Straight No Chaser by Jack Batten

Author:Jack Batten [Batten, Jack]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Literature & Fiction, Mystery; Thriller & Suspense, Mystery, Humanities, Literature, FIC022000, book
ISBN: 9780887627477
Google: vu7VngEACAAJ
Amazon: 0887627471
Barnesnoble: 0887627471
Goodreads: 12010742
Publisher: Dundurn
Published: 1989-01-01T05:00:00+00:00

21

ANNIE WAS SITTING at my kitchen table. She had a ballpoint pen with red ink, and she was writing in a nimble hand on pages in a ringed notebook. It was just coming up to 7 a.m.

“Know what I’m getting you this Christmas?” she said. “A typewriter.”

“Really romantic.” I was standing in the doorway in my maroon dressing gown. “What should I get you? A snow shovel?”

“If you had a typewriter,” Annie said, “nights when I sleep over, I could type the notes for the radio program. This way, longhand, I get in front of the mike and can hardly read my own writing.”

Annie was due on air for her Metro Morning movie review at around ten to eight. She was dressed and had a cup of coffee beside the ringed notebook. There was more in the Mr. Coffee machine. I poured a cup.

“Which one you going to talk about?” I asked. “The Harp Manley?”

Annie made a grunting noise that I took to be affirmative.

“Want some background stuff?” I asked. “About Manley as a jazz musician?”

Another grunt that I interpreted as negative.

I sat at the table and let my coffee cool. Three or four minutes went by, and when Annie’s writing seemed to be slowing down, I spoke again.

“Study the guy closely,” I said, “and Ted Koppel bears a striking resemblance to Howdy Doody.”

“Eye of the beholder,” Annie said without raising her head from the notebook.

“With an overlay of Alfred E. Newman.”

“The man exudes intelligence.” Annie looked up. “I can’t help myself, Crang. Ted speaks from the TV screen and I get all unglued.”

“Must be the hour.”

“He does come on late, which is a shame.”

“Not Koppel’s hour. This hour, right now, seven in the morning. It’s too early for rational talk about sex appeal.”

“For talk maybe.” Annie let go a slinky smile. “But I’ve known you to show fantastically sexy moves at ridiculously early hours.”

I looked at the wall clock. Ten past seven.

“Not now, idiot,” Annie said. “A girl needs a little foreplay.”

“How ’bout a quickie?”

Annie went over to the phone and dialled for a taxi.

“Just end the suspense about one thing,” I said.

“It isn’t true,” Annie said. “I’m not seeing Ted Koppel on the sly.”

“Another subject altogether,” I said. “What in hell’s a best boy?”

“Persistent cuss you are.” Annie was organizing the notebook, pen, and other utensils in her shoulder bag. “A best boy. He’s the person on the movie set that runs the errands, fills the coffee cups, opens the limo doors, sharpens the pencils.”

“A gofer? That’s all?”

“Don’t blame me. I just supply the answers around here.”

“I was hoping for something more exotic.”

“Shoot the messenger, why don’t you?”

I went around the table and kissed Annie’s forehead.

“Did I sound like an ingrate?” I said. “Truth is, it’s a heck of a load off my shoulders. All those years, sitting in movies, reading the credits, not knowing what best boy meant, feeling stupid.”

The taxi came just after seven-thirty. Annie was cutting it fine. Metro Morning broadcast from studios over on Parliament Street, about ten minutes from my place.

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