Blood and Oranges by James Goldsborough (top 50 books to read .TXT) 📕

helped get rich, including people at the Times, Pitts’s corruption was revealed in a series of front-page stories that won Pat Murphy a Pulitzer Prize.

And got him killed.

“The police don’t find him because the police don’t want to find him,” McManus croaked in a voice scratchier than his usual baritone because he was smoking more and sleeping less. “They don’t find him because they’re in on it somehow—as you all know.” The city editor paused to look around the table. “How they’re in on it, I don’t know and neither do you, and I pay you to know. Either someone in this room finds Pat Murphy’s murderer or he will go on hoisting cold ones at the Canton Bazaar until another reporter is knocked off.” Another pause. “And it could be any one of you.”

The conference room fell silent. Outside the Times third-floor windows, the First Street traffic made its usual din, muffled by double windows installed so people could talk to each other without shouting—though not all the shouting could be blamed on the traffic. Listening to the city editor, eight reporters and editors gazed out the windows to the soothing sight of palms and plants and happy people sunning themselves on the grass around city hall, where they could not hear Larry McManus.

Lizzie was fidgeting because they’d been over all this before and had gotten nowhere. They had no leads. The pressure on McManus was building inside the newspaper and out. She was ready to ask him to take her off the metro desk and have a crack at it, but wanted him to ask first. The public had no confidence in city hall. The Times had already hinted that the police were in on it. If the Times didn’t catch the killer of its own reporter, who would?

McManus looked around at the faces focused on him, not one of them showing any sign of speaking. “What I’m going to do,” he said, exasperation finally breaking through, “is start a running story, a daily front page notebook on the Murphy case. The notebook’s success will depend on what you bring me each day. Feed me and we will look good. Starve me and we will look stupid—a notebook with no notes.”

He paused for a last drag on his cigarette before stubbing it out in the overflowing ashtray. Looking up, his eyes came to rest on Lizzie, and she wondered if they were thinking the same thing. “The point is,” he said, “I don’t want anyone in the city to start thinking—particularly in the police department—that we’re going to let this thing die. And God help us all if the Examiner or Daily News scoops us on the murder of our own Pat Murphy!”

Afterward, she phoned Asa, and they agreed to meet for lunch at the bazaar. She walked over from the newspaper to find him waiting, punctual despite everything. He looked good, she thought, sharp in pinstripes and a natty red silk tie tied in a neat Windsor, better than in the dingy old days at the DA’s office. After the war he’d joined a private law office. She hadn’t seen that much of him since the divorce and her remarriage. Her view was that the divorce had been good for both of them, which wasn’t necessarily his view.

“I worry about Larry,” she said after they were seated. “He smokes too much and worries too much. His is face redder than that tie you’re wearing. Murphy’s killer will have a second victim at this rate.”

He was wondering why she’d called and why he’d accepted, though he had nothing else scheduled. Seeing her always hurt. “What am I supposed to do about it?”

It was not the friendliest of openings. “I’m going to ask him to put me on it. I need some names from you.”

They’d ordered pot stickers and chicken with broccoli and noodles and watched as the waiter poured green tea. The Canton Bazaar on Temple was more like a two-story Chinese cafeteria than a bazaar. It was a hangout for anyone who had anything to do with city hall, the hall of justice, the courts or the Times. If you wanted to be seen, you stayed downstairs. If you wanted privacy, you came early and slipped upstairs. There were things going on in the back that were illegal, but nobody bothered.

“My advice is to stay away. Anyway, I don’t know anyone up there anymore. The war, a new mayor, new DA, me a new job.”

“Who owed Pitts, owed him enough to blow up Pat Murphy?”

The waiter brought lunch and left quickly, as they are trained to do at the bazaar.

“There has to be a secretary or paralegal or someone who’s been around forever and knows everything,” she said. “Just give me a name or two, somewhere to start.”

“I’m sure your reporters have been through the staff.”

She slurped up a noodle trying to escape. “Maybe they have.”

“I thought you were happy on the metro desk, thought you liked the hours.”

Which showed how out of touch they still were. They said war changed you, but how had it changed Asa Aldridge, a USC Law School, JAG Corps guy who’d spent his career handling AWOLs and Article 32s and never made it west of Honolulu? He was the same guy she’d married five years before and was sent away. They weren’t the only couple to marry in the great surge of Pearl Harbor patriotism and later discover they had nothing in common.

Maggie had warned her about Asa. “Arnaud and I were already sleeping together,” she said. “Are you and Asa sleeping together? No, don’t answer that because it’s obvious you’re not.” The “obvious” had irked Lizzie. “How can sleeping together be obvious?” she wrote in her diary that night. “What will you do until he’s back?” asked Maggie, convinced her sister was under-sexed, whereas the truth was that she was simply more private. Why should she have told her about the affair with Joe Morton? She doubted she