Murder at The Washington Tribune (2 page)

It was, he knew, what his wife wanted to hear. She squeezed his thigh and said, “Let's stop for ice cream. I'm in the mood.”

“Then ice cream it'll be.”

TWO

Joe and Georgia Wilcox had lived in their modest tract home in Rockville since the spring of 1977, having moved to this suburban area of the nation's capital from Detroit. Thirty minutes from downtown, twice that at rush hour, they'd seen their tranquil Maryland suburban haven blossom into an extension of D.C.'s urban sprawl, still leafy and family friendly, but changed from the day they moved in. Home prices had soared, roads and highways were clogged, and malls abounded. Still, it had been a pleasant place in which to live and to raise their daughter, who had been seven when they arrived.

Leaving Detroit hadn't been an easy decision. They'd lived a comfortable, relatively stress-free life in one of the Motor City's suburbs. They were active in the community, their daughter happily attending grammar school, with Joe ensconced as a cityside reporter who'd broken a couple of big crime stories during his time at the
Free Press.
A shot at becoming an assistant Metro editor in a year or two was a distinct possibility.

That changed one day over lunch. Tom Melito, a newly minted friend from
The Washington Tribune
's recently opened the Detroit bureau, mentioned to Wilcox that the
Trib
was beefing up its Metro staff in Washington, and thought Wilcox should consider applying.

“Damn,” Wilcox said as a drop of soup landed on his tie. “I'm not a D.C. kind of guy,” he said, dabbing at his tie with a napkin. “Can't take me anywhere. Never get invited to the White House with soup stains on my tie.”

“Hey, presidents spill soup, too,” said Melito. “Besides, have you ever known reporters who don't have stains on their ties?”

“And on their reputations,” Wilcox said.

“Don't play cynic. Doesn't become you. Look, Joe, I'm serious. You're a helluva fine reporter, and the
Trib
is a hell of a paper, big and getting bigger and more influential every day and giving the hallowed
New York Times
a run for its money. The brain trust has decided to really ratchet up local coverage, and they're committing big bucks to it. Metro's already the biggest staff on the paper, and getting bigger. I don't know what you're making here but—”

“No,” Wilcox said, shaking his head and inserting his napkin between buttons on his shirt. “I'd never get it past Georgia. She's happy with her job at the library, and Roberta's doing well in school. Besides, my boss winks that he's grooming me for an assistant editor job down the road. But thanks for suggesting it, Tommy.”

They spoke about other things during lunch, but Joe's thoughts weren't entirely on those topics.
The New York Times
and
The Washington Tribune
had been in competition for as long as he could remember, vying for the biggest stories with the most impact on the body politic and the nation's conscience. Like every youngster with Yankee pinstripes or Dodger blue in their fanciful futures,
The Times
and the
Trib
represented the big leagues to journalism students across the country, and he was no exception. Sure, there were plenty of jobs in the reporting business that were meaningful and fulfilling. But those two competing newspaper giants in New York and Washington represented “making it,” whatever that meant. The
Trib,
he knew, tended to be more sensational than
The Times
in its news coverage, and had its share of critics because of that. But it was no tabloid. It had broadsheet clout, and anyone working for it did, too.

“Joseph Carlton Wilcox at the esteemed
Washington Trib,
huh?” he said to Melito over dessert, laughing at the very notion of it.

“Suit yourself, Joe, but they're looking for Young Turks like you. I don't qualify.”

“What are you, over the hill?”

“I am as far as they're concerned back in D.C. They sent me out here to wind down, go peacefully into the night, cover the latest car models, and make it sound like I care. Maybe you're right. It is intense in D.C. Cutthroat, like politics today. Get the story at all costs. Publish or perish ain't only for academics. Used to be fun. No more, and I can't say I'm unhappy being further away from it. But you? You're exactly what they're looking for. You could really make your name there, pal.”

Wilcox grunted and dug into his apple pie. The topic didn't come up again until they had split the bill and were standing on the sidewalk.

“Sure you don't at least want to explore the
Trib
thing?” Melito asked. “I can give somebody a call.”

“No, I. . . . Sure, Tommy, call somebody. It's not for me. But it'd be interesting to see what golden opportunity I'm passing up.”

Wilcox spent the afternoon interviewing two witnesses to a shooting at a downtown public housing complex and filed his story before leaving the office. He'd had trouble pushing aside the conversation with Melito, and thought of little else as he drove to the house he'd called home for the past couple of years. He decided not to even mention it to Georgia. No sense upsetting her with thoughts of another move. The
Detroit Free Press
was his third job since graduating from Northwestern seven years ago with a degree in journalism and marrying his college sweetheart. She'd been a good soldier about it, encouraging him as he moved from a weekly paper to a daily, and then to the larger daily where he now worked, each move advancing his career and bettering his salary. But he knew she considered the
Free Press
the culmination of that career, a major daily in a large city, with room for advancement. For her, this
was
the big time, and he sometimes agreed with her.

Still, there were those youthful visions of one day becoming, say, a foreign correspondent, trench coat and all, his generation's Edward R. Murrow, meeting with shadowy figures in exotic foreign cities while bombs burst around you, scooping others who were after the same story, front-page bylines on a paper like
The New York Times
or
The Washington Tribune
and the resulting notoriety, including prizes—
a Pulitzer for little Joey Wilcox from Kankakee
? Maybe he'd start smoking a pipe.

