A Face in the Water, ch 6 by rose_of_pollux [Kolchak: the Night Stalker, Mosso]
Title: A Face in the Water, Chapter 6: Sinking Fast
Author: Crystal Rose of Pollux (rose_of_pollux)
Theme: 16; Mosso
Fandom: Kolchak: the Night Stalker
Warnings: PG13
Disclaimer: The characters aren't mine (except for the OCs), and the story is
Summary/Comments: Another disappearance leads Carl back up to the lake--and headlong into trouble. Meanwhile, Tony searches for clues to solve his own mystery of what Carl is trying to hide from him, and finds more than enough to put the pieces together.
Cross-posted to fanfiction.net
“Sometimes, I wonder if Tony knows more than he lets on. Even on those old cases where he claimed that I was crazy, maybe he really did think about them… but just didn’t tell me. At any rate, he knew that I was hiding something, and I could tell that he was genuinely concerned about it-guess he realized that I usually don’t shut up about these things, so if I was hiding something, it meant that I was in some sort of trouble. Well, though the job offer certainly didn’t constitute as trouble, I wasn’t exactly free from trouble, either, as I would soon find out.
“After a fitful sleep, thinking about those instruments, I headed to the library first thing in the morning. Not wanting Tony to be able to track me down easily, I decided not to stop in at the office in the morning and hopes that he somehow forgot that I had told him last evening that I was going to the library.
“Unfortunately, my search for information at the library was severely limited. All the books on mermaids and sirens didn’t mention anything about magical instruments that somehow caused this siren-mermaid and her friends to appear and start adding humans to their collection of surface trinkets. No; there was a different legend at work here-one that didn’t seem to be as well-known. It was up to me to find it before it was too late, but that was easier said than done. ”
Carl sighed, staring at the books he had placed open on the table as he flipped through them all.
Same old story, he sighed to himself. They sing, lure men to their doom, and no way to get rid of them. Just stuff up your ears so that you can’t hear--
“Kolchak! Hey, Kolchak!”
Several annoyed patrons of the library turned to glare at Sam Gorpley as he dashed through the quiet building, heading for him.
Wish I had something to stuff my ears with now… Kolchak mentally sighed as he put on a false smile to greet Gorpley with.
“What are you doing here?” he asked.
“I was waiting outside by your car-it’s the yellow Mustang, right? I thought I’d just hang out there until you finished up in here, but I overheard some radio chatter on your receiver, or whatever that was…”
“Will you just get to the point?” Carl asked.
“Captain Rausch is heading back up to the lake; there was another disappearance ten minutes ago, and this one’s a doozy! It wasn’t a fisherman or little sailboat rider this time-it was some rich guy, right off of his yacht, and his wife was there on the deck with him!”
Carl was on his feet at that.
So Ariel’s upping the ante, huh? Well, she’s going to have to learn that she can’t have her way all the time…
“Wait a minute!” Gorpley said, following him out of the library. “I just wanted to let you know; you’re not going back up there, are you?!”
“That’s where the story is, isn’t it?” Carl said. “I was under the assumption that would be where responsible newsmen go.”
“After what Captain Rausch said yesterday, you’d be crazy if you did go there!”
“Oh, Rausch is all talk,” Carl lied. Deep down, he knew that the captain was dead serious. Though Gorpley could prove to be a useful decoy… “You want to come along?”
“You are crazy. You wouldn’t be able to pay me to go up there. And from what I understand, Vincenzo isn’t paying you at all to go there.”
“And before you start saying that Wainwright is, I’m aware of how he wants to buy my story,” Carl sighed. “Why don’t you go tell Wainwright what I’m doing? You know, let him know what his new investigative reporter will be getting into if he hires him.”
“You’re taking the job?”
“I didn’t say that,” Carl said, immediately. “I’m still considering it.”
“If I had been in your situation, I’d have stopped considering it after five minutes and taken the job,” Gorpley said.
Carl just muttered something under his breath and got into his car.
“You sure about this, Kolchak?”
“Absolutely. Now go be a good little scout and report this to Wainwright like you have for everything else I’ve been doing since yesterday.”
Carl pulled out of the parking space and drove off, heading for the lake.
