Read Jimmy Fox - Nick Herald 01 - Deadly Pedigree for Free Online Page A

paper and the Times-Picayune, Tawpie was mostly concerned with parading his own righteousness, though he was supposed to be protecting the honor of the school. It was chiefly because of his high profile in Nick’s case that, later, some gullible but powerful alumni pushed for his promotion to the position most department staffers thought Una had earned.
    And it was Una who sailed him into the calm cove of genealogy after the storm of disgrace. He had never given the subject a minute’s thought, wasn’t even sure what it was. It just so happened that a cousin of hers had contacted her about their family origins, and Una rashly volunteered Nick as an experienced genealogical researcher–which, of course, he wasn’t. The new challenge was just what he needed. Two published family histories were the result in the following year and a half; these initial works of scholarship kindled his interest in the subject, and cinched his genealogical certification.
    But after that promising initial splash, Nick now found himself floundering. He had lately begun to wonder if he could stick with anything–or anyone–long enough to find fulfillment.

    “Hawty Latimer, huh?” Nick said, rubbing his chin as if deciding, trying not to appear to surrender too easily. “Fine. You win. Send her over. But I can only give her minimum wage.”
    Victorious at last, Una raised her glass for a toast; Dion and Nick did likewise.
    “She may turn out to be very helpful, if she’s as sharp as you say. I’ve got this big project for a little old guy who wants me to track down an ancestor he knows hardly anything about. I might have to do some traveling on this one. I’ve rushed through my most urgent current projects and lied to the clients who–”
    “Zounds! You, lie?” exclaimed Dion, with counterfeit surprise on his expressive face.
    “You heard right. Hey, by common consent I’m already a scoundrel, so what do I have to lose? My conscience and I have come to an amicable arrangement: we look the other way when necessary. So, there’s a lot someone with a little intelligence could do for me while I’m tied up with my new client.”
    “If only Messieurs Shakespeare, Jonson, Milton, and Tawpie–he doesn’t deserve to be in that august company–would allow me some leisure for such fascinating pursuits! Maybe I’m the one who needs Hawty.”
    “Dion means that we spend quite a lot of time reading incessant inane memos from the Usurper,” Una said.
    “What an intellectual titan!” Dion declared. “He concerns himself with things like the price of Twinkies in our snack machine. Sends out polls craving our opinions on parking arrangements. A bad teacher makes a worse bureaucrat. Ah, Nick, in a way I’m glad you aren’t soldiering on with us under the new regime, forced to endure the mindless pettiness to which we have descended!”
    Dion twirled his flamboyant mustache as he spoke. His bony limbs were splayed across his chair. Beneath his frizzy black-and-gray hair, his thin bearded face had the jaded look of a Renaissance rake in a London strumpet shop. A face from a sixteenth-century miniature. The substantial gap in his front teeth served to enhance the eccentricity of his appearance and gave his speech an engaging sibilance. He was immensely popular with most of his students for his ice-breaking histrionics and brilliant presentation in his difficult classes; others, less interested in the substance of the course, liked the ease with which he could be reduced to caricature in their notebooks.
    “Well, we do have our little weapons to fight back, don’t we, Dion?”
    As Una described the latest guerrilla tactics of their band of departmental subversives, Nick listened with divided attention. Their concern for his state of mind touched him, as usual, and he wanted to put them at ease, convince them he wasn’t going to swan dive off the Huey P. Long Bridge. Yet, he didn’t want to let on how much he had begun to love genealogy;