Eugene Gordon, "Cold-Blooded" (1928)
CHARLEY BREAM, city editor of the Boston Morning Bulletin, thrust Mahoney's story back at him. "For God's sake," he cried fretfully, "put a little warm blood into it, won't you?" He scowled at the middle-aged, fish-eyed, gum-chewing reporter in the shiny blue serge. Mahoney shoved his yellowed straw hat farther toward the rear of his half-bald head, but he neither spoke nor blinked. "I'd give it to Jim there to rewrite," Bream complained, "if I didn't know you so well. But I know you can do it every damn bit as well as Jim." Mahoney, standing beside the city editor's desk in the corner, glanced with apparent interest at the solemn rewrite man designated as Jim. Then he returned to a perusal of his story. He glanced at his chief. "Oh, I see," he said at length. "You want sob stuff in an ordinary thug story." Voice and shrug combined in conveying contempt. He sauntered toward his desk against the left-hand wall midway the long room.
Mr. Bream's face and hairless head reddened. He whacked the desk with his fist. "Never mind the flippancy, Mahoney! I'm the city editor, and you'll write as I want you to ... or you'll get through." Mahoney plucked his yellowed straw from the back of his head and tossed it behind his typewriter ; then, having draped his shiny blue coat over the back of his chair, he seated himself. He read through the story rapidly, muttering something under his breath. Glancing sidewise toward the street-end of the room where the editors sat, he shrugged, then inserted in the typewriter a blank sheet of paper.
He leaned back and chewed with unconscious vigor. On the wall behind his typewriter was pasted a photograph clipped from a newspaper: a woman in filmy white propped up in bed and holding on each breast a very young infant. The caption above the picture read: "Wife of Bulletin Reporter Mother of Husky Twins," and underneath: "Mrs. Joseph Mahoney, wife of Joe Mahoney, of the Bulletin reportorial staff, with the two youngest Mahoneys, born at Roxbury Lying-in Hospital yesterday." The picture was more yellowed than Mahoney's old hat.
The reporter contemplated the pictured group for several minutes, his jaws working rhythmically. Then he contemplated the blank sheet in the typewriter, his forehead unwrinkled, his eyes more fish-like than ever. Finally he began to write, striking with full-armed force.
At the end of the room overlooking the street the re-write man was typing interminabl the assistant city editor, the high back of whose desk abutted the city editor's, was glancing through the afternoon papers; the city editor in his corner was writing with a pen; and the office boy, a copy of "Sherlock Holmes" pressed close under his arm, was sorting some mail and placing it in the reporters' boxes. These occupied wall space just at Mr. Bream's left.
Under the augmented bedlam of Mahoney's old machine, Tom Molloy, assistant city editor, rose and leaned forward ac'ross his desk. "Whassa matter with 'im, Boss?" he whispered, jerking a stubby thumb toward the reporter. "Not falling down on the job, is he?" Mr. Bream glared at his assistant. "Who do you mean?" he asked bluntly.
"Frog Mahoney. I noticed you sent 'im back to rewrite his story. Usually he's pretty good, you know. I was just wondering." The city editor was writing again. "Oh, Mahoney," he said, and paused. He narrowed his smallish gray eyes at his assistant, an eager-toplease, conscientious little "Yes-Boss" man with a beautifully polished skull. "The story's all right," declared the boss. "All right as a story, that is. Contains all the facts, is accurate, has good English, 'n' everything; but it's too damn dead. Dead!" His voice mounted, and his round, puffy face and hairless head crimsoned under the slight exertion. The assistant city editor nodded understandingly. The rewrite man, facetiously called "Jim the Sphinx" because of his silent solemnity, stopped pounding and listened deferentially, and the office boy halted his leisurely movements and stood at attention.
"You mean he didn't put in any human interest?" Molloy queried mildly.
"Sure. That's what I mean. Anybody almost can get stark facts, but anybody can't put flesh and blood and breath into a story, and make the people live. Get what I mean?" He laid down his fountain pen and leaned his shirted, overstuffed body forward. "Now, here's this burglary out here in the Back Bay, see.
The mother's alone in the house with her baby, and the baby's crying in another room. In come the burglars where the baby's crying, see ; and when the mother wants to get to the child, the thugs drive her back. See the possibilities?" "Yep. Sure, Boss!" The assistant city editor was enthusiastic.
"Sure, I can see that, all right," intoned Jim the Sphinx.
The office boy grinned. Mr. Bream continued: "Well, the district man out there is right on the job, see, and he covers it perfectly.
