Читать книгу The Naked Storm - Cyril M. Kornbluth - Страница 10

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Thin January sunlight slanted through the dirty windows of the Chicago Bureau of the World Wireless Press Service. Bureau Chief Hal Foreman looked on his newsroom and found it good. George and Johnny, teletype operators, were pounding out respectively, the general and sports copy. Goldberg and--what's his name?--Adams were respectively ripping news from the latest editions of the Chicago papers and rewriting it to move on the WW wire. The receiving printer from New York was clicking out Washington and foreign news, and the Las Vegas Western Union telemeter was, thank God, closed down this week for some reason or other.

Everything was beautifully under control and he went for his coat to get some coffee. Shrugging into the coat, he heard a brisk, impersonal clang-clang from the New York printer.

Johnny called out sharply, not looking up from his racing copy or letting his flying fingers slow on the keys: "Note from New York, Hal!"

He went to the printer and read: "CH CHF-WARAMA-RANGU MIDAS WAGOGO SLUMMY IMMY-JC."

All he understood of it was that it was a note for him--"CH CHF"--from WW's president, Jefferson Clark, who wanted something done "IMMY"--immediately--about a phone number--"MIDAS." The rest was front-office code, distinct from newsroom code. He ripped the note off the machine and brought it into the business office adjoining the small newsroom.

Miss Sillery looked up icily from a yellow-paged ledger.

"I'm sorry to trouble you, Madge," Foreman said, "but could you break this for me?"

She nodded bitterly and Foreman retreated to the newsroom in his overcoat to wait. The printer from National Press popped erratically and much too slowly. He frowned as he saw slowly emerging: "6TH NEW ORLEANS OFF 03--MONEYMAN, LA SPECTRE & FOTO" and then immediately: "6TH NEW ORLEANS BILSAB IS 3RD." Foreman glanced at the big wall clock, which showed twenty-one minutes past the hour. Eighteen minutes to get the flash up from the Fair Grounds. Stinking time. And the way the foto result had followed right on the heels of the flash looked even lousier. Somebody had held the flash up somewhere along the line, no damn doubt of that.

Johnny's fingers rippled smoothly over the keys of his teletype as, with his head craned at an impossible angle, he copied the flash and foto from the National Press printer.

"Johnny," Foreman asked, "how's Fair Grounds today?"

"Stinks," the operator replied briefly. "Fifteen minutes, twenty minutes, eighteen minutes. The third was past-post."

"Um," Foreman said, and moved away. He'd have to see National Press, which he didn't like to do. National Press had been much in the newspapers lately. It seems that along with supplying racing news to legitimate sources, they did business with bookies and some Senators did not approve. So far the tar-brush had missed WW.

He stalled for a while by reading the New York report. The machine was printing what looked very much like a long, dull, unedited story right from their Reuters ticker about the long-term effects of pound-devaluation on gold-mining in the Rand, South Africa. Fascinating, Foreman thought sourly. Just what the clients are panting to hear. This goddam outfit is becoming a laughingstock. At the last luncheon meeting of the Chicago Radio Newsmen's Association he had been on the defensive for an hour. The boys had bored in good-humoredly, wanting to know who was buying the report these days and why. It had been difficult to answer. The New York office didn't tell him things. The only client they had in Chicago was WJC, and that was only because old Wally Irvine, their news director, had a sentimental and somewhat superstitious attachment to WW. He'd stuck with them for fifteen years, he could stick with them for fifteen more. There was always AP-Radio, UP and the INS wire for him to fall back on if WW let him down on a newscast. But old Wally had missed the meeting, home sick, and the going had been rough.

The hell with it. He had a job to do.

He took out his notebook, looked up National's number and dialed it at a rewrite phone in the corner. "Illinois Turf Digest," said a woman's cheery voice.

"Mr. Charny, please."

Long pause. "Who is this calling?"

"Foreman. World Wireless."

