in his family, all the people he has collected around him, except they’re not perfect, they seem to want to leap at him….”
Andy Cyst was walking from the administration offices toward his desk. The room was so big Jack thought there was a need for conveyer belts on the floor. It was not a city room; it was a world room; a cosmic room.
Jack took his feet off the edge of Andy’s console desk.
“… That’s why I want you to come here,” Shana continued. “Investigate this. There’s so much tension. I’m afraid of what’s going to happen.”
Jack stretched the muscles of his upper back. He had had an exciting but exhausting few weeks. “Well, I’d like to meet Mister Radliegh, as I said,” Jack said into the phone, “but I do have a job, I think, and you understand I can’t drop everything and come to some Valhalla in the sky, pass myself off as some itinerant relation to the daughter-in-law to be, just in case the butler spits in Daddy’s mock turtle soup. You do understand that, don’t you?”
“What can I do to persuade you?”
“Make me believe there’s a story here.”
“Is ‘story’ all that matters to you? I’ve heard you play the guitar. I’ve had you in bed. The whole world has just seen this wonderful expose of The Tribe you’ve done. You mean to tell me you don’t care about people?”
“Get some evidence. Find me a plan to collapse those five acres of roof on Chester Radliegh.”
“I was hoping you’d do that. Find evidence, I mean.”
“I have a life, lady.”
“Lucky you.”
“Give me your phone number, just in case old Chester gets carted off to the hospital with a case of botulism, or something.”
She recited the main number of the estate. “There’s a switchboard,” she said. “I’m in the American Girl Rose Suite.”
Andy stepped into his workstation.
“What does that mean?” Jack asked.
“The suites don’t have numbers. Each is named after a particular flower, or plant. My suite is called the American Girl Rose Suite.”
“Ah. I see. Sounds homey enough. Does it come complete with pricks?”
“Homey enough if your last name is Windsor. Will you at least think about it?”
“I don’t see how I can.”
Shana Staufel sighed. “Okay. Well, it was nice meeting you. Nice talking to you.”
“Best wishes,” Jack said, “on your marriage.”
•
“A story?” Andy asked.
“A girl.”
Jack stood up.
“Alex Blair asked me to tell you to come to his office right away.”
“Who’s he?”
“His office is down the Central Corridor, right next to the C.E.O.’s.” Andy sat in his chair. “He’s waiting for you now.”
“Okay.”
“Jack?”
“Yeah?”
“You know, one of my assignments here is to answer the phone to Mister Fletcher. He’s a stockholder. A director. He has a past in this business, at least print journalism, I don’t know, was a respected journalist, I guess: I’ve heard he was; I’ve heard he wasn’t. Sometimes he calls me three and four times a day. Then weeks will go by when I don’t hear from him at all. When he has story ideas, needs some research done.”
“Sounds like a tough assignment.”
“No,” Andy said. “It’s interesting. I try to figure out what he’s doing, thinking, what he’s working on by the questions he asks. He’s very oblique. Almost never do his questions mean nothing. Usually something interesting results; sometimes something sensational. I’m learning a lot from him. I think I am. It was that way regarding The Tribe story. There were little questions about The Tribe I could have ignored, about a jailbreak in Kentucky, about a woman named Faoni. One huge story developed, and one very good story.”
“This guy Blair is waiting for me.”
“How did you meet Mister Fletcher, Jack? How did your paths cross?”
Jack said, “Ask him.”
2
“Jack!” Rising from behind his massive mahogany desk, the slim, graying man in the form fitting blue suit seemed genuinely glad to see him. Smiling, he came around the desk and shook Jack’s hand with both of his. “I’ve been seeing you around the office all week, of course, but I haven’t had the chance to stop and say hello.”
His gray eyes were not smiling.
“Are you Mister Blair?” The smiling secretary had nodded Jack through the office door without speaking.
“Alex.” The man continued to hold Jack’s hand. “Call me Alex.”
Returning to his desk, Blair nearly sang, “What a wonderful story! So glad to nail those racist bastards! Wish we could rid the world of that scum for all time! We’re so damned pleased you brought the story to Global Cable News!” He sat in the tall leather swivel chair behind his desk. “Sit down, Jack, sit down!”
Sitting, Jack looked around the office. All the wood was mahogany, or appeared to be. Everything else Jack had seen in the GCN building was glass, steel, plastic—very good plastic, of course. In the mahogany bookcases were television screens, rows of them.
“So,” Jack said, “you’re the guy who fixes the t.v.’s?”
“What?” Blair followed Jack’s eyes to the rows of t.v. sets. “Oh!” He chuckled. “A little joke.”
Jack smiled his agreement with Blair’s assessment.
Blair stirred some papers around on the glass surface of his desk. “We need your Social Security number.”
Jack reached for his wallet. “I thought you’d never ask. Where are you going to assign me?”
“Where what?” The man kept his eyes on his desk.
“I’m free to take a foreign assignment,” Jack said. “Not married. Not entangled.”
“We have your name as John Faoni.” He spelled Faoni. “Have we been right about that?”
“Yes,” Jack answered. “J-O-H-N.”
“You know, we don’t even have your address.”
“I don’t have one here in Washington, yet. Will I need one? You’ve been putting me up in a motel down the highway.”
“Oh, yes. Is it comfortable?”
“I don’t know. I’ve been spending day and night in this building, getting these stories out. This is the first morning I’ve had nothing to do.”
“I had lunch in that motel once.”
“Was it good?”
Blair’s cheeks colored slightly. “Brunch, actually.”
“Oh,” Jack said. “You slept late.”
Jack handed his Social Security card to Blair and recited his mother’s address in Indiana.
Blair asked, “How did you happen to come across Mister Fletcher?” At Jack’s lack of response, Blair continued. “Very fortunate for us you did. Mister Fletcher is a great friend to all of us here at GCN. On the Board of Directors, a Consulting/Contributing Editor, but working as he does in his own unorthodox ways, well outside, away from the network, he brings great freshness to us. Keeps us honest, in some ways. However it happened, you were very lucky to cross paths with him.”
“Yes,” Jack said. “Lucky.”
