Spearfield's Daughter (55 page)

“That would mean Jake Lintas still ran the paper.”

“I know. You'd just have to be persuasive.”

“That would never work with Mr. Lintas, not if I seduced him every night. He'd rather put the paper to bed than me.”

“Must be more wrong with the man than I thought. Well, do you want to give it a go?”

She was given time to think while the head waiter took their order. He didn't know who Jack was, but he recognized an Englishman, though this one looked much more untidy than most of them who came
here.
Jack ordered the liver and bacon, then looked up from the menu at Cleo.

“What's their bread-and-butter custard like?”

“I never got to taste it. They shot my last host just as I was about to take my first mouthful.” She looked at the head waiter, who seemed to have gone a little green. “Lord Cruze is a connoisseur of bread-and-butter custard. It had better be good.”

The head waiter bent his knee as if he were about to be knighted when he heard the title. “Of course, your lordship.”

He went away and Jack said, “He sounded like you that first time we met. He's never been closer to the Tower of London than Brooklyn Bridge.”

“Don't laugh. There's a posh Chinese restaurant in London that has all Italian waiters . . . I'll take the job.”

“Good. We'll drink to that. Do they serve English champagne here?”

He was suddenly in a light-hearted mood, throwing off his nervousness with her, and Cleo threw off her own restraint towards him. The rest of the evening passed enjoyably; even the bread-and-butter custard came up to Jack's hopes. They discussed what changes were needed to brighten up the
Courier
and were in agreement on them. Then they left the restaurant, bowed out by the head waiter and the Beefeater doorman as if they were Henry VIII and his current, if temporary, wife.

He had hired a limousine and took her home to Second Avenue. On the way he said, “How's your father?”

“He tries to sound happy in his letters, but he's not. I think he knows it's all over for him now.”

“Well, it's not all over for you. Some day he may be proud to be known as Cleo Spearfield's father.”

“Maybe. But for his sake, I hope I don't ever hear anyone say it.”

The car pulled up outside the shut and darkened delicatessen. He got out and looked around him. “You mean you live
here
?”

“Didn't your sources tell you?” She said it without malice.

“All I had was your address. We'll have to get you out of here.”

“Don't rush me, Jack. I'll move in my own good time.” She kissed him on the cheek, glad that
she
still lived above Kugel's Deli. He would never try to go to bed with her in such surroundings. He had his snobberies, about rendezvous. “Thank you for the job. I shan't let you down.”

“Good luck, Cleo. Let's be the best of friends.” He got back into the car, not pushing his own luck at the moment, and was driven away.

Cleo watched him go, then heard the car start up on the other side of the Avenue. She glanced across the street and saw what looked like a Volvo driving away. It was impossible to see who was in it.

15

I

IT SEEMED
that Cleo's fortunes on the
Courier
were in the same time slot as those of certain Presidents, though their fortunes were not the same. She had joined the
Courier
on the day Richard Nixon left the White House; she became associate editor of the paper on the day that Jimmy Carter was given the Democratic nomination for President. She did not go up to Madison Square Garden to cover the convention, though she would dearly have loved to; but she knew that Jake Lintas's and the
Courier's
sympathies were Republican and she did not want to get off on the wrong foot by showing where her own political sympathies might lie. She was not sure where they did lie because she believed that only by being apolitical could a newspaperman or woman be truly objective.

“You weren't objective when you worked for the
Examiner?
Jack said.

“I was a columnist then, not an editor. I don't want to be a biased one.”

“A biased editor is one who's blind in one eye, Quentin used to say. An objective editor is one who's blind in both. Keep both eyes open, be biased if you believe in something, and you can't go wrong.”

The day after Cleo took over as associate editor, Alain resigned. Within a week he had closed up his apartment, sold the Volvo and left for Europe. He did not say goodbye to Cleo; indeed, he had not spoken to her since he had brought her home from that Sunday in the country. She was upset because she knew he would be unhappier than she was. She hoped his disappointment in her was inflated and could be let down in Europe by a girl who went to bed regularly and felt no commitment. Like so many women she thought that men got over their rejected love quicker and less painfully than women did. She had her own double standard.