"Jacobs would, of course, he's a damn good newspaper man. But I send Mahoney here out there to get a slant on the human interest angle, see,-the horror-stricken mother separated from her child by these thugs, and all that sort of thing." The city editor paused and stared out the window. "And he brings back a tabulation of cold facts that have as much life in 'em as I've got sex appeal." If his peroration was intended to provoke mirth it failed of its purpose. The city editor seldom made so long a speech; his opinions were usually posted on the bulletin board; but when he did speak, it was with the tacit understanding that those close at hand were to sit or stand at attention until he had finished, then react to the speech as they suspected he desired. They listened now rather solemnly and ill at ease, for Mahoney stood beside the desk with the revised story. And they knew that he had heard much of what the Boss had said. If there was anything less funny than the idea of the over-stuffed, bloated-faced, suspendered, hairless city editor's having sex appeal, it was to have the cold, uncanny "Frog" listening in on a speech he wasn't supposed to hear.
The city editor noted the silence, and turned, to scowl at Mahoney. The assistant city editor was suddenly busy at countless details; directing the movements of photographers, answering his desk 'phone, marking clippings from rival sheets. Jim the Sphinx worked like an automaton. The office boy was everywhere at once, "Sherlock Holmes" pressed open under his arm.
Having read the story through, the city editor tossed it into the wire basket on his desk. The reporter chewed absentl stared absently before him; ambled absently back toward his typewriter. He seemed unaffected by what he had heard. He removed the gum from his mouth and stuck it underneath his typewriter desk.
From a pocket of the shiny blue coat draped on the back of his chair he removed a pipe and scraped out its odoriferous bowl with a penknife.
Then he stuffed it with fresh tobacco from the watch-pocket of his trousers, lighted it, sat down and placed his feet on his desk, and leaned back once more to contemplate his family. As he gazed, his eyes were human eyes, no longer those of dead fish. He was like a man who sees pleasant things in his sleep.
The fire signal sounded above the head of the rewrite man. It continued to sound at brief intervals for many moments. No one seemingly heeded it. Mahoney, his face now cast in a beatific smile, regarded the wife and twins through the bluish haze from his pipe. The office boy occasionally answered the telephone and shouted a message, the assistant city editor conferred with the chief of the photograph department, the solemn rewrite man hammered flesh and blood upon the skeleton of some district man's telephoned story, and the city editor opened the glass door of the bulletin board and hung up a newly written memorandum. Reporters, drifting in and lounging aimlessly, sauntered over to the bulletin board.
In the street three stories below fire sirens were screeching. The telephones in the four booths, toward the center wall at the right of the room, jangled almost incessantly. Reporters had to go to the assistance of the office boy. Fire engines in the street roared above creaking brakes and squawks of frightened automobiles.
Reporters and photographers were being dispatched to cover the fire.
Mahoney removed his feet from his desk, stood up, locked his typewriter in, and went over to read the newest memorandum : Reporters on this paper are expected to use their brains in writing stories, but not to the exclusion of their hearts. Get the facts, but also get some of the little human details that change stark facts into Jiving things. Use your imagination as well as your eyes.
"Lotta bunk," Mahoney muttered, and turned when the office boy, pushing open the telephone booth, yelled to the city editor: "Mr. Bream, it's Gallagher. He says it's important." Gallagher was the Charlestown district man.
Mahoney leaned against the glass-encased bulletin board and stared at the man in the booth.
Engines roared by below. The rewrite man was looking out the window. The assistant city editor pushed back his chair and looked into the street. Reporters from the other end of the room sauntered forward and tried to peer over the shoulders of those ahead; tried to see down into the street. A heavy, slowly-moving mass of black smoke had smeared itself above the roofs of the tall buildings.
Mr. Bream emerged from the telephone booth, head and face flushed.
"Some fire," he soliloquized, resuming his seat.
"General alarm." Tom Molloy sat down and waved the reporters back to their places. "Get t'hell away from over my desk, you fellers ! " Mahoney reclined against the bulletin board, his pipe cold, his deadened eyes on the sourfaced rewrite man at the typewriter. He removed his pipe and hammered the contents of its bowl into his palm, shook his palm over the metal waste container, and returned to his place.
He dropped the pipe into a pocket of the old coat on the chair, fumbled beneath the desk a moment with his fingers, transferred his gum to his mouth, and began to chew. He tilted back his chair, crossed his ankles on the desk top, and smiled at the wife and twins.
"Must be pretty good-sized by now, Frog." Mahoney looked up at Jacobs, the district man from the Back Bay.
"You mean the kids? Yeh. Two years old day after tomorrow. Great trio. Great kids... You married, Jake?"
"Sure. Got a kid two years old myself."
"Great institution, family, Jake."
"Greatest in the world, Frog." Typewriters were thumping over all the room now. Fire engines still roared at intervals. From where he sat Mahoney could see the sleazy, shapeless form of smoke, like a blot of ink, on the sky. Jacobs dropped upon the chair beside him, observing:
"Most be some fire over in Charlestown. Rather glad I don't live over there." Mahoney stopped chewing and squinted at Jacobs. "That's funny. Charlie Bream hasn't-"
"Mahoney!" He stood up. It was the Boss' voice. Mahoney trudged slowly toward Charley Bream's desk. Red and harassed of face, the city editor glared up at him.
