Lady in the Lake(27)

It was an easy thing to walk down the hill to the newspaper building, not even a mile from where she lived. How simple it would be, if she got a job, to make that walk Monday through Friday, how satisfying to return home, up the hill, tired after a long day. She wondered if people at the newspaper socialized, if she would be invited out.

She also wondered how Ferdie would feel if she were no longer at his beck and call. Would he care? Or would he be relieved? It could create the pretext for a graceful ending, assuming that was what he wanted.

But just crossing the threshold into the building undermined her confidence. She had to approach a huge desk, where a woman sat at a phone bank, elevated, like a judge.

“Who are you here to see?” she demanded.

“Mr. Bauer?” Maddie said, hating the way her voice scaled up, as if she had no right to be in this holy place, asking for the well-known man who had sat in her apartment and pleaded to tell her story.

“Is he expecting you?”

“No.”

“What’s your name?”

She provided it in a whisper, almost as if she were afraid to be overheard, then waited, at the switchboard operator’s instruction, on a wooden bench. After much muttering and sighing, the woman said: “Fifth floor.”

“What?”

“Fifth floor, fifth floor. He’s in the Sunday office on the fifth floor.”

Maddie’s first impression of the newsroom was that it was, well, filthy. Filthy and loud. So many newspapers, piled everywhere. People shouting, typewriters clacking, a bell ringing somewhere. And so many men. But there were women working here, she reminded herself. She had read their bylines, seen their stories. Women could be reporters, too.

Mr. Bauer had a desk in the corner of the room where the Sunday staff worked. Its windows faced south, toward the water, and the view would have been bright and expansive if the windows had not been caked with dust and dirt. Someone had written in the grime: The Star, One of the World’s Newspapers. It took Maddie a moment to get the joke. The Beacon, the more sober morning newspaper, with foreign bureaus and a large staff in Washington, called itself “One of the World’s Best Newspapers.”

“I’m surprised to see you here,” he said, leaning back in his chair. He seemed different at first and Maddie realized the man she had met had been playing a part of sorts. Pretending interest in her, pretending empathy, pretending whatever he needed to pretend to get what he wanted. Now he didn’t need anything from her—or so he thought.

“I want a job here.”

He smiled. “I’m not the editor, Ms. Schwartz. I don’t do the hiring. If I did, I’m not sure I’d stump for a woman with no experience.”

“But you can help me.”

“Maybe. Only why would I? This is a serious place, for serious people. You just don’t walk in off the street and start doing it.”

“I helped you get”—she debated with herself whether to use the word, whether it would make her sound ridiculous. “I helped you get a scoop.”

Another smile. Yet it didn’t cow her. She did not feel ridiculous. She knew what she had, in her purse.

“You deflected me. You were lucky that the deflection worked.”

“I offered you something better than what you were seeking. I wouldn’t call that deflection.”

“And now you think you want to work at the newspaper? What could you possibly bring to this job?”

She pulled out a sheaf of papers, tied with string. “These are letters. From Stephen Corwin. I wrote him about the murder of Tessie Fine and he wrote me back. Twice.”

The room did not go quiet—it was a place that was never quiet, Maddie sensed. But something shifted. Other people were listening to them now, or trying to. Perhaps Mr. Bauer noticed as well because he said: “Take a walk with me.”

She assumed he meant outside, but he took her to the corridor, then down a back staircase. “May I see them?”

“I’ll show you the first one,” she said.

Mr. Bauer could read very quickly. “So what?” he said. “He doesn’t admit anything. He just repeats this cockamamie story that the girl came back and he was gone. No one believes it.”

“I don’t either,” Maddie says. “But there’s a detail that suggests he has an accomplice.”

He raised his eyebrows. “I’ve heard of reading between the lines, but you’ve all but moved in between them and built a house. That’s a lot to infer. So he made up a story about someone else doing it. How do you get accomplice from that?”

“Not from there,” Maddie said. “Go back to the earlier part of the letter, about how he fought with his mother that day.”

“That drivel with the eggs. Not even I could make it interesting.”

“No, the part about how he walked to work.”

“Right. So?”

“Tessie Fine’s body was found almost two miles from the pet shop. How did it get there? Whose car did he use? I went back and read all the articles about him at the Enoch Pratt.” How purposeful she had felt, going to the central branch, just steps from her front door, and requesting the long wooden rods of the daily newspapers. She had seldom used the Pratt. It felt castle-like compared to the modern blandness that was the Randallstown branch where she had checked out popular novels.