"One mo-ment." It was a long moment. Those guys claimed they were a legitimate business and they couldn't help it if crooks bought their service any more than a newspaper could help it if a bookie read results in their turf edition. But they were hard as hell to get hold of. Somebody picked up a phone at the other end and Foreman heard the machine-gun rattle of a dozen Morse sounders going full blast in the distance.

"Yuh?" said somebody. It wasn't Charny's voice.

"Let me talk to Charny."

Long pause. "Who's this?"

"Foreman. World Wireless."

"I'll try to gettum. Hold the line."

The next voice was Charny's. "Hi, Bill!" he said brightly. "What can I do for you?"

"If you really want to know, you can snap things up from New Orleans. You past-posted us on the third race. And I just watched the sixth come in. It was awful. The flash with a photo for third, and then the photo result right after it. Not a second between them. You can't tell me he wasn't copying them all off the same card. And his punching, just incidentally, was lousy. When I see punching like that it scares the juice out of me because anybody that bad is going to make mistakes in the figures."

Charny roared with laughter. "Don't take it so hard, Bill!" he said. "I'll tell you what it is. He's kind of a new man, he's been doing other work, so we're just breaking him in on the printers."

Foreman said, knowing he shouldn't: "Why don't you one time break a new man in on a horse-room wire instead of on us?"

Charny said, in a completely different voice: "Okay. We'll pull him off your machine. If there's anything else, call me. Good-bye."

Me and my big mouth, Foreman thought. If they pull a slow-down on us there'll be hell to pay. Well, it's too late now. He wondered what kind of other work the new man had been doing before they put him on the printers: wig-wagging results from a park to a confederate in a nearby house? Manning an abandoned Postal Telegraph "dry wire" with battery and key? Building switchboards that would hook together thirty phones acquired through dummies into what the newspapers always called a "nerve center of gambling"?

He wandered over to the National printer again. The punching style had changed. Crisp, regular and authoritative, the letters clicked onto the paper at a good 50 w.p.m.: "SIXTH SUNSHINE OK BALLAMAN 4.40 3.20 2.80 GARBOYLE 19.40 (OK) 8.80 RUNAMILE 2.20 TIME 147 3/5 OFF 17½."

Things were under control again for the time being. Now if the note wasn't another headache he could go and get that coffee.

Miss Sillery handed him a page from one of her three-by-five pads on which she had written, in her precise script, with one of her needle-pointed pencils: "Chicago Bureau Chief, call me immediately at National 0323 from an outside phone. Jefferson Davis Clark."

"Thank you, Madge," he said, studying it. "Uh, that's a Washington number, isn't it?" It wasn't any of the Washington bureau numbers, though.

"Mr. Clark is in Washington this week," she said. She knew things like that. You had to go to her all the time for bits of information. A client's address. Rates and costs. Where you could get in touch with Clark. Who was new in New York and Washington. What clients were added and who had canceled.

"Thanks," he said, and headed for the newsroom petty cash box, locked in a filing cabinet that also contained the bureau's skimpy and decrepit morgue. He scooped out twelve quarters and scribbled a slip. He'd never got a message like that before. There had been a good deal of: "You alone, Hal?" and "You suah theah's nobody else on the lahn?" before proceeding to a conversation about, usually, sports wire clients and the need for speed. But never any of this outside-phone stuff.

He slid into a booth at the corner cigar store and called long distance. She ordered him to deposit one-fifty and he sent the quarters pouring into the phone in a clanging stream.

"Hello?" said a guarded voice with a southern drawl that he recognized.

"Hello, Mr. Clark. This is Foreman in Chicago. What can I do for you?"

"You calling from an outside phone like I tole you?"

"Yes, sir. Corner cigar store."

"Okeh. You got a pencil and paper?"

"Sure." He worked them out of his inside breast pocket. "Shoot."

"Take this down. Room 1423, Monongahela Buildin'. You know wheah that is?"

"Sure."

"Take this down. Mr. Ganyon. G-A-N-Y-O-N. Eight o'clock tonight. Got that? You go an' see Mr. Ganyon at Room 1423 Monongahela Buildin' at eight o'clock tonight."

