The Scarecrow (2 page)

My phone buzzed in my ear and I was about to guess it would be my ex-wife, having already heard the news in the Washington
bureau, but the caller ID said
velvet coffin
. I had to admit I was shocked. I knew Larry could not have gotten the word out
that fast. Against my better judgment I took the call. As expected, the caller was Don Goodwin, self-appointed watchdog and
chronicler of the inner workings of the
L.A. Times
.

“I just heard,” he said.

“When?”

“Just now.”

“How? I just found out myself less than five minutes ago.”

“Come on, Jack, you know I can’t reveal. But I’ve got the place wired. You just walked out of Kramer’s office. You made the
thirty list.”

The “thirty list” was a reference to those who had been lost over the years in the downsizing of the paper.
Thirty
was old-time newspaper code for “end of story.” Goodwin himself was on the list. He had worked at the
Times
and was on the fast track as an editor until a change of ownership brought a change in financial philosophy. When he objected
to doing more with less he was cut down at the knees and ended up taking one of the first buyouts offered. That was back when
they offered substantial payments to those who would voluntarily leave the company—before the media company that owned the
Times
filed for bankruptcy protection.

Goodwin took his payout and set up shop with a website and a blog that covered everything that moved inside the
Times
. He called it
thevelvetcoffin.com
as a grim reminder of what the paper used to be: a place to work so pleasurable that you would easily slip in and stay till
you died. With the constant changes of ownership and management, the layoffs, and the ever-dwindling staff and budget, the
place was now becoming more of a pine box. And Goodwin was there to chronicle every step and misstep of its fall.

His blog was updated almost daily and was avidly and secretly read by everybody in the newsroom. I wasn’t sure much of the
world beyond the thick bomb-proof walls of the
Times
even cared. The
Times
was going the way of all journalism and that wasn’t news. Even the
New York By God Times
was feeling the pinch caused by the shift of society to the Internet for news and advertising. The stuff Goodwin wrote about
and was calling me about amounted to little more than rearranging deck chairs on the
Titanic
.

But in another two weeks it wouldn’t matter to me. I was moving on and already thinking about the half-started, half-assed
novel I had in my computer. I was going to pull that baby out as soon as I got home. I knew I could milk my savings for at
least six months and after that I could live off the equity in my house—what was left of it after the recent slide—if I needed
to. I could also downsize my car and save on gas by getting one of those hybrid tin cans everybody in town was driving.

I was already beginning to see my shove out the door as an opportunity. Deep down, every journalist wants to be a novelist.
It’s the difference between art and craft. Every writer wants to be considered an artist and I was now going to take my shot
at it. The half novel I had sitting at home—the plot of which I couldn’t even correctly remember—was my ticket.

“Are you out the door today?” Goodwin asked.

“No, I got a couple weeks if I agreed to train my replacement. I agreed.”

“How fucking noble of them. Don’t they allow anybody any dignity over there anymore?”

“Hey, it beats walking out with a cardboard box today. Two weeks’ pay is two weeks’ pay.”

“But do you think that’s fair? How long have you been there? Six, seven years, and they give you two weeks?”

He was trying to draw an angry quote from me. I was a reporter. I knew how it worked. He wanted something juicy he could put
in the blog. But I wasn’t biting. I told Goodwin I had no further comment for the
Velvet Coffin
, at least not until I was
permanently out the door. He wasn’t satisfied with that answer and kept trying to pry a comment out of me until I heard the
call-on-hold beep in my ear. I looked at the caller ID and saw xxxxx on the screen. This told me the call had come through
the switchboard rather than from a caller who had my direct number. Lorene, the newsroom operator I could see on duty in the
booth, would have been able to tell I was on my line, so her decision to park a call on it rather than take the message could
only mean the caller had convinced her that the call was important.

I cut Goodwin off.

“Look, Don, I’ve got no comment and I need to go. I’ve got another call.”

I pushed the button before he could take a third swing at getting me to discuss my employment situation.

“This is Jack McEvoy,” I said after switching over.

Silence.

“Hello, this is Jack McEvoy. How can I help you?”

