The Scarecrow

“You know what he wanted. He gave me notice. I’m out of here.”

“Holy fucking shit, you got pinked!”

“That’s right. But remember, we call it ‘involuntary separation’ now.”

“Do you have to clear out right now? I’ll help you.”

“No, I’ve got two weeks. May twenty-second and I’m history.”

“Two weeks? Why two weeks?”

Most RIF victims had to clear out immediately. This edict was instated after one of the first recipients of a layoff notice was allowed to stay through the pay period. Each of his last days, people saw him in the office carrying a tennis ball. Bouncing it, tossing it, squeezing it. They didn’t realize that each day it was a different ball. And each day he flushed a ball down the toilet in the men’s room. About a week after he was gone the pipes backed up, with devastating consequences.

“They gave me extra time if I agreed to train my replacement.”

Larry was silent for a moment as he considered the humiliation of having to train one’s own replacement. But to me two weeks’ pay was two weeks’ pay I wouldn’t get if I didn’t take the deal. And besides that, the two weeks would give me time to say proper good-byes to those in the newsroom and on the beat who deserved them. I considered the alternative of being walked out the door by security with a cardboard box of personal belongings even more humiliating. I was sure they would watch me to make sure I wasn’t carrying tennis balls to work, but they didn’t have to worry. That wasn’t my style.

“So that’s it? That’s all he said? Two weeks and you’re out?”

“He shook my hand and said I was a handsome guy, that I should try TV.”

“Oh, man. We gotta get drunk tonight.”

“I am, that’s for sure.”

“Man, this ain’t right.”

“The world ain’t right, Larry.”

“Who’s your replacement? At least that’s somebody who knows they’re safe.”

“Angela Cook.”

“Figures. The cops are going to love her.”

Larry was a friend but I didn’t want to be talking about all of this with him right now. I needed to be thinking about my options. I straightened up in my seat and looked over the top of the four-foot walls of the cubicle. I saw no one still looking at me. I glanced toward the row of glass-walled editors’ offices. Kramer’s was a corner office and he was standing behind the glass, looking out at the newsroom. When his eyes came to mine he quickly kept them moving.

“What are you going to do?” Larry asked.

“I haven’t thought about it but I’m about to right now. Where do you want to go, Big Wang’s or the Short Stop?”

“Short Stop. I was at Wang’s last night.”

“See you there, then.”

I was about to hang up when Larry blurted out a last question.

“One more thing. Did he say what number you were?”

Of course. He wanted to know what his own chances were of surviving this latest round of corporate bloodletting.

“When I went in he started talking about how I almost made it and how hard it was to make the last choices. He said I was ninety-nine.”

Two months earlier the newspaper announced that one hundred employees would be eliminated from the editorial staff in order to cut costs and make our corporate gods happy. I let Larry think for a moment about who might be number one hundred while I glanced at Kramer’s office again. He was still there behind the glass.

“So my coaching tip is to keep your head down, Larry. The axman’s standing at the glass looking for number one hundred right now.”

I hit the disconnect button but kept the headset on. This would hopefully discourage anybody in the newsroom from approaching me. I had no doubt that Larry Bernard would start telling other reporters that I had been involuntarily separated and they would come to commiserate. I had to concentrate on finishing a short on the arrest of a suspect in a murder-for-hire plot uncovered by the Los Angeles Police Department’s Robbery-Homicide Division. Then I could disappear from the newsroom and head to the bar to toast the end of my career in daily journalism. Because that’s what it was going to be. There was no newspaper out there in the market for an over- forty cop shop reporter. Not when they had an endless supply of cheap labor-baby reporters like Angela Cook minted fresh every year at USC and Medill and Columbia, all of them technologically savvy and willing to work for next to nothing. Like the paper and ink newspaper itself, my time was over. It was about the Internet now. It was about hourly uploads to online editions and blogs. It was about television tie-ins and Twitter updates. It was about filing stories on your phone instead of using it to call rewrite. The morning paper might as well be called the Daily Afterthought. Everything in it was posted on the web the night before.

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.