Read Online Azrael by William L. Deandrea - Free Book Online Page A

journalism. He’d shown up in perfect feature-writer camouflage, dressed somewhere between the popular conception of a best-selling novelist, which feature writers wanted to be, and that of an associate professor of English Lit, which is what a lot of them were attempting to escape from. There were, in the two hundred some odd cities where the Hudson Group had papers, probably a hundred thirty colleges, the English faculties of which were going nowhere. At least a feature writer got his name in the paper.
    Trotter had come into her office, smiled at her, and said he was happy to be aboard. He’d already said that until they knew what was going on, she was to act as if he was exactly what he was pretending to be, in public and in private. Regina was not happy with the implication of the possibility of hostile surveillance, but then she hadn’t liked much of anything since her mother came home from that funeral.
    All right, she’d told herself as she avoided Trotter’s deceptively friendly brown eyes. This was the time to call it off; she hesitated, and was lost.
    “Nice to have you,” she said, trying to sound as if she meant it. There was a lengthy silence that would give the theoretical listeners-in something to think about but was just Regina’s inability to think of anything to say next.
    Trotter came to the rescue. “I’d like to see the place, if there’s someone to show me around.”
    Of course, Regina thought. Only polite to show the new employee around. And because she didn’t want to hang around a possibly bugged office, she announced she’d do the job herself. Trotter acted as if he’d expected that all along.
    She showed him around, not only the Chronicle’s little operation in the basement but the whole building. From the Worldwatch offices to Group Advertising Sales to the cafeteria, she showed him around. They walked until Regina wished she’d worn sneakers, the way she usually did, instead of dressing up a little to greet the new employee.
    It wouldn’t have been so bad if Trotter had said anything besides “mm-hmm.”
    She saved the printing plant for last, arriving, as she’d planned, at one of the few hours of the day the place wouldn’t be shaking with the roar and clatter of thirty-foot-high, high-speed presses.
    She gave all the statistics, as related to her by the German company that made the machines. How many tons they weighed, how many gallons of ink per second they used. How, since they did not only the magazine and the local newspaper here, but special inserts for the entire Hudson Group, as well as hiring out to other magazines and advertisers, that this was one of the world’s busiest pressrooms. She told him that this was all offset, and that the paper went through the machines at nearly two hundred miles an hour.
    She pointed at a catwalk that ran down the middle of the room at the level a little above that of the tops of the presses. “You can see it better from up there,” she said. “That’s where the men go to paste the new rolls onto the web. See, they lower them into position, then glue them to the ones already there. While the press is going. It’s a very dangerous job, since the paper going that speed is like a saw and could cut your arm off before you’d even feel it. We have an excellent safety record, though.”
    Trotter said, “Mm-hmm,” and Regina, tired of it, had told him he didn’t ask enough questions to pass as a journalist, and gotten the snappy comeback.
    Trotter waited a few seconds, then told her, just above a whisper, “Don’t apologize or react to this, but you could have just arranged for me to die.”
    Right, don’t react. Regina felt a look of total stupidity spread itself across her face. Trotter pointed discreetly to a man in white coveralls walking briskly along the catwalk to a glassed-in control booth at one end.
    “I don’t think he heard you,” Trotter continued in the same barely audible tone, “but he might have. Let’s not