Murder at the Washington Tribune - Margaret Truman [77]
“I’m not staying,” Wilcox said, draining his second drink. “No, I, ah, I have an appointment somewhere. I have to be somewhere. I have to—I’m sorry. Good seeing you. I have to go.”
“Okay,” Grant said. “Hey, Joe, about Hawthorne. Don’t let it get to you. I just thought you’d enjoy hearing the story.”
“Sure. Yeah, I did.”
Wilcox stood and asked for his bill.
“I’ve got it,” said Grant. “Go on, go to your appointment.”
Grant watched his friend leave the room.”You notice anything strange about Joe?” he asked the bartender, who’d been serving drinks at the National Press Club for more than twenty years.
“He looks a little uptight, Mr. Grant.”
“That’s an understatement,” Grant said, shaking his head. Unstated: The guy’s cracking up.
Wilcox walked to the Tribune Building but didn’t enter. He went past the entrance and wandered aimlessly along nearby streets. There were times when he thought he might pass out and took refuge against a building wall, trying to be as subtle as possible so as to not draw attention to himself. Mild nausea came and went. What’s wrong with me? he wondered. He felt like an old man, feeble and easily victimized, taking careful steps to avoid falling, crossing intersections with great care, starting across when the light changed but hesitating because he wasn’t sure whether it was safe to go to the other side.
After forty-five minutes of this drifting, he felt sufficiently composed to return to the newspaper and his cubicle. He’d no sooner settled in his chair and started to check e-mails and voice mail messages than Morehouse summoned him.
“What’s up?” Joe asked, taking a seat across the desk from the editor.
“What’ve you got for tomorrow?”
“Just what I sent you before lunch.”
“What’s the problem, Joe?”
“There is no problem, Paul. I’m working my sources. Hopefully, I’ll have more tomorrow.” It seemed insufferably hot in Morehouse’s office, and Wilcox dabbed at his brow and upper lip with a handkerchief.
“You sick?” Morehouse asked.
“Sick? No. It’s hot in here.”
“Well, Joe, it’ll get a lot hotter if we don’t come up soon with a different slant on the murders. We took the lead in packaging the serial killer idea, thanks to you. Now that we have, we can’t just drop it. Everybody else in town is running with our story, Joe. I’m not running a journalistic charity here.”
“I’m doing all I can,” Wilcox said, weakly.
“I doubt that.”
Wilcox stiffened. “Now wait a minute, Paul,” he said. “Don’t tell me whether I’m giving it my all. I resent that!”
Morehouse came from behind his desk and stood at the window overlooking the main newsroom. Wilcox started to get up to leave but Morehouse motioned for him to remain seated. The editor said, without looking at Wilcox, “You know I like you, Joe.”
Joe didn’t respond.
“I always have,” Morehouse said, his attention still on the scene through the window. “Times have changed, though. You aware of that?”
It was more of a snort than a laugh from Wilcox. “I’ve noticed,” he said.
Morehouse propped himself on the edge of a two-drawer file cabinet. “You’ve been a hell of a good cops reporter, Joe. I mean that. There’s nobody in this city who could top you.”
“ ‘Could?’ ” Wilcox said. “That sounds past tense.”
“The way things are going,” Morehouse said, “we’re all about to become past tense—but only if we let it happen.”
“Meaning?”
“When I hired you, Joe, I was the boy wonder around here, the youngest editor of a major section in the paper’s history. I have to admit that it was awkward at first bossing around grizzled veterans, guys who’d forgotten more than I knew. And it was all guys, the old-boy fraternity at work, women need not apply.” He paused and glanced through the glass again. “I was a lot like Hawthorne and the other Young Turks out there, Joe, full of myself and looking down at the old-timers.” He laughed. “Funny how fast you become an old-timer, too.” He snapped his fingers. “Like that! One day the wunderkind, the next day the guy with the bad back and molded shoes.”
Wilcox didn’t know how to respond. In all the years he’d worked for Morehouse,