Paulina's telephone rang. She hesitated answering it, focusing instead on the morning edition of the Dispatch spread in front of her. Her hand gripped a red pencil. She was already worked up from having to explain to Bynes that a prank caller had impersonated her. That even though she thought Louis
Carruthers was an idiot she wasn't stupid enough to spew a racist diatribe to a receptionist.
She was making small notes in the margins, passages that could have read better, accusations that could have been a little more salacious without bordering on libel. The article on Joe Mauser's murder had been written by some hack in
Metro. Paulina's piece on Athena was on page three. Mauser got page seven. In the kingdom of selling newspapers, heroic cops were cow shit compared to rich heiresses. Way it went, and Paulina didn't think twice.
She looked at her caller ID, recognized the area code, figured if she didn't pick it up he'd just keep calling back. She picked it up.
"What?"
"Miss Cole, it's James."
"Hi…James."
"Hi?" Hi as a question. As if the word would offend her.
James Keach was a junior reporter at the Dispatch. About five foot ten, two hundred and ten cookie-dough pounds, with razor's-edge-parted hair that looked ready to recede the moment anyone said anything nasty about it. Just two years out of J-School, James never left the newsroom, followed reporters around like a beagle awaiting a biscuit, and was generally more of a nuisance than anyone you didn't either sleep with or work for had a right to be. The kid had pulled a solid C+ average, but his father was golfing buddies with Ted Allen and apparently promised to give Allen an unlimited supply of mulligans at Pebble Beach if his son was given a shot to learn the ropes. James didn't seem so much eager to learn the ropes as he did to simply climb halfway up and hang on for dear life.
Paulina had given James his very first assignment, which, she stressed, was every bit as important as any story she was working on that year. Seeing as how he'd spent every previous waking moment peeking around the watercooler in the hopes of overhearing gossip, she knew offering Keach a bone would make him salivate.
So last week, while laying out her eventual hatchet job on David Loverne, she decided to bring James into the fold. She wore her highest heels that day, a low-cut blouse, and a sweet new perfume called Sugar. James would have driven a lawn mower to Antarctica to report on penguin migration that day.
His assignment, she told him, was to shadow Henry Parker twenty-four hours a day. Find out where he goes when he's not at home or at the office. Find out who he speaks with and what they speak about. Find out who his friends and enemies are, what he has for breakfast, whether he wears matching socks, everything. She wanted to tie Parker into the Loverne piece, show how a combination of her father's philandering and Parker's snubbing drove poor Mya Loverne over the edge.
For years, Mya had been the consummate politician's daughter. Bright, attractive, never a hair mussed or sentence misspoken. She got good grades, and never got into trouble.
Her life had taken a terrible detour when she was attacked by a man who broke her jaw during an attempted rape. Mya fought him off, but she had never been the same. Paulina attributed this to her disintegrating family and love life, her dreams vanishing in a puff of lies.
And so far James was everything she wanted in a bloodhound: loyal, dependent and weak. If reporting didn't work out, he'd make a hell of a peeping Tom. Hell, just yesterday
Paulina learned that Henry took his coffee with skim milk and three Splendas. Not exactly front-page material, but Keach was getting close.
"So, James, calling to shed light on more of Parker's dietary habits?"
"Oh, no, Miss Cole, nothing like that." He paused. "So how are you this morning?"
She rolled her eyes. "I'm just fine, James. Skip the pleasantries."
"Right. No more pleasantries. Sorry about that, I…"
"James."
"Right. Anyway, I wanted to let you know that I followed
Parker when he left his apartment this morning. He made one call, then right after that another call came in. Then he went into the Gazette and I lost him. Maybe I'll see if I can get a temp ID, get into the building…"
"That's all right, James, your daddy doesn't need you getting arrested. Who was the first call to?" Paulina chewed the swizzle stick from her coffee, wondering if snorting the
Xanax would make it take faster.
"I didn't catch everything, but the guy's first name was
Curtis. Parker said something about them meeting up later this afternoon. They sounded tight."
Lovers? Paulina wondered. That'd be a hell of a story.
"And who called him right after?"
"No last name, but at one point he called her Mya. And from the sound of it Parker didn't sound happy to hear from her. Cut her off pretty quick."
The straw fell from Paulina's mouth. A smile spread over her lips. Mya Loverne. Paulina knew that after his acquittal,
Henry had broken up with Mya for a new airhead named
Amanda Davies. Tossing aside his former love. Apparently, the goods weren't so happy to be tossed aside.
Paulina had despised Henry Parker the moment she met him. Given a cushy job by Wallace Langston despite the experience of a fetus. And to top it off, the court jester himself,
Jack O'Donnell, took the kid under his wing. Paulina had sweat blood and tears over her ink for years, and Henry was being groomed as the heir apparent. The newsman of the twenty-first century whose balls had barely dropped.
And either directly or subversively, Paulina swore to be the wrecking ball that tore it all down. And if she happened to take down the Gazette with it, hell, that wouldn't be such a bad morning.
"James, you just made my coffee taste better."
"Oh, that's swell, Miss Cole, and again I hope you know how much I appreciate your trusting me with this assignment. I'm…wait, Parker's moving. I'll call you back when I get anything new."
"You do that, Jamesy, you do that."
"Hey, Miss Cole?" James said apprehensively. "Do you think I can file expense reports for my breakfast? The bagels at this place are like three bucks each."
"Not a chance, Jamesy. Talk to you later." She hung up.