From an easy-going, frankly sloppy guy like Clark it was astounding. Foreman repeated the details of the appointment.

"Good. Now, Hal, Mr. Ganyon's people are very good, very valuable friends of ouah's. I took the liberty of tellin' them that you'd be glad to do a job for them. It may take you out of town for sever'l days, but that cain't be helped."

"But the Bureau!" said Foreman, startled. "All I have is Goldberg and three green men!"

"To hell with the Bureau!" Clark said dispassionately. "Put Goldberg in charge an' don't worry about it. Take on another buck-an-hour kid. Is Backmeister still theah?"

That was Johnny. "Yes, sure."

"He's a good man. Don't worry about a thing. Hal, I recommended you up to the hilt to these very, very good friends of ouah's. I said you were intelligent, I said you could take orders an' I said you could keep youah mouth shut. I went right down the lahn for you and I trust you won' let me down."

"Well, Mr. Clark, what's all this about?"

"All I'm free to say at this tahm is that it's related to ouah Las Vegas operation. Well, that's all for now. You'll heah the rest from the party I mentioned. Good-bye, Hal. See you some time."

Click.

Foreman went back upstairs to the bureau without getting his cup of coffee. Goldberg was pounding out a story. Foreman waited until he was finished and said: "Sam, I may be going away for a few days. You'll be in charge of the Bureau. I don't think there's anything coming up in the way of installations, sales or supplies. If anything you can't handle turns up, just spike it for me."

Goldberg's dark face was shining with incredulous joy, "Sure, Hal!" he said earnestly. "Why, this is marvelous! The experience will be wonderful!"

Foreman smiled back meagerly and shucked his overcoat. You got to do everything at WW. The pay wasn't much, but the experience was wonderful. He studied the idle Las Vegas teleprinter broodingly. For two months it had been a rush-rush priority to get the race results on it first and fully. Nominally there was another World Wireless bureau at the other end. Nominally. This was when there had been shootings and a crackdown in California.

Goddamn it, Foreman yelled silently, how the hell did I get mixed up in this anyhow?

But he knew how. He had got mixed up in it by pretending you could get something for nothing, that the experience would be marvelous, that it was just a lot of talk in the newspapers, that WW was a brave little firm battling the giant news monopolies, that Charny was a jolly good fellow, that he was just a little guy following orders.

So quit the job, he said. Go in and tell Madge Sillery you're through and for her to mail you your check and withholding statement. No; you can't do that. You bought a suit that isn't paid for yet and you have a lease on the apartment and you're having a good time with the girls and you like seafood cocktails and steaks. No; you can't do that. You'd be a bum on the street with maybe five hundred other unemployed newsmen tramping from City News Bureau to the Sun-Times to the Trib to the AP to the News to the UP to the Herald-American to the neighborhood papers and never finding anything. No; you can't quit. Just hang on, Hal Foreman told himself. Everything will probably turn out all right.

He looked up a number and called it. A young-sounding voice answered.

"This is Mr. Foreman at World Wireless. Minelli, are you still looking for newswork?"

"Sure am, Mr. Foreman. Did something--?"

"Yeah. Come on down."

He read the Trib for three-quarters of an hour. When Minelli arrived, a skinny, intense fellow of 22 or so, he received him in the shoe-box private office he hardly ever used.

"We have a couple of weeks of desk work at a dollar an hour. It isn't much, but I'm sure you know what the experience means."

"Of course, Mr. Foreman. What would the work involve?"

"You'd be rewrite man under Mr. Goldberg--I'm going to be out of town. Essentially you take dispatches from various sources, put them into WW style and get them on the wire."

The boy's face fell. "No reporting at all?"

"Very little reporting out of here. We rely mostly on our string men and the local papers."

"Local papers. How's that, Mr. Foreman?"

Foreman couldn't meet his eye as he said: "We clip them and rewrite."

"Clip--I don't understand you. You mean we take their news--"

"Sure that's what I mean," Foreman said. "You got any objections?"

Minelli looked dubious. "I thought you couldn't do that, Mr. Foreman."

