46

 

THE SAN FRANCISCO REPORTER OFFICES, BRANNAN STREET, WEDNESDAY AFTERNOON

Dan Jacobsen looked round the office, scarcely masking his distaste. The place was a friggin’ gallery of black-and-white images, all featuring MackStack posing with the powerful—a president, four movie stars, three sports stars—basking in their reflected glory, unaware that his own was a leasehold, merely the trappings of an office that could be snatched from him at any time by the capricious billionaire owner of the Reporter. And he didn’t even know it. Power corrupts, image blinds … Dan eyed the man slouching against the power desk of pewter marble.

The editor wore his usual black trousers and crisply ironed shirt. He had a shirt fetish, had hundreds of hand-tailored ones, which he and only he would iron. No maid or laundry service ever got it right.

“What have you got for me, Daniel?” MackStack asked silkily.

“I’m playing it straight here; I’ve got what you read. Nothing more,” Dan replied levelly. He walked to the window, looked out, wanted to step right through the glass and out.

“Listen up, Jacobsen,” said Stack, straightening up, walking to the window, standing shoulder to shoulder with Jacobsen. The journalist had four inches and sixty pounds on the editor, who disdained all forms of physical endeavor, save sex, but felt safe, sublimely cosseted and enthroned by his editorship,

“I know there’re more stories you can get rooting around with the ARk Storm people,” Stack whispered with a sickening complicity. “Stories they don’t want the public to get. Stories of thousands of bodies rotting in the waters, in the ghettos, in the badlands, where the voters don’t vote. Make Katrina and the New Orleans rescue look fuckin’ textbook. No way they could get to everyone, or evac everyone out. So there’ll be a certain minimum collateral damage they’ll be prepared to accept. This is the shit they’ll be discussing behind closed doors.” He moved away, perhaps finally detecting the energy and the revulsion pumping from his journalist, who stood still, superficially unmoved.

Stack moved behind his desk, sat, spoke to Jacobsen’s back.

“Added to which, I am gunning for that bastard Gabriel Messenger. Christ, the guy’s a number. The custom house on Seventeen Mile Drive, the Ferrari, the backgammon tournaments, the tennis … In love with himself!” he spat. “I’ll just bet there’s some dirt there. No one’s that good without pushing the envelope, and my gut tells me he’s pushing it right over the edge. There’s at least two good stories going begging. So why do we have none of it?”

“I am using my journalistic skills, old school journalistic skills, legal ones,” replied Dan, turning to face him.

“You mean that you are not using any of your considerable technical skills?”

“Using listening devices to get stories, like News of the World in the UK, who incidentally had to shut down when they were caught.… That would be illegal, would it not?” observed Dan. He stood, hands in his pockets, and he smiled, the same smile that had been on a number of occasions the last thing the recipient had ever seen. The editor remained oblivious.

“Don’t get cute with me,” snapped MackStack. “There’s a queue round the block who can out-write you. You’re here because you can write, granted, but equally because you have skills that any editor would kill for. In-house skills.”

Dan walked forward, leaned over his editor’s desk, palms planted on the polished wood. His shirtsleeves were rolled back. The editor, in an instinctively male atavistic way, looked at the bulging forearms, felt the first flicker of uncertainty.

“You know what?” suggested Dan, voice low. “Why don’t you just round up that queue and go and have a group jerk off. Get them to do your dirty work.”

MackStack laughed. “Nice try. Do your job, Jacobsen. While you still have it.”