******************************
“It seemed as though I knew the shortcuts around the area far better than Rausch did, because I ended up arriving at the lake before he did, or maybe it was because I didn’t have Gorpley hampering things. Either way, I was grateful for my headstart, in spite of however short it was.
“After making my way through the assembled group already there, waiting for Rausch, I could easily see the wife of the missing man, Mrs. Quint. I was quick to offer my sympathy and concern, which caused her to trust me enough to tell me what had happened.”
Mrs. Quint continued to wring the tear-soaked handkerchief in her hands as she relayed her tale.
“My husband was standing on the bow of the yacht,” she said. “He was looking around for something-said he heard some strange music. Well, I thought he was hearing things; I hadn’t heard a thing-”
“Was it a woman singing?” Carl asked, his eyes narrowing. “Or was it a group of women?”
“He didn’t say,” Mrs. Quint said. “I thought he was hearing something in the wind, but I turned my back for an instant, and…”
“He fell overboard?” the reporter prompted as she trailed off.
“I… I’m not sure he fell,” she whispered, clutching her handkerchief with trembling hands. “He didn’t yell out like he would’ve if he had fallen. It’s like he… It’s like he jumped overboard on his own, but… Why? He had a good job… We had a happy marriage… He had a smart head on his shoulders… I just don’t understand…”
Carl shook his head, staring out across the vast expanse of the lake. Well, things were becoming very clear to him.
He looked back to Mrs. Quint again and offered his sympathies before wandering off on his own.
Okay, so I have an idea of what’s in the lake, causing disappearances. But how do I get rid of them?
He took out the business card that he had received yesterday from the antique shop. Was there some link to how these siren-mermaid hybrids had suddenly showed up, and how this Mr. Giovanni had been so quick to get the Sirens’ Instruments out of his possession? Well, he would just have to pay a visit to Mr. Giovanni and find out.
He pocketed the card again and turned to leave, but froze in his tracks. Above the din of the young policemen investigating the scene and Mrs. Quint once again explaining what had transpired, the reporter could hear a familiar voice and tune.
“O, ye who dwells upon the land…”
It was them-or one of them, at least. Carl couldn’t quite tell if there was one or more singing at that particular moment, but he found himself not caring. And just as before, he had made a grab for his tape recorder to get some proof of the singing this time, but as the voice continued to sing, he (once again) forgot about it, his hand suspended in midair.
He turned towards the lake, walking to the edge of the pier. He knelt down at the edge, just as he had before, and there she was. But he could see more than just a face this time; brown hair framed her face, and some sort of garment-a tunic of some kind-was draped around her. And emerging from the bottom of the fabric was a long, fish-like tail.
It never once crossed the reporter’s mind to take a picture with his camera. No; his thought process was more along the lines of “Where have you been all my life?” Despite the fact that this was most unlike him, Carl didn’t even care that he was clearly not in his right mind as he leaned in closer and closer; he was dangerously close to having gravity take over and pull him the rest of the way. But that didn’t cross his mind, either. This time, nothing would stop him from hearing that song again… from perhaps even talking to her… getting even closer… Yes, closer, still…
Well, almost nothing…
Carl’s arms were suddenly seized and pulled behind him.
“What the…?” he stammered, tearing his gaze away from the singer beneath the water as he felt the all-too-familiar feeling of handcuffs closing around his wrists.
“Kolchak, you can’t say that I didn’t warn you of what would happen if we crossed paths again during the course of my investigation,” he heard Rausch’s voice say as he was roughly pulled to his feet. “Spencer, take him away.”
“No, no, no!” Carl protested, as he was dragged away from pier. He looked back to the water, but, once again, she was gone, and the details of what she looked like and what she was singing were rapidly fading from his mind.
“Put him in the squad car and have Sonntag offer Mrs. Quint a ride to the station so that she can give her statement to me personally,” Rausch went on, ignoring Carl as he cursed under his breath. “And I want to question Kolchak personally, as well.”
“Do I get a phone call?” Carl asked, livid at being dragged away from the siren-mermaid and her song for the second time. I was so close-so close!
He paused. Now he realized he wasn’t thinking straight, but he had more pressing matters on his mind.
Rausch gave Carl a derisive look.
