False Negative (Hard Case Crime) (3 page)

A quarter past eleven, and he was having breakfast over the Monday paper when the phone rang. He didn’t know anyone up so early. Nightside reporters didn’t start work till five. No one called unless a calamity required his attention, usually a boardwalk fire or drowning worth a few paragraphs on the local page. A fire at a crowded restaurant, a hotel robbery, another killing would be a welcome change of pace—any story that didn’t involve the Coast Guard. November was too cold to go out in the cutter, and get sick to his stomach chasing after fishermen who’d been caught overnight in strong currents.

But the voice on the other end wasn’t from the paper. “Adam Jordan, this is Ed Pelfrey.”

“Do I know you?”

“I’d like to talk to you about something that ran under your name in the
Press
.”

Jordan had been meaning to remove his number from the phone book.
Press
readers weren’t shy about bothering him at home to ask what right he had to put something they didn’t like in his paper. He’d point out that it wasn’t
his
paper, and that
Thomas Jefferson had given him the right, but
Press
readers weren’t listeners. Rather than continue the civics lessons, he’d change to an unlisted number.

“I was out late, Ed, tracking down more stories for you, so if you’ll excuse me I’ll be getting back to my Rice Krispies.”

“Don’t hang up. There are a couple of articles we need to discuss.”

Only two? Readers who didn’t appreciate his reporting normally had a gripe with every word he wrote.

“One,” Pelfrey said, “is the execution of Conrad Palmer. The other is the body on the beach.”

“What didn’t you like about them?”’

“There was nothing I didn’t like. They were excellent accounts with lively writing, and good insights into the thinking of a pathetic killer, and the detectives hunting the murderer of a beautiful girl.”

“Thanks for the kind words, Ed. I really do have to get off the phone.”

“I haven’t told you who I am,” Pelfrey said. “I’m the editor of
Real Detective
magazine at Turner Men’s Group in Manhattan.”

“You’re calling from New York?”

“That’s right.”

“To say you like my writing?”

“To ask if you’ll do some work for us.”

Jordan pushed away his breakfast. He reached for his cigarettes.

“
Real Detective
is Turner Men’s lead title. We publish four fact detective magazines a month. Ever read us?”

“I don’t look at pulp—don’t get to read many magazines. You were big before the war.”

“We’re still big,” Pelfrey said. “Circulation is over a million for each title. Four books a month, twelve stories in each issue, eat up close to six hundred homicides a year. We’re starved for copy.”

“What’s six hundred murders in a country of a hundred-fifty million people?”

“Six hundred too many,” Pelfrey said. “That’s one way of looking at it. For us it’s barely enough. We can’t use just any case. The old man comes home with a load on, the wife kicks him out of bed, and he slaps her around till she stops breathing, our readers aren’t interested. Ditto for any murderer who’s not smart enough to keep out of the hands of the police for three days, the time it takes to get a good homicide probe working. We want stories with good dick-work, and sympathetic victims. Young, nubile, and attractive don’t disqualify them either. We can’t be picky with our killers. Maybe one in a thousand is an appealing character. Conrad Palmer, for instance. We’d like you to do his story for us.”

“I’ve never done magazine work.”

“Pick up a stack of dick books at a cigar store, and study the formula. Begin at the beginning with the victim gone missing, and the discovery of the body, and proceed through the investigation, arrest, and legal process. Our readers aren’t fans of literary experimentation. Tell the story in short, declarative sentences. They’ll think you’re Hemingway.”

“I don’t know,” Jordan said. “I’m pretty busy.”

“We pay fast, Mr. Jordan.”

“So does the
Press
. Every Friday.”

“We also pay well.”

“What do you call well?”

“A nickel a word. Five thousand word stories are the norm. Six or seven thousand well-chosen ones are okay, if the case merits it. What do you make on the
Press
?”

“That’s not any of your business.”

