A few days after the softball game, Frankie was at the paper early, determined to work on his repo-man story in silence. Darwin made ample use of low-paid freelancers and interns, who often congregated in “the Bedroom” like it was a group therapy clubhouse, grousing about getting paid five cents a word and worrying over their stories, significant others, and life in general. Five people might be on the phones doing interviews, or trying to avoid making calls by striking up conversations. You could also hear the muffled voices of the designers through the hole in the wall.

But at 6 a.m. Frankie had the place all to himself.

Still sweaty from the short walk from the crumbling parking lot to the back door of the building, Frankie tried to think cold thoughts before he got to work. It was a mental exercise he’d been trying out lately to combat unusually hot August weather. He imagined Baskin-Robbins Daiquiri Ice, the ice cream that offered the imaginary thrill of skirting drinking laws when he was eight. He pictured the iceberg that sank the Titanic.

Frankie had a simple goal for the morning; he needed to describe Mateo Cruz.

But describing people or landscapes or buildings or bodies of water was not his strong suit as a journalist. He cut descriptions out of magazines and tacked them to the otherwise bare walls of his apartment for inspiration, but he still had trouble envisioning these things, even when they were expertly rendered by more capable writers. One clip from GQ affixed to his bedroom door described a basketball coach with “sharp features that imply ambiguity despite their uncompromising angularity.” It sounded good, but all Frankie could imagine was the American Eagle on The Muppet Show. Or, maybe, a figure in a Cubist painting. Above the toilet, so he would read it while he peed, there was a line from Harper’s that detailed an “awkwardly sloping hill with vertiginous, wind-blown elms on its northern rise.” For Frankie, it triggered visions of a hard plastic mountain with tiny trees made in Taiwan that might decorate the rumpus room of a fastidious, middle-aged model train enthusiast. But it was in Harper’s, so it must be good, right?

Fully acknowledging his shortcomings as a writer, Frankie settled on a system that relied on well-known public personalities and landmarks. In short, he compared little-known people and places to more famous people and places. It seemed like cheating, but he wasn’t sure what else to do.

An example: Frankie covered a murder trial when he first arrived in Oakland. He wanted to start with something big, and Darwin encouraged him to give it a try. Frankie was mesmerized by the defense attorney, who stood in front of the jury box, his legs planted hip-width apart, knees locked, and delivered his pitch with an exaggerated, loose-limbed flamboyance confined solely to his upper body. He liked to close his eyes and shake his head when he laughed, a wheezy exhalation he employed to indicate the ridiculous nature of the prosecution’s assertions. Frankie described him as looking like “Sammy Davis Jr. with bad knees, lacking only a cigarette as a prop because the courthouse smoking ban forbade it.” (Darwin told him this story had “cover potential,” but it got bumped for one of Walker’s stories.)

This system, this crutch, was not foolproof. Frankie had to assume that the readers knew who Sammy Davis Jr. was. And he needed to know when his own cultural references didn’t correspond with his audience’s. He accepted that he was obsessed with the eighties British cult band The Smiths and considered The Bad News Bears one of the greatest films of all time. He thought he was safe in assuming that most readers, alas, did not share his enthusiasms.

“Mateo Cruz reminds me of Mickey Rourke trapped in the body of a Latino Tony Randall,” Frankie said to the empty newsroom.

As imprecise as that was, Frankie wanted to just leave it at that, but he felt compelled to at least try a real description. Mateo was a small, wiry man in his forties. His dark hair was short and neat. He was always freshly shaven. He was quiet. He made no aggressive gestures or threatening statements. Frankie sensed he was smart, but couldn’t come up with evidence to prove it. That was sort of the Tony Randall part — compact and neat. Forget Tony Randall’s personality. Just think of him standing in a room with a slight frown on his face. But more muscular.

At the same time, Mateo managed to be in charge of things without ever openly declaring his command. Frankie was reminded of certain teachers in high school — male and female, large and small — who controlled a room without ever having to yell, threaten or chuck erasers. Mateo just had this look in his eyes that he was not to be fucked with. That was the Mickey Rourke part. It was all in the eyes and the low, gravelly voice.