"Good Lord, Mahoney, do you think you're going to a funeral?" The reporter stared, saying nothing.
"I'd like to see you really concerned about something once in your life. Here, hustle over to Charlestown. Right away. Better take a taxi. Help cover that fire. And get some life into it I I started not to send you, but- Imagine you got a personal interest, see? That's all. Get!"
When Mahoney had "got," the city editor raised his troubled features to his assistant across the desk and made a gesture indicating extreme fatigue. "Whoever nicknamed that bird 'Frog'," he groaned, "certainly knew his onions." He dashed the point of a blue pencil viciously through a new reporter's copy.
The dour-faced rewrite man let up on his clatter and said portentiously: "Well, I bet he gets some life into his story this time, all right."
"Why?" asked the assistant city editor.
"Because he lives right in that section." Mr. Bream was interested.
"That so? I didn't know that. I thought Mahoney lived in East Cambridge."
"Not in East Cambridge, Boss," contradicted the assistant city editor, apologetically, "and not in the section where the fire is, either." He turned to the rewrite man. "You're wrong, Jim.
Frog was to move to Charlestown, but he ain't done it yet." The thudding of typewriters mingled with the roar and blare of traffic below, and the frequent blasts of auto horns, the nerve-cutting scrape of faulty auto brakes, the rumble of an occasional wagon, the yelling of newsboys, the murmur of voices at the other end of the room, the ringing of telephones, the scratch of pens on paper,-all this combined to change the city room into a crazy bedlam.
"Here, Johnnie, run down and get a coupla extras. Quick!" The assistant city editor tossed the office boy a nickel. When the papers were brought, one of them was handed to the city editor; the assistant spread out one on his own desk.
"Great Scott," he said, "seven dead!" "Any names given?" asked the rewrite man.
"All unidentified, so far. Here's the names of some injured." He ran through the list, reading them aloud.
"Nobody any of us knows, is there?" "No." . . . The photographers came in, talking loudly and excitedly. The assistant city editor consigned them "to hell outa here with that damn racket." Mahoney came in, fishy eyes more fishy, his shoulders slumped, his yellowed straw hat barely retaining contact with the back of his head. As usual, he said no word to anybody.
He removed his glistening coat, and draped it over the back of the chair, tossed his yellowed hat to its place behind the typewriter; then, sitting down, he unlocked his desk. He inserted a clean sheet of paper in the typewriter, and sat staring before him. He turned presently and looked around.
"Say, George," he called to the man at a desk behind him, "got any mucilage?" "Sure, Frog." George passed it over.
Mahoney picked up a clean sheet of paper, dabbed mucilage on each of its four corners, and, leaning forward, stuck it over the newspaper clipping of his family.
Now he began to write, and he continued steadily for an hour. His story completed, he took it to the city editor.
"This is good," the Boss said, skimming through it hastily. "This is good, Mahoney! Thrilling in its very starkness! You omit no detail ; paint a perfect, living picture; yet there isn't a bit of gush or sob-stuff in it." He tossed the copy into the wire basket and, leaning back, studied the reporter. "Now, that's the kind of writing I've been after you to do." He smiled benignly, as if to cause forgetfulness of all past harsh words. But Mahoney was not looking at him; his mind seemed remotely distant, his eyes were almost opaque in their gray dulness, and his jaws moved incessantly upon the chewing gum. The assistant city editor, the rewrite man, and the few reporters who chanced to be near, all smiled in sympathy. "Frog" was a queer bird.
Nothing could even touch him, let alone move him. Here he was receiving all this acclaim and acting as if he didn't so much as hear.
"That all, Boss?" "All? Whaddyer mean, 'all'? Whaddyer want now, a leave of absence?" "Yes." The city editor whacked the desk with his fist; his harassed face and hairless head reddened. "Whaddyer trying to hand me, Mahoney, a good time? I can't say a pleasant word to you fellows but what you want to take advantage of it. What-"
"Then I guess you didn't read my story, after all," mumbled Mahoney, turning away. A moment later they saw him staggering out.
The city editor grunted.
The assistant city editor laughed contemptuously. "Run into summa that white mule hootch over there in Charlestown, that's what he done. That's why he wrote that story so well, Boss." Jim the Sphinx suspended typing. "But Frog never drinks that stuff," he assured them, gloomily.
"Well, what makes him act so?" "He said the Boss didn't read his story." The rewrite man was mildly belligerent.
The city editor reached over, picked up the copy, and began to read slowly. Suddenly his big hands fell heavily to the desk, and his puffy face and hairless head went white. The assistant city editor and the rewrite man stared.
"It says here, 'The known dead are Mrs. Margaret Mahoney and her two children, twins, Joseph and James, aged one year, eleven months .. .'" The city editor was rumbling heavily down three flights of stairs, crying, "Mahoney! Mahoney! I didn't know! ... For God's sake .. .''
Published in Saturday Evening Quill, 1928