Rough Justice Read Online Free

leaned back in my chair. “With the new boss, you mean?”
    McKay sipped his coffee. “Yeah, I mean, now that Cambridge is gone, and we don’t have to be relatable anymore.” He sighed. “I’ll miss that. The Star won’t be the same without it. No more relatability. No more infotainment. You know, I think I’ll miss infotainment most of all.”
    â€œDon’t count on it,” said Lansing. She tossed back her blond hair. Nibbled at her roll. “It’s always something. It was something before Cambridge. Weren’t we zingy once?”
    â€œI was zingy,” I said. “You weren’t born.”
    â€œI hear you weren’t that zingy.”
    â€œGimme a piece of your roll.”
    â€œHere you are, Mr. Wells. Brown. Just the way you like it.”
    â€œMm mm,” I said. I took the roll, looking up into her face. Into the blue eyes in her porcelain oval of a face and then down over the long lean body in the trim white skirt suit, the long white legs crossed at the knee. I looked away. I ate the roll. She’s too young for me. She’s twelve. I’m a million.
    â€œSo,” McKay said. “I hear you’re in Dutch with our new leader even before we have a new leader.”
    â€œThat’s the word I get too.”
    â€œHere’s your coffee, Mr. Wells.” It was Fran. She was sneering. She jutted a Styro at me. “Enjoy it while you can.”
    â€œMm mm,” I said. “Black. Just the way I like it.”
    She spun a bunch of plaid pleats at me and stomped away.
    â€œWhat’s wrong with her?” I said.
    â€œWhat do they want from you anyway?” said Lansing. “You had us on top of the Abingdon story all through the election.”
    â€œRight,” said McKay. “Exactly. That made Cambridge look so bad, we lost our last ounce of respect for him.”
    â€œWe had an ounce?” I said.
    â€œSo they fire him and now it looks like Wells is more powerful than the managing editor. So now they have to cut him down to size. Management Technique One-A.”
    â€œYou didn’t happen to hear any specific points of this plan?” I asked. “Am I gonna be put on obits or something?”
    He shook his head. “They don’t tell me their secret thoughts. Something about opera reviews, though.”
    â€œGreat. How about the boss? What’s the rundown?”
    â€œNot good.”
    â€œTell all.”
    â€œYou won’t like it.”
    â€œCome on.”
    â€œAdvertising.”
    â€œNo, really.”
    â€œSorry, Wells.”
    â€œOh boy.”
    â€œRich. Father owns a chain of papers based in Texas. Ivy League. Princeton, I think. Columbia J school. Some kind of trainee job on a little paper up in Schoharie. Then—the hungry weeks of struggling over at last—on to Madison Avenue. Sheckner and Covey.”
    â€œThe guys who did the Gordon campaign.”
    â€œAnd Dog Bits. ‘He’ll thank you for ’em.’”
    â€œChrist.”
    Fran returned. She was not sneering. She was smiling. She curtsied at me. Her eyes gleamed.
    â€œYour presence is requested in the managing editor’s office, Mr. Wells.” And off she flounced.
    â€œUh—shit?” I said.
    â€œSounds about right to me,” said McKay.
    I stood up. Lansing swallowed the last of her roll and slid down off the cabinet. Her fingers were long and white, too, like her legs. She fixed my tie with them. She smelled of lilacs.
    â€œThink of me from time to time—and smile,” I told her.
    â€œYou’re the best they’ve got,” she said. “What can they do to you?”
    I patted her shoulder. “No matter what, we’ll always have Paris.”
    â€œWe never had Paris.”
    â€œToo bad. She’s at her best in May.”
    I saluted and started down the hall toward manager’s row.

3

    She had gray eyes and orders to break my back.