Charm City

gets better every day.'

'A little self-examination won't keep us from nailing the story, Colleen,' Sterling said.

'It won't get us jack shit.'

'What are you so scared of? That Tess's investigation will lead us straight to your protege, Rosita?'

Tess sat on the sofa, feeling as if she were watching her parents bicker. Jack Sterling and Colleen Reganhart had an odd chemistry. It wasn't sexual, not like one of those television romances where hate turns to a clinch in mid-quarrel. This tension was the kind one expected from romantic rivals or siblings. And the object of their affection was the Beacon-Light, as embodied by Lionel Mabry, dear old dad.

'We all have our proteges,' Colleen told Sterling, exhaling smoke aggressively into his face. He didn't flinch or cough. 'We hired Miss Monaghan because Lionel's would-be-prote, Whitney Talbot, talked him into it. But that was last week, when Wink was alive and Five-Four couldn't eat at the Center Club without someone waggling a finger in his face for screwing up the basketball deal. Now we look brilliant and Five- Four can pretend a great enthusiasm for the fourth estate. Everybody's happy.'

'Lionel's not. And neither am I. We got lucky. It doesn't change the fact that tampering with Page One isn't something to be taken lightly, and the use of unnamed sources on this story has been far too liberal. Wink Wynkowski died without knowing the names of his accusers. Do you think that's right?'

'The bottom line is cash: this investigator's salary comes out of my budget-our budget, Sterling, the newsroom's budget-and it's a waste of money.'

Tess was tired of being discussed in the third person. Sterling hadn't tipped her off about this meeting for her to sit here meekly.

'Paying me is not a waste of money, Colleen.' The name felt strange in her mouth, but Miss Reganhart, for a woman not even ten years her senior, would have seemed stranger still. 'Besides, it's not something you can renege on. This morning, I checked with my boss, Tyner Gray, and he confirmed he had inserted language to that effect into our contract. You can play me or trade me, but you still have to pay me. Colleen. For at least two weeks' work.'

Reganhart looked stunned, a poker player who had plopped down a straight only to be confronted with a flush. Spike always said arrogance was the worst thing you could bring to a wager. 'Math don't play favorites' was how he put it.

'So you have a contract, too. And the union has its contract,' Colleen said at last. 'Me, I can be fired at Lionel's whim. If he can't get the tee time he wants, or the counterman in the company cafeteria forgets to put his salad dressing on the side, I'm outta here. Whatever happened to the idea of a meritocracy? Whatever happened to people doing their jobs without counting on all these…gimmicks?'

'A contract's not a gimmick. And the problem with meritocracies is they assume one or two individuals have any clue about what merit is, uncolored by their own biases.'

Reganhart slumped on the orange plastic sofa. She was neither as tall nor as large-boned as Tess had first thought. Unlike most women, she dressed to maximize her size-four-inch heels, seriously big hair, oversized and out-of-fashion shoulder pads tucked into her pea-green wool jacket. On the losing side of a battle, she seemed to shrink, like a Persian cat caught in a rainstorm.

'Assuming that you're telling the truth about your contract-and you can bet your ass I will check-then you can go ahead as planned.' She turned to Sterling. 'Now I'm actually going to use this room for its intended purpose. Could you give us girls a little privacy?'

As soon as he left, Colleen fixed a hard, blue stare on Tess.

'Your contract also stipulates thirty hours of work a week. I want you here six hours a day, Monday through Friday. And you're to check in and out with my secretary. If we pay you to work here, you work here.'

'No problem.'

'The problem will be how to fill your days. You see, I've just decided I don't want union representatives sitting in on your interviews with staff. The union will, of course, file a grievance over my decision. I'll fight it. I'll take it to arbitration. I'll take it to the fucking Supreme Court. And we'll end up putting the whole investigation on hold until the matter can be resolved, which should be well after your contract expires. So go ahead, collect your paycheck. Doing nothing is the hardest work you'll ever do. If you don't believe me, I can refer you to some reporters I've put in the same position. In the end, they all quit.'

'This isn't about money,' Tess said. 'What's your problem with me?'

'I don't trust you. I don't trust any friend of Whitney Talbot's. Jack Sterling's gunning for my job and she thinks she'll get his job if he forces me out.'

'Whitney doesn't want to be an editor. She wants to go to Tokyo.'

'I'm sure Whitney would be willing to forgo three years in Japan if she could become a deputy managing editor before she turns thirty. You may know your friend; I know ambition. How do you think I went from city editor in Wilmington, Delaware, to managing editor here in just five years?'

Reganhart dropped her cigarette to the floor and crushed it beneath her pump. Deprived of a prop, her hands flopped nervously at her sides, and she quickly lit another Merit. Tess had a hunch the managing editor was a collection of barely controlled tics-a reformed fingernail biter, a hair twister, a scab picker, an earring fiddler. Chain smoking probably kept her from tearing herself to bits.

Before Tess could make her exit, an excited Marvin Hailey pushed his way into the room, followed by Jack Sterling.

'We've got a good murder in Northwest,' Hailey panted. 'Really juicy. Two carjackers tried to take a minivan from an Orthodox Jewish mother with seven kids. She put up a fight and they shot her, right in front of the kids. The kids were so freaked they wouldn't get out of the van, so the carjackers left on foot, heading over to a fast food place on Reisterstown Road for fried egg sandwiches. Cops arrested them while they were still on line. One of the photographers heard the call on the radio and managed to get to the scene before the police. Great stuff. Amazing. But we need to decide how to make it big, how to tell people something tomorrow they won't see on the television news tonight. TV is all over this.'

'There are no good murders.' Sterling 's voice was gentle in its reproof. 'But Marv's right, we do need to throw a lot of bodies at this. Our readers will expect the definitive version from us, something more than what they'll get on TV tonight.'

'I assume the art department is already working on a map-where it happened, where the guys were caught.' Colleen dropped her fresh cigarette and rubbed her palms together, as if the story were a rich meal or a pile of money set before her. 'I want Bunky Fontaine on the community angle, rounding up the usual rabbis. And isn't Northwest the police district where the community was bitching about the decision to suspend foot patrols?'

She rushed from the room, Hailey hard on her heels like a happy puppy. Sterling followed, moving more slowly, but still following. Whatever their personal differences, Colleen and Jack could work as a team when the situation demanded it.

'A good murder,' Hailey had said, and to Tess's sorrow, she knew exactly what he meant. In her own newspaper days, she had done a brief rotation on the night rewrite desk. There, at a safe remove from victims and grieving relatives, one quickly learned that value system. Good murders, great murders, wonderful murders, all determined on a sliding scale of hometown, money, race, body count, and celebrity.

'We've got a good one.' How many times had she said the same thing? How many times had her fingers flown with delight over the details of someone's final moments on earth? It was small consolation to remind herself that Colleen was the one who had called Wink's death the ultimate orgasm, a climax powerful enough to bring an entire newsroom to a collective shudder.

Chapter 12

Whitney was waiting in Tess's bare bones office when she returned from the ladies' room. Sitting in Tess's chair, scrolling through files in Tess's computer. Tess had nothing to hide, but still.

'So did Reganheartless try to shut you down?' Whitney asked, without lifting her eyes from the computer