There was only a shadow staff in the city room. The white maze of cubicles stood silent, mysterious. Tom Cochran was at the desk. A young guy. Handsome prep-school kid. Short brown hair, three-piece suits. He had his feet up, his hands behind his head. He was chatting up Sally Giles. She was a pretty young redhead Cambridge was grooming for the night desk. Cochran lifted a hand to me as I came in. Sally smiled.

I sat down next to them at the long table.

“Listen,” I said. “I’ve got something.” I told them what I had.

Tom Cochran’s feet came down to the floor with a thud. His circular face went pale. He ran his palm up over the well-combed hair on his brilliant head.

“Well, has there … I mean … has there been an arrest?”

“No. Not yet. But there will be after I call Gottlieb.”

“Yeah, but I mean … should I call Cambridge? Maybe I should call Cambridge?”

“You do, and I’ll quit and peddle this to Reader’s Digest,” I said.

“Yeah, but …”

“Let him read about it in the newspaper.”

I pushed away from the desk.

“Oh hey,” Sally said. She had a soft voice, a whisper. She smiled again when I glanced back at her. She had a dazzling white smile. It lifted her freckled cheeks. “Someone’s been calling for you. A guy. Wouldn’t leave his name.”

“Yeah? Okay, pump it back to me if he calls again.”

She smiled some more. She had blue eyes. There was something vague about them.

I started down the corridor to my desk. As I went, I noticed Alex, the copyboy, hovering over the printers. I began to wonder if Alex had a home.

My desk was buried under papers. I grabbed handfuls of them and dumped them in the trash. I pushed some others aside until I uncovered a coffee mug. It was black with the words SCREW OFF in white letters on it. McKay had given it to me last Christmas. I picked it up, peered in at the bottom. A crust of coffee about an inch thick had hardened there.

I peeked my head up out of my cubicle. I shouted, “Yo, Alex!”

The kid looked up. His arms were full of the hard copy he’d been tearing. I hurled the mug at him across the room.

“Yaagh,” he remarked. The copy went flying up in the air. His hands clapped together like a seal’s flippers. He managed to catch the mug. The copy fluttered down around him. A sheet of it folded gently over his head.

“You ever see a copyboy fly?” I called to him.

He shook his head no. The copy slid off him and drifted to the ground.

“Right,” I said. “So keep that mug filled or I’ll toss you out the goddamned window.”

“Sure thing, Pops,” said Alex.

I felt no remorse.

I went to work. I stuck a sheet of paper in the Olympia. I stuck another cigarette in my mouth. I stuck the phone’s handset under my chin. I dialed a number. The phone started to ring. I started to type.

I battered out my lead. A woman spoke in my ear.

“Manhattan South. Sergeant Harrison,” she said.

“How ya doin’, Harry? This is Wells at the Star.”

“Hi, Wells at the Star, nothing’s happening.”

“Yeah, it is, you just don’t know it yet.”

“Ooh, that’s not what we like to hear from you, Wells.”

“Is Gottlieb there?”

“No. It’s Saturday, darling.”

“Oh yeah. Damn. Well, listen, it doesn’t matter. I need him. Call him at home, tell him I need him.”

“Oh, thanks a lot.”

“No, no. He’ll thank you for it. Really. He’ll want all of this one.”

“Okay, Wells,” she said dubiously. “Only for you.”

I hung up. I went back to the typewriter. I battered away. The clacking rose up out of my cubicle. It floated away over the broad, silent, white-lighted room.

Alex brought me my coffee.

“You clean the crud out of it?” I said, typing.

“Yeah, sure, Pops,” the kid said.

“Good. I’ll recommend your promotion to underling.”

“It’ll be an improvement over slave.” He sighed. And he was gone.

The pages rolled up in front of me. The story rolled out with them. It seemed a simple story now. Just a slight shift of emphasis had made it seem simple. I had most of the pieces. They fit together. The fit was tight.

The phone rang next to me. I snatched it up. Jammed it onto my shoulder. I kept typing.

“Fred.”

It was not Fred.

“John? John, is that you?”

“Chandler,” I said. I stopped typing. I grabbed the handset, shifted it to my other ear. “Chandler, what’s …”

I heard her gulp once. I heard her breath come fast. Her words came faster. “John, there’s a man … he says he’s going to …” She gave a little gasp. She was gone.

I straighted in my chair. “Chandler?”

Another voice came on the line. A man’s voice. It was light and quick as a knife blade. It had the slightest touch of an accent.

“I have her, Mr. Wells,” it said softly. “I have her here. I have her and I will kill her if you don’t come to me.”

“One hair, shit-for-brains. Hurt one hair on her head and they’ll bury you in a fucking water glass.”

“I know a way to kill her that she will not like,” he answered. “No, no, sir, she will not like it at all.”

I controlled my breath so I wouldn’t sound scared. “What do you want?”

“I want you here. I want you here within half an hour. Then we will negotiate.”

“Listen, how do I know …”

“You know if you are not here I will kill her. I will kill her in my not-very-pretty way.”

“Where are you?”

He gave me an address way downtown on Crosby Street. It was a lane of old lofts and abandoned factories.

“Too far,” I said. “Gimme an hour.”

There was a pause. “Until twelve,” he said. “And then I will kill her. If there are police, I will kill her. If you are not alone, I will kill her, too.”

I looked at my watch. It was 11:05.

“By noon,” I said. “I’ll be there.”

A dial tone answered me.

I nearly tipped my chair over as I jumped to my feet. I clutched at the pages I’d been writing, bunched them together in my fist. I grabbed a pen, dropped it, grabbed it again. I scrawled the address I was headed for on a message note. I ran out down the aisle to the copydesk.

“Cochran!” I screamed.

Tom had been walking toward the coffee machine. He swiveled and came running back to me. I jabbed my story into his hands.

“Call Sergeant Harrison at Manhattan South. Read her the first two graphs of this story, then tell her to get some manpower to this address.”

I shoved the message sheet at him. Cochran didn’t even look up at it. He was staring at the top graphs of my story. He was wide-eyed.

“Holy shit, Wells!” he said. “I mean, holy shit!”

“Just tell her!” I screamed.

I stuffed the address into his hand and went racing for the door.

I had fifty-two minutes left.