Free Impossible Places by Alan Dean Foster Page B

Nothing to start the day like being visited by one of your own headlines. He checked the organizer on his desk. Nothing like starting the day with a good laugh, either, and he had a few minutes left before the morning story conference.
    The guy was living proof of what police and newspaper professionals knew well; the real mental cases didn’t look like Charlie Manson. They were regular, ordinary folk just like you and me. Taxpayers and churchgoers and PTA members. Which was how they escaped detection and incarceration until they did something sufficiently drastic to bring them to the notice of their fellow citizens. Like this Johnny here. At least he was harmless.
    “I see,” Rohrbach said slowly. “Why did he send you? To deliver a message, no doubt?”
    The visitor steepled his fingers. “That’s right. See, he’s sick and tired of all these lies you’ve been printing about him ever since he died. You know the kind I’m talking about. ‘Elvis sighted at diner in Rapid City, Iowa.’ ‘Elvis’s adopted teenage daughter goes on rampage at mental hospital.’ ‘Fans steal Elvis’s body, pharmacist reveals Elvis’s secret drug list.’ Stuff like that. He wants it to stop. He wants you to stop.”
    “Sure. Uh-huh.” Rohrbach fought to repress a grin. “Um, tell me something, Johnny. If the King is so upset, why didn’t he come tell me about it himself?”
    The visitor shifted in the chair. “It’s kind of hard to explain. I don’t really understand it all myself. Something to do with a gig. So he asked me to help him out.” The visitor smiled. “We spent a lot of time together.”
    “Oh, right. Don’t know why I didn’t think of that.” Rohrbach rose. “Well listen, Johnny, I don’t know about you, but I’ve got quite a day ahead of me.” The visitor nodded and stood. “I really want to thank you for bringing this to my attention, and I promise you I’ll get right on it.”
    The visitor smiled softly. He certainly was harmless, Rohrbach thought. Have to have a talk with the people in the outer office, though. Can’t have strangers just wandering into the inner sanctum whenever they felt like it.
    He escorted the tall caller out, shutting the door behind him, and returned to his desk shaking his head. It was a wonderfully wacky world, which was fortunate for him because he had pages to fill.
    By charming coincidence one of the
Truth
’s northern California stringers had filed a nice, juicy little rumor suitable for a bottom front-page banner. At the story conference they settled on “Elvis’s Gay Lover Comes Forth in San Francisco! Broke and Dying of Aids!” for a headline. The story was accompanied by several conveniently blurry photos of some poor skeletal figure laid up in a hospital bed.
    They put the weekly issue to bed the next day, and by the weekend Rohrbach was ready to play. There were many who firmly believed that being a bachelor millionaire in south Florida was one of the planet’s more enviable existences, but you couldn’t party every weekend. Bad for the constitution. So Rohrbach settled for making a day of it Sunday at Joe Robbie Stadium with a couple of friends, where from the
Truth
’s private skybox they watched the Dolphins beat the Bears 24–21 on a last-minute field goal.
    It was as they were leaving for the limo that the pain stabbed through Rohrbach’s chest. He winced and clutched at himself. His friend Nawani, who owned a little less than a hundred of the Sunshine State’s finest liquor stores, was by his side in an instant.
    “Rob, man, what’s the matter?” He waved. “Hey, get a doctor, somebody get a doctor!”
    Even as a crowd started to gather, the pain faded. Rohrbach straightened, breathing hard, his heart fluttering from fear rather than damage.
    “It’s okay. I’m . . . okay now.”
    “You sure?” Nawani eyed him uncertainly. “Looked like you couldn’t get your breath, man.”
    “Just for a few seconds. Felt like my shirt shrank about