Murder at the Washington Tribune - Margaret Truman [2]
He saw in the young reporter something of himself years ago when he’d come to The Washington Tribune, brimming with ambition and possessing the energy to fuel it. But it had been different at the paper twenty-three years ago. Then, there were still plenty of grizzled veteran reporters from whom to learn, men (almost exclusively) who lived the life of a reporter as portrayed in movies and plays, characters straight out of The Front Page, their heads surrounded by blue cigarette and cigar smoke, pints of whiskey in their desk drawers, the rattle and clank of their typewriters testifying to their daily output, spoken words tough and profane, written words sharp and to the point. There weren’t many of them left. The younger Trib reporters, including Wilcox, had been hired to supplement that veteran staff. But eventually Gene Hawthorne and dozens of men and women like him had been brought in to replace the over-fifty crowd. There had been a flurry of buyouts offered over the past few years, and many newsroom veterans had jumped at the severance package with its generous cash settlement, pension options, and health and life insurance. In came the new blood, working at half the pay of the reporters who’d gone on to their retirement, or in many cases new jobs. One of the Trib’s top economics reporters had left on a Friday; his byline appeared over an article in the Trib the following Monday, written for a wire service that had eagerly hired him.
It just wasn’t the same anymore for Joe Wilcox. He was now a member of the dinosaur club himself and was viewed with a certain barely disguised scorn by Hawthorne and his cadre of young hotshots. Joe was two years from fifty-five, the buyout age, with the lapel pin certifying that he’d given The Washington Tribune the best twenty-five years of his life.
Roberta and Georgia approached and Roberta gave him a hug. She was taller than her father.
“Thanks for the plug,” he said.
“I meant it,” she said.
“You look great, honey. Congratulations. That was a hell of a piece you did.”
“I wonder if anyone at MPD will ever congratulate me,” she said.
Wilcox laughed. “I’m sure the police are preparing a proclamation as we speak naming you honorary cop of the year.”
“I know it was awkward for you,” Roberta said, her expression as serious as her words.
“They’ll get over it,” he said. “I still have friends over there who agreed with you. They all suffer when a few foul balls taint the entire force.”
“But if they knew you’d fed me some of the information I used—”
“Which they won’t. Don’t give it another thought, sweetie.”
“Anything new on Kaporis?” she asked.
His response was a shake of his head, and a tiny smile for a thought that came and went. This daughter-journalist had not asked the question out of natural curiosity.
• • •
Like her father, Roberta Wilcox had been reporting on the killing of Jean Kaporis, a young woman who’d joined the Trib less than a year ago, fresh out of the University of Missouri’s school of journalism. Kaporis had been assigned to the paper’s “Panache” section, helping cover the city’s vibrant social scene: the weddings of those whose names were well known enough to justify coverage, fundraisers—a day didn’t pass in Washington when someone wasn’t raising funds for something deemed worthy of their time and effort, important or whimsical—and ideally a scandal among the rich and famous and thin, a political faux pas, a fatuous misstep that would leave readers tittering. It wasn’t the sort of assignment she preferred, but she knew it represented a starting point for many newly hired female reporters, and she threw herself