Man of the Hour by Peter Blauner

Author:Peter Blauner [Blauner, Peter]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Thriller, Suspense
ISBN: 9780316038171
Publisher: Open Road Media
Published: 1999-01-01T05:00:00+00:00

29

SO THIS WAS WHAT it felt like to be a success.

Judy Mandel filed her story at six o’clock and then stuck around for three hours to answer editors’ queries and make phone calls to double-check facts. By the time she was finished, Bill Ryan had gone home to be with his invalid wife and the only ones left for her to go out and have a celebratory drink with were the Death of Hope and the paper’s editor-in-chief, Robert “Nazi” Cranbury, who everyone knew was a notorious whoremonger and grossly sentimental when inebriated.

Instead, she went home alone to her tiny $1,200-a-month East 50th Street studio to eat two-day-old salad, drink cheap chardonnay, and watch Seinfeld reruns until she started to fall asleep on her couch. But just before consciousness slipped away, the phone rang and her beeper went off. She picked up the receiver and Nazi’s sloshed, frantic voice yowled into her eardrum.

“They’re after us, love! It’s your bloody bomber story!”

“Why, what’s the matter?” She sat up and looked at the clock. It was after 11:30, and the early edition was already hitting the streets. She panicked, knowing that if she had gotten anything wrong it was too late to take it back.

“Nothing’s the matter!” Nazi shouted. “You’ve got them all chasing you. Now what have you got to follow it?”

All of a sudden, word of her story had scattered around town like broken glass. The Times was trying to match her piece about David Fitzgerald. So were the Post and the News and all the major television stations. She’d managed to beat them all, for the moment. She was running hard, leading the pack. This was the place she’d always wanted to be in her career. But already the moment was passing. Dozens of reporters and producers were working the phones and combing the streets, trying to overtake her. Now she had to start worrying about staying ahead. And she hadn’t even gotten to sleep yet.

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