“Habeck, Harrison and Haller. Good morning.”
“Hello, H cubed?”
“Habeck, Harrison and Haller. May I help you?”
“Mr. Chambers, please.”
“I’m sorry, sir. Would you repeat that name?”
“Mr. Chambers.” Looking across the city room of the News-Tribune, no one could guess that someone had just been shot to death in the parking lot of that building, and that everyone there knew it. Did everyone know it? Absolutely. In a newspaper office, unlike most other companies, the process of rumor becoming gossip becoming fact becoming substantiated, reliable news was professionally accelerated. It happened with the speed of a rocket. Assimilation of news happened just as fast. Journalists are interested in the stories they are working on; some have a mental filing cabinet, some a wastebasket into which they drop all other news. “Alston Chambers, please. He’s somewhere down in your stacks, I expect. An intern lawyer, a trainee, whatever you call him. A veteran and a gentleman.”
“Oh, yes, sir. A. Chambers.”
“Probably drifting around your corridors, without a place to wrinkle his trousers.”
“One moment, sir.” A line was ringing. The telephone operator had to add, “Excuse me, sir, for not recognizing the name. Mr. Chambers does not have clients.”
“Chambers speaking.”
“Sounds sepulchral.”
“Must be Fletcher.”
“Must be.”
“Hope you’ve called me for lunch. I gotta get out of this place.”
“In fact, I have. One o’clock at Manolo’s?”
“You want to discuss your wedding. You want my advice as to how to get out of it. Does Barbara still have it scheduled for Saturday?”
“No, no, yes. Can’t talk right now, Alston. Just want to give you the news.”
“Barbara’s told you she’s pregnant?”
“Habeck, Harrison and Haller. That the law firm you work for?”
“You know it. Bad pay and all the shit I can take.”
“Donald Edwin Habeck?”
“One of the senior partners in this den of legal inequity.”
“Donald Edwin Habeck won’t be in today. Thought I’d call in for him.”
“I don’t get it. Why not? What’s the joke?”
“He’s been shot to death.”
“This is a joke?”
“Not from his point of view.”
“At the News-Tribune. A few minutes ago. I gotta go.”
“I wonder if he left a will.”
“Why do you say that?”
“Lawyers are famous for not writing wills for themselves.”
“Alston, I’d appreciate it at lunch if you’d talk to me about Habeck. Tell me what you know.”
“You on the story?”
“I think so.”
“Does anyone else think so?”
“I’m on it until I’m ordered off it.”
“Fletch, you’re getting married Saturday. This is no time to flirt with unemployment.”
“See you at one o’clock at Manolo’s.”