57
CANDACE FINISHED writing her article on the Roth shell corporations’ campaign contributions to Speaker Markowitz and sent it to her editor. It wasn’t a breaking news story, and she had no reason to think any other reporter was sniffing around it, so Candace didn’t expect it to run immediately. It was the kind of piece that would require careful review because of the potential political fallout, and especially because it touched on the highly litigious Roths. Because of the paper’s recent history with the family, Candace expected that Nugent would loop their lawyers into the vetting, which meant it would take twice as long.
She e-mailed the story to Nugent around lunchtime, expecting to hear back in an hour or so. Instead most of the day crept by, and when Nugent finally did respond it was to ask her to come to Henry Tacy’s office.
Candace had a bad feeling as she made her way to the editor in chief’s lair. Tacy’s office was in the far corner of the newsroom, the only proper corner office claimed by the paper’s editorial side. It was spacious and open, one wall lined with grip-and-grin photos, Tacy alongside everyone from Bill Clinton to Bill Gates. Tacy was seated behind his desk, Nugent on the couch along the far wall.
“Am I being fired?” Candace asked as she sat down, only partially to break the tension.
“Nonsense,” Tacy responded, a bit too brightly, Candace thought. Tacy was not really a man who did enthusiasm well. “I’d gotten some calls about your story, so I asked Bill to give me a heads-up when you had a draft.”
“You’ve been getting calls about a story I hadn’t even written yet?”
“Friends of Speaker Markowitz,” Tacy said. “Apparently a lot of people think his future will be quite sunny.”
“And they’ve been calling to tell you that?”
“People call to tell me all sorts of things,” Tacy said. “It doesn’t mean I listen. But here they’ve been calling Mr. Friedman too, and him I do listen to.”
“So an up-and-coming politician has friends in high places,” Nugent said. “Whoever would’ve thought?”
Candace smiled at Nugent as a way of thanking him for speaking up. Perhaps people put pressure on the paper’s editor and its owner more often than she knew, but this was her first direct experience of it. She had no doubt the Roth family was playing a role.
“In any event,” Tacy said, “I’ve had a chance to take a look at your article. It’s all bloody good stuff, of course, but it seems to me you don’t quite have the full story here. Now don’t get me wrong; it stinks of quid pro quo, it looks unseemly at best, and clearly there’s a loophole in the campaign finance laws that they’re exploiting. But what we don’t yet have is whether Roth and Markowitz are the only people doing this, either in terms of politicos receiving or big-ticket donors giving. Is the Roth family the only people using LLCs in this way, or is it a common practice among their kind? How many politicians are getting money?”
Candace wasn’t sure she was seeing where this was leading. “I agree it’d be good to see how much of this is going on, but that’s going to take a couple months of Freedom of Information requests and combing through public records to piece together. We can get the party started by printing what we know now.”
“It doesn’t make sense to rush part of the story out there when right now we have it to ourselves,” Tacy said. “It’s your get, and we’ll free you up to pursue it.”
Candace was trying to figure out whether Tacy actually believed he was doing her a favor, rather than shutting her down. “It’s just that it’s going to be a long project, and I’m in the middle of tracking down all the angles on the Aurora.”
Tacy frowned slightly, then shot a quick look over to Nugent. “But this story doesn’t have anything to do with the Aurora,” he said.
“Not directly, but the trail from the Aurora is what led me to all of this.”
She’d clearly lost Tacy. “This isn’t a story about Simon Roth,” he said. “And it’s certainly not about the Aurora. It’s about money and politics. Besides, it’s going to be good for you to branch out a little.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?” Candace couldn’t stop herself from asking.
Tacy shrugged but didn’t meet her eye. “Just that I’ve seen it before, a reporter getting obsessed with their white whale.”
“I don’t have a white whale,” Candace protested.
Tacy sighed, loudly. “Let’s not make this something it’s not. Everybody thinks you’re doing slam-bang work. You’ve found a rich vein to mine here, something you can really dig into. So go do that, happily, and leave whatever else you were doing to the side for a while.”
“And this is an order?”
Tacy’s smile was not amused. “I wouldn’t characterize it as a suggestion.”
Candace realized she was being petulant and told herself to stop it. Tacy was right; it was going to be a big story. Who knew how broad the scope of it would prove to be?
Yet as they left Tacy’s office Candace couldn’t stop herself from confronting Nugent. “Did you sign off on this?”
“Henry didn’t put it to a vote,” Nugent replied. “I have bosses, same as you.”
“My story isn’t the LLC contributions; it’s Roth buying off politicos so he can have the Riis project. Which in turn connects back to the Aurora, and buying people off there.”
Nugent sighed. “Now let’s stay within the reality-based community here. You’re getting a lot of rope to dig deep into a story you’ve uncovered. You could close a major loophole in the state’s campaign financing—and who knows what else you’ll uncover along the way.”
“So am I not supposed to notice that I’m being pulled off the Roth story?” Candace demanded. “This is how the Riis deal came into being. It has to be.”
“It’s also politics as usual.”
“And then there’s the dead security guard at Riis. I think his murder goes back to the Aurora. That’s what I should be looking into.”
“And you know this how?” Nugent said archly. “Women’s intuition?”
Candace gave her editor a look. “I don’t think people really say that anymore.”
“Whatever kind of hunch you have, that’s all it is. Simon Roth and Speaker Markowitz will still be part of the story. But let’s see the whole picture before we decide what it shows.”