Westlake, Donald E - Sara and Jack 01 (4 page)

 
          
“That
isn’t the worst of it,” he told her. “One of the five is undeliverable.”

 
          
“Which?”

 
          
“Gallstones.
I asked the question,
Massa
answered it. Yes.”

 
          
“Oh,
boy.” Mary Kate looked past Jack at the new one. “And what is this?”

 
          
“The
latest keeper of the flame. Sara Something—”

 
          
“Joslyn.”

 
          
“Sure.”
To Sara Joslyn, Jack said, “Mary Kate Scudder here is my secretary, not yours.
Keep that in mind, she may be nice to you.”

 
          
“How
do you do,” Sara Joslyn said to Mary Kate.

 
          
Mary
Kate said, “I’m not sure,” and gave Jack a look. “Gallstones, huh?”

 
          
“Rub
it in,” Jack said. “Give her the nutritionists.”

 
          
As
Mary Kate opened a file drawer, one of Jack’s reporters, a tough broad named
Ida Gavin, came into the squaricle and said, “It is definitely sex.”

 
          
“Good,”
Jack said. To Mary Kate he said, “Also give her the goods requisition. Sign my
name.” To Ida he said, “Expand.”

 
          
“The
Keely Jones story,” Ida said, referring to a currendy popular television star.
“She is definitely not only two-timing her husband with her manager, she is
three-timing the manager with Mr. X.”

 
          
“And
you have Mr. X,” Jack suggested.

 
          
“A
swimming pool salesman.”

 
          
“Okay,”
Jack said. “Not as good as a cardinal.”

 
          
“An
ex-con,” Ida added.

 
          
“Oh,
nice.”

 
          
“Vehicular
homicide. Pickup truck, pregnant woman, splat.”

 
          
“Massa
will want Miss Jones’s reaction to this news,” Jack said. “On tape.”

 
          
“The
little lady talks to nobody these days,” Ida said. “Not even to God.”

 
          
“Solve
it, Ida, that’s why we’re here.” Turning away as Ida left, Jack saw the new one
standing with several papers in her hand. Taking them from her, he returned them
one at a time with explanations: “This is your requisition. Take the elevator
down to one, turn to the right, give them this sheet, they’ll give you your
typewriter, tape recorder, everything you need.”

 
          
“Okay.”

 
          
Pointing
toward the reporters’ tables on the other side of the room, Jack said, “Then
you find yourself an empty oar over there, and row.”

 
          
“Any
one at all?”

 
          
“You’re
quick, I like that.” Handing her two more sheets, he said, “These are tame
nutritionists, they
will
talk to the
Galaxy
. You phone them and— Why aren’t
you writing this down?”

 
          
“Oh.
Sorry.” Putting the papers on Mary Kate’s desk, she fumbled in her shoulder bag
and produced steno pad and pencil. “Ready.”

 
          
“Fine.
This is your money quote. Potato—” The girl looked blank.

       
    
“My what?”

           
“You must be a journalism school
graduate,” Jack said.

 
          
She
looked miffed. “Yes?”

 
          
“We
talk faster here. The money quote is what you must get your subject to say.”

 
          
“All
right,” she said. She was still miffed.

 
          
“This
time, the money quote is, potato chips are a nutritious food, they contain all
the values of potatoes plus fat
plus
salt—try to find a better word than fat—including protein. Eaten in moderation,
potato chips can give you almost every known and unknown requirement of the human
diet. Get me percentages; nitrate this, sodium that.”

 
          
The
girl looked up from her scribbling, bewildered. “But—what’s it
for?”

 
          
“The
beer and potato chip diet,” Jack told her, then grabbed up the papers he’d
given her and drew a black pen line through one name, saying, “Don’t call this
one, he gave us the beer quote.” He handed her the papers again.

 
          
She
stood there, looking stunned. “The, the beer and ...”

 
          
“Don’t
worry about it,” he advised her. “Just get me the quote.” He turned away as Don
Grove slouched into the squaricle, looking as pessimistic as ever. “Yeah?”

 
          
“You
couldn’t use a Martian wedding, could you?”

 
          
“No,”
Jack told him. “What happened to your two-headed calf?” Don shrugged. “They
wanted the money before the pix.” He sloped away, and the new girl said, “Umm
...”

 
          
Turning
back to her, Jack said, “Finished already?”

 
          
“Well,
as a matter of fact,” she said, “I do have a story. A different one.”

 
          
Jack
reared back, the better to view this wonder. “A story? Your first minute on the
job? Do you hear this, Mary Kate?”

