|
Page 18.
Chapter 14.
 On Monday, as Jeff drove in to work, he thought more about Lexa. What is it about me? he thought. Of all the women in the world, I have to get stuck on my employer's granddaughter who happens to be engaged to the apple of the old man's eye. Could I do better? Maybe walk right in and throw up on Beering's desk, then look stupid and say I've had amnesia for days, ever since I left for Vegas in a taxi with three hookers and a crate of beer?
A small cold front had pushed in from the Atlantic during the night, driving away yesterday's shred of Indian Summer. A gentle rain swished in the wiper blades.
As Jeff pulled into the Aero Atlantic parking lot, he noticed that uniformed private guards were peering into all the cars with flashlights. "Coming to work, Mister?"
Jeff showed his badge. The guards recorded his badge number and license plate number, and he parked his car.
On the 20th floor, home office of World Anaconda Publishing, there was another armed security guard checking badges. Puzzled, Jeff asked the receptionist: "What's going on?"
The young blonde said: "I'm not exactly sure, but they're worried about that guy who's been killing editors." She handed him a telephone message slip. Vince McCarthy had called early in the morning, wanted Jeff to return the call as soon as possible.
Matt Stark, Senior Editor, emerged from his window office (whose window framed a clock tower) to shake Jeff's hand. "I guess you got the razzmatazz like all of us?" Matt looked a young 40, slim and athletic, but graying.
Jeff nodded. "Maybe we should all start carrying guns, huh?" Seeing alarm on Matt's face, he added quickly: "Just kidding." Lord, was everyone losing their sense of humor around here?
Matt walked Jeff to his office, a large interior with no window view. "I'm instructed to offer any administrative support you need, secretaries, workstations, you name it. Not normally my line, but Mahogany Row wants you taken care of." Matt's tone and body language suggested some resentment.
Jeff cleared his throat, and the sound echoed in the cheerless room that contained tables, chairs, a computer terminal, and some empty bookshelves. "Ahem, yes, very nice," he said. No doubt there was a hierarchy of offices here at World Anaconda, and he currently placed somewhere in the middle.
"The rumor mill has it you've got a direct line to god," Matt said.
Jeff shrugged. "I'm going a little project for Mr. Beering, yes." He left it at that; no sense making enemies above and beyond any he might already have. "Thanks a lot, Matt." Disengaging diplomatically, he closed the door after Matt left. He sat down and began to learn the computer system.
McCarthy stopped by twenty minutes later, startling Jeff with a loud knock at the door. "I was hoping I'd catch you while you were in."
Jeff swallowed his irritation and swung away from the computer. "What's up."
McCarthy propped his rear on a table edge, holding his coat shut as though he were cold. "Well, Maxxon, we put together that Tom Armaday manuscript and had the crime lab go over it with a fine-toothed comb. They found some interesting things."
"Like?"
"Like, the manuscript is fresh, as though it had been written a month ago. But the paper, the ink, the typewriter, everything suggests it was done at least fifty years ago."
Jeff gaped.
McCarthy produced an Emory board and energetically drubbed his nails. "The lab is still narrowing it down, but they figure it's unmistakably a Quentin Boulevard Portable typewriter, a machine that was manufactured between 1928 and 1936. The typeface is Pica, which is pretty standard for typewriters even today."
"So what have we got here?" Jeff mused. "Maybe someone wrote this manuscript, sealed it away for fifty years or more, and today someone else is trying..." (he paused) "...or maybe the same person, now an old man, is sending the manuscript around..." (he paused again, trying to picture a person in his seventies or older, throwing strong young men and women into clocks..."
McCarthy shook his head. "There's got to be another wrinkle, Maxxon, and damned if I can get behind it. It's almost as though some nut wrote this Nazi propaganda, and came forward in time to try and get it published. But that doesn't make any sense at all, does it?"
Jeff caught the perplexity on McCarthy's face, and slumped his shoulders in sympathetic irony. "No, you're right, it doesn't make any sense. But neither does your case, huh?"
|
