The Stolen - Jason Pinter [114]
of black heart needed to do such a thing.
I took the paper without saying another word to Frank
and took it to my desk. There I read the entire article, every
single word. And when I was done, I crumpled it up, took
it to the incinerator on our floor and chucked it into the
darkness.
Paulina Cole had done one of the worst hatchet jobs on
Jack I'd ever read. Somehow she'd gotten one of the
porters in Jack's building to collect the liquor bottles from
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the recycling bin every morning. Easy, since he occupied
the entire floor himself. The bottles were then brought
straight to Paulina Cole. Every single one was fingerprinted to confirm that Jack had in fact drunk them
himself. No other fingerprints were found on any of the
bottles. And there must have been several hundred in the
photograph. And he'd drunk them all himself over the
span of one year.
The article described how much alcohol must have
been absorbed by Jack's bloodstream over that year. It
also made mention of every correction in every story that
Jack had written that same year, comparing it to his
previous work. It portrayed Jack as a man whose professional life was now ruled by one of the most aggressive
bouts of alcoholism ever seen in the newsroom, whose
work had depreciated to the point where his stories were
filled with more holes than an O. J. Simpson alibi.
Then the story took a more macro perspective, going
into great detail about how the Gazette promoted Jack as
one of the legends of New York journalism. Paulina ended
her story with the following paragraph:
"It can be said that a news institution can be judged on
one thing, and one thing only: the reputation of the men
and women who report the news. Jack O'Donnell is a man
whose reputation, built over years more through joviality
and cronyism than true journalistic integrity, has opened
a window into the true nature of this black-and-white
beast. And what an ugly, ugly creature it is."
The next thing I knew I was going straight for Jack's
desk. It was unoccupied. But worse than that, it was empty.
The computer was off. There were no odds and ends on
the countertop. There was nothing.
I marched to Wallace Langston's office and threw open
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the doors. The editor-in-chief was on the phone. His face
was ashen. I knew the feeling. He motioned for me to take
a seat. I declined.
When he hung up the phone, I said, "Wallace, what the
fuck is going on? Where is Jack?"
Wallace sighed and leaned back in his chair. I knew my
anger was misplaced, but my mind was going a thousand
miles an hour in a hundred different directions. "Jack is
on leave," he said.
"On leave? What the hell does that mean?"
"I assume you saw the story in today's Dispatch, " he
said.
"I just finished it."
"Well, word came down from Harvey Hillerman
himself that Jack had two choices. An extended personal
leave to deal with his demons in a treatment center. Or the
termination of his employment with the Gazette. " Harvey
Hillerman was the president and CEO of the Gazette. If it
came from him, it meant Jack had no way out.
"And?"
"And as of this morning, Jack O'Donnell is no longer
an employee of this newspaper."
I felt as if a cannonball had hit me square in the
stomach. My knees went weak, and I fell into the chair
across from Wallace.
"He can't do that," I said. "Jack is this newspaper."
"No, he's not, Henry. Jack has done more for this paper
than any employee in its history. But we are not one and
the same. You've seen Jack over the past few months. You
know things have been going downhill. He was hospitalized just last week."
"Yeah, and I know that damn picture is out there for
everyone to see."
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"You need to think about Jack," Wallace said. "The
man needs help. More than what you or I can do. If he
chooses to do it on his own, so be it. My take is that he
didn't want to be forced into doing anything. That doesn't
surprise me. It's always been the way he's worked."
"So