Eyes of the Innocent: A Mystery (6 page)

The first thing I do upon sitting down is hit the caffeine. Usually it’s Coke Zero, but sometimes, in the early morning or later at night, I go for tea. I’ll drink Diet Pepsi if I have to, but only under desperate circumstances. I never drink coffee. I may be the only journalist in the world who despises coffee.

After consuming my caffeinated beverage of choice, I switch to noncaffeinated—usually water, to avoid dehydration. Then I jump back to the caffeine. I continue this alternating pattern until the writing is done.

The end result is that I pee like I’m about to run the Kentucky Derby. Once I get going, I can’t last more than about twenty minutes without a trip to the loo.

Maybe that sounds like an annoyance, but I’ve found it to be an essential part of the writing process. It’s during these many trips to the bathroom that the magic happens. Turns of phrase leap into my head, transitional sentences mysteriously appear, narrative structure makes itself apparent. The pee flows out, the words flow in. I’m not sure if this is some kind of cosmic balancing act—I try not to think about the physics behind it—I just know it’s happened too many times to be mere coincidence.

Clearly, I wouldn’t recommend this method for anyone with urinary incontinence. And it does come with some limitations: instead of worrying about writer’s block, I fret over sewer capacity; I could never consider a job as a foreign correspondent in Europe because the pay toilets would bankrupt me; and with longer articles, I end up getting so overcaffeinated I shake like an eighties hair-band drummer.

But I have come to accept over the years that this is how I do things. Some writers hunt and peck. I piss and peck.

Akilah Harris’s story was a twelve-flush job—more than I thought it would be, but by no means a record. When I was through, I decided to give Sweet Thang the lead byline. I figured it would help get her noticed in the office for something other than her breasts. Byline politics—who got them, whose name came first, who was appearing on A1, and who was getting buried on C5—were a constant source of chatter in the office. That, of course, was the only place people talked about bylines. I’m quite confident that the vast majority of our readers skipped right over them.

But for the small percentage who actually paid attention, the next day’s story would start “
BY LAUREN MCMILLAN AND CARTER ROSS
.” A lot of veteran staff members would have put their own names first, under the thinking that she was an intern—thus deserving of secondary status—and hadn’t actually written the thing herself. But I just felt even though I had been the one putting the words on the page, Sweet Thang had made the greater contribution to the story by getting Akilah to open up the way she did.

Besides, the quotes were what carried the story. The opening quote was perfect: “I know I shouldn’t have left them at home alone,” Harris said. “It’s my fault. It’s all my fault.”

What made it perfect was that it would keep Szanto off my ass. It established that Akilah was taking responsibility for the tragedy. Once she blamed herself, I could get on with the business of blaming everyone else.

It also set up the question that would hopefully pull the reader through my prose: what happened in this young woman’s life that led her to this rather desperate position, forcing her to abandon her young children? I took the narrative right up to this morning, her decision to make one final trip to the house and her reasons for doing so. Which set up the final quote:

“I just felt like it was the only place I could be close to my boys,” Harris said. “I knew I hadn’t been there for them in life so I wanted to be there for them in death.”

In the business, that’s what we call a kicker quote—and a fine one, at that.

By the time I was done, Sweet Thang had been back from the courthouse for a while. To keep her busy, I had put her on fact-checking duty. Generally speaking, one’s ability to check facts exists in an indirect relationship to one’s rate of publication. Those yawning, indolent sloths at monthly magazines can—and do—spend weeks fact-checking. At weekly magazines, they still have the luxury of a few days. At daily newspapers? It’s mere hours. If we’re lucky.

It was one fundamental vulnerability in any newspaper’s attempt to get it right on deadline. A source who lied convincingly could sometimes snow us. Fortunately for us, most of your hardcore liars—the real pathological ones—lie about lots of things. And you only need to catch them once for it to set off those alarm bells that indicate you should look sideways at everything else they said.

