Bad Break: A Novel

Chapter Twenty-One

I walk a roundabout way to my desk, slinking like a big cat trying to stalk prey.

But I'm actually the prey. And the stalkers are the editor corps. They hunt from their desks. I'm not angry with them. The beast has to be fed. Forty-five pages of news space don't fill themselves each day.

I will do my share: hopefully write a few news briefs — two or three paragraph short stories that often don't warrant a byline, make a few calls to my sources, follow the leads of the old veteran reporters and preemptively approach the editors' bay armed with an idea or two for shorter pieces that will address the progress into the investigation of the triple shooting — stories that will keep the pressure on both cops and crooks and let our readers know that we are paying attention.

If I'm lucky, those triple stories will only take a couple of hours and Limpett, Calibretti and the gang will leave me alone.

During a lull in the breeze-shooting, I spot Dan Brawley walking toward the cafeteria and follow him. Brawley is an up-and-comer. At twenty-nine, he's two years younger than me and by two decades the youngest member of our newsroom's senior management team — even younger and higher ranking than Donohoe, the recently promoted deputy managing editor.

And in the pecking order, if our executive editor Brawley is third in line to run the whole show. As things stand, once every three or four days, when Fleischmann, the executive editor, is traveling, in corporate meetings, or otherwise unavailable, Brawley comes up in the management rotation and finds himself in charge.

Journalists by nature are a consumed bunch. Some might say self-centered or lacking in self-awareness, but we aren't so much eaten up by personal angst as we are tormented by how to give every letter in every word in every sentence in every paragraph in every story fair treatment.

So, it's not difficult to sneak up on Brawley without him noticing me.

He is no exception to that whole consumed thing because I can only imagine that at the moment, he's probably deep in thought about how best to make himself look better. He's slick. He'll demonstrate as much by fighting for certain articles to get prominent display in tomorrow's paper, not because the content moves him but because he thinks like a mob boss and figures the advocacy, regardless of sincerity, will earn him a measure of loyalty from the reporters who wrote the lucky articles. Or maybe he's weighing leverage to make his case to Tim Kilgore, the managing editor (and number two boss), for funds to hire a new reporter or two. Either way, his mind is likely filled with thoughts of self-promotion.

I stand next to Brawley for thirty seconds before he realizes I'm practically inside his shirt.

On cue, he starts and yelps simultaneously. "Sheeze la frickin' weeze, Wilson! What the Hell is wrong with you?"

"Sorry. I just wanted to run something by you."

He's cocky, but not stupid.

Brawley is suspicious of my cryptic approach. And I know what that management brain of his is churning out: Why is Wilson coming to me, instead of his direct supervisor?

But I don't give him long to dwell on the unasked question.

"You're getting coffee, right? No sugar, no cream? Just how I like mine, black and bitter, like me. Get it? Let's sit on the deck for a minute."

I make one of my typically-stating-the-obvious mental notes along the way that he doesn't resist or ask me for more information before proceeding. That's a good sign.

But our butts hardly drop into the patio chairs, before Brawley lets loose on me.

"I don't like you, Blake Angelo Wilson! I don't like how you operate. I don't like how you taunt your editors. I don't like how you gleefully show your scorn for authority. And, and...I don't like how you try to play to my sympathies because I too am Black!"