Night Extra

Tuckerman smiled faintly. “It’s like breathing. Some nights I lie awake and I find names and addresses crowding into my mind — stories going back twenty years. Accidents, fires, shootings, and lots of little stuff. Jennie Edwards, age 9, 2123 East Seventy-Third Street, taken to St. Jerome’s Hospital and treated for dogbite. Hell, Jennie Edwards has kids of her own now. It’s quite a legacy, isn’t it? A handful of local news stories.” The police speaker cracked and another alarm sounded for the warehouse fire. “That’s three,” Williams said, glancing up at the clock. He turned to Poole. “We’ll want as much as we can get for the Postscript. Let’s see how we can make room on page one. That fire is a big one.”

“The foreign aid story can go inside,” Poole said. “It’s served its purpose.”

“Sent the blood pressure up at the Merchants’ Club at any rate. Okay...”

Terrell envied them in a way. They had definite hour-by-hour demands on their skills and energy. They caught the news on the run and packaged it competently for the public’s effortless consumption. Terrell had worked with them for eight years, and then Mike Karsh had called him in to tell him he would take over Kehoe’s column when the old man retired to his farm to raise chickens. Karsh had been at his desk, beautifully groomed as always, and giving the impression that he had a dozen more important things on his mind. Everyone who talked to him had the uneasy feeling he had been squeezed into a very tight schedule.

“It’s a piece of blank paper on page three,” Karsh had said, glancing up at him with sudden intensity. “It’s blank paper, mind you, about the size of your two hands. But multiply that space a half million times — our circulation as of this morning — and you’ve got a piece of paper big enough to sky-write on. Get me? You’ll stand in a pulpit taller than any skyscraper in the city. I want you to do a good job. I think you will. You’ve learned this raunchy trade of ours pretty well.”

“Most of it from you, Mike.”

“That’s right.” Karsh had smiled up at him then, and Terrell had the feeling he was going to say something else. But Karsh changed his mind. Reaching for his phone he had said, “Well, that’s all, Sam. Good luck.”

“Thanks, Mike.” There was a bond between them, but Terrell knew Karsh was far too fastidious to attempt to put it into words.

Now Terrell glanced over his shoulder toward Karsh’s glass-walled office. He would have liked to get his opinion on the tip he had just received, but Karsh was in conference with Max Ryerson, his sports editor, and a professional golfer who had signed to do a series for the Call-Bulletin’s syndicate. Karsh was dominating both men, Terrell could see; he went on like this for sixteen hours a day, more like a battery of pure energy than a fallible human being.

Tuckerman sat down beside Terrell and dropped a huge arm over his shoulder. “When are you coming back to work for us?”

“And give up my freedom? I’m through for the day, and you’ll be pulling that car for another seven hours.”

“You work like a dog, and the column shows it.”

“You mean that?”

“Sure, I mean it. It’s good.” Tuckerman glanced down at the silent police speaker, then lit a cigarette. “About Frankie Chance. He’s strictly bush, but he’s dangerous.”

“I’m not doing a Mafia story.”

“Listen, chum, this big shining toy is going up for grabs on election day. People will get stepped on in the general crush. Make sure you’re on the sidelines.”

“If I need a bodyguard, I’ll yell.”

“Good boy.” Tuckerman winked comically at him, then lumbered back to his chair beside the police speaker.

Terrell picked up his hat and coat, left word at the switchboard that he was going out, and then cabbed across town to the Vanderbilt Hotel, where Caldwell had installed his campaign headquarters. There was something symbolic in this choice, Terrell thought. The Vanderbilt was uncompromisingly plain, innocent of chromium plate or neon signs, an old-fashioned place, true to an honest and straightforward tradition. The city itself had been that way too, decades ago, solid and sturdy, consistent with the characters of the sea captains and merchants who had built her into one of the nation’s major ports. But the city and the old Vanderbilt had damn little in common at the moment, Terrell thought.