The Lasko Tangent Read Free Page A

hotshot, I have to put up with this. I don’t.”
    “That’s true. You don’t.” One day, I thought, I would push it too far. But I had Feiner to remind me of what I didn’t want to be. His face was a frozen mask of attention, turned to McGuire. I figured he must spend his nights chiseling McGuire’s every word in marble.
    McGuire was looking me over, as if sizing me for a firing. “You’d better get with it,” he finally said.
    There was nothing more to say. I left, his sourness trailing after me.
    I walked back to my office. I wasn’t happy. The Lasko case came complete with White House interest, a meddling Chairman, and a supercilious female lawyer. I was on a very short leash, and didn’t know who was holding the other end. So I decided to call Jim Robinson.
    “Hello?” he answered.
    “What’s Mary Carelli?”
    “I don’t know, Chris. Maybe if you take penicillin it will go away.”
    I laughed. “I’m especially interested in political connections, how she got her job—stuff like that.”
    “You a lawyer or a reporter today?”
    “I just want to know what I’m dealing with.”
    He paused. “I’ll see.”
    “Thanks. Catch you this afternoon.”
    I depressed the receiver and called Lane Greenfeld at the Washington Post. After that I got the Lasko file. I riffled it for an hour or so. Then I checked my watch and left the building.
    Three
     
     
    Greenfeld and I had agreed to lunch near the Hill.
    I beat him to the restaurant and secured a table which was jammed to the side of a darkish room. The decor was instant men’s club: brick walls, stained brown beams, and heavy furniture. I ordered a light rum and tonic and looked over the clientele. The faces moved through intense talk, explosive laughter, and professionally amiable smiles. In one corner a squat man with a lobbyist’s beefy confidence was jabbing a stubby finger at an obscure and worried-looking junior senator. I resolved out of boredom to watch whether the senator’s attention broke. He was still hanging on when Greenfeld cut off my line of sight.
    He grinned. “Is this déjà vu, malaise, or ennui?”
    I considered my answer with mock gravity. “Fin de siècle,” I concluded. I inspected his Cardin suit. “Are you bucking for Paris correspondent?”
    He sat down. “Just fashion editor.” Greenfeld was a taut testament to good metabolism. He had black hair, large, perceptive eyes, and a faintly amused look. The eyes suggested that he was amused because he understood more than the rest of us. “Now, you”—he stretched out the words—“look the very figure of entrenched capitalist privilege.”
    I smiled. The banter was typical. Greenfeld’s reporting was spartanly self-edited; the excess found refuge in his speech. He liked wordplay, sonorous phrases, and verbal sparring. His conversation was a pleasure which sometimes required strict attention. I had the pleasure fairly often; we were what passed for close friends among people too busy to achieve intimacy. The knowledge reminded me unhappily of how little time I’d had since school.
    Greenfeld ordered an old-fashioned. “How are things at the commission?”
    “Kafka lives.” I tried to contain my problems with the place. “And the Post?”
    He turned his palms upward in a little shrugging gesture. “They keep the pressure on.” He didn’t seem terribly impressed. It was one of the things I liked about him.
    I hadn’t seen him for a couple of weeks and had to stretch for his roommate’s name. I retrieved it. “How’s Lynette?”
    The boyish face became guarded and he stared at his cuffs. They seemed to interest him. Finally he spoke to his old-fashioned. “She hasn’t been around lately.” The words were uninflected, as if someone had unplugged his personality.
    It seemed less awkward to finish than to switch subjects. I stumbled on. “What happened?”
    He shifted slightly in his chair. “It wasn’t working.” Greenfeld was an observer, not a revealer;