Westlake, Donald E - Sara and Jack 01 (6 page)

 
          
“Roasting
babies,” Jack said.

 
          
Jacob
Harsch’s top-floor office was a large low- ceilinged room in hushed grays, with
no sharp edges. Broad gray-tinted windows softened the southern view of the
desert, making it into an idealized portrait of itself. Bookcases were filled
with large somber tomes grouped by subject: war, pestilence, slavery, Elvis
Presley. The furniture was low, bulky, dark, expensive. At a long and
heavy-legged library table to one side Harsch himself stood with the
Galaxy's
art director, Fred Mooney, a
nervous paunchy balding man with a scraggly moustache. Together, they studied a
number of pictures scattered on the table, Harsch’s bony long fingers and
Mooney’s blunt fidgety fingers pushing the pictures this way and that,
revealing some, covering others. “All of these women,” Mooney said irritably,
“have their mouths open.”

 
          
“That’s
all right, Fred,” Harsch said softly. “That’s considered all right.”

 
          
“Okay,
okay, fine.” Restlessly, Mooney’s fingers pushed and shoved. “Now, these
funeral pictures,” he said. “These funeral pictures just don’t show me a thing.
It’s so dark, there’s no life, there’s nothing.”

 
          
“This
was a great American, Fred,” Harsch said, his gray fingernail tapping the
famous chin. “Top box office for three decades.
Massa
wants a picture on the cover.”

 
          
Dubious
but scared, Mooney blinked and squinted at the pictures. “Well, I’ll do what I
can,” he said. “We can lighten them, draw in some detail.”

 
          
“A
little cleavage here,” Harsch said, the fingernail tap-tapping. “Widows are
considered sexy.”

 
          
“Uh
huh, uh huh.” Fleeing that topic, petulantly irritated, Mooney picked up
another picture. “Now, this thing,” he said. “This is the space battle story,
you know? That clairvoyant in
Dallas
told us about it. Two spaceships had a
dogfight the other side of the moon, what was it, last October, she sees space
debris coining around into sight either late August or early September.” “I
recall the story,” Harsch agreed.

           
“Now, look at this thing,” Mooney
said.

 
          
Harsch
took the picture, which was done in the black-and-white photo realist style of
the
Galaxy
. “Yes?” The cold
fingernail tapped. “Here’s the two ships, different styles because they’re
different civilizations. Here’s the moon. We won’t see the earth, the moon
hides it. So?”

 
          
“Well,”
Mooney said, taking the picture back, gazing at it with deep discontent, “this
is very murky, like almost out of focus. The question is, is this a drawing, or
is it a photo?”

 
          
Harsch
lifted his gaze and looked into Mooney’s fidgety eyes. “I mean,” Mooney
explained, “I got to know for myself, for if we retouch or whatever, but also,
what if
Massa
asks me?”

 
          
“Fred,
how long have you worked here?” Harsch asked, not unkindly.

 
          
“Nine
years,” Mooney said in terror, and the intercom on Harsch’s desk buzzed.

 
          
“One
moment,” Harsch said, and crossed to his low massive desk and pushed the
button, saying, “Yes?”

 
          
“Sara
Joslyn, Mr. Harsch.”

 
          
“Ah,
yes. Send her in.”

 
          
“Yes,
sir.”

 
          
Turning,
crossing back to Fred Mooney, Harsch said, “I think it’s a drawing.”

 
          
“Okay,”
Mooney said, nodding jerkily, holding the picture without looking at it. The
door opened, and Mooney threw a glance of abject fear in that direction, as
though it might be the Spanish Inquisition coming in.

 
          
Sara
entered Mr. Harsch’s austerely opulent office, and found him talking with a
rumpled moustached scared-looking man holding some sort of picture. Mr. Harsch
was saying to him, “But you could double-check. Call Accounting, see did any
photographer put in for two light-years’ expenses.”

 
          
The
rumpled man blinked, as though he’d been slapped. “Well,” he said. “Okay. Okay,
it’s a drawing.” He threw a quick glance at Sara, apparently realizing his
interview with Mr. Harsch was over, and started gathering up other pictures
from the library table behind him. “And we’ll do what we can about that other,”
he said.

 
          
“
Massa
wants,” Harsch said, in his soft cold
voice.

 
          
“Okay.
Sure.” Pictures clutched in his arms, the man shot another scared look at Sara
and hurried from the room.

 
          
This
was to be the first time Harsch would talk to Sara since her arrival on Monday,
and she’d spent the time in the elevator trying to guess what the subject would
be. Congratulations on the gallstone quote? A special assignment? A transfer to
a different editor? (She wasn’t sure exactly how she felt about that last
possibility.) She wasn’t at all prepared for Harsch’s first statement. His
coldeyed attention swiveling to her, he said, “I understand, Miss Joslyn,
you’ve lost a piece of
Galaxy
property.”

           
Bewildered, Sara said, “I have?”

           
“The sticker you were—”

           
So relieved that it wasn’t anything
serious, Sara unconsciously interrupted, saying, “Oh, that! I completely
forgot—”

 
          
“Miss
Joslyn,” the cold voice said, bearing down, “the
Galaxy
is a fearless hard-hitting newspaper.”

