Read Face on the Wall for Free Online Page B

you—”
    There was a pause. Mary could hear a polite voice fending him off.
    â€œWell, I must say.” For a moment the eager young man seemed incapable of saying anything. Then he spoke up in a tone of grave indignation. “Well, then, I guess your loss is somebody else’s gain. I’ll have to try The New York Times. ” Clashing down the phone, he stared angrily at Mary. “You’ve got to know somebody. Today it’s all buddy-buddy, you know what I mean?”
    â€œRight,” murmured Mary, flipping through the stack of recent issues of the scandal sheet, skimming the headlines—
    FELICIA FIGHTS FLAB
    WORLD’S HAPPIEST COUPLE?
    GUESS AGAIN!
    SIZZLING FLING ENDS IN RAPE CHARGE
    MURDER VICTIM?
    WHERE IS BATTERED WIFE?

    Mary slapped the page. “Here it is. Thank you. I’ll just make a few notes.”
    The editor-in-chief, who was also the entire staff of The Candid Courier, was not interested in Mary’s discovery. He jumped up and began moving the colored pins around on his map of the world. The pin for Bosnia went to the Gobi Desert, the one for South Africa to Tierra del Fuego, the pin for Jerusalem to Kamchatka. Jab, jab, jab.
    Mary read the part of the article that had been missing from the scrap on Annie’s table.

    â€¦ It is rumored that
    real estate is involved, a large parcel
    of land upon which Frederick Small
    intends to build a gold-plated housing
    development of million-dollar homes.
    The deal awaits the signature of the
    missing Mrs. Small.

    â€œMr. Jackson,” said Mary, “where did you get this story?”
    â€œWhat?” He turned away from the map and looked vaguely at the folded page Mary held under his nose. “God, I don’t know. Somebody phoned it in. I’ve got these people out there”—he waved his arm at Washington Street, and, out of sight beyond the girlie theater across the way, the rest of the world, beginning with Boston Common and the Charles River—“they send in stuff.”
    â€œI see. Well, thank you.” Mary went out and closed the door gently, feeling sorry for George Jackson. The poor kid had aspirations for higher things. He wanted to interview heads of state. He wanted to race down a bomb-cratered road in an armored Jeep. Instead, he was here in Boston, on Washington Street above a joke-goods store, mired in shameless voyeurism and subpornograpbic trash, neck-deep in shucked sheiks and sizzling flings. Poor wretch.
    Mary glanced in the window of the joke-goods store on her way out. The gruesome drooping eye of the monster ogled her. Its ghastliness was exactly what she had expected to find upstairs in the office of the Courier. And perhaps she really had. Perhaps that pink-cheeked would-be foreign correspondent was actually a monster in the flesh.
    She turned away, shuddering. It was beginning to rain. On the way home the heavens opened. Lightning flashed. Mary had to pull the car to the side of the road, because the windshield wipers couldn’t handle the water sheeting down the glass.

Chapter 11

    Brave soldier, here is danger!
    Brave soldier, here is death!
    Hans Christian Andersen,
    â€œThe Steadfast Tin Soldier”

    â€œI ’m afraid,” said Eddy. His hair was drenched. Rivulets of water poured down his cheeks. He struggled after his father up the difficult ascent behind the house. It was a long walk in the downpour to the top of Pine Hill.
    â€œIt’s just a little rain.” Bob Gast had to shout to be heard above the thunder, which rumbled and crashed like lumber falling downstairs. The lightning was simultaneous. “We’ve come out to watch. I really want you to see this, Eddy.” There was a sharp splintering noise behind them, and Bob Gast jumped. Turning, he saw a split tree fall slowly, crashing through other trees, snapping the trunk of a big white pine.
    Eddy cowered against his father. He had to be dragged up the steep side of