The Mourning Mail (final release candidate #8)

Chapter 7

My Uber slowly navigated the streets of downtown San Diego in midday traffic. As it approached the sidewalk in front of my apartment building, I hadn't yet pulled myself together. It took a few moments to collect myself enough to open the door so the driver could go about the rest of his day. I apologized to him and thanked him for his kindness and patience.

"It's no problem," he said. "I hope your afternoon goes better for you."

I found his decency comforting.

Too exhausted to walk to the parking lot at the back of the building and use the tenants' entrance, I used the visitors' door in the front. I entered my apartment and closed the door, placing the folder of estate paperwork on the table. I took a moment to reflect on an old photo of Mom and Dad that hung on that wall next to the door for years. The sorrow still lingered in me, but the thought that they were together now helped.

With a touch of my fingertip to Mom's lips, a nod to Dad, and an enormous sigh, I walked over to my desk and flipped on my notebook computer. The normalcy of that act and checking my e-mail started the process of re-focusing on my regular routines.

While I suspected Dad's demise and my feelings of loss would make me sad for a long time, there was a bright spot. Dad had given me a way to return a tiny part of his love, and I was incredibly grateful. With the rest, I'd come to a sense of clarity.

You'd need to know about my history to understand how much my father had done for me. I have never been Daddy's goody-two-shoes little girl.

Nothing illustrates that quite like the last conversation I had with my editor at the Union-Tribune.
OCTOBER, 2015

The ending of my long stint with the Union-Tribune began in late 2015, right after the paper, then called "U-T San Diego", had been sold to the Los Angeles Times. Almost a third of its staff had been laid off, and local printing of the paper ended. It was a little over two years before the most egregious military bribery scandal in the nation's history was exposed by the Washington Post in November, 2017. The name "Fat Leonard" had not yet exploded onto the national media landscape.

A source told me about a Malaysian citizen living in San Diego. This man was funneling high-end prostitutes, rare whiskeys, Cuban cigars, and outright cash to those in power. The recipients included local active-duty and retired U.S. Navy officers and politicians. The more I wrote about his activities, the more I discovered. I was unable to find a good stopping point, and had to reformat the work as just the first of several pieces I intended to write about him.

Three months later, I'd submitted my lead Navy corruption article for publication. I was taking a celebratory run around the track in my head when Jerry Dark, my editor, called me into his office. I expected he'd want to turn my piece into a series. Though I hadn't yet discovered the bribery's true purpose or national scale, I'd exhaustively tracked the flow of illegal merchandise and services to local recipients. I had established that Leonard Glenn Francis, to become famous later as Fat Leonard, was behind all of this activity and that this story had real legs.

"Take a seat, Debra Ann, and close the door," Dark said without looking away from his monitor. After a few moments, and in that how-dare-you-challenge-me tone of voice he liked to use when asserting his authority, he asked, "What is this supposed to be, Debra Ann?!?"

He spun the monitor towards me. It displayed the print version of my article.

"That, Jerry, is a great example of the damn fine investigative reporting readers are proud to see coming from their local paper," I replied. "It hasn't been so long since my last piece that you should have forgotten what it looks like."