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“Three.”

“Whoo-ee! Fifteen bucks. Unless you want to make it the best five of seven.”

“No, thanks. You’d clean me out.”

Howie reached for the three five-dollar bills his opponent extended toward him. He stuffed the money into his pocket and would have made another cocky comment about his extraordinary win, when something in the other man’s eyes warned him that gloating might not be a good idea.

“The least you can do is buy me a drink.” The loser of the tournament was smiling, but thinly.

“A drink? Sure, sure,” Howie said. “What’ll you have?”

He asked for vodka on the rocks. Howie went to the bar and placed the order. He carried the vodka and a beer for himself back to the table where the man had chosen to sit.

“I can’t stay out too late,” Howie said as he rejoined him. Actually he was ready to leave now. The guy had ordered the vodka by brand. A round or two of drinks with him could liquidate Howie’s winnings. “I gotta be at work early.”

The man took a sip of his drink. “What line of work are you in?”

“Broadcast journalism,” Howie boasted, shaking salt into his beer. “WVUE.”

“You’re on TV?”

“Nah, I don’t do that on-air shit. That’s a job for idiots, talking heads. No, I assign news stories to the reporters.”

“So, you’re more or less responsible for what gets on the air?”

“I’m entirely responsible for what gets on the air.” Basking in the man’s interest, Howie elaborated and embroidered. “It’s up to me which reporter covers which story, which stories get canned, and which get airtime and how much airtime they get. On any given day, I gotta make a million decisions.”

“That’s a very responsible position.”

“I thrive on pressure,” he said expansively.

The man seated across from Howie was the man Howie Fripp wanted to see in his own shaving mirror. Sometimes he even deluded himself into believing that he made the kind of impact on other people that this man had made on him. His new friend was a smooth talker. No matter what the situation, he would keep his cool. He hadn’t even lost his temper when he was soundly defeated in three straight games of pool. He was the kind of guy who inspired uncontrollable lust in women and fearful respect in men.

“You must be on top of everything going on,” the man remarked. “You get the news before anybody.”

“That’s right.”

“So, what’s cooking?”

Howie searched his mind for something that would impress this impressive individual. “Hmm, well, let’s see. I had a reporter at the scene of that triple shooting the other night, minutes after it happened. Got video of the bodies before they were covered up.”

The man gave a half-smile and glanced down at his wristwatch.

“And, uh, let’s see…”

“Well, I enjoyed our game. I’d better be going.”

“But the biggest thing we’ve done lately was that series on SIDS. You know, crib death,” Howie said, hoping to regain the man’s attention.

“Yeah?”

Bingo! “It was my idea to do it. Sort of a follow-up to the President’s kid, you know.”

“Tragic thing.”

“We got an interview with the First Lady.”

“That was a real coup. She doesn’t grant that many interviews, does she?”