The Scarecrow

There were a billion lights out there on the horizon and I knew that all of them put together weren't enough to light the darkness in the hearts of some men.

I mean like with the love of your life. Everybody’s got one person out there. One bullet. And if you’re lucky in life, you get to meet that person. And once you do, once you’re shot through the heart, then there’s nobody else. No matter what happens—death, divorce, infidelity, whatever—nobody else can ever come close. That’s the single-bullet theory.

The art of sports writing always amazed me. Nine out of ten times the reader already knows the outcome of your story before reading it. They know who won, they probably even watched the game. But they read about it anyway and you have to find a way to write with an insight and angle that makes it seem fresh.

I ordered one more and the bartender made a deal with me. He'd only splash whiskey on my ice if I gave him my car keys. That sounded like a good deal to me and I took it. "Death is my beat" "Technically, I don't work for you. My paper has rules about reporters misrepresenting themselves." Schifino reached into his pocket and pulled out his cash. He handed a dollar across the desk to me. I reached across the murder scene photos to take it. "There," he said. "I just paid you a dollar. You work for me." I thought he was guilty as sin. It was the only way I could live with losing the case. Abasiophilia. Paraphilia. Single-Bullet Theory: "I mean like the love of your life. Everybody's got one person out there. One bullet. And if you're lucky in life, you get to meet that person. And once you do, once you're shot through the heart, then there's nobody else. No matter what happens--death, divorce, infidelity, whatever--nobody else can ever come close. That's the single-bullet theory." Unrelenting pain. He waited for someone to stop it. To save him from it. But no one came. No one heard him. He waited in darkness.

Think of all the great journalism we’ve seen in our lifetimes. The corruption exposed, the public benefit. Where’s that going to come from now with every paper in the country getting shredded? Our government? No way. TV, the blogs? Forget it. My friend who took the buyout in Florida says corruption will be the new growth industry without the papers watching.

I am writing now. Every day. I usually find a crowded coffee shop in the afternoon in which to set up my laptop. I have learned that I cannot write in authorial silence. I must fight distraction and white noise. I must come as close as possible to the experience of writing in a crowded newsroom. I seem to need the din of background conversations, ringing phones and keyboards clacking to feel comfortable and at home. Of course, it is an artificial replacement for the real thing. There is no camaraderie in a coffee shop. No sense of "us against the world." These are things I am sure I will miss about the newsroom forever.

...'the single bullet theory'...with the love of your life. Everybody's got one person out there. One bullet. And if you're lucky in life, you get to meet that person. And once you do, once you're shot through the heart, then there's nobody else. No matter what happens--death, divorce, infidelity, whatever--nobody else can ever come close.

I nodded and looked behind her at the wall covered with photos and cards and newspaper clips. She had a classic headline from one of the New York tabs on the wall: “Headless Body in Topless Bar.” You couldn’t beat that one.

People too poor to afford their own legal defense and reliant on the government that was prosecuting them to also defend them.

This is a common practice. You go to a site and your ID is captured and sent on for marketing use elsewhere. It’s essentially the origin of spam.

I must be able to tell more than what happened. I must tell why. It’s breadth and depth again—the ol’ B and D—and I am used to that.

You don’t have to be an interrogator at Abu Ghraib to know that time never favors the suspect.

Breadth and depth. What the editors want.

But I also knew that the U.S. Supreme Court had upheld the legality of the police’s lying to a suspect if the lie would reasonably be seen as such by an innocent person.

card stolen. It didn’t matter that I told them I hadn’t reported the cards stolen. Someone else had, and that someone had known my account numbers as well as my home address, birth date, mother’s maiden name and Social Security number. I demanded that the accounts be reopened and the service reps gladly complied. The only catch was that new credit cards with new numbers had to be issued and sent to my home. That would take days and in the meantime I had no credit. I was being fucked with on a level I had never experienced before.

corruption will be the new growth industry without the papers watching.

Far as I know, it was a righteous bust. I’m

I quickly crossed the room