The Darkness - Jason Pinter [6]
And leave it to Jack O'Donnell to throw a crowbar
into the wound.
I was wearing a suit, the same one I'd worn on my very
first day in the office several years ago. I remembered the
day clearly. Meeting Wallace Langston, the paper's editor
in chief, being led to my desk where I'd write the stories
I was born to write. Seeing the man, Jack O'Donnell, in
person for the first time.
The man was a legend of the New York newsroom, as
synonymous with this city as any one of its towering
monuments. But every monument has cracks, ignored
by those who prefer to see their gods as unfailing, monuments pristine in their foundations and men pure in their
humanity. Yet while Jack raised the bar for journalism,
his cracks had begun to show themselves not just to me,
but to millions of people.
We all knew that Jack drank. But when you told people
Jack drank, you raised your eyebrows and enunciated the
word drank like it was hepatitis. Jack O'Donnell drank.
Three-martini lunches might have fallen out of fashion, but Jack was trying to keep the tradition going almost
singlehandedly. And who else would expose the cracks
in the foundation but someone who resided as low to the
ground as possible.
Paulina Cole used to work with Jack at the Gazette. A
few months ago, she penned a hatchet job to end all hatchet
jobs, exposing Jack's drinking problem on the front page in
our rival paper, the NewYork Dispatch. It was a colossal embarrassment to his reputation, personally and professionally.
Then Jack disappeared.
Whether he was in rehab or lying in the gutter some-22
Jason Pinter
where, I figured the man needed time to figure out if he
was going to be swallowed whole by his demons, or if he
still had the strength to fight them off. My answer came,
surprisingly, when I needed him the most.
After I learned the truth about Stephen's killer, Jack
found me at my home just as my girlfriend, Amanda, and
I were packing up. He told me he'd needed a "dialysis of
the soul." He looked good. Healthy. And raring to go to
answer the questions that Stephen's murder just touched
upon.
Anyway, that's what I was doing here early in the
morning. I wanted to get here before him. Though we'd
worked in the same offices for several years, I'd never had
the chance to work side by side with Jack. I was eager to
prove what I'd learned, eager to prove that there was
someone waiting in the wings to carry on the traditions
he'd started. And what better way to show I was ready
than by beating the man to his desk on his first day back
in the office?
So when I got off on the ninth floor, pushed through
the glass doors to the newsroom, rounded the corner to
the sea of news desks, I was shocked to see Jack O'Donnell surrounded by our colleagues, looking like a kid at
his own birthday party.
He was sitting on his desk, feet on his desk chair,
speaking loudly and buoyantly while the other reporters
and editors laughed and slapped him on the back. I hadn't
seen Jack with this much energy since, well, ever. And
any frustration I felt in getting here late disappeared when
I saw the smile on the old man's face.
It was like a returning war hero being embraced by his
countrymen. While Jack was gone, one of the things I
wished I understood better was the newsroom's opinion
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23
of him. While I always held his professional career in the
highest regard, there were no doubt others who looked at
his departure as something of an embarrassment. Any
time a paper's reporter ends up in the headlines instead
of below them, it was considered an affront to the integrity of the establishment. The New York Times went
through it with Jayson Blair, and the Gazette had gone
through it twice in the last several years: the exposure of
Jack's alcoholism by Paulina Cole at the Dispatch, and
when I was accused of murder. And while the truth about
my situation eventually came to light, the harsh reality
was that every word in Paulina's story was true. Granted
she handled it with the class and dignity of a five-dollar