The Almighty

by Irving Wallace

  Victoria was back at her desk at the Record by two-thirty, hoping Nick Ramsey had returned early. But he had not appeared.

  She had rushed through her lunch break. She had gulped down a hamburger, found a taxi, and hurried up to West Seventy-third Street where a female college friend was waiting to show her the vacant apartment. It consisted of a small living room with a sofa bed and small kitchen, was furnished in con-tempo modern and had just been cleaned. Victoria quickly signed a rental agreement and gave the landlady a deposit.

  Now, breathless at her desk, she sought Nick Ramsey in the vast newsroom, not having the faintest idea of what he looked like, and at last knowing that he would eventually find her. Settled down, she filled out a requisition for supplies. Then she dug her compact out of her purse and freshened her makeup. Finally, she began to read this morning's edition of the New York Record, which she had taken from a pile at the foyer entrance to the newsroom.

  She skipped the Mideast news and other foreign dispatches, skimmed the national news from Washington, D.C. (noting the mention of her father's name in one story, and reminding herself to call him after work) and concentrated on the metropolitan news. The major attraction playing in New York, it appeared, was crime, mainly murder. The monotony of this mayhem was relieved only by a few pieces about graft in the city government.

  She had become engrossed in this seemingly endless parade of the sordid when she felt a hand on her shoulder.

  She heard him before she saw him.

  "Ms. Nellie Bly, I presume?" His voice carried a lilt of mockery.

  Victoria's head came back, and she looked up as he added. "I'm Nick Ramsey, at your service."

  She scrambled to her feet, somewhat surprised and disconcerted by his good looks. She had expected Armstead's best investigative reporter to resemble an aggressive ferret or a mole. Instead, he resembled an aging collegian who still did well with the young girls. He was certainly six feet tall, with poor posture, rounded shoulders. His face was somewhat narrow, sunken, craggy, and it wore a faint air of amused cynicism. His dark hair was combed sideways—a recalcitrant strand in back stood up—and he had gray eyes, absolutely marvelous gray eyes meant to make women weak-kneed. He wore a maroon pullover and cord slacks. Middle to maybe late thirties, Victoria guessed.

  And he smelled of breath spray.

  "I'm Vicky—Vicky Weston," she said, trying to regain her poise.

  "Oh, not Nellie," he said. "Incidentally, she never carried one."

  "What?" she asked, truly bewildered.

  "A gun. Nellie Bly never carried a gun. And you won't either, unless you like to shoot stray cats. I'm told you've been hired on as an investigative reporter, junior grade. Well, you won't have to confront anything more ferocious than Ma Bell. The telephone's the weapon we use. My orders are to break you in this afternoon."

  "I have a good telephone voice. Will that help, Mr. Ramsey?"

  "It'll get you a lot of dates. First step in breaking you in: my name's Nick."

  "Okay, Nick."

  "Now you're broken in." He looked at his watch. "We've got two hours. I guess we can best use it by me showing you around —where the ladies' room is, where the Coke machine can be found, and how to get to your desk without being seen when you've come in late with a hangover."

  "Sounds great."

  "You don't have to walk close to me," he said. "I can see you can't stand the breath spray. Let's have an open relationship. I've been drinking, and I had too much."

  "Are you all right?"

  "Too much breath spray," he said. "But under your cool and upright gaze, I'm sobering quickly." He took her arm. "Let's start our fateful odyssey here in the newsroom—where the life of a big city paper throbs, as the documentaries say. Ready, Vicky?"

  She adored him. "I'm ready, Nick."

  He walked her about the endless newsroom, introducing her to a blur of receptive editors and reporters, mostly male, as he tried to explain the organization of the newsroom. Very little of what he said was new to Victoria. It was similar to the organization of her suburban Chicago paper, only there was more of it, much more.

