The Scarecrow Read Online Free

miss that most about the job.
    “You know what I heard,” Larry said to me, his head turned from the sports guys so he could be confidential.
    “No, what?”
    “That during one of the buyouts in Baltimore this one guy took the check and on his last day he filed a story that turned
     out to be completely bogus. He just made the whole thing up.”
    “And they printed it?”
    “Yeah, they didn’t know until they started getting calls the next day.”
    “What was the story about?”
    “I don’t know but it was like a big ‘fuck you’ to management.”
    I sipped some wine and thought about that.
    “Not really,” I said.
    “What do you mean? Of course it was.”
    “I mean the management probably sat around and nodded and said we got rid of the right guy. If you want to say ‘fuck you,’
     then you do something that makes them think they messed up by letting you go. That tells them they should’ve picked somebody
     else.”
    “Yeah, is that what you’re going to do?”
    “No, man, I’m just going to go quietly into that good night. I’m going to get a novel published and that will be my fuck-you.
     In fact, that’s the working title.
Fuck You, Kramer.
”
    “Right!”
    Bernard laughed and we changed the subject. But while I was talking about other things I was thinking about the big fuck-you.
     I was thinking about the novel I was going to restart and finally finish. I wanted to go home and start writing. I thought
     maybe it would help me get through the next two weeks if I had it to go home to each night.
    My cell phone rang and I saw it was my ex-wife calling. I knew I had to get this one over with. I shoved off the bar stool
     and headed outside to the parking lot, where it would be quieter.
    It was three hours ahead in Washington but the number on the caller ID was her desk phone.
    “Keisha, what are you still doing at work?”
    I checked my watch. It was almost seven here, almost ten there.
    “I’m chasing the
Post
on a story, waiting for callbacks.”
    The beauty and bane of working for a West Coast paper was that the last deadline didn’t come up until at least three hours
     after the
Washington Post
and
New York Times
—the major national competition—had gone to bed. This meant that the
L.A. Times
always had a shot at matching their scoops or pushing the lead on stories. Come morning, the
L.A. Times
could end up out front on a major story with the latest and best information. It also made the online edition must-reading
     in the halls of government three thousand miles from L.A.
    And as one of the newest reporters in the Washington bureau, Keisha Russell was on the late shift. She was often tagged with
     chasing stories and pushing for the freshest details and developments.
    “That sucks,” I said.
    “Not as bad as what I heard happened to you today.”
    I nodded.
    “Yeah, I got downsized, Keish.”
    “I’m so sorry, Jack.”
    “Yeah, I know. Everybody is. Thanks.”
    It should’ve been clear I was in the gun sights when they didn’t send me to D.C. with her two years earlier, but that was
     another story. A silence opened up between us and I tried to step on it.
    “I’m going to pull out my novel and finish it,” I said. “I’ve got some savings and there’s got to be some equity in the house.
     I think I can go at least a year. I figure it’s now or never.”
    “Yeah,” Keisha said with feigned enthusiasm. “You can do it.”
    I knew she had found the manuscript one day when we were still together and had read it, never admitting it because if she
     did she would have to tell me what she thought. She wouldn’t have been able to lie about it.
    “Are you going to stay in L.A.?” she asked.
    That was a good question. The novel was set in Colorado, where I had grown up, but I loved the energy of L.A. and didn’t want
     to leave it.
    “I haven’t thought about it yet. I don’t want to sell my place. The market’s still so shitty. I’d rather just get an equity
     loan