Kill the Messenger (25 page)

TWELVE

Withdrawal

DESPITE HIS SEEMING
downward spiral, Webb enjoyed happier moments. In January 2003, he attended a journalism conference on the Isla de Mujeres, an island resort off the coast of Cancun, Mexico, which had been organized by Al Giordano, an expatriate American reporter. Giordano's conference brought together young journalists from around Latin America interested in covering the war on drugs. (Giordano initially agreed to an interview, but only in writing; he failed to respond to subsequent emails.) Webb, who gave speeches about investigative reporting at the conference, was given a hero's welcome, says Jeremy Bigwood, a freelance photographer who attended the conference and helped Webb coach the younger journalists on accessing government records.

“He was known as the ‘Marlboro Man' because he smoked Marlboro Reds and looked like the Marlboro man in the poster,” Bigwood recalls. “Al was the first to call him that and it really took off.” Despite the presence of a large contingent of beautiful young South American female reporters who fawned over him, Webb behaved himself well, Bigwood says. “Al had gotten a lot more women than men at this conference, but I think Gary saw that people were looking up to him and he gave a really good impression. Everyone really liked him.”

Also at the conference was Adam Saytanides, a producer with National Public Radio's Latino USA. Saytanides met Webb at the airport and rode to the conference with him, and quickly realized that Webb was going to be the highlight of the conference. “Gary was a fucking Pulitzer-prize winner and he couldn't get a job in journalism.” he says. “Gary was kind of a stud, because he was an example of that crash and burn mentality: publishing these stories and going out in a blaze of glory.”

One of Webb's fellow lecturers was Annie Nocenti, a screenplay writer from New York City who had edited several magazines, including
Lies of Our Times, Scenario
, and
Prison Life
. Nocenti says she was immediately attracted to Webb. “He was an all-American boy, chivalrous, respectful, rugged, adventurous,” she says. Webb rented a motorcycle, and the pair tore off to the beach, skipping an entire day of panel discussions to lie in the sun, a romantic interlude that quickly turned into a brief love affair.

To Nocenti, Webb didn't seem depressed in the least. “He was happy,” she says. Although Webb had by then pulled
away from many of his closest friends, Nocenti says he opened up with her about his life. He told her that he hated his job at the state legislature because it involved little more than showing up for work and trying to seem interested in meaningless, tedious assignments. Webb also talked about his experience at the
Mercury News
, and how his series was attacked for alleging that the CIA had dumped crack in the inner city—something he emphatically denied he had ever written.

“For some reason, he didn't seem particularly angry about it,” she adds. Nocenti says they kept in touch by telephone after the conference ended, but didn't remain romantically involved. Webb told her he was still in love with his ex-girlfriend, but she didn't want to commit, so he was moving out of the house he shared with her and buying a fixer-upper. A few months after the conference, Webb flew to New York for an award that he shared for writing a chapter about “Dark Alliance” for
Into the Buzzsaw
, a book of essays by reporters who had been ousted from journalism after writing controversial stories.

While in New York City, Webb stayed with Nocenti, who introduced him to her friends, all of who were fans of his work. A TV producer Nocenti knew told Webb he wanted to put “Dark Alliance” on the screen. At one point, Webb expressed an interest in moving to New York, but said he couldn't leave California because he wanted to remain close to his children. When Nocenti got a job as the editor
of High Times
magazine a few months later, Webb told her he wanted to write a Hunter S. Thompson-style story about racing motorcycles against kids half his age. She loved the idea, but he never followed through.

On the phone, Webb seemed increasingly trapped in his own obsession over his ex-girlfriend. “He was in daily contact with a powerful unrequited love situation,” Nocenti says. Nocenti tried to convince him to move on with his life, to forget about her. “But he thought she was so perfect,” she says. “He said he'd only had two soul mates in his entire life, his ex-wife and this girl.”

