Chapter 4


Ed Rosenberg hated being put on hold almost as much as the people
who did it to him hated talking to reporters. He looked at his watch. 9:18 a.m. He washed down his second cup of coffee, now almost cold, and considered how to make the most of the situation. Maybe write a book, he mused, 101 Creative Activities While On Hold. Trouble was, he couldn’t think of any. Cradling the receiver between his chin and shoulder, he considered balancing his checkbook, but rejected the idea as too depressing for so early Monday morning.

Across the cavernous newsroom of the San Francisco Foghorn, Ed spied the new features editor, Karen Kaitz. She had abandoned an upwardly mobile career at the first-rate Miami Herald to slum at the second-rate Horn. In addition to a flair for putting stories together, word in the men’s room was that she was well put together herself. Ed craned his neck to follow her as she strode up the row of cubicles toward him. Perhaps one chapter of 101 Creative Activities While On Hold could be: “Ogle Women.” But that wouldn’t work. He did that all the time.

Still on hold, Ed scanned the Sports section. The A’s won, of course, 7-6 over Milwaukee, a baseball juggernaut rolling inexorably toward another pennant, another World Series. In the AL West, their magic number was down to 16. But the Giants—damn!—fell to Atlanta 6-5. Reuschel had them up 5-1 on a one-hitter. Mitchell smacked his 43rd. Then in the eighth, Downs and Bedrosian gave up five runs. But the Giants were still five games up on San Diego, with a magic number of 13 in the NL West. Please, God, Ed prayed, a latter-day Tevya in Fiddler on the Roof, is it too much to ask to give the Giants the pennant just this once? As you know, God, it’s been twenty-seven years.

Ed scanned the box scores, and contemplated the two magic numbers. At 16, the mighty A’s seemed a whole lot closer to the World Series than the often-hapless Giants did at 13. He closed his eyes: Please, God.

When he opened them, he was still on Hold. What’s with this guy? Ed wondered. Doesn’t he realize I’m calling from “The Voice of the West”?

The lovely new features editor had disappeared from view, which left Ed nothing better to eye while on Hold than his story. He hated this story. It was a sad, tedious slice of banality, a pathetic comment on the tensions rife in a changing city, a small story about small-minded people. When would he ever get another big story, one that actually mattered? Probably never, now that the assistant city editor who’d loved his work had bolted to the Baltimore Sun, leaving him under the oily thumb of Mr. Insufferable, Ron Ruffen, who seemed to delight in making Ed’s life miserable. Ruffen had been a newspaperman since San Francisco had belonged to Mexico, and knew how to shape a story. But he and Ed rubbed each other the wrong way. Ruffen considered Ed a wiseass, a failed academic who’d taken a wrong turn into journalism. As punishment, Ruffen tortured him with piece-of-shit assignments—POS, in Foghorn vernacular—which brought out the wiseass in Ed.

So Ed bent the rules every now and then. What good reporter didn’t? Look at Woodward and Bernstein, the heroes of Watergate. You’re no Woodward and Bernstein, Ruffen snapped during their last set-to. Yeah, Ed replied without thinking, and you’re no Ben Bradlee. Their editor. Ruffen took umbrage and placed Ed “on notice,” one bureaucratic step away from “probation,” which was just a stone’s throw from termination. The union guy told Ed to cool it, that if push came to shove, all the higher-ups would line up behind Ruffen and he’d be history. But no one told Ruffen to stop dealing Ed one POS after another.

San Francisco was filled with great stories. AIDS had hit the Castro so hard that apartments were going begging and some heteros were moving back in. Traffic was worse than ever, but Muni was cutting bus service. San Francisco was fast becoming mainland America’s first Asian city, but not a single Asian held elected office. The Giants were threatening to bolt to San Jose unless city taxpayers coughed up $150 million for a downtown stadium. And the Health Department saw no connection between the Navy’s 50 years of dumping toxic waste all over Hunter’s Point and the fact that the neighborhood had three times the cancer rate of the rest of the city. So what was Ed writing? He peered at his screen, and felt nauseous. If he were lucky, this yawner would end up as filler on the Obits page. Or maybe the other editors would realize that Ruffen had lost his marbles, and just kill it.

