The four sat in Higgins' comfortable dark paneled office. With 2 walls full of books and generous seating, the ample office resem- bled an elegant and subdued law library. Higgins chaired the meeting from behind his leather trimmed desk. Scott brought a tall stack of files and put them on the glass topped coffee table.
"We need to go over every bit, from the beginning. OK?" Higgins made it sound more like and order than responsible journalistic double checking. Higgins didn't interfere in the news end of the business; he kept his opinions to himself. But it was his respon- sibility to insure that the City Times' was kept out of the re- ceiving end of any litigation. That meant that as long as a story was properly researched, sourced, and confirmed, the con- tents were immaterial to him. That was the Publisher's choice, not his.
Mason had come to trust Higgins in his role as aggravating media- tor between news and business. Scott might not like what he had to say, but he respected his opinion and didn't argue too much. Higgins was never purposefully adversarial. He merely wanted to know that both the writers and the newspaper had all their ducks in a row. Just in case. Libel suits can be such a pain, and expensive.
"Why don't you tell me, again, about how you found out about the McMillan scams." Higgins turned on a small micro-cassette re- corder. "I hope you don't mind," he said as he tested it. "Keeps better notes than I do," he offhandedly said. Nobody objected. There would have been no point in objecting even if anyone cared. It was an unspoken truism that Higgins and other good attorneys taped many of their unofficial depositions to protect themselves in case anything went terribly wrong. With a newspaper as your sole client, the First Amendment was always at stake.
"OK," Scott began. His reporter's notebook sat atop files full of computer printouts. "A few days ago, on September 4, that's a Friday, I got an anonymous call. The guy said, 'You want some dirt on McMillan and First State S&L?' I said sure, what do you have and who is this?"
"So then you knew who Francis McMillan was?" Higgins looked up surprised.
"Of course," Mason said. "He's the squeaky clean bank President from White Plains. Says he knows how to clean up the S&L mess, gets lots of air time. Probably making a play for Washington. Big time political ambitions. Pretty well connected at Treasury. I guess they listen to him."
"In a nutshell." Higgins agreed. "And . . .then?"
Mason sped through a couple of pages of scribbled notes from his pad. "My notes start here. 'Who I am don't matter but what I gotta say does. You interested'. Heavy Brooklyn accent, docks, Italian, who knows. I said something like, 'I'm listening' and he says that McMillan is the dirtiest of them all. He's been socking more money away than the rest and he's been doing it real smart. So I go, 'so?' and he says he can prove it and I say 'how' and he says 'read your morning mail'." Mason stopped abruptly.
"That's it?" Higgins asked.