Serve & Protect Page 5

  “And I want my children raised in a home like this one,” Mac said. “But I also want them to be able to think for themselves, to think critically, to be accepting of differences — of different people, like Shorty, or my Aunt Lindy, or my cousin who is Black.” Well, unlikely that Toby would be around, but still, maybe someday. Toby was married and had two daughters, after all. “And let’s face it, some of your boarders — and some of your church — would have a problem with them, Lindy especially.”

  She looked troubled. “I hoped you hadn’t picked up on that,” she admitted. “But I forget you’re a reporter. That’s what you do — pick up on things.”

  “Kate? Do you have a problem with Lindy being gay?” he asked gently.

  She was silent. She didn’t meet his eyes, and he couldn’t tell if she was thinking, or if she was avoiding him. Finally, she sighed, and looked up. “It bothers me,” she admitted. “The Bible says it’s a sin, Mac.”

  Well, no it didn’t actually, but Mac didn’t see a need to argue theology. Not ever. “She’s as close to a mother as I’ve got,” he observed.

  “I know. And I like her; well, I will when I get to know her better, I’m sure,” she said. “But you have to admit she can be pretty in your face and even crude.”

  He snorted. Kate had been with him one evening when Lindy had come in with her lover and they were venting about a male colleague. They’d gotten pretty graphic about it before they realized Kate was there and was uncomfortable. He’d thought they were funny as hell.

  “Babe, I can be crude,” he observed.

  “But you’re improving every day!” she protested.

  He was, but he thought he was doing it to fit in better with her world, not to meet her approval. And the difference between those two mattered to him, he found. A lot.

  “Kate, I’m always going to be a rough-around-the-edges Marine, a reporter who sees the uglier side of humanity daily, and basically a cynical SOB,” he said. “And I guess that’s why I asked what you were envisioning for the future. Because I’m willing to watch my language around company and attend Easter services. I’ll carve the Thanksgiving turkey, and I’ll even go hear the Messiah every year if you want. But I’m not going to stop thinking. Or give up my family and friends. And if that’s what you’re picturing, we aren’t going to make it, sweetie.”

  She bit her lip.

  Mac considered her for a moment. She was one of the smartest women he knew. She taught science at a prestigious private school and was working on a master’s in biology at the U Dub. Shorty predicted she was going to be a professor someday.

  “What do you see, Mac?” she asked. “If you don’t see what I see?”

  “Fair question,” he conceded. “I see you, a college professor in the biology department. Me, still a reporter. Kids. A house where all kinds of people are in and out, because I kind of collect oddballs and strays. I see a big picnic for the 4th of July maybe with your Mom and Aunt Lindy, and half of campus probably.”

  “And church?” she pushed.

  “I’d go with you on the big occasions,” he said. “But I can’t listen to it every Sunday. I can’t.”

  “But it’s what I believe,” she said, meeting his eyes.

  “And I never will.”

  There was silence. “I don’t think I’ll stay for dinner tonight,” he said.

  She didn’t see him out.

  Naomi caught him at the door, however. “I heard you two,” she said gently. “It was a conversation that’s needed to happen for some time.”

  Mac looked down at her. “It’s not going to work is it?” he asked.

  She hesitated. “Unless you are willing to convert to her — our — views? Probably not. She and I have both seen marriages where a believer and a non-believer are married. And Mac? It doesn’t work.”

  He nodded. “Good-bye Naomi,” he said softly. He laughed. “Shorty said I wanted to be adopted by you as much as marry Kate.”

  “You’re hungry for a real home,” she said, laughing herself. “I’d hoped that would become a hunger for the Lord, too. But if you’re sure that won’t happen? You need to end it now. It’s going to hurt as it is. Don’t make it worse by thinking you can just fake it.”

  He nodded. He got into his car and drove away. Drove aimlessly. Finally realized he was in the Examiner’s parking lot. He sat there, and then he went in. He didn’t work evenings, so it was a different crew. Seth Conte, the evening cop reporter, nodded at him and quirked an eyebrow, and Mac just shook his head.

