Stone Cold Dead by James Ziskin (great novels of all time txt) 📕

story was the drubbing it would represent for George Walsh. This article would wash him out of my hair for good, or at least for this story. He had a knack for ingratiating himself to the publisher, most probably by serving him toadying helpings of peas and potatoes with meatloaf whenever his wife invited Daddy over for supper.

“Yes?” asked Charlie, looking up when I rapped on the mahogany jamb of his open office door. “Come in, Ellie,” he said, waving at me.

“What are you working on?” I asked.

“This thaw,” he said, referring to the weather. “There’s a lot of snow, and now the big downpour today. I’ve been putting together a piece on the flood risks, interviewing a couple of engineers and meteorologists down in Albany. Did you know that they’re going to start lowering the gates on some of the locks east of town? All the way past Schenectady to Cohoes. That doesn’t happen often in winter, but the water is rising and they need to control it.”

Charlie loved engineering stories. He’d told me how he’d always wanted to build things, but settled into the newspaper biz after a summer job in the printing room back in the early twenties. Then he got married and had a couple of daughters. It was too late to change careers now, but he made sure that no one but himself ever got to do stories on bridges and highways and building demolitions. I loved listening to how excited he got about these things, even if the subject didn’t thrill me personally.

“That’s great, Charlie,” I said. “Snow melts, makes water.”

“Clever girl,” he said. “You should be begging me for stories like this one. But if you’re too hep for this, I’ve got an idea for a human interest story for tomorrow’s edition. Short and easy. You can knock this one out in your sleep.”

I rolled my eyes.

“No, really, Ellie,” he said. “This one is good. Remember that boy who won the spelling bee last year? What was his name? Gordie Douglas. A little genius, that kid. What if we did a follow-up on it? ‘Winning Spells Success for Fifth Grader.’ What do you think?”

“I think it S-T-I-N-K-S,” I said, and Charlie’s face fell. “Why don’t you ever ask George Walsh to write that kind of stuff? He’d be a natural. Might even learn to spell.”

“Ellie, I can’t ask George to write that,” said Charlie. “Besides, you don’t have anything else for tomorrow’s paper, unless you’ve finished your profile on Teddy Jurczyk.”

“That’s not fair,” I said, taking the seat in front of his desk. “You know I didn’t get the chance to work on that today. And I’ve already done the social calendar for next week and the Rock ’n’ Roll Hymnal thing you wanted me to cover at St. Agnello’s.”

“You actually went to that?”

I thought for a moment. “Well, no,” I confessed. “But I phoned Father Francis, and he told me who won. Anna Maria Galderoni, in case you had money on it. But maybe I’ve got a big story for you. Right here in my hand, perhaps.”

Charlie feigned a chuckle. “Very funny. Now do this little genius story, and you’ve had a great week. I would have liked to print the Teddy J. story before the game, but I guess you didn’t have time to do that in the slammer.”

Now it was my turn to fake a laugh. Then I realized I hadn’t thanked him for getting me out of stir. I was even feeling kindly toward Sol Meshnick. I supposed a leer or two was the least I could grant him for such prompt results.

“I was upset this afternoon,” I said. “And it was rude of me not to have thanked you.”

“Thank me for what?” asked Charlie.

“For the get-out-of-jail-free card.”

Charlie shook his head. “Thanks for the thanks, but it wasn’t me.”

“Then I’ll thank that old pervert, Sol Meshnick,” I said.

Charlie scoffed. “It wasn’t him either. We got to the station and started making a ruckus, threatening lawsuits and bad press if they didn’t spring you pronto. But they wouldn’t even let us in to see Chief Finn.”

“Then who fished me out of there?” I asked.

“You should call Frank Olney,” said Charlie, and I flushed.

“Frank? What for?”

“While Sol and I were yelling and screaming and getting nowhere, Don Czerulniak showed up and zipped inside to have a chat with the chief. Five minutes later you were out.”

“So what’s that got to do with the sheriff?” I asked, feeling a knot in my stomach.

“The DA was in a hurry, but he stopped to say hello on his way out. He said Frank Olney had phoned him and told him to get you the hell out of jail. He’d heard all about it from that nitwit Pat Halvey, who’s got a buddy on the NHPD. A guy he bowls with. Paulie Iavarone, I think he said.”

I felt the bus-ticket story burning in my hand. I tried to hide it behind my back, and Charlie noticed.

“So, what’s the big story you’ve got?” he asked. “Is that your Rock ’n’ Roll Hymnal story?”

“No,” I said, taking a step back. “It’s just a memo. It’s nothing.”

Back at my desk, I swore to myself, stuffed the doomed story inside a drawer, and went home.

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

THURSDAY, JANUARY 12, 1961

At three in the morning, I was still wrestling with my decision to pull back the unused-bus-ticket story. I’d been grinding it through my head since bedding down four hours earlier, having been awakened several times with ever-new, twisted dreams to torture me. One had me getting fired for not producing anything more interesting than a high-school boy could write. Another was my assignment to a new position at the paper: assistant to Luba, the office’s ancient, Ukrainian cleaning lady. She swept and mopped, emptied wastepaper bins and trash cans, washed windows and polished brass, always half bent over, with a kerchief tied around her head. A third torture had me leaving the paper altogether and jerking sodas for Fadge