Busted by Wendy Ruderman

problem: “The LEAST you could do is write back. Your loss!”
    The guy she planned to meet on that Friday night sounded promising. He had told her that he was a fifty-four-year-old manager for a computer company, had two adult kids, and loved to run. She met him at a coffee shop.
    This couldn’t be him, she thought, as she saw this man, mostly bald, with a few strands of gray hair swept to the right in a comb-over, walk toward her. With tense, slightlyhunched shoulders and a slow gait, he looked close to Barbara’s dad’s age. Nothing like his Match photo. He said in his profile that he was six feet tall. Maybe thirty years ago, Barbara thought.
    He stretched out his liver-spotted hand for her to shake, and they walked inside.
    Within twenty minutes, he pulled out his wallet to show Barbara photos of his three grandkids. They were next to his AARP card. He told her he had retired from his job.
    â€œSo how old are you?” she asked curiously.
    â€œSixty-six,” he said.
    â€œBut your profile says you’re fifty-four.”
    â€œI know. I figured most women your age would dismiss me if I put my real age. And all they have to do is meet me.”
    â€œBut that’s a big age difference. That’s like twelve years,” she said.
    â€œYou know what?” he said, leaning toward her, clearly irritated. “Most women your age have no problem with it. I have a five-bedroom house, a pool. I drive a Mercedes, have a boat. The last woman I dated was forty-eight.”
    Barbara looked at her watch.
    At about 7:30 p.m., I was just shutting down my computer when Gar came over to my desk and said that our attorney, Scott Baker, and Michael Days, the paper’s top editor, wanted to go over the story. Right now.
    I thought about calling Barbara but didn’t want to interrupt her date. Loaded down with an armful of documents, I trailed Gar, beetle-like, into Michael’s glass-front office. Michael waved me in and I took a seat at the conference table. Scott had inked up a copy of our rough draft; he’d circled words and phrases that he deemed too loaded and scribbled notes and question marks in the margins. We went over the story, line by line. I slid documents—search warrants, interviewnotes, Bochetto correspondence, the rental agreement, and the landlord-tenant eviction notice—across the table for Scott’s review.
    â€œDo you think we are going to get sued?” I asked.
    â€œThere’s a fifty-fifty chance,” said Scott, who pointed to Benny’s criminal record. “The guy is a convicted drug dealer.”
    â€œYes, I know,” Michael said, “but these are two fine reporters. Ultimately, you have to trust your reporters.” He turned to me. “What does your gut tell you? Do you believe him?”
    â€œI do,” I said.
    â€œTo me, it passes the smell test,” Michael said about Benny’s story.
    Fear of a libel lawsuit, said Scott, is not a good enough reason to kill a story. “This is a newspaper. You’re a reporter. We’re in the business of writing stories.”
    I felt the urge to hug this corporate lawyer, this unexpected ally and champion of journalism.
    Barbara and I came into the office on Sunday to fact-check the story one more time. Barbara called Bochetto to let him know that the story was slated to run the next day. She asked if he had any additional comment. He had none. Gar gave the story a final read. Kevin Bevan, the editor in charge of the page-one design, who wore a down-on-the-farm plaid flannel shirt to work every day, showed us the headline he coined: “Tainted Justice?” The question mark was a hedge, the Daily News version of a wink, as if just askin’—“Hey, readers, do you think this cop is corrupt?”
    â€œYou can commit a lot of sins with a question mark,” Bevan once said, half joking. The Daily News was famous for slapping question marks on