“No, no he didn’t,” said Gunnar. He smiled his pointed smile. “He just wrote some speeches for him during Ike’s campaign. Nixon will court the extreme right wing privately, but he can’t afford to be seen with them. If you know what I mean.”

Andy thought about this, sipped more vodka. The Linotype machine cycled through, fresh slugs cooling in the bin. Andy looked at the hard lines of type, wondered again how Gunnar could read so well backwards. Gunnar would catch mistakes the editors didn’t see. Things even Overholt missed. Collected a quarter each for them, which kept his secret bottle full. The amazing part was that when he was done with all the physical and mental effort of setting type, Gunnar ran the press, too.

Upstairs Beth pounded on her Royal. Sounded like a machine gun. Gunnar looked up, shook his head, and smiled.

Then his smile subsided and he locked his cool gray eyes on Andy. “You haven’t heard about Alma Vonn?”

Andy waited.

“Killed herself with gin and rat poison. Dead when the girls came home from school today.”

Andy thought of flying through the air and into Lenny Vonn six years ago. Of the blood running down Casey’s face, of the girls on the tracks by the packinghouse. He remembered how shabby the Vonn house had been and he remembered his father saying later that trouble had chased the Vonns to California and trouble would probably find them here again. He could still picture how tightly Alma Vonn’s hair was pulled back that night. He’d seen her since then, peddling his J. C. Higgins past their house on his paper route. The Vonns had never subscribed. And Alma Vonn had looked at him plenty of times but never once shown him any recognition.

“I’ve never written a suicide obit,” Andy said.

“Some papers admit the suicide, and some cover it up,” said Gunnar. “J.J. decides for us. If the person wasn’t noteworthy, J.J.’ll usually just leave out the suicide part.”