“Mother of God, what is it?” said one of the policemen.
The stricken man continued to spin and scream for several seconds; then his knees buckled, and he went down. His bowels let go and added to the mess on the floor.
The policemen stood transfixed, guns drawn. The one who had spoken shifted the revolver to his left hand and crossed himself.
The body jerked and flopped for another ten seconds; then, with a final spine-cracking convulsion, it lay still.
The policemen approached warily. One of them reached down with great reluctance and put his fingers on the man’s throat. After several seconds he snatched his hand back with obvious relief.
“He’s dead.”
“Thank God,” muttered the other.
Corey moved over to where Vic Metzger still stood leaning against the wall. Vic’s forearm was open in a long, jagged slash. Corey grabbed a bar towel and pressed it over the wound.
“This man needs medical help,” he told the policemen.
“Ambulance coming,” one of them said. Neither could immediately pull his eyes away from the dead man.
“What happened, Vic?” Corey asked. “Who was he?”
A little of the color returned to Vic’s face. “Hank Stransky,” he said in a hoarse whisper. “Comes in here a lot. Never caused any trouble before. He acted kind of funny tonight, but I didn’t think much of it. Said he had a headache. Then things started happening to his face….”
Vic broke off in a shudder that racked his whole body. Corey was busy taking notes in his personal shorthand.
“What’s that about the face?” he said.
“It was like nothing I’ve ever seen. Big red patches came out. Then they got all lumpy.”
Corey looked back at the still figure on the floor. “Are you talking about those sores on his face?”
“They weren’t there when he came in. Shit, I wouldn’t serve anybody looked like that. The things just broke through the skin while I was watchin’. Horrible.”
Vic shuddered again. A young man in a white jacket came in carrying a medical case. Corey moved away and let him attend to Vic’s arm.
The crowd outside had doubled since the arrival of the police and ambulance. Two more police cars had arrived, and uniformed officers were keeping people away from the entrance and taking names. The injured had been separated, and the situation seemed under control. No one thought to ask Corey what he was doing inside.
With no one paying him any attention, he stepped carefully through the mess on the floor back to the telephone on the wall by the men’s room. He dropped in a coin and punched out the number of Jimbo Tattinger, the photographer who had worked with him on the tit story. The phone was picked up on the first ring.
“I’m on my way, sugar pie. Just hold your — ”
“How about changing your plans, sweet lips?”
“What? Who is this? Macklin? What’s the idea?”
“I want you and your camera at Vic’s Old Milwaukee Tavern right now.”
“Are you crazy? I got a date.”
“Fuck your date.”
“That’s my plan.”
“Listen, shithead, there’s a story down here with picture possibilities that will get us a wire-service pickup or I’ll kiss your ass.”
“No use trying to sweet-talk me.”
“Just get here.”
“I’m on my own time.”
“I’ll pay you out of my own pocket, for Christ’ sake.”
“Overtime?”
“Oh, shit yes. Are you coming down here, or am I coming there to rip your lungs out?”
“Okay, hotshot. Where are you, exactly?”
Corey gave Jimbo the address, had him read it back, then went out to talk to the cops and the witnesses. He was actually excited about a story. It was almost like the good old days.
Chapter 4
For the first time in the memory of the present staff, there was the crackle of excitement in the musty halls and offices of the old Milwaukee Herald plant. Corey Macklin’s story on the bloody events at Vic’s Tavern had come on a slow news day, and with Jimbo Tattinger’s graphic photos, the street sales of the Saturday edition exceeded anything since the Brewers were in the World Series.
Telephones shrilled throughout the building. People moved through the halls with purposeful strides. Typewriters clacked like bursts of machine-gun fire. Even the lethargic maintenance crew went about their cleanup tasks with unaccustomed vigor.
Corey was thoroughly enjoying his spurt of fame. He had requests from three television stations — one network affiliate and two local channels — for interviews as an eyewitness. He turned them all down. This was his story, and he had no intention of sharing it. As a measure of Corey’s enhanced status, city editor Porter Uhlander had, for the first time in two years, called him by his first name.
The city editor was bald except for an uneven fringe of gray above the ears. His pale jowls hung over the collar of his starched white shirt. He had the early edition of Monday’s Herald spread out on the desk before him. Corey sat on the other side of the desk in a cracked leather chair, waiting for the editor to speak.
“You did a nice job on the Stransky story, Corey,” Uhlander said. “Good follow-up today on the victims.”
“Thanks, Porter.” Corey tried out a mixture of brashness and humility.
“Think any of them are going to die?”
“Doesn’t look like it,” Corey said.
“Too bad. What have you got for tomorrow?”
“Interview with Pauline Stransky.”
“The widow? Hasn’t she already been on television?”
“Sure, ten seconds here, twenty seconds there. All those TV guys know is ‘How do you feel, Mrs. Stransky?’ Hell, how would she feel? I want to get a picture of the husband through her eyes.” Even as he spoke, Corey knew it might be wishful thinking. Widow stories did not usually sell a lot of papers unless the widow had a forty-inch chest. Still, it was a possibility.
“If you think you can get something readable, go ahead. I’d like to keep the story running through Wednesday if we can.”
“Can I have Jimbo?”
“Think you can use him?”
“He got some good stuff Friday,” Corey said.
“Bloody but good,” Uhlander agreed. “What can he do with the widow?”
“Character shots. Background stuff.”
“A little arty for us, isn’t it?”
“We can jazz it up with the right captions.”
“You mean like ‘From this ordinary-looking house came the ordinary man who Friday night spattered a Milwaukee neighborhood with blood’?”
“A tad lurid, but that’s the general idea.”
“Okay, take Jimbo.”
Corey got up and started to leave.
“By the way, Corey …”
“Yeah?”
“I had a call from Mr. Eichorn about you.”
“No kidding.” Nathan Eichorn was the seldom-seen publisher of the Herald who did most of his business from Palm Springs or somewhere in Switzerland.
“I think he has some ideas about boosting you to a daily column.”
Having his name and maybe his picture on a daily column would be a step up from city-beat reporter, but it sure as hell wouldn’t make him rich. Corey’s ambitions went beyond the rickety Milwaukee Herald. Still, he was not yet in a position to turn anything down.
He said. “Interesting. I’d like to hear more when I get back.”
He found Jimbo Tattinger in the shabby photographers’ lounge with a cup of coffee and a well-thumbed copy of Hustler. With a minimum of grumbling, Jimbo got his gear together and followed Corey out to the parking lot, where his Cutlass waited.