Jake Lintas did not welcome his new associate. A new office, a tiny storeroom that had been converted for her use, was set up for Cleo. It looked out on to the newsroom and she kept the door wide
open
both for ventilation and to let it be known that she was available for anyone to consult her; at the end of the first day she wondered if she should not shut the door against the Arctic air drifting in from the Eskimos at their typewriters. When she went into the big room next to Jake Lintas's for the conference of editors on the make-up of tomorrow's paper she might just as well have hung herself on the wall as a decoration. But she kept her mouth shut and bided her time.

At the end of the second week she made her first suggestion. She chose to make it to Lintas himself in his office rather than to the editorial conference.

“You can run the paper when I depart,” Jake Lintas said. “Till then things stay as they are.”

“I'm sorry you feel that way, Mr. Lintas.” He had not asked her to call him Jake and she stuck stiffly to the formal. “I hoped you would be open to a suggestion or two. I don't think my ideas will mean changing the paper's policy too much.”

“Getting rid of Bill Brenner
would
mean a change of policy, at least to most of our readers. He has been our editorial cartoonist for almost forty years. If you knew anything about American newspapers, you'd know that cartoonists are probably the longest surviving of all of us who work on them.”

“I do know that. But Bill Brenner is still drawing 1930s cartoons—his style is old-fashioned and so's his humour. And he never concedes that we have women readers, that the things he comments on affect them as much as they do men. I think it's time we had someone with more
bite.
There's a girl who does freelance work for the Denver
Post—
”

“A woman cartoonist?” It was as if Cleo had suggested a woman quarterback or, worse, a woman President. “What makes you think the public would take note of a woman's comment on the political scene? That her stuff would have more bite, as you call it, than Brenner's?”

“You're a bachelor, Mr. Lintas. Maybe you haven't come up against a woman's bite. No, I take that back. I'm sure you've had your experiences with Mrs. Roux. If she could draw, don't you think her cartoons would have plenty of bite?”

Lintas had no answer to that other than to say, “There'll be no woman cartoonist or political columnist on this paper while I run it.”

He's medieval, she thought. “You never read Dorothy Thompson or Rebecca West?” He didn't answer and she stood up. “I'm not going to give up offering suggestions, Mr. Lintas. I'm here to stay.”

She
went back to her own office and a little later Hal Rainer wandered in. “I miss you down at the police shack, Miss Spearfield.”

“Thank you, Mr. Rainer. Now cut out the bull. You're the only friend I have around here, Hal. No one comes into this office unless it's pure business. And then they only come in because Jake is tied up and they're in a hurry.”

“It's heavy going, I can see that.”

“Do people know how or why I got the job?” As far as she knew, Jack's name was not known around the office. Unless Alain, out of spite, had spread the word.

“There are rumours,” Hal said, but didn't elaborate. “You going to stick it out?”

“What's the alternative? How's crime—still paying?”

“Better than newspapers do. You remember your friend Tony Rossano? I got the word in from Kansas City. He's popped up out there and guess what? He's taken over Frank Apollo's territory. He's the front man for the Chicago top Family. Mafia family.”

“So he did set up the Apollo killing?”

“He also set up you and me.”

“Would you like to follow him up? Go out to Kansas City and see what you can make out of him?”

“Jake Lintas and Carl Fishburg would never agree to that. The expense, for one thing—you know what they're like about that. Any day now I'm expecting them to sell all the company cars and put us on bicycles.”

“Leave it with me.”

At the editorial conference that afternoon she waited till the make-up of the paper had been decided, then she said, “There's a story out in Kansas City that I think Hal Rainer should be sent to cover.” She explained the re-emergence of Tony Rossano and the implications of his new status. “I think we should run a series on how the Syndicate, or the Families, whatever we like to call them, still go their own way, putting their front men wherever they choose. It makes a mockery of all those crime commissions.”