  He stood in the doorway to the newsroom and just looked at people working. Then he heard a giggle from the photo department, and he smiled.

  “What are you doing here?” he asked Angie Wilson. “Didn’t you have morning shift Monday?”

  “Yeah, and night shift tonight, and God knows what I’ll be doing tomorrow,” she groused. “We’re short-handed. What are you doing here?”

  “Came in to check on something,” he said vaguely. “Heard you laugh.”

  He grinned at her. “It’s an attention-grabbing laugh.”

  “Well at least you didn’t call it a giggle,” she grumbled.

  “Are you about ready to wrap it up?” he asked impulsively. “I’ll buy you a drink?”

  “I thought you didn’t drink alcohol?” she said, but she started putting things away.

  “Don’t. But you know what? Bars serve other things too,” he teased. “Do you know the Bohemian?”

  She’d taken the bus into work, so they drove there together. Mac relaxed as they walked in. It was a Tuesday night, and the bar was quiet. Not even a live DJ. Mac liked subbing for the DJ on occasion, on a Friday or Saturday, when he could mix music, and create a mood that made people feel, and made them dance. But this was nice too. Some R&B, a table where they could get a drink and talk.

  The waitress knew him. “Mountain Dew?” she asked.

  “If you’ve got one,” he agreed.

  She laughed. “We keep a six-pack for you, babe,” she said. “And when you drink them all? Someone runs to Safeway for another.”

  He shook his head. “You know? I was at a bar in Marysville yesterday and they had Mountain Dew. The gun shop? It had a Pepsi fridge behind the counter, and it carried Mountain Dew. So why is it so odd to you here?”

  “Hummm, let me see. Out in redneck country, they have Mountain Dew. Here in the sophisticated center of Seattle, we don’t. What does that tell you?” she teased.

  She took Angie’s order for a Fremont Interurban. When did beers start having weird names like froufrou drinks, Mac wondered. He looked at the beer, and for the first time in a long time, he wanted one.

  Wanted more than one was the problem, he admitted.

  “So, what? You dump your girlfriend or something?” Angie asked.

  “Now how do you know I have a girlfriend?” he asked, with a half-smile.

  “There’s this thing called gossip,” she teased. “It’s what news people do. We gossip with our sources and call that reporting because we get paid to do it, and we gossip about each other, because... well, because that’s what we do.”

  Mac laughed. He never gossiped at work. He didn’t even know what the gossip was or where the reporters and photogs hung out to gossip. He knew that about the cops. He knew all the cop bars. He knew the scuttlebutt around the various departments and agencies. He knew about the detective whose marriage was in trouble, the dispatcher who was cheating on her wife with an officer, the guy on horse patrol who was drinking too much.

  He did not know that about his own colleagues. He considered that for a moment. “What else is the gossip saying?” he asked.

  “You need to get plugged in,” Angie said. “Seriously. Because the gossip is that your boss is in danger of losing her job. And I don’t think you have a clue.”

  “Janet?” he said. “She’s been a bit grim lately, but last fall was hard on her. And she still hasn’t started re-building her house yet.” And a lot else going on too. He hadn’
t bugged her about it. Maybe he should have.

  “Janet,” Angie said. “The knives are out. But I don’t want to talk about her. Tell me about this girlfriend. People say she’s gotten you to stop saying fuck.”

  He laughed. “She did,” he admitted. “But I think we’re done.”

  Angie was a good listener, and she coaxed the story out of him. “But not for the gossip chamber,” he warned her.

  “So, you want a home, and she has a home, and so you thought you could marry her and have that home too,” Angie summarized. It sounded sarcastic, but her eyes were kind, and Mac had to admit it was a fair assessment.

  “Pretty much,” he said. “Although I found her attractive, too, and I liked her and respected her brains. But....”

  He shook his head.

  She patted his shoulder. “But she wanted you to change who you are,” she said. “To become something you’re not. And that’s too high a price to pay, Mac. You can have a home without becoming the dream baby daddy of a Bible-thumping Christian.”

