Page 48 of We Could Be So Good
Chapter Eleven
On Tuesday morning, after Monday has come and gone without a word from Andy, Nick gets himself to theChronicleoffices early and does something he hasn’t ever done before: he takes the elevator to the seventh floor.
The seventh floor is sandwiched between the bustle of the newsroom and the commotion of the top-floor composing room. It’s where theChroniclebrass have their offices. Technically the managing editor’s office is here, too, but Lou Epstein spends most of his day on his feet in the newsroom.
When the elevator doors open and Nick steps out, he’s assaulted by the quiet. It’s not the quiet of emptiness, like downstairs in the morgue files or the semi-abandoned fifth floor, but rather the quiet of a deliberate hush, and that flies in the face of everything Nick has ever experienced at a newspaper. Nobody is shouting for a copyboy or shouting at their editor or shouting at all, which is just disturbing. The carpet is about twice as thick as any carpet has a right to be and isn’t littered with a single cigarette butt or pencil shaving. No phones are ringing. The handful of secretaries, stationed at desks outside their bosses’ offices, areeven typing quietly. It’s unnerving. Nick can’t imagine Andy up here, can’t imagine Andy anywhere so quiet and sterile and slow.
Off to the side he spots a woman who’s been pointed out to him before as Mr.Fleming’s secretary. She’s about fifty and looks like she could moonlight as a nun: hair scraped back, plain dark clothes, general air of not being interested in your bullshit. Nick unconsciously straightens his tie.
His theory is that Mr.Fleming’s secretary will know what hotel Andy is staying at in Washington. He approaches her desk, unable to shake the sense that he’s about to get a demerit or learn that he’s failing chemistry.
“Good morning,” he says, and at least his voice doesn’t crack. “Do you happen to know which hotel Andy—which is to say, Mr.Fleming the, ah, younger, is staying at?”
She blinks at him, and Nick hadn’t known a blink could contain that much disappointment. The nuns at Nick’s elementary school could have learned a thing or two.
“Send him in,” comes a deep voice from within the office.
Nick freezes.
She blinks again, and this time the blink means that Nick better hurry if he knows what’s good for him. Nick hurries.
Inside the office, the carpet is somehow even softer than in the reception area. At a desk the approximate size of a cathedral door sits a man he’s only seen a handful of times. Mr.Fleming seldom leaves the seventh floor.
“Good morning, Mr.Fleming,” Nick says, trying to sound normal. In the New York newspaper business, Andrew Fleming is nothing short of a legend. He dragged theChronicleout of tabloid sensationalism into something respectable, something like an institution, a paper that gets mentioned in the same breath as theTriband theTimes, not theDaily News. When Nick was acopyboy at theBrooklyn Eagle, seasoned reporters read Fleming’s HUAC testimony aloud to one another.
In real life, he’s a gray-haired man of about sixty-five with a lantern jaw and broad shoulders. He looks nothing like his son, but Nick already knew that—Andy takes after his mother.
“Mr.Russo, is it? Shut the door, will you?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Please, take a seat.” Mr.Fleming gestures at a pair of leather upholstered chairs. “We haven’t met. I told Andy he ought to bring you up to meet me. So now that he isn’t here, I can satisfy my curiosity.”
Nick sits in one of the leather chairs. It’s aggressively uncomfortable. He’s a hundred percent positive that the secretary picked it out. “I’m happy to answer any questions you have.”
Mr.Fleming raises his eyebrows the merest fraction. “I don’t have any questions. I only wanted to meet you.” He picks up the phone. “Evelyn. Will you bring in two cups of coffee, please?” When he puts the phone down, he glances up at Nick. “Actually, I do have one question. Is Andy coping well after the debacle with MissWarburton?”
Nick doesn’t know how to answer that. If Andy wanted his father to know, he’d already have told him himself.
“Because,” Mr.Fleming goes on, “when I ask, he tells me he’s doing fine. He says that after the initial shock he was disappointed, but that he wishes her the best.”
Since that’s almost exactly Nick’s understanding of the situation, he decides that maybe he won’t be giving anything away by confirming it. “That’s what it looks like to me, too, sir.”
Mr.Fleming looks relieved. Nick knows that Andy thinks his father is completely indifferent to him except as theChronicle’s future publisher, but Nick isn’t so sure of that. Still, Nick’s thelast person to tell someone what to think of their family, so he’ll probably be keeping this opinion to himself.
“I’ve enjoyed that series you’re writing about the missing police evidence. Has Stanley spoken to you about doing another series?”
It takes Nick a moment to realize that Stanley is Jorgensen. “Yes,” Nick says, and is spared explaining that he hasn’t even pitched an idea yet, because the secretary enters. She sets a tray on the desk, then disappears, closing the door silently behind her.
Mr.Fleming takes off his glasses and begins to clean them with his handkerchief. “What did you need to know from Evelyn this morning?” Mr.Fleming asks. He puts down his glasses for long enough to bring his cup of coffee to his mouth, and Nick notices that his hands are shaking—except, no, that isn’t quite right. He realizes that what he’s seeing is a tremor of the sort his nonna had, only worse. Andy never mentioned his father drinking, and the man he sees before him doesn’t look like he’s in the late stages of drinking himself to death, so Nick doesn’t know what to think.
“Did I hear you ask about Andy’s hotel?” Mr.Fleming continues.
“He didn’t tell me where he’s staying.”
“If you have a message, I can make sure it’s passed on to him,” Mr.Fleming says smoothly enough that it takes Nick a moment to realize it’s a refusal.
“Don’t worry about it.” He starts to get to his feet. “I’ll see him when he gets back.”
