“Actually, Connie,” said Junior.
Actually, Connie, thought Blacklock. It has come to this. The peasant, the creature of mud and straw I fashioned with my own hands, my Gollem! Addressing me as Connie!
“Actually, Connie,” repeated Junior. “I’ll be coming with you to the same synergy seminar. Phil thought I could benefit by it.”
Blacklock regarded his former protégé and heard the ring of thirty pieces of silver. Phil thought you could benefit by it. Blacklock had known from the start that the Publisher was infectious, but not until this moment had he realized how virulent Phil was. He would not crush the man like an insect. From that moment on, Blacklock would be looking for the silver bullet to shoot the werewolf-virus that threatened his career.
Jinnah walked back to his desk to find Sanderson still at the keyboard, labouring over his story. He glanced at the screen and groaned.
“Ronald! You have undone most of my handiwork!”
Sanderson turned a baleful eye on Jinnah.
“Handiwork is not a word I would use here, Hakeem. I am merely restructuring the story so it resembles something akin to the truth.”
“You’ve made it boring is what you’ve done, my friend. Any hack from Canadian Press could write this stuff! You must put your personality into your writing, hmm?”
“I just did,” said Sanderson, sounding a trifle hurt.
Jinnah shook his head and sat down at his desk, put his feet up and started chewing his lower lip. He considered his next move carefully. Sam the Sham. Shyster Schuster. Murder or suicide? Who had the most to gain? Who had the most urgent motive? He ran down the list of suspects and sighed. There was nothing for it. He had to start eliminating them, one by one, the old-fashioned way. And the best way was to start with the one most likely and get it over with. By the time Frost had manifested beside his desk, he knew what he must do. The only trick was convince Frost it was entirely within his half of the investigation.
“That was quite a performance in there, Hakeem,” Frost said, sitting on the corner of Jinnah’s desk. “I think if you’d slipped Grant a Frenchie he’d have had a seizure.”
“I must say, you were mighty cool in there,” said Jinnah, voice trickling like dark molasses, in full flattery mode.
“You think so?” said Frost, raising an eyebrow.
“An iceberg, my friend: a veritable Arctic tundra. How do you do it?”
“Save us both a lot of time by cutting the crap and telling me what you want.”
“And so perceptive. A veritable Edgar Cayce —”
“Jinnah.”
Jinnah pulled up short. That was the quiet Frost voice of command. For unlike Blacklock, Frost believed a soft, icy tone was far more effective than shouting. It certainly worked well with Jinnah.
“My friend, I have examined my options here on the criminal side of things.”
“Yes. So what are you going to do?”
“And having fully examined them and followed a tale of deductive reasoning second only to Sherlock Holmes himself —”
“Jinnah —”
“I’m going to interview Neil Thompson.”
Frost said nothing for a moment. His face had that blank, permafrost expression, betraying no hint of emotion. Jinnah squirmed in his chair. He hated this. Most people he could read by their faces and body language. Not Frost. He was one of those rare individuals who had been born with a perfect poker face. He sat there, considered what you said, made sure you’d finished, then pronounced like some Greek oracle. There was no way to tell what sort of hand he would deal Jinnah.
“That sounds suspiciously like a business angle to me,” he said finally, voice completely neutral, non-judgmental.
“My friend — my inherent instincts tell me he is the man to start off with.”
“My inherent instincts tell me that’s poaching on Grant’s turf. They also tell me that Cosmo Lavirtue seems to be a more likely suspect.”
“He’s doing the Full Lambada with Mrs. Schuster,” Jinnah agreed. “We’ll get to him in due course. First finks first.”
“You think Thompson’s the killer?”
“I’m not sure, but he has the eyes of a killer, I’m telling you,” Jinnah shivered.
“Give me a reason to let you to attempt a hostile takeover of the business side.”
Jinnah had thought hard about this. He had decided on using honesty. It was a tactic he seldom used so when he did employ it, he felt it carried considerable weight.
“Frost, say you send Grant to interview Thompson instead of me. What sort of story are you going to get, hmm? I’ll tell you what — the same sort of thing you’re about to get from Sanderson over there on his teen-hooker rescue — zip, that’s what! You send me, you get a line story. Guaranteed, buddy!”
Frost came close to cracking a smile. He said nothing, but sauntered over to Sanderson’s desk and took a cursory glance at what Ronald had done to Jinnah’s lurid (but far more readable) prose. He had to admit, the analogy was precise. Grant would ask questions about funds, debentures, shares: technical stuff that seemed hugely important to a business junkie but were utterly incomprehensible to the vast majority of readers. Jinnah, on the other hand, might come back with a signed confession.
“You will tell no one else of this,” Frost said quietly. “You will not boast to Grant even if this guy Thompson spills his guts and turns himself in to you. Understand?”
Jinnah’s hackles rose, but only very slightly. It was a small price to pay for victory. He smiled broadly.
“You won’t regret this, my friend,” Jinnah said, grabbing his jacket.
“Considering the example you used, I could hardly say no,” said Frost blandly.
Jinnah, who had been about to make a dramatic exit, paused briefly.
“It would be a shame for Sanderson to submit that piece of shit he’s working on instead of my masterpiece, hmm?” he whispered to Frost.
“Did you save one of your versions?” Frost replied softly.
“I always do,” smiled Jinnah.
Frost nodded and Jinnah went on his way, feeling a double happiness. For one way or another, he was certain, he would have the line story today. True, one article might have Ronald Sanderson’s byline on it, but that was a technicality. Everyone who mattered would know who the true author of the masterpiece was. Feeling a bit like Bacon to Sanderson’s Shakespeare, Jinnah swept out of the newsroom.
Chapter Seven
The satellite-guided Love Machine crawled through the mid-morning traffic on manual pilot. Jinnah was headed for a section of town he hardly frequented and this certainly wasn’t one of the routes pre-programmed into the guidance system. Broadway is a curving, twirling artery that runs east to west through Vancouver and, like the Milky Way, contains completely different galaxies at either end of its arms. At the western end is fashionable Kitsilano and Point Grey, havens for the well-heeled and comfortable. But East Broadway beyond Main Street is run-down with crumbling sidewalks and corrugated streets. The facades of the commercial buildings are faded, their awnings torn and drooping. Just north of Broadway lays one of the poorest neighbourhoods in B.C. It was not the sort of area you’d expect to find an allegedly wealthy businessman’s offices. But Neil Thompson’s company had its headquarters on the eastern extremity. The low, three-storey office strip Jinnah parked in front of was typical of the urban decay around it. Once white, it was now dirty grey, stained by weather, wear, tear, and exhaust.