Famous Last Words (18 page)

He stands when he sees me. “Samantha?”

“Yes.”

“You are so young!” he exclaims. I’m not offended. To him, everyone must look young.

“Can I help you, sir?”

I see he’s holding some papers in his hand. On top is a feature obituary I wrote last week.

“I like your writing,” he says, pointing to my byline.

“Thank you.”

“I am Aleksandr Kovalevsky. Alex,” he says, extending his age-spot-covered hand, which I promptly take. “I would like for you to tell my story.”

Then he slips another paper from the stack he’s carrying. It’s a faded photocopy of a newspaper clipping depicting a hollow-cheeked young man in a dirty prison uniform.

“This is me,” he says. “On the day I was liberated from a Nazi prison camp. I’ve never told anyone about what happened to me. But now I want my grandchildren to know this story. Before I’m gone.”

It takes me a few beats to process this, and I’m not sure how to proceed. Thankfully, Antoinette, who’s all ears at this point, offers me a next step.

“Why don’t you take this gentleman to the conference room and get him some water,” she says.

I do as she suggests, then find Harry to let him know about Mr. Kovalevsky. He looks around the newsroom, and I’m wondering if he’s trying to choose a reporter to go talk to him. “Meg!” he finally says. “Do you have a recorder D’Angelo can borrow?”

“Sure!”

“Grab a notebook and pen, D’Angelo. Take notes and record him too,” Harry says.

“You want
me
to interview him?”

“Of course. I want to know what he has to say. Don’t you?”

I do.

Meg gives me a quick lesson in how to operate her digital recorder, and I return to Mr. Kovalevsky in the conference room.

“Do you mind if I record you?” I ask.

“Not at all, my dear.” The term of endearment sounds sweet coming from him and instantly puts me at ease. I flip open my notebook, pull up a chair, and turn on the recorder. I just start with the obvious question.

“How did you end up in a Nazi prison camp?”

He looks out the window. His pale blue eyes match the summer sky. Is he having second thoughts about telling me his story? But then he rubs his hands together like he’s warming them and begins to speak.

“It’s funny. I started off at a Russian work camp. The Germans were the ones who
liberated
me,” he says. “I had no idea how much worse my nightmare would become.”

His story unfolds like a Spielberg film. The son of Ukrainian immigrants, Kovalevsky went to visit his grandmother in Poland in 1939. He was there during the Soviet invasion and eventually imprisoned when KGB officers stormed his grandmother’s home and found his American flag in her house. “My prison cell was very, very dark. Many mornings I would awake and think I had gone blind,” he says. He takes a drink of water, and I wait for him to speak again. I ask very few questions—he’s had a long time to think about this story. All I do is listen. “One of my favorite things to think about was the parade I attended after Charles Lindbergh made his transatlantic flight. I relived that day many, many times.”

His days were divided, he says, between walking in circles in his solitary cell and interrogations, where he was forced to stand at attention for hours with a bright light shining in his face. And throughout it all, he was literally starving, given only “filthy soup” to eat.

In 1941, Mr. Kovalevsky was liberated when the Germans invaded eastern Poland, but eventually sent to a Nazi camp, where he remained until the end of the war. I can’t believe what he endured for all those years. He was beaten, starved, humiliated, and again interrogated. He saw mass graves and witnessed men being nailed to concrete walls and pregnant women being tortured and left for dead. These memories, he says, still wake him up screaming in the middle of the night.

“I’m getting up in age. I didn’t want my story to die with me,” he says. “It wasn’t easy to find people who wanted to listen to me when the war ended. A lot of people had sad stories. But I want my family to know what happened to me.”

After his liberation, he married and had three children. He has six grandchildren and a great-grandchild on the way. But no one knows the details of his imprisonment. How many stories get lost because people didn’t want to listen or ask questions? Mr. Kovalevsky’s makes me think about the history that dies when an elderly person passes away. My own grandmother was a young girl when World War II ended, and she and her family had survived the Great Depression, but most of the time, all I ever ask her about is what’s on TV or what we’re having for dinner.

Nearly two hours later, I walk Mr. Kovalevsky to the reception area. “Thank you, Samantha,” he says, grabbing my hand with both of his. His eyes are watery, and I’m afraid if he starts crying, I will too.

“Thank you,” I say. “I’m honored you chose me to talk to.”