“Whether or not you are granted permission for a phone call is fully dependent on how cooperative you are when I question you.”
Carl narrowed his eyes, but said nothing as Spencer pulled him away. First the siren-mermaid disappeared again, and now this. Yesterday had not been his day, and it didn’t look like today was much better.
******************************
Tony Vincenzo now knew that something was up. Since parting ways the previous evening, Carl had made himself very scarce; he hadn’t even shown up that morning at the INS, and Tony knew that whenever Carl was immersed in one of his odder stories, he always used his desk as a sort of home base to think. His absence confirmed what Tony had suspected; Carl had something to hide, and he was deliberately avoiding Tony. Well, Tony was going to get to the bottom of it.
And he soon found an excuse to do some searching of his own. Miss Emily had finished up with her advice column early, and had asked him if there was anything else she could do for this week’s edition of the paper. Tony was about to tell her not to bother, but then decided to let her in on the Julius Caesar fiasco, and how he considerably doubted that Carl was going to get to it. Miss Emily smiled and said that she wouldn’t mind reviewing the play at all, and Tony informed her that he had lent Carl the play and offered to go through Carl’s desk to find it for her.
Searching through it, he paused as he noticed something tucked into a corner drawer-a business card for R. T. Wainwright, editor of the Chicago Chronicle.
“The Chronicle…?” Tony murmured aloud.
Of course, he knew all about the Chicago Chronicle. They were one of the city’s most popular papers, and the crew at the INS considered them a snooty rival (and Tony didn’t exactly think too much of Wainwright, either); it wasn’t uncommon to see part of a page of the Chronicle plastered over the dartboard in the office. So why did Carl have Wainwright’s business card?
He soon found another clue under Wainwright’s card-a slip of paper with an eyebrow-raising sum of money written on it, and the handwriting wasn’t Carl’s.
The editor looked from the card to the slip of paper repeatedly, thinking about how Carl was definitely hiding something from him, and he suddenly exhaled as he put two and two together.
“Mr. Vincenzo?”
Tony gave a start as Miss Emily looked at him questioningly.
“Oh, right,” he said, handing her the play.
“Is everything alright, Mr. Vincenzo?” she asked, accepting it. “You have the same out-there look that Carl had yesterday.”
“I do, huh?”
“Yes; I was leaving for my lunch break, and I saw him in the hall outside, just staring at the wall-only he wasn’t really looking at it, if you know what I mean. His mind was elsewhere. And you looked just the same a moment ago.”
Tony sighed.
“Guess we’ve both been working too hard,” he said, quietly.
“Well, if you’re sure that’s all it is, then I think I’ll head home and read up on this before I go see the play.”
“Yeah, you do that,” Tony said. “Ron’s got the day off, and Carl’s… Well, who knows where he is right now? At any rate, he’s got a key if he desperately needs to come back here, so I think I’ll lock up early and take the rest of the day off, too.”
“Good for you!” Miss Emily said, as she headed out the door. “You’ve earned it, bless you! Everyone knows you do the most work around here! …And we all appreciate it!”
“Really?” Tony asked, quietly, after she was out of earshot. He stared at the business card and the slip of paper. “Sometimes I wonder…”
After collecting the two clues, it certainly didn’t take a genius to figure out what Carl was trying to hide. Wainwright had obviously offered him a job at the Chronicle (one with a very tempting salary, if the paper was any indication), and Carl did not want Tony to know about it. Why? Why was he being so secretive about it? Why hadn’t Carl jumped at the chance to take it? Why was Carl still holding onto Wainwright’s card?
And why did Tony feel as though he had just been stabbed in the back?
Tony immediately chided himself for thinking that; he knew that if he ever had half a chance to jump the INS ship for something greater, he’d have done so in a heartbeat. And yet… he would’ve tried to take Carl with him. Hadn’t Tony gotten Carl a job in Seattle-one that had ended with Carl getting them both out of work? Hadn’t Tony managed to convince Abe Marmelstein to hire Carl, too, after managing to salvage the INS editorial position? Tony had done everything in his power to keep Carl employed, and if he had the chance to move up the ladder, he’d have done his very best to help Carl up, as well.
