“Me or one of my officers will be right outside your door all night. Here’s the cell number,” Carol said, handing me her card. “Just in case you hear, see, or smell something and don’t want to open the door.”
“Not necessary, but thanks,” I said.
“It’s our job.”
With that she and her minions stepped outside before I could even offer them a Coke or a cookie.
My answering machine was flashing. That meant that my voice mail had automatically gone to the machine.
I hit the “play” button. There were ten messages from various media who needed/wanted/had to have an interview. My number wasn’t exactly secret: They had mine and I had theirs from years of working side by side.
Then, “Ali? It’s Donald.” (He never called the day after, before this.) “I’m around.”
Now that I’m famous, or is that genuine concern?
I was too exhausted to call him back.
I took a very hot shower, didn’t bother to remove my makeup, brushed my teeth until they bled, and turned on my tablet, saw the story hadn’t yet been put up (very odd), and called the desk again. Dickie had gone out for a smoke, and his next in line told the copy kid who had answered the phone to tell me my story had caused the site to crash from the number of hits, so they had to pull it but were working it out.
Satisfied, and even excited, I nonetheless fell into a coma of a deep sleep.
7
I woke up at 5:30 the next morning, desperate to see how The Standard had played the column.
I turned on my iPad and saw this:
EXCLUSIVE TO THE NEW YORK STANDARD
Kiss of Death From the Lips of the Terrorist
By Alessandra Russo
I was violated, pure and simple.
Nothing would, could, should have, in my life, ever prepared me for what happened yesterday.
And by now you know what happened to me yesterday:
I was kissed against my will as Demiel ben Yusef, head of the Al Okhowa Al Hamima terrorist organization, responsible for the deaths of thousands of innocent people around the world, was “perp-walked” after exiting the armored van driven by our own American heroes—the Federal Bureau of Investigation agents—to the doors of the UN.…
I shut off the tablet without finishing “my” column. I knew the rest of it would be even worse than the lead. What had they done to possibly the most significant news story and column of my lifetime?
Within thirty seconds I was on the phone to the City Desk. A sleepy kid answered. “New York Standard.”
“It’s Russo. Gimme Dickie.”
“What?” the kid said, mystified. I then realized he thought it was a dirty call.
“Dickie Smalls. Gimme Dickie Smalls!”
“Oh. Mr. Smalls doesn’t come in until nine A.M., Miss Russo,” the kid said, finally figuring it out. “It’s like five thirty.”
“Then gimme his cell number.”
“I don’t know if I’m allowed to do that.…”
“Allowed? Who is this?”
“Smalls’s cell is 917-221-9864,” the anonymous copy kid spat out, terrified.
On the fourth ring, a half-asleep Dickie answered. “Yeah?”
“Worm! Traitor! What happened?” I yelled. “Who rewrote—no, let me rephrase that. Who wrote my goddamned column? This crap is the opposite of what I wrote.”
Dickie was never one to back down. “Russo, it’s five friggin’ thirty. I was up all night with that goddamned column of yours. Don’t like it? Take it up with the editor. Yeah. Bob himself rewrote. Said it was a piece of terrorist propaganda and when he saw you, he was going to kill you.”
By 6:30 A.M. I was putting my iPad back into my red bag, and by 6:45 I whipped open my door and stopped dead at the sight of my captors standing there. I’d forgotten all about them in my fury—but on the upside, they did offer to drive me to work. I’d be on my own from then on, they said. Too much going on in the city for them to be concerned with one reporter. Good.
By 7:15 I was sitting outside Bob Brandt’s office looking, but most definitely not feeling, like a kid outside the principal’s office. I felt more like the kid who wants to blow up the school and is waiting to take the principal hostage.
Bob’s secretary wasn’t at her desk, but the morning editors were just starting to trickle in.
“Nice work on the Yusef column, Ali,” Carly McNally, an editor, said as she passed by.
“Be sure to commend Bob,” I said, the sneer rising to a level I didn’t know I was capable of.
She turned back knowingly. Then out of conscience, I guess, she came back, put her hand on my shoulder, and said, “C’mon, honey. We’re too old for this. Think before you go off the deep end. There aren’t a whole lotta jobs out there anymore.”