Chapter 143 - The Mucky Muck

The offices of the Muckraker magazine feel true to the "vision and mission" of such a highly esteemed publication. It's located in the basement of an old art deco building, on the boundaries of the city's own china town, with nothing but a little signage by the entrance door announcing its existence. Inside is a small "editorial room," a common area where four or five desks are arranged around a single inkjet printer, where an editorial staff of a grand total of seven, not including Gary Smulder, bang on their antiquated yellowed desktop computers the week's journalistic masterpieces.

It's into this wonderful world of ace-level reporting that Gary Smulder enters, his face brimming with expectation. At the desk nearest the inkjet printer sits a corpulent gray-haired man, quickly typing on the computer keyboard what can only be presumed as the magazine's next cover story.

"Hey, Patrick, guess what I have in my hand?"

Patrick does not even stop typing; he continues pounding the keyboard, his face limned with the phosphor glow of the monitor. "I can guess, but I'm sure reality is much stranger than guesses."

Gary laughs; he plunks himself in the squeaky office chair nearby and makes himself comfortable. He surveys the cramped office. Ted, the senior features editor, is slathering a slice of bread with chunky peanut buŧŧer, right on his workstation. Liza, who does graphics design and layout, paints her nails a murderous red. Gary makes mental note to hit on Liza later; maybe, finally, she'd agree to giving him a blowjob, or maybe more. Liza's resting bitch face looks exceptionally bitchy today, and Gary presumes a fight with the old boyfriend, which might mean Liza is more receptive to the idea of cheating on his boyfriend. Tonight might be the night, after all.

But Gary's lurid train of thoughts is cut off by Patrick's hoarse voice. "So what is it in your hand, then? Somebody's severed dɨċk you found in a garbage can in the back alley behind Pizza Hut?"

Gary, again, laughs; to be on Patrick's good side, you always must show appreciation for his comedic talent, although the talent that Patrick has so far excelled in is finding absolute malice on everything and everyone.

"Much, much better than a severed dɨċk, Pat!" Gary brandishes the notepad, as though it was some kind of trophy. "I have here the week's explosive cover story!"

Patrick looks at him, his eyes bearing the old "I've heard that line before and I'm sick of it" jadedness. A beat, then he actually says, "I've heard that line before. So if you're saying this is cover story material, you better be sure, or this will be the last time you're ever making be a bit excited."

"Does the name Miguel Tan ring a bell?" Gary says, his eyebrows arching.

Pat's bushy brow furrows. "Miguel Tan? Hmmm. We surely know a lot of Tans, usually ȧssociated with truckloads filled with cash. So which Tan would this be?"

"Miguel Tan, Pat. Come on. Gabriel Tan's brother. THE Gabriel Tan, the country's most eligible bachelor and at the head of a global conglomerate with interests in shipping, property development, electronics, retail, and I don't know what else."

Patrick stares at him. "If this is about Gabriel Tan, you better have a compelling story."

Gary grins. "What can be juicier than a deadly love triangle? Involving the brothers and Gabriel's new fiancée?"

"What?" Patrick finally stops typing. He stares at this upstart who so desperately tries to sell him gold. He's no idiot; he easily connects the dots as soon as he hears the names of the brothers tied up with a woman. Men throughout history has always fought over booty, be it the glimmering kind or the type that involves an attractive member of the opposite sėx. "The brothers fought over a woman, and one of them almost dies. How did you come by the information?"

Gary shrugs, like he's been discovered to be an absolute genius hiding under a rock all this time. "I just happen to have this natural talent for sniffing out blood."

Patrick ignores it. He's used to characters like Gary. He's the most jaded person in this room, and that's saying a lot. "I can almost read the title of the magazine's next cover story," Patrick says after a while.

And Gary, in an effort to impress his editor, offers, "How about 'Gabriel Tan fights Miguel Tan over Gabriel's fiancée'?"

"Are you serious about that headline, Gary? Really?"

Taken aback, Gary tries again. "Alright, how about "Gabriel and Miguel Tan Almost Kill Each Other over a Girl'?"

