Dead-Line

It was already 10:07.

"The day was November 15, 1963," he began the story. "A Friday, exactly one week before President Kennedy was assassinated ...

Entering the newsroom shortly before dawn, I found Jack Forrester slumped across the top of his 110 SCM electric typewriter.

At first, it looked as if he had passed out drunk again sometime in the night at his typewriter finishing his latest article for the tabloid. But stepping closer, I saw that there was something terribly wrong with him. For one thing, I couldn't see his bottle of bourbon among the junk on his cluttered desk. For another, Forrester didn't seem to be breathing.

With a sigh, I advanced to his side, stopped momentarily, then shook him by the shoulders.

"Forrester?" I said, my voice quavering.

After no response, I called into his right ear:

"Forrester! Wake up!"

But he remained stiff, unresponsive.

Finally, I reached under his right arm, lifted his heavy, uncooperative torso off the typewriter and, as best I could, lowered him against his swivel chair. His head rolled over the headrest revealing swollen jowls, white as chalk. His eyes, wide open, were lifeless.

I stiffened momentarily. Clearly, Forrester was dead.

I found his black telephone, put my finger into the "O", and circled completely around the dial. A chirpy operator answered and I told her that there was a dead man in the newsroom of True Weird News. On Reynolds Avenue. She promised to dispatch an ambulance right away.

Next, I was dialing the home number of our publisher, J. Michael Cassady III. Out of breath, I informed his groggy wife what the problem was. After a confused moan, she handed the receiver to an equally groggy Cassady. He grunted as I told him that I had found Forrester slumped over his typewriter in the newsroom. Dead.

He grumbled that he'd be right in.

After the call, it seemed an eternity for the ambulance to arrive. All the while, I stared at Forrester's lifeless body, repulsed by the sight of it, bent and unnaturally stiff over the back of his chair. I wondered what the hell could have happened.

Forrester was only a couple years older than me, in his mid-forties, though never the picture of health. His eyes had that persistently blood-shot glaze, and were swollen from long, sleepless, often drunken nights. Over the years, he had developed a nasty cough from smoking two packs of Lucky Strikes a day.

No wonder he had dropped dead at his typewriter, at the height of his writing career, with his Great American Novel, perpetually on the verge of completion, stacked in the neat unfinished pile he had shown me once in a drunken stupor, next to his manual typewriter on the rackety desk in the back of his shabby apartment.

The blare of a siren up Reynolds Avenue was welcome relief. As it reached an ear-splitting crescendo directly in front of the building, I hurried to the glass front door and opened it to a warm, quiet sunrise.

Two paramedics exited the ambulance and rushed forward. One was huge, with thick, fleshy jowls; the other, a scrawny, dark Cuban refugee with the beady eyes of a rodent.

As they entered the newsroom, I nodded to Forrester's body. They hurried over and gently lowered him to the floor.

The Cuban lifted Forrester's arm and listened for a pulse. After a moment, he surprised me by suddenly ripping open Forrester's shirt and pumping on his chest.

But after a minute of so of this, the Cuban looked up at his fat partner.