Either way, Ed’s story was a classic POS: Bird Man’s Neighbors Squawk Over “Screamer.” It seemed that one Roy Muller, a retired firefighter way out on Forty-fifth Avenue had, some years earlier, begun collecting exotic birds and housing them in an aviary he built off the back of his Sunset district home. The parrots, macaws, cockatoos, and cockatiels didn’t bother anyone, and they helped the old guy survive the loss of his wife, who’d contracted AIDS from a transfusion back in ’82 before they figured out how to screen blood for the virus. The Bird Man, as he became affectionately known around the neighborhood, ran local errands with one of his extravagantly plumed pets on his shoulder and everyone, especially the kids, loved it—that is, until he obtained a rare Sumatra Screamer, a bird whose wail sounded like an opera star with a megaphone being burned at the stake. The bird screeched at all hours, which didn’t bother the Bird Man—he was hard of hearing. But it infuriated his neighbors. They complained. He flipped them the bird. They called the police, the San Francisco Neighborhood Mediation Service, and the Bird Man’s old buddies at the firehouse on Forty-third where he’d spent his career. But there was no end to the Screamer’s caterwauling. Finally, a few of the neighbors took the Bird Man to court for causing a public nuisance. He was Old San Francisco: white and of German extraction, while his antagonists were New San Francisco: Chinese, Filipino, and Vietnamese immigrants. The Bird Man was quoted in the neighborhood newspaper making derogatory remarks about people from the other side of the International Dateline. This brought the city’s Asian civil rights groups into the fray. The Bird Man vigorously denied having slurred anyone’s ethnicity. He charged that, under pressure from the neighborhood, the local pet-store owner, a woman from Hong Kong, had tried to kill the Screamer by poisoning the special food the thing ate. One of the aggrieved neighbors, a Burmese nurse, worked at the American Heart Association with Ruffen’s wife, which was how this POS got dumped on Ed.

Unfortunately, before he could bid the sorry tale good riddance, Ed had to get a quote reacting to the poisoning charge from the pet-store owner, Lilly Wong. But she refused comment, referring him to her attorney, who put Ed on Hold … eons ago. The schmuck didn’t even have Hold Muzak, though, on second thought, Ed decided that was a blessing.

Reporting was a far cry from the historical research that, for eight delightful years, had engrossed Ed at Michigan and Berkeley. Delving into primary sources—diaries, memoirs, musty public records, sunken ships’ manifests—there were always surprises, strange and wonderful discoveries that sent you deeper into the remote recesses of the enveloping past. Despite the much-ballyhooed mythology of investigative journalism, that was almost never the case in newspapering. Half the paper was little more than rewritten press releases and the other half contained stories so predictable, that a fool could make up the quotes and be right 97 percent of the time. Ah, Ed thought, the perfect diversion while on Hold.

He turned to his screen and set up for another round of Let’s Make Up Some Quotes, the game that had saved him from psychotic breaks during previous POS assignments. What would this lawyer, Eric Chin, say about the poisoning accusation? Ed keyed the possibilities: Numero uno: “Ridiculous. Ms. Wong categorically denies having done any such thing.” Number two: “Mr. Muller is trying to deflect attention from the serious problems he has caused by impugning the spotless reputation of a respected businesswoman.” Or how about: “Mr. Muller’s racist innuendo is an affront to the entire Asian-American community.” And finally: “The Bird Man should have his head examined. I think you’d find a bird brain in there.”

“Ed,” Ruffen barked over the intercom, “when do I get Bird Man?”

“Soon as I get a reaction to the food-poisoning charge.”

“What food-poisoning charge?”

“The food-poisoning charge that has become the latest wrinkle in—the story.” He caught himself before saying, “this POS.”

“Details?”

“The Bird Man says a Chinese pet shop owner tried to poison his Screamer. But I can’t close it up until I get a reaction from the pet store owner’s lawyer.”

“I’m waiting.”

“I’m on Hold.”

Just then, the lawyer came on the line and delivered a crisp professional comment in the best interests of his client. Unfortunately, Ed was distracted and didn’t quite catch it. Nearby several reporters were noisily wagering on the odds of a Bay Bridge World Series. And the new features editor chose that exact moment to sashay her perfumed assets right past his cube.

