Pace fixed coffee and breakfast—if a single English muffin is breakfast—and sat down to read the Sunday Chronicle. The big headline said:
Below was a subhead:
It carried his byline. He hoped the story wasn’t as flimsy in the reading as he’d thought it in the writing the evening before. He didn’t have the stamina to find out. He left the table and went to his bedroom to shower, but he couldn’t hold his eyes open. He flopped on the bed with the thought that if he could rest for a few minutes, he’d be fine.
Thirty seconds later, still fully clothed, he was sound asleep.
10
Several colleagues stared as Pace eased himself down at his desk. If he looked as lousy as he felt, he could have been taken for a vagrant. Glenn Brennan wandered over.
“It was either an all-night binge or a wild and crazy sex orgy to which I was not invited,” Brennan said as he dropped into Jack Tarshis’s chair. “You didn’t have an orgy and forget about your old buddy Glenn, now did ye?”
“None of the above,” Pace replied weakly. He needed a lift, but Brennan’s needling wasn’t the ticket. It would have to be something more profound, something like Kathy keeping her promise and asking to see him when she returned to Washington.
“Ah, denial,” said Brennan, waving a forefinger in the air. “’Twould lead me to believe ’twas the orgy, then, ye no-account scoundrel. I want details, man. Details!”
“Glenn, I don’t need this today. What are you doing here anyway? It’s Sunday.”
“There’s a memorial thing on the Hill today—not that he deserves it—for the fascist congressman from California, and they called me in to cover it. But don’t be changin’ the subject. I want details of this affair.”
“There was no all-night party. No sex orgy. I was working.”
Brennan stared at him, scowling. “ ’Tis scum ye was born, and ’tis scum ye will die,” he continued. “Glory, but yer a dog-faced asshole.”
Pace raised an eyebrow. “I didn’t know ‘asshole’ was an Irish word.”
“ ’Tis since the Irish met you.”
Brennan laughed aloud, delighting himself with his joke. Pace rubbed his eyes and tried to stifle a yawn. He drained one cup of coffee from the office cafeteria and started on another, anticipating a third, except the acid was beginning to wear away the lining of his stomach, which hadn’t been offered solid food, save for one English muffin, since lunch in front of the NTSB offices the day before. It seemed like a month.
He heard Brennan get up and felt a hand on his shoulder. “Somethin’s worn you down. If I can help, I’ve got the time.” Brennan reverted to his normal brogue, which was thick enough.
“Thanks, Glenn,” Pace said.
“Is it professional or personal?” Brennan asked.
“Professional,” replied Pace.
“Something wrong?”
Pace shook his head. “I wish I knew.” He glanced up at Brennan. “You really want to help? You’ll have to listen to a story that could conservatively be called bizarre.”
“Absolutely. I love bizarre.”
“What time is the memorial thing for Whitlock?”
“Two this afternoon. They’re givin’ time for people to get to church and eat first.”
“Speaking of eating, I’ve got to get some food in me. Is the G Street Deli open?”
“Yep. I doubt the Sunday staff would survive without it.”
“Come with me while I devour an entire cow.”
“Wouldn’t miss it.”
Pace got up from his desk and snapped his fingers. Through the twin veils of exhaustion and hangover, the night before looked very fuzzy. But he remembered clearly his promise to check out the identity of the victim of the car wreck on 193.
“I’ve got to stop in Virginia Suburban first,” he told Brennan. “It’ll just take a second.”
Brennan sat down. “Think of me as your faithful dog, Patrick. You call, I’ll be there.”
Pace snorted. “Patrick was a saint, not a dog.”
“Well, I’ll be a saint of a dog,” Brennan promised.
“If you try to lick my face, I’ll deck you.”
Pace headed for the stairway down to Suzy O’Connor’s floor, but a signal from Wister detoured him. The look on the national editor’s face could have soured a quart of milk. Pace guessed it was due to something more than having to work on Sunday.
“I didn’t like the idea of Glenn covering the NTSB briefing last night,” Wister scolded without so much as saying good morning. “He doesn’t have your expertise. On top of that, I expected you in earlier today, ready to do some serious business, rather than obviously hung over and playing to Glenn’s ill-conceived notions of hilarity. There is a certain amount of responsibility that goes with the privilege of working for the Chronicle, you know.”
Pace hadn’t intended to charge overtime for his work the night before. But so furious was he at Wister’s officious lecture that he decided to put in for every minute of it, including the time spent drinking Black Jack with Mike McGill.
“I was not out partying last night, Paul,” he lashed back. “I worked on a lead on the Sexton story until dawn. I got home after six. You can believe it or not. I don’t give a shit. But I’m not going to take your abuse when you don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“Don’t be insubordinate,” Wister cautioned. He looked at Pace skeptically. “You were working all night on a lead?”
“Yes.”
“Did it come to anything?”
“No. Ah, not yet. The truth is, I’m not sure. There’s something I have to check with the Virginia suburban desk.”
“I think we’d better talk to the Old Man first. He’s in the Glory Room going over the Sunday papers. He’s been waiting for you.”
The man Pace found in the conference room was dressed in well-worn Dockers, a faded kelly-green Polo knit shirt, and Topsiders without socks. His face was ruddy and his hair windblown. He could have stepped off a yacht on the Chesapeake Bay. Pace had seen Schaeffer casual before but never at the office. Paul Wister, of course, was in a three-piece suit, this being a weekend notwithstanding.
Schaeffer noticed them standing at the door and grinned broadly. “Steve, come in and see what you did to the opposition. Or have you seen it already?”
“No,” Pace replied. “I saw page one of ours this morning, but I didn’t get up until after ten, and I haven’t had a chance to look at the Post or the Times.”
“You sleeping in on the job?” Schaeffer grinned. “We’re paying you handsomely, and all we ask in return is you work a solid eighty or ninety hours a week.”
“I didn’t go to bed until dawn, Avery.”
“He says he was working on a lead all night,” Wister said, “but he hasn’t told me anything about it except it didn’t pan out.”
“You didn’t give me a chance to tell you,” Pace responded.
Schaeffer looked from one to the other, the expression on his face growing serious. He motioned for them to sit down.
“If you two have a problem, take care of it,” he ordered. “I don’t want it in the newsroom interfering with business. I don’t want it anywhere interfering with the biggest story of the year. I want it handled. Today.”
He sat back in the chair at the head of the table, and his face brightened as though the mere act of dismissing discord had ended it. “Now let’s talk about tomorrow.” He nodded toward Pace. “What’s this great lead of yours?”