“A whipping post in every back yard,” Terrell said.
“Tim didn’t intend to dwell on the gore,” the salesman said. Watching Karsh’s face he smiled quickly and nervously. “I’ll tell him to forget it.”
“Tell him also that I’m thinking of throwing his big hairy column the hell out of the paper.”
The salesman laughed shrilly. “That’ll jolt him. I’ll put it to him dead-pan.”
“Just the way I put it to you.”
The second of the press agents returned with the red-head named Bill, and the conversation swirled away like chips on a floodtide.
Terrell hated to leave. Karsh struck him at the moment as a blind Sampson or a senile Lear — a badgered wreck, surrounded by fools and sharpsters and drunks. The press agent was telling a wide-eyed Bill about the last scene of Alice in Wonderland. “It’s probably the greatest piece of writing in the world,” he said in a soft, belligerent voice. “Every man should read that once in his lifetime to a little girl — and not while he’s drunk, mind you. If it doesn’t cut right through to his heart you can scratch him for a no-good sonofabitch. Talk about loyalty tests! I can tell about a guy by listening to him read the part that goes—” He took the girl’s hand and stared at the ceiling. “Well, in so many words, she’s lying there and a twig falls on her, a leaf, I guess, and she wakes up and starts talking to her mother — sister, rather.”
“It’s lovely,” Bill said.
“Lewis Carroll on bullfights,” Karsh said, waving for a round of drinks. “That’s what I’d like to see in the goddamn paper.”
Terrell stood and caught Karsh’s eye. “I’m running along, Mike. Thanks for dinner.”
“Don’t mention it, boy.” Karsh smiled up at him and patted his arm. “Keep pitching. You’re on something good.”
Terrell went outside feeling very sorry for Karsh. He seemed to make sense only at work. There he operated with brilliant precision, keeping every department of the paper under meticulous supervision. But the rest of his life was chaos. His marriage had ended in divorce several years ago and he had been bled white by his wife’s lawyers. He had taken a mistress which had added to his problems without ameliorating his loneliness. He had never been close to his children — a son and daughter — and saw very little of them now; the girl had married and moved to the west coast, and the son was a smooth and expensive youngster who dropped in at the office occasionally to discuss his financial needs.
Terrell knew most of this by intimation; Karsh had never talked to him about his personal problems. But no wonder he was cynical, Terrell thought, as he cabbed back through the darkness to the office. He wished he could help Karsh in some way. But how? Tell him to relax, cut down on cigarettes? Terrell still had a copy boy’s hero-worship for Karsh, and walking out on him tonight made him feel like a heel.
At ten-thirty the Call-Bulletin’s lobby was dark, and Terrell had to rap on the heavy plate glass doors to raise a watchman. This was the slow, graveyard stretch; the next edition, the Night Extra, wouldn’t go in until one o’clock in the morning. And it wasn’t an important edition, just a re-write of the day’s news and the front page brushed up with wire copy.
The skeleton crew was sitting at the long city desk with coffee before them and cigarettes burning away in the ashtrays at their elbows. The rest of the floor was dark; there was no one working in the sports or women’s page sections, and the big lights above the clock drew a circle of brightness around the men at the city desk and police speaker.
Bill Mooney, an old city hall reporter, was in charge of this shift, and he nodded to Terrell and said, “Want some coffee, Sam? Prince here made it. It’s what they hired him for, I guess.”
Prince was a healthy looking young man with dark hair, excellent clothes and a degree in journalism from the University of Iowa. Mooney did not mind his good looks or good clothes, but he was in no hurry to forgive him for the degree in journalism. “I’ll get you a cup, Mr. Terrell,” Prince said.
“Never mind. I’ll pass.”
“It’s good coffee,” Prince said.
“Informed by college wit and sophistication,” Mooney said.
Ollie Wheeler, Terrell saw, was sitting just outside the cone of light that fell on the city desk. He wore an overcoat, and had his feet propped up on a waste basket.
“Company man,” Terrell said. “Can’t get enough of the place.”
“And how about you?”
“I’ve got work to do.”
“You’re lucky,” Wheeler said, taking a pint bottle of whiskey from the inside pocket of his overcoat. “I got bored at home. Opulent indulgence is the father of satiety. My boarding house is too heady for steady consumption. So I came down to listen to police calls with Mooney. It’s like the dissonant theme in a symphony, it makes the ear long for the tonic. An hour with Mooney and I’ll be glad to get back to my room.”
Terrell knew that Wheeler had to be jolted out of this mood. A word of sympathy would reduce him to tears. “Christ, you’re like all the old hacks around here,” he said. “Sneering at the corn in the paper, the first robin stories, and pictures of lost kids with a cop’s hat on their curly heads. All tasteless and sloppy. You’re going to quit and write bitter novels. But a day away from the shop and you’re homesick.”
“God, I’ve heard everything,” Wheeler said, bringing his feet down with a crash. “Of all the censorious and self-righteous bilge I’ve ever heard — that takes the cake, Sam.”
Terrell took Wheeler’s pint and poured a drink into an empty coffee container. “Don’t mind if I do,” he said. “You know, Ollie, you don’t really like to drink. It’s just something you’ve seen reporters in movies doing.”
“While they tell the managing editor to tear up the front page,” Wheeler said, grinning.
“They’re always stopping the presses, replating page one — it’s a wonder they ever get a paper out.”
Mooney said to Prince, “Keep your eye on the radio for a while and don’t let anything slip by. Fires are indicated by the ringing of a bell and a strong smell of wood smoke. I’m going to the john.”
When he had disappeared into the shadows, Terrell said to Prince, “Quiet night?”
“Everything is quiet but him,” Prince said, smiling ruefully after Mooney.
“That’s part of the uniform,” Terrell said. “Old reporters wear cynical masks to hide the fact that they’re bastards at heart. Don’t let it worry you.”
The police speaker sounded. The announcer’s flat voice directed the street sergeant from the Sixteenth District to an address on Manor Lane. A few seconds later he directed an ambulance to the same address.
Prince said, “But it’s rugged being treated like a stuttering cretin around here.”
Terrell held up his hand. “Just a second.”
Wheeler got to his feet and walked over to the city desk, a little frown on his lean old face. He pushed his hat on his forehead and bent forward to put his ear beside the police speaker. “Did he say two-twenty-four Manor Lane?”
“I believe so,” said Terrell.
In the silence that followed Prince said, “Mooney thinks it’s indecent that I didn’t start as a copy boy. He’s got the idea that college...”
“For God’s sake keep quiet,” Wheeler said. “They’ve sent an ambulance out to two-twenty-four Manor Lane. That’s where Richard Caldwell lives.”
“Go get Mooney,” Terrell said to Prince. “Ollie, you better give the Sixteenth a ring and see if they can tell us anything yet.” He picked up a telephone directory, then remembered that the house on Manor Lane belonged to one of Caldwell’s friends who was now in Europe. Caldwell lived in the suburbs and used the town house when late speeches or meetings kept him in the city. He stayed there with his chauffeur, an elderly man who had been with him for years.