He said that last word the way a new bishop might say: “I am consecrated.”
“Glad to hear that. Joe, when could I get a chance to meet some of the other regular Boys?”
“Ya wanna get In, huh?” he asked shrewdly. “There’s been guys here a lot longer than you, Spencer.”
“In, Out,” I shrugged. “I want to play it smart. It won’t do me any harm.”
He barked with laughter. “Not a bit,” he said. “Old man Kennedy didn’t see it that way. You’ll get along here. Keep ya nose clean and we’ll see about The Boys.” He beckoned the loutish porter and left me to my musings.
That little rat had killed his man, I thought—but where, why, and for whom?
I went out into the little corridor and walked into the “ride-up-and-save” parka emporium that shared the second floor with me. Leon Portwanger, said the sign on the door. He was a fat old man sitting cross-legged, peering through bulging shell-rimmed glasses at his needle as it flashed through fur.
“Mr. Portwanger? I’m the new ISN man, Sam Spencer.”
“So?” he grunted, not looking up.
“I guess you knew Kennedy pretty well.”
“Never. Never.”
“But he was right in front there—”
“Never,” grunted the old man. He stuck himself with the needle, swore, and put his finger in his mouth. “Now see
what you made me do?” he said angrily and indistinctly around the finger. “You shouldn’t bother me when I’m working. Can’t you see when a man’s working?”
“I’m sorry,” I said, and went back into the newsroom. A man as old as Leon, tailoring as long as Lepn, didn’t stick himself. He didn’t even wear a thimble—the forefinger was calloused enough to be a thimble itself. He didn’t stick himself unless he was very, very excited—or unless he wanted to get rid of somebody. I began to wish I hadn’t fired those bottles of Kennedy’s home brew down to the incinerator so quickly.
At that point I began a thorough shakedown of the bureau. I found memos torn from the machine concerning overfiling or failure to file, clippings from the Phoenix, laundry lists, style memos from ISN, paid bills, blacksheets of letters to Marsbuo requesting a transfer to practically anywhere but Frostbite, a list of phone numbers and a nasty space-mailed memo from McGillicuddy.
It said: “Re worldshaker, wll blv whn see. Meanwhile sggst keep closer sked avoid wastage costly wiretime. Reminder guppy’s firstest job offhead orchidbitches three which bypassed u yestermonth. How? McG”
It was typical of McGillicuddy to memo in cablese. Since news bureaus began—as “wire services”; see his archaic “wiretime”—their executives have been memoing underlings in cablese as part of one-of-the-working-press-Jones-boys act that they affect. They also type badly so they can slash up their memo with copyreader symbols. This McGillicuddy did too, of course. The cablese, the bad typing, and the copy-reading made it just about unintelligible to an outsider.
To me it said that McGillicuddy doubted Kennedy’s promise to file a worldshaking story, that he was sore about Kennedy missing his scheduled times for filing on the ether-type, and that he was plenty sore about Kennedy failing to intercept complaints from the client Phoenix, three of which McGillicuddy had been bothered by during the last month.
So old Kennedy had dreamed of filing a worldshaker. I dug further into the bureau files and the desk drawers, finding only an out of date “WHO’S WHO IN THE GALAXY.” No notes, no plans, no lists of interviewees, no tipsters—no blacksheet, I realized, of the letter to which McGillicuddy’s cutting memo was a reply.
God only knew what it all meant. I was hungry, sleepy and sick at heart. I looked up the number of the Hamilton House
and found that helpful little Chenery had got me a reservation and that my luggage had arrived from the field. I headed for a square meal and my first night in bed for a week without yaks blatting at me through a thin bulkhead.
It wasn’t hard to fit in. Frostbite was a swell place to lose your ambition and acquire a permanent thirst. The sardonic •sked posted on the bureau wall—I had been planning to tear it down for a month, but the inclination became weaker and weaker. It was so true to life.