The lawyer rang off. Ed was left staring at his screen, uncertain what he said. Monday morning, 9:24 a.m. It was shaping up to be a very long day. He might call the lawyer back, but the effort didn’t seem worth another century on Hold, not when he already had four perfectly serviceable quotes. He liked the “bird brain” quip best, but then thought the better of it, and went with the straight denial. That was what this POS deserved, a predictably boring quote. He slugged it “Bird Man,” hit the SEND key, and sent it on its way to Ruffen and the next morning’s Home edition, or with any luck, the trash.

Ed cranked himself out of his chair and headed to the coffee machine for java number three. He considered how much he could comfortably wager on the Giants making it to the World Series. A hundred bucks. He could go that much. But if he made the bet, he would be putting a kinehoreh, a Jewish jinx, on his team, and the Giants were certain to wash away like a sand castle at high tide. Ed did not want to be responsible for his team’s demise, so he decided not to bet. He poured the coffee, and threw in some whitening powder. The brew tasted as bad as he felt.

Wandering back to his cube, Ed caught another glimpse of the new Features Editor. Maybe he could. … Then he saw the major rock shimmering on her finger. Sorry, sailor, another one taken.

How long since he’d gotten laid? Way too long … since Diane had left him for the A-frame with the big garden in Grass Valley. Lost in regrets about his ex, Ed didn’t notice the tall rail-thin man leaning on the chest-high wall by the entrance to his cube.

“Hello, Ed,” the man ventured. “Long time.” He was about Ed’s age, but his face was lined, not with the crow’s feet that marked a certain maturity, but rather with deeply chiseled creases that bespoke a life that had not played out as expected.

Ed regarded his visitor, momentarily befuddled. “Chet?” he whispered tentatively. The man smiled. His small teeth were the giveaway. “Chet! Jesus H. Christ! It’s really you! Rumor had it you were about to start. How long has it been, man? Eight years? Nine?”

“Ten.”

“And, hey, congratulations on that Pulitzer—and under a pseudonym, no less.”

“Not a pseudonym,” Chet corrected him gently, “an assumed name. I was underground, remember? I got the job at the Anchorage Pioneer using my alter ego. It was weird at first. But it gave me the chance to make it on my own, not just because I’m a Gilchrist.” Chet was, in fact, Chester Worthington Gilchrist IV, heir to the San Francisco Foghorn media empire: the Horn, a dozen other papers, five TV stations, twenty-odd radio stations, a book company, and enough property to become the fifty-first state.

“So, what are you, psychic?” Ed couldn’t resist ribbing his old buddy. “You write a series about oil tanker crews boozing their nights away, and what happens a month later? A drunk captain runs the Exxon Valdez aground, spilling a zillion gallons of crude. You were a lock for the Prize. That wasn’t reporting. It was prophecy.”

“Hardly. Those tankers were a disaster waiting to happen. We just stumbled into the right story at the right time.”

Same old Chet, Ed thought, modest to a fault, uncomfortable with success, and even less comfortable with his family’s wealth and power. Chet had always been thin. Now he looked positively gaunt. Most of his hair was gone and the horseshoe ring that remained was gray verging on white. But the old mischievous gleam still shone in his eyes.

“What about—?” Ed couldn’t bring himself to finish the question.

Chet smiled at his discomfort. “You mean: What about the charges pending against me? Heroin possession? Flight from prosecution? Felonious details like that?”

Ed nodded gravely. He never figured Chet for heroin and couldn’t believe it when the story broke and his friend fled. The whole episode still made no sense to him. “Our story said the governor pardoned you. Is that for real?”

“Correct,” Chet replied with a dismissive wave of the hand. “The governor has granted me a full pardon, effective last night. It seems I was the victim of a miscarriage of justice, that I’ve made good and contributed enough to society as a journalist to close the curtain on my unseemly past. Of course, I have to do a thousand hours of community service. And it didn’t hurt that Daddy endorsed our esteemed Guv last election and showered enough money on his campaign to buy Panama. I just had an offer from Hollywood for a TV movie: The Prodigal Gilchrist, or some such nonsense.”

“Hey, don’t knock it,” Ed advised. “Having your life turned into a TV movie has become the number-two American dream, after winning the Lotto, at least according to a sociologist I interviewed at Sonoma State.”

“Spare me,” Chet groaned. “Whatever happened to the dream of home ownership?”