  Ramsey pointed out the location of the desks of the metropolitan editors, national editors, foreign editors, and the partitioned offices holding the sports desks, financial desks, culture desks. Victoria lingered with him beside the copydesks, formed in the shape of a horseshoe. They watched editors sorting publicity releases and going through folders containing leads to future news events. Victoria followed Ramsey into the wire room where thirty-five teleprinters pounded out news from around the world—most of this from the Record's own special correspondents, the rest of it from Associated Press, Reuters, Dow Jones, and other agency sources.

  The flood of words pouring in dazed Victoria. "How many words come in here every day?" she wondered.

  "You mean just on the wires? Or from their local reporters, police headquarters, city hall, and in general?"

  "From everywhere."

  "About a million and three-quarters words every twenty-four hours. We print about 125,000 of those words."

  Victoria groaned. "How'll I ever get a word in edgewise?"

  "It's not how much you get in, but what you get in," Ramsey told her. "If you make it as an investigative reporter, your words will get in, plenty of them. Don't worry."

  After that, Victoria trailed Ramsey through one department and office after another—advertising with its staff of 250, the morgue with its rows and rows of clipping files, the reference library with its thousands of books, the picture editor's offices and finally the composing room, where each story came out in computerized strips that were cut up, pasted onto boards, converted into plates that were photographed electronically.

  Leaving the composing room, Ramsey gave Victoria a long look. "You must be wiped out," he said. He studied his watch. "Almost six. I have to leave you now anyway. I have a business date—got to be at the Oak Bar of the Plaza in fifteen minutes."

  "Thank you for the Grand Tour, Nick."

  Lighting a cigarette before leaving her, he hesitated. "What are you going to do now?"

  "I guess I'll do some grocery shopping and lug it back to my new apartment and make myself something to eat."

  "I think you can do better than that your first night as a gainfully employed person in Manhattan."

  "Like what?"

  "Like having dinner with your mentor. I'll be free if you are." Her face brightened. "I'd like that, if it can be Dutch treat."

  "Since I intend to have some drinks, let's make it Armstead's treat. See you at eight-thirty. Oak Room, the Plaza. Don't bring a notebook. This'll be strictly holding hands."

  They had not held hands at all.

  It would have been impossible, Victoria knew, because each of his hands had been otherwise occupied during the hour in which they had been sitting at a secluded rear table in the Oak Room. Ramsey's right hand had not once been without a glass of gin and tonic, and his left hand had been permanently busy holding a cigarette, one lit off another.

  She had nursed her drink while he finished three. She felt faint with famine, and was about to tell him so when he opened the menu and ordered dinner for both of them without consulting her. But she was grateful, and then concerned when she heard him order a fourth drink.

  She had been nervous but stimulated in the presence of this attractive stranger. He was definitely dissolute and definitely cynical, the real-life embodiment of Sydney Carton, a fictional hero of her youth. Her tension was heightened by the belief that he would make a pass at her, and she was not certain how she would react. But Ramsey had made no pass at her, had not even sat close to her, and she knew that she was disappointed.

  Her edginess had made her talk more than she normally did. The moment they took their seats she started to tell him about paying the rent and the security deposit for her new apartment before getting the key from the landlady. There hadn't been much time to do anything else, yet she recited to him the details of unpacking her s
ingle suitcase and garment bag; the jubilant call to her father in Washington, D.C., to tell him that she had got the job on the Record; a more contained call to her mother in Evanston to repeat the news of the job (an irritating exchange in which her mother had said, "Well, I suppose I am happy you're pleased, but I really had hoped you'd get out of that miserable newspaper business") and to ask her mother to arrange with a shipper to pack her clothes and books and other effects and send them on to New York; a quick bath and change of clothes before finding a taxi to the Plaza.

  Ramsey's only reaction to her inane, compulsive recital had been to say, "You don't sound as if you like your mother very much."

  "Oh, I like her, of course. You've got to like your mother. But not 'very much.' She resents me because she thinks I take after my father."

  "Do you?"

  "I hope so," she said sincerely.

  "Well, your mother's right about one thing."

  "What?"

