Free Collins, Max Allan - Nathan Heller 12 by Angel in Black (v5.0) Page B

since this hot new story had dropped in their laps.
    “Not a chance in hell,” Fowley had said, grinning, cigarette bobbing. “Richardson says he’s more anxious than ever to talk to you. Hell, you’re our star photographer!”
    Now we were crossing Broadway, on foot, navigating traffic, stepping over trolley tracks, the newspaper’s massive black printing presses looming through the big plate-glass windows that took up much of the Examiner’ s ground floor. Those presses, silent now, would soon roar to life with an extra edition, newsprint threading through at sixty miles an hour, headlines screaming of the “werewolf” killing.
    I had made this appointment with the Examiner in hopes ofgetting myself some ink; but WEREWOLF SUSPECT IN CUSTODY — PRIVATE EYE KNEW VICTIM wasn’t what I had in mind.
    Lavishly corniced brown-marble columns did their best to dominate the impressive lobby, competing with a vaulted ceiling across which strode gilded centuries-ago heroic figures—nobody ever accused publisher William Randolph Hearst of a light touch. After all that ostentation, a single, comically insufficient wrought-iron cage elevator awaited us. The two of us and the operator made a crowd.
    “Why aren’t you out in Leimert Park,” I asked Fowley, the elevator grinding its way up to the third floor, “knocking on doors, looking for leads?”
    “Richardson already sent out his foot soldiers,” Fowley said. “I think he’s got something else in mind for us.”
    I didn’t like the sound of that: by “us” did Fowley mean himself and the rest of the city-room crew? Or did he mean . . . us?
    Not anxious for the answer, I just followed the little reporter through a low-slung swinging gate across a nominal reception area, where he went in a door whose opaque glass window bore the black block letters CITY ROOM. The world beyond was a big, bustling one: thirty or more plastered-over steel bearing beams kept things open, despite the countless desks (often paired up and facing each other) where reporters and (with phone receivers cradled at their necks) rewrite men banged away at ancient machines that looked more like coffee grinders than typewriters. Against one wall, a pair of telephone operators spoke into horns sprouting from their chests, as they fielded constant incoming and outgoing calls at a red-light-flashing switchboard; teletypes machine-gunned out wire-service copy, only to be ripped free by attentive copy boys, while—in the midst of all this controlled chaos—blue-pencil-wielding proofreaders sat engrossed at their copy, like monks doing calligraphy. Cutting straight down the center was an aisle, a copy boy’s gauntlet (“Boy! Copy boy!”) from the news desk to the city desk which sat in front of a big window, on either side of which were wainscoted, glassed-in offices.
    I knew city editor Jim Richardson a little, from the Peetecase—he was feared by cub reporters, and respected by the veteran newshounds, a chainsmoking, mostly bald, bullnecked, self-proclaimed son of a bitch.
    He was also wall-eyed. Richardson’s left eye had a weak muscle, and when he looked at you, it took half-a-second for the left eye to catch up with the right. The effect was no more eerie than seeing Karloff as the Frankenstein monster for the first time.
    Richardson rose behind his desk and waved at us to follow him into a glassed-off editorial chamber. He barked at several other reporters, seated in the nearby bullpen, who trailed after him into the conference room. Fowley and I were the last ones in.
    Everybody had taken a chair around the big, scarred table except Richardson himself, who was expectant-fathering at its head, lighting up a fresh cigarette off the butt of his previous one. While Fowley and the three other reporters were wearing their suits and ties and, in several instances, their hats, Richardson had long since removed his tie and the sleeves of his suspendered white shirt were rolled up over