CHAPTER 30
Steve’s alarm woke him at nine in the morning, three hours earlier than normal for a Tuesday. The business library at Northeastern Illinois opened at ten, and he intended to be there when the door was unlocked.
He had posted his most uninspired Tuesday Hangover in memory a little before midnight and gone to bed. Usually, he posted the column just before dawn, after an entire night of crashing the bulletin boards, watching the tapes, writing and re-writing. Last night he threw together one draft of generic opinion in less than an hour and didn’t bother to re-read it before posting. It probably was riddled with errors, but Steve didn’t want to know. He put it up for the world to judge, and decided to get on with it. He had already committed himself to Mr. Anonymous’s scavenger hunt. If it led nowhere, so be it. The damage was already done. Might as well let it all hang out and hope to get lucky.
There was a new email:
To: Steve Garcia
From:
[email protected] Dear Steve,
The story you are following is much bigger than any of these other ‘scoops’ you’re missing. Here’s another tidbit to keep you motivated. Dr. Harold Claven in Houston recently moved. His old address was 628 Amherst Drive. His new address is 4853 Ledgestone Court.
Anonymous
Steve had printed the email but forced himself not to dwell on it yet. One thing at a time. He had never heard of Dr. Harold Claven. The information was so random, in fact, that thinking about it led him closer to believing again that this was all an elaborate hoax, which was too painful to consider. At least Mr. Anonymous had acknowledged Steve’s anger that he’d missed out on the Zeke Thunder story.
Parking at Northeastern was a bitch. Three laps around a massive campus, only to find a metered space a good ten minutes from the library. Steve put four dollars into the meter, buying himself two hours. After a trek across two parking lots and a courtyard, he entered the library with a ratty backpack strewn over his left shoulder.
His previous jaunts to the library had taught him how to find what he was looking for. He went down one flight of stairs and across an array of bookcases to reach the periodicals. Six computer terminals arranged in a semicircle faced him in front of the book stacks. He sat at one and opened the library’s search software. He typed “Calgary Financial Telegram,” and reached his first dead end. “Not in subscription database.” The publication was too obscure for this library.
Undaunted, Steve grabbed a scrap piece of paper, wrote down “Calgary Financial Telegram,” hiked back to the first floor and approached the information desk. A teenage boy with horn-rimmed glasses and matted hair sighed as he pulled his head out of a hardback copy of Dune.
“Can I help you?” he said.
“I’m looking for an issue of a financial newsletter that isn’t in your subscription base,” said Steve, showing the boy his scrap of paper.
“Calgary Financial Telegram,” the boy read to himself, then shook his head. “You say it’s a newsletter? I don’t think you’re going to find it.”
A slacker himself, Steve recognized that the boy only wanted to get rid him. “Well where else can I try?”
“I don’t know. Have you checked the Internet?”
“Yes,” said Steve. “Listen, I really, really need to get my hands on a copy of this newsletter. Is there somewhere else I can look?”
The boy blew air out of the corner of his mouth. His breathe smelled like coffee. “Just a second,” he said, then picked up a phone on the edge of the desk.
“Mary, hi, this is Paul. There’s a guy here who’s looking for a copy of a really obscure financial newsletter that we don’t subscribe to and isn’t on the Internet. Is there any other place he might find it? Mm-hmm. Alright. Thanks Mary.
“Okay, come on,” the boy, Paul, said as he stood up. Paul led Steve across several aisles of bound periodicals to a bay of computer terminals.
“Double-click on that icon that says Ilib,” said Paul, pointing to a square icon on the screen. Steve clicked on the icon.
“This is the library system of all the state universities of Illinois,” said Paul. “If you can’t find your newsletter here, you won’t find it anywhere.”
“Thanks,” said Steve. He waited for coffee-breath Paul to leave, then entered a search for “Calgary Financial Telegram”.
The hard drive spun. A task bar appeared, and said, “Searching...” Steve sat back in his chair. He waited. And waited.
Ten minutes later, the screen turned blue, and said:
1 of 1 documents found
Calgary Financial Telegram, Calgary Investors Bureau
Steve hit enter. The task status bar returned. Steve leaned back in his chair and waited it out. This time it took close to fifteen minutes.
120 of 120 documents found
The screen listed 120 different issues of the newsletter. Steve used the arrow keys to scroll through them, until he found Volume 8, Issue 3. He hit enter. Two minutes later a pop-up window said, “Print? Y/N”
“Paul, could you come help me?” Steve called out in a breach of library etiquette. He could hear Paul sigh from across the book stacks.
“Yes?” Paul said.
“Does it cost me anything to print this?”
Paul appeared from behind the bookstacks, looking severely inconvenienced.
“Ten cents a page and I need to see your student ID,” said Paul.
“Oh. Well, I’m not a student...anymore,” said Steve. Paul looked displeased, so Steve added, “I’m alumni.”
“Sorry dude. If you’re not a student, I can’t let you print.”
“Well, can I print to the screen?”
“Nope. Ilib only lets you print hard copies. Ten cents a page for students with ID.”
“What if I just print this, and pay you ten cents a page, and we just pretend I had my student ID?” said Steve, grinning at Paul like they were old friends.
“Nope. Sorry man. University policy. I could get fired.”
Whatever, Steve thought.
“Listen Paul, I really need to see this document. I’m just going to go ahead and print it and pay you ten cents a page.”
“No way Dude. I’ll turn off the printer.”
Was this a bad dream? So close to being a real journalist, only to be thwarted by Paul, the teenage geek with a warped sense of duty.
“Maybe it’d be best if you left, Dude,” said Paul. “I don’t want any trouble.”
“No, no. I won’t cause any trouble,” Steve held his hands up like they were potential printing weapons. He was about to stand up and leave, thinking that if this system was in every library for state universities, he’d just go to Champagne and print it out. But right before he stood, he saw his reflection in Paul’s glasses. His face was chubby and covered with stubble. Here he was, mid-twenties, trying to be a journalist, and his first attempt at a real story was going to be shut down by an 18-year-old slacker.
“Paul. I need this document. I can make it worth your while.”
Paul laughed nervously. “What?” he said.
“How about ten bucks? Ten bucks, plus ten cents a page, and you just pretend I showed you my ID.”
“I don’t think so Dude. Maybe you’d better--”
“Twenty bucks,” said Steve, with confidence in his voice. Paul was beginning to crack.
“I don’t think so,” said Paul.
“Fifty bucks Paul. I’m dead serious. I need this document.”
Paul looked at Steve to judge his earnestness. Then he looked around to see if anyone else was listening.
“Really? Fifty bucks?”
“I need this Paul.”
Paul took one more look around the area, then leaned over Steve’s shoulder and hit the Y key, initiating the print job.
“It’ll print out over there,” said Paul, pointing to a printer next to the far terminal. Steve walked over, and grabbed the pages as they p
rinted. The first page was labeled, “Calgary Financial Telegram, Volume 8, Issue 3.” Steve glanced at it quickly, not sure what he was looking for. He picked up Pages Two, Three, Four, and Five. He hadn’t seen anything yet, but there was no time to look now. He put the pages in his backpack.
“See you later Paul,” he said, and headed toward the stairs.
“Hey!” Paul caught himself yelling, “hey,” he whispered as he chased after Steve.
“My fifty bucks please.”
Steve kept on walking.
“Forget it Paul. I’m not paying.”
“Then I won’t let you walk out of here. I’ll tell the front desk you have library property.”
“Go ahead. I dare you.” Steve kept on walking. Paul followed him up the first flight of stairs, then stopped.
“Asshole,” Paul said as he turned around.
Steve walked out the front door of the library without incident. He felt like a king.