Free The Bottom by Howard Owen

comes down. He moves into the open space in the middle of the newsroom, a vast prairie sprouting tumbleweeds where now-departed reporters and editors labored not too long ago.
    He begs our attention. When we gather around, he introduces the rather attractive, late-forties vintage woman at his side.
    After a few mumbled introductory pleasantries about doing more with less, during which I am afraid Enos Jackson or one of the other hard-ridden veteran editors is going to attack him with a pica pole, he introduces our new publisher.
    Her name is Rita Dominick. She is a blonde, at least for the moment. She has one of those cuts like that woman on House of Cards. It must be the in thing. Sally said she saw a fat, unattractive woman come into the hair salon, pull out the woman’s picture and tell the stylist, “Make me look like that.”
    Rita Dominick is wearing a red dress that is stylish and does what it is supposed to do: exude the sense that she could kill you in bed or just rip your head off and crap down your neck for fun. I’m guessing she does either yoga or judo and stays away from saturated fats. She was the head of advertising at the only paper in our chain that’s larger than us. She’s married with two kids, for whom I feel sorry, for some reason.
    I’m sure Wheelie’s relieved to get back in the newsroom. He’d never been that close to the brimstone before. Ms. Dominick (“Call me Rita”) speaks to us about our exciting future. She talks about turning the corner. The only corners we’ve turned lately have brought us face-to-face with joblessness or salary cuts, so we’re a little skeptical. We’re pretty much over corners.
    I glance at Baer. His head is going up and down like one of those bobblehead dolls they sell at the ballpark. He’s eating it up. Another place to put his brownish schnoz.
    It just goes to show you. Things can always be worse. You can have a publisher like the late James H. Grubbs, who used his considerable clout to get rid of a large chunk of his former friends and mentors, only to wake up one fine September morning and find out that you are now in the clutches of advertising. Jesus Christ.
    Wheelie brings her around and introduces her to as many of us as can’t find somewhere else to be. I look up, and she’s standing there, looking down at me.
    “And this,” Wheelie says, a half smile, half grimace on his face indicating to me they’ve already had a discussion about my merits and demerits, “is Willie Black.”
    “Ah, yes,” my new publisher says, “the famous Willie Black.”
    It doesn’t sound like a compliment.
    I GET A call as I’m finishing up my story on Ronnie Sax taking it on the lam.
    It’s Kate. I ask her how the new baby’s doing, but she talks over me.
    “Willie,” she says “we just got a call. From Ronnie Sax. He wants to talk to you. To us. You and Marcus and me.”
    Sax took my advice. He called Marcus Green’s firm first thing this morning, from a cell phone at an undisclosed location.
    “He told us he didn’t do any of this,” Kate says, “but he’s afraid once they get him in jail, it’s going to be a fait accompli .”
    “He said ‘ fait accompli ’?”
    “He said they were going to railroad his ass.”
    I ask Kate if she and Marcus are going to give me a finder’s fee for this one.
    She has to speak up over a baby yowling in the background.
    “I don’t know what you’ve found. From what I’m seeing, he’s as good a suspect as any right now. He was living in the Bottom, he has a record and he has a penchant for porn.”
    I concede that I can’t vouch for Ronnie Sax, but I tell her that I wanted to throw a little business Marcus’s way, knowing that he would rather be on TV than eat a prime rib at Morton’s.
    I ask her if she doesn’t want to go and comfort her bouncing baby girl, who sounds as if she has a safety pin stuck in her butt.
    “Greg!” I hear my ex-wife and landlady shout. “Grace has got a diaper