Read Online American Sextet by Warren Adler - Free Book Online

cosmos.
    His altercation with Barrows, so utterly unnecessary in
retrospect, had further eroded his position with Webster. He had considered an
apology, but it was too late. A hotshot's fall from grace was something to be
cheered in this nest of bloated egos fighting for space and by-lines. Webster
enjoyed watching his stars collide, disintegrate and reform into new stars in
his whirling solar system.
    When Webster called him into his office on his first day
back, he'd expected to get worse news. To be fired for
"insubordination" was a favorite management ploy, but it did require
a Newspaper Guild hearing, a process that had a flavor of humiliation about it.
Having a committee rule on the issue of holding one's job didn't do much for
one's pride. Besides, hadn't he already earned his journalist's stripes?
    "How could you do this to me?" he asked Webster
after he'd announced that henceforth Jason would be covering the Fairfax County
Council, a kind of Siberia for someone of his experience. Worse, he would have
to take orders from another young hotshot working his way up the ladder.
    "This paper's a machine, Jason," Webster told him
blandly. "You got a faulty cog, the whole thing rattles." His arm
swept over the city room. "I got a thousand egos to placate. You're just
one." Keep cool, Jason warned himself.
    "You're cutting off my cojones, Paul," he told
the editor, forcing a pose of contrition. At all costs, he'd decided, he needed
this job now. Avoiding Webster's eyes, he looked downward and saw a proof of
tomorrow's page one sprawled across Webster's desk. A headline read: "SEC
Commissioner Resigns."
    "I had no choice, Jason. It's all I can give you
now," Webster said.
    "It used to be different."
    "Things change." Jason's eyes shifted again to
the page proof.
    "So I see." He was being deliberately cryptic. At
one time he'd practically worshipped Webster.
    "Do you good to go back to straight journalism,
Jason," Webster said, winking inexplicably, as if there were a conspiracy
between them.
    "The Fairfax County Council. I'm overqualified for
that and you know it."
    "The opening is there," Webster snapped, showing
his sense of command. "I don't have to justify it." He became
absorbed in the page proof, an obvious dismissal.
    "Still playing that on one?" Jason asked.
    "They eat it up," Webster muttered, ignoring the
obvious malice. Jason stood rooted before the desk. Webster looked up again.
"Just do the job," he said, his tone placating now. Jason knew what
was coming. The editor's system was the carrot and the stick. "We'll watch
you, kid. Keep it straight for awhile." Webster studied him calmly.
"Put the flame on low--it'll do you good." His eyes drifted slowly
back to the page proofs.
    "And if I come up with a really big one? I've still
got contacts..." There was a note of desperation in his voice now. Leave
it alone, he told himself simultaneously, knowing it was Big Jake's voice
prodding him.
    "Sure, kid."
    Webster said it like offering a useless trifle. It was an
unmistakable dismissal. Hypocrite, Jason had screamed within himself as the
offensive headline caught his eye once again. You wait, he jeered silently, I'll
come up with something that will blow your mind.
    The taste of bile flooded the back of his throat as he
strode out of the city room under Barrows's triumphant gaze. Screw you, he
mimed to him as the elevator door closed.
    "I'm unfit for human consumption," he'd told
Dorothy later. She had tried everything to dispel the gloom. For brief periods,
her lovemaking comforted him, then he sank again into depression and
sleeplessness. When she came at him again in the early hours he pushed her away
roughly, although he apologized quickly for it.
    "All I want is for you to be happy," she'd said.
    "I know, baby."
    He had wanted to explain what had happened to him, but the
thought of everything else it involved was discouraging--his childhood, his
failed father, the fear of genetic emulation, the ego-bruising life with