Джозеф Хеллер - Maximum Impact

“Let’s get out of here, Steve. I’ll take you home and get you a drink.”

Pace shook loose. “I’m not leaving,” he insisted.

“The medical examiner will need at least an hour in there, and he’s not even here yet,” Barnes said.

“I’ll wait,” Pace replied emphatically. “I’m not leaving.”

A huge man wearing gray slacks and a herringbone jacket with a gold shield hanging from the breast pocket approached them. He was built like a pro-football lineman who’d gone slightly to seed but still could take care of himself.

“Mr. Schaeffer, I’m Detective Lieutenant Martin Lanier.” He didn’t offer a hand. Schaeffer introduced Pace.

“I understand from Lieutenant Barnes here that the two of you knew one of the victims,” Lanier continued. “Then I couldn’t help but overhear that Mr. Pace apparently believes there was more than a robbery motive for this.”

“You’re goddamned right there was,” Pace insisted again.

“Listen to me, Pace,” Lanier snapped, dropping the Mr. “It’s not going to help your friend to go mouthing off at me. And it could get you in a lot of trouble. I’m sorry for your loss, but things like this happen when guns and drugs take over a city. All of a sudden, some junkie who can’t afford to buy what he needs walks into a store—”

Pace fairly jumped at Lanier. “This was no junkie, damn it!” He was shouting at Lanier. “It was a setup, and I’m not going to let you write it off as a simple homicide!”

Lanier stood perfectly still and spoke softly. “I’ll tell you what you’re going to let me do, Pace. You’re going to let me do my job. You’re going to let me tell you to keep your voice down. And you’re going to let me order you away from here. Otherwise, you might find yourself letting me toss you in jail on a disorderly conduct charge until you cool down.”

“Let’s go, Steve,” Schaeffer said. “We’ll go back to the office and get a reporter down here right away. Let’s give the police some room on this.”

Pace whirled on Schaeffer, glaring into his eyes and finding compassion where there should have been outrage. “I’m the one the police need,” he insisted. “I’m the one who can tell them who the suspects are.”

“Steve, listen. I don’t see how this could have been set up to kill Mike. Nobody knew he was coming here. Mike didn’t know himself until a few minutes before he was killed.”

Pace pushed himself out of the editor’s grip. He was trembling with fury. Did Schaeffer actually believe what he was saying?

He staggered away, not walking anywhere in particular; not even aware he was walking. He was only aware of his rage.

He took several long, ragged breaths, trying to calm himself. He was at the curb in front of the Chronicle building, standing at a lamp post with a trash receptacle chained to it. He kicked the trash bin as hard as he could, hearing it clang against the metal light post and seeing it rock against its restraints. Several passersby stared and moved away.

“Goddamn it,” Pace shouted. “Goddamn it to hell!”

He leaned over the receptacle and was sick for a long time.

It was after ten when Schaeffer got Pace up to the tenth floor men’s restroom.

Their entrance startled a copy boy named Rudy, who was washing his hands.

“Rudy, do me a favor and ask Paul Wister to come in,” Schaeffer said.

“Yes, sir,” Rudy replied. “Is there anything I can do to help?” He was looking with wide eyes from the slightly rumpled editor to the enraged reporter and back again.

“No, Rudy, get Paul.”

Rudy must have conveyed the idea there was an emergency, because Paul Wister banged through the double outer doors within sixty seconds.

His mouth dropped. “My God, what happened?”

Schaeffer helped Pace off with his sport coat and hung it on an empty stall door. The reporter leaned against the cool wall tiles while a sink filled with water.

“Wash your face, Steve,” Schaeffer said, ignoring Wister for the moment. When Pace didn’t move, Schaeffer spoke again, harshly. “Clean yourself up! We have work to do!”

Suddenly Pace lost all semblance of control. “What do you mean, we have work to do?” He jumped right into Schaeffer’s face, defying the editor’s unyielding restraint. “You don’t have anything to do, because you don’t believe what happened down there. You want to call this another senseless crime in the city. Well, fuck that!”

“Watch your mouth, Pace,” Wister ordered. “I won’t tolerate insubordination.”

Schaeffer held up a hand, a signal for Wister to back off. He turned to the national editor. “Two things, Paul. I want you to order the first edition held up, and I want a reporter—I don’t care if it’s metro, suburban or national—get somebody down to the Price-Less drugstore down the street. There’s been a multiple homicide, and we need a story on it tomorrow. Then come back, and I’ll fill you in.”

Wister, bewildered, looked at Pace again. “We know about the shooting, Avery,” he said. “It came over the scanner. Metro has a reporter and a photographer there. The first edition’s already gone, but I can pull it back.”

“Do it,” Schaeffer ordered. “Then make two holes on the front page for a spot report on the shooting and a longer piece Steve will write when he gets a grip on himself.”

“That sounds like a long delay,” Wister suggested warily. “It’ll bump all the editions back and cost us a fortune in composing-room overtime.”

“I know,” Schaeffer snapped. “Just do it!”

“I’ll be right back,” Wister said. He left to follow orders he didn’t understand.

Pace glared at Schaeffer. “I’ve got a grip on myself, and I’ve got a pretty good grasp of reality, too,” the reporter said.

Schaeffer refused to allow himself to rise to Pace’s bait. “Then you know you’ve got a job to do,” he said. “Clean yourself up and get to your desk.”

Fifteen minutes later, with Pace working on Schaeffer’s story, the editor took Wister into his office and told him about the evening’s events and what Pace suspected about McGill’s death. As the story went into its graphic details, Wister paled progressively.

“Sweet Jesus, no wonder Steve’s out of control,” he said. “That’s unbelievable. Mike was sitting right here just a few hours ago.” Then he straightened. “Is Steve writing that two NTSB investigators have been killed in a conspiracy to preserve a cover-up?”

“Of course not,” Schaeffer said impatiently. “We don’t have that story. He’s writing about the coincidence of the deaths within four days of two key members of the NTSB team. I think if we had a mathematician, he’d say the odds of that happening were a million to one against. There will be no accusations, not even a hint we think it’s more than coincidence. I’m not convinced it isn’t coincidence, but it’s still one hell of a story.”

“You’re sending a message,” Wister said. It was a conclusion, not a question.

“Precisely. If there is a cover-up, and if homicide is being used as a convenience to preserve that cover-up, I want the devils behind the scheme to know we’re watching.”

“At the risk of repeating myself, I think you should consider whether this is a game too dangerous for us to be playing.”

“The way I look at it, Paul, the stakes are too high for us not to deal ourselves in.”

Pace made it through the eighteen-inch story. It raised fascinating questions and coincidences. Three times during the writing, he forced himself to go back and tone down the copy. In his devastated, furious state of mind, he was writing accusations he couldn’t substantiate, or that he wasn’t yet ready to make public.