Westlake, Donald E - Sara and Jack 01 Read Online Free Page A

despicable Englishman of about forty,
face puffy from years of alcohol and starch, smiled the smug smile of a winner. Boy was no trouble. Boy was a good Boy.
                 Massa squinted toward the new girl. He said,
“She’ll talk to scientists, right?”
                 “They
do like a college girl,” Harsch agreed. Harsch left the elevator to talk to the
college girl, and Massa considered Boy’s list. “ The Argentine Navy Caused the Bermuda
Triangle,’ ” he read, and lifted his head to show a happy smile. “That’s terrific,
Boy. Terrific.”
                 Boy
purred, eyes half closed in feline pleasure.

           Three
     
                 The
strange thing was, Sara had turned the job down back when it was offered. That
was a year and a half ago, up in Syracuse , when the recruiters came around in the
spring to talk to the journalism graduates. The Galaxy had a terrible reputation, a garish supermarket tabloid full
of TV stars and creatures from outer space, but the recruiter had been a
sensible, plausible woman, not much older than Sara herself, and she’d been
tempted. Here was a chance to move from the cold dark Northeast to sunny Florida , to work in what sounded like a fun
environment, to get a fabulous salary.
                 Too
fabulous, that’s what the problem had been. Thirty-five thousand dollars a year
for a trainee? There had to be a catch in it somewhere. Weird scenarios of
white slavery had crossed her mind —Florida was, after all, the same direction
as South America—which was ridiculous, of course, but there had to be something
wrong with it somewhere, or why would they pay so much? Besides, through a
friend at school, she’d been offered a low-paying job on a small New England paper. It wasn’t so far from home, it was
real journalism on a comfortably small scale, and the editor looked a lot like
Ed Asner. And the salary didn’t make her nervous.
                 But
here she was, after all, a year and a half later, and everything made her nervous, including the ice-eyed Jacob Harsch,
approaching now from the elevator, while everybody else returned their careful
attention to Mr. DeMassi. A cold smile on his cold face, Harsch made his way
among the black lines—even he obeyed, she noticed— and offered a hand that Sara
was not surprised to find also cold. He held hers briefly, saying, “Remind me
of your name, dear.”
                 “Sara
Joslyn.”
                 “Yes,
I remember your resume.” His cold hand on her elbow, he led her away from the
editorial meeting, down along the row of elevators. He was very tall, and he
bent his head above her shoulder, speaking confidentially in a raspy voice.
“You worked for a newspaper in Vermont .”
                 “ New Hampshire ,” she corrected. “It closed. Or it was
merged, actually.”
                 “We
won’t be closing,” Harsch said, merely pointing out the fact, not speaking with
any particular satisfaction. “We fulfill a need, and people come to us,” he
explained. They had come to a stop past the elevators, in an open space just
before a librarylike area of tall bookshelves filled with phone directories and
other reference books. “We think of ourselves as a community service
organization.”
                 “Oh?”
Sara said politely.
                 “Not
only in our hard news,” Harsch told her, “but also in our features. Our
audience is the modem woman, in all her complexity.”
                 Remembering
the gaudy front pages mounted on the entry walls, Sara nodded soberly, saying,
“I see.”
                 “Not
only as a housewife and mother,” Harsch went on, his manner calm and secure,
“but as a consumer, a sophisticated audience for today’s entertainment, and as
the keeper of the flame of Western civilization. We think we here at the Galaxy