Deadline by Gerry Boyle Page A

railroading quote or any of the other stuff. Vigue would hit the roof, but did I want him completely turned off on me and the paper? Would he get so mad at me that it would make him back away from the Arthur thing even further? Or had I already crossed that line?
    Flipping through the pages, I decided to wait. But I took the Vigue notes and stuck them in a folder with the picture of Joy. I took the photo of the woman with Martin and put it with the other stuff and stuck the folder in my file cabinet under “N,” for no reason. I shut the drawer and for the first time since I’d been at the Review , locked it.

7

    I t was late Tuesday afternoon and the shift had changed at the mill, releasing a stream of cars and pickup trucks that flowed down Main Street as if it had been squeezed out of a tube. I was sitting at my desk with my hands on the keyboard but my gaze on the traffic under the Christmas lights. When I looked back at the screen, nothing had changed. The slug read SIDEBAR-ART and the rest of the glowing green screen was blank.
    I looked around the office. Vern was drawling into the phone with the southern accent that he fell into every once in a while, usually when he was really waxing on about something or when he was drunk. I wondered about that. Was it just sports macho, or had he lived in the South at some point? He never said much about his background. Nothing that really told you much. A private person who never shut up.
    Paul was cursing as he picked at a roll of border tape for an ad. He’d been in a nasty mood all week, but that was the way he usually was when he was under a lot of pressure, which pre-Christmas was. Or when one of his two-month flings was on the way out. Then I’d hear him talking to Cindy, man to woman. “She doesn’t understand.
    I adjust my life to hers. But if I ask her to make some adjustments for me, she acts like I’m pushing her around. I don’t know how long it’s gonna last.” Within a week, he’d be with somebody else. Two months later, he’d be talking to Cindy again.
    I took a breath, stretched my shoulders, and started typing.
    Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â  Arthur Bertin didn’t leave much behind when he drowned last weekend. There are stuffed bunnies gathering dust in his studio on Carolina Street. They are left over from years ago, when Arthur used to get kids to smile for the camera. Many of those photographs are probably still treasured by mothers and fathers who by now are grandparents. Their grandchildren won’t be able to go to Arthur to have their photographs taken.
    Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â  There are pieces of old Nikkormat cameras scattered around his studio, too, cameras cannibalized to keep one camera in operation for Arthur’s work at the Review . Most of those pictures have disappeared with the papers, but a few probably have survived. They turn yellow in scrap-books. Perhaps Little Leaguers still have them taped to their bedroom walls.
    I thought of the stack of Peeping Tom photos, the bank teller in her slip. It really didn’t change anything—or did it? Arthur took child portraits. He was practically an institution at the Review . I knew of his other side, but most people didn’t. And they would be expecting that his career be acknowledged somehow. But could I do it without feeling like I was lying to the public? As I sat, I heard Dave Curry’s booming Dale Carnegie voice.
    Maybe I’d ask the opinion of somebody who lied for a living.
    â€œJack, sorry to bother you again, but something came up, and I thought you’d want to know about it.”
    Overdressed and overbearing, he shook my hand and pulled some typed pages from his leather folder. He handed one to me and the way he waited made me think I was supposed to read it. I looked at the Philadelphia letterhead, the phrase, “reaffirming our commitment to the community.”