True-Life Adventure

occasions that they graced City Hall with their august presences. Reporting sullied their images, so they didn’t do too much of it. But maybe some of them would be there today, and maybe I could pick up some gossip about Lindsay Hearne. Or better yet, Susanna Flores.
    I told Janet I’d be back in a minute, and I left.
    I could have taken the elevator, but I never had when I was working in the second-floor pressroom, and I didn’t see why I should start now. Or I could have taken one of the big, stately staircases. But I’d never done that, either.
    City Hall also has some hidden staircases— not hidden, really, because all you have to do to find them is open a door that says Stairs— but most people don’t notice them. Even City Hall employees don’t use them much. But I always had, partly, I think, because they were so often deserted. It was eerie being completely alone in such a public place, and I got a kick out of it.
    I wasn’t looking for kicks that day. I just took those stairs out of habit. Or almost took them, as it turned out. I didn’t get very far.
    There was a man sprawled out on them, between the second and third floors. It was Brissette.
    I galloped the few steps up to where he was lying and stooped. He was very still and there was blood coming out of his mouth. I felt for a pulse, as I had with Jack, and had a strange sense of déjà vu. Once again, I felt helpless— I didn’t know if someone was dead and I didn’t know what to do for him if he wasn’t.
    I raced back over to the supervisors’ offices and cornered the clerk.
    Without a word, he followed me back out the door and up the stairs.
    Other people from the office heard me, and they followed too, also silently.
    “I think we’ll need an ambulance,” I said to no one in particular, and one or two people turned back, to call one, I suppose, or simply to avoid looking at Brissette.
    The clerk and I got him off the stairs and onto the lower landing. One of the women loosened his tie.
    When we put Brissette on the landing, I took off my coat, wadded it up, and slipped it under his head. And when I did that, I touched something disconcerting— something around the back of the head that felt soft when it ought to have felt hard. Suddenly I had to find a men’s room.
    When I realized I wasn’t going to make it, I remembered the sink in a sort of utility closet at the back of the second-floor pressroom. I barged in, raced through the room, and threw up all over the day’s crop of dirty coffee cups.
    Pete Lufburrow, my ex-colleague from the Chronicle , stopped typing and hollered: “Mcdonald, I thought I told you never to eat in the City Hall cafeteria.”
    I staggered into the pressroom proper and said: “Mike Brissette fell down the inside stairs.”
    Three chairs squeaked on the old tiles as the three reporters in the room rose in unison, grabbing their notebooks. “Dead?” asked Lufburrow.
    “I don’t know.”
    I could practically feel the breeze as the three whizzed out of the room. Naturally, Lufburrow thought this was his story since City Hall was his turf, and so far as he knew, I didn’t even work for the Chronicle. But I had a prickly feeling it was going to be my story before my two weeks’ employment were up. I called Joey Bernstein.
    “Mcdonald, you gotta start keeping in better touch. I’ve got something for you.”
    “Joey, for heaven’s sake, I’ve only been out-of-pocket for about forty-five minutes and meanwhile I got you your lead story for tomorrow.”
    “Bullshit! The lead story’s—” Then he caught on. “What’s going on, Paul?”
    “I’m at City Hall. Mike Brissette’s badly hurt.”
    “Holy Christ!”
    “Lufburrow’s on it, but listen, he doesn’t know a couple of things I know that you ought to know.”
    “Like what?”
    “His head’s caved in in the back. It looks like he fell down the stairs, but I have a feeling he might have been sapped.”
    “And why, pray tell?”
    “I’m no expert, but I don’t see how you could get that kind of injury just falling down. That’s one thing. But there’s another— he’s connected with the Birnbaum case.”
    “Holy Christ!”
    I filled him in on the details.
    “You’re a good boy, Paul. Come back to work for us, okay?”
    “I am working for you, Joey. Hey, I found him, didn’t I?”
    “Did you?”
    “I guess I forgot to tell you. I’m everywhere at once, kid. I’ve got my finger on the pulse.”
    “I’ve got bad news for