Charm City

WFP, that person would be history.'

Tess studied the words on the screen. 'Is this the story, or a copy?

'It's the original. The one in the paper was a copy of an earlier version, before Colleen had edited it last. But there's still a trail. The computer tells us someone sat down at computer number 637, the classical music critic's terminal, a little before eleven-fifteen P.M., the time the story was sent to composing. Everyone in the building knows the critic never remembers to shut his machine off. He's legendary for it.'

'So you can use his sign-on, knowing you won't get caught.'

'Yeah, but even with the guaranteed anonymity of working under the critic's user name, this person was real, real careful. Watch.'

Dorie tapped another key and Tess saw a form, which showed when the story had been created-almost six weeks ago, by Rosita Ruiz-and who had made changes to the story since: Ruiz, Feeney, Sterling, Reganhart, Hailey, Whitman, Mabry. Too many cooks, she thought. No wonder Feeney's usually clean writing had broken down into cliches and chest-thumping hyperbole.

'Here's my working hypothesis.' Dorie said the word as if it were two words, hypo thesis. 'He/she called up the old version on ‘Browse' and saved all of the text-' Nimbly, Dorie demonstrated how to define a large block of copy and store it with just three keystrokes. 'Then he/she went into the set directory and picked out a Page One story already set into type. A tidal wetlands story in this case, which the paper probably could live without. You see, the coding is already there, so all our unofficial editor had to do was erase the wetlands text and put the Wink text in its place.'

'What about the headline?'

'Wrote a new one-not a very good one, but it was the same number of characters as the tidal wetlands head, so it fit. Probably didn't want to take the time to make it good. Now watch this.' Dorie hit one key, and the body of the Wink Wynkowski story appeared. 'I hit justify-' she stroked another key 'and the computer tells me I'm over by six lines. I cut from the bottom-' She deleted the last graph with two keystrokes. 'I justify again. Perfect. Now all I have to do is change the bylines and I'm ready to roll.

'Last step.' She hit another key and the type was now underlined as she wrote 'SUB, SUB, SUB FOR TIDAL' at the top. 'See, that's in a special format, the computer can't ‘read' it, but the guys in the composing room can. A final command-Command X, in fact, and it's on its way. Vol-A.'

'What's Vol-A? Computer jargon for Volume A?'

'No, it's French. You know, like a magician might say. Vol-A!' And she made a large, sweeping gesture with her hand, as if pulling a rabbit out of her computer.

'Oh, voila,' Tess said, hating herself for it when she saw Dorie's face.

'I saw it in some book. I didn't know you said it that way.'

'Hey, I'm the same way, phonics screwed me up for life. I can't pronounce half the words I see in print. But it's more important to know something than to know how to pronounce it.'

'Not around here,' Dorie said, looking unhappily at her keyboard. 'I read a lot-history, especially the Civil War, and I've been listening to all these books on tape-full-length, not abridged. It took me a month to get through Great Expectations. But it doesn't matter. Here, it's how you say things, not what you say. It's how you talk, it's how you dress, and whether you went to some fancy college. And if you're a woman, it's how you look, too.'

'But you have the real power, Dorie. You could bring this place to its knees. They couldn't put the paper out without you.'

'Yet I'm still just a computer geek, right?' Apparently, she had not forgiven Tess's tactless opening line. 'Lesson over. You're on your own now. Let me tell you one more thing-'

Tess looked up hopefully.

'If you spill soda or coffee on one of my keyboards, your life won't be worth living.'

Although barely in his thirties, classical music critic Leslie Brainerd wore voluminous khakis hiked up to his sternum, belted so tightly they suggested an Empire ball gown. This effect was heightened by his long-fallen pectoral muscles, bobbling like voluptuous breasts in his knit polo shirt. Alone at his desk, he appeared to be listening to music on his headphones, which looked like a strange growth on his shiny bald head. But when Tess tapped him on the shoulder, he jumped with a violent start, awakened from a covert catnap.

'Small details are for small minds,' he sniffed, once he understood why this strange woman had disturbed his sleep. 'I have more important things on my mind than turning off this machine every night.'

'I'm sure you do,' Tess assured him, determined to ingratiate herself after her rough start with Dorie.

'Tuesday night was very busy for me,' Brainerd continued fretfully. 'I had to write on deadline. A most exquisite concert, featuring a young violinist.' The name he mentioned meant nothing to Tess, and her blank look must have given this away.

'But you must know her! She's lovely! To see her in a black velvet gown, slit to the femur, is to experience heaven. ‘The curves of her body mirror the curves of the violin, creating an almost sexual tension between the performer and her instrument.' That's from my review.'

She couldn't stop herself. 'When Pinchas Zukerman was in town, I don't remember any details about his body.'

'Oh, yes, my Zukerman piece. Another exceptional piece of deadline writing. I received quite a few compliments on that.'

Good, Brainerd's hide was too thick to pierce, armored as it was with self-importance. Tess would bet that perhaps 5,000 of the Blight's 400,000 readers actually slogged through his reviews, but they were the right 5,000, the men and women likely to fraternize with the publisher and the top editors.

'So you left here about ten-thirty. Did you see anyone on your way out? Did you go straight home, or did you stop somewhere along the way?'

Brainerd looked confused. 'Where would I go?'

'I don't know. A restaurant, a gas station, a bar. I'm trying to figure out if you can prove the time you left here, or if someone else can establish the time frame. The computer tells us when you filed, but because you didn't turn it off and the security system was down, there's no record of when you left the building. And your boss edited the piece from home, so he doesn't know when you left, either.'

'I was not happy with Harold's changes. He never gives me enough space. Just slashes from the bottom, like some vandal, or that crazy Hungarian who hammered Michelangelo's Pieta. I asked him once if he thought Mozart could be edited, and he said, ‘He could if he wrote for me.''

Tess mentally crossed Brainerd off the list of possible accomplices. It was obvious to her now that Leslie Brainerd was too egotistical to care about any story written by someone other than Leslie Brainerd. If he had stumbled into the Watergate burglary, he probably would have written about how sleek the Cubans looked in their black pants.

The others on Tess's list of those known to be in the building the evening of 'unscheduled publication' were night-side workers who wouldn't arrive until 2 P.M. or later. She took a long lunch at Lexington Market, opting for an all-peanut meal: fresh roasted nuts for her main course, then brittle from Konstant Kandy for dessert. After a morning at the Beacon-Light, with its strange codes and conflicting agendas, the old market felt refreshingly real. You want an apple? Some bananas, maybe? Apple meant apple; banana meant banana. No more, no less.

Back at the Blight a little after 2, she found custodian Irwin Spangler taking a cigarette break on the loading dock. He shook his head mournfully at all her questions. 'The only thing I ever notice around Mr. Brainerd's desk is how many cups of coffee he's managed to spill in a day. Tuesday must have been a good day for him, because I don't remember needing too much time up there. I was off the floor by eleven.'

Following the story's journey through the paper, Tess went to the composing room, on the third floor. Howard Nieman, the worker who had pasted the story in place and sent it on its way, was starting his shift. A stoop- shouldered man with thinning brown hair, he had a permanent squint from a lifetime of working with agate type.