 
          
“Yes,”
Mary Kate said, reserving judgment.

 
          
“Tell
me this story,” Jack demanded, “in one brief, fact-filled, explosive sentence.”

 
          
“There’s
a murdered man out on the road,” she said, and looked smug, waiting to be
patted on the head.

 
          
Jack
held his breath for the kicker, though he already knew it wouldn’t come. He
didn’t doubt her statement, not for a second—if she said there was a murdered
man out on the road, there was a murdered man out on the road—but where was the
fact’s
usefulness?
At last Jack asked
the core question: “So what?”

 
          
She
gaped. “I beg your pardon?”

 
          
Okay,
okay; no point taking it out on her, she’s brand-new, nothing prior to this in
the history of the world has been her fault. And here, in any case, is a golden
opportunity for an entry-level lesson in the lower journalism. “Who is this
murdered man?” Jack asked.

 
          
Wide-eyed,
she spread her hands, saying, “I don’t know, I just—”

 
          
“Who
murdered him?”

 
          
“How
am I supposed to—”

 
          
“On
what series is he a regular?”

 
          
Her
jaw dropped, then clenched. “Are you,” she asked, “trying to make fun of me?”

 
          
“Not
at all,” Jack assured her, while Mary Kate shook her head in scorn. “I am
merely trying to point out,” he said, “that the
Galaxy
is a
national
newspaper,
not some local hometown rag. We happen to be in the state of
Florida
, in which almost
every
road contains its murdered man, sometimes several. They’re
mostly grubby little crimes about grubby little people, usually connected with
cocaine or the Marielistas or both. Our readers don’t care about cocaine and
never heard of the Marie- listas, and they’re happier that way.
Our
readers care about the beer and
potato chip diet. They will love us and bless us and praise us as saviors of
mankind when they read the beer and potato chip diet, and
you
are delaying that happy consummation. Now, you just got out of
journalism school, so naturally you—”

 
          
“I
did not,” she said. “I worked a year for—”

           
“Well, now you’re working
here.
Of course, if you’d rather
not
pursue the beer and—”

           
“I never said that!” Angry, jaw
thrust forward, hands on hips, loudly she said, “I happen to be a reporter, and
a good reporter, and I can follow my editor’s instruc—”

 
          
“Good,”
he told her, meeting glare with glare, letting all the frustration and rage
spill out, not caring anymore. “Because,” he told her, bearing down,
“my
survival on this rag depends on my
people giving me what
Massa
wants. If you can do it, do it. If you can’t, save us all a lot of
trouble and quit now.” Then, realizing he was just about to go too far, that he
was on the verge of firing this poor girl before she ever got a chance to go to
work, he turned away to Mary Kate and said, “I’ll be in the men’s room,
contemplating suicide.”

 
          
Sara
stared, openmouthed, as that insufferable man went stomping away, turning left,
then right, among the black lines. The skinny little rat-faced secretary said,
“Honey.”

 
          
Expecting
sympathy, an explanation,
something
,

           
Sara turned her irritated expression
toward Mary Kate Scudder, saying, “What?”

 
          
Mary
Kate pointed across the room. “The phones are over there,” she said.

 
          
Coming
back up to the third floor, lugging the small portable manual typewriter and
the package of pens and pencils and notepads and typing paper and paper clips
and Liquid Paper and scissors and Scotch tape, Sara was still furious. Leaving
the elevator, she looked over across the land of black lines and there he was,
Jack Ingersoll, once again in his own square, ranting at a man and a woman,
pushing his fingers through his hair, pacing, ranting and ranting while the man
and woman sometimes nodded, sometimes interjected a word, and the secretary,
Mary Kate Scudder, unconcernedly typed.

 
          
Why
would anybody ever work for such a beast?
I’ll
work for him, Sara thought, but only to shove his nastiness and cynicism right
back down his throat. I’ll
prove
myself here, and they’ll transfer me to a decent editor once they find out I
can both take it and dish it out, and
then
we’ll see.

 
          
In
the meantime, Ingersoll was too far away to be glared at effectively, and all
this stuff she carried was
heavy
, so
Sara turned and went over to the rows of long tables, where the reporters still
typed or jotted notes or talked, talked, talked on the telephone. There were
very few empty spaces at the tables, and Sara hesitated, unsure what to do,
until a young woman in the middle of it all waved and beckoned for her to come
over.

 
          
There
was an empty space to the young woman’s left. Gratefully, Sara dumped all the
stationery store stuff there and said, “Thanks. I’m new.” “You surely are,” the
young woman said, with a finishing school accent. She had a sharpboned face,
attractive in a patrician way. “I’m an old hand,” she said, “I’ve been here for
months and months. I’m Phyllis Perkinson.”

