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“He shouldn’t have to do that…”
“Are you kidding? He loves to get out of the office. Besides, I want to go over our strategy and maybe even make a preliminary call to the attorney representing the Comptroller and his buddies. Just between you, me, and the shark tank, I don’t know that your story was that far off the mark. I just don’t think we can prove it with what we have.”
Quinn sat, watching Genelva begin the song and dance that was negotiating a settlement with a bunch of old men who had been caught with their hands in the cookie jar and were looking for payback. Quinn realized quickly the law firm had been fools to let Genelva go. She was a skilled attorney who seemed to excel not only in the application and finer points of the law, but in the art of negotiation.
After several days of strong and masterful lawyering and negotiating, a settlement was reached. Quinn would pay all but five thousand dollars of her life’s savings and agree never to practice journalism again within a thousand miles of the State of New York. The contract included a non-disclosure agreement and mutual resolution of claims for all parties involved, including the newspaper.
An investigation of her assets revealed a great aunt she only barely remembered had passed and left a small studio apartment in the French Quarter of New Orleans. Genelva had managed to get it exempted, explaining Quinn’s plan was to move to New Orleans and start over. That hadn’t been Quinn’s plan at all but facing the stark reality of having nothing but a career in ruins, the City of Second Chances seemed to be a fitting place to begin again.
With her things loaded and en route to the Big Easy, Quinn gave Genelva a hug and thanked her for everything as she boarded the southbound train out of New York City’s Grand Central station. She waved at Genelva and Ignacio as the train pulled out, listening to the thunder roll and watching the lightning flash and the rain begin to fall. It seemed a fitting way to bid goodbye to the city that had once seemed to offer her everything but in the end had turned its back on her with a cold and utter finality. Squaring her shoulders, she looked straight ahead toward the City of Second Chances: New Orleans, Louisiana.
CHAPTER2
QUINN
New Orleans, Louisiana
Present Day
The alarm sounded and without opening her eyes, Quinn groaned as she reached across the bed to turn it off. She managed to roll up into a sitting position and open bleary eyes. It wasn’t even Mardi Gras, and she was hungover. It was universally understood that most of the city’s residents would be at least a bit hungover for the entire two plus weeks of the festival. The official opening of the festival had begun at her favorite watering hole, The Refuge, last night.
The Refuge was something of an institution in the Big Easy. The story was that Pierre Lafitte, older brother of Jean, had founded the pub when he retired from being a pirate and it had been in continual existence since that time. It had gone underground during prohibition, but it had never gone away. Curiously, it wasn’t those who plied their trade on the waters of either the Gulf of Mexico or the Mississippi River who made The Refuge their port of call. Instead, it was writers—be it novelists, bloggers, or journalists.
Quinn had found a community of sorts there for her off hours and a home at the New Orleans Gazette, a small, twice-weekly newspaper dedicated to hard news. The publisher and editor of the Gazette was a wizened journalist who had been blacklisted when he’d had a similar experience to Quinn’s, only his had been in Chicago. That commonality had secured her position, but Levi Bennet demanded the best from his staff. Little-by-little, he had built the paper and its reputation into something nationally recognized and a force to be reckoned with over the past five years. Quinn had been with the paper for almost that entire length of time and was still the newest reporter on staff. Those who went to work for the Gazette were soon as devoted to it and its reputation for hard-nosed, investigative journalism as Levi. One of his proudest moments was when someone compared the paper to the oldSixty Minutestelevision show.
Knowing she would need a shower to revive her, Quinn stumbled into the small bath and turned on the shower. When she’d first arrived in New Orleans and looked at the flat her great aunt had left her, she’d burst into tears. The building itself was nice enough, but her little studio was pretty grim. Quinn had set about trying to reconstruct her career and her life out of the ashes New York City had given her.
She’d begun writing freelance—selling her stories and articles wherever she could. Top Ramen and chicory coffee had been her staples that first year. But being frugal had allowed her to begin to renovate her little home in the French Quarter. She’d haunted the local building supply stores for returned paint or tiles that could be bought at a fraction of the cost, as well as the local salvage and antique stores. The worst job had been restoring the floors. Days of sanding and stripping the wood floors and removing the cheap linoleum in the bath had revealed the beauty of the original flooring—encaustic tiles in the bath and wide plank, maple flooring everywhere else. It had been hard work, but every time she saw them, she smiled. They were beautiful and original.
Quinn had combined subway tile with grout matching the encaustic tile flooring to create a unified look that paid homage to what had always been. She’d opted for a large walk-in shower versus a tub/shower combination and had managed to find vintage appliances to place throughout. She’d given up some of her space in the small bath to fit a washer/dryer all-in-one machine. Over that little cubby, she’d created additional storage.
Once in the shower, she washed using hot water to loosen all the kinks out of her system and then rinsed with cool water to refresh herself. Stepping out of the shower, she toweled off quickly and pulled her black hair up into a high ponytail which she then braided. She pulled on what she thought of as her normal workday attire—leggings, a loose tank top and some kind of natural weave jacket. She wore the outfit paired with ankle boots that could be worn comfortably all day as well as minimal jewelry.
Her most significant adornment was the ring that had replaced her engagement ring. When she arrived in New Orleans, she’d spent part of the money she’d been able to bring with her on a tribal design tattoo around her left ring finger to remind her that she was ‘married’ first and foremost to herself.
Finally, she trotted down the steps from her flat out into the humidity of New Orleans. It might be February, but it wouldn’t be long before the heat and humidity of Spring began to cast their pall over the bright, sunny days. New York had prepared her for heat, but Quinn found the city’s proximity to the Gulf of Mexico made it far less noticeable.
Hopping on the cable car, she smiled and waved her pass at the conductor before taking her seat. There was something relaxing about taking the cable car. On New York’s subway system she’d felt like she had to be on alert. Here in the Big Easy, riding a cable car, there was time and space just to breathe—to gear up for the day or wind down for the evening. Quinn was so lost in her musings that she might have missed her stop if the conductor hadn’t called to her. Trotting down the back stairs of the trolley, she crossed the street and entered the Gazette’s small building.
“He’s looking for you,” said Yvette, who served as Levi’s assistant as well as everyone else’s. She was the heart of the paper, and they were all convinced they couldn’t do without her. She was indispensable and irreplaceable.
“Quinn! Quinn, did I hear you?” called Levi from his office at the back of the bullpen where all of the reporters toiled.
“What you suppose he’d do if I said ‘no?’”
Yvette smiled. “Most days he’d laugh it off. But we’ve lost two more major advertisers. I’d tread lightly.”
The congealed blob she’d felt that last day working for the paper in New York seemed to come together much more quickly this time. Quinn had known that the paper was experiencing the same kind of squeeze every other newspaper was feeling—electronic media, in all of its forms, was beginning to snuff out the viability of paper news. No one felt that squeeze more than the hard news weeklies, or in their case, the twice-weeklies.
Quinn entered the newsroom. A few people averted their eyes, but not most. She placed her laptop case, purse and other personal items on her desk, but didn’t open them. She swung into the doorway into Levi’s office.
“Yo, boss man, what’s up?”
“Come in and close the door.”
Shit! Shit! Shit!She’d just begun to feel like she was on solid ground again.
“Let’s cut to the chase. Are you firing me?” she asked.
