Charm City

because it seemed a little sleazy, as if she'd been manipulated by an unknown source whose agenda was still unclear.

'I know I wasn't asked to do any of this,' she finished. 'But sometimes my curiosity gets the better of me. You were the one who asked me what I thought about that story, on a gut level, and I really didn't have an answer at the time. Now I think it was the combination of solid reporting and sordid gossip that made it seem slightly off. Rosita's work undermined Feeney's at every turn.'

'Feeney is a friend of yours, isn't he, Tess?'

Uh-oh. 'Baltimore is a small town of 650,000 people. Everyone knows everyone here.'

'Do you know him the same way you knew Jonathan Ross?'

'No!' Shit, she was blushing. 'I mean, we're friends. We have a drink from time to time, that's all.'

'Don't you think it was an ethical breach for you to take this job, given your relationship with him?'

'Well, yes.' Something in Sterling's gentle manner tempted her to tell the truth-it would feel so good to get some of those lies off her ledger. Besides, she no longer felt a need to protect Feeney, not after his behavior yesterday. Still, if she veered from the official version, things would get tricky.

'I was told he had an ironclad alibi for the night, so it wasn't an issue.'

'You were told. Nice little wiggle phrase, there.'

'What does it matter now?' she said, feeling a little desperate under Sterling's questions. She suddenly realized what a good reporter he must have been in his day. 'Doesn't what I've learned today make it pretty obvious Rosita slipped the story into the paper? She's ruthless as hell.'

Sterling stood up, crumpled his pretzel bag in his hand, and flicked it at the trash can for a clean two-pointer. 'Your information doesn't suggest or confirm anything about the original incident. But I want you to come with me now and talk to Lionel about it.'

'Why?'

'Because I think Rosita Ruiz's days at the Beacon-Light are coming to an end.'

Chapter 23

It snowed on Friday morning, a heavy, wet snow with fat flakes that stuck only to the grass, but it was enough to throw the morning commute into complete chaos, as cars spun out in anticipation of spinning out and the local schools announced they would start one hour late, two hours late, then not at all. Tess had tried to take the bus to the Beacon-Light, thinking it might be marginally faster, but the bus had been sideswiped, which was seen as a kind of open lottery in most city neighborhoods, and pedestrians began climbing on until it was standing-room only. Finally, a young security guard got on and held the doors shut, as thwarted plaintiffs surrounded the bus and pounded on its sides. Tess squeezed out the back door, letting a few more potential plaintiffs on in the process, and hailed a taxi. In fact, her neck and shoulders were sore, but she had a hunch it was the Blight, not the transit system, that was at fault.

Although she was twenty minutes late, the meeting in the publisher's conference room had yet to start. Five- Four and Lionel Mabry, who lived far out in the suburbs, were still en route, and Sterling was sequestered with Rosita. Colleen Reganhart sat glumly at the table with Guy Whitman, whose face brightened when Tess walked in.

'Snow, and this weekend is Palm Sunday. It's certainly been a strange winter,' Whitman said, making conversation. 'Now, is Friday the good day for firing, or the bad day? Or is it neither? I always get confused. What do you think, Tess?'

Tess, who had been laid off on a Wednesday, thought every day was a bad day to lose one's job. How unexpected it had been, how ill prepared they all had been, when the Star's publisher had asked the staff to gather in the newsroom soon after their afternoon paper had gone to bed. As a coup de grace, the Star's corporate owners had not even allowed its workers the catharsis of putting out a final edition about their paper's demise. Tess's last piece of journalism had been a four-paragraph story about a water main break downtown.

Whitman answered his own question. 'Actually, there are several schools of thought about terminating employees. If you worry that an employee is prone to, uh, severe emotional responses, a Friday might be ill advised, as the employee could harm himself over the weekend. Others hold that Monday is the best day for firing from the management point of view; otherwise, the task would hang over the manager's head throughout the week, providing an unwarranted distraction. Violence cannot be discounted as a possibility. When the Los Angeles Times had to down-size by reducing its staff by more than a hundred people in a single afternoon, the company issued a directive stating-'

'Oh, shut the fuck up, Guy,' snapped Colleen, who had gotten up and started pacing the room with a lighted cigarette.

'You know, you're not suppose to smoke in here,' he countered.

'For now, I outrank everyone in here.'

'For now.'

It all began here, Tess thought, and now it's going to end here. Sterling had promised her the Blight would buy out the rest of her contract, as long as she agreed to appear here today, and, if necessary, present her notes about Rosita's reporting methods. Although they couldn't prove Rosita had slipped her story into the paper, Lionel and Five-Four were convinced she was the culprit. But she would go down for paying Bertie. It seemed highly unorthodox, perhaps even illegal, but Tess was so anxious to be free of the Beacon-Light at this point, she would have agreed to almost anything.

Five-Four's secretary opened the door and announced: 'They're on their way.' Colleen sucked down every drop of nicotine she could extract from the butt-end of her cigarette, then opened the window and tossed it to the street below. She had just slammed the window shut when Five-Four arrived, trailed by a chipper Lionel Mabry, absentmindedly whistling a pretty tune. It took Tess a few bars to identify it: 'There Is a Rose in Spanish Harlem.' Now, that seemed in dubious taste. He seemed to realize this, too, and the song stopped abruptly as Sterling and Rosita entered.

'Have a seat, Rosita.' Sterling's voice was disarmingly gentle, but Tess suspected he was probably the angriest of all those assembled. Rosita took the chair at the far end of the table, opposite from Five-Four. The big chair seemed to swallow her and Tess was moved to something almost like pity-until she saw Rosita's hard, defiant face. The little reporter had waived her right to bring a union representative to the meeting. She had, in fact, forbidden the shop steward from accompanying her. She was so sure she didn't need anyone. She didn't think she needed Feeney to get the story, she didn't think she needed the union to keep her job.

Sterling looked down at a blank legal pad as he spoke. 'I briefed you earlier on the evidence Tess Monaghan has gathered about your, uh, methods. We also have a signed statement from Bertie Athol that she was paid for information on the Wynkowski story, information that turned out to be exaggerated and false. And we can get photocopies of the papers Tess saw yesterday, the ones that establish Wink Wynkowski was the victim in his marriage, not the aggressor. We believe the cumulative result of these findings warrants your immediate dismissal. However, we are prepared to give you six months' severance-you'd only be entitled to two, normally- and assistance in finding another job. Some of us feel-I feel-we failed you here. Perhaps at a smaller paper, where the pressures to perform would not be so great, you could concentrate on some of the basics you appear to have skipped over in your career to date.'

Rosita wasn't mollified by this offer of help, nor cowed by Sterling's talk of a generous severance package. 'Those papers, assuming they're not forged, may prove Wink suffered injuries, but you can't prove he never hit Linda,' she said coolly. 'For all we know, there are other hospital records, and she chose not to show them to Tess. I stand by my story.'

'Can the shit, Rosita.' Colleen shook a cigarette from her pack, began to light it, then crumpled it in her shaking fingers, as if she hoped to absorb the nicotine through her sweaty palms. Tess couldn't figure out why she was so upset. Because she had been Rosita's champion, because Rosita was a woman? Or was it