Читать книгу Capitol Crimes - H.L. Katz - Страница 10

Five

The Washington Post was the oldest daily in the Nation’s Capital and had long been the paper of record when it came to Washington politics. The technological advancements of the twenty-first century had made newspapers an endangered species. Gone were the days of the journalist working their beat to break stories for the morning edition. With instant real-time news updates accessible on numerous websites, a paper like the Post that could not deliver the very same news item until the next morning, had to find a way to compete in the real-time arena. For most dailies, the Post included, the website had become their anytime of day salvation, but the nuts and bolts of their revenue stream was still the morning edition of the actual physical newspaper.

Kacey Mercer had recently been promoted to the congressional beat at the Post after toiling in the obscurity of the City section since being hired straight out of college. As a sophomore at Wilkes University, Kacey was awarded an internship at the Times-Leader, the oldest local paper in her hometown, Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania. While there, she was taught the ins and outs of journalism from her mentor who was leaving the paper to join the Washington Post staff at the end of that summer. Kacey spent the next eighteen months at the Times Leader, while she completed her senior year in college, when out of nowhere she received a call from the paper’s editor, Bob Kravitz.

“Kacey Mercer?”

“This is she.”

“This is Bob Kravitz from the Washington Post. I’m calling regarding a possible summer opportunity for you at our paper.”

A dumbfounded Kacey could barely manage a word in response. “Yes?”

“Do you know someone named Marge Viviano?”

“I do, yes, Margie.” Kacey, still in a state of shock, walked over to her bed and sat down on its edge.

“She’s looking for a research assistant for the summer and we were wondering if you might be interested in applying for the internship. There is a small stipend that might help you offset some expenses, but I have to tell you upfront, it’s not much.”

“Umm…yes, sir, I’d be very interested in applying for it,” Kacey almost squeaked.“How long is the application process going to take?”

“Well, the way I see it, about another two minutes.”

Kacey was confused by his answer, “Two minutes?”

“Maybe less, if you say you’ll take the job.”

“You mean…?”

“Yes, if you’d like the job, it’s yours.”

Kacey sat in stunned silence, the phone pressed against her ear like a new appendage. Margie had been tough and demanding, a mentor, but also a great friend and confidante and, as far as she could tell, a terrific reporter.

“Kacey?”

“Yes, sir, I will take it.” Kacey jumped up off her bed, her heart pounding at a rapid pace.

“Great. You start on the first of June and it will run ’til the end of August. Does that work for you?”

“Yes, sir, it does…um…may I ask you a question, please?”

“Of course.”

Kacey, a huge smile on her face, paced back and forth in her bedroom too excited to sit back down. “You offering this position to me…do you mind me asking how this happened?”

“Margie’s one of our best reporters and she’s gone through four research assistants in three months. I asked her what kind of person she was looking for and she said a person like you.”

“A person like me?”

“Actually she said you, by name, Kacey Mercer in Wilkes-Barrough, Pennsylvania.”

“Wilkes-Barre, sir.” Kacey made sure to pronounce the city’s name slowly and clearly.

Kravitz laughed at her meticulousness. “Yes, Wilkes-Barre,” he repeated with the exact same enunciation that Kacey had used. “So we’ll see you on the first?”

“Yes, sir, I’ll be there.”

Kacey hung up the phone and let out a joyful shriek. She sat down on her bed, picked the phone back up and began to dial. Her first call was not to her parents or her sometimes on-again off-again boyfriend, Keith Springs. It was to Callie Wheeler, the best friend she had since before they both could talk.

“Cal, you will not believe what just happened to me, you won’t believe it.”

“Hey Kace…”

Kacey laid on her back and slid the phone under her ear. “I got a call from this guy, right, and he says he is so and so from the Washington Post…”

“What?”

“Listen, listen. He says do you know Margie? You remember Margie, right, Cal? Remember her?”

“The lady reporter from the paper back home?”

“Yeah, her. Anyway, he says do you know Margie, right?” Kacey could no longer contain her enthusiasm and would have been talking too quickly for anyone else besides Callie, who had learned to decipher Kaceyspeak long ago. “So he says, she wants you to work for her this summer as an intern, I say who does, he says Margie, I say why me, he says Margie wants you and he says something like she wanted Kacey Mercer from Wilkes Barrough or something like that, you know how people do.”

Callie laughed, “I know.”

“How cool is this, Cal? Can you believe it?”

“So wait, did you take the job?”

“Are you serious?”

“You took it?”

“Of course, I took it, who wouldn’t take it?”

Callie paused for a moment and did the math. “Did you say the Washington Post?”

“Yeah girl! The Washington Post. Amazing, huh?”

“Oh my god, you’ll be living here? With me?”

“Well in the same city—”

Callie interrupted her. “No, you’ll be living with me. My apartment. I’m already set up and everything.”

“Well I don’t know about where I’m gonna…”

Callie interrupted her again. “You think I’m gonna let you live somewhere else?”

“I just thought, ya’ know, you’re probably busy with law school and all...”

A third time. “Shut up. You are living here wi…” Callie stopped mid-sentence and suddenly broke out in uncontrollable laughter.

“What’s so funny?” Kacey asked as she listened to Callie laugh. She pulled the phone away from her ear, looked at it, then brought it back to her mouth to talk again. “What’s so funny, Callie?”

