“Didn’t I tell you to wear a tie?”
“I’m sure I’ve got one around somewhere,” I said, “but I couldn’t find it this morning.”
“You only have one tie?”
“One is usually more than I need.”
“Couldn’t find your hard shoes either?”
“When you gave me the dress code,” I said, “you didn’t say anything about footwear.”
He scowled and shook his head. Then he reached into a desk drawer, pulled out a red-and-black checkerboard tie, and threw it at me.
“Here. Put this on.” After I knotted it, he shot his cuffs and glanced at his watch. “Time to head upstairs.”
When we arrived, the boardroom was dark. Twisdale flicked a switch, illuminating twenty carved chairs arranged around an enormous meeting table. The furniture was as old as the newspaper and was said to be the only thing the Mason family had salvaged when they sold their crumbling Victorian headquarters on Washington Street and moved to these new digs on Fountain Street in 1934. For a century and a half, generations of Masons had gathered around this slab of Ecuadorian mahogany to talk business, politics, and public service. I wondered why the family had decided to abandon it here. Perhaps the castles they lived in weren’t spacious enough for a table that could serve as a landing strip for military aircraft. Or maybe they just weren’t as sentimental about mahogany as they were about power and money.
Twisdale and I took adjoining chairs, our backs to a row of high windows that looked down on a McDonald’s restaurant and a shuttered strip club. Across from us, dusty glass trophy cases lined the wall. Inside were scores of plaques, framed certificates, and medals the newspaper had won for its journalism over the decades. Five of them were Pulitzer Prizes. Since our new owners took over, nothing new had been added.
A couple of minutes later, Butch Martin, our advertising director, trudged in. He’d supplemented the dress code with a pocket handkerchief and a funereal expression. Martin was trailed by a cafeteria worker who wheeled in a cart full of pastries and jugs of coffee. The three of us sat in silence as the guy set the table.
The three emissaries from corporate, each toting a leather briefcase, strode in fashionably late at quarter past eight. They took a moment to run their eyes over the trophy cases, claimed the seats directly across from us, and introduced themselves. Twisdale, playing host, poured the coffee. Then Beauregard, the VP for news, opened his briefcase, removed a copy of the Sunday paper, and angrily slapped it on the table.
When he spoke, his voice startled me. Subconsciously, I’d been expecting a man named Herald Price Beauregard to speak in the manner of an effete southern patrician. Like South Carolina senator Lindsey Graham, maybe, or actor Will Patton: “Ah am so disappointed in these heah goin’s-on. And ta think ah had such high regahd fo you fine gentlemen.”
But when he growled, “You three douchebags got some splainin’ to do,” he sounded more like a character from Goodfellas. I couldn’t help myself. I laughed out loud.
“You think I’m funny? I’m talkin’ ta you, jerk-wad.”
“Yeah, I do,” I said. “Ever done any stand-up? That Joe Pesci impression would knock ’em dead at the Comedy Store.”
Beauregard gave me a hard look. I returned it with a disarming smile. Twisdale frowned and dug an elbow into my ribs. Martin fussed nervously with his tie. For what felt like a full minute, no one spoke. Then Martin plucked the handkerchief from his jacket pocket, wiped a sheen of sweat from his brow, and broke the silence.
“Mr. Beauregard, I didn’t know a thing about any of this until I read the paper Sunday morning.”
“Why the fuck didn’t you?” Beauregard snapped.
“It’s not his fault,” Twisdale said. “I never told him about the story.”
“That right?”
“Yes, sir.”
“How many times I gotta tell ya, Twisdale? Any story affecting an advertiser has gotta be run past the ad director.”
“The story was written before the super PAC became an advertiser,” Martin said.
“But it ran three days after they placed their first ad,” Dwight Freeley, the corporate advertising VP, put in.
“I realize I should have consulted with Mr. Martin at that point,” Twisdale said, “but I was distracted by the work required to prepare the story for publication.”
“You were distracted?” Beauregard said. “That’s your fuckin’ excuse?”
“I’m not making excuses,” Twisdale said. “I’m merely telling you what happened.”
This is where Pesci would have pulled a revolver and started blasting. Beauregard wasn’t packing, but his dark eyes drilled us with hollow-points.
“So what’s the bottom line, here?” Freeley asked. “How much is this fuckup going to cost the company?”
“The super PAC, Americans for the Preservation of Free Enterprise, called me yesterday afternoon to announce they were dropping us,” Martin said.
“They were running daily, four-color, full-page ads?” Freeley asked.
“That is correct,” Martin said. Again with the tie.
“We get eight grand for a full page, is that right?”
“And ten thousand for the Sunday edition,” Martin answered.
“How long were they planning to continue the campaign?”
“At least another two weeks,” Martin said. “After that, I’m not sure.”
“So this lack of communication between news and advertising will cost us”-Freeley pulled an iPhone from his pocket and worked the calculator-“at a minimum, we’re talking one hundred and sixteen thousand dollars.”
“Only a hundred thousand, actually,” Martin said. “The Dispatch doesn’t publish on Saturdays.”
“Only?” Beauregard said. He raised an eyebrow and turned to Freeley. “Did that fucking toad actually say only a hundred thousand dollars?”
Martin slumped in his chair and tried to make himself smaller. Freeley started to ask another question, but Beauregard raised his hand for silence, wanting the enormity of the dollar figure to sink in.
“Okay, then,” he finally said. “Let’s turn to our legal department’s concerns about this piece-of-shit story.”
Todd Grissom, the corporate lawyer, opened his briefcase, pulled out his copy of The Sunday Dispatch, and laid it gently on the table. I noticed that he’d used a red pen to fill the front-page margins with angry notes.
“Why didn’t you see fit to have this story vetted by legal, Mr. Twisdale?” he asked. “It obviously presents a number of significant libel risks.”
“Mr. Mulligan and I went over it all line by line, and we determined that it does not,” Twisdale said. “Therefore, I decided it would be prudent to save the company unnecessary legal expenditures.”
“You think you possess the legal expertise to make such a determination?” Grissom asked.
“Sure he does,” I butted in.
Twisdale gave me another shot in the ribs. I ignored it.
“The Alfanos are both dead,” I said, “and Mario Zerilli’s reputation as a thug was already public knowledge. The only other people the story potentially libels are the New Jersey gambling interests, but that phrase doesn’t identify them. It’s more than vague enough to protect us from legal action.”
“Do you have a law degree, Mr. Mulligan?” Freeley said.
“I’ve been writing investigative stories in Providence for more than twenty years, Mr. Freeley. I bet I know more about Rhode Island libel law than you do.”
Freeley was briefly taken aback.
“Well,” he huffed, “I do concur with your assessment of our legal exposure, Mr. Mulligan. However, company policy requires that stories of this nature must be run past the legal department. In the future, I trust the two of you will follow the proper procedure.”