The Moose shrugged, his mouth drawn tightly into a crooked line, one side pointing up, the other down. His chins seemed to take on a life of their own. He squinted in frustration, and finally, no longer able to control himself, grunted. He looked at his empty chair, knowing that if he sat down it would surely collapse and splinter into pieces from nothing more than the weight of his dismay. Isobel said nothing. She too chose to stand.
“It’s ‘advocacy. ’ We don’t do ‘advocacy.’ Is this where you’re going?” Isobel remained silent. “Are you a reporter-a New York Times reporter-or are you looking to go back on 60 Minutes? Because this,” he waved the same empty sheet of paper in the air again, “this is exactly what they like. ‘The personal pain and anguish that gave birth to his violent campaign…’ That kind of language doesn’t belong in the New York Times.”
“Oh yeah,” she said. “Being dead.” That’s all she needed to say, just two words, for him to understand. Everyone at the Times knew those were the first two words from a legendary sentence in the story about the State of New York’s posthumous pardon of Lenny Bruce: “Being dead, Mr. Bruce is not expected to reap any immediate benefit from the pardon.”
“That got in the Times,” she said.
“Don’t give me bullshit! Lenny Bruce said ‘fuck you’ a couple of times. He didn’t kill five people! Now what the fuck is going on here?”
Isobel said nothing. Mel Gold tried to calm down, but he couldn’t. “Come on, damnit! Talk to me, Isobel!”
“They tried to kill me, Mel.” She spoke quietly, almost in a whisper.
“What!”
“Stein, Maloney, the gang of criminals at Stein, Gelb-”
“They-”
“They tried to kill me.” This time her voice was loud and clear. He heard every word and thought he glimpsed a look of relief in her eyes.
Now the Moose sat down, confident his bulky frame wouldn’t break anything. “Hey kiddo, what’s going on here? There’s something I don’t know and I think you need to tell me. Sit down. Talk to me. Tell me.”
She did. She told him all of it. Some of it he already knew, some he’d never heard before-from Walter Sherman’s first call, to the incident with the former NYPD detective Jack Allen and the warning Walter gave Tom Maloney. She told Gold everything. Almost everything. She left out the sex. And, for reasons she did not fully comprehend, she did not give Gold a description of the “new” Leonard Martin. Whatever she saw of him remained her secret. She said he was “unrecognizable”-although only Walter Sherman had actually seen him-but she didn’t describe his appearance even as Walter had related it to her.
“What the hell does that mean, ‘unrecognizable’?” Mel Gold knew his voice was the wrong one, his manner delivering the wrong message. He wanted so badly to be more compassionate. He yearned to be a real friend to Isobel in her time of need, but he was a newspaperman. Like a soldier in combat, he newspapered on. “What does he look like?”
“I’ve never seen him,” Isobel answered. “I was blindfolded, remember?”
“Sure, so what did Sherman say?” Isobel was silent. The Moose knew she was having a hard time giving him up. “Here’s the deal,” he said. “Listen closely, and if you don’t understand, ask me, okay?” She nodded. “If you’ve never seen Leonard Martin you can’t describe him. If Walter Sherman says he’s seen him and if he can describe him, if he says Martin has changed or altered his appearance in any way, we have no way of corroborating Sherman’s story, do we? We have only your word that someone, a third party-in this case Walter Sherman-told you something, right?” Again, Isobel nodded. “But we do have Sherman’s description. Can we use it? Can the New York Times publish a story about a physical description of Leonard Martin that differs from the public record? Can we do that based solely on what you say somebody else said?” He paused for a long moment. Isobel said nothing and she did not nod her head. She waited. “No,” he said. “We can’t. If we don’t have a first-hand sighting or a cooperative source, which I gather Walter Sherman is not, plus a second witness, we will not print a description for which we have no backup. Am I clear? Do you understand?”
“Yes.”
“Good. Now go back and write it. Give me every little detail Sherman gave you about Leonard Martin’s appearance. Do it on paper or on your own computer-not here. I don’t want it showing up anywhere on anyone’s hard disk or mainframe or wherever in hell all this shit gets stored. Print it out and give it to me. I’ll keep it at home. You and I will be the only ones who know, but I must know. There has to be a record. Believe me, the time will come when there has to be a record. And you and I have to know what we’re looking at when we see it.”
“You won’t share it with anyone? And we won’t print it?”
“Absolutely correct. I know you speak French and some other languages, even some I’ve never heard of, but you speak English too. You heard me. You do understand me, right?”
Isobel smiled at the big man. “Eai, I, Han jee, Io,” she said-yes, in Kiribati, Rotuman, Hindi, and the standard Fijian she spoke as a child.
Mel Gold grinned from ear to ear, then told her to get out of town until after New Year’s. He’d get someone else to finish writing the Louise Hollingsworth story. She would get her byline with whoever wrote the final draft.
“Now get out of here. You’re on the beach for a week or so.”
“D-d-dog days of summer, eh, Mel?”
“What the hell are you talking about?” he said. “It’s December. It’s fucking Christmas, for Christ’s sake.”
Isobel gave him a kiss on the cheek, called Walter, and headed for the airport.
“Ike is close,” said Isobel. “Einstein published two theories of relativity. The first when he was only twenty-three years old. Can you believe that? He called it the ‘special theory of relativity,’ and ten years later he published a second one he called the ‘general theory of relativity.’ Relativity takes into account different points of view-literally, like Ike pointed out-and says that what you think is real could be seen in a different way. Einstein was all about questioning the interchangeability of absolute time. And this fits because his theory holds that the idea that every object has a form and a mass that are constant is false. He also deals with heavy mass objects, saying they actually curve with the universe, which explains gravity, although I don’t think that has much to do with the size of this boat.”
“Damn,” Ike said. Billy and Walter had nothing to add. They were indeed speechless. Each assumed the others, like himself, were still in the dark. “Damn. Where’d you learn that, child?”
Isobel said, “St John’s.”
“Not here you didn’t,” said Billy.
“That’s for damn sure,” said Ike, poking through his pockets, looking for another cigarette.
“I didn’t mean here, St. John. I said St. John’s, with an s.”
“What’s that?” Billy asked.
“It’s a college,” said Walter. “Unlike the three of us, this charming and lovely young lady is an educated woman.”
“That true?” Ike asked. “St. John’s a college?”
“It is,” Isobel said. “A fine institution of higher learning. In Annapolis, Maryland.”