Panos sat behind his big editor’s desk, reading a memo, while he distractedly popped grapes into his mouth. Frings stood in the doorway and gave a stage cough to get Panos’s attention. Panos didn’t look up from the memo or stop eating grapes, but inclined his head toward the chair nearest the door. Frings was surprised to see Deyna in the next chair, smirking. Frings ignored him, grabbing a copy of the morning’s Gazette off Panos’s desk. He scanned the headlines, nothing out of the ordinary: City official on the take; citizens need to curb excess water use to ensure water supplies remain stable; school-bus accident, driver was drunk; etc. He felt Deyna’s eyes on him.
Panos finally finished his memo and looked up at Frings. “Frank, Deyna here has done some reporting. You remember that, no? He’s working sources, knocking on doors, all that. Tell him, Deyna, what you’ve found.”
Deyna shifted his chair a little so he was almost turned to Frings. “They found a second body on the river; this one upriver from the first; right by the Uhuru Community.”
Frings felt the two men watching him, waiting for a reaction. “Okay,” he said slowly.
“The police are playing this close to the vest. Big pressure to keep it quiet.”
“Why do you think that is?”
“You’re the genius, Frings, why do you think?”
“You really want to know?”
Deyna stared at him, challenging.
Frings looked at Panos. “Should I tell him what I think?”
With a flourish of his hand, Panos told him to go on.
Frings turned to Deyna. “I think you’re getting this bullshit from Ed Wayne.”
Deyna’s jaw dropped, but he recovered quickly. “Fuck you.”
“Have some respect,” Panos growled.
Deyna held his hand up in apology to Panos. “Sorry.” To Frings, Deyna said, “I’ve—”
Frings cut him off. “You want to know something about your ‘source’?” Frings turned to Panos. “Remember that story I pitched you about the assaults over by the Uhuru Community?”
Panos sighed. “How do I forget? This was two, three days ago.”
“I’ve got some sources myself. Sources who aren’t full of shit. One of these sources just called me, said he was on a two-ambulance call last night down by the Uhuru Community. Said there were four guys—white guys—beat up and laid out side by side, waiting to be picked up.”
Deyna glared, but Frings saw that this was new to him.
“So I asked him, could these be the ginks who’ve been assaulting Negroes down by the Uhuru Community? Are they thugs?
“My guy said they’ve got those lumpy knuckles and that there were a couple of baseball bats and tire irons laid out next to them and a car at the scene with what he described as ‘blunt instruments’ in the backseat. Also, anticommunist leaflets and so on.”
Panos said, “So these hooligans, they get their comeuppance? Is that the story? What’s the punch line, Frank?”
Deyna continued the hard stare, but with maybe a little doubt creeping in; seeing where this was heading.
Frings smiled. “So my guy, he said it took a while, but he talked to some people, looked at some charts, and he’s got the four names.” Frings leaned back in his chair, laced his fingers behind his head.
“Get to the point,” Deyna muttered.
Panos smiled, amused.
“Okay,” Frings said, leaning forward again. “Three of the names, I don’t recognize. But one … one is a gink by the name of Ed Wayne.”
Panos’s eyebrows went up.
Frings said to Panos, “Another thing Deyna might not know is that Wayne’s got the Uhuru Community beat. There’ve been a couple of calls over the past two weeks—assault calls. Wayne sat on them.”
Deyna said, “I’ve got a second source.”
Frings shook his head. “You’ve got one source, maybe. Wayne’s already shown his hostility to the Uhuru Community. You can’t source anything to him.”
Panos smiled and shrugged. “You’ve got the story. Finding another source, how hard can that be?”
Deyna stood. “Okay. Right.” He paused to stare down at Frings. Frings saw the hate. Deyna closed the door quietly behind him.
Panos shook his head. “This kid, he’s going to find another source, Frank. He’s damn good. And when he finds that source, we’ll run the story.”
“Panos.”
“We have to run the story. That way no one can say we are commie lovers when we go after Truffant. We sit on this story, nobody takes us seriously.”
“You’re going to sell out the Uhuru Community so we can write some nasty editorials about Truffant?”
Panos slammed his fist on the desk. “Damn it, Frank. Girls are being killed.”