Where we left off in Part Two...
Perry was glad to see that Lois actually liked Clark Kent in some ways. Now he just had to find a way to point this out to her gently. She obviously had not figured out the identity of this written, who Perry could tell she really admired a lot. “You have done good work so far, Lois,” were his first words.
“So, Mr. White, have I convinced you that I should go ahead and use Kent as the point to expose the larger criminal operations?” Lois questioned.
---
Lois was truly shocked. Not that Perry had called her into his office to question her on this issue, but that he seemed to have accepted that she was right. Her parents had always dismissed her opinions as not worth anything. They had always assumed they knew best. It was good to see she had convinced Perry that her plan would work.
She was about to head off to do her investigation, get top recognition, and be admitted to Harvard as a full-ride holder of a journalism scholarship. The decision on that scholarship would not come until February and, although it usually was offered to a junior or senior already at Harvard, she was sure another top story would get the edge to her.
Once Lois was at Harvard she would be far enough away from Metropolis University and the Samuel Lane Sports Medicine Clinic in the Lex Luthor School of Medicine to be free of the shadow of her father.
“Not really,” Perry continued, bringing Lois back to the present and her not yet achieved quest to get the next big exposé of corruption in college sports. “You really don’t seem to have a very coherent plan. Also, do you have anything else to go on besides the fact that there has been fraud elsewhere?”
“Yes, Mr. White,” Lois began, rubbing her hands in anticipation of explaining her plan, “I do. My uncle, Mike Baghdi, regularly works as a caterer for Met U functions. He told me last week two perspective baseball players touring the campus were clearly drunk when they came to a banquette.”
“Is that the biggest evidence you have?” Perry asked.
“So far it is, but I am sure there is something there. Crimes are clearly going on.” Lois said.
“True,” Perry said, “But high school seniors breaking liquor laws is not news. For this to be newsworthy you need more. If you want a big story, you need links higher up. Either to Coach Targon, or to university boosters such as Luthor. The only way the students being drunk will be a big time scandal is if the university supplies the drinks.”
“Which is why I need to be there to talk to the people who get the drinks, especially when they are drunk and thus more open to discussing such issues. I will make sure to not just go with what they say but to check sources. I will be thorough and not assume.” Lois responded, hoping that she could leave soon. She did want to finish what she was working on with Ms. Valdez before heading out to her hosting job at Met U. “So, can I go now?”
“Before that,” Perry said, “I want to point out the two key issues you have missed so far in your investigation.”
“What are those?” Lois asked. She was sure she could point out that she had in fact noticed them, whatever they were, even if she had not pointed them out to Perry.
“First,” Perry began. “If going to Junior Prom last May meant two people were currently dating, then you would still be Joe Maloy’s girlfriend.”
“Oh, so maybe Kent already has a girl on the side, sort of like Joe had Debbie,” Lois replied, glad to point out how so many men were cheaters.
“Now is that fair?” Perry asked. Lois was shocked he would stick up for the no good Metropolis High quarterback.
“They were kissing, I saw them.” Lois replied, afraid she might return to crying if Perry brought up that horrible incident again.
“No, I mean fair to Kent to project Maloy’s shortcomings onto him,” Perry said.
Of course, Lois’s mind was still stuck on Joe and Debbie. Debbie claimed that she and Joe had only really started dating after the breakup; sort of like how Miss Collins had claimed that she and Lois’s father had only started “seeing each other” after Sam had divorced Ellen. Lois knew the truth, and the truth was that a doctor did not need to bring along a nurse to a medical conference in San Antonio. In fact, since they had no sessions at that conference on nursing at all, it made even less sense. Doctors also did not give women who were just their nurse $1100 fur coats. The truth was that Debbie was also lying.
“Mr. White, I am not going to print any claim about how Clark is a liar until I have evidence, and only then if it links to criminal actions, like we saw with Julian Davis and Mary Walters,” Lois assured him.
“And how are you going to get evidence when Kent is spending all his time with you?” Perry asked.
