Lady in the Lake(75)

Mr. Heath was back from his vacation and she went about her usual tasks with her usual efficiency, waiting for the moment she would be summoned to the boss’s office. She understood and accepted that she would not continue to report the story—that Tommy’s arraignment would be covered by someone on courts or cops, that Diller would look for a folo out of the cop shop. That was fine. She didn’t want to be a cop reporter.

After the final deadline, Bob Bauer stopped by her desk.

“Hey, Scoop Schwartz.”

She blushed in spite of herself.

“So you have sources, huh?”

“I do.”

“Who are they?”

She hesitated. He leaned in, his voice low and serious. “You don’t tell anyone who your sources are. Not other reporters, not the bosses. Not the law, if it comes to that. Whatever you do, protect your sources.”

It seemed an odd comment, but she realized that Bob, plugged in as ever, must have known what was coming for her. Because when she was summoned to the city editor’s office not even an hour later, it was not for an “attagirl.” It was because a furious John Diller wanted her reprimanded for poaching from his beat.



Thirty minutes later, a shaken but dry-eyed Maddie walked out of the office and into the ladies’ room, where she splashed water on her face, then gripped the sink with trembling hands.

“You okay?” asked Edna, sitting there with her three C’s—coffee, cig, and copy.

“I think so.”

“Saw your byline. Nice work. Diller’s pissed, isn’t he?”

“You could say that.”

“He’s terrified someone’s going to dethrone him at cop shop. As if anyone wants to be the dean of that bunch. Cop shop’s a place to pass through. No one good stays there.”

“He—he wanted me to tell my source. He claims to know who it is. I don’t understand why that should matter.”

“Like I said, he’s scared.”

The man had appeared more malevolent than scared to Maddie. He had fumed and sputtered like Rumpelstiltskin, on the verge of tearing himself apart. “I know who told you about the confession. That’s no source. You risked the paper’s integrity trusting him.”

“Except I was right. Tommy Ludlow did confess.”

The city editor had treated them like two squabbling schoolchildren. “It was a holiday weekend, John. She had a tip, she ran with it, and it’s good. It’s not a big deal.”

“It’s not the way we do business around here. It was sloppy, it was amateurish, it was—”

“What are you implying, Mr. Diller?” Maddie was investing so much willpower into not crying that her voice screeched a little.

“You don’t know what you’re doing. You got lucky this time, going with a one-source story—and that source at that. Stay away from the cop shop.”

“You knew I was trying to write about Cleo Sherwood. And you didn’t mind when I filed the story on ‘Lady Law.’ That was fine by you.”

“Because it was barely a story. It was press-release pap.”

“I’m just trying to become a reporter. Is that so wrong?”

When Diller left, muttering all the way, the city editor sighed. “It was a good story, Maddie. But I don’t want you to pin your hopes on a reporting job. It’s a young person’s game. If we were to hire a rookie, I’d want it to be someone with a long future ahead of him.”

Him.

Now, in the bathroom, she stared at her own reflection, ashen in the mirror. If Diller really did know the identity of her source, what would that mean for her, for Ferdie? Would he get in trouble? She wished she could call him, be comforted. But she could never call him. She didn’t have his number, didn’t know where he lived. If she wanted to find Ferdie, her only hope was to head up to Northwest and walk down the street, screaming her head off, which was how she had found him nine months ago. Otherwise, she waited for him to come to her.

She decided to take a walk up to the New Orleans Diner, grab a coffee before closing. She sat at the counter while the waitress she remembered from her lunch there with Bob Bauer leaned on her elbows, reading the newspaper. Reading Maddie’s story.

“I wrote that,” she said. Technically untrue; the rewrite, Ettlin, had written it from her notes. But she couldn’t help herself.

“So you’re”—the waitress looked from the byline to Maddie, back to the byline—“Madeline Schwartz?”

“Yes.”

“I knew her. Cleo. Back at Werner’s.” She seemed at once shy and excited. Maddie noticed for the first time how young she was, younger than Maddie, with freckles on her nose and the bit of chest she let show in her pink uniform.

“What was she like?”

The waitress took so long to answer that Maddie assumed she hadn’t been heard. But then: “Hungry. She wanted things. She just didn’t know what they were.”

Tell me about it, Maddie thought. Except—she knew what she wanted. She was going to be a reporter. Not just any reporter. She was going to be like Bob Bauer one day. A columnist, someone who got to pick and choose her stories.

Oh, it wouldn’t be the same. It would be harder. And while she could see the goal, shining, shimmering, she couldn’t see the path. It seemed ridiculous. She had just been told she couldn’t even be the night cop reporter, that the paper would never hire her. And yet—she was not unlike Cleo Sherwood. If she really wanted something, she got it. She had wanted Allan Durst, had seduced him as much as he had seduced her. She had wanted Milton, the cloak of respectability he promised when Durst left her, deflowered and almost ruined. She had wanted to have a child. Then she had wanted her freedom. Thirty-seven might have been old or late to do such things, but it was not impossible. After all, there was . . . well, Grandma Moses. Oh lord, there must be someone other than Grandma Moses.