The tale of the Wilk, the Lemon and the university slumlord

Ashley Lemon looked at me across the battered desk in her East Quad office with distaste.

I couldn't believe how power drunk she had become. This dingy hole -- home to The Post -- had become her throne room. I didn't really care at the time when the staff had voted her to be managing editor over me. I never wanted the extra unpaid hours added to

my week anyway.

But Lemon had seized her office with relish, and seemed to be cosplaying the managing editor from The Wall Street Journal, issuing commands and icy stares in equal measures. It was almost too much to bear. I could not be cowed by her imperial edicts, and

unfortunately for her, I wasn't expendable. Lemon likely didn't know what to do with me.

"Ashley, I need to have a beat since you gave the student senate job to Jake," I said, deciding to use her first name for perhaps the first time since I met her. "I don't want to be an editor this year. I'm sick of rewriting the freshmen garbage."

Lemon shrugged and looked around the room, as if searching for inspiration on the walls. They were covered in front pages of years past. Piles of discarded papers were in the corner and an older Mac sat on the desk. The room stank of coffee, potato chips, alcohol sweat and maybe lingering intestinal gas. The entire staff was in a

rotating state of starving, drunk or hungover and the miasma of it all led to a lingering fart smell.

"Let's make you our enterprise reporter," she said. "Cover whatever you want. But I need something from you this week. The feature on the new president is too light and fluffy. It would be good to have something harder to go with it."

I was surprised to hear her say it. That was the job I wanted and I didn't think she would give it to me. Lemon and I didn't get along and I fully expected to be pushed into a broom closet for my senior year. We had joined The Post on the same day our freshman year and I had been the dark yin and to her light yang for the student paper.

She served as the meticulous editor and reporter who had never had a correction in four years at the paper, working diligently in various unsexy roles, from cub reporter and copy editor to feature editor to city editor to managing editor.

I was, by comparison, a sloppy mess. I had misspelled a name in my first published story. But the story was about a pyramid scheme some bros in my dorm were running and it vaulted me into fame and infamy. My first story had been a blockbuster. Lemon had never

published a single article that had made an impact the way even my first one had.

I had won awards nearly every year at the paper, uncovering dirty fraternities, financial boondoggles and lecherous coaches. Virtually all the reporters had voted to lead the paper for my senior year as as the managing editor, while the section editors, page designers and photographers pretty much voted for Lemon. In other words, the people who had to get things done did not want me in charge. I couldn't blame them to be honest. I wouldn't have voted for me either.

"Thanks Lemon, I won't let you down," I said. "Also, the black turtleneck is very fetching. Very Elizabeth Holmes."

She squinted at me. It looked a bit like she was trying to see how someone she loathed so much could be so important to her. Oddly, I felt similar looking back.

"OK Wilkinson, what is your first story then? Do you have anything going?" she said. When the conversation turned to stories, my hatred ebbed. I had to admit Lemon was competent.

I did have something going but it was going to be a stretch to lock it down this week. I had a lot of it written already. I had been working on it for more than a year, but it just wasn't there. It was in the interesting phase but not the newsworthy phase.

"I am going to try to get the slumlord piece finished," I said, holding my chin up.

"Oh my God," Lemon said. "Can you please come up with another story besides that one? You will never write that fucking story Wilkinson. It's half baked. Why not just dig into the fitness center expenses. It's got to be way past budget. Simple story and I know you will turn it in."

"Authoritative Lemon is my favorite flavor of Lemon," I said.

"I will bring my ball gag for our next meeting," she said, staring at me with very pale blue eyes. "OK, get out. By Tuesday you either have to have this story or we do the fitness center story. I can have Molly do it. She's my new go-to."

I smiled. Lemon. She probably would run the fucking Wall Street Journal.

I left pushed through the small newsroom. A few younger reporters were hanging around, working on idiotic stories they had cooked up for class assignments that Lemon felt obligated to stuff inside our paper. The good reporters wouldn't be here until later. I nodded at one of the freshmen girls. Cute. Dressed nice. I think she had showered recently. That wouldn't last. Unless she was one of the PR majors forced here for mandatory experience.

I had to hurry. The story I had been circling for months was about Lewis Sosaris, property owner extraordinaire, and owner of a small Greek restaurant named eponymously that served late-night

gyros and jalapeno poppers that contributed to intestinal gas for nearly every student.