I
F
W
EBB HAD
still been married, February 10, 2004, would have been his twenty-fifth wedding anniversary. He marked the occasion in an email he sent Sue at 8:15 that morning.

“It might seem odd to commemorate the 25th anniversary of a marriage that no longer exists, but I've never been one to do the normal thing,” Webb wrote. “Irrespective of everything else . . . today isn't a completely meaningless event in the history of our lives. Anyway, I just wanted you to know that I was thinking about you, my child bride, and that day a quarter century ago . . . it makes me sad and makes me smile at the same time.”

Webb found out less than two hours later that this day would be a more meaningful one than he could have imagined. That morning, he was laid off, a casualty of the Democrats having lost control of the California Legislature and a concomitant change in leadership at the Office of Majority Services. His previous poor attendance record didn't help. After she heard the news, Sue emailed her ex-husband at 10
PM
, telling him she wished it could have been a more “peaceful” day for him.

At 1
AM
the next morning, Webb wrote back, the optimism
of his previous message replaced with stark fatalism. “I almost hate to wake up in the morning to see what shit the day will bring,” he said. The only bright news, he added, was that he received a “couple of encouraging emails” from Gary Clark, his old friend from the
Plain Dealer
, who was now managing editor of the
Denver Post
. “I figure I can hold out for a couple of months,” Webb wrote. “Then after that . . . who knows? You were right about moving out here. Except for Christine being born, I can't think of anything good that's come from living out here. The rest of it has been shit and heartbreak. Sorry.”

In a recent interview, Clark says Webb had contacted him shortly before he lost his job, wanting to know if there was any possibility of getting a job at the
Denver Post
. Clark told Webb he might be in luck—the paper was interested in hiring an investigative reporter. Clark thought Webb would be perfect for the job. “Gary was probably one of the best reporters I ever met,” he says. “He had this internal drive to go find the truth. He did that through ferreting out documents and evidence. Some people thought he was difficult to work with, but I didn't. He needed a strong editor though, that's for sure.”

Before Clark could hire Webb, however, the paper had to hire an editor to oversee investigative coverage. “That search took a little longer than we expected,” he says. Clark says he knew all about the controversy over “Dark Alliance,” and it didn't particularly trouble him. “Gary had a story there,” he says. “There were people on the CIA payroll engaged in deals that involved bringing cocaine to California, and that's what Gary's story was about.” The story's lead was marred by
a certain degree of hyperbole, but Clark says he's certain this was a result of bad editing. “Nobody above Gary's editor looked at that story before it ran,” he says. “How it was presented was the issue.”

Webb also contacted his friend Mike Madigan, the private investigator in Orange County he had met years earlier at a journalism conference. Madigan offered to help Webb obtain his private investigator's license and get him started in the field. But when Webb applied for his license, Madigan says, the California Department of Consumer Affairs refused to give Webb credit for his two decades of reporting experience. Noting that Webb hadn't finished college, the state told him he'd have to get his degree first. Webb gave up. “Gary told me he just couldn't start from scratch,” Madigan says.

Webb's daughter Christine helped him send out more than fifty resumes to daily newspapers across the country. He didn't receive a single request for an interview. The only paper that seemed interested in hiring him was a local alternative newsweekly, the
Sacramento News
&
Review
. The paper's editor, Tom Walsh, had previously met Webb and told him if he was ever interested in writing for the paper to call him. When Webb contacted him in August 2004, Walsh happened to have an open position for a staff writer and suggested Webb drop by for an interview.

Despite Webb's impressive resume, which included twenty years of reporting experience and a Pulitzer prize, he wasn't Walsh's first choice. Now editor of the
SF Weekly
, Walsh says his leading candidate had a proven record in alternative journalism. Walsh, meanwhile, was concerned
that Webb was overqualified for the job. He was looking for someone who would stick around, and figured Webb would likely use the job as a springboard to find employment at a larger paper. “Quite frankly, I had thoughts in the back of my mind about whether he would fit in,” Walsh adds. “But the first person I offered the job declined, and I think at the time Gary said he could start immediately.”