“Not all his time. He will have lots of time to spend with other women. For example, there will be lots of women, far more willing, at the dances. We have the formal dinner and ball on Friday night, and then the ‘victory dance’ after the football game. Targon is so arrogant he assumes victory.” She rolled her eyes.
“Targon is so good that he has led Met U to 27 straight victories over MUT.” As if Lois needed Perry to remind her of this. She had been at the last 17 of them. The first song she ever learned was the Met U fight song.
“I can deal with this. I can get the evidence.”
“That may be, Lois, that may be,” Perry said, lowering his voice. “Remember though that you need evidence of pressure from above to provide illegal things. It would be a good thing, for the purposes of getting a publishable story, although bad for everyone involved, if they’re as brazen as they were at Stanford; Your supervisor will just give you alcohol and tell you to give it to Kent if that is what is going on. However, few people are that brazen. After Stanford, they are likely to hide any illegal activities in complex webs.”
“Okay, Mr. White, I get it,” Lois said. “This is going to be a tough assignment. When I am done with the job at hand, I will still need to do more research and understand more about how these things work. I am more likely to find a high-pressure system that uses women as objects, but not in any way that clearly breaks the law, than I am to find recognizable violation of either the law or NCAA rules. I understand this will not be easy. Anyway, if I really come up empty, it will still be a learning experience. If nothing else, I will have learned how to function using a different name.”
“I thought you pulled that off with your Suzy Q persona,” Perry said, his face breaking into a smile.
“Suzy Q was a giggly girl,” Lois responded. “I didn’t have to be able to say ‘my name is Suzy Q’ with a straight face. On the other hand, when my name is ‘Jo’, I have to say it with a straight face.”
Perry nodded. “So other than liking bright clothes, what else is different about Jo Lane?”
Lois paused for a moment. She really had not figured that out. “Maybe Jo Lane won’t be so angry at men.”
“I’m still worried,” Perry said. “However, I know you are determined to do this, so I will help you any way I can.”
“So…” Lois placed her hands on the side of the chair to rise. “Can I leave now?”
“Not quite yet, Lois. I said there were two things you missed. We have only discussed one of them. The other revolves around a question you seem to have overlooked. Who wrote the article on the Smallville City Council races and the debate over renaming the town?”
“I already mentioned that. It was C. J. Kent. I assume he’s Clark Kent’s dad,” Lois said.
Perry broke out in laughter.
“It’s not that funny Mr. White. Smallville is not that big. I guess I should not make such assumptions,” Lois replied, feeling a blush crawl up her cheeks. “I forgot that Smallville’s 40,000 is still enough to have unrelated people have the same last name. Although, Perry, how are you so sure that C. J. Kent is not the father of Clark Kent? Have you met him at some conference and asked him?”
“No, Lois,” Perry said. “In this case, your assumptions were false because of other factors. I know Clark Kent is not the son of C. J. Kent, because C. J. Kent is Clark Kent.”
Lois had to try real hard to keep her jaw from dropping. True, Perry had mentioned that Kent was a journalist, but she had assumed he was using the term loosely to include those who wrote for their high school paper. Although Lois figured that Clark did write for the high school paper as well. Even if Kent’s work had been good, that did not prove she was wrong in thinking him a two-timer.
Although, his writing was not at all complimentary to the Lang faction. Either Clark was much better at writing from a neutral perspective than most people, or he had broken up with Lana. Or maybe Lana was a rebel against her father, and Kent had joined that view. On the other hand, Kent had seemed to be fair to Lang, so that view did not quite work either.
Lois decided that she needed some air as she worked this all out, so she stood up. “Perry, I will see you tomorrow.”
“So you will go see Professor Manheim?” Perry asked.
“Why is it so important that I see Professor Manheim?” Lois asked. “At one point in the tour we will go talk with the Bailey School faculty. Anyway, I can name the entire journalism faculty, recite the graduation requirements, and even tell you what the last five lead headlines at the Scroll were.”
