omelet at his favorite café, with newspapers scattered on his table by the window overlooking the neighborhood’s busiest commercial street. He’d had an overcast, unseasonably warm morning to himself and was looking forward to seeing his nearly two-year-old son later in the day. But, no question, he’d made the classic reporter’s miscalculation—going home after his meal and answering the telephone without letting the machine pick up.
Cal Willis barked at him, “I want to run your piece tomorrow, Kramer. You said it was ready, didn’t you?”
Jamie hesitated, unsure about arguing with his boss’ inventive memory.
“Well,” he said. “I guess…”
“Good,” Willis said. “Get the piece in as soon as you can.”
Jamie hung up the phone and swore under his breath. The truth was that he hadn’t yet organized the scribble that was scattered in three different notepads. On the other hand, he knew he had enough material to squeeze out nine hundred words on the squalid conditions and care in a Brooklyn nursing home.
The tip had come from a friend who’d found his Alzheimer-stricken grandfather in urine-soaked pants. Jamie followed up with a surreptitious inspection of the facility, interviews with two other concerned families in the parking lot and with an official from an advocacy group for the elderly. The story was no prize winner. It probably wouldn’t even rate a front-page tease. But it had been weeks since he had generated anything remotely enterprising, a point he had been reminded of earlier that week—though not by Willis.
“Got anything good?” Steven Kramer had asked when they’d stepped out for lunch.
It was just like Steven—his older cousin by six months and the Kramer whose face Trib readers were well-acquainted with from his twice-weekly column—to make Jamie feel defensive about his output. It was also a subtle reminder that he owed his very existence in the newspaper business to family connections. Steven, conversely, had a degree from the Columbia School of Journalism.
Jamie wanted his story published but wished he’d had the courage to tell Willis he needed another day. After he hung up, he called his ex-wife to tell her that he had no choice—he had to work and would not be coming up to deliver his son’s birthday gifts. His excuse was airtight, entirely legitimate. He still was upset but not so much at Willis as he was with himself—and Karyn.
“Why can’t I just bring Aaron’s presents to his party?” he asked her.
She sighed.
“It would, you know, just be uncomfortable for me and by extension for Aaron,” she said.
He returned fire with a sigh of his own.
“You can see him on your birthday next month,” she said.
“I’ll be 32, a little old for a party,” he said. Sarcasm got him nowhere.
“Let me know when you want to bring the gifts—before Friday,” she said.
He hung up, collected the notepads from his desk, stuffed them into his shoulder bag and left for the office.
Four cups of coffee, two apple cinnamon granola bars and a small container of lo mein later, he made the 11 o’clock first-edition deadline, with about forty-five minutes to spare. He helped himself to a call on the Trib’s dime to a high school friend who had migrated to the California Bay Area. He flipped through sections of the voluminous Sunday Times, waiting for the fresh stack of Monday’s first edition Tribs to be dropped on a nearby desk.
Jamie made a beeline for a copy, glancing at the front page headline (DOOM FOR DEMS?) that hopefully raised the possibility of a mid-term rebuke of the Clinton White House agenda in the election that was two days away. He folded the tabloid and stuffed the lower half into the back pocket of his jeans. He scraped away a few stray noodles on his desk and rolled the greasy refuse into one disposable mass. He treaded carefully by Willis, who didn’t look up.
“Not bad. Need the copy earlier, as usual,” Willis said. He always needed copy earlier no matter what time it was submitted.
Willis’ dark, bald dome glistened under yellow-tinted fluorescent light. A platoon of cigarette butts overflowed an ashtray on the left side of his desk.
“And we had to trim,” he said.
“How much?”
“Fourteen lines.”
Willis, as usual, disclosed the damage with no apparent remorse.
Damn, Jamie thought. I spent so much time making the transitions work. Now it’ll read like shit.
Other reporters—Steven certainly—would have complained. Why shouldn’t he? Say something, Jamie thought. He didn’t. He reasoned that he owed Willis every line he’d published, not to mention the paycheck that supported him, his son and his ex-wife. Besides, his copy was late.
“See you tomorrow,” he said. Willis grunted a response that didn’t much sound like goodnight.
The decrepit elevator leading to the rear of the old waterfront building reeked of antiquity and groaned all the way down before shuddering to a halt. Jamie pulled the paper from his back pocket, opened it to his story at the top of page five and held it up to his face to read. He lowered his left shoulder into the metal door.
He’d been unwilling to walk the five blocks to the subway when he knew he’d be working late. That meant surrendering a cherished Brooklyn Heights parking spot to make the short drive over the bridge and lock up under the highway across the street. There he could count on the security of the post-midnight bustle, the fraternal, profane chatter of the drivers at the end of the production line as they waited to leave on their runs.
But something was different outside the building, unfamiliarity permeating the cold night air. There were unmistakable sounds of anger, the scent of disorder. One of the deaf guys who worked the presses was sitting in a chair in the dimly lit lobby, reading the paper.
“Something going on out there?” Jamie said, hoping the guy could read his lips. He just shrugged.
Jamie leaned a shoulder into the door. One step onto the sidewalk was not enough time for him to prepare for the force of nature hurtling toward him, about to tear through his flimsy newspaper shield.
In that immeasurable blink of time between detection and reaction, impact and consequence, Jamie could only create a vague mental recording of the brawny forearms that snapped the glasses off his face, knocked him to the ground—and out cold.
Chapter Two
“There’s some blood,” Carla Delgado said. She cradled Jamie’s head on her thigh. Someone from the small circle of onlookers produced an ice pack.
When Carla applied the compress, the cold jolted Jamie back to consciousness.
“Small cut,” she said, pulling back to inspect the damage. “Just a little blood.”
Eyes still closed, Jamie recognized the husky, accented mix of San Juan and New York. It was the sultry yet robust voice of the Trib’s office manager.
“He got lucky,” Carla said. “Looks like when he fell, his head landed on his bag and not the sidewalk. I don’t think it’s going to need stitches, just some ice and a Band-Aid. But the eye, it’s starting to swell up a bit.”
Caressing his cheek, she shouted: “Jamie, can you hear me?”
He opened his eyes. He wasn’t quite sure where he was but he liked the feeling of her hand on his face, the light but scratchy touch of her long fingernails. What felt even better was his head resting on the stocking covering her thigh. Her breath smelled of spearmint gum.
“One of the drivers ran you over.”
“I got hit by a car?”
“No,” Carla said, shaking her head, giggling a bit. She couldn’t help but be amused by his incoherence.