He looked kindly. "Theoretically, no. But everybody does, and don't let them kid you otherwise. You don't go around bragging about it, but you do it anyway. I could tell you stories that would curl your hair, Minelli."

The boy laughed dutifully. "If you say it's okay, Mr. Foreman. I guess they don't teach you everything in journalism school."

The rest of the interview was pep-talk. He sent Minelli away happy.

Foreman walked out of the office to have dinner before his appointment and Goldberg, still beaming, wished him a cheery good-night.

Office buildings are like cities. Your jerkwater town or your fifth-rate little building is shut tight by eight o'clock. It takes heroic measures to get action. But in a metropolis or a great office building there's no closing hour. Somebody's always up, lights are always on. An elevator man took Foreman to the fourteenth floor of the Monongahela Building without surprise.

Room 1423 had chastely lettered in gold leaf on its frosted-glass door: Dearborn Real Estate Co. Far down in the lower left-hand corner of the frosted-glass plate was lettered in small, plain black: N.P.-Chi. National Press, of course, and small enough to be mistakable for the initials of the sign-painting company.

He went in. It was the conventional receptionist's window and the conventional three-by-six waiting room with an electrolier, etchings on the wall and green leather chairs. The magazines on the end table were solid real-estate stuff: The Journal of Appraisals; N.A.R.B. Digest of State Legislation. Foreman pressed a button and sat down a little gratefully, in one of the green leather chairs. He had drunk three martinis before having a seafood cocktail and a steak.

It was not a conventional receptionist who appeared behind the window. "Grocer," Foreman thought instantly when he saw it. It was a long Italian face needing a shave. It looked incomplete without a white apron. You could easily see it smiling over peaches or green peppers. The illusion evaporated when it said in a voice cold as steel and unaccented: "Who do you want to see?"

Foreman got up. "Mr. Ganyon," he said. "I'm Hal Foreman from World Wireless."

The face continued to stare.

"Mr. Clark arranged an appointment for me," Foreman added.

It vanished without a word. After thirty seconds the newsman picked up a copy of The Journal of Appraisals and pretended to read it. After two minutes the door opened and the man with a grocer's face said: "Follow me."

Foreman followed him through an outer office made hazardous by eight oak desks, treading softly on grey broadloom. (The sale had been made three years ago by a Mr. Boyce.) He followed him into a secretary's office and then into a large oak-paneled office where there were three men.

Into the silence he said: "I have an appointment with Mr. Ganyon."

One of the men, beefy and red-faced, said with a secret smile: "Ganyon couldn't make it. I'll talk to him. Did Mr. Clark explain that this was a very, very important matter and a very confidential one?"

"Yes," Foreman said, frightened. There was the beefy, red-faced man and there were two other men who looked like brothers. They were blond, clean-cut--and somehow indescribably nasty.

"Sit down," the red-faced man said. "Let's talk turkey. I'm not a smart man with the words. I'm just an old circulation slugger who's been lucky. And I want to stay lucky. But I know enough not to stick my neck out.

"Mr. Foreman, I understand you know the wire-service game?" He said it with a secret smile.

"Something about it," Foreman admitted, frightened.

"What's the difference between a duplex and a simplex A.T.&T. lease f'rinstance?"

Foreman told him, and the red-faced man smiled with pleasure. It was the beginning of an hour-long inquisition covering A.T.&T. leases, the Western Union hierarchy, the old Postal Telegraph dry wires, nomenclature of the Bell System engineering force, maintenance service, telemetering line charges and hours, the going rate for teletype operators and steady Morse men, how to spot a no-questions-asked office building and many more things which Foreman was startled to discover that he knew.

"Excellent," the red-faced man pronounced at last. "What we want for you to do is contact a certain party in San Francisco. This party wants a news bureau set up for him, mostly on the sports side, with maybe twelve drops in and around town. This party is just going into the news bureau business and he doesn't know the ins and outs. All he knows is he wants to go into the news bureau business and he has sense enough to pay high for a high-class source of news. We want for you to handle the technical details. If it's politics, he can help you but the plain spade-work is all yours. We want for you to set up an economical system for him--but you know all that. Watch your hours, watch your hiring, watch your rentals and you'll be okay. You'll get the dope from this party on addresses and things like that. All I have to tell you is that the line to the main bureau in Frisco will run from WW Chicago six A.M. to midnight. There won't be any trouble, will there?"

