The Missing Chapter

I smiled and shook my head. “Nice try, but uh-uh. I understand Childress really blasted your man in print recently.”

Lon looked down at his cluttered desk top, then leaned on an elbow and rubbed his forehead. “Archie, I’m not one for washing dirty linen in public, although you’re hardly public. What I’m about to say is for your ears only — which I realize means Wolfe’s, too: If there were one person I could dump from the staff of this venerable journal, it would be Hobbs. Not just because he’s arrogant and obnoxious, but because I don’t trust him.”

“How so?”

Before Lon could answer, one of his phones bleated. He scooped up the receiver. “Yeah, yeah... Okay, I see... Yeah, all right, you can hold the edition for five minutes if you absolutely have to, but not one damn second more, got it?” He slammed the receiver down and turned back to me. “The police got the masked marvel, all right. The stupe dropped his plastic clown’s face on the sidewalk half a block from his bungalow in Jamaica. Anyway, as I was saying, I don’t trust Hobbs as far as I can throw him. There’s scuttlebutt around, has been for several years, that he’s not above taking a few shekels here and there in exchange for a glowing review. The piece Childress did for the Manhattan Literary Times was the first time he’s been accused in print, though.”

“Is there anything to it?”

Lon pressed his palms against his eyes. “Dammit, I don’t know — maybe it’s my nature, but I’m suspicious. And to be honest, I’m biased, too — against Hobbs. You know how much I love this business, Archie, but there are always a few rotten apples in a bushel, and my guess is this particular apple’s got more worms than an Ozark bait shop. Every newspaper of any size has at least one or two reporters, feature writers, or critics who figure they hold their job by some kind of divine right and, cloaked in the armor of the holy and almighty First Amendment, have a license to write anything they please — fairness and the laws of libel and privacy be damned.”

“That’s quite a speech. You mentioned there’s been talk about Hobbs.”

“We’ve had a few random complaints through the years, including both a letter and a call a while back from Horace Vinson, the big kahuna at Monarch Press. He didn’t back it up with any evidence, though.”

“Horace Vinson — is he well-thought-of?”

“Are you kidding? The guy’s like a god, particularly to the writers who eat their oats in the Monarch stable. They worship him. Hell, he’s even been compared to Maxwell Perkins.”

“Pardon my ignorance, but who’s—”

“For a second, I forgot who I was talking to,” Lon cut in, holding up a hand. “You may be street-smart, as we like to say in our columns, but your cultural literacy is deficient, to say the least. Perkins was a great editor, a legend back in the twenties and thirties and forties. He worked with Fitzgerald, Hemingway, and Wolfe — Thomas that is, not Nero.”

“Thanks, I’ll file that away in my memory bank. Back to Hobbs: Given the negative flak, is his job here at the Gazette in any jeopardy?”

“ ’Fraid not. The man who signs all our checks is a big booster of his.” Lon jabbed a thumb in the direction of the publisher’s office. “He likes the controversy Hobbs generates with his reviews. Claims it draws readers into the book section. He may be right, but I’m still for giving the guy a one-way ticket to the unemployment line, and I’ve said so to the boss more than once.”

“You’re cold of heart in these tough times, old friend. While we’re on the subject of Charles Childress, who came upon the body? Your story didn’t say.”

“I’m not sure who decided we’re still on the subject, but because we are old friends, it was another writer, a woman named Patricia Royce. She found Childress in mid-afternoon on the floor of his office; he’d apparently been dead about two hours, according to the medical examiner. Now, who’s your client?”

“Is it fair to assume that Miss — or Ms., or Mrs. — Royce was close to the deceased?”

“For somebody who doesn’t like to answer questions, you sure can ask a lot of them,” Lon complained, swiveling to answer the bleat of his telephone again. He gave his caller two curt yesses and a nasty no before signing off and turning back to me. “I can think of a pair of reasons why I’m indulging you, Archie and you know damn well what both of them are. One, I like being asked to break bread at Wolfe’s, and two, every so often you and your boss lob a scoop in this general direction. This may not be one of those times, but I can’t take the chance.”

I grinned. “You, sir, are a hard-headed, clear-eyed pragmatist.”