“There are things you can learn from talking to a guy you can’t learn any other way,” Perry said. “Anyway, Manheim really wants to talk to you.”
“If that was true,” Lois said as she again sat down. “Why didn’t he show up to MHS college day? Every other school at Met U had a representative there. Even the law and medical schools and neither of them take people straight from high school.”
“And you didn’t find that extremely odd?” Perry questioned.
“Yes, I did. I grilled both of those people on why they were there, and didn’t get any truly satisfactory answers,” Lois said. “The best I could gather was that each school or college could only send one person, and they needed more people there to facilitate spreading the word on how great Met U is. Still, it seemed like over kill. Half our school had applied to Met U before career day. With so many of us having parents who are on the faculty at Met U, which means reduced tuition costs if we go there, it’s hard for us to afford to go anywhere else.”
“So, Lois,” Perry said. “You didn’t consider the other side of the coin. Someone should have been there from the Bailey School. True, they may be 65% grad students, but that is still lots of under grads. And they have the top-rated undergrad paper in the country, not to mention one of the better undergrad English literature programs, despite having turned down two major grants from Luthor.”
“They turned down grants from Luthor, why?” Lois asked. “I understand not wanting to be renamed, but why reject his money. The Bailey school even took a major grant from Bill Church. If anything, Bill Church is worse. Luthor at least pays most of his employees a living wage.”
“Lexaid does not pay any better than Cost Mart,” Perry said. “That misses the actually issue though. The point is that Manheim says Luthor’s money is blood money.”
“Why does the whole school listen to Manheim?” Lois asked. “His articles made an impression, but he at times seems to make unfounded accusations. Anyway, the school has lots of good writers, they shouldn’t be swayed just by Manheim’s words, he needs more than that to get his way.” She had leaned forward to gather more information. She could sense there was something exciting here, and big. Probably bigger than a potential recruiting scandal, although maybe not as quick to generate articles or awards."
“Actually, they don’t,” Perry replied. “The dean, Aaron Shinkle, says the grants come with too many strings and would hamper free operations and maybe even threaten academic freedom. David Davis says the school turned down the grants because the faculty are a bunch of commies who hate capitalists. Unlike Manheim and Shinkle, Davis is not at Met U, but a rabble-rouser at the Metropolis Star, so I generally ignore his views on the issue. The real reason for the decision seems from what I have gathered to be based on what Dongqing Woo says.”
“Who is Dongqing Woo, and why does his opinion matter?” Lois asked. She had actually seen the name before in one of her wanderings of the halls of the Bailey School last spring, before her falling out with her father and her decision to not go to Met U. Yet other than that he had an office at Met U she knew nothing of the man.
“Dongqing Woo, was the editor of the Hong Kong Times back in 1970.” Perry began.
Lois restrained herself from pointing out to Perry that he had totally avoided really answering the question. It seemed that Perry wanted to weave a story. She remembered talk of Hong Kong and 1970 before, but could not remember where.
“He knows something about Luthor,” Perry continued. “Yet, no one really knows what. Woo speaks very broken English, and even his Cantonese and Mandarin are not good in spoken form. He is a marvelous writer. However, whatever he knows he will not write, so you need to find someone who is familiar with Blang, to translate what Mr. Woo really knows. Blang is spoken by less than 100,000 people almost all of whom live in Hunan Province in the Southwestern interior of China. James Whitecotton, the lead expert on Blang in the United States, and head of the Met U Chinese Department, died in a bridge collapse in 1972, two days before he was supposed to appear before a grand jury investigating charges against the alleged head of organized crime in Metropolis, known only as ‘The Boss’. What evidence Whitecotton had, no one knows.”
“Wait” Lois said, her interest growing. “How did Woo rise to the head of the Hong Kong Times, with so little knowledge of either English or Cantonese, at a time when the paper was published bilingually in both? If he was acting as editor, how did he communicate with all his underlings who had no knowledge of Blang?”