  "That the newspaper business is miserable, no place for a decent young lady. It makes you devious, hypocritical, immoral. It makes you forget people are human beings with feelings. It makes you warp truth for stories. How in the hell did you get into this jungle?"

  Taken aback by the anger underlying his easygoing manner, she began to cover her upset by compulsively going into the highlights of her autobiography. Her father, his exploits, his cronies had, of course, been major influences. But even beyond that, she had always been fascinated by newspapermen, by their memorable scoops, by the romance of reporting. She had spent five years at Northwestern University, had served on the college newspaper where she was the best on the staff, and upon receiving her master of science from the Medil School of Journalism had landed a job on a weekly paper. She had worked in newsrooms ever since.

  "Did you have time for a love life?" he had asked.

  "It's none of your business, but I certainly did."

  "With newspapermen?"

  "No, but—"

  "But don't," he had said.

  "Why not?"

  "Like actors, reporters are too self-involved. As Wilson Mizner once put it, 'Some of the greatest love affairs I've known involved one actor, unassisted."

  She wondered what it would be like to have a love affair with a newspaperman, someone with her own kind of mentality, maybe someone like Nick Ramsey. She'd had four affairs—what might have been called affairs at the time, although each was of short duration—in her life. The first, in high school, had been to get it over with, to lose her virginity. The second and third had been in college, to find out if it could be fun (in one case it had been, a little, while they were in bed, but he hadn't been much fun otherwise). The last affair, the one she'd mentioned to her father, was with a married lawyer she had interviewed for her paper. He had offered her his total love and promised that he would leave his wife, but he was impossibly selfish and had never intended to get a divorce.

  No matter what Nick Ramsey said, could a newspaperman be worse?

  At that point the waiter had come with Ramsey's fresh drink. Ramsey took it and lifted it as if in a toast to Victoria. "Again, as Wilson Mizner put it, 'I am a stylist, and the most beautiful sentence I have ever heard is, "Have one on the house.""

  He ignored the Caesar salads being placed before them, and devoted himself to an almost nonstop swallow of his drink. Victoria, who had been prepared to ravage her salad, now had less stomach for it.

  Fork in hand, she asked weakly, "Who was Wilson Mizner?"

  "Who was Wilson Mizner?" Ramsey repeated, a bit dimly, slightly drunkenly. "Now there's a question that—that's hard to answer. He was a writer and gambler and lots of other things. He was mostly a wit. He was mostly cynical, which is why I like him. He never lived up to his potential, which is another reason I like him. He once said to a small, no-goodnik guy, 'You're a mouse studying to be a rat."

  Victoria couldn't help but laugh.

  Recovering, she considered her plate once more. You asked something," she said, "so I guess I can ask it, too. What about your love life?"

  "No comment."

  "Not fair."

  "I have no love life," he said, "only a sex life. In my lexicon, love is a four-lettered word. Don't ask me to explain my troubled past. If you ever regard me as a love object, forget it."

  "Don't grow old worrying about that."

  "Love and news, two four-lettered words."

  Picking at her salad, she observed him out of the corner of her eye. He was drinking steadily, bemused.

  "If you dislike journalism so much," she said, "how come you're in it?"

  "How come a whore's a whore?" he retorted.

  "That's no answer."

  "And that's no question you asked."

  "I mean, something got you into journalism. What got you into it?"

  "That's a question," he decided. He set down his glass and began to eat his salad reflectively. "I was born in Oakland," he said. "Ever know anybody born in Oakland?"

  "No," admitted Victoria. "All I know about Oakland is what Gertrude Stein said about it. 'When you get there, there's no there there."

  Ramsey eyed her with bleary respect. "Exactly," he said. He concentrated on his salad, then seemed to recall what he had been speaking about. "I was no good at sports, but good at writing. Not from my parents—they had a clothing store. Writing was a natural gift. I intended to write books. Those writers seemed to live well and independently. But after two years at a junior college I was given a scholarship to the School of Journalism at the University of Wisconsin. That was my downfall."

