Fall from Grace Read Online Free PDF

the fucking story as is, and say something like, Good job, Leo. ’Cause if you don’t, then I’m fucking out of here.” And I wasn’t kidding. I had an editor who didn’t trust my judgment, and when that happens the only thing you can do is leave. I wasn’t in a great place personally, financially, and emotionally to leave the paper but if my story didn’t run the way I wrote it, I had no choice.
    “Nice work, Leo,” said a voice to the left.
    Everyone turned and Whittaker couldn’t help but gasp. It was Larry Maurizo, the managing editor of the paper and the guy who had hired me months ago. I had just spent almost two years living on the street, but a crazy situation at a local reserve had convinced me it was time to get my shit in gear again, and he was the first person I called. I knew that he was managing editor of a paper in the middle of a strike, and might be looking for staffers. I was right, although he did take some convincing, especially since I was not in the best condition, both physically and mentally.
    Fortunately, Maurizo had remembered that time I had given him his first newspaper job. And with Jacob Whyte constantly breathing down his neck to put the paper out every day during the strike, he was also desperate for anyone who could put together stories that were slightly readable. In his first job working for me as a reporter/photographer at a weekly, Larry was a decent writer armed with the basic knowledge of how to write a story using the inverted-pyramid technique, but with little real experience.
    We only worked together for about fifteen months, but in that time he showed a willingness to learn, and although I never expected him to reach the position of managing editor of a major metro daily, I knew he would at least be able to forge a good career as a journalist. The younger Maurizo had been a bit shy, but as an ME who not just ran the paper but defeated the union in a strike, he had showed a tough-as-nails attitude and didn’t suffer fools gladly. He was, like most good editors, fair. If you did a good job, he let you know or left you alone. But if you screwed up or attracted his attention for negative reasons, he could be ruthless, almost like a Roman emperor. So his appearance at the edge of our little drama was a newsworthy event. Brent quickly divested his role in the production and turned to his keyboard even though he had long since written and submitted his story.
    Since I had known Larry as a wet-behind-the-ears journalist, I wasn’t scared by his arrival. I knew he could fire me as easily as he had hired me, but I had been fired before and probably would be fired again. If not here and now, then sometime and somewhere else. Larry was completely aware of that, but as long as I didn’t undermine his authority and did my job, I was fine.
    “Larry? What are you doing here?” Whittaker stammered.
    “I’m here because I can hear you guys across the room, and despite what people might think, chaos doesn’t work in a newsroom.”
    “That’s okay, it’s only a little matter of editorial concern and we’ve got it under control here, don’t we, Desroches?” Whittaker looked at me and raised her eyebrows to ask for my support. I gave her nothing because that’s what she deserved.
    “That’s total bullshit and you know it, Whittaker,” Maurizo snapped. “What I’ve gathered by watching this for the past few minutes is that because of your failure to trust one of our reporters, a reporter that I hired, we’re in a situation where that reporter is threatening to quit. Am I right?”
    “Well, it’s not as simple as that. I was just trying to confirm an anomaly in Leo’s story. He has information that the other outlets don’t, and I was—”
    “Since when do we give a shit about what the other news outlets are running?” Larry interrupted. “We are the most credible news outfit in this city. Have been for almost a hundred years. We do not check what the other outlets are