“You’ve been gone a long time,” Ed replied. “Real estate has gone so crazy, most people have a better shot at the Lotto.” Then he remembered that housing hyper-inflation didn’t matter to Chet. He was a Gilchrist. “So what about this TV movie?”

“I told the slimy little producer to take a hike. Televisionland will have to survive without my sordid tale of youthful indiscretion and filial impiety. I’ve embarrassed my father enough. I don’t want to reopen old wounds. I just want to come back home and work on the paper.”

A moment passed in awkward silence, then Ed said, “And eventually take it over, right?”

Chet’s lips curled into a weak smile. “I owe it to my mother,” he said softly. “She always said it was my destiny. I decided to stop fighting it.”

Ed flashed on the painfully reserved Chet he’d met a dozen years earlier at Cal Berkeley on their first day as graduate history students. He seemed so burdened by who he was that during the introductions, he hung his head and uttered his last name in a whisper. This new Chet was a different person—confident, comfortable with himself. Ed was intrigued.

“At the Pioneer, to my utter astonishment, I fell in love with reporting. No one knew who I was. No one kowtowed. I was just another grunt, one of the guys, for the first time in my life. I loved it. When our team won the Pulitzer, it felt like time to make things right. Not to mention that I can’t wait to see the Giants win the World Series.”

“You wish.”

“I know.” A true believer.

“So you called a hotshot lawyer?”

“Yes, and my father. You know what the old man said? The first words out of his mouth? Guess.”

“I don’t know: ‘Thank God you’re alive?’ ‘Good to hear from you?’”

“Hardly. ‘It’s time to collect on a few campaign promises.’”

Ed shook his head. “Your father is a real operator.”

“That he is. But what about you, Ed? The last time I recall us spending time together, we were knocking back Dos Equis at the Bear’s Lair and you were starting your dissertation. What was your topic? Something about fishing, wasn’t it?”

“Whaling. The History of Whaling out of Sausalito.”

“Right. You ever finish?”

“Oh yeah, about two years after you, uh … left the program. You’re looking at a man with a Ph.D. in History from Cal Berkeley. You may kiss my ring.” With a flourish, Ed held his hand out to his friend.

Chet turned the palm up. The pads of Ed’s fingers carried the dark smudges of having read the morning’s Foghorn hot off the press. “So, Mr. Cal Berkeley Ph.D., how’d you wind up an ink-stained wretch working in this dump?”

Ed laughed. “You know the story: Those who ignore history are condemned to repeat it. And those who take it seriously are condemned to unemployment. I wasn’t cut out for academia. I taught for two years at Hayward State—liked the students but couldn’t stand the politics and didn’t have the energy to publish enough to grovel for tenure. So I quit, knocked around awhile, fell into a part-time gig at the Grass Valley Ledger, parlayed that into a reporter’s job back here at the Defender, and after a few years, wound up here.”

“You like it?”

“When I get decent assignments. I think I’ll like it more now that you’re back. You and Laura still together?”

“Super-glued. She stuck by me through everything. Didn’t see her parents, her sister for ten years. Hell of a woman. What about you and … Diane, right?”

“Divorced. Last year. No kids, thank God. Di was always a country girl. She loved Grass Valley and hated following me back here when I got the Defender job. It wasn’t a bitter divorce. She wanted me to move to Grass Valley with her, buy a place, have a garden, raise a family. But I’ve always been a city guy. One day, she just left. I saw it coming, but it hurt more than I expected. She’s got a little business up there, Blackberry Creek Preserves: blackberry, blueberry, strawberry, some others. They’re really great. I’ll give you a few jars.”

“You dating?”

“Not really. But Ms. Right is destined to appear any moment—at least, that’s what my fortune cookie said last night.”

Ruffen waddled up the row of cubicles. In a diaper, he would pass for a sumo wrestler: no neck, three chins, a beach ball with stubby arms and legs. Ruffen smoked—and just about quit the paper when the suits upstairs banned it in the building. He could often be found sucking beers after work at the M&M, the bar on Howard that catered to the Foghorn staff. And his typical lunch consisted of an Extra—a sub with two kinds of ham and three kinds of cheese from the Front Page deli on the ground floor of the Foghorn building. Meanwhile, his wife was the PR honcho for the Northern California affiliate of the American Heart Association. Go figure.

