Del Donahoo finds Armond Budish's cash

Here in the Cleveland media celeb afterlife, we know how to follow the money. It's our eternal penance for ignoring every incestuous seedy money laundering racket that lined our pockets when we still walked the earth. Betty Cope is the go to gumshoe on this topic, for obvious reasons.

Me and Betty are kind of an item, and my scoop hit a dead end thanks to $40,000 going into a black hole. So one night after rolling in the hay, I whispered a sweet nothing across the pillow.

"Betty, where's this money goin'?"



Betty plays coy, like her virgin ears couldn't possibly conceive of an instance where taxpayer money gets handed to an elected official on a silver platter then disappears.

"Ummm....Dot?.... this is a bit touchie." Breaking fucking news.

"Betty, if you wanna keep dippin' your toes in Ol' Dot's ocean of lust, better cough it up." Betty plays the victim, jumps outta bed, straps on her corset, storms out the bedroom with her nose in the air. Great. Now I gotta play hardball.

I pick up the phone. "Del?" Donahoo just arrived upstairs, and if anyone has loose lips and knows where this money's goin, it's a guy who spent a few decades at WKYC and suddenly has penance to do to pay the rent.  Del sounds groggy, tells me it's early, I hear Margaret Bourke White in the background picking up condom wrappers or something, why am I callin' him, blah blah blah.

So I cut to the chase. "Do I have to come over there and have Gib Shanley put you in his ceiling stirrups for a couple hours, or are we gonna make this easy on the both of us?"

Donahoo coughs it up. I chase down Betty at Tom Braziatis' morning canasta game, let her have it. "Care to change your story, Cope?" Betty's busted. Starts begging for mercy and whatnot. Brazaitis suggests make-up sex then a round of Bloody Marys. Four hours later, Betty and Del are at my place over a bottle of Four Roses spillin' all the beans.

Ain't nobody scoopin' the Queen of All Cleveland Journalism. Ol' Dot's still got it.