Abyss (Songs of Megiddo) (12 page)

Anyway.
The main point, there, was that tensions and hostilities intensified when things were stressful for journalists...and – apart from the outliers like myself – the journalists investigating The Disappearances were working in a market that was utterly saturated with ambitious and talented writers. Too many salmon in the stream: not enough food or breathing room. And it was getting worse by the day. Knowing that Meg had been working in New York: if she’d told me that journalists had been turning up at the Lilum Multi. offices waving pitchforks and burning torches, I would have been...yeah...surprised: inasmuch as I’d have been expecting them to be waving far more dangerous and offensive things.

“Let’s just say
...if I wanted to spend all day on the phone having complete strangers telling me to ‘fuck off and die’, I’d have gone into telemarketing. But the real problem isn’t the abuse. I have a thick enough skin to take that in my stride.”

“So what’s the problem?”

“Well, from what I can tell, there are other divisions working alongside us that we aren’t in direct contact with. Rumour has it that a lot of former Intelligence people have been pulled into it. More analysts, I guess. But without us to source the information, they have nothing to analyse beyond what they can pick up at any given newsstand, all by themselves. Which makes us redundant. Which might make some of us unemployed.”

“I’m not sure how I can help
...” I grimaced apologetically. “Lately...with the wedding and everything, I’ve been a bit out of the loop. To say I put this thing on the back burner would be a bit of an understatement.”

“Well
...” She took a deep breath. “You still know as much about the Disappearances as anyone we have access to. Even the journalists who usually play ball seem to be so worried about fighting for scraps that they’re...cagey. I mean...I assume that’s why. It’s kind of hard to tell why they won’t talk to us if they won’t talk to us. Y’know?”

“Yeah. That does make sense
, though; particularly in the Big Apple – ”

“
–
Don’t
...call it that,” Meg insisted. “I hate when people call it that.”

“Whatever
, crazy.” I rolled my eyes. Clearly that was one of her ‘things’. “I’m just saying; with New York in particular...there are never not too many journalists, relative to the stories worth publishing. And...realistically, journalism anywhere can be a pretty dog-eat-dog profession. Pretty cut-throat.”

“You seem to have avoided the worst of it.”
Meg observed.

“Can you
blame me?” I laughed.

“Not at all. I guess I just didn’t realise how far behind the front lines you
actually were. I assumed that the way you were approaching it was fairly consistent with the way everyone would be. Y’know? Do the initial leg-work and then...hang back until something real comes up. But apparently not.” I realised she was fishing. I felt bad that I didn’t have any fish for her. Frankly, I was running on a bit of a ‘fish deficit’ myself, to massively over-tax the analogy. If I didn’t have some new stuff written fairly soon, there was a possibility I’d have to start answering some pretty uncomfortable questions. Questions that would probably be mostly to do with exactly how long it would take me to get my free-loading ass on a plane back to Melbourne, where I’d be looking for whatever work I could get at short notice.

I decided to throw Meg a bone. It wasn’t a
fish, but it was all I – at that point in time – had. Maybe a little context would help her understand the situation better.

“Look. It’s obvious. It’s about the ‘three P’s’: Promotion, Plaudits, and Prestige.” That had been my theory, anyway. “Or, as
Darren puts it: Power, Pussy, and Pulitzers.”

“Eww.” the bridge of Meg’s nose wrinkled up with disdain, like I’d just held a bowl of sewage out for her to smell.

“It’s true though. Any time you’ve got competition for finite resources in an overpopulated ecology, it brings out the alpha-personalities. So not only is there not enough to go around, but there are a bunch of power-hungry dicks trying to hoard as much of whatever resources are
available for themselves. I have a monopoly on the Ambrose case. I’m the only reporter working exclusively on it. But with the other, bigger, more competitive hotspots? Even if it was just American journalists, it’d be a rough gig...but the whole world is here for this.”

“There are
always big stories, though.” Meg reasoned.

“That’s true. But
...shit...the amount of public attention this story has drawn? The number of different potential flash
-
points there are to cover? And it keeps ramping up – ”

“
– Why though? Nothing’s actually happened in ages.” It was, again, a fair point.

“Rule the first of journalism: the public are, in fact,
idiots. Now...I don’t mean that this statement is necessarily true...” She snickered.

“But you,
personally, think that it is.” I nodded and shrugged.

“I do. But that isn’t the
point. See, whether or not people are, in general, stupid...journalists are required to act as though they are. Professionally. Usually we find less offensive ways to say it...but getting right down to it, that’s how it works. It’s why we write the way that we do. Regardless of the reality, we assume that the audience are busy, and stupid. Small words; simple sentences; tight paragraphs. Easy to follow. The problem with this, is that we’re not giving them a reason to stop caring. We’re not reassuring them, or evaluating, or rationalising...which leaves a story like this sitting there like a perpetual cliff-hanger. Okay?”

“Okay
...” She followed.

“Rule the
second of journalism: if no one gives a shit, then don’t write it. Usually we’d say something less...abrupt, like: ‘the story has to be topical and newsworthy’. But, again: at the heart of it, it’s simple. You don’t write things if no one gives a shit. If everyone gives a shit? That’s a story you want to work on. And it remains one – that can be ‘changed up’ and refocussed – for as many news cycles as everyone continues to give a shit. The inverse, unfortunately, is how the rule is usually interpreted.”

“If
anyone gives a shit, do write about it.” She verified. I nodded.

“Exactly. Which is annoying. ‘Cause mix that up with bias, conjecture, and shoddy source
-work? That’s the definition of tabloid journalism.”

“And the point?” I shrugged.