There was not much about Akilah’s story that could be verified one way or another. A spokesman for the hospital said she wasn’t an employee of theirs, but she still might work there—she could be employed by any number of cleaning services that had contracts with the hospital. The pallet company, which didn’t like the idea of its name going anywhere near a story like this, refused comment. But I suppose that was to be expected.

By the time Sweet Thang was done with those phone calls, I had a draft for her to read before I filed it.

“Oh, my goodness, this is soooo awesome,” she gushed after she finished. “You are totally going to have to teach me how to write like this.”

“It’s really nothing,” I mumbled false-modestly.

“Nothing?” she said, a little too loudly. “How could you say
nothing
? It’s totally brilliant—the way you work in all the important facts along with all those great details, the way you use the quotes, the way it flows so perfectly. I couldn’t write it that well in a week and you did it in, like, two hours.”

I often find it difficult to accept a compliment gracefully, so I just kept my mouth shut like the strong, silent cowboy I am and gave my best it-warn’t-nothing-ma’am shrug.

“No, really, I want to know how you did this,” she demanded.

I debated telling her about the frequent-urination method but decided such advanced concepts in fluid dynamics were better left to the professors at Princeton. So I gave my other standard writing advice:

“Writing is like a muscle,” I said. “The harder you work it, the stronger it gets.”

I immediately regretted the metaphor.

“I bet you’ve got the biggest muscle of anyone I’ve ever met,” she gushed.

I coughed uncomfortably.

“Well, I’m going to file this thing now,” I said, glancing at the clock. It was 5:45, which was getting to be the time of night when the acid in Szanto’s stomach compelled him to start demanding copy.

“Oh, definitely,” she said. “And thanks for giving me the lead byline. You totally didn’t have to do that.”

“You earned it. Without that interview, we wouldn’t have had a story.”

“That’s so sweet of you,” she said, then added in what was intended to sound like an afterthought: “By the way, some of the interns are getting together at McGovern’s after work for a quick drink or two. You want to join?”

“Sure,” I said too quickly. Then, in the second it took me to consider the implications, I added, “I’ll try to stop by.”

“Cool,” she said, giving me a little wave as she departed. “See ya.”

*   *   *

Sweet Thang wasn’t gone from my desk for more than fifteen seconds before Tina Thompson roared into the same spot.

Tina is our city editor. At most newspapers, the city editor is some frumpy bearded guy named Bruno. At our paper, it’s Tina, a too-hot-for-her-age thirty-eight-year-old with curly brown hair, a penchant for short skirts, and abs you could play checkers on. Her hobbies include yoga, jogging, and keeping me in a permanent state of confusion.

We were clearly … something. I liked her intelligence, her wit, her sarcasm. And did I mention her abs? We always enjoyed our time together. She obviously cared about me. She even saved my life once—long story.

But I couldn’t accurately say Tina and I were an item, because it had never been consummated by the appropriate adult gymnastics. It was difficult to speculate whose fault that was. There were times when I had clearly been invited to show her my floor routine but stumbled on the way to the mat. Other times, I participated in the warm-ups then withdrew my name from consideration before the competition began. It all made for a relationship that had never gotten past the preliminaries.

It was just complicated. What Tina wanted out of me was not companionship, commitment, or even recreational sex. She wanted insemination. Having spent most her life as a career-driven alpha female, Tina had recently decided she was going to try motherhood. And she was sufficiently type A in personality that she didn’t feel like wasting time with the whole dating-cohabiting-marrying paradigm. She didn’t want to fiddle around with anonymous sperm donors, either. As she explained it, she wanted her baby’s daddy to be smart, above six-feet tall, and have light-colored eyes—but didn’t want it to be some lanky, green-eyed homeless guy who managed to convince a fertility clinic he went to Stanford. That left her with six-foot-one, blue-eyed, Amherst-educated me.

She promised it was a no-strings-attached deal. She even offered naming rights. But I was still unsure about it. On the one hand, I had what Mr. Darwin would describe as the male imperative to spread my seed. On the other hand, I was a little conflicted about someday having to explain to Carter junior that his mother had been interested in me primarily for the fifty-fifty chance I’d pass on my bone structure.