  The salad plates had been removed, and they were being served rack of lamb, with new potatoes and fresh peas. Ramsey considered the food, and finished his drink.

  He became aware of his partner. "Where was I?" he asked.

  "In Madison, Wisconsin."

  "Yes. I was a feature writer on the Daily Cardinal. I was very gifted, too gifted. A magazine in New York—forget its name—gave me a freelance assignment. An exposé about Big Ten football. Recruitment. Did I tell you it was an exposé?"

  "You were starting to."

  It was very good. Result, the New York Times hired me. Features. Some by-lines. Result, the Giant—E. J. Armstead—he offered me more money. Almost ten years ago. Been on the Record ever since."

  "So what's so bad about that?" Victoria wanted to know.

  "Books," Ramsey mumbled. "Always wanted to do books."

  "Why didn't you?"

  "I did. Wrote one."

  "You did?" She was surprised. "You wrote a book that was published? What about?"

  "Novel about Rousseau. Not Jean Jacques. Henri, Henri Rousseau. French primitive painter, died 1910. A real primitive, toll inspector, sometimes postman, turned painter."

  "I'd like to read it. What was it called?"

  "The Postman Always Rings Twice. Naw, I'm kidding. Never mind what it was called."

  "I would like to read it, Nick."

  "Unavailable, even in rare-book stores. Sold 344 copies."

  "Why don't you write another one?"

  "Would you, with that kind of encouragement?"

  Victoria nodded her head vigorously. "I would, if that's what I wanted to do most in the world."

  He snorted. "You would. You're a romantic. You even think newspapers are romantic. You think there are big beats around every corner, derring-do, clandestine meetings, earthshaking news. That's what you believe, isn't it?"

  "Yes, that's what I believe. I think being on a newspaper is one of the last romantic things in the world."

  "Honey, this is big-time, big commercial time, and you're going to lose your girlish laughter fast. Maybe newspapers were romantic once. When your father was a young newsman, battered felt hat, ancient Underwood typewriter, stubby pencils, underworld connections, making deadlines, Extras in the street. Honey, that world is as dead as the one-hoss shay. You know what a newspaper is now? Something you read if you happened to miss last night's television. Something that shovels in words betwe
en the ads. No more regular typewriters, no more stubby pencils, no more Extra-read-all-about-it. Just one big electronic rig-up, filled with computers and tapes. It's one big bore, with no future. Take my word for it and spare yourself a lot of grief."

  "I hope you're wrong," she said.

  "For your sake, I hope I am." He signaled a passing waiter and held up his empty glass. "One more for the road," he called out. When he turned back, he found her eyes hard on him.

  "Nick," she said, "why do you drink so much?"

  He gave her a wicked smile. "I don't know," he said. "You're the investigative reporter. You find out."

  The next morning, at her desk early, Victoria Weston was still thinking about Nick Ramsey when she heard her name on the loudspeaker. It was a summons from the managing editor. Taking up a notepad and ballpoint pen, she hurried to Ollie McAllister's office.

  Studying the contents of a manila folder, he told Victoria to draw up a chair.

  "Your first assignment," he said.

  "I'm ready," she said, indicating her pad and pen and wondering what the assignment would be.

  "Since Edward Armstead has just taken over, we haven't as yet had time to determine what investigative stories we want to get into. However, to keep you busy we have some news features that need doing. Especially one we want to get into the works right now."

  Victoria waited tensely.

  McAllister looked up. "Ever heard of Sam Yinger?"

  "Who hasn't? He murdered all those kids,"

  "He's going to die in the electric chair at Green Haven prison two days from now. Since his crime—horrendous as any I've heard—has imprinted itself on the public consciousness, we figure there's wide interest in how Yinger spends his last hours or last day. Especially now that the state has restored capital punishment. He'll be one of the first big names to burn under the new law. What we want is a color story, really. There you are in a cell on Death Row. Soon you are going to be extinguished as a human being. How do you spend your final hours? What are you doing? What are you thinking? Do you get the picture?"