“The public aren’t getting bored. They just...aren’t. Until either that happens, or the story breaks properly, there’s not a chance in hell that things’re going to calm down. Not in the slightest.”

“So it’s a perfect storm, is
...basically what you’re saying to me, here?”

“Pretty much, yeah. I’m sure a lot of the cases are dead ends. They have to be, really. But when it breaks
...if it breaks...anyone at the forefront of one of the stories relating to that break is gonna be on the list of anointed. Period.”

“Anointed for what?”

“Promotion...plaudits...prestige...”

“Right.
‘Pussy and Pulitzers’.” She rolled her eyes.

“Don’t judge too harshl
y: I mean...if I wasn’t with Naithe, I’d be the exact same way.” She raised an eyebrow. And then, for good measure, she raised another. “Not like
that
.” I scoffed. “You know what I’m saying: that I’d be playing the game, too. I was ambitious, once upon a time.” It seemed like a very, very long time ago, though. Another life, in a manner of speaking.

“So...my take
-home from this...” She paused, a wry, nasty little smirk winding it’s way across the whole-bottom-half of her face: “...Is that I need to be careful getting changed around you from now on?”

“Eat me.” I snarked. She snickered a juvenile little snicker.
“Gross. You’re gross, Meg. I’m going to go find a rock...and I’m going to hit you with it in the head.” I informed her matter-of-factly.

“Sure you are. Careful not to Freudian
-slip-over while you’re finding one.” I flicked my cigarette out into the parking lot, staring daggers at her and flipping her off. I couldn’t hold onto the expression, though; her quiet mocking laughter was infectious. I started laughing as I rustled around for another cigarette in my purse.

“Fuck...
you...” She coughed, still laughing:

“You know I’d still love you just the same if you
did like girls, right?”

“You wouldn’t need to be careful getting
changed around me, you mean?” I murmured distractedly. She shrugged, smiling lasciviously.

“
Sure. Might even be fun.”

“
Wow. You’re fucked up. That’s fucked up,” I laughed, lighting the new cigarette. “I’m married to your nephew.” She shrugged again, still smiling. Joking though we were, the conversation was moving down a strange path. A path that, in my experience, was likely to lead to an awkward pause at some point. I wasn’t a fan of awkward pauses, so I diverted:

“On a
serious note? I’m so glad I’m not working one of the hot-spots. One of the guys that the Sydney Morning Herald has working on The Disappearances in Chicago: he had a nervous breakdown a few weeks back. He’s back in Sydney now on indefinite leave. Sobering.”

“Did you know him?”

“Not really.” I shook my head. “I met him at a work thing once. Very serious guy: not much of a sense of humour. Nice, though, from what I could tell. He probably wasn’t cut out for the rough stuff. He was a name; not a big name, but a name, if you know what I mean? The paper probably sent him over here to cut his teeth on something genuinely big. I doubt it was even just the competition that got to him in the end.”

“What else would it
have been?” I tipped my head to the left and then to the right, evaluating how best to express what I was thinking.

“Well...c
an you imagine working so hard on something so big, and knowing you might not even get to be on the sidelines when it all came together? ‘Cause, like I said...a lot of these have to be dead ends. The vast majority of people who’re out here for this...they’re gonna be going home empty-handed, and they all know it. So...for the ones who are genuinely ambitious, it’s a case of doubling down – again and again – on the bet that they’ll be there, in the right place, when the ‘end-game’ starts. But they know they might
not
be. They know that...y’know...they probably won’t be.” I sighed.

It actually depress
ed me. More than I was willing to admit. It was hard: both imagining myself winding up so close, and yet so far away from a win that I wanted...and the fact that I, personally, had put myself out of the running for this particular win. At the start...I’d wanted it. I preferred not to admit it, but I’d definitely wanted it. And I hadn’t honed in on Ambrose’ story solely because it was convenient and easy, if I’m honest...at least a
part
of me had done it because something about that story – about Ambrose, specifically – made me feel as if I was the right girl for the job. 

Because...my first impression had been that
he – Ambrose, that is – was like me. Isolated, but not lonely; driven inexplicably forward; broken, but functional. I’d thought that I could relate to him, and that – maybe – that would be the edge I needed. And, in a way, I guess, I’d been right about that. Unfortunately...relating to people is kind of like loving people. It makes you weak. It makes you hide from unwelcome realities. It makes you vulnerable to sentiment.

So I did what I did, and the world
– my
world – kept on turning without me. The stories kept being written; the public kept on reading them. And yeah...on some level, I missed it. Not that I was willing to admit
it.

So...m
aybe I was being arrogant about it, but...when I’d heard about what happened to Steven – the Herald reporter who’d had the breakdown – it hadn’t been ‘sobering’. It had, actually, pissed me off. A lot. I’d thought: ‘if that’d been me, I would have held it together. I would have stayed the course’. Professionally speaking, it was a fair call. I’d always been stronger in a fight. At my paper, back home in Melbourne, I’d built myself a reputation as being the wrong person to play chicken with. It wasn’t that I didn’t lose: it was that I didn’t back down. If I was gonna take a dive, I tended to make a point of taking everyone who hadn’t fought to stop it happening down with me.

But I
’d made my choices. And I had to stand by the choices I’d made.

“So is
your case a dead end, or...?”

“Maybe.” I shrugged: even sort of believing it. “Hard to say. But regardless, it’s
...outlying. Pretty well every hot-spot in the U.S. has more – and more interesting – cases than Pueblo. Ambrose Portokolos was just this guy, y’know? He had a troubled childhood and an obsession with old planes. He liked stars and played around with a telescope that used to be his adoptive father’s. That’s about it. Against the bigger picture, he just...fades away. He’s barely a blip.”

“Why
is it even getting covered?”