Mister Jinnah Mysteries 2-Book Bundle. Donald J. Hauka
Читать онлайн книгу.
out on the floor and throwing him into the breach when there was a distasteful task that needed doing like a firing or suspension. Blacklock was constantly giving Junior lectures and putting him into situations to test his fitness to succeed him at the paper’s helm. There could only be one reason for including Junior in a meeting between himself, Jinnah, and Grant: Blacklock wanted to teach his ME some evil facet of employee management. Well, Jinnah wasn’t about to managed. He would be calm and professional about the whole thing. If they wanted to make idiots of themselves by including Grant in what was undoubtedly a contract killing of some sort, then so be it. It wasn’t Jinnah’s problem. He would wait them out and when the truth finally emerged (with a little help) he would be the one in a position to modestly say “I told you so.”
“Let me at ‘em,” said Jinnah, crushing his cigarette underfoot.
Frost smiled faintly.
“Do not go gently into that lion’s den,” he said.
“Listen, buddy — you don’t have to be afraid of some syphilitic lion when you’re a Kenyan Tiger!”
Frost refrained from mentioning there were no tigers in Kenya as Jinnah walked quickly back to the newsroom. He noticed Sanderson motioning to him as he moved along the row of glassed-in offices where the executives held court, but ignored him. He found Blacklock already in his office with Junior and Grant. The editor-in-chief was sitting at his side-desk, on which rested a massive Macintosh terminal that, unlike Jinnah and Sanderson’s smaller screen, was designed to lay out the entire paper, if necessary. Close beside him was Junior and slouched insolently in a chair against the far wall was Grant. Everyone looked at him pointedly as he entered.
“Ah, Jinnah,” said Blacklock with that genteel contempt unique to the English accent that has successfully endured public school but failed in Fleet Street. “Just what have you been doing while we have been here planning?”
“Working,” said Jinnah, taking a seat beside Grant. “I’ve got the line story.”
Grant raised his eyebrows and smiled without warmth.
“I rather doubt that,” he said.
Jinnah looked at Blacklock to see his reaction, but the editor’s face revealed nothing. Church’s face was a study of anxiety: he was anxious to please his boss, anxious to understand what was going on, and anxious to add something — anything — that appeared to be half-way intelligent to the conversation. He was such a contrast to Blacklock, Church. While the editor-in-chief was a larger-than-life man with a small, black moustache and affected English accent, Church was a thin, wiry figure, his ginger hair a legacy of his Scottish/Irish ancestry. Together, Blacklock and Church reminded everyone in the newsroom of Laurel and Hardy. It was rather hard to take them seriously, but unlike the famous comics, these two were not funny intentionally — they were always in deadly earnest. Jinnah ignored Grant and spoke directly to Blacklock.
“We have a hero who risked his life trying to pull Schuster from the flaming inferno that claimed his life,” Jinnah enthused. “It’s a fantastic story.”
Blacklock looked singularly unmoved. Church, waiting for a cue from his mentor before speaking and seeing none, was silent. Grant leapt into the gap.
“I don’t think anyone who tries to save Shyster Schuster’s skin can be called a hero,” he said dryly.
Jinnah felt the admittedly thin veneer of his cool, professional demeanour flaking.
“For God’s sake! The man is in hospital recovering from burns!” he cried. “He risked his life to save another human. He didn’t ask the bastard to fill out a questionnaire before crawling through the smoke and flames —”
Blacklock held up a hand.
“Enough, Jinnah! Let us bring some order to this chaos. Let’s start with what we know for certain. Now, what do we know about Sam Schuster? Mister Grant?”
Grant, slumped somewhat arrogantly in his chair to effect just the right air of feigned indifference to the proceedings, lazily leafed through his notebook.
“Schuster was fifty-three,” he said without really glancing at his notes. “Medium-sized player on the VSE before the merger with the Alberta Exchange created Canadian Venture. Prime mover of the Northern Frontier Oil and Gas scam in the early 1980s —”
“Scam?” interrupted Jinnah. “Nothing was ever proven.”
Grant looked at Jinnah with a pained, pitying expression.
“And O.J. Simpson is innocent.”
“A lot of oil and gas exploration companies went under in the early Eighties,” insisted Jinnah. “Not all of them were scams.”
“Well, Schuster’s was,” said Grant.
“He was never convicted of anything.”
“And you,” said Grant pleasantly. “Have never won a major journalism award of any kind, but that doesn’t mean you’re not a good reporter, Hakeem.”
The veneer, which had been flaking slowly away, now fairly flew off Jinnah’s hide in large, messy chunks.
“Listen, you pompous son of a bitch,” he said, pointing a finger at Grant. “Any business reporter can get an award by rewriting a few corporate press releases. Crime reporting is different!”
“There’s no need to get personal,” said Grant.
“Gentlemen,” said Blacklock. “I know it’s difficult for you both to check your egos at the door but do you think we might focus on the story rather than your resumes?”
Jinnah and Grant were stopped in their rhetorical tracks. Jinnah was sweating and he desperately wanted a cigarette. It had been a mistake to rise to Grant’s bating, but he couldn’t help it. The smarmy bastard got under his skin. He needed to regroup and launch an all-out sales pitch for his hero story. He sat silently and waited for an opening.
“Thank you,” said Blacklock, seeing order had been restored. “Now, Mister Schuster’s checkered career has been admirably chronicled by Mister Grant, so I feel that portion of things is under control. The effect of his untimely death, I understand, has led to a stop-trading order for shares in his company on the exchange. Right, Mister Grant?”
Grant nodded, a thin smile playing on his thick lips.
“Excellent. That brings us to his death. What do we know about that? Jinnah?”
Jinnah glared at Grant, who mouthed the word “suicide.”
“Murder,” said Jinnah spitefully. “A bizarre murder, but murder nonetheless.”
“Might it have been suicide?”
Jinnah and Grant were both startled by this sudden pronouncement. It took Jinnah a moment to realize that Church had offered this opinion.
“Suicide?” said Jinnah, incredulous. “That’s ridiculous.”
“Why?” asked Church innocently.
“No one commits suicide by blowing themselves up while standing beside a flaming car, that’s why. A Cadillac isn’t a Pinto, for God’s sake! It needs some assistance to burst into flames. And there were plenty of people who had motive and opportunity to kill Schuster.”
“How do you know that?” challenged Grant.
Jinnah smiled.
“Am I wrong?”
“No, but how —”
“Common sense, my friend. The exchange is littered with the corpses of promoters, stock brokers and swindlers —”
“You just said Schuster was never convicted of anything.”
Blacklock was now drumming his fingers on the desktop — a sure sign that he was tired of the blood sport and anxious to get on with making up the paper.
“Let’s