Nightside 08 - The Unnatural Inquirer

out.”
    The door to the inner offices opened, and out shambled a hunched and scowling adolescent in a grubby T-shirt and jeans. His T-shirt bore the legend FUCK THEM ALL AND LET THE DOCTORS SORT THEM OUT. He flicked his long, lank hair back out of his sullen face, looked me over, grunted once, and gestured for me to follow him inside. I felt like giving him a good slap, on general principles.
    “Let me guess,” I said. “Everything’s rotten and nothing’s fair.”
    “I’m nineteen!” he said, glaring at me dangerously. “Nineteen, and still a copy-boy! And I’ve got qualifications…I’m being held back. You just wait; there’ll be some changes made around here once they finally see sense and put me in charge…”
    “What’s your name?” I said.
    “I’m beginning to think it’s Hey you! That’s all I ever hear in this place. Like it would kill the old farts that work here to remember my name. Which is Jimmy, if you really care, which you probably don’t.”
    “And what do you want to be when you grow up?” I said kindly.
    His glare actually intensified, and veins stood out in his neck. “To be a reporter, of course! So I can dig up the secrets of the rich and powerful, and then blackmail them.” He looked at me slyly. “I could always start with you. Get a good story on the infamous and mysterious John Taylor, and they’d have to give me my own by-line. Go on; tell me something really shocking and sordid about you and Shotgun Suzie. Does she really take the gun to bed with her? Do you sometimes swap clothes? You’d better give me something, or I’ll just make up something really juicy and extra nasty anyway. I’ll say you said it, and it’ll be just your word against mine.”
    I looked at him thoughtfully, and he fell back a step. “Jimmy,” I said, “if I see one word about Suzie or me in this rag with your name on it, I will use my gift to find you. And then I’ll send Suzie to you, who will no doubt wish to demonstrate her extreme displeasure. Suddenly and violently and all over the place.”
    He sniffed dismally. “Worth a try. Follow me. Sir.”
    He led me into the inner offices of the Unnatural Inquirer. The air was thick with cigarette smoke, incense, sweat, and tension. People bustled importantly back and forth around the various reporters, who were all working with furious concentration at their desks, hammering their computer keys like their lives depended on it. They kept calling out to each other, mostly without looking up from what they were doing, demanding information, opinions, and the very latest gossip, like so many ravenous baby birds in a nest. They all sounded cheerful enough, but there was a definite undercurrent of malice and cut-throat competition. The general noise level was appalling, the air was almost unbreathable, and the whole place seethed with talent and ambition.
    It was everything I’d hoped it would be.
    The copy-boy slouched down the main central aisle with me in tow, and everyone ostentatiously ignored me. There was a definite bunker atmosphere to the inner offices; probably because most people really were out to get them, for one reason or another. The industrious men and women of the Unnatural Inquirer drank and smoked like it was their last day on Earth, because it just might be. Their readers might love them, but nobody else did. For the staff here it was always going to be Us versus Them, with everything and everyone fair game. There were always lawsuits, but the Editor & Publisher could afford the very best lawyers and took pride in keeping cases in court forever and a day. The paper might never have won a case, but it had never lost one either, mostly because the paper outspent or outlived the litigants. The Unnatural Inquirer had never once apologised, never printed a retraction, and never paid a penny in compensation. And was proud of it. Which was why the staff had to hide away in a bunker and take out special insurance against assassination attempts.
    There was a prominent sign on one wall. YOU DON’T HAVE TO BE VICIOUS, PETTY-MINDED, AND MEAN-SPIRITED TO WORK HERE; BUT IT HELPS. Anywhere else, this would have been a joke.
    Jimmy the copy-boy finally brought me to the Sub-Editor’s office, knocked on the door like he was announcing the imminent arrival of the barbarian hordes, and pushed the door open without waiting for a reply. I followed him in, shutting the door carefully behind me, and Scoop Malloy himself stood up from