Westlake, Donald E - Sara and Jack 01 by Trust Me on This (v1.1) Page A

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and find whatever had been reported on it, if anything. Sara believed now that
Jack’s first dismissive summation of the incident had been wrong, that it
hadn’t merely been a drug dealer story, or that if it was a story about drugs the trail nevertheless led here somehow to
the Galaxy , but she had been aware of
absolutely ho investigation of the incident; no police presence at the Galaxy , none at the scene of the crime.
No one had approached to question her. Were the police also dismissing the
murder as unimportant? Was there such a thing as an unimportant murder?
                 Leaving
Jack Ingersoll’s squaricle, carrying the paperwork of her new assignment, Sara
was distracted by this unfinished story, this unanswered question: What about
the murdered man beside the road? True, it was none of her business. True, she
already had too much to think about. True, there was nothing she could do about the problem. But it still
existed, nagging at her.
                 For
instance. Even though her next assignment was right here, clutched in her hand,
she found herself wondering again about the murdered man’s car’s license plate;
did its letters, or did they not, start with a “Z”? Making her intricate way
out of the squaricles, Sara crossed to the reporters’ tables, where Phyllis
flashed her a bright welcoming smile while continuing to talk seriously and
earnestly into the phone: “And when you met Cleopatra,” she was asking, “in
your previous life, did she happen to mention anything about snakes?” To the
left of Sara’s desk space—Phyllis being on her right—sat Harry Razza, another
of Jack’s eight reporters and another of the many stakers from Australia. An
aging matinee idol type, with thickly sculptured auburn hair and a roguish
smile, he apparently thought of himself as being from the Douglas Fairbanks
mold, and Sara had been forced to put him quite firmly in his place several
times on Monday and Tuesday; since when, he’d been friendly and calm. Now, he
was speaking with dogged patience on the phone, saying, “Can I quote you as
saying you’re glad he’s dead? Well, can I quote you as saying you wouldn’t
bring him back if you could? Well, can I quote you as saying you feel a certain
relief?”
                 Bob
Sangster, the Aussie with the large nose, had the desk space directly in front
of Sara, where he was saying into his phone, “Now, didn’t the United States government pay for these frogs?” And Don Grove, the pessimistic young reporter
who had so far this week failed to produce both a two-headed calf from Brazil and a Martian wedding from Marin County , California , in his position at the desk space direcdy behind Sara was also on the
phone, saying, “And how old was the victim? And this midget: just how short is he?” Sara had already become so used
to this new work environment that she was distracted by none of these
conversations. Seating herself at her desk space, putting Jack’s new work
assignments to one side, she rested her shoulder bag on the typewriter—there
wasn’t room for it anywhere else— removed her spiral notebook, and then placed
the shoulder bag, as usual, under her chair. Now, the page with the murdered
man’s car . . .
                 .
. . wasn’t there.
                 She
leafed through the notebook twice. Had she tom it out? She occasionally did
that, when a page contained only items of the most transitory interest, like
shopping lists, but surely she wouldn’t have tom out the page containing the
information on the murdered man’s car.
                 That
would be the same page with the details of her appointment that morning with
Mr. Harsch: his name, directions to the Galaxy ,
time of the meeting. But that was gone, too.
                 Well,
yes. That she might have thrown out,
once the meeting was over. Had she done so without noticing what else was on
that page? It was