Bruce DeSilva - Cliff Walk

Mason had taken to hanging around me, eager to learn the things about street reporting that they didn’t teach at Columbia-which was just about everything. Sometimes he got underfoot, but he was starting to pick up a few things.

“My father,” Mason was saying, “deeply regrets the recent staff reductions, but they were necessary to preserve the financial health of our family newspaper.”

“Yeah? Well, it’s not working. The Dispatch is circling the drain.”

“Perhaps, but it’s hardly Father’s fault. Every newspaper is having difficulties.”

“Of course they are,” I said, “and do you want to know why?”

“I’d welcome your opinion on the subject.”

“Because they are run by idiots.”

“A bit harsh, don’t you think?”

“No, I don’t.”

“Newspapers have fallen victim to forces that are beyond their control,” Mason said.

“Bullshit,” I said. “When the Internet first got rolling, newspapers were the experts on reporting the news and selling classified advertising. They were ideally positioned to dominate the new medium. Instead, they sat around with their thumbs up their asses while upstarts like Google, the Drudge Report, the Huffington Post, and ESPN.com lured away their audience and newcomers like Craigslist, eBay, and AutoTrader.com stole their advertising business. By the time newspapers finally figured out what was happening and tried to make a go of it online, it was too late.”

Mason stroked his chin, thinking it over.

“People like your daddy forgot what business they were in,” I said. “They thought they were in the newspaper business, but they were really in the news and advertising business. It’s a classic mistake-the same one the railroads made in the 1950s when the interstate highway system was being built. If Penn Central had understood it was in the freight business instead of the railroad business, it would be the biggest trucking company in the country today.”

“A provocative analysis,” Mason said. “Perhaps you might expand it into an op-ed piece.”

“Already did. Your daddy declined to print it.”

“Maybe if I had a word with him…”

“Don’t bother,” I said. “Writing about it isn’t gonna change anything. What’s done is done, and now thousands of journalists who devoted their lives to reporting the news are paying the price.”

Mason fell silent for a moment, then said, “Did you know this is Mark Hanlon’s last day?”

“Uh-huh.”

“He doesn’t want us to make a fuss.”

“So he told me.”

“Doesn’t seem right.”

“It’s the way he wants it, Thanks-Dad.”

“Lomax says he’s the best feature writer the Dispatch ever had.”

“Without a doubt.”

Earlier this week, while perusing the obituary page, Hanlon noticed that the death of a seventy-seven-year-old Pawtucket woman had been given only three lines. It was the shortest obit he’d ever seen in the Dispatch, and it offended him. So he talked to her only son, found the friends she worshipped with at St. Teresa’s, tracked down people she once made G.I. Joes with on the assembly line at Hasbro, and wrote a story that celebrated her life. The lead was typical of his elegant, unadorned style: “This is Mary O’Keefe’s second obituary.” It was his final story for the Dispatch .

I stood and looked toward his cubicle near the city desk. He was still there, going through drawers and placing a few personal items in a shoebox. At fifty-four years old, he’d reluctantly accepted the paper’s early retirement offer, knowing it was better than the alternative. I watched as he pushed back from the desk, rose on long, storklike legs, and shrugged on his denim jacket. Then he turned in a slow circle, looking the place over one last time.

Mason began to clap, the sound like gunshots in the cavernous space, and my opinion of him ticked up a notch. Lomax looked up from his computer screen, annoyed by the racket. Then he realized what was happening, pushed himself up from his fake leather throne, and joined in. One by one, throughout the football field-size newsroom, the survivors of the latest bloodletting got to their feet for a standing ovation. Marshall Pemberton, our fish-faced managing editor, rarely ventured from his glass-walled office that resembled an aquarium, but for this he made an exception. He waddled out of his door to join the tribute.

Hanlon lowered his head, tucked the cardboard box under his left arm, and trudged to the elevator. He stepped in, and the door slid shut behind him. He never once looked back.

Pemberton shook his head sadly, slipped back into the aquarium, and closed the door behind him. Once, he had managed the news department at one of the finest small-city newspapers in America. Now he was like a physician trying to keep his patient alive while the family debated whether to pull the plug.

Attila the Nun thunked her can of Bud on the cracked Formica tabletop, stuck a Marlboro in her mouth, sucked in a lungful, and said: “Fuck this shit.”

“My sentiments exactly,” I said.

“It’s what, a week now? And the state police still can’t ID the body? What is this, a Naked Gun sequel?” She paused to gulp more Bud. “Who’s running this investigation, Frank Drebin?”

“Far as I know, it’s still Captain Parisi,” I said. “Think he might be stonewalling you?”

She hit me with a steely glare. “He wouldn’t fucking dare.”

Attila the Nun’s real name was Fiona McNerney, but a Dispatch headline writer had bestowed the nickname on her, and it stuck. She was a member of the Little Sisters of the Poor religious order. She was also the Rhode Island attorney general. Both roles called for a more discreet vocabulary, but she was always herself around me. We’d been friends since junior high. Over the years, the smiling kid with braces and a sprinkling of freckles across her nose had turned gruff and gray. Cigarettes and a holy determination that damned delicacy had graced her with a growl that rivaled John Lee Hooker’s. Her red hair was chopped short like a boy’s, and she never bothered with makeup. God wasn’t the kind of husband who needed a trophy wife to boost his ego.

“So what’s the holdup?” I said.

“Parisi says Salmonella’s wife and daughter are both out of the country. He’s not sure where and doesn’t know when they’re coming back.”

“Makes sense,” I said. “I’ve been checking their place in Greenville every few days. It’s always dark and locked down tight. No one else can identify the body?”

“Apparently not. None of his dirtbag flunkies will even talk to a cop, let alone make an official ID.”

“What about unofficially?”

“Unofficially, yeah, it’s him-right down to the Navy SEALs tattoo on his right arm.”

“Maniella was in the SEALs?”

“He was,” she said. “He enlisted right after college. Ended up getting shipped to South Vietnam, where the SEALs worked with the CIA in something called the Phoenix Program.”

“What was that?”

“Code for hunting down Viet Cong sympathizers and slashing their throats.”

I looked at my hands and thought about that for a moment. I hadn’t realized Maniella had been such a tough guy-or that he’d served his country before stuffing his servers with smut.

“The ID sounds kinda tentative,” I said.

“Best I can do, Mulligan. Maniella was so secretive about everything that our crack detective unit can’t even find out who did his dental work. And he’s never been arrested, so his prints aren’t in the system.”

“How about the navy?” I asked. “They should have his prints on file.”