Patrick winces. He squirms in his seat, turning to his reporter. "Listen to me, Gary. And this is a nugget of journalistic wisdom I rarely hand down to anyone. But because you've done something worthy of my time and attention today, I'm giving this lesson to you, free." Patrick pauses. "When you craft a story, a headline, and you want people to instantly relate to it, you have to look past the names. You have to pay attention to what the people in the streets consider important."

"Hmmm," Gary mutters. "Okay. How about, 'Gabriel Tan almost Kills his brother for Love'?"

Patrick scowls. "People don't know Gabriel Tan on a first-name basis. Our headline, our story should be cleverly crafted with things that people on the streets already know by heart."

Patrick falls silent, looking at nothing, as though reading the future in the thin air. "I'm thinking of using the headline, 'Richest Man in the Country Almost Kills Brother over Pretty Girl'. That's the perfect headline, see? People on the street passing by a news stand, they read 'richest man in the country' and they wonder, 'who the heck is the richest man in this goddarned country?' That's the first bait. The second bait is 'pretty girl'—they'd ask themselves, what kind of girl, what level of prettiness, can compel a person who's so rich to almost kill his brother? Jesus, at this point, and this all happens within a split second, our people on the street could not contain their curiosity. They stop, and scan the blurb, they read the first paragraph. That's when they read it's about Gabriel Tan. But—and this is a big 'but'—we won't mention Gabriel Tan in the first paragraph. Not yet. What we will mention are the names of some of his most recognizable businesses, which are frequented and perhaps loved by the people. Isn't Gabriel the owner of a popular brand of potato chips? He also owns a string of family-oriented restaurants, right? He also owns a number of iconic buildings downtown, right? That's what we will mention first. And that will shock the people into buying copies of our magazine."

"Jesus," is all Gary manages to say. "And I haven't even written an actual single word of that story, yet."

"Then set out to write it. Begin now." Patrick stands up. "Use my machine, for good luck."

"Really? It's an honor to—"

"Shut up, Gary, and start typing. And be sure to follow what I just said. I want a thousand words of copy by nightfall." He turns to Ted, who couldn't help but overhear the entire conversation consideration how small the editorial office is. "And Ted, when you're finished with that peanut buŧŧer sandwich that's giving the entire space some weird funk you only smell in sweatshops, please find royalty-free images of Gabriel Tan and Miguel Tan and check out the social media accounts of the girl. If you have photos of her in a bikini, or sunbathing topless in the sand, or anything that should excite the imagination, harvest them pictures. I envision ten whole pages of this story."

Gary listens to Patrick giving these orders with the confidence of an army general, and he feels a certain kind of pride. He has spent the past five or so years writing, or trying to write, for this magazine, and these rare moments when Patrick's wisdom shines the most that make the reporter's stint here at Muckraker all worth it. That, or the fact that no other publication would accept his journalistic talents. In any case, Gary tries to focus on the task at hand. He makes a few mouse-clicks to open a new document on the word processor. But when faced with the blank page, Gary loses steam; he starts daydreaming about when the magazine hits the newsstands a few days from now. It's going to be amazing. Patrick might give him the next plum job at Muckraker, which is desk editor, with a team of junior reporters under his wing. That would be something. That would be—

"What are you snickering about, Gary?" Patrick says, who seems to have been watching him from the adjacent desk. "Stop grinning like a fool and stop romancing that keyboard. I'm waiting for your first of many drafts."

Gary gulps down his spit. "First of many drafts." Jesus henry Christ, Patrick would be totally anal about the quality of this write-up. And if how the titles he earlier suggested were rejected were any indication, today might actually be one hellaciously long day.

But then again, this is him biting the bullet, just to climb the stairs to success, and so on and so forth. And so, armed with nothing but all the cliches in his heart, Gary Smulder, esquire, of the prestigious Muckraker magazine, begins pounding on the keyboard the first words of the cover story that will, finally, catapult him to journalistic stardom.