Contents Under Pressure Read Free Page A

break into the movies, though he had the talent and the smarts. He came home.
    Unlike so many who fight their way out of the ghetto and never look back, he reached down from the top of the ladder to those at the bottom. He tried to make a difference, coaching and working with disadvantaged youngsters to keep them in school, out of trouble, and off drugs.
    He was thirty-eight years old.
    “He came in by ambulance during the night, a few hours before dawn,” Rico continued. “Car accident, unconscious, but expected to recover. A few hours later a nurse on routine rounds called a code blue; he’d stopped breathing. The team managed to restart his heart and breathing and hooked him up to life support, but he was brain dead. They are keeping his vital functions going long enough to take his organs for transplant. He was carrying an organ donor card.”
    Phone tucked under my chin, I was scribbling notes and groping for the phone on the desk behind me. Ryan Battle, the general assignment reporter who sat there, had gone home, and I needed to call the library for D. Wayne’s clip file. I did all this while also trying, without success, to establish eye contact with the assistant city editor in the slot, forty feet away.
    “How was he injured?” I asked. “This was an accident?” I rolled my chair up to the video display terminal next to my desk, punched out the password, and slugged the story, taking notes as we talked.
    “Apparently, he was running from the cops; they were chasing him.”
    “Why would Hudson run from the cops? On foot?”
    “Nah, if it was on foot, they never would have caught D. Wayne, even with his bum knee. The cops said they were chasing his car when he wrecked it. I was in the ER when they brought him in.”
    “What cops? Miami? Metro? What kind of injuries? Did he ever say anything? Was he drinking? Any drugs? What was he wearing? Where was he coming from? Where was he going?”
    “You always do that, Britt. All I know is what I said.”
    “What cops? Come on, Rico, you saw them.”
    “The cops wore blue shirts, Miami.” Miami cops wear dark blue; Metro police and highway patrolmen wear brown.
    “Miami … on the midnight shift. How come I didn’t hear about it? I was at the station this morning.
    “Well, D. Wayne didn’t take a turn for the worse until after the cops left. That’s all I know. You got to get everything through official channels, Britt. We didn’t talk.”
    “Right.” I thanked Rico and glanced at the clock, stomach clenched like a fist. We had forty-five minutes until deadline for the final. I stepped quickly up to the city desk. Bobby Tubbs was in the night slot, responsible for the news that went into the local section in the final edition. Not a job for someone who hates change. He looked apprehensive at my approach, anticipating what was coming. When I said I had a story, his chubby face took on the look of an evil Muppet. What a newsman. Bobby was famous for becoming apoplectic when his carefully laid out pages were messed up by something as intrusive as breaking news. He was beginning to hyperventilate until I explained what I was working on. If this tip was true, his page would not be torn up after all. The story would go out front, on page one. D. Wayne Hudson was news.
    Tubbs informed the national desk, and sports, to start somebody on a sidebar with D. Wayne’s stats and playing field achievements. I hit the phones, working with a receiver to each ear. At one point, both the police department and the hospital had me on hold. Breathing deeply, I stared at the relentless hands on the big clock mounted over the city desk, then closed my eyes for a long moment. The best years of my life have been spent on hold.
    The hospital reluctantly confirmed that D. Wayne Hudson was a patient I had to go three rounds with an administrator to drag out more details. Meanwhile, the police department’s accident reports had been locked in an office until morning. I reached a