At Anthrax Ground Zero

PALM BEACH COUNTY

IF ANY PLACE IN THE COUNTRY deserves a respite from dubious headlines, it is surely Palm Beach County. "I remember May of 2000, when that Lake Worth middle schooler shot his teacher in the face," recalls a Palm Beach Post staff writer, pining for a simpler time. "I thought that would be the worst story we'd ever see." Little did he know how much worse it would get. Last November, slow-witted voters and slower-witted officials kicked off the most grisly debacle in U.S. elections history. Last month, it was discovered that the region played host to over half the terrorists involved in the September 11 attacks. And last week brought perhaps the saddest and scariest news--a Sun tabloid employee died after being infected with anthrax, evidence of what might be the only bioterrorism attack in America since followers of Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh poisoned a Shakey's salad bar in 1984.

But as veteran observers know, tragedy never lasts long around here without giving way to farce. And so it is again, as the national press corps deploys to the "new ground zero," the upscale office park of American Media Inc. in Boca Raton, where the Globe, the National Enquirer, and just about every other tabloid that graces grocery-store racks is published. We have not come, however, in search of the Horn-Faced Lady or the Dog-Faced Man, whose exploits are championed in the Weekly World News.

Rather, it is here that Robert Stevens, a much-beloved Sun photo editor, was exposed to anthrax spores of unknown origin (they were found on his computer keyboard), causing his death on October 5. It is from here that hundreds of AMI employees have been evacuated, as they await word on their nasal swabs and blood samples, which should reveal whether they too have been invaded by the anthrax bacterium (two additional employees have tested positive, though they appear to be doing okay). It is here that journalists keep 24-hour vigils behind yellow police tape, waiting to catch a glimpse of . . . no one's exactly sure what. Though personnel from the Centers for Disease Control and the FBI mill around the off-limits parking lot, while men sporadically exit the building in snow-white hazardous materials suits that make them look like menacing Easter bunnies, there are no soot-covered firemen or leather-faced iron workers to romanticize, as we did at the original ground zero. "Unless they bring the anthrax out in handcuffs," offers one impatient reporter, "there's nothing to see here."

Because of the lull, many of us move several miles up the road, to American Media Inc.'s accounting building. Here, displaced tabloid writers temporarily work out of claustrophobic cubicles in a pastel-hued building the color of Don Johnson's old undershirts. A supreme irony takes shape as the mainstream media stake out the tabloid media, who have, under duress, become a respectable lot, given to restraint, quick with a "no comment," generally resistant to our invading their lives as they have so many others'. Perhaps it is because they don't want to disclose any particulars in an ongoing investigation. Perhaps, as some have alleged, their corporate masters have threatened to fire them if they talk. Or perhaps, most of us suspect, they just don't want to waste their good anecdotes in somebody else's newspaper.

Whatever the case, they are largely uncooperative. So the mainstream journalists tan themselves in the tabloid empire's parking lot, waiting for our counterparts to leave the building as we slalom around grouchy security guards ("They don't want you here," says one) or just size up our prey like hunters in a duck blind. When the rare employee does talk--usually on background--he has as many questions as answers: How did this happen? Is it related to September 11? Why us?

That last question might have an obvious answer. While health and law enforcement authorities have refused to deduce a terrorist act from the circumstantial evidence (despite their belief that several terrorists had subscriptions to American Media titles, and that nearly one-quarter of the 300-plus associates in their network at one time lived in Florida), AMI would make an ideal target, as it accounts for 25 million weekly readers. Skeptics say that the tabloids make lots of enemies, which is true. But it is unlikely that actor Russell Crowe has access to lethal strains of anthrax. Plus, to carry out such a heinous act, he'd have to be really, really mad about the National Examiner's reporting that the former "real-life Maximus" now has a "double chin and a jelly belly."