Release date: October 26, 2006
Copyright 2006. Please do not distribute or copy without permission of the author.
There comes a time in every reporter's life when he ends up disgraced, humiliated, and sentenced to the Reporting Gulag. For me, that comes annually, like the vacation I somehow never take. This particular exile had to do with a story under my byline involving strippers, motor oil, and a certain distinguished city councilman -- the strippers were delighted, the motor oil company didn't care, but the city councilman was less than pleased, and before the last paper smacked pavement that morning, he was on the phone to my editor Tony Vincenzo, screaming. Tony yelled back -- that's what I like about Tony, he'll defend his reporters like a lioness defending cubs. Nobody tells his people what to do but Tony.
Of course, once he hung up the phone, all bets were off.
Now, I wasn't exactly new to this game. While he was still exchanging goodbye insults with the esteemed councilman, I grabbed my hat, recorder and camera, and hustled for the door in the hopes of seeming like I was in pursuit of a hot lead rather than fleeing the hellfire burning in Tony's office.
Fat chance.
"Kolchak!" he yelled. I hadn't quite made it to the door. I winced, and so did the lovely, elderly, gentle Miss Emily, who was sitting with her back to Tony's office and was therefore directly in the auditory line of fire. "What the hell do I pay you for? I should go hire my cousin's high school kid! At least she can write two or three grafs without landing us in Lawsuit City!"
"Hey, scandal sells! You know that!"
"Scandal sells, lawyers cost, and it can't exactly come out of your pathetic paycheck, Kolchak, which means it comes out of mine." He glared at me, leaning with his fists planted on his desk. "What about the Trinity bomb story? Where's the rest of it?"
"What rest of it?"
"Kolchak -- " His face was turning a spectacular raw-liver red. "The fiftieth anniversary of the first atomic bomb blast, and you turn in three grafs? Come on!"
"You want me to pad it, Tony? Because there's just no there, there! And besides, it's been covered by everybody and their trained mutt!" Vincenzo had come around his desk and stood in his doorway, the better to glare. Miss Emily bustled away from her desk to make herself some chamomile tea and -- not incidentally -- get out of the collateral damage area. "Look, Tony, I've got a hot lead on a murder over on -- "
"I already sent Ron," he interrupted. "No, don't even start, the way you've flopped me into the fire, you don't deserve a decent murder. You know what? I think you need a vacation, Carl. Someplace warm and sandy."
I had a bad feeling. When Tony proposes something that seems kind, there's usually a hook in the worm. "Uh, Tony ....?"
"New Mexico. Land of Enchantment. I want you to drive out to White Sands and get the real story, Carl. Something about the terror and tragedy that started that day when the A-bomb exploded. Something more than three lousy grafs. They're having some kind of fiftieth anniversary ceremony out there. Cover it."
"New Mexico?" I stared at him like he'd grown a second head. Then again, I'd seen two-headed monsters before. This was more hellish than that.
"Now, Carl!" He used his parade-ground yell, the one that meant he was at full boil. I winced. Miss Emily, stirring her tea, mouthed an oh dear at me. She was a sweet old broad, but as a reporter, she was a disaster. No appreciation for the art of confrontation. I winked at her.
"How about if I just do an internet search and -- "
"You have one minute to hit the street!"
"Keep your shorts on, Tony, I'm going, I'm going." I grabbed my digital camera and notepad while I glared back at him. "You want a fluff piece, I'll give you a fluff piece. Reams of paper!"
I tipped my hat to him and escaped into the hottest summer on record in L.A. It wasn't likely to be any better in the New Mexico desert.
On the whole, it just seems like I have more luck with writing about the strange than I do the straightforward. Less chance of, say, a zombie suing the paper for libel.
- continued in KOLCHAK: THE NIGHT STALKER CASEBOOK - "Stealing Fire"