Jake Lintas said nothing, sitting at the head of the table and looking coldly at her, certain that the lesser executioners around the table would deal with her. One of them, Carl Fishburg, said, “That's a story
for
the Kansas City papers, not ours. Forget it.”

“I think it's a national story.” Cleo looked directly at Joe Hamlyn, the national news editor. She knew that he had a wife and four daughters and, by circumstances and subjugation, was less a male chauvinist than any of the others at the table. He was, however, a man who had never been known to rock Jake Lintas's boat. “What do you think, Joe?”

He looked at Lintas and her heart sank: she knew she was going to get the brush-off she had come to expect. Then surprisingly he said, “It's a good idea. Let's send Hal out there for a week and see what he can dig up. Every paper in the country but us is running an exposé of some sort. Maybe we can try for a Pulitzer.” He laughed to show everyone it was a joke, but Cleo noticed he was no longer looking at Jake Lintas. “We haven't won one since the 1950s.”

The editor's boat had indeed been rocked: he looked seasick. “Prizes aren't the yardstick of a paper's true worth.”

“Maybe not,” said Joe Hamlyn, “but the guys like to win ‘em.”

Cleo was doodling on her notepad with the gold pen the St. Martin sisters had given her. It was a moment before she realized she had drawn a stout man with a knife sticking out of his back. She screwed up the piece of paper before her pen drew a homburg on the man. She sat forward, glancing at Hamlyn to thank him for his support, then looked directly at Jake Lintas. It was the first time she had seen a crack in that bland, sleek exterior. His boat had not only been rocked, it had run onto rocks.

“Give Hal Rainer a week out there, no more.” He stood up, ending the day's conference; but also ending any further rebellion. “That's it for today.”

Cleo followed Joe Hamlyn out of the room. “Joe, could you come into my office for a moment?”

“I have to get my guys started—”

“It will take only a moment.”

She went into her office and sat down behind her desk. He did not sit, but stood with one foot in front of the other, as if about to run, the notes in his hand held out like a relay baton about to be passed on. She smiled at him.

“Relax, Joe. Jake isn't going to have your head, I'll see to that. I'm on the board, remember.”

He tried to look relaxed and succeeded only in looking as if he might fall over. He was a balding,
unathletic
man who peered out at the world through thick glasses; he no longer had any drive, any ambition, but he had once been a very good reporter. “Cleo, he's still editor. I don't really know why I spoke up for your idea—”

“Because you know it's a good story, if Hal handles it right. And I'm sure he will. How old are you, Joe?”

“Forty-eight. What's that got to do with it?”

“You've got another ten or twelve years here, maybe more. Between you and me and no one else, I'll be editor of the paper before then. When Jake retires, I intend to take over. You and I and one or two others could make the
Courier
as good as it used to be back in the Twenties. I've looked up old copies in the morgue. It was a good newspaper then, one of the best.”

He sat down, took off his glasses and absent-mindedly cleaned them with his notes. Then he put them back on and looked at her carefully. “You sound just like my wife, only you think bigger. Are you asking me to be on your side against Jake?”

“No, I don't want the paper divided like that. It would get nowhere if that happened. But I want any ideas I have to be considered on their merits and for you to back them if you think they are any good. I don't want to be ignored because I'm a woman and because you all resent my having been jumped over the top of you. That happens all the time in America. General Eisenhower was the classic example. If it's good enough for men to be promoted that way, it's good enough for a woman.”

“It's not just that. The men see you as the thin end of the wedge of women's lib.”

“Dammit, I'm not a women's libber!” She slapped her desk. “I support some of the things they want, things we should have had years ago. But I'm not interested in all their petty flag-waving. Burning bras, calling themselves Ms., insisting on non-sexist terms like spokesperson—that's juvenile stuff. I am against the double standard and you men here had better face up to it. The point you all have to accept is something I've already told Jake—I'm here to stay!”