Джозеф Хеллер - Maximum Impact

Brennan laughed aloud, delighting himself with his joke. Pace rubbed his eyes and tried to stifle a yawn. He drained one cup of coffee from the office cafeteria and started on another, anticipating a third, except the acid was beginning to wear away the lining of his stomach, which hadn’t been offered solid food, save for one English muffin, since lunch in front of the NTSB offices the day before. It seemed like a month.

He heard Brennan get up and felt a hand on his shoulder. “Somethin’s worn you down. If I can help, I’ve got the time.” Brennan reverted to his normal brogue, which was thick enough.

“Thanks, Glenn,” Pace said.

“Is it professional or personal?” Brennan asked.

“Professional,” replied Pace.

“Something wrong?”

Pace shook his head. “I wish I knew.” He glanced up at Brennan. “You really want to help? You’ll have to listen to a story that could conservatively be called bizarre.”

“Absolutely. I love bizarre.”

“What time is the memorial thing for Whitlock?”

“Two this afternoon. They’re givin’ time for people to get to church and eat first.”

“Speaking of eating, I’ve got to get some food in me. Is the G Street Deli open?”

“Yep. I doubt the Sunday staff would survive without it.”

“Come with me while I devour an entire cow.”

“Wouldn’t miss it.”

Pace got up from his desk and snapped his fingers. Through the twin veils of exhaustion and hangover, the night before looked very fuzzy. But he remembered clearly his promise to check out the identity of the victim of the car wreck on 193.

“I’ve got to stop in Virginia Suburban first,” he told Brennan. “It’ll just take a second.”

Brennan sat down. “Think of me as your faithful dog, Patrick. You call, I’ll be there.”

Pace snorted. “Patrick was a saint, not a dog.”

“Well, I’ll be a saint of a dog,” Brennan promised.

“If you try to lick my face, I’ll deck you.”

Pace headed for the stairway down to Suzy O’Connor’s floor, but a signal from Wister detoured him. The look on the national editor’s face could have soured a quart of milk. Pace guessed it was due to something more than having to work on Sunday.

“I didn’t like the idea of Glenn covering the NTSB briefing last night,” Wister scolded without so much as saying good morning. “He doesn’t have your expertise. On top of that, I expected you in earlier today, ready to do some serious business, rather than obviously hung over and playing to Glenn’s ill-conceived notions of hilarity. There is a certain amount of responsibility that goes with the privilege of working for the Chronicle, you know.”

Pace hadn’t intended to charge overtime for his work the night before. But so furious was he at Wister’s officious lecture that he decided to put in for every minute of it, including the time spent drinking Black Jack with Mike McGill.

“I was not out partying last night, Paul,” he lashed back. “I worked on a lead on the Sexton story until dawn. I got home after six. You can believe it or not. I don’t give a shit. But I’m not going to take your abuse when you don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“Don’t be insubordinate,” Wister cautioned. He looked at Pace skeptically. “You were working all night on a lead?”

“Yes.”

“Did it come to anything?”

“No. Ah, not yet. The truth is, I’m not sure. There’s something I have to check with the Virginia suburban desk.”

“I think we’d better talk to the Old Man first. He’s in the Glory Room going over the Sunday papers. He’s been waiting for you.”

The man Pace found in the conference room was dressed in well-worn Dockers, a faded kelly-green Polo knit shirt, and Topsiders without socks. His face was ruddy and his hair windblown. He could have stepped off a yacht on the Chesapeake Bay. Pace had seen Schaeffer casual before but never at the office. Paul Wister, of course, was in a three-piece suit, this being a weekend notwithstanding.

Schaeffer noticed them standing at the door and grinned broadly. “Steve, come in and see what you did to the opposition. Or have you seen it already?”

“No,” Pace replied. “I saw page one of ours this morning, but I didn’t get up until after ten, and I haven’t had a chance to look at the Post or the Times.”

“You sleeping in on the job?” Schaeffer grinned. “We’re paying you handsomely, and all we ask in return is you work a solid eighty or ninety hours a week.”

“I didn’t go to bed until dawn, Avery.”

“He says he was working on a lead all night,” Wister said, “but he hasn’t told me anything about it except it didn’t pan out.”

“You didn’t give me a chance to tell you,” Pace responded.

Schaeffer looked from one to the other, the expression on his face growing serious. He motioned for them to sit down.

“If you two have a problem, take care of it,” he ordered. “I don’t want it in the newsroom interfering with business. I don’t want it anywhere interfering with the biggest story of the year. I want it handled. Today.”

He sat back in the chair at the head of the table, and his face brightened as though the mere act of dismissing discord had ended it. “Now let’s talk about tomorrow.” He nodded toward Pace. “What’s this great lead of yours?”

Pace retold the story, including most of the details. But as he heard himself telling it, it sounded trite. He didn’t have any evidence to support the theory of a conspiracy. There was a mysterious voice on the telephone and a coincidental fatal automobile accident on Georgetown Pike. Nothing more.

When he finished, Pace stared through the plate glass at the ornate grayness of the Old Executive Office Building. It was the best alternative he had to the scorn he thought he’d see if he looked at the two faces across the table.

He was right about Wister’s. “So you went gallivanting all over the Virginia countryside in the middle of the night with an ex-jet jock on some wild-goose chase precipitated by a crank phone call,” the national editor summed up. “Jesus, Pace, when are you going to grow up?”

Pace had had enough. “Damn it, Paul, you don’t know it was a crank call,” he insisted. “It sounded straight to me. Mike couldn’t dismiss it, either. We’ve trusted his instincts before. There’s no reason to stop trusting him now.”

“Except he’s suddenly become your editor, telling you where to go and what to do. That’s not his job or his privilege.”

“He did not—”

“Stop it, both of you!” Schaeffer was sitting forward in his chair, a deep scowl furrowing his face. “I told you to end this. This sparring between you two is over. Clear?”

Both Pace and Wister nodded.

Schaeffer nodded. “When do you plan on checking the dead body?” he asked Pace.

“I was on my way to ask Suzy if her people had anything from the Virginia State Police when Paul said you wanted to see us.”

“Avery, I don’t think this is getting us anywhere,” Wister protested. “Steve’s going to be all over the place looking for conspiracies under every rock while the Post and the Times clean up on the central story. We’d be better off staying in the main channel.”

“I don’t want to stray far from the main channel, either,” Schaeffer concurred. “But I think we can spare a little time to explore this side channel. We have two reasons. The first is Mike McGill’s reliability. The second is Pace’s conversation on Friday with, ah, that guy from the Senate Transportation Committee.” He was making circles in the air with his left forefinger pointed at Pace, asking for help with the name he couldn’t pull from his memory.