The only hitch was that Walsh couldn't offer Webb a salary that came close to matching the paycheck Webb had been receiving while an employee of the State of California. But Webb was desperate for work and jumped at the opportunity. Unlike the rest of the paper's small staff, however, most of whom were still fresh out of college, Webb was almost fifty years old. He made no effort to fit in with his fellow reporters.

“He would show up to our Monday meetings and have straightforward comments about what was interesting and what was not,” Walsh says. “That was part of the value he brought.” But whenever the staff got together to have beers, Webb declined. “He told me specifically he didn't drink,” Walsh says. “He wasn't a party person. He didn't socialize. He would come in to do writing and do phone calls, but would also work at home.”

Webb's first feature story for the paper, “The Killing Game,” appeared in October 2004. It detailed the military's growing interest in violent video games, something Webb discovered by playing on the computer with his teenage son, Eric. According to Walsh, the story displayed all the talents that made Webb such a masterful reporter. “It showed his natural inclination to dig into a story, to see who was behind it,” he says. “Once he got the connection to the
Army he really got going. It was a pleasure having a real reporter sitting across the room from you talking with enthusiasm about his work.”

Following that story, Webb published a few more articles, one about a local measure aimed at funding local libraries in Sacramento, and a profile of a woman who helped people trying to sell houses redecorate their homes. His last story, a feature entitled “Red Light, Green Cash,” exposed how local judges routinely upheld traffic violations cited by unreliable, privately owned cameras—exactly the type of muckraking journalism Webb had always craved.

Unbeknownst to Walsh, Webb was rapidly reaching the end of his dwindling psychological and financial resources. A major blow came when a Los Angeles television producer who was interested in hiring Webb to write a miniseries about arms trafficking backed out of the project. Webb had driven down to Los Angeles for a series of meetings and came back thinking the project was going to happen. When the deal fell apart, whatever hopes Webb had of resolving his financial difficulties and boosting his critically wounded ego evaporated and he sank even deeper into depression.

The last time Greg Wolf spoke to Webb was in May 2004. Over the course of the previous several weeks, they had exchanged a barrage of emails ranging from Wolf's refusal to get married to Webb's difficulties dating and the relative merits of various anti-depressant medications. Wolf knew Webb had developed a daily pot smoking habit, which he viewed as a form of self-medication, but became worried when Webb told him he was no longer taking his pills, because the side effects outweighed the benefits.

According to Wolf, Webb said his medication either made him feel numb or more depressed than he already was, and since he no longer had health insurance, he didn't want to pay for the pills out of his own pocket. “Man, that was some bad news,” Wolf says. “He said he couldn't afford it, but that's bullshit. You can get Prozac for $30 a month. It was just a decision he made, and that's the last time I talked to him.”

W
EBB WASN'T EXAGGERATING
his financial woes. In fact, he could no longer pay his bills. His new paycheck barely covered his monthly $2,000 mortgage, and shortly after he joined the
Sacramento News
&
Review
, Sue had garnished his wages for child support. She was already paying medical insurance for the three kids from her own paycheck and Webb hadn't sent her a dime for food, clothes, or other expenses since being laid off earlier that year. When Sue demanded $750 per month in child support, Webb emailed her back saying he couldn't afford it. “Obviously I cannot keep this job for very long,” he said. “If I don't find something better, or sell the house, I'll be broke by Christmas.”

His growing despair was fueled by the fact that his ex-girlfriend, whom he continued to pine after, refused to reciprocate his declarations of love. Although he continued to ride his motorcycle with his oldest son, Ian, he felt that his two younger children seemed to have too much going on in their lives to spend time with him. Webb was supposed to be able to share weekends with his kids, but they often had other plans. When they did stay at his house, Webb often stared blankly at his computer screen, playing video games.