 
          
“Sara
Joslyn.”

 
          
They
shook hands, Phyllis Perkinson grinning like someone playing grown-up. “Who’s
your editor?” she asked.

 
          
“A
truly terrible person,” Sara said, “called Jack Ingersoll.”

 
          
Phyllis
Perkinson looked surprised. “Truly terrible? Jack Ingersoll’s a pussycat.”

 
          
“Not
with me, he wasn’t. I came in with—” Instinctively dramatic, Sara lowered her
voice, leaning toward Phyllis Perkinson as she said, “The most incredible thing
happened, on my way here.”

           
Phyllis smiled, looking ready to
laugh. “A funny thing happened on the way to work?”

           
“Not that funny. I found a murdered
man!” Phyllis looked puzzled through her smile, as though still looking for the
punchline.

           
“You found a what?”

           
“A murdered man.” Sara quickly sketched
in the scene out beside the road, with none of the flourishes it would have
received if she’d been permitted to
write
the story, and finished, “When I told that, that, Ingersoll, he said, ‘Oh? What
series is he a
regular
on?’ Very
snotty, just like that.”

 
          
“Oh,”
Phyllis said, frowning now as she thought it all over. “Well, maybe Jack got up
on the wrong side of the bed this morning,” she decided. “I mean, that was a
little rough.”

 
          
“I
sure thought so.”

 
          
“Of
course, that
isn't
our kind of story,
you know,” Phyllis went on. “I mean, not really.”

 
          
“I
understand that.
Now
I do.”

 
          
Phyllis
dismissed the subject with an airy shrug. “Jack’s my editor, too,” she said,
“and when you get to know him, believe me, you’ll think he’s great.”

 
          
“I
can hardly wait,” Sara said, unconvinced.

           
“What are you working on?”

           
“Something called the beer and
potato chip diet,” Sara said, having trouble believing it herself. “Nutritive
values in potato chips.”

 
          
“Oh,
he gave you an easy one!” Phyllis actually clapped her hands in delight.
“There, see? I told you he was nice. He starts you off with something simple
and easy, you don’t even have to he about who you are, and the first thing you
know, you’re an old pro like me.” Laughing lightly, Phyllis said, “And now
I'd
better get back to work.” And, with
a little wave of her fingertips, she turned away and reached for her phone.
Setting up her desk space, Sara couldn’t help but hear Phyllis’s telephone
conversation. After dialing what was obviously a long distance number, Phyllis
said, with an official briskness completely unlike her previous conversational
style, “Rosso Brothers? Yes, good morning, this is Miss Ballantine of Garfield
Fiskin, accountants for John Michael Mercer. I understand you’ve taken over the
gardening tasks at the Mercer est— No? Sorry.” And she hung up.

 
          
Having
arranged everything more or less neatiy on her small desk space, Sara looked at
the list of tame nutritionists, then rested her hand on the phone, but didn’t
immediately make a call. Instead, she listened to Phyllis talk to another
gardening service and present herself again as Miss Ballantine of John Michael
Mercer’s accountants. Sara knew that John Michael Mercer was a television star
with his own series, and so he would certainly be covered from time to time in
the newspapers, but his
gardener?
What was that all about? Unable to swallow her curiosity, she waited till
Phyllis’s second call was finished, then said, “Phyllis? Could I ask a
question?”

 
          
“He
fired our other spy,” Phyllis said.

 
          
Sara
didn’t get it. “Fired? Spy?”

 
          
“John
Michael Mercer,” Phyllis explained. “
Massa
’s in love with John Michael Mercer, he
wants stories about him all the time, but Mercer doesn’t like the
Galaxy.
So we keep a spy in his house,
and then he fmds the spy and fires him, and then we have to plant another one.
The last one was terrific, he worked for the security service, he was a guard
right on the property, he knew
everything
”

 
          
Sara
said, “A private guard, working for him? And he was a
spy?”

 
          
“The
security company got all upset when they found out,” Phyllis said, laughing as
though it were some sort of college prank she was talking about. “So now we’re
going to try to go through his gardener, if we can
find
his gardener. Excuse me.” And she went back to the phone.

 
          
I
should leave, Sara thought. I should quit this crazy place, I should walk out
right now. Oh, if only the
Courier-Observer
hadn’t been merged! I
liked
working
there. I’ll never like this place. I should stand up this instant and walk out
and never come back.

 
          
But
she didn’t. She picked up the phone and called a tame nutritionist.

