Doing my best Lauren Bacall (i.e., acting as cool and indifferent as possible), I carried all four morning editions into Crockett’s office and plunked them down on his desk. Then I went back into the workroom to fetch his coffee. (God forbid he should ever have to get his own!)
“Here you go, Mr. Crockett,” I said, returning to his office, walking around the front of his desk, and setting his coffee down next to his phone and ashtray-right where he liked it. The Daily News was open in front of him. (Having once been a staff reporter for the News, Crockett always read that paper first.) I leaned over the desk, tucked my shoulder-length brown hair behind my ears, stared down at the spread of newsprint, and madly scanned the upside-down headlines. Luckily, there was no story about the murder on either page, or I might have snatched the paper right out from under Mr. Crockett’s nose. (As hard as I try to contain myself, I can get a little carried away sometimes.)
“Will that be all, Mr. Crockett?” I asked, stalling, hovering, hoping he would turn the page so I could check out the next batch of headlines.
“Yeah,” he said, “except for lunch. Make a reservation for two at the Quill for twelve thirty. I gotta take the distributor out for a steak.” He didn’t look up from the News, but he didn’t turn the page, either.
“Yes, sir,” I said, giving up and walking back to my desk. Further stalling or snooping was pointless. I’d just have to keep my curiosity under control until Crockett finished the morning papers and gave them to me to clip-hopefully before Brandon Pomeroy came in.
As I sat down and reached for a galley to proofread, Lenny Zimmerman made his usual wheezing, gasping, red-faced entrance. (Lenny is deathly afraid of elevators and always climbs the full nine flights of stairs to the office.) Actually, he was more red-faced and wheezy than usual. Rivulets of sweat were trickling down his florid cheeks, and he was panting so hard his glasses were all steamed up.
Knowing it would take a full minute or two for my friend to recover from his arduous climb, I corrected all the typos in the first few paragraphs of the article I was reading. Then, as soon as Lenny’s breathing returned to normal, I grinned and gave him a hearty “Good morning.”
“Morning,” he mumbled, still standing just inside the door. He removed his black-rimmed glasses, wiped the lenses with his muffler, then returned the spectacles to their off-kilter perch on his large, distinctive nose. “God, Paige!” he said, aiming his bloodshot eyes at me. “It’s as hot as a steam bath in here. Do you have the radiator turned up too high?” His feet were firmly planted on the floor, but the rest of his thin body was swaying like a willow in the wind.
“Nope. I set the knob in its usual position. But you know what, Lenny? I think you’re turned up too high. Your face is still flaming. Do you feel all right?”
“Uh, yeah, I guess so,” he said, slowly stumbling across the room and looping his hat, muffler, and jacket on the coat tree. “I’m just a little tired, that’s all.”
“Late night?”
“Hardly. My mother thought I looked sickly and made me go to bed at nine o’clock.”
I smiled. Lenny was twenty-three years old but still lived at home with his parents. He probably wouldn’t move out until the day of his wedding-if that day ever came. His mother was a tad possessive… and a really good cook.
“Hey, wait a minute!” I said, as Lenny walked up to my desk and turned to head for his drawing table in the rear. “Your mother was right. You do look kind of sickly. Stand still for a second.” I jumped to my feet and put my palm on his forehead. “Gosh, Lenny! You’re burning up. You should have gone to the hospital instead of coming to the office!” I was exaggerating, but not by much.
“You’re worse than my mother,” Lenny said. “She just wanted me to stay home.”
“You should have listened to her.”
“I couldn’t,” he said. “The cover paste-up and all the boards have to be finished and sent to the printer today. If I didn’t come in, Pomeroy would have me arrested and sent straight to the electric chair.”
“That would be funny if it weren’t true.”
“Tell me about it.” He looked so feverish I thought he might faint.
“What can I do for you, Len?” I asked. “Do you want a cup of coffee?”
“God, no. That would make me throw up.”
“A glass of water? Some aspirin?”
“Nothing, Paige. I just want to go sit down.”
Giving me a sad excuse for a smile, Lenny turned away and slunk down the aisle to the deepest recesses of the workroom. As he passed the open door to Mr. Crockett’s office, he muttered a quick hello, then sat down at his drawing table. Propping his elbows on the table and resting his head in his hands, he let out a moan that could have been heard in Hoboken. Poor Lenny. He was sick as a dog, with a major deadline looming-like the blade of a guillotine-over him. He knew he had a long, hard, harrowing day ahead.
I was in for a harrowing day myself, but-unlike Lenny-I didn’t know it yet.
Chapter 2
MIKE AND MARIO ARRIVED TWO MINUTES LATER. I don’t know how they do it. They live on opposite sides of town, but they always get to work at the same time and burst into the office together. I think it’s some kind of conspiracy.
“Buon giorno!” Mario bellowed, removing his hat and coat and hanging them on the coat tree. He straightened his tie, drew a comb from his breast pocket, and swiped it through both sides of his slick, black (and ridiculously juvenile) ducktail. Then, the minute his hands were free, he scooted over to my desk and put them on me. “How are you feeling today, Paige?” he said, standing behind my chair and squeezing my shoulders.
“Since you’re the one doing the feeling,” I said, “why don’t you tell me?” I tried to shrug him off, but he just laughed and kept on squeezing-pressing the fleshy parts of my upper arms as if testing them for ripeness.
“Well, you feel pretty good so far,” Mario sniggered, “but I think I need to do some more research.”
“Cut it out!” I sputtered, vaulting out of my chair and around the side of my desk before his stubby fingers could find something else to fondle. “I’m not a piece of fruit!”
“No, but I bet you’re a good piece of… pie,” he murmured, substituting one three-letter word for the one he really wanted to say. He gave me a lecherous grin to make sure I got his meaning.
Oh, brother! I muttered to myself. Is this joker ever going to grow up?
Mike waltzed over to join in the fun. “Now you’ve done it, pal,” he said to Mario. “You’ve turned one too many of Paige Turner’s pages. If you’re not careful, she’s gonna close the book on you.” Snickering at his own vapid wordplay, Mike skimmed one hand over the roof of his straw-colored flattop, lit up a Lucky Strikes, and sat down at his desk-the one right next to mine. “Bring me some java, doll,” he said, blowing smoke in my direction. “I need a jump start.”
“Yeah, me, too,” Mario chimed in, reluctantly ditching the groping game and propelling his short, stocky body toward his desk in the rear of the workroom. “And make it snappy, will ya? It’s deadline day.”
There was a time when Mike and Mario wouldn’t have let me off so easy. They would have teased and taunted me till the cows came home (or until Mr. Crockett poked his head out of his office and told them to pipe down). But that was before I’d proved myself as a writer… before I’d increased DD’s circulation by a third… before I’d earned the respect of the magazine’s profit-loving (but by no means profit-sharing) owner, Oliver Rice Harrington… before Mike and Mario had lost the power to have me fired.
Everything was different now that I was a bona fide staff writer. Well, not everything. I still had to kowtow to my male “superiors” (i.e., suffer fools gladly), and I still had to serve the damn coffee.