Call me biased but I immediately identified the person who replied as female, black and uneducated.

“McEvoy? When you goin’ to tell the truth, McEvoy?”

“Who is this?”

“You tellin’ lies, McEvoy, in your paper.”

I wished it
was
my paper.

“Ma’am, if you want to tell me who you are and what your complaint is about, I’ll listen. Otherwise, I’ m—”

“They now sayin’ Mizo is’n adult and what kinda shit is that? He did’n kill no whore.”

Immediately I knew it was one of those calls. Those calls on behalf of the “innocent.” The mother or girlfriend who had to
tell me how wrong my story was. I got them all the time but not for too much longer. I resigned myself to handling this call
as quickly and politely as possible.

“Who is Mizo?”

“Zo.
My Zo
. My son, Alonzo. He ain’ guilty a nothin’ and he ain’t no adult.”

I knew that was what she was going to say. They are never guilty. No one calls you up to say you got it right or the police
got it right and their son or their husband or their boyfriend is guilty of the charges. No one calls you from jail to tell
you they did it. Everybody is innocent. The only thing I didn’t understand about the call was the name. I hadn’t written about
anybody named Alonzo—I would have remembered.

“Ma’am, do you have the right person here? I don’t think I wrote about Alonzo.”

“Sure you did. I got your name right here. You said he stuffed her in the trunk and that’s some motherfuckin’ shit right there.”

Then it came together. The trunk murder from last week. It was a six-inch short because nobody on the desk was all that interested.
Juvenile drug dealer strangles one of his customers and puts her body in the trunk of her own car. It was a black-on-white
crime but still the desk didn’t care, because the victim was a drug user. Both she and her killer were marginalized by the
paper. You start cruising down to South L.A. to buy heroin or rock cocaine and what happens happens. You won’t get any sympathy
from the gray lady on Spring Street. There isn’t much space in the paper for that. Six inches inside is all you’re worth and
all you get.

I realized I didn’t know the name Alonzo because I had never been given it in the first place. The suspect was sixteen years
old and the cops didn’t give out the names of arrested juveniles.

I flipped through the stack of newspapers on the right side of my desk until I found the Metro section from two Tuesdays back.
I opened it to page four and looked at the story. It wasn’t long enough to carry a byline. But the desk had put my name as
a tagline at the bottom. Otherwise I wouldn’t have gotten the call. Lucky me.

“Alonzo is your son,” I said. “And he was arrested two Sundays ago for the murder of Denise Babbit, is that correct?”

“I told you that is motherfucking bullshit.”

“Yes, but that’s the story we’re talking about. Right?”

“That’s right, and when are you goin’ to write about the truth?”

“The truth being that your son is innocent.”

“That’s right. You got it wrong and now they say he’s going to be tried as an adult and he only sixteen years old. How can
they do that to a boy?”

“What is Alonzo’s last name?”

“Winslow.”

“Alonzo Winslow. And you are Mrs. Winslow?”

“No, I am not,” she said indignantly. “You goin’ put my name in the paper now with a mess a lies?”

“No, ma’am. I just want to know who I am talking to, that’s all.”

“Wanda Sessums. I don’t want my name in no paper. I want you to write the truth is all. You ruin his reputation calling him
a murderer like that.”

Reputation
was a hot-button word when it came to redressing wrongs committed by a newspaper, but I almost laughed as I scanned the story
I had written.

“I said he was arrested for the murder, Mrs. Sessums. That is not a lie. That is accurate.”

“He arrested but he didn’ do it. The boy wouldn’t hurt a fly.”

“Police said he had an arrest record going back to twelve years old for selling drugs. Is that a lie, too?”

“He on the corners, yeah, but that don’t mean he go an’ kill nobody. They pinnin’ a rap on him and you jes’ along for the
ride with your eyes closed nice and tight.”

“The police said that he confessed to killing the woman and putting her body in the trunk.”

“That’s a damn lie! He did no such thing.”