Foreman could see it very plainly. National Press, very much in the clear. World Wireless hopelessly compromised in case of a breakdown. The only link between National and the Frisco distributor of racing news this meeting here and now--

"I don't like it," he said.

Pause.

"Maybe Clark didn't tell you all you needed to know," the red-faced man said gently. "Maybe he didn't tell you that he gets three thousand a week for six years, which is close to a million bucks. Didn't you handle the Las Vegas standby telemeter, kid?"

"Yes," said Foreman.

"So what's the bitch? They drilled Cohen, the heat went on, you set up a Las Vegas telemeter. Don't tell me you can't add two and two, kid." The voice was infinitely persuasive.

"I can add two and two," Foreman said. "I still don't like it. I'm getting out of here." He started for the door, but the man with the grocer's face was standing there.

The beefy man said: "Like hell you are, kid. You got the wrong idea."

The man with a grocer's face caught Foreman a terrific blow in the belly, without seeming to try hard. The newsman collapsed on the broadloom carpet, doubled up and crowing harshly. The two men who looked like brothers moved in. One of them picked Foreman up and held him under the armpits. The other slugged his right fist into the newsman's midriff again and again, expressionless. Foreman rocked and grunted under the blows, powerless to do anything except feel the exploding fire of each deliberate piledriver slam.

The room was a red haze before him when he heard a voice: "That's enough, kids. That's enough, you queer sons of bitches! Leave him alone, I want to talk to him."

He was dumped on a leather couch and a glass of ice-water splashed into his face. It jerked him upright, staring.

"Take it easy, kid," the red-faced man told him. "I want you to see some pictures." He snapped his fingers and one of the men who looked like brothers snickered and pulled from his inside breast pocket a parcel of snapshots. Foreman was quite sure they would be obscene pictures, wild though the thought was, from his manner.

They were obscene only in a certain sense. The first showed a drowned man with many stab-wounds in him. There were crabs eating his face away. The man with the photographs, in a somewhat high-pitched voice, delivered a running commentary.

"This one was with the ice-pick. Ice-pick isn't good because wounds like that swell shut with the congestion and decomposition gas forms in the body cavities and it floats up ... This one was with the razor, which was better but still not the answer ... This one was the cleaver. You see what a bad Wop did to him. A bad Wop is the worst thing to have working on you there is ... Blowtorch ... This is another blowtorch but the people had more time. Three hours, somebody told me ... Battery acid, this one--"

Foreman looked and listened in a dull comprehension that he would do exactly what these people wanted.

After looking at all the photographs he told them that.

"Good," said the red-faced man. "I hated to see you act like a God-damned fool, Foreman. Here's the expense money." It was five hundred dollars in small, worn bills. "It should hold you for a month. Here's your ticket and reservation." It was a roomette on the Golden Gate. The penciled scribble on the envelope said it left tomorrow morning at 9:05. "And when you're located in Frisco, you just phone Mr. Clark and he'll give you the name of the party we want you to contact. And, uh, you needn't think any of this is going to get out, kid. We'll tell 'em you were reasonable right from the start."

Foreman was wearily sure that the red-faced man was embarrassed, not for himself, but because he, Foreman, had made a fool of himself.

"That's all right," he said, and got up, aching. The man with a grocer's face walked with him silently to the elevator. In his uncomfortable company Foreman jeered at himself bitterly: So you wanted something for nothing?

He walked the dark streets for two hours that night, aching and filled with self-loathing. I'll get out of it, he told himself over and over again. I won't have anything to do with pimps and killers and dope-runners. I'll get out of it. They bribe and steal and murder but they can't make me over. I'll get out of it.

At 1:30, aching and filled with self-loathing, he went home and packed.