Frankie was still agonizing over the description when the phone rang in Walker’s closet-sized office off the main newsroom. It was only about 50 square feet, enough room to wedge in a desk, chair and small bookcase. Walker had randomly covered the thin beige walls with various mementos — that photo of him meeting President Bush; venomous letters to the editor in cheap black frames denouncing him as a “vulture” and a “smug prick”; and a faded newspaper clipping in agate type listing Walker Hanlon as the 278th pick of the Milwaukee Brewers the year he graduated from high school. There were three petrified Twinkies still sealed in their plastic wrappers affixed with stickpins to the wall above his computer. Walker explained that they were already there when he took the job.

It was claustrophobic, but it had a separate phone line and a narrow, prison-style slat window that didn’t open.

“At least the warden lets me see the sky,” Walker once told Frankie, solemnly reaching out to touch the window.

The cheap wooden door to the office was closed, but Frankie could hear Walker answer the phone. He’d been in there, lurking in silence, the whole time.

Frankie could always tell when it was Bridgett. Walker would start out sounding genuinely happy and excited, then lapse into long stretches of silence, followed by him arguing in a loud whisper. Frankie sensed that Bridgett often hung up on Walker, at which point he’d carry on a fake, one-way conversation for the benefit of anyone who might be listening in “the Bedroom.” Today was no different. Frankie heard Walker practically yell, in a whisper, if that was possible, “Bridge, please, don’t get like this.” Then there was 15 seconds of silence before Walker said, in a normal, overly chipper voice, “Okay then, that sounds great. I’ll see you later tonight. I love you.”

Walker emerged slowly from the office, his eyes red like he’d been crying. He acted surprised to see Frankie.

“Hey,” he said, rubbing his eyes. “How’s the repo man thing going? Darwin asked me to handle all the early edits on it.”

Despite his doubts about Walker’s devotion to helping him mature as a writer, Frankie preferred working with him on his first cover story over Darwin, who was easily distracted and wrote in a style that didn’t sound right to Frankie. Besides, no matter how good your editor was, Frankie thought it was your job as a reporter to disagree with most of what he said, even when you knew the suggestions were making your story better. And there was the finger thing. Frankie had noticed that Darwin used his middle instead of his index finger to point. It’s was small thing, but it drove Frankie crazy. Darwin would point to a section of his story on a printout and it was like he was flipping Frankie off.

Hoping to avoid any discussion of softball, Frankie told Walker about the encounter with gunman in El Sobrante and ran down Mateo’s take on repo men underpinning the American dream. He leafed through his notebook to find the exchange he’d had with Mateo about the important role the repo man played in patrolling the country’s credit frontier. Frankie started reading for Walker, who was now blowing his nose with a monogrammed hanky he’d fished out of his back pocket.

"The auto recovery industry may have a bad reputation, but it allows Americans to participate in the real national pastime,” Mateo said.

"Baseball?" I asked.

"No," he answered, sounding pleased that I’d gone for the bait. "The real national pastime."

"Wiffle Ball?" I offered weakly.

"No. Spending money you don’t have. Going into debt. That’s what America’s all about. That’s what makes us great.”

Walker shook his head with disgust.

“That sounds like bull to me,” he said. “These guys are scum. They’re taking advantage of poor people.”

It was unusual for Walker to take such a strong stand on anything so quickly.

“Come on, think about all the things that get a person to the point where they can’t make a car payment,” Walker continued, rubbing the stubble on his cheek. Frankie wondered if he’d slept in the office. “To start with, BART and the bus system suck so poor people have to somehow get their hands on a car. And then there’s all the societal pressure to get a nice car. And if you’re broke, you get the worst financing and insurance deals, so you’re getting punished financially for not having more money to begin with. The whole system is set up for people to fail.”