  He smiled at her touch. “Time to take you home,” he said. “Because I’m in a mood, and I like you. And I really like that fuchsia streak in your hair. And if I don’t take you home now? I’ll invite myself in.”

  She followed him out to the car, and gave him directions to the condo she shared with roommates in Belltown.

  “Not the safest place to live,” he observed.

  “Yes, Mr. Cop Reporter. You sound like my mom,” she said as she got ready to get out of the car. “When you decide you’ve truly broken up with your girlfriend and that you’d like to see more than the fuchsia streak, you know where to find me.”

  She leaned in and kissed him on the cheek. He watched her until she was inside, before he drove off. He looked at the clock on his dashboard: 10:30 p.m.

  What the hell, he thought, and he drove over to Janet’s rental apartment in Pioneer Square just blocks from the office. He buzzed to be let in. It took a while before she answered.

  “It’s Mac,” he said, beginning to regret his impulse.

  She didn’t ask him any questions, just buzzed open the main door. He took the elevator to the sixth floor. He’d been here to help her move in. They were close, but they didn’t socialize. Except for coffee. Her coffee.

  “What’s going on?” she asked when she let him in to her apartment. Her hair was loose and she was barefoot. She wore a UW sweatshirt and black yoga pants. He wondered if he woke her up.

  He sat down at her kitchen table, and she poured them both iced tea.

  “Mac?” she said.

  “I may have broken up with Kate tonight,” he said, which wasn’t what he’d planned to talk about to her at all.

  “Tell me,” she said, and he did, ending with Angie’s summation of what he’d been looking for.

  “She’s not wrong,” he admitted.

  “No, she pretty much nailed it,” Janet agreed. “So, you going to convert?”

  He shook his head. “All this time I thought they were being welcoming and accepting me as I am, and it turns out they were trying to convert me.”

  Janet nodded.

  “Jesus fuck,” he swore. And then he grinned. “And doesn’t that feel good to not watch my language anymore? You knew.”

  She shrugged. “Well, yes,” she admitted. “But I don’t see it as anything wrong, per se. Impossible. But not wrong.”

  He laughed. “OK, I can go with that,” he conceded. “But that’s not really why I came knocking on your door. I found out that the newsroom has as much gossip as the cop shop, and I’m out of the loop.”

  She laughed. “God knows what Angie told you,” she said. “Gossip has been running pretty wild about you and your girlfriend. I think there’s been a betting pool going on whether you get married or go back to cussing out the receptionist when she gets a message wrong.”

  Mac rolled his eyes. “So, when were you going to tell me there are people out to get you fired?”

  Janet looked down at the table. “Someone is always out to get the editor,” she said vaguely.

  “This internal or external?”

  “Both?” Janet shrugged. “It’s fallout from the fall. The holy trinity,” Mac smiled at Janet’s nickname for the publisher, executive editor, and managing editor, “assure me I have their support and not to worry about it. It will blow over.”

  “But?”

  “And they’re probably right. At least from the outside pressure. I’m pretty low profile for them to keep it up for long,” she said.

  “Keep up what?”

  “Mostly calls to the publisher, a few to advertising, and a few to circulation,” she said. “Saying I should be fired because I’m not objective, that I can’t be trusted to be objective. That I’m an atheist, a feminist and probably a communist. You know, the usual.”

  “Ad boycotts, subscription drops?”

  She shook her head. “No, and that’s why no one thinks I should take it seriously.”

  “But Angie thinks there’s something,” he persisted. “And she seemed bothered by it. Worried.”

  Janet sighed, and ran her hand through her hair. It was her only tell for nerves, and Mac used it to tell how stressful the morning was on deadline. So, he paid attention to it now. Something was happening, and it bothered her.

  “There are similar sentiments being expressed internally,” she admitted. “That I’m now too controversial to be seen as objective, that I tainted a promising Pulitzer Prize winning story with my own personal life and biases and that’s why we didn’t win. And there are some who think I’m an atheist, feminist, and probably a communist.”

  Mac was silent. He had a good idea where that was coming from.

