Rumor Has It by Charles Dickinson

Author:Charles Dickinson
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: HarperCollins
Published: 2014-09-16T00:00:00+00:00

“If the worst happens—” Muff Greene said.

“What’s the worst?”

“We can’t get back control of the presses,” Muff Greene said. “Or they damage them in some way. Can we print at the Quill?”

“They’d hold us up,” Derringer predicted. “They’d charge us by the letter.”

“Call someone over there,” Muff Greene urged. “We should find out if it’s a possibility.”

“Call whom?”

“Go to the top.”

“Barton?”

“He’s going to approve it eventually—if it gets approved.”

Derringer departed. “I’d like to listen in on that conversation,” Danny said.

“Well, you won’t. And you didn’t hear this one, either. OK?” Muff Greene said.

He wanted to go to the pressroom gallery, a long carpeted hallway with windows looking in on the dark tops of the presses. The men in there with their plugged ears and headgear cupping the plugs could look out and see people talking soundlessly, as if all their precautions against deafness had been futile. Dan wanted to see the pressroom under siege; he wanted to see the men who were refusing to acquiesce to the final plans of management, a plan he had embraced for the lure of its familiarity.

Dwight Spang came to his office. “I heard they’re flooding the pressroom. A pressman has a fire hose and they can’t get it away from him.”

“Good story, Dwight. Who’s your source?”

“No source. It’s a teaser. I was hoping you’d set me straight.”

“What’s new on the grave-liner strike?”

Dwight Spang leaned forward. “They’ve covered the gallery windows with newsprint. Why the blackout? Are they torturing guys in there?”

“I don’t know anything.”

“You were in there with Muff and Fluff. You have access.”

“What have you got?” Dan asked impatiently.

Dwight sighed. “Back to business,” he sang. “Something interesting has developed. But it turns it into a two-day story. This new thing . . . I won’t be able to get it firm today.”

“It’s still early,” Dan said. He looked at his watch, then at his phone, wondering where Tim Penn was.

“I can give you a story on the strike and the pileup of bodies waiting to be buried,” Dwight Spang said. “I’ve got that story. But I turned something else up. I was calling around to some of the bereaved to get their reaction to having their loved ones in cold storage. I was hung up on twice, the third time the woman called me a fiend from hell, and so I was all set to take a hint. But I tried one more family. Their mom is in Wolf Funeral Home in Evanston. They don’t know what I’m talking about. Mom was buried just fine last week. I thought maybe they had liners then—so I called another family from Wolf—their grandma died Thursday. According to the other funeral-home directors I’ve talked to, someone who died Thursday would be about three hundredth on any waiting list for liners. But no—Grandma is planted snug as a bug. Four others—all from Wolf—who died Thursday or Friday have been buried without delay.”

“Maybe he had liners stockpiled,” Dan said.

“The story is there isn’t one in the state.”

“Have you confronted Wolf?”

“Sure.

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