Kiss the Girls and Make Them Cry(2)
Stepping out of the shower at five-thirty in the morning, Gina was pleasantly surprised at how she felt so good. She had slept for almost eight hours on the plane and another four after arriving home. She wasn’t feeling any of the dreaded jet lag most people experience after a long west to east flight.
She was eager to get back to work. After graduating from Boston College with a major in Journalism, she had been thrilled to land a job as a desk assistant at a suburban newspaper on Long Island. Budget cutbacks had forced the paper to let many of their senior writers go. Within a year she was writing feature stories.
Her articles on business and finance caught the eye of the editor of Your Money. She happily made the switch to the brash new upstart and had loved every minute of her seven years there. But the declining interest in print publications and slowing advertising revenue had taken their toll. In the three years since Your Money had folded, she had been a freelancer.
While part of her enjoyed the freedom to pursue the stories that interested her, another part missed the steady paycheck and health care that came along with being an employee. She was free to choose what she wanted to write about, but at the end of the day somebody had to buy her story.
Empire Review had been a lifesaver. While visiting her parents in Florida, friends of theirs told Gina about being horrified that their eighteen-year-old grandson had been branded during a hazing ritual at his college fraternity. Using a hot iron, Greek letters had been burned into the back of his upper thigh.
Complaints to the university’s administration were going unanswered. Big donors among the alumni had threatened to withhold contributions if there was a clampdown on the “Greek Life” community.
Empire Review had agreed to the story immediately. They gave her a hefty advance and a generous travel and expense budget. ER’s exposé caused a sensation. It was covered by the national evening news programs and even prompted a segment on 60 Minutes.
The success of the fraternity story had given her high visibility as an investigative journalist. She was inundated with “tips” emails from would-be whistle-blowers and people who claimed to have knowledge of major scandals. A few of them had resulted in stories she had pursued and published. The trick was distinguishing between providers of genuine leads versus crackpots, disgruntled former employees, and conspiracy theorists.
Gina glanced at her watch. She was scheduled to meet with the magazine’s editor in chief the next day. Charles Maynard typically began the conversation with “So Gina, what do we want to write about next?” She had a little over twenty-four hours to come up with a good answer.
She dressed quickly, choosing jeans and a warm turtleneck sweater. After touching up her makeup, she glanced at her full-length mirror. She looked like the early pictures of her mother, who had been homecoming queen at Michigan State. Wideset eyes, more green than hazel, and classic features. Auburn shoulder-length hair made her look even taller than her five foot, seven inch frame.
Satisfied with her appearance, she put a frozen bagel in the toaster and made a cup of coffee. When it was ready, she brought her plate and cup to the table by the living room window. She had a view of the morning sun that was barely peaking over the horizon. It was the time of day when she keenly felt the death of her mother and experienced the feeling of time rushing by too quickly.
Settling at the table, her favorite place to work, she opened her laptop and watched a wave of unread emails unfold on her screen.
Her first glance was at the new emails that had arrived since she had checked while on the plane. Nothing urgent. More importantly, nothing from CRyan.
Next she scanned through the ones that had arrived over the last week and a half, when she had been in one of the few remaining places on earth where WiFi service was not available.
A note from a woman in Atlanta who claimed she had proof that the recycled rubber being used in school playgrounds was making children sick.
A request to speak the following month at the ASJA, American Society of Journalists and Authors.
An email from a man who claimed he had in his possession the portion of President Kennedy’s skull that had gone missing after the autopsy.
Even though she probably could have recited its content, she went back and clicked on the email she had received the day she left on her vacation.
Hi Gina, I don’t believe we ever met when we were at Boston College. I finished a few years apart from you. Right after I graduated, I went to work at REL News. I had a terrible experience with one of the higher-ups. (And I wasn’t the only one.) Now they’re afraid I’ll talk about it. I’ve been approached about a settlement offer. I don’t want to put more in an email. Can we arrange to meet?
When she had seen the name CRyan on an email, she had tried to remember why the name was familiar. Had there been a Courtney Ryan at school?
Gina reread the email twice, pushing herself to see if there was anything she had missed. REL News was a Wall Street darling among media companies. Its headquarters were at 55th Street and Avenue of the Americas, or Sixth Avenue as most New Yorkers still called it. In a span of twenty years it had grown from a small group of cable TV stations to a national powerhouse. Its ratings had surpassed CNN and were growing ever closer to the market leader, Fox. Its unofficial motto was “REaL News, not the other kind.”
The first subject that had come to her mind was sexual harassment. Hold on, she had thought. You don’t even know if “CRyan” is a man or a woman. You’re a reporter. Don’t get ahead of yourself. Get the facts. There had been only one way to find out. She looked again at the response she had sent.