True-Life Adventure

you.”
    “Yeah?”
    “When you called in, I thought I could make you real happy. I had a page 1 story for you. So now you’ve called in an injured supervisor, but it’s Lufburrow’s story. So see what you just did, Mr. Finger-on-the-pulse?”
    I sighed. “Knocked my own story off page 1.”
    “You got too good a nose for news, pal.”
    “What’s my story, anyhow?”
    “Koehler’s decided to go public on the kidnapping.”

CHAPTER 8
    It seems Jacob Koehler, the eccentric who never gave interviews, had simply picked up the phone, dialed the Chronicle, and said he had a story. He was switched to the city desk line that such calls go to— known to the staff as the nut line— and was engaged in the uphill work of trying to explain to some jaded copyboy that he really was a Nobel laureate who really was divorced from a television personality when Joey walked by, caught the name Koehler, and took the call.
    Joey made us an appointment for 5:30 P.M. at Koehler’s Emeryville condo— it seems the Koehlers were among the well-heeled white folks who lived in the good part of town, with all the saunas and pools.
    They lived in the oldest of the condo developments— a place called the Watergate. You can look it up if you don’t believe me.
    I didn’t have much time before the appointment, but there were a couple of things I wanted to clear up before I left City Hall.
    Outside the pressroom there was bedlam. The news had spread, and everyone was in the corridors, on the rotunda stairs, all over— they were watching Brissette being carried out on a stretcher. Lights and wires were already all over the place, signifying the TV folks had swung into action.
    I went back to the supervisors’ office and looked for Janet: I figured one of Brissette’s colleagues would have gone to the hospital with him, thereby hogging a little publicity, and Janet would have been left to answer phones.
    The phones were already ringing, but the place was deserted. I went back outside.
    And there she was, fighting her way up the rotunda steps, harangued and bullied by my brethren in the broadcast media. She was crying so hard she was tripping over their wires.
    But in case I haven’t mentioned it, journalism is a dirty job. Even though any fool could see now was not the time to bother her, I was about to do it, too. I’d had years of practice at being the kind of asshole a reporter on deadline is, and I hadn’t forgotten how. I went back to Brissette’s cubicle. I knew she’d fight off those turkeys in a few minutes and then go there to repair makeup, call her boyfriend, smoke a joint, or whatever she did to relieve tension.
    She jumped when she opened the door and then, recognition dawning, fell into my arms, sobbing and holding on like she was drowning and I was a passing inner tube.
    Comforting ladies, unlike being an asshole, was not something at which I was practiced. I improvised. I patted and soothed and every now and then said, “There, there,” or something.
    Pretty soon she calmed down a little and I got her some water.
    “I’m sorry, Janet,” I said. “I don’t know what to say.”
    “Thanks, Paul. Thanks for being here. I mean, I guess you’re here because you want to know something, but I’m glad it was somebody nice.”
    I felt like a jerk, but I had a dirty little job to do and I did it. “I wanted to ask you,” I said, “if Brissette left the office to meet somebody.”
    She looked surprised. “No. I mean, I don’t think so. He just left without saying anything, as if he were stepping out to the men’s room.”
    “Did he get a phone call before he left?”
    “Well, sure. Lots. Supervisors get so many phone calls you don’t notice.”
    “Do you screen them?”
    “No. Why?”
    “I just wondered. I was also wondering something else. Was he in the habit of using the inside stairs?”
    Again she looked surprised. Very surprised. “Not that I know of, no. I wonder why he took them today?”
    She started to cry again, thinking, no doubt, of the cruel irony of it all.
    “I’ll leave you alone,” I said. “Stiff upper lip, kid.” And I gave her hand a little squeeze. I was getting sort of good at soft stuff.
    I went back to the pressroom. By then everyone had finished calling in his story and the gang was sitting around having a postmortem gossip.
    “How’s Brissette?” I said.
    “Mcdonald, goddammit, you get back there and clean up that mess in the sink.”
    “I— uh— forgot.” And