As I watch him walk gingerly through the glass doors and down the sidewalk, I’m sad and drained but also inspired. I can’t change the horrible things that happened to him, but I can tell other people what this man endured in order to live.

As I pass by Harry on the way to my desk, he looks up and says, “How’d it go?”

“Intense. He had a lot to say.”

“Take your time with it,” Harry says. “Get me something by next Friday and we’ll go from there.”

That gives me more than a week. I’m glad. A lot of my best writing happens in my head. Stories form and organize themselves there. The quotes I remember are usually the ones worth keeping. I’ve come to realize that journalists, the really good ones, aren’t just great wordsmiths, they’re great thinkers.

“Where’ve ya been?” AJ asks when I sit down at my desk. I fill him in and get the usual one-word AJ response of “heavy.” He packs a lot of emotion into two syllables.

“I don’t have to file the story tonight, though,” I say.

“Okay. Let me finish this concert preview and we can go.”

I start transcribing my notes while AJ finishes working, and that’s when Tony stops by my desk.

“Hey, Sam,” he says. “I forgot to tell you. I’m leaving earlier than expected for my vacation, so I won’t be going to the Journey and Foreigner concert on Saturday.”

I’ve been so busy, I’d forgotten all about it. Almost.

“Oh, that’s okay. Thanks for letting me know.”

“Alexis is still going. Maybe you can be her plus one.”

Still going?
So, she was invited all along? I shrug it off.

“Uh, no. That’s all right. Have fun in Aruba.”

My body feels hot. I can’t look at AJ after Tony walks away.

“Thanks, I will.” Tony smiles like a cat with a canary in his mouth.

“You were going to be Coma Boy’s plus one?!”

Oh, here we go. “No! He mentioned it a long time ago. I completely forgot about it. And, anyway, I don’t remember ever saying I’d go.”

“No explanation necessary,” AJ says. “Date whomever you want.”

My back goes up when he says that. I
can
date anyone I want. It’s not like AJ shares any information about his love life with me. I never did find out what he was doing with Jessica in Chestnutville during the weekend of the Fourth. We spend enough time together at work and on weekly stakeouts—if at any point he wanted to hang out as more than just friends, well, he’s a big boy. He should have said something.

I don’t talk much as we follow the mayor’s Jaguar to his final destination, Fidelity Savings in Belleville—we got lucky, today is banking day. The quiet time gives me a chance to think. When AJ parks the car, I decide to shake things up a bit. I wait until the mayor leaves through the back door, the one closest to the parking lot, and I get out of the car.

“Come on,” I say to AJ. “Let’s go in the front.”

When we get through the doors, I run up to a teller and act like I’m out of breath.

“Hi! We were supposed to meet our new boss here. I don’t have an account yet, but he said he would cash our paychecks for us. We work at his bookstore slash coffee shop.”

“Was he here? Big guy? Salt-and-pepper hair?” AJ asks.

“You mean Mr. Goldberg?” the teller says. “He just walked out the back door. Maybe you can catch him in the parking lot.”

“Thank you!” I say, then I grab AJ by the arm. “Come on.”

By the time we get to the lot, the mayor is long gone. Still, I wait until we’re back in the car before I say anything.

“Why is the mayor pretending to be Sy Goldberg? Is Sy too sick to sign paychecks?” I ask.

“Maybe he’s stealing Sy’s money while the poor guy lies dying.”

“I know I should tell Harry, but I can’t. He told me to stay out of it, and I don’t want him to get mad at me before my big week of covering Michael’s beat.”

“Wait until Michael gets back. We’re not sure what this means or what it proves. If anything,” AJ says.

“I guess.” The guilt may give me an ulcer by then.

“It can wait a week,” AJ says. “Trust me.”

I do trust AJ.

*   *   *

It’s Friday morning, and I’m flying solo at East Passaic city hall this morning. My dad dropped me off here at ten, and AJ agreed to pick me up when I’m done. I’ve already stopped by the police and fire department headquarters and the mayor’s office. Just like Meg showed me. Mayor Amato wasn’t in this time, but I got my advance copy of the agenda of the next city council meeting from his secretary, Marisol.

I’m about to text AJ to say I’ll meet him out front in five minutes when I realize I forgot to charge my phone. I glance around the maze of cubicles and spy an empty one. The nameplate reads
KIKI RAMIREZ.
Sounds like she should be famous, not stuck behind a desk in city hall. I walk over to the man across from Kiki’s.

