The Scarecrow Read online

  “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.

/>   Only three other reporters showed up for my wake. Larry Bernard and two guys from the sports desk who might have gone to the Short Stop regardless of my being there. If Angela Cook had shown up it would have been embarrassing.

  The Short Stop was on Sunset in Echo Park. That made it close to Dodger Stadium, so presumably it drew its name from the baseball position. It was also close to the Los Angeles Police Academy and that made it a cop bar in its early years. It was the kind of place you’d read about in Joseph Wambaugh novels, where cops came to be with their own kind and the groupies who didn’t judge them. But those days were long past. Echo Park was changing. It was getting Hollywood hip and the cops were crowded out of the Short Stop by the young professionals moving into the neighborhood. The prices went up and the cops found other watering holes. Police paraphernalia still hung on the walls but any cop who stopped in nowadays was simply misinformed.

  Still, I liked the place because it was close to downtown and on the way to my house in Hollywood.

  It was early, so we had our pick of the stools at the bar. We took the four directly in front of the TV; me, then Larry, and then Shelton and Romano, the two sports guys. I didn’t know them that well, so it was just as well that Larry was between us. They spent most of the time talking about a rumor that all of the sports beats at the paper were going to be shuffled. They were hoping to get a piece of the Dodgers or the Lakers, the premier beats at the paper, with USC football and UCLA basketball close behind. They were good writers like most sports reporters have to be. The art of sports writing always amazed me. Nine out of ten times the reader already knows the outcome of your story before reading it. They know who won, they probably even watched the game. But they read about it anyway and you have to find a way to write with an insight and angle that makes it seem fresh.

  I liked covering the cop shop because usually I was telling the reader a story they didn’t know. I was writing about the bad things that can happen. Life in extremis. The underworld that people sitting at their breakfast table with their toast and coffee have never experienced but want to know about. It gave me a certain juice, made me feel like a prince of the city when I drove home at night.

  And I knew as I sat there nursing a glass of cheap red wine that I would miss that most about the job.

  “You know what I heard,” Larry said to me, his head turned from the sports guys so he could be confidential.

  “No, what?”

  “That during one of the buyouts in Baltimore this one guy took the check and on his last day he filed a story that turned out to be completely bogus. He just made the whole thing up.”

  “And they printed it?”

  “Yeah, they didn’t know until they started getting calls the next day.”

  “What was the story about?”

  “I don’t know but it was like a big ‘fuck you’ to management.”

  I sipped some wine and thought about that.

  “Not really,” I said.

  “What do you mean? Of course it was.”

  “I mean the management probably sat around and nodded and said we got rid of the right guy. If you want to say ‘fuck you,’ then you do something that makes them think they messed up by letting you go. That tells them they should’ve picked somebody else.”

  “Yeah, is that what you’re going to do?”

  “No, man, I’m just going to go quietly into that good night. I’m going to get a novel published and that will be my fuck-you. In fact, that’s the working title. Fuck You, Kramer.”

  “Right!”

  Bernard laughed and we changed the subject. But while I was talking about other things I was thinking about the big fuck-you. I was thinking about the novel I was going to restart and finally finish. I wanted to go home and start writing. I thought maybe it would help me get through the next two weeks if I had it to go home to each night.

  My cell phone rang and I saw it was my ex-wife calling. I knew I had to get this one over with. I shoved off the bar stool and headed outside to the parking lot, where it would be quieter.

  It was three hours ahead in Washington but the number on the caller ID was her desk phone.

  “Keisha, what are you still doing at work?”

  I checked my watch. It was almost seven here, almost ten there.

  “I’m chasing the Post on a story, waiting for callbacks.”

  The beauty and bane of working for a West Coast paper was that the last deadline didn’t come up until at least three hours after the Washington Post and New York Times—the major national competition—had gone to bed. This meant that the L.A. Times always had a shot at matching their scoops or pushing the lead on stories. Come morning, the L.A. Times could end up out front on a major story with the latest and best information. It also made the online edition must-reading in the halls of government three thousand miles from L.A.

  And as one of the newest reporters in the Washington bureau, Keisha Russell was on the late shift. She was often tagged with chasing stories and pushing for the freshest details and developments.

  “That sucks,” I said.

  “Not as bad as what I heard happened to you today.”

  I nodded.

  “Yeah, I got downsized, Keish.”

