Ellis realizes his guilty conscience is due to the lie he is telling, although he was right to take the job—the increase in pay alone means a larger apartment. He meets his new boss, Walker, then Dutch Vernon, who takes him on a newsroom tour. He meets the other reporters who play a trick on him: They give him a tip to a nonexistent gambling ship. Ellis spends three days looking for the ship before they let him in on the joke.

They call Ellis a cub reporter, which shocks him because he worked for three years at the Examiner. But he has much to learn. Ellis is reprimanded for poor sourcing, so he learns to record all information at least twice. Therefore, when he misses a meeting at city hall, he knows that Dutch gave him the wrong time. Ellis stays quiet though; he understands that he is now in a competitive job in a competitive city, where “a man had to look out for himself” (80). To drown his sorrows, Ellis goes to the bar. He is drunk when he overhears some Irish mobsters discussing their bad reputations. Ellis tells them he is a reporter with a proposal that their boss will want to hear.