“No,” said Trout, “the economy blows, or don’t you read the papers?”
“Who reads the fucking papers? News is free on the Internet. ”
“And you wonder why I’ve cut my rates?”
“I want the same rates as before. ”
“Can’t do it. As it is seventy-five percent is my kids not eating. ”
“You don’t have kids. ”
“I got alimony and both of my ex-wives are immature. Works out the same. ”
“Believe me,” said Schlunke, “this is worth the regular rate—”
“This is the regular rate. ”
“—plus another twenty-five percent on top. ”
“I can’t afford to feed a drug habit. ”
“I don’t do drugs. ”
“Then I can’t afford to feed your Internet porn habit, Schlunke. ”
“God, I can’t tell you how much I missed being your straight man, Billy. Maybe I should be doing drugs, ’cause I must be having a psychotic episode. I mean … I think I’m talking to an actual reporter who wants an actual goddamn exclusive. But … hey, maybe that’s just the magic mushrooms talking. ”
“That’s sidesplitting,” yawned Trout. It occurred to him that Schlunke was one of those rare people who looked exactly like his name. He was a big, sloppy, shambling lump of a southern boy who came to Pennsylvania because Mississippi wasn’t redneck enough. Trout grudgingly conceded to himself that Schlunke had sent three or four good stories his way over the years. “Okay, okay,” he said, “you tell me what you have and I’ll tell you if it’s worth full price. ”
“Full price is one hundred and twenty-five percent of your old rate. ”
“Just tell me. ”
“Word of honor?”
Trout smiled as he glanced around the newsroom. It looked like a Hollywood set dresser had made sure there was every possible stereotype and sight gag appropriate to a regional paper sliding down the greasy slope to the septic tank. Stacks of bundled papers. Two-thirds of the desks empty; the other one-third buried under clutter so comprehensive that it had long ago morphed into a single eyesore rather than a collection of unique and separate pieces of junk; wall clocks that were still set to the wrong hour of daylight saving time; and one other reporter asleep with his heels on his desk and a John Grisham novel open on his chest.
It depressed him. He could remember a time—not that long ago—when coming to work filled him with excitement. Of course, back then he believed that journalists were the good guys and the voice of the people—and that the truth actually mattered. Time and the economy had beaten most of that out of him. Now it was a job, and soon it might not even be that.
Regional Satellite News was one of the hybrid services that had begun to crop up during the rise of twenty-first-century Internet news and the death spiral of print. Trout and his fellow reporters fed news stories to over forty print papers in Western Pennsylvania—none of them first rate—and they fed video stories to the Internet and, on good days, to services like the AP. The had very few “good” days here in the hinterlands of Stebbins County.
“Really,” said Trout. “You’d take my word?”
“Ha! How’s it feel to be someone else’s straight man?”
“Fucking hilarious. How’s it feel to
hear me hang up?”
“You won’t. Not with what I have for you. ”
Billy Trout tapped the eraser of his pencil on his desk blotter for a three count. “Okay. One twenty-five. But this had better be worth—”
“Two words for you,” said the prison guard. “Homer Gibbon. ”
“I got two words for you. Yesterday’s news. ”
He heard Schlunke chuckle.