to suggest maybe he hasn’t tried all the angles, and he gets snippy and defensive and patriotic on you. You’ll see—Barbans are all like that. Touchy. And all roads lead to their cloverleaf politics. Mention the flipping weather—which I gather stinks—and you’ve insulted their precious national pride. Anyway, the guy came up with diddly. No leads. Left me to believe Saddler must have been abducted by aliens or something.”
“So what’s the gig?” Edgar pressed, forcing his leg to stop jittering.
Wallasek clapped his hands. “I need a correspondent in Barba. I’ve given up waiting for Saddler to send flowers. So I’m offering you a string. There is a retainer, which technically makes you a ‘super-stringer,’ but don’t let the heroic title go to your head; our monthly gratuity will keep your tape recorder in fresh batteries, and that’s about it. Flat-rate four hundred bucks an article, plus expenses, but only for the pieces we print. We’ll pay your initial freight. No benefits. You can set yourself up in Barrington’s digs; I gather he even left his car.
“But this arrangement would be provisional,” Wallasek barreled on before Edgar had a chance to say yes or no. “Barrington’s been on board this paper from its inception. He’s an institution, if you like. If he shows up with an explanation I can even pretend to swallow, the posting’s his again. He knows this story, been on it from the ground up. So Saddler shows up next week, your string is for one week.”
“The retainer, how much …?”
“You’re embarrassing me,” Wallasek cut him off. “Three-fifty a month, which is as appalling as it is nonnegotiable. Furthermore, you gotta be prepared for plenty of computer solitaire. It’s possible the SOB has called it quits, or maybe they’ve clawed each other’s eyes out; these hot-blooded paramilitary outfits often self-destruct. In that case, the story’s dead, and you’re on your own. I can’t guarantee another posting, either. This is a one-time offer. On the other hand, the story heats up, Saddler’s still among the disappeared? You could spin this into a big break. Think you could handle that?” In brandishing disclaimers, the editor clearly read Edgar as so hard-up that he couldn’t afford to be choosy. Wallasek was right.
This was indeed a big break, so Edgar’s hesitation was absurd. The offer far exceeded his expectations, the very expectations that Wallasek had mocked for being set so high. Edgar had figured that at best he’d get the go-ahead to submit a feature on spec, or a promise to keep his CV “on file”—that is, incinerated only after he walked out and not before his eyes. This “super-string” paid peanuts, but had a spicy ring to it, and was a foot in the door. Maybe sometime soon 245 civilians would make him a lucky man: DEATH TOLL IN HUNDREDS AS SOB CLAIMS SABOTAGE OF UNITED FLIGHT 169, by Edgar Kellogg, Barba Correspondent.
Still, something in the setup oppressed him. Whoever Saddler was, sight-unseen the guy clearly belonged to the elite Exception to Every Rule Club, whose members cast the sort of shadow in which Edgar had lived all his life: the eponymous Falconer, of course, but Edgar’s super-jock older brother as well; the suffocatingly august Richard Stokes Thole; Angela’s affected ex-lover on whom she was secretly still stuck; all those valedictorians, first-chairs, first-prize winners, and presidents.
Furthermore, Edgar was leery of substituting for a minor-league celeb who could show up unannounced any time to reclaim his home, his car, his beat, his half-smoked Camel, and his cold coffee. The very name “Saddler” sounded burdensome. Edgar imagined himself trudging a bleak landscape mounded with his predecessor’s baggage, like a loose burro too dumb and biddable to buck the chattel off his back.
“I guess I’m game,” said Edgar uncertainly. “How soon should I go?”
“ASAP. And here …” Wallasek scribbled an address, which he apparently knew by heart. “Saddler’s digs.” He held out a sheet of paper, adding obscurely, “You won’t suffer.”
Edgar accepted the paper. “So how do I …?”
“Book a flight, submit a receipt, we’ll reimburse,” Wallasek yadda-yadda-ed. “Oh, and one more thing.” The editor thumbed a furry leather contact book on his desk, then snatched the paper back to scrawl a number. “You might get a key to the house from Nicola.” Returning the page with a teasing shimmy, Wallasek leered. “One of Saddler’s friends. His very best friend, from all reports. I’ve never met her, but it’s funny how often Saddler’s numerous friends turn out to be good-looking women.”
A red flag went up: after spending ten seconds on the logistics of Edgar’s whole new life and forty-five minutes on this feckless cad playing hooky, Wallasek still couldn’t stop talking about Saddler.
Edgar folded the paper, stalling. He was sure there were dozens of questions he should be asking, equally sure that they wouldn’t occur to him until he was on the plane. “So, um. What’s my first assignment?”
“The strange and terrible fate of Barrington Saddler, what else?”
Long Time, No See
It may have been almost twenty years since they’d nodded stiffly at each other across a throng of parents at Yardley’s graduation, but Edgar didn’t anticipate having any trouble recognizing Toby Falconer when they met for a post-interview drink. Toby was one of those golden boys. His hair was so blond it was almost white, confirming for Edgar, whose own mop was mouse-brown, that the chosen people weren’t self-made but genetically marked. Vertical as a mast, Toby’s Nordic frame and sea-green eyes called out for bearskins and a javelin. It was unlikely he’d kept that smooth, narrow chest into manhood, but Falconer was vain enough by sixteen that he’d probably become one of those Nautilus obsessives who poured rice milk on his muesli. Besides, Edgar’s paltry efforts to update his mental mock-up of Toby Falconer—to bulge the muscular wavelets of his stomach into a paunchy swell, to dull the sublime adolescent promise of that platinum blond down to pewter—felt juvenile, like drawing zits on a GQ model with a ballpoint.
He was a little surprised that Falconer’s choice of venue didn’t show more panache. The Red Shoe had once been a chic Flatiron watering hole, but that was years back. Since, the crimson velvet cushions had faded to sickly pink, their plush nap flattened like a cat’s fur in the sink. The varnish on the dark banquettes had worn to expose stained pine. Its waiters were old enough to no longer describe their shifts as “day jobs.” Even Wall Street knew The Red Shoe was déclassé. Maybe it was sufficiently out of fashion to qualify for a tongue-in-cheek reprise, and Toby, as usual, was setting the pace.
Edgar paused in The Red Shoe’s foyer, preparing himself for his old friend—or whatever it was that Toby had become by senior year. After mussing his hair, releasing his top shirt button, and yanking the Windsor knot to the side the way he once wrenched his school tie, Edgar ditched his suit jacket on the coat rack. Edgar’s image at Yardley had been hostile, unkempt, and seditious; an intact chalk-stripe might give Falconer a shock.
Edgar turned and heard a plop. The hanger arm had flipped upside-down and dumped his jacket on the floor. Stripped screw. Flustered, Edgar scooped up the jacket, hastily brushing the lapels. Damn. Especially in these in-between moments—tossing a coat on a rack, swinging from a bucket seat—Toby Falconer had been infuriatingly graceful.
Inhaling, Edgar launched through the double doors, his coat hooked over a shoulder. He was flattering himself to picture his old buddy, waiting expectantly in a corner by himself. Falconer was always mobbed. Forget homing in on the beacon of hair. Just locate the social goat-fuck in the very center of this dive, its biggest table, the one crammed with extra chairs—one more of which Edgar would be obliged to fetch and wedge in somewhere. Falconer would be braying, those mighty fluoride-fortified teeth arrayed to the smoky tin ceiling, arms spread and palms lifted like Jesus, the rest of the rabble wheezing, flopping, wiping tears.
But the bar was quiet. Edgar scanned the large round middle tables: one subdued party, workmates, glancing at watches,