fifty-three,” he said without really glancing at his notes. “Medium-sized player on the VSE before the merger with the Alberta Exchange created Canadian Venture. Prime mover of the Northern Frontier Oil and Gas scam in the early 1980s —”
“Scam?” interrupted Jinnah. “Nothing was ever proven.”
Grant looked at Jinnah with a pained, pitying expression.
“And O.J. Simpson is innocent.”
“A lot of oil and gas exploration companies went under in the early Eighties,” insisted Jinnah. “Not all of them were scams.”
“Well, Schuster’s was,” said Grant.
“He was never convicted of anything.”
“And you,” said Grant pleasantly. “Have never won a major journalism award of any kind, but that doesn’t mean you’re not a good reporter, Hakeem.”
The veneer, which had been flaking slowly away, now fairly flew off Jinnah’s hide in large, messy chunks.
“Listen, you pompous son of a bitch,” he said, pointing a finger at Grant. “Any business reporter can get an award by rewriting a few corporate press releases. Crime reporting is different!”
“There’s no need to get personal,” said Grant.
“Gentlemen,” said Blacklock. “I know it’s difficult for you both to check your egos at the door but do you think we might focus on the story rather than your resumes?”
Jinnah and Grant were stopped in their rhetorical tracks. Jinnah was sweating and he desperately wanted a cigarette. It had been a mistake to rise to Grant’s bating, but he couldn’t help it. The smarmy bastard got under his skin. He needed to regroup and launch an all-out sales pitch for his hero story. He sat silently and waited for an opening.
“Thank you,” said Blacklock, seeing order had been restored. “Now, Mister Schuster’s checkered career has been admirably chronicled by Mister Grant, so I feel that portion of things is under control. The effect of his untimely death, I understand, has led to a stop-trading order for shares in his company on the exchange. Right, Mister Grant?”
Grant nodded, a thin smile playing on his thick lips.
“Excellent. That brings us to his death. What do we know about that? Jinnah?”
Jinnah glared at Grant, who mouthed the word “suicide.”
“Murder,” said Jinnah spitefully. “A bizarre murder, but murder nonetheless.”
“Might it have been suicide?”
Jinnah and Grant were both startled by this sudden pronouncement. It took Jinnah a moment to realize that Church had offered this opinion.
“Suicide?” said Jinnah, incredulous. “That’s ridiculous.”
“Why?” asked Church innocently.
“No one commits suicide by blowing themselves up while standing beside a flaming car, that’s why. A Cadillac isn’t a Pinto, for God’s sake! It needs some assistance to burst into flames. And there were plenty of people who had motive and opportunity to kill Schuster.”
“How do you know that?” challenged Grant.
Jinnah smiled.
“Am I wrong?”
“No, but how —”
“Common sense, my friend. The exchange is littered with the corpses of promoters, stock brokers and swindlers —”
“You just said Schuster was never convicted of anything.”
Blacklock was now drumming his fingers on the desktop — a sure sign that he was tired of the blood sport and anxious to get on with making up the paper.
“Let’s get down to logistics, then,” said Blacklock. “We have some words. More importantly, what sort of art do we have of Schuster?”
“More important!” cried Jinnah. “The story’s the important thing, for God’s sake!”
Blacklock dragged out his combined contemptuous-bored expression and leveled it at Jinnah.
“You may well think that, Jinnah, but let me assure you that no one wishes to read a page of solid type, even one composed of your deathless prose.”
Here, Junior Church was on solid ground. He chipped in to help the Boss.
“Graphics and photos are key,” he chirped. “And nibbly boxes. Readers love ‘em!”
Jinnah and Grant exchanged a pained glance. They disagreed fundamentally about most things, but this was one issue where they were as one. Art could go hang — it took away space from the words. Blacklock had turned around and was fiddling with his terminal, trying for the umpteenth time to access the photo-browser and failing. Junior Church, seeing his difficulty, sprang at once to Blacklock’s assistance.
“If I may, sir?” he said differentially.
“If you must, impatient youth,” said Blacklock, grinning at Grant and Jinnah as if to say: “I could do this if I chose.” Jinnah noted, not for the first time, his editor’s discomfort with new technology. Church’s fingers whirled on the keys and around the mouse, bringing up Schuster’s file. A series of thumbnails came up on the colour screen — most of them standard, corporate mug shots. One stood out: a small image of several people around what appeared to be a hay wagon. Blacklock pointed to it with a pen.
“Enlarge this one, if you would, Mister Church.”
Church obediently moved the mouse, sending the arrow-cursor fluttering about the screen like a sparrow. For a second, the screen went blank. Then, the image reappeared, now filling up the entire screen. Jinnah leaned close. There were seven people dressed in weird, 1960s garb standing in front of or sitting atop a hay wagon with an oil derrick in the background. But this was no haphazard snapshot. It had been composed by a Tribune staff photographer and Jinnah’s trained eye saw the three men standing in the centre of the frame were the key participants around which the image was structured. The man in the middle he recognized as a much-younger Schuster, wearing a tie-dye T-shirt, long hair, and a headband. Medium-height, medium weight. Everything about this man, save his career, seemed average. He had a huge grin on his thin face. On his left was a large, heavy-set man dressed uncomfortably in a black wig, flower-power shirt and Jesus Boots. He had his eyes closed, but Jinnah could tell by his body language he was extremely uncomfortable. To Schuster’s right was a big, tall man sporting a Van Dyke beard, granny glasses, army helmet, and a Mao jacket, smiling broadly. This man seemed almost as happy as Schuster and Jinnah immediately identified him as a ham, eating up the camera.
“Great snap,” he said. “Who the hell are these clowns? The Peace Corps?”
“Actually, Jinnah, this is Schuster and his business partners at the launch of Northern Frontiers Oil and Gas, circa 1982,” said Grant.
“So why the Hippie outfits, for God’s sake?”
“Because the project was in the Peace River country of Northeast