  “I’m so sorry, Jack.”

  “Yeah, I know. Everybody is. Thanks.”

  It should’ve been clear I was in the gun sights when they didn’t send me to D.C. with her two years earlier, but that was another story. A silence opened up between us and I tried to step on it.

  “I’m going to pull out my novel and finish it,” I said. “I’ve got some savings and there’s got to be some equity in the house. I think I can go at least a year. I figure it’s now or never.”

  “Yeah,” Keisha said with feigned enthusiasm. “You can do it.”

  I knew she had found the manuscript one day when we were still together and had read it, never admitting it because if she did she would have to tell me what she thought. She wouldn’t have been able to lie about it.

  “Are you going to stay in L.A.?” she asked.

  That was a good question. The novel was set in Colorado, where I had grown up, but I loved the energy of L.A. and didn’t want to leave it.

  “I haven’t thought about it yet. I don’t want to sell my place. The market’s still so shitty. I’d rather just get an equity loan if I have to and stay put. Anyway, it’s too much to think about right now. Right now I’m just celebrating the end.”

  “Are you at the Red Wind?”

  “No, the Short Stop.”

  “Who’s there?”

  Now I was humiliated.

  “Um, you know, the usual crew. Larry and some Metro types, a bunch of guys from Sports.”

  It was a split second before she said anything and in that hesitation she gave away that she knew I was exaggerating, if not outright lying.

  “You going to be okay, Jack?”

  “Yeah, sure. I just… I just have to figure out what—”

  “Jack, I’m sorry, I have one of my callbacks coming in.”

  Her voice was urgent. If she missed the call, there might not be another.

  “Go!” I said quickly. “I’ll talk to you later.”

  I clicked off the phone, thankful that some politician in Washington had saved me from the further embarrassment of discussing my life with my ex-wife, whose career was ascending day by day as mine sank like the sun over the smoggy landscape of Hollywood. As I shoved the phone back into my pocket I wondered if she had just made that up about getting the callback, attempting to end the embarrassment herself.

  I went back into the bar and decided to get serious, ordering an Irish Car Bomb. I gulped it quickly and the Jameson’s burned like hot grease going down. I grew morose watching the Dodgers start a game against the hated Giants and get shelled in the first inning.

  Romano and Shelton were the first to bail and then by the third inning even Larry Bernard had drunk enough and been reminded enough of the dim future of the newspaper busi
ness. He slid off his stool and put his hand on my shoulder.

  “There but for the grace of God go I,” he said.

  “What?” I said.

  “It could’ve been me. It could’ve been anybody in that newsroom. But they tagged you because you make the big bucks. You coming in here seven years ago, Mr. Bestseller and Larry King and all of that. They overpaid to get you then and that made you a target now. I’m surprised you lasted this long, to tell you the truth.”

  “Whatever. That doesn’t make it any better.”

  “I know but I had to say it. I’m going to go now. You going home?”

  “I’m going to have one more.”

  “Nah, man, you’ve had enough.”

  “One more. I’ll be fine. If not, I’ll take a cab.”

  “Don’t get a DUI, man. That’d be all you need.”

  “Yeah, what are they going to do to me? Fire me?”

  He nodded like I had made an impressive point, then slapped me on the back a little too hard and sauntered out of the bar. I sat alone and watched the game. For my next drink I skipped the Guinness and Bailey’s and went straight to Jameson’s over ice. I then drank either two or three more instead of just the one. And I thought about how this was not the end to my career that I had envisioned. I thought by now I’d be writing ten-thousand-word takes for Esquire and Vanity Fair. That they’d be coming to me instead of me going to them. That I’d have my pick of what to write about.

  I ordered one more and the bartender made a deal with me. He’d only splash whiskey on my ice if I gave him my car keys. That sounded like a good deal to me and I took it.

  With the whiskey burning my scalp from underneath I thought about Larry Bernard’s story about Baltimore and the ultimate fuck-you. I think I nodded to myself a couple times and held my glass up in toast to the lame-duck reporter who had done it.

  And then another idea burned through and seared an imprint on my brain. A variation on the Baltimore fuck-you. One with some integrity and as indelible as the etching of a name on a glass trophy. Elbow on the bar top, I held the glass up again. But this time it was for myself.

  “Death is my beat,” I whispered to myself. “I make my living from it. I forge my professional reputation on it.”