Pace retold the story, including most of the details. But as he heard himself telling it, it sounded trite. He didn’t have any evidence to support the theory of a conspiracy. There was a mysterious voice on the telephone and a coincidental fatal automobile accident on Georgetown Pike. Nothing more.
When he finished, Pace stared through the plate glass at the ornate grayness of the Old Executive Office Building. It was the best alternative he had to the scorn he thought he’d see if he looked at the two faces across the table.
He was right about Wister’s. “So you went gallivanting all over the Virginia countryside in the middle of the night with an ex-jet jock on some wild-goose chase precipitated by a crank phone call,” the national editor summed up. “Jesus, Pace, when are you going to grow up?”
Pace had had enough. “Damn it, Paul, you don’t know it was a crank call,” he insisted. “It sounded straight to me. Mike couldn’t dismiss it, either. We’ve trusted his instincts before. There’s no reason to stop trusting him now.”
“Except he’s suddenly become your editor, telling you where to go and what to do. That’s not his job or his privilege.”
“He did not—”
“Stop it, both of you!” Schaeffer was sitting forward in his chair, a deep scowl furrowing his face. “I told you to end this. This sparring between you two is over. Clear?”
Both Pace and Wister nodded.
Schaeffer nodded. “When do you plan on checking the dead body?” he asked Pace.
“I was on my way to ask Suzy if her people had anything from the Virginia State Police when Paul said you wanted to see us.”
“Avery, I don’t think this is getting us anywhere,” Wister protested. “Steve’s going to be all over the place looking for conspiracies under every rock while the Post and the Times clean up on the central story. We’d be better off staying in the main channel.”
“I don’t want to stray far from the main channel, either,” Schaeffer concurred. “But I think we can spare a little time to explore this side channel. We have two reasons. The first is Mike McGill’s reliability. The second is Pace’s conversation on Friday with, ah, that guy from the Senate Transportation Committee.” He was making circles in the air with his left forefinger pointed at Pace, asking for help with the name he couldn’t pull from his memory.
“George Ridley,” Pace said.
“Ridley, right.” Schaeffer plunged on. “He doesn’t call the Harold Marshall thing a conspiracy, but that’s what he’s talking about. Maybe it’s nothing. Maybe it’s something. We don’t know. Now one of the insiders on the investigation gets a couple of oddball messages that a conspiracy exists. We don’t know who the caller was. It might have been Ridley. It might not. Probably not, because McGill wouldn’t be the logical person for Ridley to call. But if it wasn’t Ridley, then we’ve got suspicion originating from a second source. And where there’s smoke—”
“—more often than not, somebody’s blowing it,” Wister interrupted.
“Maybe,” Schaeffer conceded. “But if that’s the case, that’s a story, too, some creep running around inventing dark plots. I want the story either way.” He turned to the reporter. “But Paul’s concerns are valid. There are still lots of questions about the crash to be answered. You know that; you raised most of them. Unless and until something harder develops on the conspiracy theory, the central story is your priority.”
“I understand,” Pace said.
Wister nodded, and Schaeffer turned back to the Sunday papers .
Leaving the conference room, Pace was eager to stay out of any further conversation with Wister. It was one thing to get up on the wrong side of the bed; it was quite another to bring the bed to work with you. So he made a sharp turn toward the door leading to the back stairwell and took the steps, two at a time, to the Suburban department.
Suzy O’Connor was everybody’s mother. She was in her late forties, slightly rotund, and had a broad face highlighted by brown eyes that twinkled most of the time. She wore her graying hair pulled back severely, trying to counter the elfin expression that dominated her face even when she was angry. Her wardrobe ran to suits and her collection of shoes was of the variety most commonly known as sensible. O’Connor had been the matron of the Suburban desk for twelve years, taking promising green reporters and either turning them into national-desk material or turning them onto the street. Now and then a successful one would opt to stay with a suburban beat rather than move up and away from Sister Suze.
Pace and a few others on the national side had avoided her whips and chains because they had been hired as experienced reporters from other papers for specific national beats. Pace sometimes thought that by skipping Suzy O’Connor’s finishing school, he somehow missed a great professional experience. On the other hand, he wasn’t sure he would have survived it.
Suzy was hunched over her computer terminal, her back to him, cursing some hapless reporter whose copy she was finding it necessary to rework. He stopped behind her and watched over her shoulder for a minute as she moved the cursor over the copy, cutting, pasting, moving, deleting and replacing words, phrases, and paragraphs like an army general moves battalions during war. When she sensed his presence, Suzy turned in her chair and uttered a small shriek.
“All rise, the national staff is here,” she announced, coming to attention. A few reporters raised their heads to look at Pace and smiled, but none joined O’Connor’s ritual. It was her show. “And to what do we owe this great honor, my liege?” she asked.
In every newsroom, some reporters are singled out as the elite, the corps given the opportunity to handle major stories. It’s a system that creates hard feelings among reporters given fewer opportunities. In Washington, the elite are the national reporters, and the idea of elitism on the Chronicle was passed like tribal scripture from one generation of suburban reporters to the next with the help, even the encouragement, of Suzy O’Connor. She tried to create in her staff the conviction that they were the underdogs against the big guys, always striving to make page one despite the handicap of covering the less newsworthy subjects. She instilled a camaraderie and competitiveness worth more journalistically than good spelling and grammar. After all, any old computer could check spelling, and as far as grammar was concerned, that’s what God made editors for.
“I need a favor, Suzy,” Pace said, ignoring her theatrics.
“A boon, my lord? ’Twould be an honor.”
“It’s a good thing you’re a good journalist, Suze, ’cause you’re a lousy actress.”
She shrugged. “I do better with Shakespeare. Whatcha got?”
“Car wreck on Georgetown Pike early this morning. The car and the driver were toasted. I need an ID on the driver.”
“So call the cops.”
“I thought maybe your people picked it up.”
“I haven’t seen a story, and I’ve got a new gal out there, Sally Incaveria. She’s still feeling her way around the beat, and I don’t expect to hear from her until one or a little later. I’ll have her check. Involve a friend of yours?”
“I don’t know. I haven’t the faintest idea who it was. But it might be important.”
“I’ll let you know,” Suzy promised.
“Thanks,” Pace said. “I owe you.”
“I won’t forget.”
Finally it was time to take care of his stomach.
“Come on, Patrick, let’s go, boy,” he said to Brennan. When Glenn got up from his desk, Pace laid it on. “There’s a good boy. Heel.”