Well, it seemed that Carl now had an opportunity to move up the ladder on his own. And he didn’t seem to have any plans to take anyone with him. Then again, did Tony really expect him to? Carl never had seemed to appreciate all that he had done for him; when Tony had accused him of being ungrateful back in Seattle, it wasn’t unfounded. And Tony was feeling those very same sentiments again. Here he was, desperately trying to keep the both of them employed, and did Carl ever show him the slightest bit of gratitude for all of it? No, but, Tony realized that to keep them employed meant throwing out any and all of Carl’s stories on the supernatural-something that vexed the reporter deeply. Was Carl that desperate to get his supernatural stories printed that it was worth more than everything that Tony had gone through to keep him employed?
It hurt more than Tony cared to admit, and yet he knew he couldn’t hate Carl for it. But, still… Tony had to wonder… Would he have been this upset if he had found out that someone else, like Ron or Emily, had been offered the Chronicle job instead of Carl?
Of course not, he said to himself. I’d wish them good luck and let them go on their way without much more than a second thought. The fact that it’s Carl is what complicates things, but that shouldn’t even matter!
Yes, it shouldn’t matter. But that didn’t change the fact that it did-that it was personal when it shouldn’t even be personal.
The editor shook his head, trying to clear these thoughts from his mind. He knew that any sane person would take a better job opportunity if it came along, and Carl would be utterly stupid not to take this job at the Chronicle. If Tony could help his hardheaded employee by being a stepping stone, well… maybe he should just accept that. And maybe Carl hadn’t hidden this information to spite him after all, but to try to find a way to soften the eventual blow. Well, it was all but out in the open now; he would have to talk to Carl about it the next opportunity he had.
Tony decided to pocket the card and the slip of paper; they would probably come in handy when he spoke to Carl about it when he came back from… wherever it was. He had said last evening that he was going to the library in the morning, hadn’t he? Or had that been a ruse to find time to go and see Wainwright about the job?
Now I’m just paranoid about this.
Deciding not to dwell on it until he saw Carl again, he decided to lock the place up and take the day off as he had planned. Also, a trip to the bar and a subsequent glass of 2% milk (if not something stronger, like whole milk) was in order. It looked as though today was promising to be a very long day indeed.
And it wasn’t even noon yet.
Author: Crystal Rose of Pollux (rose_of_pollux)
Theme: 16; Mosso
Fandom: Kolchak: the Night Stalker
Warnings: PG13
Disclaimer: The characters aren't mine (except for the OCs), and the story is
Summary/Comments: Another disappearance leads Carl back up to the lake--and headlong into trouble. Meanwhile, Tony searches for clues to solve his own mystery of what Carl is trying to hide from him, and finds more than enough to put the pieces together.
Cross-posted to fanfiction.net
“Sometimes, I wonder if Tony knows more than he lets on. Even on those old cases where he claimed that I was crazy, maybe he really did think about them… but just didn’t tell me. At any rate, he knew that I was hiding something, and I could tell that he was genuinely concerned about it-guess he realized that I usually don’t shut up about these things, so if I was hiding something, it meant that I was in some sort of trouble. Well, though the job offer certainly didn’t constitute as trouble, I wasn’t exactly free from trouble, either, as I would soon find out.
“After a fitful sleep, thinking about those instruments, I headed to the library first thing in the morning. Not wanting Tony to be able to track me down easily, I decided not to stop in at the office in the morning and hopes that he somehow forgot that I had told him last evening that I was going to the library.
“Unfortunately, my search for information at the library was severely limited. All the books on mermaids and sirens didn’t mention anything about magical instruments that somehow caused this siren-mermaid and her friends to appear and start adding humans to their collection of surface trinkets. No; there was a different legend at work here-one that didn’t seem to be as well-known. It was up to me to find it before it was too late, but that was easier said than done. ”
Carl sighed, staring at the books he had placed open on the table as he flipped through them all.
Same old story, he sighed to himself. They sing, lure men to their doom, and no way to get rid of them. Just stuff up your ears so that you can’t hear--
“Kolchak! Hey, Kolchak!”
Several annoyed patrons of the library turned to glare at Sam Gorpley as he dashed through the quiet building, heading for him.
Wish I had something to stuff my ears with now… Kolchak mentally sighed as he put on a false smile to greet Gorpley with.