 
          
Thrown
off balance, Sara could think of nothing to say but “Yes?”

 
          
“That
means,” Harsch told her, “the
Galaxy
has
enemies. That’s why we have security here.”

           
“Oh,” Sara said, nodding, “I see
what you—”

           
“A
Galaxy
sticker is now out in the world, Miss Joslyn,” Harsch said.
“Out of our control.”

           
Unable to believe Harsch expected
her to treat this situation like a tragedy out of Shakespeare, Sara said, “But
it’s just a—”

           
“I want you to understand this, Miss
Joslyn,” Harsch said, overriding her. “We don’t take security lightly here. Nor
theft of
Galaxy
property.”

           
Shocked, offended, Sara raised up,
saying, “Mr.
Harsch,
I—”

           
“That’s what our attorneys would
name it,” he said, “if we felt we had to call them in on this.” Then, while
Sara watched him in mingled alarm and disbelief, Harsch turned away, looking
out his tinted windows at the soft gray desert. “You’re new here,” he said,
looking at the desert, “so I’m taking that into account.” Glancing back at
Sara, he offered a wintry smile, saying, “Everyone gets one free error.”

           
“Thank you,” Sara said, her mind
racing. Had all of this just been meant to scare her, to play some sort of
petty power game on her?

 
          
“However,”
Harsch went on, giving her his full attention again, “we will need that sticker
back.”

 
          
She
didn’t understand. “But it’s gone,” she said.

 
          
“You’re
a reporter, aren’t you?”

 
          
“Yes,
sir,” she said, with as much force as she could muster.

 
          
“Your
assignment, Miss Joslyn,” he said, bearing down again, “is to drive your
stickerless car off this property and return no later than tomorrow with the
sticker affixed.”

 
          
Call
the rental place; not impossible. Absurd, but not impossible. “All right,” she
said, feeling mutinous but realizing mutiny would be just as absurd as this
pettiness over a windshield sticker. Captain Queeg and the strawberries, she
thought.

 
          
Turning
away again, moving toward his desk, speaking more quietly and thoughtfully,
Harsch said, “This is a bad mark for Jack Ingersoll, and—”

 
          
“What?”
Sara stared. “Why for
him?”

 
          
Harsch
looked back at her, shrugging as though it should be obvious. “You’re on his
team. If you don’t return, it’s a worse mark. And if you fail to come back
tomorrow, Miss Joslyn, fail to come back.”

 
          
Tomorrow’s
Saturday, she suddenly realized, and assumed he’d forgotten. “There won’t be
anyone here tomorrow,” she said. “It’s Saturday.”

           
“The guard will be at the gate.
He’ll be expecting you.”

 
          
So
that’s my punishment, Sara thought. I get to drive all the way out here on my
day off. “All right,” she said. “Is that all, Mr. Harsch?”

 
          
“For
the moment,” Harsch told her, as a section of wall to her left suddenly receded
an inch, with a heavy mechanical
clack
,
and slid away rightward behind the next section of wall, revealing Bruno
DeMassi, seated at his desk in his elevator/offlce. He looks ridiculous in
there, Sara thought, but then realized that he also looked faindy frightening,
the mechanized spider in his web. Everything at the
Galaxy
, it seemed, combined those same qualities of the scary and
the absurd.

 
          
“Busy,
Jock?” DeMassi asked, with a quick glance toward—but not exacdy at—Sara.

 
          
“No,
sir,” Harsch told him, his manner somehow just as cold as ever but no longer
threatening. “Miss Joslyn is just starting out on assignment.”

 
          
“Good,
good,” DeMassi said. “Golf this afternoon?”

 
          
“I’d
be pleased, sir.” The expression around Harsch’s mouth might even have been
called a smile.

 
          
Sara,
moving toward the door, said, “I’ll get right to work on it, Mr. Harsch.”

 
          
“You,”
DeMassi said, waving a hand at her. “Miss Whatever.”

           
“Joslyn,” Sara said.

           
“Come on,” DeMassi told her,
gesturing for Sara to board the elevator, “I’ll give you a lift.”

           
Surprised but willing, Sara said,
“Why, thank you,” and crossed to enter the elevator.

           
Meantime, DeMassi had apparently
heard the echo of what he’d said and was delighted by it. Grinning hugely at
Harsch, he said, “Did you hear that? This is a lift! In
England
, that’s what they call an elevator, they
call it a lift! Did you hear what I said? I’ll give you a lift!”

 
          
“Funny,”
Harsch agreed.

           
“Talk to you later,” DeMassi said,
and, with Sara aboard, pushed a button on his desk.

           
From within, Sara watched two wall
sections close over the space, shutting out the grim figure of Jacob Harsch.
The inner wall section, paneled wood with a pair of framed old hunting prints
on it, snicked into place, and the elevator simply became a windowless doorless
room furnished as an office. I’d go crazy in here in thirty minutes, Sara
thought, as she felt the elevator start down.

 
          
“Sit
down,” DeMassi told her, pointing at the green leather sofa on the side wall.
As she did so, he opened the refrigerator built into his desk, took out a
bottle of beer, and waggled it at her. “Beer?”

           
“No, thank you.”