Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine. Vol. 148, Nos. 3 & 4. Whole Nos. 900 & 901, September/October 2016
- Автор: Дивер Джеффри, Эллин Стенли
- Год: 2016
- Язык: английский
- Год: Penny Publications
- ISBN: 0013-6328
- Жанр: Другие детективы
Электронная книга - «Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine. Vol. 148, Nos. 3 & 4. Whole Nos. 900 & 901, September/October 2016». Краткое содержание книги:
Expecting her to say thanks and leave.
But she hadn’t. She’d said, “A stint here for a few months? That’d look real nice on the résumé. Do you think a forty-three-year-old divorcée can be an intern?”
“As in ‘for free’?”
“As in ‘for the experience of it.’”
“As in,” he’d said coyly, drawing out his words, “... okay, I agree.”
Nicole had turned out to be an excellent research assistant and editor. Her notes were pithy and well-written. And he’d heard her on the phone, digging for information and not letting subjects weasel away. But there’d never been any talk about her writing articles, certainly not under her name. The Power(s) Lunch blog was his exclusively — all eight or so weekly stories scribed by him alone. He felt an odd twinge at the thought of giving up a byline.
Powers now sipped his bourbon. He glanced down at the empty space before her. She shook her head again. He said, “Give me the idea first.”
Nicole first pressed down on top of the unsteady table, then turned away. She found a business card in her pocket, read the name, and folded it several times. She wedged it under a leg to level the table. Then she dug into her backpack, which had a Spiderman decal on it. He was always amused at this, her only whimsy, as she was the picture of nondescript. He’d been surprised, during that interview, when she mentioned her age; he’d have thought her somewhat younger. The divorcée part made sense, though. She was attractive enough, in a suburban librarian sort of way, but on the heavy side. She tended to wear bulky, well, ugly sweaters and badly fitting skirts made from fabric that had — what did his ex say? That’s right: it had pilled, ended up covered with little dots like lint. Her shoes were always scuffed. And she tended to spill food and drinks, a splash or dab of which inevitably ended up on her chest or thighs. She wore too much makeup, the concealing kind, not the sexy kind. Hubby, he speculated, might have wanted a prettier package and gone hunting in Younger-ville. Or, no reason to be sexist about it, maybe her keen eyes and intellect and uncompromising nature had pushed him away.
Or, let’s be really fair here: Maybe she’d dumped him, and was dating Sven the artist or Richard the Broadway actor. Trevor Powers had learned that when it came to the bedroom, the least likely candidates could be the most electable.
Watch those assumptions! he warned his J-students at Midtown College.
Now, a notebook appeared and she glanced through it. Then looked up.
“Michael Kessler.” Nicole was whispering.
Powers felt a thud in his gut.
Kessler...
This explained why she wanted to meet here, out of the office. Given the sensational and controversial topics he blogged about, and the unpopularity and hatred heaped upon crusaders like himself, Powers believed that his small Greenwich Village office might from time to time be bugged — by competitors, the politicians and CEOs he wrote about, and possibly even the government. The place had been swept recently by a private eye he used and the results had come back negative. Still, when it came to blogging about Kessler, you could never be too careful.
“And?” Powers found himself leaning forward again. His hand was gripping the glass tightly.
“I was at my night job, and I thought the man at a table I was waiting on looked familiar. Couldn’t place him but I’d seen him in the Times. He was in his fifties, nice suit, kind of imperious, you know. There was a woman with him. A few years younger. They’d had two drinks each, bourbon for him. She had martinis. And it was really riling me I couldn’t get the name. You know how that happens?”
Sort of. “Go on.”
“And I was hoping they wouldn’t pay cash, so I could get a credit card. And sure enough, he pulled one out. Kessler Development. Amex Black. The one you need to spend a quarter-million a year to get. And, yep, it was him. And his sister.”
“Sister?”
“Sarah. I looked the name up afterward and found pictures of her too. She’s CFO of his operating company.”
Well, well, well...
“Kessler tip well?”
“Not particularly. Now, what happened was, I stepped away to have the bartender run the card and when I got back to the table, they were leaning close, talking. It looked like they didn’t want to be overheard. That was my impression. So I stopped. But I was still pretty close and I heard something.”
“Is this the part where you extort me into letting you write the story?”
Her sky-blue eyes narrowed. “I want to do more than just research, Trevor.”
The implication, maybe, was that if he wasn’t paying her, she deserved better than a Thanky, Miss on the masthead. And she probably did. But was this an appropriate payday for her? A story that was potentially huge?
He suspected her life before going back to school later in life had been country clubs and shopping with lady friends, Whole Foods dinners, part-time boutique work or volunteering. She hadn’t mentioned children, and she didn’t strike him as a mother, but that was a possibility.
Certainly she could be a journalist — she could write and she was dogged. But did she have what it took to go up against Michael Kessler?
Trevor Powers — along with many, many other people — considered Kessler the embodiment of twenty-first-century greed and underhanded business practices. Not a One-Percenter, he was a One-Hundredth-of-One-Percenter, and had achieved that lofty status by bludgeoning those who opposed or threatened him (probably not literally, though rumors abounded to the contrary).
No, Powers now decided, this was out of Nicole’s league. And there was another factor too: Powers wasn’t above admitting that he personally wanted his byline on any story about Kessler. While he didn’t lecture his J-students on the subject, he knew that ego was an important fuel in the world of reporting. Sometimes the most important.
He was frank with her now. “I’m sorry, Nicole. Michael Kessler? He’s too big, too dangerous. If it pans out, I’ll take this one. Whatever you want to write next, it’s yours.”
The woman fell silent.
He added, “I wasn’t joking about him being dangerous. He’s utterly ruthless. Whatever you’ve got on him, if it hurts him, he’ll hurt back. Hard.”
Nicole slumped, not happy, but he could see she was seriously considering his proposition.
Powers heard the door to the bar open and he looked over, then raised his hand to the person entering: a young woman, blond and skinny. She wore a battered leather jacket and jeans, and an old backpack hung from her shoulder. It had, charmingly, a button with a peace symbol pinned onto the strap.
She walked to them and, when Powers gestured to a chair, she sat.
“Cherise, this is Nicole.”
“Hey, hi,” the girl said cheerfully.
They shook hands.
“Cherise is a student of mine. Nicole works for me. She’s studying journalism too.”
“Cool!”
Nicole nodded. “Second career. Where are you going?”
“Hunter.”
“I’m at City University.”
“What area do you want to go into?” Cherise asked.
“Blogging or podcasts. You?”
Cherise said, “I’m in Professor Powers’s new-media class, but I think I want to go into broadcast.”
He clicked his tongue — all his students knew his dislike of TV and radio reporting — and she laughed. Then she dug into her backpack and pulled out a red plastic document sleeve. “Thanks for the extra time.”
“No worries.” He took the report and looked inside. The title was A History of the Ethical Journalism Network. He knew it would be well researched, and written in a lean, accessible style; surprising for a nineteen-year-old. “Your mother’s doing better?”