“What are you doing here?” he asked.
“I was waiting outside by your car-it’s the yellow Mustang, right? I thought I’d just hang out there until you finished up in here, but I overheard some radio chatter on your receiver, or whatever that was…”
“Will you just get to the point?” Carl asked.
“Captain Rausch is heading back up to the lake; there was another disappearance ten minutes ago, and this one’s a doozy! It wasn’t a fisherman or little sailboat rider this time-it was some rich guy, right off of his yacht, and his wife was there on the deck with him!”
Carl was on his feet at that.
So Ariel’s upping the ante, huh? Well, she’s going to have to learn that she can’t have her way all the time…
“Wait a minute!” Gorpley said, following him out of the library. “I just wanted to let you know; you’re not going back up there, are you?!”
“That’s where the story is, isn’t it?” Carl said. “I was under the assumption that would be where responsible newsmen go.”
“After what Captain Rausch said yesterday, you’d be crazy if you did go there!”
“Oh, Rausch is all talk,” Carl lied. Deep down, he knew that the captain was dead serious. Though Gorpley could prove to be a useful decoy… “You want to come along?”
“You are crazy. You wouldn’t be able to pay me to go up there. And from what I understand, Vincenzo isn’t paying you at all to go there.”
“And before you start saying that Wainwright is, I’m aware of how he wants to buy my story,” Carl sighed. “Why don’t you go tell Wainwright what I’m doing? You know, let him know what his new investigative reporter will be getting into if he hires him.”
“You’re taking the job?”
“I didn’t say that,” Carl said, immediately. “I’m still considering it.”
“If I had been in your situation, I’d have stopped considering it after five minutes and taken the job,” Gorpley said.
Carl just muttered something under his breath and got into his car.
“You sure about this, Kolchak?”
“Absolutely. Now go be a good little scout and report this to Wainwright like you have for everything else I’ve been doing since yesterday.”
Carl pulled out of the parking space and drove off, heading for the lake.
******************************
“It seemed as though I knew the shortcuts around the area far better than Rausch did, because I ended up arriving at the lake before he did, or maybe it was because I didn’t have Gorpley hampering things. Either way, I was grateful for my headstart, in spite of however short it was.
“After making my way through the assembled group already there, waiting for Rausch, I could easily see the wife of the missing man, Mrs. Quint. I was quick to offer my sympathy and concern, which caused her to trust me enough to tell me what had happened.”
Mrs. Quint continued to wring the tear-soaked handkerchief in her hands as she relayed her tale.
“My husband was standing on the bow of the yacht,” she said. “He was looking around for something-said he heard some strange music. Well, I thought he was hearing things; I hadn’t heard a thing-”
“Was it a woman singing?” Carl asked, his eyes narrowing. “Or was it a group of women?”
“He didn’t say,” Mrs. Quint said. “I thought he was hearing something in the wind, but I turned my back for an instant, and…”
“He fell overboard?” the reporter prompted as she trailed off.
“I… I’m not sure he fell,” she whispered, clutching her handkerchief with trembling hands. “He didn’t yell out like he would’ve if he had fallen. It’s like he… It’s like he jumped overboard on his own, but… Why? He had a good job… We had a happy marriage… He had a smart head on his shoulders… I just don’t understand…”
Carl shook his head, staring out across the vast expanse of the lake. Well, things were becoming very clear to him.
He looked back to Mrs. Quint again and offered his sympathies before wandering off on his own.
Okay, so I have an idea of what’s in the lake, causing disappearances. But how do I get rid of them?
He took out the business card that he had received yesterday from the antique shop. Was there some link to how these siren-mermaid hybrids had suddenly showed up, and how this Mr. Giovanni had been so quick to get the Sirens’ Instruments out of his possession? Well, he would just have to pay a visit to Mr. Giovanni and find out.
He pocketed the card again and turned to leave, but froze in his tracks. Above the din of the young policemen investigating the scene and Mrs. Quint once again explaining what had transpired, the reporter could hear a familiar voice and tune.
“O, ye who dwells upon the land…”
It was them-or one of them, at least. Carl couldn’t quite tell if there was one or more singing at that particular moment, but he found himself not caring. And just as before, he had made a grab for his tape recorder to get some proof of the singing this time, but as the voice continued to sing, he (once again) forgot about it, his hand suspended in midair.
