To hell with going in the kitchen, he decided. What I'll do is just get in a car and go find a fast-food joint.
The idea had a sudden appeal. He realized that what he really wanted was junk food. Hamburgers and french fries. Not what they served these days in McDonald's or Burger King, but the little tiny ones they used to sell for a dime, the kind they sort of steamed on the grill over chopped onions. In those white tile buildings with no booths, just round-seat stools by a counter, where everything was stainless steel. He could practically smell the damned things.
He had a little trouble finding where they kept the keys to the cars. He supposed they took them from the ignition last thing when they locked up for the night. He finally found a rack of keys in a little cupboard in the pantry off the garage. They were all in little numbered leather cases, except the key to the Rolls, which had a Rolls insignia on it.
Which was which?
He didn't want to take the Rolls. He was going to go to a hamburger joint and sit on a round stool and eat cheap little hamburgers and french fries, and you don't take a Rolls-Royce to do that.
He took one key and worked his way through a Cadillac coupe and a Buick station wagon before it worked in the ignition switch of an Oldsmobile sedan he didn't remember ever having seen before. He remembered vaguely that Sally had said something about having to get Mrs. Dawberg a new car, and that he'd told her to go ahead and do it.
He thought he remembered a White Palace or a Crystal Palace or whatever the hell they called those joints about a mile away, but when he got there, there was a Sunoco gas station, so he drove on. When he stopped at a red light, he decided it had been some time since he'd last had a little sip, and pulled the cork from the Hennessey bottle and took a little nip.
Thirty minutes later, not having found what he wanted, he decided to hell with it. What he would do was go by theLedger. It wouldn't be a cheap little White Palace hamburger, but the cafeteria operated twenty-four hours a day, and he could at least get a hamburger, or something else. And it was always a good idea to drop in unannounced on the city room. Keep them on their toes.
He drove to the back of the building and pulled the nose of the Oldsmobile in against a loading dock, and took another little sip. He could hardly walk into the city room carrying a bottle of cognac, and there was no telling how long he would be in there.
There was a tap on his window, and he looked out and saw a security officer frowning at him. With some difficulty, Arthur J. Nelson managed to find the window switch and lower the window.
"Hey, buddy," the security officer said, "you can't park there."
"Let me tell you something,buddy," Arthur J. Nelson said. "I own this goddamned newspaper and I can park any goddamned place I please!"
The security officer's eyes widened, and then there was recognition.
"Sorry, Mr. Nelson, I didn't recognize you."
"Goddamned right," Arthur Nelson said, and got out of the car. "Keep up the good work!" he called after the retreating security officer.
He entered the building and walked down the tile-lined corridor to the elevator bank. Windows opened on the presses in the basement. They were still, although he saw pressmen standing around. He glanced at his watch.
It was not quite one A.M. The first (One Star) edition started rolling at two-fifteen. Christ alone knew what it was costing him to have all those pressmen standing around for an hour or more with their fingers up their asses at $19.50 an hour. He'd have to look into that. Goddamned unions would bankrupt you if you didn't keep your eye on them.
He got in the elevator and rode it up to the fifth, editorial, floor, and went into the city room.
He felt eyes on him as he walked across the room to the city desk.
Well, why the hell not? I don't come in here at this time nearly often enough.
There were half a dozen men and two women at the city desk. The city editor got to his feet when he saw him.
"Good evening, Mr. Nelson," he said. "How are you, sir?"
"How the hell do you think I am?" Nelson snapped.
"I'd like to offer my condolences, sir," the city editor said.
"Very kind of you," Arthur Nelson said, automatically, and then he remembered that goddamned cop, whatsisname,Wohl.
"I've got something for you," Nelson said. "The cops have found my son's car. It was stolen from the garage at his apartment when… it was stolen from his apartment."
"Yes, sir?"
"You haven't heard about it?"
"No, sir."
"Well, I'm telling you," Nelson said. "And they're giving me the goddamned runaround. Somewhere in Jersey is where they found it. Some Jersey state trooper found it, but he wouldn't tell me where."
"I'm sure we could find out, sir," the city editor said. "If that's what you're suggesting."
"Goddamn right," Nelson said. "Get somebody on it. It's news, wouldn' t you say?"
"Yes, sir, of course it is. I'll get right on it."
"I think that would be a good idea," Nelson said.
"I was about to go to Composing, Mr. Nelson," the city editor said. " We're just about pasted up. Would you like to go with me?"
"Why not?" Nelson said. "Have you got somebody around here you could send to the cafeteria for me?"
"What would you like?"
"I'd like a hamburger and french fries," Nelson said. "Hamburger with onions. Fried, not raw. And a cup of black coffee."
"Coming right up," the city editor said.
Nelson walked across the city room to Composing. TheLedger had, the year before, gone to a cold-type process, replacing the Linotype system. The upcoming One Star edition was spread out on slanting boards, in "camera-ready" form. Here and there, compositors were pasting up. '
Nelson went to the front page. The lead story, under the headline " Man Sought In Police Murder Killed Eluding Capture" caught his eye, and he read it with interest.
If all the goddamned cops in the goddamned city hadn't all been looking for that guy, they probably could have caught the bastards who killed my Jerome. They don't give a shit about me, or any other ordinary citizen, but when one of their own gets it, that's a horse of a different color. That sonofabitch Wohl wouldn't 't even tell me where Jerome 's car was found.
The city editor appeared.
"Now that the cops have found that pathetic sonofabitch," Arthur J. Nelson said, "maybe, just maybe, they'll have time to look for the murderer of my son."
"Yes, sir," the city editor said, uncomfortably. "Mr. Nelson, I think you better have a look at this."
He thrust the Early Bird edition of theBulletin at him.
"What's this?" Nelson said. And then his eye fell on the headline, " Police Seek 'Gay' Black Lover In Nelson Murder" and the story below it by Michael J. O'Hara.
"I thought O'Hara worked for us," Arthur J. Nelson said, very calmly.
"We had to let him go about eighteen months ago," the city editor said.
"Oh?" Arthur J. Nelson asked.
"Yes, sir. He had a bottle problem," the city editor said.
"And a nice sense of revenge, wouldn't you say?" Nelson said. He didn't wait for a reply. He turned and walked down the line of pasteups until he found the editorial page.
He pointed to it. "Hold this," he said. "There will be a new editorial."
"Sir?"
"I'm not going to let the goddamned cops get away with this," Arthur J. Nelson said. "Not on your goddamned life."
Louise Dutton slipped out of her robe, draped it over the water closet, and then slid open the glass door to her shower stall. She giggled at what she saw.