Boundary and Me
Like Martin Boundary, I was a tenacious reporter. I was fearless and fierce. I made my editors at one paper, the Asbury Park Press, squirm.
The Press back then (1975-80) was family-owned and an influential “cat-killer.” By that, I mean it was so fat with ads and stories that if the delivery guy inadvertently tossed it on top of a cat, that feline would give up all nine of its ghosts at once.
(Interjection: I am writing this with great haste because I am a caregiver and have scant free time these daze. So, forgive any flaws. Caregiving is the most time-consuming, labor-intensive, round-the-clock endeavor that I’ve ever known.)
One time, a colleague went on vacation for two weeks and I was assigned to cover her beat in Long Branch, N.J., including meetings of the local HUD office, which had a reputation for corruption. A guy sitting next to me said, “Thank God the Press has a new reporter here. The old one doesn’t cover the real news.” Further conversation revealed that he had heard there was a sweet-heart contracting scheme at the local agency favoring the son of a powerful county politician who ran a heating business.
I showed up at the HUD office one day and asked to take a look at the binder with the contracts. The receptionist made a call to the guy in charge of that office and informed me that he was not in. Simultaneously, out the window, I saw the same guy bolt from a side door and run towards his car in the adjoining parking lot. I immediately exited the building and yelled for him to chat. He jumped in his car and sped off. I jumped in my car and chased him.
(My car was a joke at the Press. It was a 1970 Ford Maverick, colored gold, with a black racing stripe on the hood, that I had purchased the previous Christmas Eve during a snowstorm from a dealer for a few hundred bucks. The wages at the Press were rock-bottom.)
Like a scene out of Bullett, we raced and turned and ran redlights through the streets of Long Branch. He finally pulled over outside a pharmacy—he probably needed blood-pressure pills—and exclaimed, “I’m not the one who did anything wrong!” He then promised to let me see the paperwork for several jobs replacing boilers in HUD buildings.
HUD rules dictated competitive bids for any job exceeding either $25,000 or $50,000, I can’t recall detailed numbers. I quickly deduced that the HUD guys were breaking big jobs into multiple little jobs so that they could award contracts to the politically connected contractor.
I wrote a great story, and the son of the publisher killed it because the politically connected contractor was a good friend. Pissed off to the boiling point, I took my story to the bravest NEWSMAN ON THE STAFF, Sunday Editor Si Lieberman, who had complete control of the highly-profitable Sunday paper. I believe the circulation was around 150,000. Did I mention that back then we had 126 reporters, a larger staff at the time than the Atlanta Constitution? Si ran the story as the Sunday lead. The Monmouth County prosecutor subsequently launched an investigation. The publisher wanted to fire me but decided it would not look good, so, instead, he transferred me to the Red Bank Bureau. I became sort of a legend there. Ask around.