“We pay better than the papers, because good crime writers are harder to find than inventive killers. We don’t want just one story from you. Keep an eye on every promising murder in your
neck of the woods. The first story or two will take most of a week to write, and give you fits. After you get the hang, you’ll knock them out in no time. Our best regulars pull down two, three thousand a month.”

“Where did you get my name?”

“People send us clips on potential stories. It surprised me I’d never seen your byline before. Can I count on you for the Palmer case?”

Jordan was slow with an answer because he was doing math in his head. At a nickel a word he figured on a four-hundred dollar payday. How could a novice who hadn’t learned the formula tell Con Palmer’s story in fewer than eight thousand words?

“Did I mention that we also need photos?” Pelfrey asked. “The victim, of course, and the crime scene, and investigating officers digging up evidence. Gruesome is okay, but no close-ups of a morgue slab. We want pictures of the suspect when he’s apprehended, and another on his way to court or behind bars. Payment is ten dollars for every one we use. Shoot them yourself, make a deal with a staff photographer, or steal them from the police like most of our writers do. It can add another hundred or two hundred dollars to your fee.”

“When do you need the Palmer story?” Jordan asked.

“Yesterday.”

“I think I can give you what you want.”

“Some very fine reporters can’t,” Pelfrey said. “They look down their nose at the pulps. It shows in their writing.”

“How will I know if you like my story?”

“There’ll be a check in your mailbox.”

At a candy store on his corner the pulps were racked with slick girlie magazines away from
Life
,
Look
, and the
Saturday Evening Post
. A dozen or so detective titles all seemed the same. On the cover of each one was a tough guy and/or babe with a gun, or a doe-eyed innocent in the clutches of a fiend.
Easy to snicker at, but he’d never look down his nose at five cents a word, or a formula that for all he knew was as difficult to master as Professor Einstein’s.

Real Detective
readers did not like being teased with red herrings. They did not want policemen who were conflicted about sending killers to the death house. Investigators were not deductive geniuses, but bulldogs who fastened on a suspect and didn’t let up till they had a confession. The victims of murder were naïve and trusting—in particular those with money—unless they were prostitutes, strippers, or wayward youngsters asking for trouble. Lawyers were not mentioned by name, which was how the
Press
also tried to cut down on lawsuits. Killers were irredeemable monsters. Those who cheated the electric chair cheated justice.

Not every murder victim Jordan had written about for the
Press
was as uncomplicated as she would be portrayed in the pulps. He knew killers who were worse than others. On the Jersey Shore homicide came in various gradations of gray.
Real Detective
paid better than newspapers because there was an art to telling a story in just two colors—black and white—and keeping readers riveted for five thousand words.

Jordan read three magazines from cover to cover before sitting down at the typewriter. Color and authenticity were essentials of the formula. Invention was not. Pelfrey didn’t want literature, but morality tales, and maybe that wasn’t a bad thing.
Real Detective
’s grit was lacking from Jordan’s sensitive death house piece for the
Press
.

By 4:00 he’d completed three and a half pages. He could have written two long Sunday features in that time, and knocked out a couple of obituaries. He wanted to count the words, to know to the penny how well he’d spent the afternoon, but he had to leave for work.

“Mr. McAvoy’s asking for you,” a copy boy said as he ran up the stairs to the city room.

Ken McAvoy had started at the
Press
as junior varsity sports stringer during his sophomore year in high school, and risen through the news ranks to editor. He was divorced, without children, a semi-reformed alcoholic who worked seventy-hour weeks and never took a vacation. His cubicle under the south window was his only perk. He didn’t smile when he looked up at Jordan, but McAvoy almost never smiled now that he almost never drank.

“What do you want, Ken?” Jordan asked him.

McAvoy’s desk was buried under news clips and copy paper held down with linotype slugs. On the walls were historic
Press
front pages cast in lead, the attack on Pearl Harbor, D-Day, V-J Day, FDR’s death, and Bobby Thomson’s shot heard round the world. Jordan liked it here in McAvoy’s place in the sun, and occasionally let himself think about what he’d hang on the wall.

