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for?”
    “Word on the street is they’re twisting in their polyester over you flapping your gums.”
    “Flapping my… Give me a break. They didn’t really think I wouldn’t tell you anything. What was I supposed to say? ‘No comment’?
     That’s a hoot.”
    “Yeah, well, what they expected you to do and what they
ordered
you to do are on two totally different planets, capisce?”
    “So good luck me ever getting another cop to open his mouth?”
    “You got it. North Pole time.”
    “What’s this press conference all about?”
    “Word is they’re going to ID one of the vies. Maybe one, maybe both.”
    “If the cops are freezing us, how’d you hear that?”
    “Mad just called from the Citizen. Picked it up from one of the TV guys. Cameraman said somebody at the cops leaked it to
     his producer, dangled a carrot about how they were going to scoop our ass.”
    “How did Mad get there? I just left him swilling gin with my roommates.”
    “How the hell do I know? He was there with some limey chick.” So Mad and Emma were living it up at the Citizen Kane, the local
     journalists’ bar of choice. Fabulous. Well, maybe she could handle him. Or else she’d wind up dumping a pitcher of Molson
     over his head, like so many before her. “So it looks like the sons of bitches are yanking our chain,” Bill went on. “I was
     going to send out Junior here to get somebody to spill it, but he assures me that there’s not one single cop that’ll give
     him the time of day.”
    “Well, actually, I…” Franklin began.
    Bill shut him up with a look. “Meter maids don’t count.”
    “Will you give him a break?” I said. “He just started. How many decent sources did any of us have when we first got here?
     Don’t feel bad, Franklin. Right now I couldn’t even get the meter maids to talk to me.”
    “You got that right,” Bill said.
    “That bad?”
    “Fact is, when the chief called to screw me over with the press conference, he specifically said to make sure you weren’t
     there.”
    “No way.”
    “Yep.”
    “So I take it you’re sending me?”
    “Of course.”
    “When again?”
    “Tomorrow, eight A.M.”
    “Wow, they’re really pissed. They know no A.M. reporter starts before ten. What a bunch of jerks.”
    “So tomorrow, bright and early.”
    “What about tonight?”
    “What about it?”
    “Are we really going to lie down and get screwed? Me, I like some romance first.”
    “You got a better idea? I’m up shit’s creek here. My best reporter is drunk off his ass…”
    “Thanks a
lot
.”
    “… and my second-best reporter just did a Wicked Witch of the West down the side of a mountain. My cop reporter looks like
     he’s dying for his mother’s tit. Who am I supposed to send? Lillian? The cops aren’t the goddamn ladies-garden-club bunch
     they’ve got over at theschool board. We don’t exactly have a staff of thousands here, you know. Hey, I got it. Maybe I could get one of the sports
     guys to go over, give me some play-by-play.”
    “There’s a thought.”
    “Go home, Alex. Go get some sleep and let me figure out how I’m going to explain to our esteemed publisher that the world’s
     smallest TV station is going to scoop us on the biggest story of the year.”
    “Come on, it’s not that bad. It could be worse. They could be scooping us when they catch the killer. Then we’d all be out
     of a job.”
    “Junior, make sure Alex gets home okay. And for Chrissake, shut my door.”
    We went out by the back stairs, but when Franklin headed for his car I dragged him in the other direction.
    “Where are we going? Alex, wait, will ya? Bill told me to get you home. You heard him.”
    “Just follow me.”
    “Where are we going?”
    “Cop shop. You remember the way, right?”
    It’s a five-minute walk from the paper to the police station, but in my condition it took ten. When we went through the front
     door I had this wispy flashback of myself crawling in there two days ago,