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I’m sure you know,” Kanin said. “Radio City is still glamour. It’s a national showplace. All this talk about closing it down has brought it into the limelight again. People want to read about it. They’re especially hungry for backstage stuff, because there’s a feeling afoot that it won’t be with us much longer. Combine the glamour, nostalgia and the girl with a Stone Age background and you’ll have a feature that any editor in the country would use. Helluva piece.” Kanin dropped a paper on Walker’s desk. On it was a name, which he read upside down as Diana Yoder.
    “What’s the girl say?” Walker asked. “I can’t imagine she’d want to be interviewed about this.”
    Again Kanin flashed that crooked smile. “If it were easy, I’d give it to one of the kids. See you later, Walker.”
    He watched Kanin walk away, then took up the paper and looked at the name. Diana Yoder. Amish girl. Rockette.
    It was a story, all right. No doubt about that, but it left Walker with the taste of salt on his tongue. The girl would tell him soon enough that her religion was her own business, and he would find himself agreeing with her. But he would do it anyway because he was a pro, and to some extent he lived by the code of the old-style reporter. You didn’t turn down assignments unless you had an understanding somewhere. His understanding included a certain up-front period of city desk hassle, so he would start on the Yoder thing tomorrow. He settled into his desk, filling the rest of the afternoon with calls to old friends: cops, politicians, contacts from his fiery youth. Some of them he had known at Newsday, long years before. He tried Al Donovan four times during the afternoon without success. Of all the cops he had known then, he had always liked Donovan best. Donovan had been with the FBI since 1939. Walker hadn’t talked with him in years, but he knew he would still find Donovan in that tiny FBI office in Brooklyn. Donovan had been there since the Red scare days, and they weren’t about to start moving him around now.
    But Donovan was tied up for the day. When Walker tried his number the fourth time, the day was over. He would get Donovan another day. A few reporters dropped by to welcome him aboard; one or two came over just to size him up. One of the last to go was Frank Woodford, the old wire service man. He was plump and in his late forties, and he wore loud clothes.
    Woodford said he was glad Walker was there, and he seemed to mean it. “This paper’s so gray it’s goddamn pathetic. We could use some bright stuff around here. Want to go for a beer?”
    “Let me take a rain check. I’ve got a few more calls to make.”
    “What’ll you be working on?” Woodford said.
    “Whatever comes up.”
    Woodford leaned close. “Listen, let me plant a bug in your ear.” He looked at Kanin, still busy across the room. “Don’t let Kanin stick you with that goddamn Radio City thing. He’s been trying to unload that for almost a year now. Gives it to every new hand who comes in.”
    “What is it, some initiation joke?”
    “Hell no, he’s as serious as a heart attack.” Woodford made a wry face. “Oh, hell, it’s a story all right, or would be if the girl would talk to anybody. If she even smells a reporter coming her way, she runs like hell. Kanin’s made her totally gun-shy. It’s one of them ungettable mothers.”
    Walker didn’t believe in ungettable mothers. But he didn’t say anything.
    “Kanin’s flipped on the girl,” Woodford said. “Ever since he first heard about her—must be ten, twelve months now. The funny part is, he’s never even laid eyes on her. Real strange. One time I got drunk with him and I just flat asked him about it. Turns out he’s from Amish country himself. He was born and raised on a farm in Indiana. When he was twenty he fell like a ton of bricks for this Amish girl. There was no way it could ever work out. Their religion forbids it, so the girl ups and marries