He turned towards the lake, walking to the edge of the pier. He knelt down at the edge, just as he had before, and there she was. But he could see more than just a face this time; brown hair framed her face, and some sort of garment-a tunic of some kind-was draped around her. And emerging from the bottom of the fabric was a long, fish-like tail.
It never once crossed the reporter’s mind to take a picture with his camera. No; his thought process was more along the lines of “Where have you been all my life?” Despite the fact that this was most unlike him, Carl didn’t even care that he was clearly not in his right mind as he leaned in closer and closer; he was dangerously close to having gravity take over and pull him the rest of the way. But that didn’t cross his mind, either. This time, nothing would stop him from hearing that song again… from perhaps even talking to her… getting even closer… Yes, closer, still…
Well, almost nothing…
Carl’s arms were suddenly seized and pulled behind him.
“What the…?” he stammered, tearing his gaze away from the singer beneath the water as he felt the all-too-familiar feeling of handcuffs closing around his wrists.
“Kolchak, you can’t say that I didn’t warn you of what would happen if we crossed paths again during the course of my investigation,” he heard Rausch’s voice say as he was roughly pulled to his feet. “Spencer, take him away.”
“No, no, no!” Carl protested, as he was dragged away from pier. He looked back to the water, but, once again, she was gone, and the details of what she looked like and what she was singing were rapidly fading from his mind.
“Put him in the squad car and have Sonntag offer Mrs. Quint a ride to the station so that she can give her statement to me personally,” Rausch went on, ignoring Carl as he cursed under his breath. “And I want to question Kolchak personally, as well.”
“Do I get a phone call?” Carl asked, livid at being dragged away from the siren-mermaid and her song for the second time. I was so close-so close!
He paused. Now he realized he wasn’t thinking straight, but he had more pressing matters on his mind.
Rausch gave Carl a derisive look.
“Whether or not you are granted permission for a phone call is fully dependent on how cooperative you are when I question you.”
Carl narrowed his eyes, but said nothing as Spencer pulled him away. First the siren-mermaid disappeared again, and now this. Yesterday had not been his day, and it didn’t look like today was much better.
******************************
Tony Vincenzo now knew that something was up. Since parting ways the previous evening, Carl had made himself very scarce; he hadn’t even shown up that morning at the INS, and Tony knew that whenever Carl was immersed in one of his odder stories, he always used his desk as a sort of home base to think. His absence confirmed what Tony had suspected; Carl had something to hide, and he was deliberately avoiding Tony. Well, Tony was going to get to the bottom of it.
And he soon found an excuse to do some searching of his own. Miss Emily had finished up with her advice column early, and had asked him if there was anything else she could do for this week’s edition of the paper. Tony was about to tell her not to bother, but then decided to let her in on the Julius Caesar fiasco, and how he considerably doubted that Carl was going to get to it. Miss Emily smiled and said that she wouldn’t mind reviewing the play at all, and Tony informed her that he had lent Carl the play and offered to go through Carl’s desk to find it for her.
Searching through it, he paused as he noticed something tucked into a corner drawer-a business card for R. T. Wainwright, editor of the Chicago Chronicle.
“The Chronicle…?” Tony murmured aloud.
Of course, he knew all about the Chicago Chronicle. They were one of the city’s most popular papers, and the crew at the INS considered them a snooty rival (and Tony didn’t exactly think too much of Wainwright, either); it wasn’t uncommon to see part of a page of the Chronicle plastered over the dartboard in the office. So why did Carl have Wainwright’s business card?
He soon found another clue under Wainwright’s card-a slip of paper with an eyebrow-raising sum of money written on it, and the handwriting wasn’t Carl’s.
The editor looked from the card to the slip of paper repeatedly, thinking about how Carl was definitely hiding something from him, and he suddenly exhaled as he put two and two together.
“Mr. Vincenzo?”
Tony gave a start as Miss Emily looked at him questioningly.
“Oh, right,” he said, handing her the play.
“Is everything alright, Mr. Vincenzo?” she asked, accepting it. “You have the same out-there look that Carl had yesterday.”