Like I said, it was confusing. As was the fiercely territorial look she had on her face as she approached.

“Just stop it,” she hissed.

“Stop what?” I said, trying to summon my best innocent face.

“Oh, Carter,” she mocked Sweet Thang’s voice in a violent whisper. “You’re so wonderful. I want to write just like you.”

“What did I do?” I said, perhaps too defensively.

“Oh, Carter,” she continued in the voice, “you’re such a great writer. Why don’t you have drinks with me and then come over to my place and
write
for me all night long?”

“Oh, come on.”

“Writing is like a
muscle,
Carter? And which muscle is she supposed to think you’re bragging about? Your trapezius? Why don’t you just pull her into the supply closet and ask her to play Seven Minutes in Heaven?”

“Now you’re just being silly.”

“Am I? Or did I just see her give you
the little wave
?”

“That? That was not the little wave. That was just … a wave.”

She closed in and clamped her hand on my chin, lifting my face for closer inspection.

“I thought so,” she said, the whisper getting even angrier. “You have
glitter
on your cheek.”

“So?” I said, wiping both cheeks quickly.

“So Sweet Thang was wearing makeup with glitter in it. Is that just a coincidence?”

“Glitter has been known to become airborne,” I pointed out.

Tina stuck her fists into her side, glared at me for a moment, then stomped off. Three strides into her stomping, she turned around and jerked her head, like I should have known I was supposed to follow her. I trailed after her. It was either that or get scolded in front of the entire newsroom.

She went into the (thankfully empty) break room and was ready for me with an ambush when I entered.

“She’s hitting on you,” Tina hissed.

“Is not.”

“And you’re
flirting
back!”

“Am not!”

“I heard her saying you gave her the first byline on that story. You want to tell me if she was dump-truck ugly with an ass she couldn’t fit through an elevator door you would have done that?”

“She earned that byline—”

“Liar!”

“And besides, if her ass was that big she never would have fit in the booth at the restaurant and we never would have gotten the interview.”

“Don’t change the subject.”

“I’m not sure I know what the subject is.”

“The subject is that every male under the age of ninety in this newsroom has been following that girl around with drool pouring out their mouths for the last month, and you, of all people, are not going to join them. It’s improper, it’s unseemly, and it’s gross. She’s a child.”

I raised my right hand like I was taking the presidential oath of office and said, “I have absolutely nothing but the purest of intentions toward that young woman. And I have no indication her feelings for me are anything besides professional admiration.”

“You are and always have been a
dreadful
liar, Carter Ross. You’ve been screwing her with your eyes ever since she got here.”

“I don’t even think I said hello to her until this morning.”

“And let me guess, you let her tag along with you all day long because, what, you’re deeply concerned about the quality of instruction she receives during her internship?”

“Szanto told me to work with her,” I said, still sounding far more defensive than I intended.

“Oh, sure. Did Szanto also tell you to jump in her lap the moment she asked you out for a beer after work?”

Couldn’t exactly dispute that one. Tina sighed and waved her arms in the air.

“Look at you! You can’t even defend yourself! Of course you want to have sex with her. She’s twenty-two. She’s got helium balloons for tits. I should probably be worried if you
didn’t
want to have sex with her, because it would mean you were dead from the waist down, which would mean you’re absolutely no use to me. All I’m saying is, if you sleep with her, don’t even think about sleeping with me. I’ll find some other guy with good breeding potential to get me knocked up.”

With that, Tina stormed off.

I looked at my only friend in the room, the Coke machine. “Did you get all that?” I asked it.

The machine hummed back at me.

“Just to review,” I said. “A woman who has expressed exactly zero interest in a conventional monogamous relationship just berated me for flirting with an intern. Can you figure out what to make of it?”

The machine hummed some more.

“Yeah,” I said. “Me, neither.”

*   *   *

Before I could make it back to my desk, I was interrupted by a strangling sound coming from Szanto’s office. It sounded vaguely like my name, so I stuck my head in.