I didn’t know if she was referring to the murder or the confession but it didn’t matter. I had to get off. I looked at my
screen and saw I had six e-mails waiting. They had all come in since I had walked out of Kramer’s office. The digital vultures
were circling. I wanted to end this call and pass it and everything else off to Angela Cook. Let her deal with all the crazy
and misinformed and ignorant callers. Let her have it all.

“Okay, Mrs. Winslow, I’ ll—”

“It’s Sessums, I told you! You see how you gettin’ things wrong all a time?”

She had me there. I paused for a moment before speaking.

“I’m sorry, Mrs. Sessums. I’ve taken some notes here and I will look into this and if there is something I can write about,
then I will certainly call you. Meantime, best of luck to you and—”

“No, you won’t.”

“I won’t what?”

“You won’t call me.”

“I said I would call you if I—”

“You didn’t even ask me for my number! You don’ care. You just a bullshit motherfucker like the rest a them and my boy goes
to prison for somethin’ he dint do.”

She hung up on me. I sat motionless for a moment, thinking about what she had said about me, then tossed the Metro section
back on the stack. I looked down at the notebook in front of my keyboard. I hadn’t taken any notes and that supposedly ignorant
woman had me pegged on that, too.

I leaned back in my chair and studied the contents of my cubicle. A desk, a computer, a phone and two shelves stacked with
files, notebooks and newspapers. A red leather-bound dictionary so old and well used that the
Webster’s
had been worn off its spine. My mother had given it to me when I told her I wanted to be a writer.

It was all I really had left after twenty years in journalism. All I would take with me at the end of the two weeks that had
any meaning was that dictionary.

“Hi, Jack.”

I turned from my reverie to look up at the lovely face of Angela Cook. I didn’t know her but I knew her: a fresh hire from
a top-flight school. She was what they call a
mojo
—a mobile journalist nimbly able to file from the field via any electronic means. She could file text and photos for the website
or paper, or video and audio for television and radio partners. She was trained to do it all but in practice she was still
as green as can be. She was probably being paid $500 a week less than me, and in today’s newspaper economy that made her a
greater value to the company. Never mind the stories that would be missed because she had no sources. Never mind how many
times she would be set up and manipulated by the police brass, who knew an opportunity when they saw it.

She was probably a short-timer anyway. She’d get a few years’ experience, get some decent bylines, and move on to bigger things,
law school or politics, maybe a job in TV. But Larry Bernard was right. She was a beauty, with blond hair over green eyes
and full lips. The cops were going to love seeing her around headquarters. It would take no more than a week before they forgot
about me.

“Hi, Angela.”

“Mr. Kramer said I should come over.”

They were moving quickly. I had gotten pinked no more than fifteen minutes earlier and already my replacement had come knocking.

“Tell you what,” I said. “It’s Friday afternoon, Angela, and I just got laid off. So let’s not start this now. Let’s get together
on Monday morning, okay? We can meet for coffee and then I’ll take you around Parker Center to meet some people. Will that
be okay?”

“Yeah, sure. And, um, sorry, you know?”

“Thank you, Angela, but it’s okay. I think it’ll end up being the best thing for me anyway. But if you’re still feeling sorry
for me you could come over to the Short Stop tonight and buy me a drink.”

She smiled and got embarrassed because she and I both knew that wasn’t going to happen. Inside the newsroom and out, the new
generation didn’t mix with the old. Especially not with me. I was history and she had no time or inclination to associate
with the ranks of the fallen. Going to the Short Stop tonight would be like visiting a leper colony.

“Well, maybe some other time,” I said quickly. “I’ll see you Monday morning, okay?”

“Monday morning. And I’ll buy the coffee.”

She smiled and I realized that she was indeed the one who should take Kramer’s advice and try TV.

She turned to go.

“Oh, and Angela?”

“What?”

“Don’t call him Mr. Kramer. This is a newsroom, not a law firm. And most of those guys in charge? They don’t deserve to be
called mister. Remember that and you’ll do okay here.”

She smiled again and left me alone. I pulled my chair in close to my computer and opened a new document. I had to crank out
a murder story before I could get out of the newsroom and go drown my sorrows in red wine.