Free Vengeance Road by Rick Mofina Page A

There were a few noisy neighbors and a few creeps. And sometimes the halls were heavy with the smells of exotic cooking. But generally people left him alone.
    He liked that.
    His apartment had a large, sweeping view. The wind often charged off Lake Erie and rattled his windows, but it was warm in the winter.
    He sat on his couch and sorted through his mail. There were mostly bills, then a letter from Ron Cook, an old reporter friend, who’d quit his job at the Detroit Free Press to teach English in Addis Ababa.
    â€œBuddy, here’s an application if you’re looking for a career change and an escape from the snow!”
    Gannon pondered the idea for a moment, but he had too much going on here to give it serious consideration.
    No, thanks, Ron.
    Then he came to a letter from the lawyer handling his parents’ estate, reminding him that the anniversary was coming up for payment on the unit where he’d stored their belongings. Did he want to pay for another year, or did he have other plans for his family’s property?
    He’d deal with that later.
    He tossed the letters on his coffee table, opened his bag, and had started reading the file Mary Peller had given him on her missing daughter when his cell phone rang.
    â€œGannon.”
    â€œIt’s Fowler. We’ve got a substantial retraction going in tomorrow’s edition. In thirty minutes we start rolling it off the presses.”
    â€œYou didn’t call to tell me that.”
    â€œGive me your source and I’ll kill the retraction.”
    Gannon said nothing. Now more than ever he didn’t trust his managing editor.
    â€œJack, give me your source and we can all have our lives back.”
    â€œDoes Bernice Hogan get her life back? Why does Styebeck get a free ride?”
    â€œThe police have publicly pissed on your story and the Sentinel today. You were wrong. We have to swallow that and move on.”
    â€œI was not wrong. And I can’t give up my source.”
    â€œThink about what you’re risking. Your job is hanging by a thread, Gannon. You’ve got about twenty-nine minutes to think it over.”
    Gannon didn’t call.
    He took a hot shower, dressed and got into his car.
    Freeway traffic was light as he glided along Interstate 90.
    He left the interstate and got on Genesee. As he headed into the heart of the city, Buffalo’s skyline rose before him: the HSBC Center, the Rand Building and City Hall.
    He found himself at the Sentinel’s loading docks, an area bordered by a chain-link fence that trapped stray papers and flyers. The air smelled of newsprint and exhaust as trucks and vans performed a marshaling ballet in and out of the ten bays, laden with damp copies of the first edition.
    He was watching an act in the swan song of the newspaper industry, an industry in which he’d invested everything.
    But he was not giving up.
    He parked and went to the gate. Holding up a dollar bill, he flagged down a van departing for its route.
    â€œSell me a copy?”
    The driver had a scar on his cheek. He snatched Gannon’s buck then reached to his passenger seat, grunted and handed him a fresh copy of the Buffalo Sentinel.
    The retraction was there on the front page, framed in a shaded box with a different font. He scanned, “ Sentinel offers its apology…” “Uncorroborated information…” “Erroneous reporting…” “Taken action…” “Suspended…” The words landed like punches until he heard a clank down the street at a row of newspaper boxes.
    A carrier was loading a box for the Buffalo News . Gannon went over and bought a paper. The News had clobbered him with their front-page coverage, giving him his comeuppance in a column under the headline:
    The Pulitzer Finalist Who Got It Wrong
    The item pontificated about the journalistic failing of rushing to be first at the expense of getting it right. Gannon lowered the papers, like flags