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of those spooky magazines. You know? ‘What Abraham Lincoln Said To Me.’ That sort of thing.”
    “Or maybe a morticians’ trade paper,” the photographer said. “You could be their Consumer Affairs Columnist.”
    “Keep laughin’, guys.”
    “Or you could quote Thomas Bradley again,” said an old reporter, who was not smiling.
    Fletch glanced at the big wall clock. “Guess I better hurry up, if I’m going to make that interview with
The New York Times
. Shouldn’t keep ’em waiting too long. They want a new managing editor, you know.”
    “Gee, no, Fletch. We didn’t hear that,” said the photographer.
    Terry said, “Ernie Pyle should get the job. Maybe H.L. Mencken.”
    Al called after Fletch, as Fletch was leaving the city room. “Aren’t you cleaning out your desk?”
    “Hell, no,” Fletch said. “I’ll be back.”
    “Yeah,” the unsmiling reporter said. “Maybe in your next life.”

9
    “ G  O D ,    I      H A T E this,” Tom Jeffries said. On a high metal bed on wheels, on which he was lying on his stomach in the tiny patio behind his house, he was dressed only in shorts and, from his waist to his head, plaster casts and metal braces. His friend, Tina, was sitting on a stool spooning scrambled egg into his mouth. She was dressed in a light, loose dress. “Everything you eat sticks in your throat. Give me more orange juice, will you, Tina?”
    She held a glass of orange juice up to his face and placed the flexible straw in his mouth.
    “Hang-gliding sure looks pretty,” Fletch said. He was sitting on the picnic table, his bare feet on the bench.
    “It’s a pretty thing to do,” Tom said. “It feels pretty. It is pretty.
    Soar like a bird.”
    “Birds get broken backs very often?” Fletch asked.
    “Sometimes you land pretty hard,” Tina said. “This was to be Tom’s last flight before we get married next Saturday.”
    “Yeah,” Tom said. “I was going to give it up because Tina wanted me to. She said I might get hurt. Shows you what she knows.” Tom grinned at her.
    “Wedding put off?” Fletch asked.
    “No,” Tom said. “Instead of wearing a tuxedo Tina’s going to put a big red bow ribbon on my ass.”
    “That’ll be nice,” Fletch said. “At least she’ll know what she’s marrying. How long you going to be wrapped up like that, in plaster and aluminum?”
    “Weeks,” Tom groaned. “Months.”
    “We’ll be married a long time,” Tina said quietly. “A few months won’t matter.”
    She had offered Fletch breakfast, and he was hungry, but he had refused. He figured she had enough to do taking care of Tom.
    “You heard what I did?” Fletch asked.
    “Yeah,” Tom said. “Jack Carradine called me. At first I thought he was telling me a funny story. Then I realized he doesn’t think it’s even slightly funny. Somebody ran your piece on Wagnall-Phipps on his pages while he was out of town. You quoted a dead man, Fletch.”
    “And got fired.”
    “And got fired. Makes me look all the better.” Tom smiled at Fletch. “Which, under the circumstances, I don’t mind at all. The only job security I’ve got. You screwed up royally on a story originally assigned to me.”
    “Tom, can you tell me any reason why Charles Blaine should show me, and let me quote from recent memos he said were from Thomas Bradley?”
    “Sure,” Tom said. “He’s a creep. They’re all creeps at Wagnall-Phipps. Tom Bradley was a creep.”
    “In what way?”
    “I don’t know. Bradley lived way back, down deep inside himself—somewhere near his lower spine. He never seemed very real to me, if you know what I mean. Every word, gesture seemed calculated. Very self-protective. Always gave you the feeling he was hiding something—which is why we started that investigation into the financial dealings of Wagnall-Phipps a couple of years ago. Creepy. Made us suspicious. Sure enough, there he was, doing kick-backs,pay-offs, running the ski house in Aspen neither he nor