Sosaris owned 109 properties in Bergden, home of Walsh University, and nearly every house was nearly unlivable. Electricity was spotty, plumbing mercurial, flooring disgusting, roofing leaking, windows cracked. They all had one thing in common,

though. They were close to the bars.

Sosaris had somehow avoided fixing even the most dire of problems at his rentals and the market for rentals was so tight that renters had few other options if they wanted walk-home-drunk proximity. This was life and death shit.

His reporting so far had brought in hundreds of complaints to the city. That part alone, he thought, would make an OK story. The city had commented about how they had sent inspectors, some orders to fix things and some other half-hearted but ineffective efforts.

Someone or something was preventing the city from forcing Sosaris to fix his properties. Everyone knew it. It was one of those things. The students - and let's be honest - the students' parents were paying the price.

More than that, The Post had reported on the complaints from students before. The story had temporarily kicked up some dust with little effect. Without more information, the Sosaris story was just one of those things you lived with in an insular college town. I knew that my story had to do more than what the last one had.

It was Friday afternoon and the sign on the door of my favorite bar was beckoning me with offers of $1.25 Milwaukee's Best. But if I was going to get this story finished, I needed to get a break. I decided to go to the police station instead of the bar.

"What's up Wilk," the desk officer said when I came in. "I'm a little surprised to see you at 4 p.m. on Friday. Did someone die?"

Officer Andrew Skrywzowksi -- barely older than me -- sat vigil at the front door of the city police building. The local police had a pretty decent job as the university squad had to deal with a lot of the B.S. stuff that happened. Skrews, as everyone called him, had grown to know me over the past four years. He often got stuck with desk duty because he seemed to tolerate the drunk or dimwitted

students and belligerent townies better than the other cops.

"Hey Skrews, do you know if Detective Anton is still here? I am trying to find out about a report that probably came in a few weeks ago," I asked.

"He's here. Go on back. I will sign you in," Skrews said. I loved Skrews. Good dude. Cops are awesome once you get to know them. I had spent so much time hanging around, writing up blotter items off of the incident reports that I knew most of them. You know the little stories that are in the police section of the paper ... "Man called to report ghosts in his house." There were a few jerk

cops, but most of the good guys made fun of them.

I knocked on the door to Det. Anton's office and he barked for to come in. Anton was sitting behind his desk typing something into his computer with painful slowness. My relationship with Anton wasn't as solid as Skrews, so I put on my polite mask.

"Hey Detective - got a minute?" I asked in a friendly tone.

"Take a seat. I have to finish this report. Miserable. Three people with Dutch last names. I am definitely fucking someone's name up here," he said.

He finished and focused on me. Anton was wearing a white shirt and tie. His gun and belt were slung on another chair. Anton had a Bruce Willis vibe to him. Probably he was ex-Army. I would know it if he was a Marine. They always told you.

"OK Wilkinson, whattaya got?" he said.

"There was a report a few weeks ago about a guy threatening some girls -- a guy sent by the landlord apparently. I heard about it from some friends," I said. "Anything come of that?" I waited for his response already knowing the full details of what had happened.

I had interviewed the girls at length. They were suing Sosaris in civil court because he refused to fix sewer problems in their house. The city hadn't taken action and the toilets wouldn't flush. One of the girl's had a lawyer in the family and had sued.

Then a guy had come by the house, pretending to be a plumber. Once he was inside, he proceeded to instruct the girls to drop the lawsuit while he slapped a heavy wrench against his palm.

"Ah, that one," he said. Anton looked down and then at the ceiling. Then he looked at his computer. Then he looked at me. "Nothing has happened with that."

"Why not? Seems pretty straightforward. From what I heard, the guy threatened them?" I asked, taking out my notepad.

"All right Wilk. I can give you an answer and stop this right now," he said. "Here's that answer: 'We are investigating.'"

"Oh give me a break!" I said, my polite mask falling.

"That's the answer you will get from me right now," he said, frowning.

"What answer would I get later?" I asked, sensing that Anton was trying to tell me something.

"Put the notebook down and I will talk to you off the record for the moment, OK?" he asked, sly enough to know the rules reporters worked under.

I nodded and put my notepad in my back pocket. Anton leaned forward and put both elbows on the table.

"We spoke with this guy. He works in the kitchen at Sosaris' restaurant, along with half a dozen other recently released convicts from Newberry," he said, referring to the state penitentiary nearby. "He was scared. Didn't want to go to jail. Told us that he had been told to go scare the girls or he would lose his job, which would mean he could lose his parole."

