The sudden fussy clearing of a throat brought Margo back to the present. She looked up to see a short man standing before her, wearing a worn tweed suit, his leathery face lined with innumerable wrinkles.
“I thought I heard somebody wandering around my skeletons,” Hagedorn said, frowning, tiny arms crossed in front of his chest. “Well?”
Despite herself, Margo felt annoyance begin to take the place of her daydreams. His skeletons, indeed. Stifling her irritation, she pulled a sheet of paper from her carryall. “Dr. Frock wants these specimens sent up to the Forensic Anthropology lab,” she replied, handing the sheet to Hagedorn.
He scanned it, the frown deepening. “
Mentioning the Director’s name had the desired effect. “Oh, very well. But it’s still irregular. Come with me.”
He led her back toward an ancient wooden desk, heavily scarred and pitted from years of neglect. Behind the desk—in rows of tiny drawers—was Hagedorn’s filing system. He checked the first number on Frock’s list, then ran a thin yellow finger down drawers. Stopping at last, he pulled out a drawer, rifled through the cards within, and plucked one out, harrumphing in displeasure. “1930-262,” he read. “Just my luck. On the very top tier. I’m not as young as I used to be, you know. Heights bother me.”
Suddenly he stopped. “This is a medical skeleton,” he said, pointing to a red dot in the upper right-hand corner of the card.
“All of the requests are,” Margo replied. Though it was clear Hagedorn wanted an explanation, she fell into a stubborn silence. At last the administrator cleared his throat again, his eyebrows contracting at the irregularity of the request. “If you insist,” he said, sliding the card across the desk toward her. “Sign this, add your extension and department, and don’t forget to place Frock’s name in the Supervisor column.”
Margo looked at the grimy paper, its edges soft with wear and age.
She bent forward to scrawl her name in the first blank row, then stopped abruptly. There, three or four names up the list of previous researchers, was the jagged scrawl she remembered so well: G. S. Kawakita, Anthropology. He’d taken this very skeleton out for research five years earlier. Not surprising, she supposed: Greg had always been fascinated by the unusual, the abnormal, the exception to the rule. Perhaps that’s why he’d been attracted to Dr. Frock and his theory of fractal evolution.
She remembered how Greg had been notorious for using this very storage room for fly-casting practice, snapping nymphs down the narrow rows during practically every coffee break. When Hagedorn was not around, of course. She suppressed a grin.
There was a high-pitched, rattling wheeze, and she looked up from the card into the small impatient eyes of Hagedorn. “It’s just your
THE BROAD ORNATE front of the Polyhymnia Club squatted on West 45th Street, its marble and sandstone bulk heaving outward like the stern of some Spanish galleon. Above its awning, a gilt statue of the club’s namesake, the muse of rhetoric, stood on one foot as if poised to take flight. Beneath it, the club’s revolving door did a brisk Saturday evening business; although patronage was limited to members of the New York press, that still let in, as Horace Greeley once complained, “half the unemployed young dogs south of Fourteenth Street.”
Deep within its oak fastness, Bill Smithback stepped up to the bar and ordered a Caol Ila without ice. Though he was for the most part uninterested in the club’s pedigree, he was very interested in its unique collection of specially imported scotch whisky. The single malt filled his mouth with the sensation of peat smoke and Loch nam Ban water. He savored it for a long moment, then glanced around, ready to drink in the congratulating nods and admiring glances of his fellow pressmen.
Getting the Wisher assignment had been one of the biggest breaks of his life. Already, it had netted him three front-page stories in less than a week. He’d even been able to make the ramblings and vague threats of the homeless leader, Mephisto, seem incisive and pertinent. Just that afternoon, as Smithback was leaving the office, Murray had thumped him heartily on the back. Murray, the editor who never had a word of praise for anyone.
His survey of the clientele unsuccessful, Smithback turned toward the bar and took another sip. It was extraordinary, he thought, the power of a journalist. A whole city was now up in arms because of him. Ginny, the pool secretary, was at last growing overwhelmed by the volume of calls about the reward, and they’d had to bring in a dedicated switchboard operator. Even the mayor was taking heat. Mrs. Wisher had to be pleased with what he’d accomplished. It was inspired.
A vague thought that somehow Mrs. Wisher had deliberately manipulated him flitted across his field of consciousness and was quickly pushed aside. He took another sip of scotch, closing his eyes as it trickled down his gullet like a dream of a finer world.
A hand gripped his shoulder, and he turned eagerly. It was Bryce Harriman, the
“Oh,” Smithback said, his face falling.
“Way to go, Bill,” said Bryce, his hand still on Smithback’s shoulder as he elbowed up to the bar and rapped a coin on the zinc. “Killians,” he said to the bartender.
Smithback nodded. Christ, he thought, of all the people to run into.
“Yup,” said Harriman. “Pretty clever. I bet they loved it over at the
