Lorene asked if I had called 411 to try to get the number. Sometimes the basic starting point was forgotten. I thanked her and headed on to the desk. I had called information at home and already knew there was no listing for Wanda Sessums.

The city editor at the moment was a woman named Dorothy Fowler. It was one of the most transient jobs at the paper, a position both political and practical and one that seemed to have a revolving door attached to it. Fowler had been a damn good government reporter and was only eight months into trying her hand at commanding the crew of city-side reporters. I wished her well but kind of knew it was impossible for her to succeed, given all the cutbacks on resources and the empty cubicles in the newsroom.

Fowler had a little office in the line of glass but she preferred to be an editor of the people. She was usually at a desk at the head of the formation of desks where all the aces-assistant city editors-sat. This was known as the raft because all the desks were pushed together as if in some sort of flotilla where there was strength in numbers against the sharks.

All city-side reporters were assigned to an ace as the first level of direction and management. My ace was Alan Prendergast, who handled all the cop and court reporters. As such, he had a later shift, usually coming in around noon, because news that came off the law enforcement and justice beats most of the time developed late in the day.

This meant my first check-in of the day was usually with Dorothy Fowler or the deputy city editor, Michael Warren. I always tried to make it Fowler because she ranked higher and Warren and I never got along. This might have had something to do with the fact that long before I had come to the Times, I had worked for the Rocky Mountain News out of Denver and had encountered Warren and competed with him on a major story. He had acted unethically and for that I could never trust him as an editor.