police blue. One of the detectives is my old pal Sgt. Mazolli. The uniformed officers are carrying a pick and a sledgehammer. They linger by the elevator. Amber walks our way. Melinda stiffens.

“Amber.”

“Melinda.”

She has a badge dangling from around her neck and is wearing a dark blue windbreaker with “FBI” emblazoned on it. “The guard says you’re in charge tonight.”

“Yes.” Melinda tucks the Tiffany key back inside her sweater.

Amber hands her a folded set of papers. “Then I’m serving you with this search warrant.”

While they talk, I am digging through the files in my briefcase. I find the old notebook and leaf through it. And I finally understand.

Chapter Forty-seven