Linwood Barclay: Never Look Away

Brian slipped in behind his desk and asked me to close the door before I sat down.

“So, this prison thing,” he said. “What have you really got?”

“The company gave Reeves an all-expenses-paid vacation in Italy after the UK junket,” I said. “Presumably, when Star Spangled’s proposal comes up before council, he’ll be voting on it.”

“Presumably . So he’s not actually in a conflict of interest yet, is he? If it hasn’t come up for a vote. If he abstains or something, then what do we really have here?”

“What are you saying, Brian? If a cop takes a payoff from a holdup gang to look the other way, it’s not a conflict until the bank actually gets robbed?”

“Huh?” said Brian. “We’re not talking about a bank holdup here, David.”

Brian wasn’t good with metaphors. “I’m trying to make a point.”

Brian shook his head, like he was trying to rid his brain of the last ten seconds of conversation. “Specifically about the hotel bill,” he said, “do we have it a hundred percent that Reeves didn’t pay for it? Or that he isn’t paying back Elmont Sebastian? Because in your story,” and now he was looking at his computer screen, tapping the scroll key, “you don’t actually have him denying it.”

“He called me a piece of shit instead.”

“Because we really need to give him a chance to explain himself before we run with this,” Donnelly said. “If we don’t, we could get our asses sued off.”

“I gave him a chance,” I said. “Where’s this coming from?”

“What? Where’s what coming from?”

I smiled. “It’s okay, I get it. You’re getting leaned on by She Who Must Be Obeyed.”

“You shouldn’t refer to the publisher that way,” Brian said.

“Because she’s your aunt?”

He had the decency to blush. “That has no bearing on this.”

“But I’m right about where this is coming from. Ms. Plimpton sent the word down,” I said.

While born a Russell, Madeline Plimpton had been married to Geoffrey Plimpton, a well-known Promise Falls realtor who’d died two years ago, at thirty-eight, of an aneurysm.

Madeline Plimpton, at thirty-nine, was the youngest publisher in the paper’s history. Brian was the son of her much older sister Margaret, who’d never had any interest in newspapers, and had instead pursued her dream of having a property worthy of the annual Promise Falls Home and Garden Tour. She managed to be on it every year, which I would never suggest, not for a moment, was because she was tour president.

Brian had never actually worked as a reporter, so you almost couldn’t blame him for not understanding the thrill of nailing a weasel like Reeves to the wall. But Madeline, when she was still a Russell, had worked as a general assignment reporter alongside me more than a decade ago. Not for long, of course. It was part of her crash course in learning the family business, and in no time she was moving up the ranks. Entertainment editor, then assistant managing editor, then M.E., all designed to get her ready to be publisher once her father, Arnett Russell, packed it in, which he had done four years ago. The fact that Madeline had, however briefly, worked in the trenches made her willingness to turn her back on journalism-to tiptoe around the Reeves story-all the more disheartening.

When Brian didn’t deny that his aunt was pulling the strings here, I said, “Maybe I should go talk to her.”

Brian held up his hands. “That’d be a very bad idea.”

“Why? Maybe I can make a better case for this story than you can.”

“David, listen, trust me here, that’s not a good plan. She’s this close to-”

“To what?”

“Forget it.”

“No. She’s this close to what?”

“Look, it’s a new era around here, okay? A newspaper is more than just a provider of news. We’re an… an… entity.”

“An entity. Like in Star Trek? ”

He ignored that. “And entities have to survive. It’s not all about saving the world here, David. We’re trying to get out a paper. A paper that makes money, a paper that has a shot at being around a year from now, or a year after that. Because if we’re not making money, there’s not going to be anyplace to run your stories, no matter how important they may be. We can’t afford to run anything that’s not airtight, not these days. We’ve got to be sure before we go ahead with something, that’s all I’m telling you.”

“She’s this close to what, Brian? Firing me?”

He shook his head. “Oh, no, she couldn’t do that. She’d need some sort of cause.” He sighed. “How would you feel about a move to Style?”

I settled back in my chair, absorbed the implications. Before I could say anything, Brian added, “It’s a lateral move. You’d still be reporting, except it would be on the latest trends, health issues, the importance of flossing, that kind of shit. It wouldn’t be something you could file a grievance over.”

I breathed in and out a few times. “Why’s Madeline so worked up about the prison story? If I was writing about another Walmart coming into town, I could see her freaking out over lost ad dollars, but I kind of doubt Star Spangled Corrections is going to be running a bunch of full-page ads about weekly specials. ‘License plates fifty percent off!’ Or maybe, ‘Need your rocks split? Call the Promise Falls Pen.’ Come on, Brian, what’s she upset about? She buying the argument that this is going to mean jobs? More local jobs means more subscribers?”

“Yeah, there’s that,” Brian said.

“There’s something else?”

Now Brian took a few slow breaths. There was something he was debating whether to tell me.

“David, look, you didn’t hear this from me, but the thing is, if this prison sets up here, the Standard could wipe all its debts, have a fresh start. We’d all be able to feel a lot more secure about our jobs.”

“How? Are they going to get inmates to write the stories? Let them start covering local news for free as part of their rehabilitation?” Even as I said it, I thought, Not too loud. Give the bosses around here an idea-

“Nothing like that,” Brian said. “But if the paper sold Star Spangled Corrections the land to build their prison, that would help the bottom line.”

My mouth was open for a good ten seconds. I’d been a total moron.

Why had this never occurred to me? The twenty acres the Russell family owned on the south side of Promise Falls had for years been the rumored site of a new building for the Standard . But that talk stopped about five years ago when earnings began to fall.

“Holy shit,” I said.

“You didn’t hear it from me,” Brian said. “And if you go out there and breathe a word of this to anyone, we’re both fucked. Do you understand? Do you understand why anything we run has to be nailed down, I mean really nailed down? If you find something good, really good, she won’t have any choice but to run it because if she doesn’t, the TV station’ll find out and they’ll go with it, or the Times Union in Albany will get wind of it.”

I got up from my chair.

“What are you going to do, David? Tell me you’re not going to do anything stupid.”

I surveyed his office, like I was sizing it up for redecorating. “I’m not sure this room meets the cat-swinging code, Brian. You might want to look into that.”

I sat at my desk and stewed for half an hour. Samantha Henry asked me five times what had happened in Brian’s office, but I waved her off. I was too angry to talk. Despite Brian’s warning not to, I was seriously considering walking into the publisher’s office, asking her if this was what she really wanted, that if we had to abandon our principles to save the paper, was the paper really worth saving?