 
          
Seated
at his typewriter, Jack typed. He typed:

 
          
Does
sex cure gallstones? Go to macro, then back to micro. Does sex cure anything?
Well, wait, wait, wait, a healthy sex life— What about acne? Regular sexual
activity tones the body, removes wastes— Forget that part. Tones the body.
Regular non-kinky sex tends toward mental and physical health. Can we get into
it that way? Doctor, would you say a normally active sex life would tend to
increased mental and physical health? Would there be some physical illnesses,
Doctor, such as acne, various hormonal imbalances, that are improved by regular
sexual activity? Doctor, I’m begging you here. Is it possible that certain disorders
of the internal organs might be prevented or alleviated by regular normal
sexual activity? The prostate, for instance. My God, the prostate! We may be
onto

 
          
The
new one approached the squaricle, a grim smile on her mouth and several sheets
of paper in her hands. Jack tried to concentrate on the problem, but she was
insistent, passing right by Mary Kate, stepping across the squaricle, slapping
the pages onto Jack’s desk, next to the typewriter. “The potato chip quote,”
she announced.

 
          
“Good,
good, give it to Mary Kate.”

           
 
something here

 
          
“Don’t
you want to read it?”

 
          
Jack
gave her a look that would have burned through a vault door. “I am
busy,”
he said. “You’re a hotshot
reporter, as I understand it. You understood the assignment, as I understand
it. You say you have completed the assignment, as I understand it. I
understand. Give it to Mary Kate.”

 
          
Doctor,
the prostate gland in men may be affected by frequency and manner of sexual
activity. Now, is it possible

 
          
“Wait!”
Jack called after her as, heavily miffed, having given Mary Kate her potato
chip wisdom, the new one was about to march away. “I’ll have another assignment
for you in just a minute.”

 
          
“As
you understand it,” she said.

           
He didn’t have time to respond to
that. The future of mankind itself hung in the balance.

 
          
that
other inner organs in the human body can also be affected, for good or ill, by
sexual activity? Doctor, is it at all possible that a combination of mental and
physical wellbeing, brought on by normal healthy sexual activity, might reduce
the danger of developing gallstones, for example?

 
          
“Oh
-kay!”
Jack yanked the sheet of paper
from the typewriter, and turned grinning to Mary Kate. “Give her the
internists,” he said. “Once again, we are snatching victory from the jaws of
defeat.”

           
“Feels more like the stomach of
defeat,” Mary Kate said, opening a file drawer.

           
“Very humorous,” Jack agreed, and
turned to the new one. If he admitted he’d forgotten her name she’d just get
all snippy again. “Now, Champ,” he said, smoothing the sheet of paper neady on
his desk, “let me describe our next money quote.”

 
          
During
lunch in the employees’ commissary on the second floor, a broad beige room that
combined all the most charming qualities of a bus depot in
Newark
with those of a minimum security prison,
Phyllis suggested Sara move in and share her apartment. “It’s
huge
,” Phyllis assured her. “My
salary’s so ridiculous, I just went out and splurged, and there I am, stuck
with the lease. It’s just too large for me. Come on, Sara, it’ll be fun.”

 
          
“I’d
love to,” Sara said, having spent last night in the Holiday Inn back in the
city and beginning to wonder when she’d have time to go apartment hunting for
herself. So it was decided, and Sara went back to eating lunch, which was
pretty good despite the surroundings, and very cheap.

 
          
Lunch
happened between her successful capturing of the gallstone quote—the awful
Ingersoll actually smiled when she brought it to him, or rather brought it to
Mary Kate, whose comment was, “Holy shitsky!”—and her unsuccessful effort to
learn which of Florida’s many swimming pool care services tended to the
swimming pool of John Michael Mercer.
“One
of these people is lying,” Phyllis said darkly at one point, still failing to
connect with John Michael Mercer’s gardener. “The question is, which one? And
the problem is, being service industries, they’re used to lying on the phone
anyway.”

 
          
The
question turned out to be unanswerable, at least for today, but in the process
Sara learned about the reference section, an area of library stacks in a remote
comer of the floor. In addition to dictionaries, encyclopedias,
Who's Whos
, almanacs and atlases, the
reference section also contained what was apparently every phone book published
in America, filed alphabetically by state and then by city. Sara and Phyllis
alternated visits to this section, bringing back
Florida
phone books two at a time, calling the pool
services and the gardening services, failing again. Then, at about ten to four,
the workday nearly done, Sara returned to her desk space to find the white
light on her phone flashing. Holding the latest phone books protectively to her
chest, she said, “Why is it doing
that?”