Jan Burke - Remember Me, Irene

I scrolled through the story on my screen, typed “Contacted by the Express, Moffett declined to comment on the allegations,” and hit the keys that file a story on the computer. I called Murray, having made a promise, and told him he might be interested in the story I had just filed.

John had asked me to let him know when I filed it, so I went into his office and watched as he pulled it up. He read it, keeping his face expressionless, which is something you get used to when you work with John.

His comments to me were strictly along the lines of follow-up, and I told him that I had already talked to Murray. “Moffett thinks he’s out of reach,” I said, and repeated a few of Moffett’s off-the-record ratings on the subject of the Brown Act.

John grunted in disbelief. “Moffett might be beyond the reach of the law,” he said, “but he’s not beyond the reach of public opinion. No politician in this town is going to want to be tarred with the same brush-they’ll all steer clear of him. And even if he tried to get hired somewhere else, a scandal here would make him too risky to touch. Scandal’s worse than a lawsuit to a guy like Moffett.”

“At least Moffett deserves his damaged reputation,” I said, thinking of Lucas. “And I’m not done with him. This isn’t why he resigned.”

We talked about my progress on that part of the story. John seemed less irritated with me now, probably because I had handed something in. Not just any something-we both knew that Wrigley would quickly calculate how many papers a “Secret Meetings” headline would sell.

As if Winston Wrigley III-“Duck and cover, here comes WW III,” the staff would say-had crossed his mind, too, John said, “Kelly, would you happen to know anything about Mr. Wrigley’s pager number being widely distributed?”

“Why, now that you mention it, he did ask me to give it to a good-looking rich widow. Is he being pestered by gangs of them now?”

“No, but he’s been paged by several funeral homes, pet hospitals, psychiatric facilities, and other establishments in the last twenty-four hours. And surprisingly, they always seem rather annoyed at him, and don’t seem to understand why he’s called, even though their numbers are on his pager. He said it was going off all night. He couldn’t figure out how to set it to the vibrating mode, so he finally put it in the glove compartment of his car. Then he worried all night that someone important might be trying to reach him.”

“A pager would hardly seem worth it, would it?” I said.

“He just might be seeing it that way himself, Kelly.”

IWENT BACK to my desk and checked my voice mail. There was a message from Lisa Selman, sounding forlorn, asking me to call. I did and got her father’s machine, and left a return message with my pager number. In spite of my glee over Wrigley’s torture, I had to admit the pager had been handy. Still, I bridled at the thought of being forced to carry one at all times.

I called Keene Dage and left a message on his answering machine. “Keene, you’d be surprised at what I’ve learned lately. I know you can tell me more. Let’s get together and talk.”

He’d probably ignore it, but you never know when being a pest will pay off. I called Jerry Selman’s number again, this time leaving a message for him to call me. I was hoping he could shed some light on his father’s ex-girlfriend. I thought of calling Corbin Tyler and leaning on him, too. Because I chicken out sometimes, I convinced myself I had better things to do.

I took a few pages of Ben’s calendar out of the envelope I had stuffed them in-end of July and early August. The pages were filled until August 8. That day was blank. So was the one after it. And the one after that.

When looking through the pages of the earlier months of 1977, I had found other blanks, but only one here or there. August 9, August 10, August 11. On and on, nothing. Claire had said Ben wouldn’t write if he felt depressed. This must have been a major blue funk. I went as far as August 16, the last of the pages I had pulled out, without seeing another entry. I was going to try to pull out the next set, but Ivy called to say she was about to send Nadine Preston’s records by fax.

I hastily put the calendar pages back into the envelope and carried it with me to the fax machine. The fax chirped, and the transmission began.

It was a long one, about fifteen pages, which caused complaints from a couple of people who wanted to use the fax machine. But bigger problems came from those who were curious about my hovering over it, shielding the pages of the fax so they couldn’t be read as they were received. I eventually grabbed a copy of yesterday’s late edition and propped a tent of classified ads over the receiving tray. The fax wasn’t important to any of them, but some of my coworkers seem to think that if we aren’t pesky with each other, we’ll get out of practice for the job.

As the last page was coming through, the fax machine made a high-pitched squealing sound and stopped working.

“What’s wrong with it?” I called to Lydia. Among the people who happened to be in the newsroom at that moment, she was the only one I trusted.

She came over, pressed a button that shut off the squealing sound-much to everyone’s relief-and said, “It needs a new cartridge.”

“A toner cartridge?”

“No,” she said, opening the lid of the machine. “This is a plain paper fax. Doesn’t work like the old ones.” She looked over to see Dorothy Bliss edging closer. “Buzz off, Dorothy. Irene gets it.”

Dorothy left sputtering, while I wondered what on earth Lydia was talking about. As I held my faxes close, Lydia pulled a gray object out of the machine.

“Hold this,” she said. “Don’t give it to anyone. It’s the printing cartridge.”

It looked like a square, gray, plastic frame; two long, enclosed spools were braced together at each end by thinner side pieces. Stretched between the spools was a thin film, shiny black on one side, dull black on the other.

Lydia glanced over, saw me examining it. “That’s the ribbon,” she said.

On the ribbon, there was a perfect negative image of the page I had just received. I suddenly understood why Lydia was giving it to me. I held it while she found a replacement cartridge and inserted the new one in the machine.

I went to my desk and sat on the fax pages. Now that I had both hands free, I examined the cartridge more closely. Somewhat like a film cartridge, one of its spools was made to hold unused ribbon, while the other acted as a take-up spool after exposure. I started to pull on the take-up spool. Out came a length of images, black and white reversed. The thin ribbon crackled, but was stronger than it looked. It reminded me of the carbon ribbon in an electric typewriter, but it was much wider. When I had all my pages, I took out a pair of scissors and cut them from the film. I got an envelope from my desk, and put the ribbon clipping in it, then placed the actual pages in a second envelope. Keeping hold of both envelopes, I took the cartridge back to Lydia.

“Thanks,” I said. “I never knew that the machine held a second copy of everything that was faxed here. Kind of dangerous, when you think about it.”

“People fax things all the time without knowing about that. Think about what happens at businesses,” Lydia said. “Someone does what you just did; stands by the fax and picks up a confidential memo, not knowing that anyone else in the office could open up the fax and read the image in negative. Or obtain signatures and credit card numbers and all the other sorts of things that people fax in ‘confidence.’”

She stopped talking, then said, “You’re pulling on your lower lip.”

“Thanks, Lydia,” I said numbly and went back to my desk. I wanted to read the faxes, but what Lydia had said about the machine stirred a memory.