“Your paper won’t suffer, Jinnah. Be sure to read it tomorrow. Now good-bye.”
Graham hung up. Jinnah considered smashing the phone down, but thought better of it. He sat, chewing his lip, thinking. Sanderson was busy having his nervous breakdown on the telephone. Around him, his fellow reporters were at their work. What did Graham mean, he thought, by the Tribune not suffering? Read it? Jinnah snorted derisively at the notion. The only thing he read in the paper was his own stories and the stock quotations in the business section —
The business section.
Grant.
Jinnah stood up abruptly and hurried over to the business department. Grant was at his desk, working on his computer. Before he could get a look at the story, Grant hit the send key and the words on the screen vanished.
“Hakeem. Delighted to see you. How’s the pyramid scheme going?”
“Cut the crap, Gerry!” said Jinnah, pulling up a chair and sitting uncomfortably close to Grant. “What are you working on?”
“Need to know basis only, top secret. I’d have to kill you.”
Grant’s fulsome face was smug. Jinnah felt a burning ball of rage knotting his stomach. He tried to control it.
“Look, my friend,” he said as reasonably as he could. “We’re supposed to be working on this together. Let’s compare notes.”
“Like we compared notes yesterday?” said Grant, arching an eyebrow. “Forget it.”
“Come on, Grant! Just to make sure we’re not stepping on each other’s toes!”
“Jinnah, you’re eating my dust so far behind me on this one that you can’t even scuff my heels let alone step on my toes,” smirked Grant. “Now, maybe you’ll tell me what your contribution for tomorrow is — partner.”
Jinnah looked at his tormentor with cold loathing.
“That’s none of your damned business, partner!”
Jinnah stood up, flung his chair backwards in Grant’s direction and stormed back to the city desk. He sat stewing in his chair, playing with a pack of cigarettes, waiting for Sanderson to get off the phone. When he finally did ring off, Jinnah leaned around the computer terminal solicitously.
“Listen, Ronald, my friend,” he said in a low voice. “I wonder if you could do me a favour —”
“Forget it, Hakeem! I haven’t the time.”
“I just want you to find out what Grant’s working on, that’s all.”
“It’s not on the list and he certainly won’t tell me of all people,” said Sanderson, rifling through the notes he’d just taken over the phone.
“What the hell sort of project are you doing anyway, for God’s sake?” demanded Jinnah. “You look like you’re about to have a heart attack.”
Sanderson looked at Jinnah with a face that could have been used on a poster for National Suicide Prevention Week.
“It’s called ‘Reclaiming Our Kids.’ I have to interview a bunch of single moms who have had their daughters run away from home and — what are you laughing at?”
Jinnah was fighting hard to contain it, but a chuckle was slipping out from behind the hands he’d clutched to his mouth.
“Let me guess — your first assignment is to find a mom who’s about to rescue her daughter from a notorious pimp, right?”
Sanderson looked guppy-like at Jinnah, mouth open, eyes agog.
“How — how —” he gasped.
“Ronald, we do this series roughly every five years. I personally did it about fifteen years ago, just before you arrived at this pillar of the journalistic industry, hmm?”
Sanderson took a deep breath and tried to compose himself. He closed his eyes. His voice was tired.
“Jinnah, I don’t see anything humorous about a woman risking her well-being to save her daughter from some swine of a pimp,” he said as evenly as he could.
“Nor do I, buddy,” agreed Jinnah, barely able to contain himself.
“Then what is so damned funny?’
“The thought of you risking your person to cover the event,” howled Jinnah. “Can you imagine!”
“Why is that so funny?” said Sanderson, turning red.
“Are you kidding me? You’re too damned Canadian to do a story like that and Blacklock knows it!”
“What has being Canadian got to do with it?”
“Manners Ronald, manners! You’ll probably apologize to the pimp as he puts you in a headlock!”
“Don’t be absurd!”
“I bet you call him ‘Mister’ out of pure habit as he pummels you.”
“I’m not talking to you anymore, Hakeem.”
“You don’t need to, buddy,” said Jinnah, standing up and feeling much, much better. “I have more important things to do.”
“Like what?”
“Like get a start on writing your obit, that’s what.”
Jinnah felt refreshed. Somehow, seeing Sanderson discomfited never failed to cheer him up. It was part of that class struggle between beat reporters like Jinnah and general assignment reporters like Sanderson. Sanderson often commented on how “beat” reporter meant knowing how to beat the system out of an honest day’s labour, unlike the honest general assignment journalist, the men and women who produced the bulk of cityside copy and had to write two, three, or four stories every day. Jinnah loved it when Sanderson was forced to do a crime story and confront the horrors that he dealt with every day. Let Ronald fret. He had other Tribune staff to do his bidding. He sauntered over to the receptionist’s desk.
“Ah, mademoiselle,” he said, approaching the young woman wearing a headset and seated behind the imposing, glassed-in counter. “Voulezvous coucher avec moi?”
Crystal Wagner gave Jinnah a bland look and sighed. In her early twenties, she’d been working at the Tribune to pay her way through university for three years now and was quite used to Jinnah’s routine. She called it his “Pepe le Pew act” and while other women might have been offended, Crystal found it amusing.
“Speed it up, Hakeem,” she said. “The sooner you finish the sooner I can call the Human Rights Branch and lodge a complaint.”
Jinnah slowly undid two more buttons on his shirt and started stroking his hairy chest, his fingers rolling his heavy, gold medallion back and forth.
“Ah, ze young lady iz playing hard to get,” he said, still affecting his French accent. “Perhaps if she stopped working so hard and relaxed on my African rug she would feel differently.”
“I’d feel like a shower,” said Crystal. “Whatever it is you want, the answer is no.”
“There is a difference between what I want and what I need,” said Jinnah, seating himself on the counter next to Crystal. “I want you to look something up for me.”
“Can’t. Busy. Got homework.”
“Homework! For what?”
“It’s a study of contemporary work values in North American office settings.”
“You should do a study on this place.”
“I’m majoring in sociology, not zoology.”
Jinnah moved even closer to Crystal, brushing against her shoulder.
“I just want you to get some information for me,” he