Chapter 29

ROGER MCKINLEY, THE MAGAZINE’S EDITOR, CALLED ME INTO HIS office the following morning. Now, Roger and I didn’t normally have much contact besides the usual handing-off of layouts to proof, or the occasional phone call where he needed me as backup on some fine point of grammar or syntax because a freelancer was giving us grief over something we’d changed in an article. I liked Roger well enough, but my job just didn’t require a lot of one-on-one contact with him.

As usual, he looked vaguely rumpled and a little unfocused. Roger was a native of Southern California, just as I was, but he had always looked sort of English to me, too pasty for Los Angeles. Someone could have cast him as Tim Roth’s younger brother with no problem.