“Ah, you hit the nail on the head,” Perry said, leaning back. “Some think the answer is that he could speak Chinese and English. And the best testimony, that I have gathered, says that he did. Those who I have spoken to, say that Woo was more fluent in English than many English speakers, that he spoke top notch Mandarin, Cantonese, and several other Chinese languages, as well as French and Italian. The late Rose Woo, his wife, was born Rose Dalton. She was an American. She was only somewhat fluent in Cantonese and Mandarin, and probably never spoke a word of Blang in her life. Dongqing met her while in Hawaii doing research on the connection of the Hawaiian and Blang languages, but Rose knew no more Hawaiian than I know Lenape. Yet the Woos had three children, talked normally, and functioned well as a family by all reports.”
“Can the children help us? Do they know Blang?” Lois could smell that this story was big, real big.
“The answer to the first question is no,” Perry said, with a frown coming over his face. “They all died with their mother in a horrible car crash in 1970. A crash that disfigured their cousin, killed their aunt, and led to accusations against their uncle who was driving. Woo was also there, but would not respond to questions in Mandarin, Cantonese, or English. He was not physically injured at all, but either his wife dying or some connected event took a large emotional toll on him.”
“Mr. White,” Lois cut back in. “I still do not see what that has to do with Met U. accepting a donation.”
“Well, the man driving the car was Lex Luthor, Mrs. Woo’s brother-in-law. Manheim managed to get Woo set up with a research professorship at Met U when he started communicating with Dr. Whitecotton.”
“Wait, Mr. White, how does Manheim fit into all of this?” Lois asked.
“Manheim had been just written an article on Luthor’s business practices,” Perry explained. “An article which was very critical of what Luthor was doing. He had been following Luthor to try and get an interview. When Luthor’s car careened off the road, he quickly arrived on the scene. He has always believed Luthor was criminally at fault.”
“I see, Mr. White, so what is Woo up to now?”
“He writes some, on very theoretical issues in journalism. Occasionally gets published in the Journal of Journalism. He is present at all Bailey School faculty meetings, even if he almost never says anything. The real heart of the vote on the Luthor donations comes when they turn to Dr. Woo. Dr. Woo says ‘no’, the one English word he has been observed to say since his wife’s death.”
“But what does Dr. Woo know about ‘the Boss’? Why don’t people seek out an expert to learn that?” Lois asked. She was feeling outrage at the injustice of this all. “Whitecotton can’t be the only person in the U.S. fluent in Blang.”
“Actually, he was,” Perry replied. “There is someone in England who knows it, though. The big problem is Sheldon Bender orchestrated the election of J. R. Clemmons as Metropolis District Attorney in 1974. Clemmons promised to end what was described as the ‘witch hunt’ after what many consider to be the mythical ‘boss’ and his allies. It does not help that investigative journalists spend so much time chasing for leads on sex scandals at universities, that they let 13-year-old suspicious death cases go forgotten.”
“Mr. White, if we ignore present crime to search for past crime, are we doing any better?” Lois knew she was pleading, but still.
“Well, just remember this,” Perry said. “Manheim has seen a lot, and he can help you crack lots of cases. Don’t throw this opportunity away, before you even get a chance to check it out. I know you think you want to go kick Met U and everything it stands for from your feet, and go to Harvard, but don’t burn all your bridges. Go meet with Manheim, and don’t rush to judgment.”
“Okay,” Lois grumbled, not fully convinced, but willing to talk with Manheim and not tell him at first meeting she had no real intention of ever going to Met U. Maybe he could help her in an unexpected way since it wasn’t like she had a story yet. Maybe some human interest type pieces, but nothing that would really break new ground. Uncle Mike’s lead was not story material unless she could connect it to intentional university wrong doing. “I will go speak to Mr. Manheim.”
----
On the subway on her way to Met U half after leaving Perry’s office, Lois’s was trying to read her physics text book, but her mind kept thinking back over a horrible thing that had happened not two months ago.
