“I’m not saying you don’t have your share of readers. I’m saying you don’t have nearly as many as you used to. According to our marketing studies you’ve got almost forty percent less. We don’t know if we can justify carrying you.”
I took a deep breath. “Look, if you drop me there are going to be some unhappy people out there. My column’s a tradition in this town.”
“Tradition or not, if we were to keep ‘The Fast Lane’, and you were to keep letting us down, where would that leave us?”
“Well, maybe I haven’t been putting as much into my column as I should, but-”
“No maybes about it, Johnny.”
My throat now felt as if I’d swallowed a cactus. “Okay,” I conceded. “Let’s say I’ve been taking things for granted. That doesn’t mean I can’t do better. What if I did more promotion? I haven’t been on a radio show in a long time and that would help get folks back into the fold.”
He was nodding, giving the idea some thought. “It would help,” he admitted. “At least it would calm some people down around here. I have an idea for this month’s column, so I’ll be generous and forgive you for now. You won’t let me down again, will you?”
I told him there was no chance of that, and I meant it. It wouldn’t happen overnight, probably take a few years, but if I was dropped from the paper, eventually my business would dwindle away to nothing. Without my column, folks would forget all about Johnny Lane. I would end up no better than Max Roth and I couldn’t let that happen.
“Good.” Eddie gave me a false smile. “That’s what I want to hear.” He paused for a moment. “There’s something else,” he said. “We’ve been getting anonymous letters about you.”
At first all I could do was stare at him. After a while I asked him what they said.
He started to laugh. It choked somewhere inside him and came out as a wheeze. “Mostly that you have been blackmailing your clients. You haven’t been doing that, have you?”
I blinked a few times before the impact of what he said hit me. Then I was so mad I could barely see. I snapped at him, asking him what the hell he thought.
As he looked at me his eyes closed to slits and that gave me a start. He was sizing me up. Then he started chuckling, his eyes back to normal.
“I’m sorry, Johnny. Just pulling your chain a little. Some people around here try to pull a story out from every piece of horse dung tossed against our door. I guess that’s part of working for a newspaper. Convicted until proven innocent.”
He laughed some more and again it died down pretty quick. “Let us hypothesize a little. If those letters are true, it means that we, the Examiner, have been promoting a common criminal, building him up into the public’s trusting eye for almost twenty years. I don’t believe I could have had my nose rubbed in it for that long without smelling anything.”
“If I found out I had,” he went on, “I would have no choice but to destroy the bastard, or at least use all the paper’s resources trying. I would feel obligated to hound him incessantly. Publish stories to get the public so incensed they’d as soon hang him as spit on him. Of course, the courts would soon enough feel they had no choice but to go after this bastard, and I’d make sure they did so with a vengeance. In the end, his life wouldn’t be worth a nickel.”
He winked at me. “I’ll tell you, Johnny, it’s a good thing those letters are crap.
* * * * *
God only knows how I sat there. The pounding in my ears had gotten so bad I could barely hear above it. I guess we shook hands, but I couldn’t say for sure. All I really knew was I somehow got out of there without harming anyone. And I don’t think even God could’ve figured that one out.
Leaving the building, I was staggering, a red haze blinding me. Even with my eyes wide open I couldn’t see anything more than shadows. I guess nature works in miraculous ways, because if I could have seen any of those smug goddamned self-important faces, I would have turned them right back into the crap they really were. So I reeled down the street like a stinking drunk, bumping into people along the way, and lucky for all concerned no one made as much as a peep because that would have been all I needed. And in the long run that wouldn’t have done me any good.
I don’t know how I ended up where I did, but whatever self-preservation instinct had blinded and deafened me also delivered me right to that bar.
Of course, there was no truth to those letters. Eddie Braggs had sense enough to know it, and he could’ve asked each of my clients and they’d tell him that. Still, it was another burden to bear. If those letters were sent out to enough people they’d hurt me some. Maybe more than some. And it wouldn’t matter whether there was a word of truth in them. I was going to have to look into it. Sooner or later, I’d find out who was sending them and why.
* * * * *
The pounding in my ears had died down and the haze was all but gone. A glimpse of myself from a mirror behind the bar showed a hard smile frozen onto my face. I tried correcting it and a woman sitting a few bar stools away started laughing. I asked her what was so damned funny.
“I’m sorry,” she said. “You must be having a real bad day. You’re spilling your drink all over yourself.”
I looked down at my hand and she was right. There was a shot glass in it and some of the whiskey was trickling out onto the front of my jacket.
“What’s the matter, your best friend just die or something?”
I gave her a quick look, a real quick one because there wasn’t really much to look at. Nothing except a small redhead who had let herself get bloated from alcohol.
“I just found out,” I remarked, “that I won’t qualify for this year’s Miss America contest. I guess you must have been told the same thing years ago.”
I was sorry as soon as I said it. I guess I was still too rattled to think straight, but that was no reason to be mean to her. She turned away from me, facing straight ahead with her eyes as blank as stones and a hurt look playing on her mouth. I apologized and bought her a drink.
She grudgingly accepted it. “Where have I seen you before?”
“Probably in the Examiner.”
“That’s it, must’ve been in the funny pages. You’re that talking dog who’s always getting dropped on his head. Arf arf.”
“I can’t go anywhere without being recognized by my fans. You got a trick for an old dog?”
“I know who you really are,” she said, slyly. “You’re Johnny Lane, the detective. You really think I’m that bad looking?”
“Not at all,” I lied. “I was too wrapped up in some stuff to see straight. I should be struck dead for being so wrong.”
“Well, in that case,” she said as she moved next to me. She held out her hand and introduced herself as Margo Halloran.
I took her hand and it felt small and warm in mine. Holding it started giving me ideas.
“I was really named Marge,” she continued, showing an easy smile. “But Margo sounds so much more exotic, don’t you think?”
“Doesn’t even begin to do you justice.”
She scrunched up her face and gave me a hard look, trying to decide if I was being insincere. I wasn’t, though. Not at all. I wasn’t trying to make up for before, either. Maybe it was the way she had held onto my hand a good deal longer than was decent. Or maybe after the day I had suffered I didn’t see how I could make it alone. Or maybe a vein had popped in my brain, leaving me witless. Whatever the reason, I wasn’t about to let her looks interfere with me.
She made up her mind that I was just being sweet and her face melted back into an easy relaxed look. “So,” she said. “You find me sexy and desirable?”
“Now, darling, how in the world could I possibly not?”
“That was a pretty nasty crack you made before,” she said, her mouth hardening a little with spite. “What makes you think I like the way you look?”
“How in the world could you possibly not?”
