The men who bossed the city were running scared. Elections were coming up and the voters were rallying behind Richardson Caldwell, an idealistic reformer with the old-fashioned notion that criminals belonged in jails instead of public offices.But then a staggering development struck at the hopes of Caldwell's supporters. He was found drunk in his apartment, and beside him lay a murdered woman whose reputation had been notorious gossip for years.Caldwell was arrested and charged with murder. The cell door swung shut on his career and the hopes of the city for decent government.It was then that Sam Terrell, a newspaperman, began a determined inquiry into the life of the murdered girl, and into the forces to whom Caldwell's arrest had meant a reprieve from ruin. The search was dangerous; but Terrell stuck at it stubbornly, convinced that his newspaper owed more to the community than sports news and comics.To this explosive situation William P. McGivern adds an illuminating dimension by examining with sympathy and power the question of how much a man owes the community in which he lives. Mr. McGivern's compassionate talents have been seen in such novels as THE BIG HEAT, ROGUE COP, THE SEVEN FILE, etc. In NIGHT EXTRA, a story of passions and politics and people, he has reached a new superb level of suspense.
The
Sam Terrell didn’t look up from the typewriter when the phone rang; he finished the item for his column, then lifted the receiver.
The voice in his ear said, “I’ve got something for Terrell. Is he around?”
“This is Terrell.”
“Answer your own phone, eh? Keeping the common touch?”
“Who’s this?”
“It doesn’t matter, Sam. What matters is I got something for you on Caldwell, our lily-white reform candidate.” The tipster’s voice was husky, and his inflection was heavily ironic. Terrell’s interest picked up; with elections two weeks off, almost anything on Caldwell had a priority value.
The edition was only seconds away from deadline now; a bell rang warningly and rewritemen began shouting for copy boys. The atmosphere of noisy confusion was deceptive; beneath that the. work went on with routine skill and precision.
“Okay, let’s have it,” Terrell said, holding the receiver tightly against his ear.
Ollie Wheeler, whose desk was beside Terrell’s, chose that moment to say, “Sam, a bank wouldn’t lend this paper a nickel. It’s nothing but organized hysteria. Look, we’re on deadline and they’ve got a head-on collision with both cars travelling in the same direction. Neatest trick of the week, eh?”
Terrell covered his phone and stared at the old man. “For God’s sake, shut up!” he said. Terrell was tall and nervous, and when he was working he usually looked mad; now his cheeks were flushed and his eyes were sharp with irritation. “Can’t you knock it off for a second?”
Ollie said, “Judah Priest, temperament yet,” and turned angrily back to his newspaper.
Terrell said into the phone, “I’m sorry, but this connection is bad. Could I call you back?”
“I’m at a drugstore, so calling back wouldn’t tell you much. Be content with the tip, Sam. Don’t worry about me. Now: you know Eden Myles?”
Terrell did, slightly; she was a singer, the friend of a minor hoodlum named Frankie Chance. “I know the lady,” he said.
“Lady?” The tipster made a clicking noise with his tongue. “Okay, have it your way. Well, she’s been huddling with Richard Caldwell for the last month or so. Five or six times, all on the quiet. But somebody saw her easing into his hotel suite. Somebody always does. You run this down and you got a story.”
Terrell reached for his cigarettes, feeling a pleasurable excitement growing in him. “Anybody else know about this?”
“Just you and me, sweetheart.”
“I’d like to buy you a drink,” Terrell said. “Thank you formally.”
“Never mind. I’m off the sauce anyway. Good luck, Sam.”
“Wait a minute,” Terrell said, but the phone was dead. He jiggled the hook automatically, then put the receiver down. Rich Caldwell and Eden Myles — it was an incongruous combination. Caldwell was the high-minded idealist, called to politics by duty and conscience. And Eden Myles was a smalltime tramp. Singer, hostess, model, all of it small time. Even Frankie Chance was small time.
“Ollie,” Terrell said. “Ollie, what do you think of Rich Caldwell?”
“You have a moment for the peasants, eh?” Wheeler was hurt, Terrell saw; the old man was staring straight ahead, giving him the benefit of a hard, severe profile. Terrell wondered how to coax him into good humor. Wheeler was a souvenir of the paper’s more vigorous days, a cynical old man who drank too much and was in debt to half the men in the building. Mike Karsh, the
“I’m sorry I popped off,” Terrell said. “But my connection was bad.”
“The column’s the important thing,” Ollie said. “Don’t let such trifles as courtesy or good manners ever come first. Remember that. You’re young but in time you’ll be like everyone else on this rag — one of Mike Karsh’s journalistic thugs, literary bully boys, ready for—”
“Say, that’s good,” Terrell said, with a perfectly straight face. “Literary bully boys!” He repeated the phrase in a soft, respectful voice. “Using typewriters instead of machine guns, you could say. How do you toss off gems like that, Ollie?”
“Go to hell, you sarcastic sonofabitch.” Ollie grinned at him, a frail old man with gray hair and sharp aristocratic features. “What was the call that got you excited?”
