Charm City

pronounced dead at the scene. No note was found, but a Bruce Springsteen song, ' Thunder Road,' was playing on the car stereo when police arrived.

Although Wynkowski had always acknowledged his time at the Montrose School for juvenile offenders, he had characterized his crimes as 'one notch up from Andy Hardy-a little vandalism, a little larceny.' Sealed juvenile records had made it impossible to contradict this account before now.

But a former Baltimore man now living in Georgia told the Beacon-Light this week that Wynkowski had bragged about causing a man's death while incarcerated at Montrose. The man-who passed a polygraph test, but asked that his name not be revealed because his own delinquency is not widely known among his associates in Georgia-said Wynkowski claimed to have beaten the man to death during a hold-up.

A source familiar with the state's juvenile justice system yesterday confirmed that Wynkowski was sent to Montrose on a manslaughter charge, although the circumstances were slightly different. Nathaniel Paige, a shopkeeper on Gold Street, was pistol-whipped during a hold-up there in the summer of 1969, but the official cause of death was a heart attack. Under Maryland law, Wink, who had been involved in several minor crimes before this, was charged with manslaughter.

Contacted yesterday for comment, Wynkowski said he wanted to speak to his lawyer and would have no statement until Sunday morning. He was found dead 12 hours later, and his lawyer, Michael Ellenham, said he had not been in contact with his client all day.

Tess skimmed through the rest of the story, but most of its length was devoted to the Georgia interview and a rehashing of what the paper had already reported. She tried to work out the timing in her mind. If police had been called at 10:30, Feeney couldn't have arrived at the scene before 11-just enough time to call in two paragraphs to the night rewrite, who had done a pretty good job blending the new information into the existing story. Under the circumstances, the Beacon-Light had been lucky to get the story at all.

'What would you want to be listening to as you die?' asked Crow, for whom all news tended to be abstract, impersonal. 'I don't think I'd pick Springsteen. Yet it would be unseemly to die with Poe White Trash playing. Everyone would assume I did it because I was a failure at my music. The blues would be too obvious, opera too pretentious. Hey, maybe that Chet Baker album you're always playing. ‘It Could Happen to You.''

'Sounds good,' Tess muttered absently, rereading the story in case she had missed anything. No suicide note. Blood alcohol 0.1-too drunk to drive, but not drunk enough to die. Cause of death pending toxicology reports, due in two weeks, but that was a pro forma check for drugs that the blood test would have missed. Mrs. Wynkowski and the children were at her mother's place in New Jersey, where they had been spending the weekend.

Tess and Crow sat in silence, except for the occasional cracking sound from his mouthful of ice. So one of the city's longest winning streaks had come to an end in a chugging Mustang, with a soundtrack by Bruce Springsteen. Tess knew she should be thinking deep thoughts about the past and personal responsibility, about what it was like for a beloved figure to face the loss of the public adoration he enjoyed.

But all she could wonder was if she still had a contract with the Beacon-Light.

Chapter 11

When Tess switched on her computer at the Beacon-Light Monday morning, she found three messages waiting: a perfunctory note from Dorie Starnes about basic computer commands she might need, another lunch invitation from Guy Whitman, and a polite, professional welcome from Jack Sterling. 'Welcome aboard,' he had written. 'Let me know if I can do anything.' Sent on Friday afternoon. Did the offer still stand? And was there anything personal to be gleaned from the impersonal words? Even as she was deconstructing his first message, another notice from him flashed across the top of her screen: 'U there? 10:30 pre-meeting to daily 11 o'clock in Colleen's second office. BE THERE. But U didn't hear it from me.'

Like all newspaper editors, the Blight bosses met constantly, in various sets and subsets. There were two news meetings a day, one feature meeting, two metro meetings, a Page One meeting, and a sports meeting. When the editors weren't in formal meetings, they were in informal ones, dashing into offices and shutting doors to whisper conspiratorially. The 11 o'clock was the first news meeting of the day, mandatory for all department heads. But what was a pre-meeting? And where was Colleen's second office? Jack Sterling gave her too much credit, Tess thought, dialing Whitney's extension.

'This is Whitney Talbot.' Tess waited a second, unsure if she had reached a real person. Whitney was one of those people who sounded exactly like her voice mail.

'Well, is someone there?' Whitney snapped impatiently.

'Hey, it's Tess. I'm here. But I'm not sure for how long. I've just been summoned to Colleen Reganhart's second office, whatever that is.'

'Look, Reganhart might act as if she has the authority to dump you, but she doesn't. Only Lionel or Five-Four can terminate you. Don't let her bluff you.' Whitney actually sounded concerned, as if Tess were still an under- employed bookstore clerk who needed the Blight's fee to keep body and soul together.

'Don't worry, I have a little advantage where that's concerned. But I'm not sure what I can do for the Blight, with the union on my back and Wink dead. Obviously, he's not going to bring suit now, so what's the point?'

'You were hired to look into the computer sabotage, remember? Wink's death doesn't change the fact that someone, most likely Rosita, compromised the paper's integrity. What would the paper look like if every reporter greased the skids for her pet project?'

'Look, I'd better find this meeting. Where can I find Reganhart?'

'On the fourth floor, behind the door marked ‘Ladies,' an irony that quickly becomes apparent in any prolonged discussion with Colleen Reganhart.'

The fourth-floor women's bathroom was a suite with a large anteroom separated from the facilities by the kind of double doors usually associated with saloons. Tess, pushing her way into the sitting area at 10:25, reflected that the size, placement, and fixtures of such restrooms could give future archaeologists much to ponder about the late twentieth-century workplace.

Upstairs, where men had dominated the news pages throughout the Blight's history, the women's bathroom was an afterthought, a cramped, windowless room carved from a corner of the original men's room, barely large enough for two stalls. But this bathroom near the former Woman's Page was a two- room suite suitable for an attack of the vapors. The lounge had a long sofa and two upholstered chairs. It even had a vending machine, stocked with sanitary napkins and pantyhose in formidably large sizes. The dispenser, dusty and dented, didn't look as if it had been restocked since the late 1960s, about the same time the Blight had stopped discriminating against black and Jewish brides on the wedding page. Tess took her place on a banana-yellow vinyl chair and waited.

At precisely 10:30, Colleen walked in, lighting a cigarette and taking a deep drag before the door swung shut behind her.

'It's against the law to smoke in Maryland offices,' Tess said helpfully.

'If you have a problem with cigarette smoke you can leave. In fact, you can leave even if you don't have a problem with cigarette smoke.'

Jack Sterling came through the swinging door and did a not-bad job of feigning surprise to see Tess there.

'Given that Miss Monaghan was to be the subject of our discussion here, don't you think she should stay?' he asked. Very cool, Tess thought.

'No, I don't. I think she should go to her desk, clean it out, and get the fuck out of here. We don't need her. We never needed her. This weekend's story makes the first one look like a goddamn puff piece. Who cares any more how it got in the paper? It led to the second story, which is even better.'

'What if-and I'm just playing devil's advocate here-what if his widow still tries to sue?'

'Let her. You can't libel the dead. Besides, we didn't libel anyone. Wink's suicide proves we don't know how much shit he had to hide. This is a goddamn fucking purple orgasm of a story, and it