The House of Wolves (House of Wolves #1)(23)

He kissed me on top of my head.

“They got stuff on you? You think I don’t have stuff on them? I’ve been waiting to take both of them down my whole life.”





Twenty-Five



I’D GOTTEN THE EMAIL from the principal at Hunters Point, Joey Rubino, around one o’clock. He said he wanted to see me after school let out to discuss my “situation.” To the best of my knowledge, it was the first time I’d ever heard my exposed rear end described quite that way.

I emailed him back and said I was on my way, knowing I had enough time to make one stop.

Jack Wolf was standing in the middle of the Tribune city room when I arrived, talking to an attractive red-haired woman. It had to be his managing editor. Megan somebody. Thomas said he couldn’t remember whether Jack was still sleeping with her or not.

“Just in case you need a little extra ammo when you get there,” Thomas had told me.

“Don’t worry. I won’t.”

I walked down the middle of the room, past reporters at their desks, feeling every single eye in the place on me. Apparently they all recognized me just fine with my clothes on.

“Jenny,” Jack said when I got to him, not acting remotely surprised to see me.

“Jack.”

The room had gone quiet.

“This is Megan Callahan, our managing editor,” he said.

“I know who she is,” I said, keeping my eyes on my brother.

“If you want to talk, we should really go to my office.”

“I’m fine here.”

“Have it your way.”

“That was some front page today,” I said. “What’s the London tabloid with naked women on page 3? I always forget.”

“The Sun,” he said.

“Well, you beat them by two pages, didn’t you?”

“We don’t make the news. You did that all by yourself. We just try to present it in an interesting way.”

He sat down on the edge of the nearest desk. He wore a vest, no jacket, tie pulled down from his collar, more for effect than comfort, I was sure. He seemed to enjoy playing the part of editor, even though I was fairly certain he would have gone into a dead faint if he were asked to lay out pages himself.

“If you came to have a scene,” Jack said, “then have at it.”

“I came to ask you a question.”

“And what’s that?”

I waited, then smiled.

“Is that all you got?”

I walked out the way I’d come, without looking back.





Twenty-Six



MY BOSS AT HUNTERS POINT was younger than I was.

Joey Rubino came from the neighborhood, lived a couple of blocks from where I did. He was a good guy and had made it clear, from our first meeting, what a huge Wolves fan he was. I liked him a lot and realized now how much I was going to miss working for him.

“Quite a day,” he said when I was in his office, door closed.

Then he grinned.

“I’m talking about me, not you.”

It was three thirty. Practice normally began at four. I was going to miss that most of all. It was the teacher in me. I liked practices better than games.

“You don’t have to explain anything to me, Joey,” I said. “You didn’t do anything. The kids didn’t do anything. This is all on me. I talk to my players all the time about making good choices.”

“Who puts a picture like that on the front page of a newspaper?”

“My brother.”

“To sell papers?”

“To sell me out is more like it.”

In addition to being smart and funny and someone who, I was told, had been a great English teacher, Joey Rubino loved the school from which he had graduated. I thought it was his best quality.

“Got a lot of calls today, as you might imagine,” he said.

I smiled now. “Might?”

“The cancel culture. Full speed ahead.”

There were pictures on the table behind him of his wife and children, three beautiful little girls. I sat there across from him and wondered what it was like for them, growing up in a normal family and having a normal childhood, with a father who didn’t constantly pit them against one another.

“I did my best to explain to the parents that I thought we had to do better than handing out some sort of death sentence for the worst moment of someone’s public life,” he said.

“It’s funny, Joey. Until a couple of weeks ago I hadn’t had a public life since I was married to Ted Skyler.”

He was taking his time with this, I could see, wanting to let me down gently. It wasn’t my place to rush him. He had to do this his own way, even though we both knew how this particular movie was going to end.

When we finally did make our way there, I was just going to ask him if I could meet with the players before cleaning out my office.

“Unfortunately, the parents didn’t want to hear it. They already had the scarlet letter on you.”

I smiled again. “I bet I know where, too.”

As awkward as this was for both of us, that got a chuckle out of him.

“For what it’s worth, I never got fired before.”

Joey Rubino looked confused.

“Who said anything about firing you?”