“The Palmer execution was as good a piece of writing as I’ve seen in this paper. I don’t know how you wormed your way into the death house,” McAvoy said, “but it’s where you belong.”

His faint smile puzzled Jordan, who didn’t smell alcohol on his breath.

“We’ve gotten dozens of calls and letters. Opponents of the death penalty say you deserve a Nobel Prize—and so do those in favor. I wish I had more reporters who saw things with your eyes.”

“I took dictation. The story told itself.”

“One of your others didn’t.”

“The killing at Little Egg Harbor?” Jordan said. “I caught a break. I was in my car when they called it in.”

“Not that.”

“What else—?”

“Garabedian’s talk at the Legion Hall.”

Jordan didn’t blink. McAvoy knew he’d fudged the piece. How many times had McAvoy pulled the same stunt himself?

“What about it?”

“You made him sound almost intelligent,” McAvoy said. “Something else you got wrong, too. We’re fielding calls on it, non-stop.”

“I got back late from Trenton. I was in no shape to drag myself to the Legion Hall to listen to that hack spoon out garbage. What happened? He get off a few zingers I left out?”

“Wasn’t that,” McAvoy said.

“I quoted something he didn’t say?”

“Several things. He never gave the speech.”

“Oh, crap.”

“That’s your poker face, right?” McAvoy said. “How can it be the whole town’s talking, and my ace reporter hasn’t heard?”

“Mea culpa, Ken. Quit looking at me like my back was turned while the Hindenburg burned.”

“Nobody gives a rat’s ass about the speech,” McAvoy said. “But Teddy Garabedian dropping dead ten minutes after he walks inside the Legion Hall is a huge story.”

“He did
what
?” Jordan said.

“From what I read in the
Cape May Times
and the
Vineland Journal
it was a grisly performance. Four or five people who saw it needed ambulances themselves.”

The way he felt, Jordan might be the sixth.

“For us to get beat because we went with an account of the remarks he didn’t make doesn’t do a lot for our credibility.”

“What can I say, Ken?” Jordan pressed his hand over his heart. “It’ll never happen again.”

“No,” McAvoy said. “No, it won’t.”

“I don’t suppose,” Jordan said, “you’re asking me to cover the funeral.”

“You’re a newsroom legend,” McAvoy said. “The hot shot who filed copy on a speech after the congressman who gave it, or rather didn’t, choked on a fried egg sandwich. The day will come when you’ll have a good laugh, too. Laugh loudest.”

“When do you think?”

“Five years? Ten? Not any time soon. I’m letting you go.”

“There’s got to be something I can do to put things right.”

“Not by me,” McAvoy said. “I could fight to keep you, but it means going up against the board, and probably losing my job also. Bad judgment is not a strong selling point for either of us.”

“Goddamn Garabedian,” Jordan said. “He almost went last summer eating oysters he dug up out of season. I prepared an obit on him for when we’d need it. All you need is a graph telling how he died.”

“We found it when we cleaned out your desk. We’re going with it today. Nice piece of work.”

“Might as well run mine alongside it.”

“It’s not the end of the world,” McAvoy said. “Someone else will want to take a chance on you. When they ask for references, have them call me. I’ll be happy not to pick up the phone.”

Jordan hadn’t come to the
Press
with ambitions to be a great reporter. Of the things he did better than ferret news, none paid. Journalism would serve as an apprenticeship for his real life’s work, the writing of novels. But he’d begun to have doubts. Scott Fitzgerald was churning out his best stuff when he was the age Jordan was today. Same for O’Hara. Norman Mailer was a literary sensation with a big book under his belt by twenty-five. At the end of his twenties Jordan had plenty of false starts, and shoeboxes filled with news stories told in a sure, incisive voice. He had quit believing these were evidence of failure. A newspaperman was what he wanted to be.