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I said. "How about
Quentin Dover? How honest was he?"
    Jack sat back in his chair. "Ah, Quentin,"
he said. "There I can speak with some authority. You know, I
worked with him. He was head writer on 'Phoenix'."
    "Was he a good writer?"
    Jack threw his hand at me in disgust. "Naw, he
was a terrible writer. A hack. What you got to understand, Harry, is
that 'good' doesn't enter into it when you're talking about daytime
TV. Frank and Helen aren't interested in good; they're interested in
the old 41/42."
    "And what is that?"
    "Forty-one or forty-two minutes of playable
story, every day of the year, year in and year out, with no summer
reruns. In that respect, Quentin was a great writer. Or, at least, he
was up until a few months ago. Quentin was a rarity--a man with no
mind of his own, no artsy pretentions, and no sense of shame. He was
perfect for daytime."
    "How was he during the rest of the day?"
    Jack grinned maliciously. "He couldn't pour a
cup of coffee without taking a stiff drink first. He was thirty-eight
years old and he'd already had a quadruple bypass. Does that give you
any idea? Quentin Dover was Type-A incarnate. He was a walking basket
case. He once told me that he took fourteen different pills every
day. Fourteen! He carried a thermometer in his coat pocket. He
couldn't pass a blood pressure machine in a drug store without
slipping a quarter into it. His life was one long stifled scream."
    "Glendora seemed to think he was charming.
    "Glendora didn't have to work with him every
day," Jack said bitterly and stared at his little desk with
scorn. "Yeah, sure he could be charming. Most neurotics are. He
had an act he went into when he was around the big boys. Frankly, I
don't know how he brought it off. For a man without a shred of real
confidence, he could put on the damndest show of self-assuredness you
ever saw. They say money talks; well, if it does, Quentin had the
accent down to a tee. He was a name-dropper, a gossip, a jet-setter
without wings. You should have heard him go on about Back Bay Boston
or about his days with Armand Hammer or about the time he escorted a
starlet to a hot-tub orgy in Hollywood. He had the accent, all right.
And that's what guys like Frank love to hear. It gives them a little
goose, like paging through the National Geographic.
    That's what Quentin was to them: a trip to the
respectable unknown, with a glimpse or two of naked savages along the
way."
    "It's the not-so-respectable unknown that they
seem to be afraid of," I said.
    "I'm afraid I can't tell you anything about
that," Moon said. "Outside of work, Quentin and I didn't do
much socializing. You see, we weren't in the same league-money-wise.
And money was all-important to Quentin."
    It seemed to be rather important to Jack Moon, too.
But I didn't make a point of it Like he'd said, he had a big appetite
and the job just didn't satisfy his hunger.
    He must have recognized the rancor in his voice,
because he straightened up in the chair and gave me a weary look of
apology. "You don't know what it's like, Harry," he said.
"Having to nurse these talentless bastards all day long. That's
all I do--run a daycare center for neurotics. It gets old after
awhile."
    "I thought you were the executive producer of
the show?"
    He laughed biliously. "Executive producer is
just a fancy name for go-fer. I'm United's boy at the plant, that's
all. The show is run by Helen Rose. She's the producer, and the only
person she's responsible to is Frank. I'm along for the ride--to pat
Helen's hand for her when it needs patting and to count Quentin's
pills for him when he loses track. Shit, do you know how much money
Quentin Dover was making,?--he didn't wait for an answer. "Better
than half a million dollars a year."
    I stared at him. "For writing soaps?"
    "For writing soaps," he said with disgust.
"They pay me twenty-six grand, Harry. So don't expect me to show
much pity for Quentin. He had his house in Indian Hill. And his
Rolls-Royce. And his centerfold