“But repo men don’t create that system, and they’re not exactly getting rich doing this,” Frankie countered, surprised at how quick he was to defend Mateo Cruz and Clay MacIntyre. He had an intimate relationship with debt, but he wasn’t going to share that with Walker. Frankie had felt the same way Walker had when he went into the story; repo men kicked people when they were down. Now he wasn’t so sure.

Frankie started reading again:

"I was out in the repo yard one day in August of 1972 when a garbage truck rolled up to collect at the house that used to sit on the east lot,” Mateo said.

"'Say, what do you do here, man?' this poor bastard hanging off the back of the truck asks me.

“‘We're a repossession agency,’ I tell him. ‘We take back people's cars when they don't pay their bills.’

"Sweating like a pig, this trash man, with his droopy drawers and sad-ass work shirt, throws a load into the truck and yells, 'Man, I wouldn't want your job for nothin,' as the truck takes off with him clutching the back. I learned where I fit in society right there."

Frankie looked up at Walker, feeling he’d proved Mateo and Clay were sympathetic underdogs, not capitalist tools.

“Fine, they’re not as bad as the people making the real money at the banks, but they’re making it possible for other people to make the big money,” Walker said, raising his voice. “These guys are hapless toadies for greedy bankers.”

“Walker, you’re turning all communist on me,” Frankie said, concerned about what his first edit would be like if Walker was getting this worked up just talking about it. Besides, the unofficial stance of the paper, as dictated by Dallas, was quasi-libertarian — to distinguish us from the liberal dogma of the Express. (Of course, this approach also had the unintended effect of alienating East Bay readers and advertisers.)
“This is an adventure story. It’s about people stealing cars in the middle of the night. It’s not about the world financial conspiracy to subjugate the masses. I only pitched the economic angle to get Darwin to okay the story.”

“No, you’re right,” Walker said, his voice softening. “You have to tell all the good repo stories. Hell, you got a gun held to your head. You have to describe that. But you need some kind of structure that puts these guys in a larger context. They’re not heroes.”

Frankie didn’t point out that the gun had been held to Clay’s head. He was eager to change the subject at that point. Walker did it for him by reminding him that there was a monthly staff meeting that afternoon down at Clarissa’s bar. These talkfests brought together everyone who worked for The Independent to bore each other for two hours. The advertising reps delivered overly optimistic sales projections, the editorial staff demanded more time for stories, and the designers threw out ideas that involved buying new software or computer equipment that corporate would never approve.

Frankie was dreading what would be his third all-employee meeting when Walker revealed a plan to make it more palatable.

The meetings were held at a big table on an elevated platform in the corner of the bar. A wooden slat railing ran along the edge of the platform and demarked it from the rest of the room. You had to walk up a few steps to get to the table, so you were a good three feet above everyone else in the place. Frankie always felt conspicuous sitting up there, like he was on stage

Each staff member was entitled to a free drink as a bribe to ensure attendance. Walker had talked to a waitress at the bar who told him Darwin just signed off on the bill without checking it. He covered the tab with free advertising for Clarissa’s in the paper, so no money changed hands. Because the waitress got her tip based on the total, she was willing to sneak us extra drinks, provided it wouldn’t be obvious, to run up the tab.

Walker’s plan called for us to sit on the side of the table closest to the railing. When we finished a drink, we’d surreptitiously place it on the floor behind us at the base of the railing. The waitress, largely hidden from view, could easily pick up our empties and replace them with fresh drinks as she walked by. All we’d have to do is pretend to drop something and retrieve the drinks without anyone catching on. It wouldn’t be difficult, Walker promised, because Darwin sat at the head of the table, a good distance from where they’d put the plan into action.

Frankie felt uneasy about the whole operation. It seemed like a pretty risky way to get a few free drinks. They were basically stealing from Darwin, but Walker talked him into it. Frankie didn’t want to cross him before he edited his story.

“For what he’s paying us, he can spare a few free drinks,” Walker said. “Besides, he’d probably think it was hilarious if he caught us. This is the kind of thing journalists should pull on their editors.”

Coming Thursday, July 29

Skip Tracer Installment 18: Drunk on the job