I was itching to take notes but just nodded.

"Into the kitchen walks Sosaris and the mayor AND" he said with great emphasis, "the university president."

My eyebrows shot up.

"That's an unlikely trio," I said.

"Yeah, no kidding," Anton said. "I wasn't there. Franklin told me this. Anyway, the mayor asked him to come back later. He's still new. He freaked out and left and told the guy he would be back to finish the interview. He came back an hour later and the guy was gone. Sosaris said he went home sick. But the address he gave - a Sosaris flop house on the west side of town - was totally empty."

"Damn," I said. "So he's just gone?"

"We are considering whether to put an arrest warrant out for him. We talked to his parole agent and she hasn't heard from him. In the meantime, the captain told me to 'just drop it,'" Anton said, his face twisting. "Obviously, shit is not right here."

"Can I start taking notes yet?" I asked, pulling out my notepad.

"Not yet," he said. "I am going to stick with my investigating comment. But ..." and he waggled his eyebrows. "I am going to point you to the interview report that Franklin did.”

Anton pulled a report from his desk draw. It clearly had been set apart, not filed, perhaps waiting for someone to ask for it. He slid it across the desk to me and I scanned it. It detailed the interaction.

“I think you got quite lucky that you found this report while combing through the older files,” Anton said.

I knew what that meant. He’d given me a comment and a look at the key document. The rest was up to me.

The story fell into place quickly after that. The document had it all there. Sosaris, the mayor and the university president interrupting an interview with an ex-con who was suspected in intimidating the girls to drop the case.

I made calls to Sosaris, the mayor’s office and the president’s office in quick succession. Sosaris played dumb and said the “gentleman in question” no longer works for him. The mayor couldn’t be reached. The president, however, arranged a short interview on Monday.

Harley Shinson was new to Walsh, having been provost at Case Western for five years. He had only been on campus for a year or so and was finding his footing.

It just so happened that The Post was doing a feature on him that would publish the same day as my story. Maybe he was aware of this entanglement when he agreed to chat.

I sat down in his office in a comfortable seat and Shinson smiled at me.

“Hello Sam,” Shinson said in a voice that reminded me a lot of my elementary school principal. “How can I help you.”

I pulled out a copy of Franklin’s report.

“I am wondering what happened here?” I said, recounting the line in the report where the mayor Sosaris and he had walked into the kitchen. “This man has now disappeared. No one can find him.”

The president nodded. His face looked almost … impressed.

“OK. Here is what I can tell you and honestly, I don’t know more than this,” he said. “I had a meeting set up with the mayor to talk about the condition of some of the housing where our students live. In the past year, our office has received a number of complaints. The mayor requested that we have lunch at Sosaris.”

Shinson paused for a minute. I think he was considering what to say next. I looked up at him from my notepad and saw that he had decided to plunge ahead.

“The mayor told me that he had arranged for Mr. Sosaris to eat with us because he had plans to develop a significant new housing complex that would be a great benefit to the town and university,” Shinson said.

I scrawled down the information as fast as possible, knowing that I already had enough for a story. My heart thumped faster as Shinson spoke.

“Mr. Sosaris explained that he couldn’t afford to fix up these houses when his plan was to knock them down,” Shinson said. “Right after that is when Officer Franklin came to the restaurant. Our meeting ended shortly thereafter.”

I asked a series of questions afterwards. Did the president know the mayor well? “No.” Did he know Sosaris well? “That was our first meeting.” What did the university plan to do about the housing? “Only what we can do, which is to continue working with the city.”

I sped back to the newspaper after the interview, skipping my “Campaigns and Elections 406” class (sorry Mrs. Temple). The story was almost finished before the interview. I had worked on it over the weekend, pulling in the police report and doing more interviews with students who had complained about their houses.

Lemon stood over my shoulder as I finished it, already line editing and making suggestions.

“You will get it in a minute!” I barked. “Go away.”

“You have to get rid of that anecdotal lede,” she said. “It takes too long to get to the news.”

Sigh. She was right. But it was so good. Damn editors, always ruining my fun.

I filed it in an e-mail to Lemon and she bolted for her office, closing the door.

An hour later, she emerged. She had a coke stain down her white blouse and her dirty blond hair was sticking out in all directions. Like always, I had a little anxiety before opening the file she had sent back with her questions and fixes. But like always, she found all the problems and half-baked reporting and snuffed them out.

“Go in and fix all the things you screwed up,” she said. “And great story, Wilk.”