Chapter 13 #2
I understood this. Decades in the insurance industry had taught me exactly how institutions weighed liability against truth. The math was always the same. Not what's right, but what's defensible. Not what happened, but what can be proved to the standard required by the entity most likely to sue.
"Is your editor going to back you?"
"I think so. I'm making it hard for her not to. Every piece I bring in is tighter than the last. If I hand her something bulletproof, she'll run it. She's a journalist. She got into this for the same reasons I did."
"And if she doesn't?"
Richard was quiet for a moment.
"Then I find another way to get it out. But I'd rather do this through the paper, with editorial review and legal vetting and the full institutional weight of even a small newsroom behind it. That matters. Credibility matters."
Grace had been listening without interrupting, which for Grace was something. She pulled the towel tighter around her shoulders.
"Can I ask a question?" she said.
Richard nodded.
"Aren't you scared? This dude has been running this county for like thirty years. He's got money, he's got people in the government working for him, and now he knows you're coming. You're twenty-three and you work for a tiny newspaper. What happens when he turns his attention on you?"
Richard smiled. It was not the flustered smile from the pond but something quieter, with a self-awareness behind it that hadn't been there before.
"My father runs Whitlock Investment Partners. You've probably heard of it. It's one of the larger venture capital firms in Seattle."
The name was familiar. I didn't follow Seattle's tech VC scene closely, but I'd seen the name on downtown buildings and on hospital wings. The kind of philanthropy that requires a certain threshold of wealth to even contemplate.
"I won't give you a number," Richard continued.
"But Harlan Foster's money, which is significant by any local measure, is not something that concerns me personally.
I've been around wealth my entire life. Harlan's fortune is substantial for Port Chasten.
In the world I grew up in, it wouldn't get you past the first round of a capital raise. "
He said it without a trace of superiority, like stating the temperature.
"So money doesn't scare you," I said.
"Money doesn't scare me. His lawyers don't scare me.
If he comes after me personally, my family has lawyers who eat lawyers like Harlan's for breakfast. So yeah, I have no worries about my personal jeopardy.
I could pick up the phone and have my lawyers involved by tomorrow if I wanted to.
" He turned the BrainJuzzy can slowly in his hands, watching the neon orange label rotate.
"But I don't want to. That's not why I'm doing this.
And my father's lawyers can protect me, but they can't protect the Bremerton Times. "
The shadows across the clearing had lengthened. Late afternoon light slanted through the Douglas firs around us.
"Here's what I think about a lot," Richard continued, his voice low and thoughtful.
"I can afford to do this job. Literally afford it.
I don't have student loans. I don't worry about rent.
I don't need the paycheck the Bremerton Times gives me, which is by the way, barely enough to cover groceries and gas for a month.
I took this job because I wanted it. Because journalism is what I believe in. "
He pushed his glasses up and leaned back in his chair. He gazed out at the swallows wheeling overhead.
"Most of my classmates from J-school are already gone.
PR firms. Corporate communications. Content marketing.
They're writing SEO copy for insurance companies and social media posts for tech brands.
Not because they wanted to, but because they had seventy thousand dollars in student loans and journalism pays thirty-six thousand a year in a city where rent is twenty-one hundred a month.
The math doesn't work. You can't be an investigative reporter if you can't eat. "
Grace was watching him with the same focus she had when Scout was explaining how to filter water or skin a rabbit. Fascination mixed with respect.
"The people who can afford to do what I do, to chase stories that matter, to spend weeks in county records offices pulling thirty-year-old documents, to risk pissing off powerful people without worrying about whether it costs them their livelihood?
" Richard set the can down. "These days, those people almost always come from money.
That's not a comfortable truth, but it's true.
The freedom to pursue work that serves the public interest is itself a form of wealth. And most people don't have it."
He looked at me directly. Brown eyes, serious behind the black plastic frames.
"I know I didn't earn my position in life.
I was born into it. I know that and I think about it constantly.
The question I keep asking myself is, what do you do with an advantage you didn't earn?
You can feel guilty about it, which helps no one.
You can pretend it doesn't exist, which is dishonest. Or you can use it.
Point it at something that matters and do the work. "
Richard picked up his notebook and tapped it against his knee. He seemed to sit more upright, his spine straighter.
"Abner Flint served this country for more than twenty years.
He breathed poison so that forward operating bases in Iraq could have electricity.
He came home and built a life and asked nothing from anyone.
And a man with money and connections used the county government to harass Abner for fifteen years.
That story deserves to be told by someone who can afford to tell it without blinking. That's me. That's what I'm for."
Nobody spoke for a while. A Steller's jay landed on the porch rail, considered us with its black crest tilted, and departed.
"Dude, that's fucking awesome. Respect."
"Thank you," Richard nodded solemnly at Grace, who was looking at him with approving eyes.
"Ditto," I said. "Have you eaten? Grace made some tasty Korean barbecue. We're going to grill it up for dinner. Join us?"
"That sounds really tempting, but I should get going."
Richard stood. He tucked the notebook into his messenger bag and zipped it shut. He picked up the BrainJuzzy and finished it in one long swallow.
"I'm glad we talked," he said. "I'll be in touch about next steps. I want to get more documents from Olympia before I present the full package to my editor."
I stood and shook his hand. His grip was firm.
"Thank you, Richard."
"Thank you, Thomas." He nodded to Grace. "Nice to meet you, Grace."
"Nice to meet you too, Richard."
He walked to the Prius, tossed the messenger bag onto the passenger seat, and folded himself in behind the wheel.
He backed out carefully, one arm draped over the seat, and rolled down the drive.
The cracked windshield caught the late sun one more time, a bright fracture line across the glass, and then the trees swallowed him up.
Grace and I sat on the porch in the quiet he left behind. She pulled at a thread on her towel.
"He's kind of a nerd," she said. "But he's a nerd who means well. Like, he actually gives a shit. That's cool as hell."
"Yeah, it is."
"Too many people act like cynicism is the only way to be real nowadays. But being earnest is the real realness, know what I mean?"
"I agree. Especially for Richard."
"For real."
She unfolded herself from the chair and gathered her things.
"I'm going to take a shit and shower. I had Indian yesterday and that always gives me hella gas, so maybe stay out here for a while until the bathroom clears."
"Got it. Thanks for sharing that with me."
"The bulgogi is soaking in the fridge. We can grill it on the fire pit."
"Sounds like a plan."
She paused at the doorway. "You think the paper will run it?"
"I don't know."
"But you think he'll find a way? Even if they don't?"
"Yeah. I think he will."
She nodded once and walked into the cabin, letting the screen door bang shut behind her.
I stayed on the porch. The light was moving through the trees now at its lowest angle, turning everything amber.
Harlan was out there somewhere, with his money and his shell companies and his butterscotch candy and his bottomless belief that the world arranged itself around his wants.
He'd been running this stretch of the Olympic Peninsula for decades, and he'd gotten comfortable with the assumption that nobody would push back.
He hadn't counted on Abner and me. And he certainly hadn't accounted for a twenty-three-year-old kid in a blue Prius with a cracked windshield, a neon-orange energy drink, and a family fortune large enough to make his threats meaningless.
A kid who'd thought carefully about what privilege was for and decided to use his for this.
Abner probably has a good quote about worthy allies. I'll ask him about it next time I see him.
I picked up my pipe from the rail and packed it. I lit it and drew the smoke in and then breathed it out into the warm summer air.