Overhead the open ceiling was crisscrossed with wires and rollers which would later carry finished papers to the machines that would bundle them for distribution. I turned a corner and stepped into the main press room. I grabbed a pair of “visitor’s” ear protectors and listened through them to the magnificent roar of rolling paper and press. Coburn and Parker, two of the operators, saw me and waved, grinning from ear to ear.
Straight ahead was the tall black housing of the Motters, our newest presses, which had color-printing capabilities. The older, green Goss presses surrounded the two Motters. Newsprint rolled into them and streamed from them in a blur of speeding print. Eight pages at a time, cut, rolled, turned, folded, and moving, moving, moving in a web of fantastic design. I stood and watched for a while.
Coburn walked over and shouted, “Good to see you back!” It was a greeting I would hear again and again as I made my way upstairs.
Wrigley was smoking a cigar in his glass-paneled office. We called this his “God office,” which was one of two he had in the building. The God office was the one he sat in when he wanted to watch what was going on in the newsroom, or hold conferences with the editors. He had another one upstairs that he spent most of his time in; that one commanded the much more attractive view of the skyline and was more impressive to visitors.
I knew that he had watched as I made my way over to the office, stopped every few feet by an old, familiar face, or to be introduced to someone new. When I stepped into his God office, it was as if we were in a glass cage — I realized that every face was watching from the other side. I also realized that Wrigley had orchestrated our first reunion as employee and employer in this manner to make a point to the staff. Bygones were going to be bygones.
“Irene, dear!” he beamed and stretched out a hand. “Come in, come in.”
What the hell, I thought, and shook it. He glanced out the windows behind me and the staff went back to work. He didn’t say anything for a while, just sat there grinning like a fool. It was a scary sight.
Finally, he said, “Well! I guess you’ll want to get going. Your, ah, old desk—” He floundered, circling the cigar in the air as if it would help him speak. “Your old desk is in use. But I want you to take O’Connor’s desk. I think it’s — it’s appropriate. It’s just the way he left it — well, except for what the police took.”
I had wanted to work with whatever O’Connor had left here, but I guess I hadn’t considered the possibility of being given his desk as my work station. It was crazy, of course, to think that no one would be using my desk over a two-year absence — after all, I had quit and refused to come back. But so much at the paper had seemed to stand still in time, I suppose I had figured that would too; now I saw the nonsense of it.
Wrigley handed me a small brass desk key and shook my hand again, and once more all eyes seemed to be on me as I stood up and walked toward O’Connor’s desk. Except for the crackle of the scanners, the room was as quiet as I ever remembered it being.
As close as O’Connor and I were, as I approached his desk I felt like an intruder. And as curious as I was about what secrets I might learn there, I couldn’t make myself sit down in his chair. So many, many times I had seen him there. I walked around the outside of the desk, running my fingers along it. I could feel my co-workers staring at my back. Suddenly I heard a booming voice say, “Haven’t you rubberneckers got some work to do?”
It was John Walters, the news editor. John was a great old gruff bear of a man, about seventy pounds overweight and all of it cantankerous. The room was startled back into motion at his command, as if a stern teacher had walked back into a schoolroom. We got along famously. In John’s book, I was “a feisty broad.”
“Welcome back, Irene,” he said to me in his low, growling voice. “Have a seat. He’s not going to put an Irish curse on you for sitting in his chair.”
Reluctantly, I sat.
John laughed. “You’ll get used to it. That chair was lonely until just this minute.” He winked, an incredible gesture on his stern face, and strolled off to harass somebody.
For a few moments, I simply sat there, thinking of O’Connor. Finally, I reached over and turned on the monitor at his computer terminal. It glowed to life, the bright cursor pulsing on and off below the words “Sign-off completed.”
Not yet. I thought. Not yet.
13
I NEEDED A PASSWORD to get into O’Connor’s files. Unlocking the desk and looking through its drawers, I realized that the detectives who had searched it had been thorough. No loose papers, no calendar, no notebooks. I was going to have to spend some time down at police headquarters if I wanted to go through anything handwritten.
Just as I was about to give up, Lydia stopped by the desk and handed me a small piece of paper with what looked like a license plate number on it. “It’s a new password,” she said. “You’ll need it to access O’Connor’s computer files. They had to override the old one so that the cops could copy the files onto a disk.”
“Thanks.”
I entered the password in the terminal. There was the usual delay while the computer looked for the files. Just as O’Connor’s notes were coming up on the screen, the phone rang.
“Kelly,” I said, picking it up.
“Oh, I’m sorry. I was trying to reach Mr. O’Connor. Is he in?”
Now what should I do? I couldn’t bring myself to say, “Mr. O’Connor is dead,” or “He won’t be in today,” or “Not at the moment.” I settled on “May I ask who is calling?”
“This is Dr. MacPherson at the Los Angeles College of Dentistry.”
“Mac teeth,” I said half-aloud. It had to be the man referred to in O’Connor’s notes.
“I beg your pardon?”
“Oh, excuse me. This is Irene Kelly. May I help you with something?”
“Well, I’m not sure that he would want me to talk about this with anyone else, so maybe you could have him give me a call when he gets in.”
“Dr. MacPherson, I’m sorry to say that Mr. O’Connor was killed this past Sunday.”
“Killed!”
