Free Hole in One by Walter Stewart

that,” I explained. “Heck, I would drop the story like a flash. I don’t imagine we’ll ever learn anything, anyway, it’s just that . . .”
    I paused. He got it.
    â€œIt’s just that you’re too chicken-shit to explain to Hanna that you can’t do her dirty work for her because I have told you to find out certain things for me and to keep your big mouth shut about what you find out.”
    It could have been more graciously put, but I had to admit he had it, in a nutshell.
    â€œYes,” I said.
    â€œYou mean, you can’t work for me, and keep the information from the scummy
Star
if Hanna doesn’t want you to.”
    â€œThat’s it, exactly.”
    â€œWell, that’s easily fixed.” He got up. “You’re fired.”
    A man of volcanic passions, Tommy. He does not like to be thwarted, and when he is thwarted, he takes steps. Usually, the same step: he fires me.
    â€œIt won’t last,” I told him. My firings don’t usually hold for more than a week. In fact, it appears to be company policy to fire me whenever there’s a holiday coming up, and then rehire me afterwards, to save holiday pay.
    â€œYes, it will,” said Tommy.
    â€œWell, if you fire me, who’s going to do your digging around?”
    â€œWe’ll hire somebody else. Or I’ll do it myself.” He seemed to like the thought of this. “I haven’t lost the old skills, you know, just because I don’t work so well with those goddam computers.”
    â€œGoing to break another Henry Doyle story, are you, Tommy?”
    This was, and was meant to be, a low blow. When Tommy was a stringer for the Windsor
Mercury
, working out of Sarnia, Ontario, he had to file a story every week about the level of the Great Lakes. They’re crazy about lake levels down in that part of the country. Of course, it’s rather hard to put much zip into a story like that, because it lacks the personal angle. So Tommy made up an old guy who would comment on the lake levels. It happens a lot more often than you might think in journalism; half the “informed sources” in your daily newspaper are mere wraiths, like Henry Doyle, who kept coming up with colourful comments for Tommy every week. In fact, his comments got so colourful that the Windsor
Mercury
’s city editor phoned Tommy up one day and said he was sending a photographer down to get a picture of Henry Doyle. They were going to do a feature on him.
    This put Tommy into a bit of a pickle, so he did the only thing he felt he could do. He killed Henry Doyle. At first, he was going to drown him, but he thought that might look suspicious, so he ran him over with a bus instead. It made a tiny item at the back of the paper, and nobody would ever have found out about it, but Tommy got plastered one night years later and boasted about how he got away with it. I had heard the story in the Press Club in Toronto one time, but I had never mentioned it, until now.
    â€œThat’s does it,” snarled Tommy, jumping to his feet. “You’re through. Permanently. And if you want to work on this story for the scummy
Star
, you go right ahead, but of course, if I find you using any information I have just given you in confidence, I’ll sue you down to your socks.”
    With those cheery words, he was off to the door. As he fumbled with the knob—everybody thinks you have to turn it, but the inner works fell apart years ago, so you just shove—I asked, “Well, anyway, what’s the connection with Mrs. Post? Why has she got a particular interest in this? You might as well tell me; I’m bound to find out, anyway.”
    Tommy got the door shoved open at last, and paused on the threshhold. He was still clutching Billy Haldane’s
Penthouse
, which I guess he had confiscated. He waved it at me as he replied, “Yes, even an incompetent like you is probably going to get onto it.