“Yeah, a lot. They’ll discharge her tomorrow. Thanks again, Professor.”
“See you in class.”
Goodbyes were exchanged and the girl left.
“You enjoy teaching?” Nicole asked.
“I do. I like to think I make a difference.” He laughed. “How pretentious was that?”
“Six out of ten.”
“It’s fun. And the kids keep me in my place.”
“That I’ll buy. Now. We were talking. If the Kessler lead pans out, I get a story of my own. You guarantee it?”
“Yes. I promise. Agreed?”
“Not yet,” she said and though he believed she was joking, there was no smile on Nicole’s face. “I want front page, lead placement. Next issue. My byline. Solo. Not a ‘with’ or an ‘and.’”
He hadn’t figured on all of those conditions. But it was clear to him she wasn’t backing down.
Finally Powers said, “Okay. You want to shake?”
“I believe you.”
“Well, thanks for that.”
Now, she smiled.
Leaning forward, feeling his heart thump a fast drumbeat. “What do you have?”
“So, in the bar. Kessler was on the phone. I heard him say, ‘It’s a perfect plot. You did a good job. Thanks.’ And then he hung up.”
Powers felt a ping in his gut. Kessler was talking about a conspiracy... Tasty, very tasty indeed.
“What then?”
“He turned to his sister and said, ‘It’s being taken care of. A few obstacles, but it’s going to work.’”
Powers muttered, “Plot...” He loved the sound of the word. “Any idea who he was talking to? On the phone?”
“No. I was afraid they’d turn around and see me eavesdropping so I walked up to the table with the check before they said anything else. He signed and left.”
Powers leaned back in his chair and looked out the window of the bar, tugging absently at his sleeve. While most journalists in this age of new media wore jeans, T-shirts, and, for formal occasions, dark sports coats, Powers didn’t go for the scruffy look. Today, as always, he wore a navy blue suit and button-down, powder-blue shirt. Even when alone, he donned outfits like this, as a reminder of the noble job he was doing, a reminder that he was better than the people he went after in his blog, those guilty of corruption, avarice, deceit.
People like Kessler.
What kind of plot was he up to?
There was no shortage of possibilities.
Michael Kessler was a New York real-estate developer, bankrolled by his father, an industrialist, who died a decade ago. But while Warren — Dad — was clever and hardworking, his son added a new attribute to those inherited traits: ruthlessness. He believed that people in the New York City area desired living space the way addicts desired liquor or crack, and he was all too happy to exploit that need. From inner-city tenements in Brownsville and Bed-Stuy to quaint walk-ups in the Village to penthouses above the clouds in Manhattan and Jersey, Kessler looked at the properties he owned like battlefields in the war to become the richest developer on the face of the earth. All was fair. Hiring private eyes to suggest (not even prove) that tenants were circumventing rent-control laws, cutting corners on heating and gas and rodent control and air conditioning, evicting without mercy, ordering unnecessary but noisy construction at all hours to harass troublemaking tenants... it was all part of Kessler’s business model.
On the other hand, if you were a politician or regulator who made sure Kessler Development got the infrastructure or zoning ruling that favored it, well, you could count on a well-below-market-value apartment in a neighborhood of your choice.
Prosecutors had brought hundreds of actions for unfair housing practices, dangerous conditions, and questionable treatment of his tenants. But while Kessler lost a civil suit occasionally, no D.A. had been able to make a criminal charge stick. Kessler was not otherwise a monster, donating large sums to New York’s cultural institutions. But when it came to his business — his “lifeblood,” as he described it, real estate — there was only one goal, making money, and only one sin: being weak.
His net worth didn’t yet approach that of Trump or Speyer or LeFrak, but he made no secret of the fact that he one day intended to leave them in the dust on the balance-sheet playing field.
The press was all too happy to point fingers at the man (a recent headline: Developer Tries to Evict Cancer Grandma Over Week-Late Rent Check), but that was typical tabloid fodder. Despite many reporters’ attempts, none had been able to unearth any actionable practices, and no substantive articles of wrongdoing ever found their way into print or pixels.
And so the developer remained the elusive Holy Grail of investigative reporters.
Filled with raw excitement about the prospect of taking the man on, Powers now asked Nicole, “Can you talk to other wait staff, employees, see if he’s been in before? Who he’s met with?”
“Already did. And their answer’s no.”
Powers sipped whiskey and mused aloud, “What do we have going on at the moment?”
She reminded him of a couple of stories in the works: about CEOs offering politicians some junkets, restaurateurs bribing health inspectors, a DUI cover-up involving a local celebrity from Long Island. The only big story was about a New York Congressman whose extracurricular activities were not exactly those of Thomas Jefferson.
Nicole, he knew, wasn’t a big fan of the story. Her point was that the legislator was smart and talented and did a good job representing his constituency; the tweeted sex pictures of him cross-dressing were irrelevant to his job. Powers had had to point out that the real story was not about bra and panties; it would be about his reaction after the initial blog post appeared. Would he “man up”? (Powers couldn’t resist the play on words.) Or whine and claim hacking or victimization? He’d told Nicole, “If he tries to weasel, that will reflect on his job.”
But, true, it wasn’t a biggie and he now told her, “I’ll back-burner the drag queen—”
“Trevor!”
“—and we’ll concentrate on Kessler and this secret plot of his. Start digging up dirt on him. Everything.” Then he had a troubling thought. “At the bar where you work, is your name on the check?”
She frowned then nodded. “It gives the server’s first name, yes.”
“And you’ve already started to ask questions. He might begin to suspect somebody’s doing a story and place you as the source. Be careful.”
“He doesn’t scare me, Trevor,” Nicole told him in a low voice, her hand gripping his arm. Their first contact since shaking hands upon meeting a month ago. And suddenly the blogger was looking at a very different vision of his intern. Her intense blue eyes, so focused, actually made her seem both formidable... and, curiously, less dowdy. Attractive, really. The gaze reminded him of that of a lioness who’d just spotted her cubs’ next meal, a gazelle grazing obliviously on the veldt not far away.
Evening, lying back in bed.
Trevor Powers was listening to the sound of traffic on Broadway, outside his Upper West Side apartment. He was listening too to the sound of flowing water from his bathroom shower, which had the effect of calming his fevered thoughts. And turbulent they were. Tomorrow they would start going over the material Nicole had unearthed about Kessler. What would it reveal? He felt like Woodward or Bernstein, about to break the Watergate scandal.
But there was nothing to do at the moment, so he forced aside his speculation about Kessler’s plot and whom he was going to screw in the process. Glancing at a textbook on the bedside table, The New Journalism, Trevor Powers fell into a meditation on how his profession had changed.