The Fraud by Brad Parks Page B

Despite my multitude of journalism awards and a job status that was as close to tenure as a modern newspaper gets, I was still as afraid of Brodie as I had been as a rookie on probation.
    Especially because I couldn’t figure out why he was calling. I doubted Tina would ask Brodie, of all people, to inform me she had gone into labor. And he wasn’t really the type to just pick up the phone and call reporters. As a long-ago military veteran—his first combat was at Antietam, I think—he believed in preserving chain of command. He always had the reporter’s frontline editor deliver his wishes. This was the first time in my nine years at the paper he had ever called me directly.
    “Hi…” I began, and then I paused. I had never quite summoned the nerve to call him by his first name, but didn’t want to sound like a dork—or, worse, an obsequious kiss ass—greeting him by his last name. So I just added a “there.” It came out: “Hi … there.”
    “I had a quick question for you, if you don’t mind,” he said.
    “Sure. Shoot.”
    “You and Tina Thompson, you are … well, how would you describe your relationship? She is pregnant with your child but you are not married, is that right?”
    Oh, lord. Where was he going with this ? And could I get away with telling the executive editor to mind his own damn business? Then I thought back to that all-important commandment: Thou Shalt Not Piss Off Harold Brodie.
    “Well, yes, sir, I’d say you’ve got things right.”
    “And you are betrothed?”
    “I’m still working on that part, sir.”
    “I see. Well, I had a little proposition for you. Madge and I, we like to … well, back in the seventies, they used to call it ‘swinging.’ I’m not sure what the term is these days. But you’re such a good-looking fellow and Madge has always been sweet on you. I was wondering if you’d like to come over and have a ‘go’ with her tonight while I get to know Tina a little better. I have to admit, I’ve always had a bit of a fetish for women at the very end of gestation. There’s just nothing quite like the lactate-swollen bosom of an expectant mother. I bedded my first pregnant woman when I was barely more than a boy myself. Why, in my salad days, they used to call me ‘mommy hopper.’”
    I paused to be sure, then said, “Hi, Tommy.”
    Tommy Hernandez was our city hall reporter. He was twenty-five-years-old, of Cuban heritage, and as gay as backstage at the Tony Awards. How it was he had developed a spot-on impersonation of our arrow straight, Caucasian, septuagenarian executive editor was something of a marvel. He used it as a weapon whenever it suited him.
    “Aw, man! I had been working on that one all morning,” he whined. “Where did I lose you?”
    “At ‘swollen.’ I feel like Brodie would have gone with ‘engorged.’”
    “The devil is always in the details,” he said.
    “No, the devil is you. Though I must say you are delightfully twisted.”
    “Thank you!” I could practically hear him beaming through the phone.
    “Anyhow, does this call have a purpose beyond putting a seriously disturbing image in my head?”
    “Yeah, actually, I wanted to make sure I wasn’t stepping on your toes with something I’m working on.”
    “What’s that?”
    “There’s a rumor the Nigerian government has decided that there’s a sizable enough Nigerian population in northern New Jersey to establish an embassy here in Newark,” he said. “We’re not sure if it’s a satellite to the main embassy in New York or if they’re going to move their whole operation here. Either one is news.”
    “Yeah, sure.”
    “Anyhow, I was talking to Kathy Carter at the prosecutor’s office about it and she said, ‘What is this, Nigeria day?’ And then she said you had talked to her about something related to Nigeria, but then she wouldn’t say what because it was on background.”
    “Yeah, I was just asking about a Nigerian ex-pat who came down with a bad