“Excuse me,” I say. “Would it be okay if I use the phone on Kiki Ramirez’s desk? It’s a local call, and it doesn’t look like—”

“Who?” He looks confused. I may have woken him up.

“Kiki? She sits across from you?”

“I’ve never seen anybody sitting there,” the man says. He’s standing now and looking toward the cubicle in question. “As far as I know, no one sits there.”

“Oh, well, could I use the phone? I’ll be quick.”

“Okay by me. Dial nine for an outside line.” Then he sits down and goes back to work or his nap. I’m not sure which.

Fifteen minutes later, it feels like I’m stepping into a sauna when I walk through the front doors of city hall and into the heavy August air. AJ is already waiting by the curb. It’s a shame the air-conditioning doesn’t work in his Jeep. I’m going to be a sweaty mess by the time I get to the
Herald Tribune
.

I open the passenger door and get inside.

“Hey,” I say.

“Hey.”

“Got the agenda.” I wave the document in his face, then buckle my seat belt.

“Anything look interesting?”

“I don’t think so. I’ll have Meg double-check it for me. Tuesday’s meeting should be a short one. Feel like coming with me? We can hit the Harp afterward,” I say.

“You mean you want me to be your plus one?”

I slap him with the agenda.

Is this a dig about Tony, or does he want it to be a date? Do I? It now feels like it’s about 107 degrees in his vehicle, because I’m blushing. But I don’t think AJ notices. For the rest of the ride, he never looks my way.

chapter twenty

Nut Graph

I spent all day yesterday prepping for this Tuesday-night city-council meeting. Meg read over the agenda again with me to see if there are any important votes coming up. The only thing that seems newsworthy is a cost-savings proposal to go from two-day-a-week garbage pickup to one. Perhaps the city’s tax dollars would be better spent if it focused its trash-removal efforts on the mayor.

Before I leave for the meeting, Meg shows me how to prewrite the trash story, including nut graphs—paragraphs that give some history and bring readers up to speed about why the story is news. When AJ and I walk into the council chambers, I’ve got my laptop, my notebook, and Meg’s recorder. I’m ready.

The council shares space with the municipal court. Reporters sit at the table used for the defense. The seven-member council sits behind an elongated judge’s bench, and there’s a lectern at the top of the aisle for the public portion of the meeting when citizens are allowed to address the council. So far, the only spectators here are me, AJ, a reporter from the
Record-Gazette
(our competition), and an older gentleman in a robin’s-egg blue seersucker suit who came in carrying a briefcase.

“That’s Constantine,” the
Record-Gazette
reporter whispers to me. “Never misses a meeting. Thinks he’s an attorney.”

Ah. Michael warned me about him. His exact words were,
Do not make eye contact with Constantine. He’s like a half-wit cobra. He won’t stop talking and you’ll miss your deadline
. Apparently, Constantine shows up at city hall every day too. Michael says he’s gotten some good tips on stories from him, but often, since he’s a few cards short of a deck, it’s not always easy to figure out what Constantine really knows and what he’s making up.

The meeting drags on and on. The council votes on various resolutions related to the mundane business of running a city; Constantine makes an impressive presentation on trash collection, complete with visuals; AJ sneaks off to the back row to pop in his earbuds and falls asleep. And then, just when it seems like the meeting is wrapping up, the city attorney blindsides me.

“The mayor would like to make a motion to discuss a personnel matter behind closed doors.”

“Can they do that?” I ask the
Record-Gazette
reporter.

“Yep. For personnel matters, they’re allowed to close the meeting.” He starts packing up his stuff. “This could take the rest of the night. I’m out of here.”

I quick dial the city desk and get Grace. I tell her what’s going on and ask her what I should do.

“Ask them what the personnel matter is related to,” she says. “You’re entitled to that information.”

I hang up just as they’re about to take a vote to go into closed session. The
Record-Gazette
reporter is already gone. AJ is in la-la land. I panic. I raise my hand like I’m in school, stand up, and start talking. “Uh, hello. I’m Samantha D’Angelo from the
Herald Tribune
.” Did the mayor smirk when I mentioned the paper’s name?
Jerk
. “Can I ask what the personnel matter relates to? This wasn’t on the agenda I picked up.”