Fair Warning (Jack McEvoy #3)(12)
“Half-assed reporters, Detective?” Myron said. “What does that mean?”
“It means you aren’t even the real thing and you’ve got this guy running around, talking to our witnesses and intimidating them.”
He gestured to me. I was ‘this guy.’
“That’s bullshit,” I said. “All I—”
Myron put his hand out to cut me off.
“Detective, my reporter was pursuing a story. And as far as you thinking we are half-assed anything, you should know we are a fully recognized and legitimate member of the media and enjoy all the freedoms of the press. We are not going to be intimidated while pursuing a valid news story.”
I was amazed by Myron’s calm demeanor and strong words. Five minutes earlier he was questioning my motives and the story I wanted to pursue. But now we had closed ranks and were standing strong. This was why I went to work for Myron in the first place.
“You won’t have much of a story if your reporter ends up in jail,” Mattson said. “How will that look to all your media brethren out there?”
“You are saying that if we continue to look into this story, you will jail our reporter?” Myron asked.
“I’m saying he could go from reporter to prime suspect pretty quick and then freedom of the press won’t matter much, will it?”
“Detective, if you arrest my reporter, I guarantee you it will be a story of widespread interest. It will make news across the country. Just as it will do when you are forced to release him and admit publicly that you and your department were wrong and trumped up a case against a reporter because you were afraid he might find the answers you could not.”
Mattson seemed to hesitate in responding. Finally he spoke, looking directly at me since he now understood that Myron was a solid wall. But he no longer had the hard edge in his words.
“I’m telling you for the last time to stay away from this,” he said. “Stay away from Lisa Hill and stay away from the case.”
“You don’t have anything, do you?” I said.
I expected Myron’s hand to come up to signal me to silence again. But this time he did nothing. He looked intently at Mattson, awaiting a reply.
“I have your DNA, buddy boy,” Mattson said. “And you better hope it comes back clean.”
“Then that confirms it,” I said. “You’ve got nothing and you’re wasting time trying to intimidate people and make sure nobody finds out.”
Mattson snickered like I was a fool who didn’t know what I was talking about. He then reached out and hit Silent Sakai on the arm.
“Let’s go,” he said.
Mattson turned and led Sakai out. Myron and I watched through the window as they swaggered through the newsroom toward the door. I felt good. I felt supported and protected. It was not a good time to be a journalist. It was the era of fake news and reporters being labeled by those in power as enemies of the people. Newspapers were folding right and left and some said the industry was in a death spiral. Meanwhile, there was a rise in biased and unchecked reporting and media sites, the line increasingly blurring between impartial and agenda-based journalism. But in the way Myron had handled Mattson I saw a throwback to the days when the media was undaunted, unprejudiced, and therefore could not be intimidated. I suddenly knew for the first time in a long time that I was in the right place.
Myron Levin had to raise money and run the website. Those were his priorities and he didn’t get to be a reporter as much as he wanted to be. But when he put on that hat he was as relentless as any I had ever known. There was a famous story about Myron from his days as a consumer reporter at the Los Angeles Times. This was before he took a buyout, left the paper, and used the money to initially fund FairWarning. In reporting circles there is no better feeling than to expose a scoundrel, to write the story that reveals the con man and shuts him down. Most often the charlatan claims innocence and damage. He sues for millions and then quietly slips out of town to start over somewhere else. The legend about Myron is that he exposed a grifter who was running an earthquake-repair con after the Northridge quake in ’94. Once outed on the front page of the Times, the grifter claimed innocence and filed a defamation-and-slander suit seeking $10 million in damages. In the filing documents, the grifter stated that Myron’s story had caused him so much humiliation and anguish that the damages went beyond reputation and earnings to his health. He said that Myron’s article had caused him bleeding from the rectum. And that was what cemented Myron’s legendary status as a reporter. He had written a story that allegedly made a man bleed from the ass. No reporter would ever be able to best that, no matter how many millions they were sued for.
“Thanks, Myron,” I said. “You had my back.”
“Of course,” Myron said. “Now go get the story.”
I nodded as we watched the two detectives go through the office door.
“And you better watch yourself on this,” Myron said. “Those assholes don’t like you.”
“I know,” I replied.
5
With my editor and publisher’s approval I was officially on the story. And on my very first official move, I got lucky. I went back on Tina Portrero’s social media, used her Facebook tagging history to identify her mother, Regina Portrero, and reached out to her through her own Facebook page. I assumed that if Regina reached back from her home in Chicago we would set up a phone call. Phone calls with the bereaved were safest—I still have a scar on my face from asking the wrong question of a woman grieving the sudden death of her fiancé. But things can get lost or missed in a phone call: nuances of conversation, expressions, emotion.