Lois’s mind turned back to that horrible day she had learned the truth about Joe. Well, maybe not ‘horrible’. Perhaps she should think of it as the day she was saved from following the same path that her mother had taken. Lois had a very difficult test in her calculus class that day, which reminded her why she was going into journalism and not engineering. Also, she realized that the reason George Bailey’s life was considered ‘wonderful’ was that he never left Bedford Falls and never had to plow through such difficult calculations as the ones used to figure out how to build mile long bridges.
After that, there had been the chess club game against New Troy Science and Technology Academy, Metropolis’s premier science school. Her father had gone there, and so it was the team that Lois most wanted to beat. Not only had Lois lost to her opponent, some blonde girl who had obviously just got lucky to pull off this win, named Linda King, but NTSTA had thoroughly won the overall match.
What Lois really needed after her horrible day was the chance to spend some quality time with Joe. He had been at play practice. Lois regretted not having tried out for the play, but with being in the chess club, being student body president and being editor of the school paper and her part time job at the Daily Planet, Lois had no time for being in a play. She had quit her beloved math club in fact to make room for all her other extracurricular activities.
The rain had fallen on Lois during the short walk from the subway station back to the school. She was wet and cold, even if late September was not nearly as cold in Metropolis as it would be in a few months. She was also tired. Writing an essay on the fall of the Roman Empire for her world history class had taken far too long the night before. She had started it two weeks earlier, but with all her other assignments had ended up leaving the bulk to the last minute. The extra time she had spent on her exposé of the use of children in sting operations by the Metropolis Police Department, had pushed her behind too. Still, she had tried her best to write a good paper, and had actually gotten four hours of sleep last night.
As she rounded the corner to where she had agreed to meet Joe, she stopped in shock. There he was, kissing Debbie. Fully on the lips. Sure, Lois could see them claim that this was some sort of practice for their part in the play. Lois would not be fooled this time. She had seen her father kiss Mrs. BelCampo in exactly the same way, and then claim it was just a friendly greeting. It had been a lie then, and it would be a lie now.
“I wish I could never see you again!” Lois screamed at Joe, as she turned to run away. She wanted to be far enough away before she started crying, so that no one saw her.
“Wait, I can explain everything,” Joe called out.
Lois, however, had dealt with too many attempts to ‘explain everything’ by men, and she was not going to be fooled again. She had trusted that Joe’s ever increasing time spent “practicing” for the play with Debbie had been really that. Now she knew it was all just a cover. Lois had just kept running, making it out the front doors of the school before the sobs became audible.
----
Even thinking back on that incident had caused Lois to cry. She decided to try and focus on a much better time, the time she got involved in this investigation. It was fitting revenge she was essentially using Joe’s name as a key part of her plan to undermine the recruiting plan of the college Joe so much adored. So far, what she had was more a job than an investigation. She had not investigated anything yet.
When Lois heard the advertisement on LNN about how Met U was taking applications for its guest hosting department, primarily with the goal of having more staff to work with prospective athletic recruits, she knew this was her chance to go into the “Belly of the Beast”. When she noticed the caveat that you had to be a current Met U student she was about to give up, but then she noticed the extra rider “or a committed and accepted student for the next year”. Since she had been watching LNN on a TV monitor at a subway station, she was glad she was on the way home from work. She decided to instead head straight to Met U. That decision two days ago was probably a good one, although she still had nothing major to show for it.
The process of becoming an accepted student for next year was a lot easier than Lois had expected it to be. Her father had basically pressured her into applying for Met U last May, and, surprise, surprise, her father had lost the “I will never go to your stupid university” letter she had composed in June. Well, taken it out of the mail box and burned it in all likelihood. Evidently Met U had sent out an acceptance letter to Lois near the end of September, and the staff was overjoyed to have her say she was coming. It put them back above Harvard for the percentage of students accepted for the entering class of 1984 who had committed to come.
That evening she had put together a story on high-pressured recruitment tactics, and the pluses and minuses of long waiting lists as opposed to risking admitting too many students outright while in the process. It would be of interest to her Metropolis High classmates. That evening she was glad to find the University hosting office still open. She was even able to get them to let her take their university map test then and there. They urged her to go home and study first.
