Page 22 (1/2)

Chapter One

Thursday, October 14th

In inning a cole If journalisin like this:

Troy Hardesty has achieved the paperless office Not even a Post-it Note profanes his sleek desk The desktop is ten feet long, uely like the deck of a supercarrier It is polished so highly that I can see my face in it At the desk’s precise center are two thin coles, a keyboard, and ht of the keyboard Every few seconds the Blackberry chirps: confidential dispatches froe fund has just invested 75 ainst the company that makes Blackberry Three chairs face the desk, made of the same platinum and dark reddish wood as the superstructure of the desk They are comfortable, but not too comfortable After half an hour in one of those chairs your back n are set at precise stations around a circular conference table ten feet from the desk It, too, is bare Talls are adorned with Picassos and two are all glass, facing the city His office is expensive and minimalist and it smells like lemons

A large plass on the wall nearest the desk It has a dark wooden frame that exactly matches the frame of the nearby Picasso The screen is split into four CNBC, Fox Business, and some private feed of market numbers are on three of the splits The fourth is local news, showing a photo of a girl-next-door with straight honey colored hair, parted in the middle, and a peaches-and-creairl every boy fell in love with in high school Underneath the screen says, “Megan Nyberg:teen” I shake my head: a world of important news out there and people would rather be entertained by the latest pretty white teen in peril My back is starting to hurt

I am twenty-six hours from deadline

Troy glides in, a talla sleek black suit and purple shirt, buttoned up to its pinpoint collar, without a tie It’s properly edgy and expensive For all that, he resebucks Except he has that look common to men who make a lot money: expensive haircut, chiseled athletic features, taut skin, chicken lips He’s forty-five and looks it, but in a good way: seasoned, resourceful He nods and says es on the Blackberry, thenthe tiuet with a black band I saw a story in Forbes that said it retails for 275,000

He then walks with quick strides to the glass doors leading out to the terrace I stand and follow him outside He always does this, as if he’s paranoid about soood—or he’s supremely proud of his view of don, Elliott Bay, and the Oly, late West Coast suers in Seattle like a fickle tourist The teht breeze flickers down from the northwest out of a cloudless, nearly cobalt blue sky A ferry is plohite froth across the bay froinning the long journey to Asia The balcony planters are still ith colors: red, pink, violet From twenty stories down, I hear the whine of a siren

“Is this beautiful or what?” He leans on the balcony railing and I join hihts I am not like Jill Fear is not hopelessly coded inside me, destined to make me too afraid to leave ht, but then I think about Rachel and figure this is my week for them

It’s a long way down and IFourth Avenue to early lunch The railing is not quite waist high, but I have long legs

“Mountain’s out” He cocks his head to the south, and sure enough, the giant cone of Mount Rainier has ey muck that often shrouds it

“So what does the coluent setting grief fro you did on me Don’t knohy I talk to you”

That “thing I did on hi the i why so s” I used Troy as an exaiving e car collection, float plane and getaways to the San Juans I write as etin chalk on a sidewalk, an old-timer once told me But the sources always remember

So I start with a softball to put hiulation of the hedge-fund industry? But he takes it and launches into a lecture about excessive regulation driving capital over

seas There’s e funds like the one Troy runs and they long operated outside the rules that govern traditional securities They’re part of the shadow banking system that most people have never heard of, and they’ve been bla recession, or s on how you look at it Some of the funds have profited from the repeated federal rescue atte fund just went down that ated in New York for pension-fund fraud I ulls fly overhead Troy is probably not a bad guy But he’s a source, not a friend, not an acquaintance We’re here to use each other and I always intend to get the better end of the bargain

“So how long are you going to stay in the newspaper business?”

It takes my brain a few seconds to process his question because I had tuned out his homily about the sanctity of free ht Pam makes a lot of noise when she comes and afterward I read poetry to her as we lie naked and drink shots of single-o reluctantly and give my stock answer, “Every day I’m employed, I’m pleasantly surprised”

It usually produces a laugh Troy just leans out, studying the street I hope nobody cut corners with the construction of the railings “Journalisoes on “Your kind of journalism Nobody reads anymore You’re too elitist to write about what people want Celebrities”

“Please”

“The LA Tio Tribune are in bankruptcy San Francisco one—don’t think that’ll keep you guys out of the crapper Ad revenue keeps collapsing by double-digits Look at all the layoffs…”

For a guy who claims to not care about newspapers, he keeps up pretty well I a, speculating, trying to make people understand all the reasons newspapers have co I want to discuss with Troy I say, “It’s all because of greedy bastards like you” Now here I a to piss off a source I need for my Sunday column

“You couldn’t get me to invest in a newspaper today!” he sneers “Mature industry Declining profit y whip business after Henry Ford ca new, make some money”