Dear Old Dead(91)

“Interview,” Hector Sheed said slowly.

Gregor shot him a look. “Leave it alone,” he said. “It’s getting us what we want.”

“What is it we do want?” Hector asked.

There was a rattle at the door of the office. Dave Geraldino stopped his pacing long enough to open up. Gregor and Hector stared at the woman coming inside. That she was very young was attested to by the condition of her skin. It was so soft and unlined, it looked newborn. That young did not mean naive or innocent was attested to by the look in her eyes. Gregor’s first impression was that here was a woman who could have reported on the bombing of Hiroshima firsthand and not even blinked.

Dave Geraldino waved the young woman inside. “Lisa,” he said enthusiastically, “Lisa, come right in. This is Mr. Demarkian and Mr. Sheed. This is Lisa Hasserdorf, our Lifestyles page editor.”

“Not for long.” Lisa Hasserdorf sat down on the edge of Dave Geraldino’s desk. She had long black hair to her waist and big black eyes. The lipstick she was wearing was bloodred.

“So,” she said, after she had looked them both over. “You want to know how our contests are run.”

“Gregor?” Hector asked.

Gregor was smiling pleasantly. “That’s right. Specifically, I want to know how your Father’s Day contest is being run and about any other contests that have been run the same way.”

“Any others? But Mr. Demarkian, there have been hundreds. Going back years. From well before my time.”

“You’re in charge of the contests?”

“Not in charge, no. Victor van Straadt is in charge, at the moment. But he’s in charge under me, if you see what I mean.”

“Not exactly,” Gregor said. “What do you do? Do you check on his work? Do you oversee the money—There is money involved, isn’t there? A hundred thousand dollars?”

“That’s right. And no, I don’t do any of those things. I just make sure Victor has what he’s supposed to have when he’s supposed to have it. Right now, I’m constantly making sure that he has his copy written, and that he’s keeping the entries that come in in the glass jar in the storeroom and that he’s logged them in before he puts them in there. He had a computer program to log them in on. The Father’s Day contest is a lottery kind of thing, you see, where people have to send in the right numbers. Sometimes we run straightforward drawings. Those are easier.”

Gregor considered this. “Let’s back up a little. You say this Father’s Day contest is a lottery kind of thing. Do you mean that people send in their numbers and then you pick balls out of a bowl with numbers on them?”

“No,” Lisa Hasserdorf said, “although we’ve done it that way once or twice. What we’ve found, though, is that people like to do puzzles. They like to feel that they’ve really figured something out. And if they win, you know, it gives them a kick to tell their friends that they’re one of the smartest people in New York. Although these days, you wouldn’t think that would take much. Anyway, what we’ve got going this time is a quiz about the most famous fathers in history, and what you’re supposed to do is guess the year they were born. We don’t give the exact names, you understand. We don’t say William Tell, for instance. We say, ‘This father was forced by an evil government official to shoot an apple off his son’s head with an arrow.’ Then you’re supposed to figure out who that is, write the name down and write the year he was born. There are ten of those.”

“So you have to know both things,” Gregor said.

“That’s right.”

“What happens next?”

“Well, next, Victor looks into his computer at the end of the time period, you know, after all the entries have to be in, and he finds out how many people got the right answers and who they are—”

“Are there always more than one?”

“Usually, yes. Anyway, he double-checks those entries and then he gives the winners a call, and they come down here for a drawing. We put all their names in a drum and pull out one and that one gets the hundred thousand. We usually have five or six people in at the end.”

“What if they can’t come down here? Do they forfeit their right to be in the drawing?”

“Oh, no.” Lisa Hasserdorf looked very disapproving. “We couldn’t do that. Many of the people who enter these contests are homebound or disabled. We often have people who can’t come down here. We put their names in the drum anyway. Then, if they win, we send a photographer out to their house and get their picture for the paper. That is, if they’ll let us photograph them, of course. It’s illegal in New York State to insist on cooperation with publicity as a condition for winning a contest like this one.”