“I do, huh?”
“Yes; I was leaving for my lunch break, and I saw him in the hall outside, just staring at the wall-only he wasn’t really looking at it, if you know what I mean. His mind was elsewhere. And you looked just the same a moment ago.”
Tony sighed.
“Guess we’ve both been working too hard,” he said, quietly.
“Well, if you’re sure that’s all it is, then I think I’ll head home and read up on this before I go see the play.”
“Yeah, you do that,” Tony said. “Ron’s got the day off, and Carl’s… Well, who knows where he is right now? At any rate, he’s got a key if he desperately needs to come back here, so I think I’ll lock up early and take the rest of the day off, too.”
“Good for you!” Miss Emily said, as she headed out the door. “You’ve earned it, bless you! Everyone knows you do the most work around here! …And we all appreciate it!”
“Really?” Tony asked, quietly, after she was out of earshot. He stared at the business card and the slip of paper. “Sometimes I wonder…”
After collecting the two clues, it certainly didn’t take a genius to figure out what Carl was trying to hide. Wainwright had obviously offered him a job at the Chronicle (one with a very tempting salary, if the paper was any indication), and Carl did not want Tony to know about it. Why? Why was he being so secretive about it? Why hadn’t Carl jumped at the chance to take it? Why was Carl still holding onto Wainwright’s card?
And why did Tony feel as though he had just been stabbed in the back?
Tony immediately chided himself for thinking that; he knew that if he ever had half a chance to jump the INS ship for something greater, he’d have done so in a heartbeat. And yet… he would’ve tried to take Carl with him. Hadn’t Tony gotten Carl a job in Seattle-one that had ended with Carl getting them both out of work? Hadn’t Tony managed to convince Abe Marmelstein to hire Carl, too, after managing to salvage the INS editorial position? Tony had done everything in his power to keep Carl employed, and if he had the chance to move up the ladder, he’d have done his very best to help Carl up, as well.
Well, it seemed that Carl now had an opportunity to move up the ladder on his own. And he didn’t seem to have any plans to take anyone with him. Then again, did Tony really expect him to? Carl never had seemed to appreciate all that he had done for him; when Tony had accused him of being ungrateful back in Seattle, it wasn’t unfounded. And Tony was feeling those very same sentiments again. Here he was, desperately trying to keep the both of them employed, and did Carl ever show him the slightest bit of gratitude for all of it? No, but, Tony realized that to keep them employed meant throwing out any and all of Carl’s stories on the supernatural-something that vexed the reporter deeply. Was Carl that desperate to get his supernatural stories printed that it was worth more than everything that Tony had gone through to keep him employed?
It hurt more than Tony cared to admit, and yet he knew he couldn’t hate Carl for it. But, still… Tony had to wonder… Would he have been this upset if he had found out that someone else, like Ron or Emily, had been offered the Chronicle job instead of Carl?
Of course not, he said to himself. I’d wish them good luck and let them go on their way without much more than a second thought. The fact that it’s Carl is what complicates things, but that shouldn’t even matter!
Yes, it shouldn’t matter. But that didn’t change the fact that it did-that it was personal when it shouldn’t even be personal.
The editor shook his head, trying to clear these thoughts from his mind. He knew that any sane person would take a better job opportunity if it came along, and Carl would be utterly stupid not to take this job at the Chronicle. If Tony could help his hardheaded employee by being a stepping stone, well… maybe he should just accept that. And maybe Carl hadn’t hidden this information to spite him after all, but to try to find a way to soften the eventual blow. Well, it was all but out in the open now; he would have to talk to Carl about it the next opportunity he had.
Tony decided to pocket the card and the slip of paper; they would probably come in handy when he spoke to Carl about it when he came back from… wherever it was. He had said last evening that he was going to the library in the morning, hadn’t he? Or had that been a ruse to find time to go and see Wainwright about the job?
Now I’m just paranoid about this.
Deciding not to dwell on it until he saw Carl again, he decided to lock the place up and take the day off as he had planned. Also, a trip to the bar and a subsequent glass of 2% milk (if not something stronger, like whole milk) was in order. It looked as though today was promising to be a very long day indeed.
And it wasn’t even noon yet.