Deadline Man

I say, “After an event.”

“Exactly.” He stares into the design of the rug, realizing he’s been trapped.

Only the noise of the presses, very distant, intrudes on the big, gaping silence. I let it hang for a while.

“What happens on eleven/eleven, Jim?”

He shakes his head and forces a laugh. “It’s too late.”

“Jim.” I say his name with enough timbre in my voice that he is forced to look me in the eye. “Eleven/eleven. Everything you’ve built. Everything your family has built. Think about that. Look at your mother’s portrait.” He won’t. “Look at it!” I shout, and he does.

“She would be ashamed of you.”

“I hated her.”

“It’s going to happen here, isn’t it? In Seattle. That’s why Troy wanted to be on the other side of the Cascades by November. It’s why you’re shredding files…”

“Yes!” Sterling bellows it with such force that saliva fouls his beard. He wipes it off and stares defiantly.

Then, “A dirty bomb. Just the kind of thing al Qaeda or North Korea would do.”

“Or Praetorian.”

He looks around his office. Glances at the portrait of Maggie Forrest Sterling. “They say the damage to the city will be manageable.”

The coldness in my body even reaches into my mouth and tongue.

He goes on, “It might not be the same everywhere else. There are at least four other cities. I didn’t want to know. I just wanted to make sure my investments were properly hedged. You know, for the aftermath.”

Melinda is crying quietly, her head buried in her arms that still rest on the edge of the desk. “What have you done? What have you done?…”

I lean heavily against the chair, wanting something steady in my life. The only other question I have hardly matters now, but I ask it anyway.

“So you were never really trying to find a buyer for the newspaper, because why would it matter? Not much market for a radioactive building. And all those people you laid off in the newsroom. All those lives ruined. It was just because you’re another greedy, asshole newspaper publisher.”

His expression radiates childish hurt. “I was the only one in the goddamned family trying to save this place! Nobody would buy a newspaper this size with such a big newsroom. We had to make those cuts.” He shakes his head and blows out a long breath. “The Free Press could be published from Bellevue, anywhere in the suburbs outside the blast radius. We have a great brand. But nobody’s buying newspaper companies right now. They have no future.”

“And now neither do you.” I’m fresh out of pity.

Then I sense Amber beside me. A few second later, the Seattle cops walk past, roughly lifting the publisher from the floor and handcuffing him.

He speaks through clenched teeth. “Do you know who I am?”

Mazolli says, “We know.”

Chapter Forty-nine

Wednesday, November 10th

An hour later, two a.m., I sit on the cold bench, staring through the huge glass windows, watching the presses roll. They’re running at a very high speed now, rushing to get the city editions out. I can feel the vibration out on the sidewalk. The bronze newsboy keeps me company, forever in a pose to call out the day’s headlines.

A few yards away, the big trucks are leaving the loading docks, filled with the day’s edition: 301,000 copies. Up the hill, at the front of the building, a dozen law enforcement vehicles are parked and cops come and go. Now I see a bright glare from the same direction. The first television news crew has arrived.

I think of all the newspaper has done for all these years. The Pulitzers. The corruption exposed and wrongs righted. The ordinary people helped. “To the Public Trust,” engraved on the tower. Yet the Seattle Free Press will be most remembered as the place where the pretty, blond teen, caught in a lurid affair, was murdered and entombed by the publisher.

Until more lethal news arrives.

I have never felt so tired in my life.