"Oh, shut the fuck up, Guy," snapped Colleen, who had gotten up and started pacing the room with a lighted cigarette.
"You know, you're not suppose to smoke in here," he countered.
"For now, I outrank everyone in here."
"For now."
It all began here, Tess thought, and now it's going to end here. Sterling had promised her the Blight would buy out the rest of her contract, as long as she agreed to appear here today, and, if necessary, present her notes about Rosita's reporting methods. Although they couldn't prove Rosita had slipped her story into the paper, Lionel and Five-Four were convinced she was the culprit. But she would go down for paying Bertie. It seemed highly unorthodox, perhaps even illegal, but Tess was so anxious to be free of the Beacon-Light at this point, she would have agreed to almost anything.
Five-Four's secretary opened the door and announced: "They're on their way." Colleen sucked down every drop of nicotine she could extract from the butt-end of her cigarette, then opened the window and tossed it to the street below. She had just slammed the window shut when Five-Four arrived, trailed by a chipper Lionel Mabry, absentmindedly whistling a pretty tune. It took Tess a few bars to identify it: "There Is a Rose in Spanish Harlem." Now, that seemed in dubious taste. He seemed to realize this, too, and the song stopped abruptly as Sterling and Rosita entered.
"Have a seat, Rosita." Sterling's voice was disarmingly gentle, but Tess suspected he was probably the angriest of all those assembled. Rosita took the chair at the far end of the table, opposite from Five-Four. The big chair seemed to swallow her and Tess was moved to something almost like pity-until she saw Rosita's hard, defiant face. The little reporter had waived her right to bring a union representative to the meeting. She had, in fact, forbidden the shop steward from accompanying her. She was so sure she didn't need anyone. She didn't think she needed Feeney to get the story, she didn't think she needed the union to keep her job.
Sterling looked down at a blank legal pad as he spoke. "I briefed you earlier on the evidence Tess Monaghan has gathered about your, uh, methods. We also have a signed statement from Bertie Athol that she was paid for information on the Wynkowski story, information that turned out to be exaggerated and false. And we can get photocopies of the papers Tess saw yesterday, the ones that establish Wink Wynkowski was the victim in his marriage, not the aggressor. We believe the cumulative result of these findings warrants your immediate dismissal. However, we are prepared to give you six months' severance-you'd only be entitled to two, normally-and assistance in finding another job. Some of us feel-I feel-we failed you here. Perhaps at a smaller paper, where the pressures to perform would not be so great, you could concentrate on some of the basics you appear to have skipped over in your career to date."
Rosita wasn't mollified by this offer of help, nor cowed by Sterling's talk of a generous severance package. "Those papers, assuming they're not forged, may prove Wink suffered injuries, but you can't prove he never hit Linda," she said coolly. "For all we know, there are other hospital records, and she chose not to show them to Tess. I stand by my story."
"Can the shit, Rosita." Colleen shook a cigarette from her pack, began to light it, then crumpled it in her shaking fingers, as if she hoped to absorb the nicotine through her sweaty palms. Tess couldn't figure out why she was so upset. Because she had been Rosita's champion, because Rosita was a woman? Or was it because Colleen would have to take the fall for Rosita's failings?
"This isn't some fucking high school debating society, you're not going to win any points here with this goddamn nitpicking. You made shit up. For your own glory, yet, because the story was good enough as it was. You just wanted a piece of it. Were you scared we wouldn't put your name on it if you came up dry? Or did you need a sexy clip for your next job?"
"I made an honest mistake," Rosita insisted.
Tess couldn't help being impressed at her self-assurance. Then again, if Rosita really was a pathological liar, she had been doing this all her life.
"Yes, I gave Bertie Athol fifty dollars-she's on a fixed income, she could use a little money. But I did it after the fact, to pay her for her time, not to encourage her to exaggerate. How is that any different from taking a source to Tio Pepe's or the Maryland Inn? We do that all the time and no one squawks. What I didn't do is tell Mrs. Athol to lie, to pretend to know more than she did. She told me the Wynkowskis fought tooth and nail, that Linda had been taken away in an ambulance on several occasions. Okay, I made a mistake, but not a huge one. This is a lynching party. You're using this to get rid of me because I'm close to my biggest break yet on the story, something much bigger than anything that's happened so far, and you want to hand it off to another reporter. Well, if I go, I'm taking my story and my sources with me."
Sterling's curiosity got the better of him. "What are you talking about, Rosita? Do you know something you haven't told us? There's nothing on the budget line about a new development."
"I don't tell you everything," Rosita taunted him. "But yes, I have it on good authority that Wink didn't commit suicide. He was murdered, probably by someone who had even more to lose than Wink did if the basketball deal didn't go through."
"Who's your source?" Whitman broke in impatiently. "The autopsy isn't official yet, and no one at the cops or the M.E. have indicated they think it was anything but suicide."
"She's still making shit up." Colleen's voice was shrill, almost hysterical in its fury. "Wink's death hurt the prospects of landing a basketball team, so why would someone kill him over it? I wouldn't believe anything she said now unless it was on fucking videotape. Even then I'm not sure I'd believe it."
Rosita just shook her head back and forth, like a head-strong two-year-old. "I'm not saying anything else unless you guarantee my job. That's the deal. Let me stay-I'll take probation, I'll even go home for a few days without pay-and you get the story. I go, and the story goes with me."
Everyone, even Five-Four, turned to Lionel then. The decision would be his to make. He looked at Rosita with large, sorrowful eyes, then stood, unfolding slowly. It was if someone new had entered the room, replacing the shambling Lionel Tess knew, the Lionel who seemed so stooped and blurry, his bones a collection of bent wire hangers holding up his clothes. Now he stood straight and tall, head thrown back. So this was the Lion King.
"You are not in a position to make demands, Miss Ruiz," Mabry said, his voice stern yet regretful, as if she were a daughter who had disappointed him. "At every turn, you have demonstrated a complete absence of ethics, judgment, and professionalism. It is one thing to risk your credibility, but you risked my paper's credibility as well. Don't you understand that Rosita Ruiz, by herself, is insignificant? It is Rosita Ruiz, Beacon-Light reporter, who gets officials on the phone, who convinces private citizens to share their confidences. You care nothing for this institution, you care only for yourself, but you are nothing without the institution. You used your computer skills to slide your story into the paper because you knew it could never withstand the scrutiny that Jack Sterling and I had brought to the process. In your conceit and your egotism, you embody everything wrong with journalism today."