  “And do you think you tainted the package about Pregnancy Care centers and their anti-abortion funders?” he asked. “Or do you see that there were other, better, entries this year, and that’s the way it goes? I thought the list of nominees and the winner were pretty strong; I was proud we were a finalist.”

  She nodded. “And maybe we would have won, if I hadn’t been a part of it,” she said. “But really? My piece was small, and they could have dropped it entirely if they’d wanted. Personally, I think the mistake was when they decided to exclude your stories on the bombings of abortion clinics that followed. Maybe should have included my editorials even. It showed the story had impact. And I suspect that might be what really pissed off the investigative crowd. I wanted to break apart their precious packaged unit, and include some messy breaking news. Or so they saw it.”

  She shrugged. “I’ll be OK, Mac,” she said, but she sounded tired. “Truly.”

  He took that as his signal to leave. He patted her awkwardly on the shoulder, and he patted her dog Pulitzer who came out of the back room as he was leaving.

  He didn’t like the sound of it, and he didn’t like how defeated Janet sounded. Time to develop some gossip sources in the newsroom, he thought. So where do reporters go after work? Were there news bars like there were cop bars? Of course, there were, he thought disgusted. Tomorrow. Tomorrow he would begin social networking, both online and “in real life.” And wouldn’t all that be so much fucking fun? He could hardly wait.

  Chapter 6

  (Wednesday, 5 p.m., Pioneer Square, Seattle)

  Mac went to the gym and worked out, before he sought out the after-work crowd of the Seattle Examiner. Angie had said to come find her at the Zocalo: “happy hour margaritas!”

  Sure enough, she was at a big table in the bar with a bunch of other people he vaguely recognized. Most he could even attach names to. There were platters of nachos and bottles of beer scattered on the table. And Angie was drinking a pink margarita. “What the hell is that?” he demanded as he pulled up a chair next to her, ignoring the protests of a guy from sports.

  “Strawberry margarita,” she said happily.

  He shook his head, and ordered an O’Doul’s and another platter of nachos. Working out made him hungry, and the appetizers looked like they
’d been picked over. Maybe he needed to get there a bit earlier next time.

  He let the conversation flow around him, told a funny story about a cop, a dispatcher and the dispatcher’s now angry wife.

  “So, what did his wife do then?” someone asked.

  Mac grinned. “Her wife,” he corrected. “Her wife.”

  People laughed, and someone told a story about a guy who was pissy at city hall because he’d made a pass at a woman who wasn’t into guys, and now he was sulking.

  Someone else speculated about the availability of a new woman in advertising. Angie rolled her eyes. “She’s married, has two kids, and isn’t interested,” she told the guys from sports. “You could just introduce yourself to a new person and ask, you know.”

  Mac was surprised at how much he enjoyed the hour, and he told Angie so when he gave her a ride home afterwards.

  “They’re fun,” she agreed. “But don’t say anything you don’t want all around the office.”

  Mac snorted, and she grinned. “Right. I forgot. Mr. Strong and Silent,” she teased.

  “You go every night?” he asked as he pulled up in front of her apartment complex.

  “God, no,” she said. “Once a week is about it for me. Different places, different people. You probably could find a group somewhere within walking distance every night.”

  She frowned at him. “Mac?” she asked. “What are you up to?”

  “Getting plugged in,” he said. “Like you said.”

  “Then try Anchors on Thursday,” she suggested. “That’s where Steve’s boys can be found.”

  OK, then, he thought, as he drove out to Bellevue for his next lesson in social networking. And Shorty was nowhere as pretty a guide as Angie.

  “You don’t have a Facebook account?” Shorty asked in horror.

  Mac snorted. “What would I do with one? When I need information online, I call you. I don’t like people knowing what I am doing or where to find me.”

  “Paranoia much?” Shorty muttered. He tapped in the basic information to set up Mac’s Facebook page. Although he couldn’t change the start date without more trouble than he was willing to take, he could make it look more used than it really was. He befriended it, and then he set out to have Mac befriend anyone he could think of. He figured he knew Mac’s friend list as well as he did. And he followed a bunch of Marine pages and cop pages. Mac watched over his shoulder.