Breaking the Mold

Tommy was willing to do what the paper had not been doing for a very long time ant that was going out and investigating stories. The first time he did his own investigation and was able interview a person linked to criminal activities Janine was so appalled that she yelled at him to sit down.

“I don’t care if you when out there and got the story,” she said, “You’re dressed unprofessionally and you put yourself in danger and that won’t happen again! Now sit down!”

Tommy looked at her and wondered over to his desk and seated himself behind it for a few minutes. Then he got up and walked out the back door and got in his truck and drove home.

“Who in the hell does she think she is?” Tommy asked himself as he headed north on Pyramid Highway. He thought about the three different bars he had visited that morning to find the person he needed to talk too.

Calvin wasn’t an easy guy to track down even though he was known to frequent the local biker bars, strip clubs and skin head bars along Fourth Street in Reno. Tommy just had to find out which one he was in and that would take some legwork.

Tommy had done some rough work like man-hunting fugitives when he was younger, however he wasn’t looking for a fugitive and he wasn’t young anymore. He was looking for a man who was at one point the second in charge of the Aryan Nation in the Northern Nevada area. The known leader of the group had just been arrested for soliciting male prostitution and Tommy wanted to talk to a former member.

“His idea is to rekindle the holocaust,” Calvin said as the two men sat and drank beer on Tommy’s front porch.

Tommy looked at him and asked, “I don’t get it, how?”

“The man is infected with HIV and he thinks that if he gives it to enough homosexuals it’ll start the holocaust,” said Calvin. “Sick, ain’t it?”

“You said it,” Tommy answered. He took another sip of his beer.

He had his story. Walking into three biker bars, a number of strip joints and several skin-head bars where he could have been stomped half to death had been worth it. Calvin and his family were going to take a two-week vacation in Southern California as soon as Tommy dropped him back behind the Lady Luck Bar.

Getting banged up on the job was another thing that the newspaper was not accustomed to having happen to their reporters. It was Janine who admitted in a off-hand remark, “Most of the time nobody does anything too exciting or adventurous.”

Tommy broke the mold of reporters sitting behind their desks.