of Kelly’s was the printers’ lair. As a makeshift union hall, it had its charms and benefits. Free rent and an occasional burger were among them. Kelly Murphy, daughter of a one-time Trib printer, made her real money off the buffalo-chicken-wing-eating editorial and advertising staff which stayed in front. She’d decorated that area in the popular sports bar motif. A new TV satellite dish beamed sports games from all over the country. But the back end she left alone, a jumble of bare walls and splintered wood tables with no coverings. Trib printers had the back of the bar to themselves, clubhouse of the lost boys.
Morris tore open the envelope and pulled out a letter on Trib stationary, addressed to him. He read loud enough for everyone—including Kelly twenty feet away at the bar—to hear.
Dear Mr. Kramer:
As you are well aware, the Trib is currently experiencing an unfortunate stoppage by its unionized workforce. As you also know, the strike was precipitated by employees following routine disciplinary measures taken by the Trib in response to work place intransigence, in accordance with specified conditions in past labor contracts.
Despite the strike, and whatever support the United Deliverers Association may draw in its conflict with the Trib, the newspaper’s parent company, Atlantic News Corp., has determined that it will continue to publish, without delay, and therefore expects all management employees and those still under personal or organized labor contract to report for work. Failure to do so WITHIN A REASONABLE TIME FRAME will result in the termination of existing agreements and the possible dismissal of said employees.
Sincerely,
Leland F. Brady, Publisher
Morris jammed the letter back into the envelope, ripping it in the process. The others at the table, waiting for his response, said nothing. A cute freckled waitress brought a menu for Morris and asked if anyone needed a drink. Lou pushed his empty bottle toward the edge of the table.
“Another Bud, thanks,” he said.
Lou avoided his brother’s eyes and checked his watch. His foot tapped a steady beat against the floor.
“By the way, anyone heard from Sean Cox?” he said. “He left a message on my machine, said he was coming down. He needed to see us about something.”
Nobody answered. They were anxiously waiting on Morris.
“Guys, I think this is just a formality,” he said, lifting the envelope a couple of inches and setting it down. “They have to cover themselves legally. On the one hand, they say we should report to work. Then they say within a reasonable time frame—but what the hell does that mean? They know we’re not going to cross a picket line. They’re expecting this thing to be settled by the end of the week.”
“Maybe we should have a lawyer look at it,” Red said.
“Why do that?” Morris said, reaching for the menu. “It would be a waste of money we don’t have. Brady’s bluffing.”
There was an uncomfortable silence before Lou said, “Mo’s right. The scumbag is bluffing.”
The others nodded and glanced nervously around the table. Not another word was spoken until the waitress returned with Lou’s beer. She asked Morris what he’d like to order, but he didn’t answer. He continued to stare at his menu which he was holding upside down.
Chapter Eight
Jamie actually swelled with rebellious pride as he chanted an improvised battle cry, “Don’t buy the Trib.” Any tabloid editor who submitted so unimaginative a headline for the first edition would have had it rewritten for the second. But Jamie’s newly discovered ardor faded soon after a smiling brunette in an unbuttoned black coat, dark business suit and very high heels made brief eye contact and passed by.
The strikers cut a circuitous swath on the way back to the Trib building, picket signs swaying as they marched through the Fulton Street business area, past the fish market and along the East River. Some in the lunch crowd seemed amused. A few passers-by volunteered a thumbs-up. But Jamie recognized this common response he had seen while reporting at crime scenes and accidents, too many places where the curious couldn’t help but gape at a spectacle while hurrying back to their comparatively sane lives.
In fact, Jamie considered himself an accredited representative of those who wanted to have a general idea of what was happening and not much more. He didn’t fancy himself a journalistic insider as much as just someone who crossed into the disaster zone on an abbreviated fact-finding mission.
Truth be told, he was never very much at home around the sudden and occasionally shocking messes that commanded a few paragraphs in the next day’s paper. Get through it, he would tell himself. Get what you need and get back to the solitude of your partitioned workspace, to the anesthetizing clatter of computer keys. There he could enjoy the challenge of organizing the chaos of the street, of life itself, into an orderly and publishable six hundred words.
By the time the Alliance contingent was within a few blocks of the Trib building, Jamie’s throat was dry. He was chanted out, starved for lunch. His limp fist, when he bothered to raise it, would not have knocked out a horse fly. He only feigned a surge of energy when Steven, working his way back from the front of the pack, found him languishing in the middle.
“So, what do you think?” Steven said, walking alongside.
“I think we’re on strike,” Jamie said, impassively.
“It’s going to be a fucking war, you know?”
“I guess.”
“Listen, when we get to the building, we’ll need to start organizing picket duty right away. And then set up a meeting to create a longer-term strategy because you know that moron Robbins hasn’t thought of anything beyond getting us out of the building.”
Jamie nodded obediently. He watched as Steven, his body typically caffeinated, rejoined the front of the pack. Steven had inherited his father’s wiry frame—he was almost six feet tall, with dark brown eyes and a prominent nose that fit his angular face. His straight black hair, worn stylishly long, flapped in the breeze blowing off the river. Six months past his thirty-second birthday, Steven could still pass for a scruffy Columbia undergrad with jeans ripped at the knee and his hand on the tight ass of some poetry-reciting coed.
When they both were in college, Steven would occasionally invite Jamie to a party at his off-campus apartment on the Upper West Side with the promise of an introduction to a cute freshman he might get into bed with minimal effort and charm. But Jamie hated the inevitability of having to reveal himself as an interloper from Hunter College, a city commuter school. College life had been a mostly graceless, sexless tedium that concluded with him graduating after five years as a communications major. He minored in film studies, which more or less had credentialed him to consult the movie reviews before choosing which one to see.
Right out of school, he took a summer job teaching basketball three afternoons a week to semi-coordinated pre-adolescents at a Jewish Community Center day camp. In the fall, he was hired to work afternoons in the center’s after-school programs. One afternoon it was cooking class—tapioca pudding and grilled cheese sandwiches left uneaten by the kids for Jamie to pick at and dispose of. Another afternoon it was dodgeball in the gym. Finally, he agreed to replace the Cub Scout den mother whose pregnancy required sudden bed rest.
Most of the letters Jamie sent out seeking full-time employment went unanswered. He found a full-time job selling shoes in a department store. He sold magazine subscriptions making cold calls. Two years after graduating from Hunter, he went home one day and, with all the rehearsed humility he could muster, asked his father to help him secure a job at the Trib.
Morris looked at Jamie as if he’d requested a ride on the space shuttle. Molly shot Morris a hard stare.
“Why couldn’t you?” she said. “People do these things for their children. At least ask.”
Jamie was hired within the month as a copy boy, with the promise of promotion to editorial clerk if he handled