Armed with this shocking bit of news, Warren knew it would not be long before word of Randolph’s arrest was whispered loudly into Alma’s one good ear. The hearing in the aging widow’s right ear had been gone almost as long as her husband.
Best of all, news of Grant’s arrest would be the perfect item to lead Warren’s column, “Heard About Town,” which appeared in the town’s only newspaper, The Sausalito Standard.
But, was it wise to be so hasty? Would it be a waste of a delicious piece of gossip that could be doled out more carefully, Warren wondered as the room buzzed with a half dozen different conversations.
Fortunately for Warren, the paper’s publisher, Rob Timmons, was not on the best of terms with Chief Petersen, having written one too many stories about unsolved residential burglaries in Sausalito.
“The guy’s a muckraker,” Petersen complained to Warren on numerous occasions. “If his family hadn’t lived in Sausalito for three generations, and his father hadn’t been the town’s fire chief for thirty years, no one would pay attention to what he wrote in that weekly rag of his.”
Rob had long known that Chief Petersen preferred he write about anything but Sausalito’s finest. Unfortunately, their bloated budget and the repeated bumbling of various cases made them an irresistible target. Among the citizens of Sausalito, complaints about their police department had long been a cause for debate. Nearly all of those who were home by nine and in bed by ten thought their police did an outstanding job. But those who lived a more active life, crossing the Golden Gate Bridge for the short drive into San Francisco for the symphony, the theater, or various social events, thought differently.
Traveling through Sausalito after eleven o’clock at night could be risky. Patrol officers, who were expected to issue a certain number of traffic citations during an eight-hour shift, would pull over vehicles for such offenses as a “rolling stop,” as opposed to making a full stop at one of the city’s endless gauntlet of stop signs.
The careful policing of traffic violations was particularly galling to someone who arrived home minutes after being stopped by a patrol officer, only to find their house had been burglarized.
Incidents like these led to a steady flurry of reader letters to The Standard complaining that, “Sausalito’s well-paid police are busily working speed traps while thieves are cleaning out our homes of jewelry and other valuables.”
Rob knew that his often-critical coverage of the Sausalito PD pleased many of the town’s most successful individuals. People who in turn would make a point to patronize local merchants, and who were not shy in expressing their support for the “good work of Sausalito’s community newspaper.”
Rob’s less-than-cordial relationship with Petersen’s police force was counterbalanced by his close relationship with the county sheriff’s department, where his former high school basketball teammate and longtime best friend, Eddie Austin, served as the department’s lead investigator.
Eddie shared Rob’s view that the Sausalito PD was “the gang that couldn’t shoot straight.” He and Rob also knew the situation was exacerbated by the two departments having jurisdictions that bordered one another.
It was always a tightrope walk for Warren—the what, where, when, how, and who of dishing the dirt. Many factors had to be taken into consideration. Keeping secrets from one, sharing them with another, while laying out a plan of attack. All the while remaining aware that telling too little meant not holding his audience’s attention. But telling too much meant losing control of whatever bit of gossip was in his grasp that given week.
Warren tantalized his loyal followers with a blend of half-truths, disregarding Mark Twain’s sage advice, “If you tell the truth, you don’t have to remember anything.” Understandably, Warren was always pressed to recall what he had said and with whom he had shared his noxious blend of truth and assumption.
Later that afternoon, hours after his caramel chicken was both praised and devoured, Warren sat in a small nook in his spare, one-bedroom cottage. His aging fingers were curled menacingly over a keyboard where many of the letters had all but faded from view. Fortunately for him he knew the position of every key by heart, and any letter hit in error appeared on a monochrome monitor that by logic should have gone dark several years earlier. Poised to strike at his prey, Warren ached to tap out the name Grant Randolph. But an uncertainty welled up inside of him, and he paused.
With little time before his deadline, he chose, as he had previously, to fill his column with a mix of his usual reflections: the amusing differences between cats and dogs; the need to keep our “small city’s streets tidy in spite of the daily abuse they encounter as hordes of tourists trample through downtown, carelessly discarding unfinished ice cream cones, ketchup packets, hamburger and hot dog wrappers!”
Warren concluded with a lament about the woeful absence of manners in today’s youth. “We were raised to respect our neighbors’ right to quiet and privacy. Has kindness and consideration disappeared completely?” Warren asked in a fever pitch, certain his latest offering would please adoring readers.
Each Wednesday, when The Sausalito Standard containing his latest mix of rumor and admonishments landed in every mailbox in town, Warren anticipated several calls from admirers praising his latest efforts. But while praise was the expressed purpose of their call, most had only one question: “Warren, what do you hear in your travels through town?” And since most of these callers were age eighty or older, Warren was in the habit of speaking up.
His usual approach was to start with a question: For example, “Did you know that Penelope Jones is planning to remarry?”
His caller might respond, “Why, I didn’t think her divorce had been finalized!”
“That was my first thought,” Warren added with a short laugh.
From that point, the conversation would devolve into speculation.
Warren: “Bill Butler is going to need a