A pipe
dream,
he knew, like envisioning himself hitting the home run that would lead his favorite baseball team, the Chicago Cubs, into the World Series—finally! He was a beat reporter, covering the city of Detroit the way Hamill and Breslin did in New York, and Kupcinet did in Chicago.
A foreign correspondent?
You've been watching too many movies, he told himself. Be happy with who you are and what you've got.

He eagerly took Melito's call the next day.

“Hey, Joe, just wanted you to know that I got through to my guy in D.C.”

“And?”

“Talked to Paul Morehouse. He's assistant managing editor of the Metro section, part of the new regime, a no-nonsense guy but okay. Rough cob. Came over from
The Baltimore Sun.
I told him all about you, in glowing terms, of course, and he said he'd be interested in getting a call.”

“I really appreciate it, Tom, but—”

Melito rattled off Morehouse's phone number. “Got it?”

“No, give it to me again.”

This time, Wilcox wrote it down.

“It's his private line. Call him.” Melito said. “You've got nothing to lose, maybe lots to gain.”

Wilcox left the paper that afternoon to make the call from a gas station phone booth. Morehouse answered. He sounded gruff and distracted and squeezed a series of rapid-fire questions into a few minutes. When it was obvious to Wilcox that the conversation was about to end, Morehouse asked, “You as good as Tommy Melito says?”

“I don't know,” Wilcox replied. “What did he say?”

“Send me a resume and some clips. If I like what I see, I'll pass it on to Human Resources.” He laughed, a bark. “Christ, it used to be Personnel. I'll get back to you.”

Wilcox decided to follow through on Morehouse's request without informing Georgia. He'd come to the conclusion that it was a wasted exercise; nothing would come of it. Five days after sending the material by priority mail, he received a call at the
Free Press
from Morehouse. “Can you talk?” the editor asked.

Wilcox looked around the newsroom. “No,” he said.

“Call me back.”

That night, after dinner had been cleared and Roberta was in her room, Wilcox told his wife of his flirtation with
The Washington Tribune.

“They want you to go to Washington for an interview?”

“Yes.”

“And you want to do it?”

“I think so. It could be a wonderful opportunity for me.”

“For
you.
What about us, me and Roberta?”

“I think you'd enjoy living in Washington, Georgia. It's a nice city. Morehouse said the
Trib
is beefing up at every level, in every department. They're willing to pay for the right people.”

Georgia turned in her web chair on their small patio and looked out over the garden she'd so tenderly cultivated. A single tear ran down her cheek, and Wilcox moved his chair closer, placing a hand on her shoulder. “Hey,” he said, “I don't have the job. Nobody's offered it to me yet. And if you feel that strongly about it, I'll call Morehouse and tell him I've changed my mind, that I'm not interested.”

She said nothing for a minute, her attention still on the garden. Then she turned, took his face in her hands, and said, “No, go for the interview, Joe. If you don't, you'll spend the rest of your life wondering what you missed, and that wouldn't be good for us, for our marriage. I just wish you'd included me from the beginning. I fear surprises.” She brightened. “Nothing ventured, nothing gained, Joe.” He smiled at her use of the cliché. She knew and used more of them than anyone else he knew.

Two days later, Wilcox took a personal day and flew to Washington where he sat with Paul Morehouse in the editor's cubicle on the perimeter of the
Trib
's Metro newsroom. The air was thick with smoke; the keyboards provided a cacophonous background to their conversation. At first, he was put off by Morehouse's crusty persona that bordered on rudeness. But he soon sensed that behind that exterior was a committed man, someone who had no patience with fools or pretenders.
Like my father,
Wilcox thought as the interview continued, interrupted frequently by phone calls and people sticking their heads into the office with questions. He even got in some questions of his own.

“Say hello to Joe Wilcox,” Morehouse told a heavyset reporter who'd walked into the cubicle wearing yellow suspenders with tiny green evergreen trees on them.

“Whaddya say, kid?” the reporter said, shaking Joe's hand.

“He wants a job here,” Morehouse said.

The reporter laughed. “Good,” he said. “You come to work here, the first person you come see is me. I'll fill you in, show you where the bodies are buried—and tell you who
should
be buried.”

“Get out,” Morehouse said, waving his hand.

“Nice meeting you, kid. Lotsa luck.”

After another twenty minutes had passed, and Morehouse had asked questions ranging from pertinent to impertinent, he stood, yawned, and extended his arms over his head. “Interested?” he asked. He was a relatively short man, tightly packed with a deep chest and hard jaw, prematurely bald—Wilcox judged Morehouse to be only a few years older than he—the beginnings of gray at his temples. Bottle-green eyes seemed always to be asking a question:
Come on, come on, tell me more.

“Yeah, I think I am,” Wilcox said.

“You
think
you are?”

Wilcox smiled. “No, I know I am. Do you guys pay salaries?”

“Let's go to Human Resources. They get testy when we go over their heads about pay.”

They went down a long, carpeted hallway lined with photographs from the paper's past, which went back to its founding in 1897. “You're married, huh?” Morehouse commented as they reached a door with the sign
HR
.