Why bother? she had thought to herself. I’ve stayed up many nights reading maps, often Met U maps. Plus, with her father on the board, she had been to the groundbreaking of every building built in the last fifteen years, which with Luthor throwing his money around so much was at least two thirds of them.
She figured they couldn’t possibly ask really tough questions like “show on this diagram of the library where the BX 8600 is” or “place all statues on campus in their right place, to within 10 feet, on this unlabeled map”. And they would never ask her to write in which professor had his offices in 1600 of the Franklin Stern Business Building.
After taking the test, Lois realized she had underestimated how difficult it would be. The only one of those three hypothetical questions they had not asked was about the Stern Building, and that was only because the Business building used three digit room numbers. The following day, when she returned to find out if she had been given the job, the people in the hosting office had not stopped talking of how she had gotten the best score on the map test, ever.
For a little bit, Lois was afraid that she would not be given the specific assignment as a liaison with athletic recruiting that she had applied for. If she was the best map taker ever, why would they waste her skills on athletes? All they needed to know was how to get from their dorm to the football field.
Lois was confident that she would do well in this job. She had spent more time on Met U campus than many of the school’s alumni had. She had lived on Met U campus for the first three years of her life, while her dad finished medical school. In fact, she was 20 months old when she was first ever actually taken beyond the confines of the campus. Her parents had dressed her in every size cheerleader outfit Met U had produced. Lois also knew that two of the sizes that were only produced because her mother, as the biggest Met U fan on the face of the planet, had undertaken to make these awkward sizes herself. No other parent felt a need to put their daughter in one, but Ellen had actually gone to the trouble of getting her own special productions designated official Metropolis University products.
Thinking back on how much of a Metropolis University fan-atic her mother was made Lois shudder. When she was in second grade, and the teacher had said they would sing the national anthem, Lois had dutifully began singing the Met U fight song, because that was what her parents called it. The class had all laughed at her. Although she had noticed that Joe Maloy in the back had also began at least the first few words of Met U’s song. That was her earliest memory of Joe Maloy. She hoped she didn’t run into him at the football game.
Lois’s focus was turned from the past as the subway reached the Met U stop. She easily found her way to the Bailey School and Professor Manheim’s office.
On entering she saw that he was a tall man, maybe a few years older than Perry, but not many. Once she said she was Lois Lane, he started on a long, involved conversation, covering everything from the power of journalism, to the need to always beat the competition, to the need to build a winning team. There was one big issue still bugging her.
“So, Professor Manheim, what do you think of football? Do you expect Kent coming here to boost the team’s chances?”
“Football, posh.” Manheim replied. “I really hope to convince Kent to stay here and not play football. Probably not realistic, with the way they praise football players these days. Still, I think it would be better for his career as a journalist, and for the Scroll, if he didn’t have the game distracting him from more important things.”
Lois was glad to hear Manheim was not a football fanatic. She really thought maybe she could work with this guy. Listening to the rest of his presentation, Lois realized this even more. Still, she wanted to leave the shadow of Met U for a time.
The next day at school, Lois managed to convince all her teachers to excuse her absence for that Friday.
That Thursday night, Lois went to the airport to greet Kent on his arrival. It had been a day since meeting with Perry about this, and she was hoping to get this Thursday over with. The driver was an old man who told them stories of the many things he had learned while working for Met U. Lois did not mind the stories, but his cautious manner of driving drove her nuts. It took them twice as long to get to the airport as it would have had she driven. She knew Kent would already have his luggage and be wondering where they were when they arrived. She only hoped the country boy did not do anything too unwise on arriving in the city.
Lois recognized Clark Kent immediately as she came into the baggage claim area, having been provided with several pictures by athletic recruiting. She was glad to see Clark Kent was as handsome in person as he was in his picture. Not at all because she liked him, no, that was not it at all. She was only glad that he was handsome because it validated her theory that he was an unbearable snob. She walked toward him, stretching out her hand in greeting.