“Excuse me,” Ruffen said to Ed’s visitor, moving his great bulk into the space Chet occupied, forcing him to take a giant step backward. Ed started to introduce them, but Ruffen cut him off. “Ed,” he intoned sarcastically, “your Bird Man piece was so sterling, I’m giving you another honey of a pet assignment—”

“Ron, please,” Ed pleaded wearily.

“It seems there’s a poodle in the Haight that plays a passable game of tic-tac-toe.”

Behind Ruffen, Chet rolled his eyes.

“Come on, Ron, I haven’t had a decent assignment in weeks!”

Just then, Elena Ruiz appeared, her dark Chicana eyebrows tweezed into high arches. Pursed lips showed she was not happy. “Jesus, Ron, can’t you find anyone else to cover Gilchrist donating his coin collection to the California Museum? It’s a total puff piece.”

“The Gilchrist Coin Collection?” Ed jumped up and grabbed the press release from Elena’s hand. “Ron, let me have this one. I know coins. I collected them as a kid. And I know this collection. It’s famous. Priceless. It contains a 1906 SS Reilly Double Eagle, one of only two known to exist, the most valuable American coins ever minted. Let me give this story the play it deserves. Hey, ’Lena, you like poodles?” He handed her Ruffen’s memo.

“A poodle that plays tic-tac-toe?” She squealed with delight. “This I’ve got to see.”

“How about it, Ron?” Ed implored. “Switch us. We’ll both do better pieces this way.”

Ruffen looked from Ed to Elena and back again. “Oh, all right.” His tone said: I’m too good to you turkeys. “Lena, I need this piece yesterday as a local-angle sidebar to a thing Science is doing on animal intelligence, so get going.” When Ruffen spoke, he wheezed. The ten-yard walk from his office to Ed’s cube had covered his forehead with a shiny film of sweat. If the Giants and A’s weren’t in hot pennant races, the Sports guys would be making book on the date he’d keel over. “And Ed, about the Old Man’s gift: Play it straight and keep it short. Give us enough hoo-hah to do justice to any super-famous coins, but don’t go overboard. I don’t want the competition accusing us of giving the boss a blowjob just because he owns us body and soul, all right? Here’s the file the PR clowns gave me.”

Behind Ruffen, Chet’s eyes danced.

“Ron,” Ed tried again, “there’s someone I’d like you to—”

But Ruffen continued to bark orders. “You’ve got an interview with Gilchrist in thirty minutes.” He glanced at his watch. “No twenty-five, so get cracking. And an interview with the Museum guy—whats-hisname?—at two. Then the hoo-hah at the Museum tonight at eight. One or two quick quotes from Gilchrist, then get out of town. And nothing about the Handgun Control Initiative, okay?” It was Gilchrist, Sr.’s current pet project.

“Right, chief,” Ed said, mimicking Jimmy Olsen from the old Superman TV show.

Lost in thought, Ruffen didn’t realize he was being mocked. “Gilchrist gives a priceless coin collection to the California Museum, but what kind of coin does he give the bums who made him rich?”

Chet bit his lip to keep from laughing.

“Ron!” Ed grabbed his sleeve and turned him around. “This is Chet Gilchrist.”

Chet stepped forward and thrust out his hand. Ruffen shook it absently and looked his future boss up and down. “I heard you’d be coming on, working for Marty in Business.”

“That’s what they tell me.”

“Well, as far as the editors are concerned, you’re just another reporter. Don’t expect any favors.”

“I don’t want any.”

“Good.” Ruffen turned and began waddling back to his lair. Then he stopped and looked over his shoulder at Chet. “Nice job on that Pulitzer. Hell of a series.”

“It was a team effort.”

Ruffen took another few steps, then turned back to face Chet. “What I said about your father, it was out of line.”

“I’ve said much worse.”

Ruffen gestured toward the suite of Editorial offices at the lobby end of the newsroom. “Have you met the gang?” By that he meant Gus Oberhoffer, the C.E., John Gagliano, the M.E., and Walter French, the X.E., newspaper-speak for city editor, managing editor, and executive editor. “I’ll introduce you around.”

Ruffen led Chet down the row of cubes. He called back to Ed: “Laura and I will be at the party tonight. See you there.”