That wasn’t normal; Braddock should have been off and the chair should have been occupied by George Hale, day city editor. A faint sense of unease began to steal over O’Hara when he put Braddock’s presence together with the chill greetings he’d had from Otto and the receptionist.
He said: “Hi, Brad.”
Braddock said: “Morning, Ken.” His voice was level, noncommittal.
O’Hara frowned down at Braddock for a moment. Then he said: “What goes on here? The welcome I get from Otto and the Duchess and you, a guy would think I had bad breath or something.” Braddock was a small, bulldog-jawed man with keen blue eyes and, on occasion, a fiery temper. He didn’t vent the temper now. He said mildly: “Bad news certainly gets around an office.”
“What’s that crack mean?”
Braddock said: “Maury, let’s have what you’ve done on that story?”
The rewrite man pulled the sheet from his typewriter and flipped it to Braddock, who relayed it to O’Hara. The story led off:
Three Midwest racketeers were hunted throughout the Southwest today on kidnap charges, following the daring escape from their hands of Rex Miller, Midland City gang buster.
Kidnaped from the Hotel Diplomat here in broad daylight and held in a desert shack for twenty-four hours, Miller won freedom early today by a desperate leap from the gangsters’ car as it sped along a road near Bakersfield. Although bound hand and foot, the vice prosecutor had managed to operate a door handle with one knee and threw himself out as the car rounded a curve. Still bound, he was found a few minutes later by a passing motorist, who rushed him to Bakersfield for treatment of painful but not serious injuries. Afterward he returned to Los Angeles to aid local authorities in the hunt for the asserted kidnapers.
The hunted men have been identified as Fred “Tiny” Waldon, Ernie “The Angel” Angelo and Arthur Vickers, all of Midland City, where Miller has been heading an investigation into vice conditions highlighted by the recent bomb-murder of a prominent minister.
The dramatic denouement of the kidnaping was completely at variance with an earlier story which this paper published through a regrettable misconception of the circumstances involved and which intimated that Miller possibly was cooperating with the racketeer trio.
O’Hara slammed the copy paper down on Braddock’s desk. His face had flushed a dark red, his jaw was tight. He said: “Brad, he’s lying from hell to breakfast. Miller went away with those guys all on his little own. And if that wasn’t gin rummy and drinks between pals at the shack last night, I’m blind. The picture will prove that. Where’s the shot I sent in?”
Braddock said flatly: “No picture, Irish. The plate you sent in was light-fogged — but bad.”
Clancy said: “Jeez, Kenny, I guess you didn’t know how to work my box.”
O’Hara was nearly speechless. “No picture?” He turned on Clancy. “Don’t tell me I don’t know how to work a box.”
“Well, mine’s kinda wacky,” said Clancy. “On account of I work left-handed, I got the exposure set up just backward.”
O’Hara shook his head as though he was trying to roll off a succession of punches. Then he said: “Brad, don’t let this Miller phony put it over on you. I know what I saw — he got in that car willingly—”
“Perhaps you know what you see, O’Hara,” said a crisp voice behind him. “But you don’t know how to interpret it.”
O’Hara swung around. Rex Miller and John Norman, publisher of the Tribune, had stepped out of Norman’s office. Miller’s left wrist was taped, one side of his face bore marks of brush burns. His eyes were red-rimmed with loss of sleep but they bored into O’Hara.
He said: “When I ran into Ernie Angelo at the hotel doorway, he told me he had a gun in his pocket and that he’d kill me on the spot if I didn’t get into that car.”
“Ernie wasn’t holding a gun on you last night to make you play cards and drink with him,” O’Hara snapped.
Miller snapped back: “You didn’t notice, I suppose, that my ankles were taped to the chair. There was nothing I could do at the moment but accept the situation and pass the time as well as I could.”
John Norman, gray, neat-haired, said: “Now, Mr. Miller, I trust that in view of our complete retraction, you’ll reconsider—”
“Sorry,” Miller said curtly. “I understand, of course, that O’Hara is primarily to blame for the whole disgraceful story — but the Tribune printed it and my only recourse is to sue. A retraction isn’t enough to undo the damage done to my reputation.”
“But, man,” said Norman. “A half-million dollars!”
Miller went away, hard-heeled, toward the city room door and Norman followed him and O’Hara scowled down at Braddock. He said: “Brad, you’re not going to fight, not going to back me up?”
“Ken,” said Braddock, “if we had a prayer, I’d back you to the limit. But everything points to the fact that you went off half-cocked on the story.” He shook his hard, round head regretfully. “Just one week as a press agent ruined you, got you to dreaming up yarns.”
O’Hara said: “Clancy, let’s get out of here. This appeasement atmosphere is beginning to gag me.”
Out on First Street, Clancy murmured: “I need a drink.”
“Do you think I don’t?” said O’Hara.
They started down the street toward Mike’s Grill and when they had gone half a block a rough hand grabbed O’Hara’s arm from behind and swung him around.
It was Lenroot’s hand and he bared his yellow teeth at O’Hara. He said: “So, you lousy hold-out—”
“Take that paw off me,” O’Hara said, his voice coming huskily from behind his teeth.
“If you’d given me that picture, I’d had those guys. I got a good mind to—”
O’Hara said in the back-of-the-teeth voice: “You haven’t got a good mind, Lenroot. And if you don’t take that mitt off my arm, so help me, I’ll slug you — if I go to the clink for it!”
Their eyes locked and presently Lenroot’s hand fell away. He said: “You should have given me that picture, O’Hara, and you know it.”
“Did I try to? And did you kick me downstairs for my try?”
O’Hara turned his back on Lenroot and, with Clancy leading the way eagerly, went into Mike’s Grill.
Tony Ames found O’Hara and Clancy in the third booth on the right at Mike’s when she came in at one o’clock.
Clancy was working on his sixth highball and he wasn’t sober. He said vaguely: “Sit down, babe. Have a drinkie?”
O’Hara didn’t greet Tony. He scowled down at the Scotch that represented his third encore. He wasn’t plastered but the alcohol, added to fatigue and frustration, had him fairly high.
Tony Ames sat down opposite him. “Ken, I just got to the office and heard about it.” Her clear hazel eyes were troubled.
O’Hara muttered: “Rub it in, kitten. If I’d taken you along like you wanted, you could have backed me up on the story.”
Tony let that slide. She said: “Is there anything I can do, anything you want me to do?”
“You could go back and tell Brad he’s got guts that’re tough like a dish of boiled tripe.”
“Brad’s in a spot. Norman hopes to smooth Miller over, escape a libel suit, get away with just a retraction. He won’t let Brad fight it. And anyway, Ken—” She hesitated.
O’Hara fixed her with a narrow, wounded stare. “You, too! You think I’m a dummy who’d—”
Tony said quickly: “Don’t say that, Ken. You know I think you’re tops as a reporter and as a guy. It’s just that I instinctively liked Miller, that’s it hard to see him as the kind who’d go crooked. Call it woman’s intuition and even a woman’s intuition could be wrong. All of which is aside from the real problem, which is to get you out of this jam by proving you’re right and Miller’s a crook. What can I do to help?”