‘Sure.’
‘It’s murky stuff, and it goes pretty deep.’
‘Indeed. But you’ll need time. For travelling. And lots of money as well, presumably. For expenses.’
‘I suppose.’ Jimmy pauses again. ‘Look, I realise -’
‘No, no,’ Daitch interrupts, holding a hand up, ‘it’s fine. I get it. Time and money. That’s what you want. The two things we’ve notoriously run out of in this industry.’
Jimmy exhales. ‘So I keep hearing.’
Daitch stands up and moves out from behind his desk. He walks around to the front and then leans back against it. He folds his arms. ‘That’s the conventional wisdom these days, isn’t it? News has to be fast and cheap. It has to ride the clickstream to survive. So anything with the word “investigative” attached to it doesn’t have a prayer. Why? Because it’s expensive, it ties up resources, and more often than not it invites litigation.’ He shrugs. ‘It’s just the wrong model for the digital age.’ He leans forward. ‘Well, you know what? Screw that. Screw the conventional wisdom. When’s the last time anyone in this room paid attention to the conventional wisdom?’ He turns to Ellen Dorsey. ‘Am I right?’ Then back to Jimmy. ‘Look, my point is, Parallax is a national magazine, print edition comes out once a month, online edition we do what we can, and ad revenues are a constant struggle, a constant pain in the ass, but in the last couple of years you know what stories have made the most impact, where we’ve seen actual spikes in circulation? That’s right, longer, investigative pieces that we put time and resources into. Ask her. It’s pretty much what she does full time.’
Dorsey nods in agreement. ‘He’s right. The technology demands concision, the news reduced to a tweet, but people actually want more, enough people want more.’
Daitch stands up straight. ‘So, Jimmy, here’s the deal, if you have what you say you have, I’m prepared to let you run with it. We can at least talk terms and see where we stand, right?’
‘Sure,’ Jimmy says, ‘absolutely.’
He looks behind him. An assistant is coming through the door with a tray of espressos.
‘Besides,’ Daitch continues, walking over and taking the tray from the assistant, ‘this isn’t just some tawdry story about John Rundle getting caught out in a lie that we’ll all have forgotten about in a week. With Clark now up on a murder charge, it’s a lot more serious than that. It’s game on.’ He holds the tray out to Jimmy. ‘I think we’re in for the long haul on this one, don’t you?’
Later on, after he parts ways with Ellen Dorsey – temporarily, they’re meeting for dinner at a place called Quaranta – Jimmy takes a cab downtown.
He hasn’t been back to his hotel yet, not since he left it yesterday morning.
He needs to shower and change.
Last night he slept on Ellen’s couch.
Slept.
He didn’t sleep. He was too wound up.
Too wired.
Having been followed and harassed for most of the day, they had a difficult time at the end giving reporters and photographers the slip. As a reporter himself, Jimmy was, and remains, uncomfortable with this.
But still, as the cab glides along Fifth Avenue now – the Flatiron just ahead – it all hits him again, the sheer scale of what has happened.
And the fact that a little over an hour ago he accepted a job offer.
Or, at any rate, a commission.
For a series of articles.
What he can’t help thinking is how pleased the old man would be. Jimmy sees him now, reaching up to a bookshelf, pulling down a paperback, studying the cover for a few seconds, as though re-acquainting himself with something, and then handing it over with the words, ‘Here, read this.’
This being a primer, a window on a world, a form of code, an exhortation.
One of many.
The cab shoots across Fourteenth Street and Jimmy starts reaching for his wallet. He gets out at Eighth and makes his way over to Washington Square Park. It’s sunny and warm, with high blue skies. Was it only Monday that he sat here on a bench, facing uptown, trying to figure out what to do?
Three days.
It seems longer ago than that.
He sits on another bench now.
He still hasn’t figured out what to do, of course – not exactly. But he has a much clearer idea.
Just as he has a much clearer idea what direction his story for Parallax should take. It’s been forming in his mind for some time, coming into focus.
It’s a direct line all right, as he explained to Max Daitch, but one that goes far beyond the tawdry self-destruction of the Rundle brothers.
It’s a different route.
It’s the supply chain.
The blood-soaked motherlode.
Isn’t that what Susie Monaghan called it? In that last text she sent?
Which reminds him.
He takes out his phone, checks for messages – there are quite a few, with Maria at the top of the list.
He looks up, and gazes out over the square.
Where was he?
The supply chain. He needs to follow it. He needs to see where it leads. He needs to find out where the thanaxite ends up, who’s using it and what for.
Who has the most to gain.
There are other leads, as well. That third name, for instance – the old guy Dave Conway mentioned, and more than once. Who’s he? What was his role in what happened?
That’s definitely something Jimmy ought to chase up.
He holds out his phone, scrolls down for the number.
But first, before he gets down to work, there’s an important call he has to make.
Vaughan feels it already, creeping up on him as he opens his eyes, the post-nap crankiness – but today he has to fight it, keep it at an acceptable level, because Meredith is due back this afternoon. She’s been in LA attending a premiere, and she’ll be all sunny and starstruck, full of stories about celebs she met. The last thing she’ll want to encounter in her kitchen is a cranky old man whose idea of a movie star is John Garfield.
Not that he gives a damn, not really.
Vaughan was seventy-eight when they got married and she was twenty-six. He’d never been without a companion in his life, and at the time it had seemed like the right thing to do, affirmative, pro-active.
Or how about stupid?
It’s a vanity trap he’s seen plenty of other guys his age fall into – having a beautiful young wife on your arm when you’ve already got one foot in the grave. But then he went ahead and fell into the trap himself.
Trap.
It’s not a trap exactly, it’s an age thing. She talks a lot, which grates on his nerves, not that he blames her for that, and she spends his money – mostly on real estate, décor and clothes. But at least she isn’t a monster, like Jake Leffingwell’s twenty-four-year-old, Lisa, who insisted on getting involved in the business from the start and has dragged Leffingwell’s staid old company through the mud with all sorts of expensive and high-profile litigation. It’s ironic, he thinks, poor old Jake has aged about ten years since he married Lisa.
Vaughan goes into the study. He sits at his desk, and looks at the computer, but decides not to turn it on.
He’s had enough. All morning, wall to wall.
He thinks of poor Hank Rundle.
Henry C.
Talk about dragging a staid old company – and a respected family name – through the mud! By the time this is over, Clark and J.J. between them will have undone a century and a half of dedicated brand-building.
Pair of jackasses.
But as far as Vaughan himself is concerned, the damage is significant. There’s no question about that. At least it’s contained, though, it’s private.
No one is tweeting about the Oberon Capital Group.