I put the phone to my ear and moved away from Keltan, for both privacy and self-preservation. He crossed his arms and followed me with his fury-filled eyes.
I dodged the various cops, moving to the balcony that was at that point unmanned.
“Lucy. Please tell me the bitch didn’t flake on you,” Roger demanded before I even had the chance to speak. “We need this feature or the whole fucking story is dead.”
I glanced behind me. Keltan was rubbing the back of his neck and talking to his buddy who’d been there since the start. His eyes darted to me, and I looked away, focusing on the smog-filled view of Hollywood.
“The story is far from dead, though the feature is. Oh, and so is Lucinda Cross. I’m thinking more front page instead of feature,” I told him.
I proceeded to give him whispered details of the murder, sensing his excitement and thirst for the story over the phone.
“See if you can snap a pic of the jewelry the corpse is wearing. And maybe some blood. That would be one hell of a front page,” he decided. “I’m ordering a shit ton of jewelry from her website,” he said, followed by clicks in the background. “As soon as this breaks, it’ll go up in price.”
Charming.
“She’s not even cold yet, Roger,” I reminded him.
“Which means the story’s still hot,” he countered. “But only for as long as we’ve got the scoop. Get your lily-white ass in here so we can file a story on the website tonight before any other fuckers get to it. The primetime news might even run our story.”
In addition to being bloodthirsty, callous and literally willing to sell his own daughter for a story—she’d been involved in a high-profile actor’s marriage ending, and he’d gotten the scoop—Roger didn’t believe in such things as sexual harassment boundaries. Which was why, at any given time, there was at least one HR complaint. Usually three.
Yet he’d been editor for well over fifteen years. And one of the best journalists of his time for a decade before that. When real newspapers still flourished and real stories made differences.
He was a remnant of an industry that fossilized editors like that if they didn’t learn how to change with the times. Roger may not have moved far from objectifying women in the workplace, or his taste in shirts, but he was good at his job. He was the best, in fact, not cursing the industry for making him more and more obsolete but utilizing the changes to turn Current into the first hybrid online-offline newspaper that was actually bringing new staff on instead of laying them off.
For a budding and aspiring journalist like me, I could handle a few less than politically or humanly correct statements and a lack of empathy if it meant a job. Plus, I really liked Roger—sexist statements aside.
“I’m in a police interview, but I’ll wrap it up and be right there.” I paused. “That means you want me to write the story, the crime story, for the front page?”
“Of course, you’re writing the fucking story. You’re the eye-fucking-witness,” he scoffed.
I grinned, forgetting myself for a moment.
That some woman had to get brutally murdered in order for me to get myself away from shoes and sparkly things and onto a front-page murder story that would not only be the scoop, but have my byline.
Maybe it wasn’t leftovers from a redundant age of journalism that fostered a callousness towards humans who turned them into stories. Maybe it was a character trait.
“Make sure you leave a tidbit for an exclusive,” he ordered.
“You’re asking me to lie to the authorities?” I clarified, sounding more outraged than I was.
Which was not at all.
I’d lied to the police before. In fact, lying to the boys in blue was kind of the default when Rosie and I blew things up for fun and counted outlaws as our family.
“Omit,” he corrected. “Though, if asked by any officers of the law, or shareholders, I will deny this conversation ever happened.” A wet chewing sound telling me he was sucking on a throat lozenge. Since he couldn’t smoke at his desk anymore, he was always sucking on them. His office was littered with papers, new editions and specs, and wrappers for the things. He hadn’t adapted to a paperless office yet, despite environmentalists protesting. He needed a hard copy of everything.
“Of course,” I agreed, squinting at the smog-filled skyline and already thinking of the first line for my story.
“Okay, now get off the fucking phone, talk to the cops, flutter your eyelashes, show some chest if you have to and get your skinny white ass here for the story,” Roger ordered roughly.
I rolled my eyes. “You really like to keep the HR department busy, don’t you?”
A grunt accompanied by more sucking noises.