Final justice - W.E.B. Griffin [212]
[THREE]
The city editor of the Philadelphia Bulletin, Roscoe G. Kennedy, responded to a computer message from Michael J. O'Hara--
Kennedy--
Hold space page one section one for three
column pic, plus jump for 350-400 words, + 3, 4 more pics
Ohara
--in several ways, the first being annoyance. O'Hara's message was very much in the form of an order, rather than a request or suggestion.
No matter how much money and perquisites O'Hara's pal Casimir Bolinski, the football-jock-turned-sports-attorney, had beat the people upstairs out of in exchange for the services of Michael O'Hara, Roscoe G. Kennedy felt that this in no way changed the fact that Michael J. O'Hara was a staff writer, no more, and Roscoe G. Kennedy was the city editor, and thus entitled to tell the staff writer what to do, and when, not the reverse.
The second cause of annoyance was that in order to see what immortal prose Michael J. O'Hara believed was worthy of a three-column photograph on page one of section one--plus a jump with more pictures--before O'Hara saw fit in his own sweet time to send it to him, he would have to go to O'Hara's office.
This was actually a double irritant. Mr. Kennedy did not think a lowly staff writer was entitled to an expensively furnished private office--O'Hara's $2,100 exotic wood and calfskin-upholstered Charles Eames chair was more salt in the wound here--in the first place, and to get to it, he was going to have to get up from his desk and walk across the city room, which meant past a large number of other staff writers, all of whom would see that he was calling on O'Hara rather than the other way around.
The third irritant was that Roscoe G. Kennedy knew that if O'Hara thought he had something worthy of space on page one of section one, and with a large jump to be placed elsewhere, the sonofabitch probably did.
Roscoe G. Kennedy was honest enough to admit--if sometimes through clenched teeth--that Mickey O'Hara was really a hell of a good writer, and had earned his Pulitzer Prize.
So Mr. Kennedy resisted the urge to summon Mr. O'Hara to his presence to discuss his latest contribution to the Bulletin, and instead got up and walked across the city room and knocked politely at the door.
He saw that Mr. O'Hara had guests in his office, Casimir "The Bull" Bolinski and presumably Mrs. Bolinski, and he smiled at them.
"What have you got for me, Mickey?" Mr. Kennedy asked.
O'Hara raised one hand from the keyboard of his computer terminal, on which he was typing with great rapidity, and pointed to the screen of his personal (as opposed to the Bulletin's) computer.
There was a very clear photograph of a well-known Philadelphia police officer on it, this one showing him in a dinner jacket, with a cellular phone in one hand and a .45 Colt in the other, standing just a little triumphantly over a man lying on the ground.
"There's more," O'Hara said.
The city editor looked at the other images from the parking lot, then read Mickey's story on the computer screen. He didn't speak until O'Hara had finished and pushed the Transmit key. Then he said, "Great stuff, Mickey! Really great! The Wyatt Earp of the Main Line Does It Again."
Mickey stood up.
"What did you say?" he asked.
"For a head, how about 'Main Line Wyatt Earp 2, Bad Guys 0 in Shootout at the La Famiglia Corral'?"
"You sonofabitch," Mickey said. "That's a cop doing his job."
"Watch your mouth, Michael," Casimir said. "Antoinette . . ."
"A goddamn cop in a tuxedo who obviously likes to shoot people."
"You sonofabitch, you're no better than the goddamn Ledger!"
"Don't call me a sonofabitch, O'Hara. I won't stand for it."
"Then don't make wiseass remarks about a cop liking what he has to do to do his job,