The arrival of my own computer reminded me that I had not yet chosen a password, and Gail was pushing all of us to have them that afternoon.
I had an idea of what I wanted to use (ROBOT, a play on my formal given name), but thought I’d use my extra training to look at what the others had selected first. I used the method she had explained the previous night to call up the directory of passwords on the screen.
Most of the staff had made their choices. Frees NOCHARGE and Grace’s PRAYER were there, and I guessed at some of the others—LUNAR, I figured was Dick Mooniman; Hank Terry had selected his newsroom nickname, SNICKER; Darlington had chosen his first name, SAM; and Doralee Green, ever flaunting her cultural background, obviously was the VERDI in the directory. It wasn’t until she told me later that I could figure out why Cindy had chosen CAPTWO (Number 2 at the capitol), and I was also stopped temporarily, by BIRD.
That one came to me when I recalled Farley’s suggestion for choosing an easily remembered name. A Swift was a BIRD, and I had found the managing editor’s password. What was there to do but take a look at what the hairy one had filed away?
The first couple of items were memos to the staff, which I had read on the city room bulletin board. But the last item was something else—a private memo from Swift to Shiu.
“Update of Capital Register & Press Editorial Plan,” it read. It went on to report that the installation of the computers and the new furniture in the newsroom had been completed and that satisfactory progress had been made in training the staff to use the computers. It continued as follows:
Project A.M. Tabloid is proceeding according to the timetable for the editorial staff. The process of gradual introduction into the paper of editorial material suitable to the plan is proceeding without significant resistance.
Note: The switchboard reported eight telephoned protests to the African story and twenty-two on the pornography item. Barton received six letters protesting the first story and seventeen on the second, including a boycott threat from one women’s garden group. I am informed that there has been some grumbling about the items in and around the newsroom, but this can be discounted as the usual griping to be heard from newspaper staffs.
In all, our first efforts to inject some color and life into the newspaper have encountered somewhat less resistance than we anticipated, and it now appears that your proposal to accelerate the elements of the plan can be carried out. It is assumed that you will contact our principals for approval of the amended timetable.
While the following is wholly within your jurisdiction as publisher, I feel it should be pointed out that if acceleration is approved, it will be necessary to begin immediately the conversion of physical facilities in the production department as well as arrange for earlier-than-planned acquisition of the transport equipment. Considering the amount of lead time required for the latter, I suggest that you make entirely certain that you will be able to meet an accelerated timetable. Our principals, as you well know, do not take slippages lightly.
The memo was dated three days before I found it, and Shiu obviously had moved quickly. As I walked up the alley beside the paper on the way to the last computer training session that afternoon, I ran into Willy Janzen, the composing room foreman.
“Hey, you ready to be a tabloid reporter? The Jap just told us to start adjusting for tab size next week. You gonna have to write those whore’s dreams of yours a lot shorter now, Bobby.”
The tabloid word had already spread inside the newsroom when I got there, but it appeared no one had been told yet that the CR&P was going to become a morning newspaper as well. I was just whispering that bit of news to Grace when he got a call to come up to Shiu’s office. He was back in ten minutes with confirmation: “Week after next, we go A.M. We got one week to get used to the tabloid size and then we go to morning publication. Swift has the work schedules all made up.”
All of that was so much to assimilate I forgot to tell Grace about the reference to “transport equipment". That was to be our next big surprise. It was to be later, much later, before we found out about the “principals” Swift mentioned in his memo.
CHAPTER 4
I got my biggest story because somebody parked in my space at the Capitol. Actually, I got two stories from that circumstance, but the first was maybe the dumbest story I ever covered on the statehouse beat.
When I found a blue Honda parked in the space reserved for my green Plymouth, I did what any self-respecting scrounger would—I parked in someone else’s space. But later in the day, it occurred to me that the blue Honda now had succeeded in screwing up two people, and that was sufficient motivation to take a trip to the Capitol police office in the basement.
When I got to the office the 4:00 p.m. to midnight shift was just coming to work. I asked the secretary to see the chief and she waved me to a seat.
“He’s got someone with him, Bob. Shouldn’t be long.”
It wasn’t long, but it sure was loud. Chief Jimmy McGrath was chewing ass, and the decibel level was high enough to peel paint off a wall.
“Don’t tell me it didn’t happen on your watch, goddamn it! It was there this morning and there wasn’t anyone in the goddamn building after your shift went off at midnight, McGrath yelled. “It had to be on your shift.”
A quieter voice: “But Jimmy…”
“Don’t Jimmy me, you fucking lunkhead. Just because you’re my wife’s nephew don’t give you privileges here It’s chief, and I wish to God it had been you with the title this morning when the governor called me up there. You know how mad a man can get when he finds turd on his one-hun-dred-and-twenty-dollar Eyetalian shoes? Madder than I am at you and if I get any madder I’m liable to make you the only police lieutenant in the state to be assigned as a crossing guard. Now get your ass out of here.”
The lieutenant, a ratty little guy named Orris, was out of McGrath’s office before the echo had died, and the secretary smiled at me and said, “He can see you now, Bob.”
I knew I wasn’t supposed to have heard what had been said before my arrival, so I confined my conversation with the chief to the parking problem.
“It don’t help for you to park in somebody else’s spot, Bob,” said McGrath, still red around the jowls but trying to be pleasant. “Tell you what. If this happens again, drive over to the Capitol and park by the basement entrance and come on down here to get me or an officer. We’ll just start towing anybody’s ass out of that lot if they don’t have a sticker.”
That seemed to end our business, but I sure did want to know what Orris had done to earn the chewing he got. So I tried the old I-know-what’s-going-on gambit.
“Boy, chief, you sure were right about the governor. He was in a crappy mood—excuse the pun—all day.”
McGrath went for it: “I’d have been too… stepping into a pile of shit right in the^middle of the Capitol rotunda. If somebody thinks that’s a joke, about six months in the can ought to change his mind. It wasn’t the first time, either.”
“You mean we’ve got a rash of dumpings in the Capitol?”
“Twice before, somebody found… hey, you ain’t going to write about this, are you?”
“Desecration of public property, chief. But don’t worry, I won’t make a big thing out of it. Just an item in my column and I’ll use the angle that you have a lead on the perpetrator. I know damn well Orris is going to try to catch the guy after the chewing you gave him.”
I left the chiefs office and hunted down Orris. On him, I used the old cop trick—sympathy.
“Seems to me Jimmy was kind of tough on you, lieutenant. After all, the building is unpatrolled from when you leave at midnight till the morning shift comes on.”