“I was just thinking…did you tell Pop yet…ya’ know that you’ll be working at the Washington Post?”

The line went silent as Kacey began to appreciate the reality of her situation. She sat up straight and leaned back against the headboard of her bed. In a soft, barely audible, voice, Kacey whispered into the phone. “No, I haven’t told him yet.”

Callie dropped the phone overwhelmed by laughter. She bent over, picked it up and slowly tried to regain her composure. Having missed Kacey’s original response she asked the question again,“Did you tell him yet?”

“No, not yet.”

“This is too much, Kace.” Kacey could hear her take a few deep breathes between her chuckles. “When do you have to be here?”

“June first.”

“Great, you can stay in the second bedroom, which at the moment is filled with a bunch of boxes and stuff…I can’t wait.”

“You sure it’s okay?”

“Stop…and no you won’t pay me.”

“Yes, I will.”

“Forget it and no, we’re not gonna talk about it later. It’s settled. You’re moving in with me and that’s final,” Callie said with a wide grin on her face. “I have to run to class, but there’s a part of me that wants to stay on the line just to listen when you tell your dad…he’s gonna go crazy.”

“I can hear Pop already,” Kacey said. “Screamin’ at the top of his lungs…that communist piece of shit paper…they can’t be trusted those Marxists bastards over there…”

Callie chimed in with her own imitation of Kacey’s dad. “Those friggin leftists…they should burn that…”

Kacey joined her and said it with Callie at the same time “…that shit hole to the ground.” The two woman laughed at the irony of Kacey getting a great opportunity at a paper she had never been allowed to read at home.

“Gotta’ go, good luck with Pop. It’s gonna be hilarious.”

“A regular riot. Love you, Cal-pie.”

“Love you too, Mer-maid. Call me later?”

“Yup”

That internship turned into full-time employment at the Post after she graduated from Wilkes University Magna cum laude and was assigned to the city section in July of 2005. Margie Viviano continued to work at the paper, but Kacey’s two favorite people at the Post were the paper’s editor, Bob Kravitz, who loved Kacey’s work ethic and persistence, and Walter Bloom, a thirty year veteran of the paper, who liked to remind Kacey that he was at his desk working on the Israeli withdrawal from the Sinai Peninsula, the day she was born in April of 1982. It had been almost six months to the day that Bob promoted Kacey to her current position. She waited until just before lunch to approach Bob about an e-mail she’d received the night before.

“Can we talk a sec?” Kacey asked as she knocked on Bob’s door and disrupted his solitude.

“What’s on your mind?”

Kacey walked towards his desk and handed him the one page e-mail.

“What’s this?” Bob said as he grabbed the page from her extended hand.

“I got it late last night. No idea who it’s from or anything.”

Bob read the three lines and handed the paper back to her. “What do you think?”

Kacey fidgeted with the pen she’d been holding, winding it through her fingers like a majorette in a marching band. “I have no idea, that’s why I’m coming to you.”

Bob leaned back in his chair and thought for a moment. “Check it out and see if there’s any truth to it. If it has legs, we can run the story and see what it flushes out.”

Kacey’s eyes widened just a bit. “You want me to do it?”

“It’s your e-mail.”

“What about Walter? Or Margie?”

“Not your concern.”

Kacey tried to contain her smile as she turned towards the door. “You sure?”

“Don’t make me second-guess myself,” Bob said with his head down already moving on to the next urgent crisis on his agenda.

Kacey ran down the hallway to find Walter Bloom. Walter was sixty-three years old, a father of four, and a grandfather to nine and counting. He still had all of the hair on his head, albeit exclusively white, wore glasses that he took off constantly in order to read and had a belly that, very shortly, was going to make his belt disappear from view.

She searched for Walter in his office and the newsroom before finding him alone in the break-room munching on a Kit-Kat bar. “You sure you should be eating that?”

“No,” he said as he swallowed the last piece then smiled at her. “What’s up?”

Kacey reached out to hand Walter the e-mail, then pulled back and reconsidered. “Wash your hands.”

“What for?”

“Chocolate.”

“Who are you, Miss Manners?”

“Have it your way,” Kacey said as she turned to leave.

“Wait.” Walter walked to the sink and ran cold water on his fingers while Kacey stopped dead in her tracks at his command. “What ya’ got?”

Kacey slipped him the e-mail and waited for his response as he read the short note.

“Where’d you get this?”

“No clue”

Walter wiped his mouth with his bare forearm. “Anything to it?”

“Bob just asked me to find out.”

Walter picked up a cup from the counter and headed back toward the sink. He turned on the cold water and watched it cascade across his index finger. “Normally I’d say it’s a dog except the Senator Lank thing intrigues me.”

“You think there’s something there?”

“Did Bob say it’s your story?”

Kacey nodded her head and smiled.

Walter, satisfied with the water’s temperature, filled up the cup halfway, then took a drink, but left the water running. “He say if we’d run it?”

“If there’s legs…”

Walter filled the cup again. “Nothing left to do but find out…if this thing has legs though, we’re talking huge story…”

“Like how huge?”

“Like front page, make the politicians piss themselves, huge.”

Kacey ripped the e-mail from Walter’s hands, leaned in and kissed him on the cheek. “Thanks, Walter.”

“Be careful, if there is something here, there will be plenty of people trying to destroy it,” Walter said. “And the best way to destroy it, will be to destroy you.”