“Oh?” Brody was beginning to lose interest. “What’s that?”

“Man-eater. Other sharks kill people once in a while, for all sorts of reasons—hunger, maybe, or confusion or because they smell blood in the water. By the way, did the Watkins girl have her period last night?”

“How the hell would I know?”

“Just curious. Hooper said that’s one way to guarantee yourself an attack if there’s a shark around.”

“What did he say about the cold water?”

“That it’s quite common for a great white to come into water this cold. Some years ago, a boy was killed by one near San Francisco. The water temperature was fifty-seven.”

Brody sucked a long drag from his cigarette and said, “You’ve really done a lot of checking into this, Harry.”

“It seemed to me a matter of—shall we say—common sense and public interest to determine exactly what happened and the chances of it happening again.”

“And did you determine those chances?”

“I did. They’re almost nonexistent. From what I can gather, this was a real freak accident. According to Hooper, the only thing good about great whites is that they’re scarce. There’s every reason to believe that the shark that attacked the Watkins girl is long gone. There are no reefs around here. There’s no fish-processing plant or slaughterhouse that dumps blood or guts into the water. So there’s nothing at all to keep the shark interested.” Meadows paused and looked at Brody, who returned his gaze silently. “So it seems to me, Martin, that there’s no reason to get the public all upset over something that’s almost sure not to happen again.”

“That’s one way to look at it, Harry. Another is that since it’s not likely to happen again, there’s no harm in telling people that it did happen this once.”

Meadows sighed. “Journalistically, you may be right. But I think this is one of those times, Martin, when we have to forget the book and think of what’s best for the people. I don’t think it would be in the public interest to spread this around. I’m not thinking about the townspeople. They’ll know about it soon enough, the ones that don’t know already. But what about the people who read the Leader in New York or Philadelphia or Cleveland?”

“You flatter yourself.”

“Balls. You know what I mean. And you know what the real estate situation is like around here this summer. We’re right on the edge, and other places are, too, like Nantucket and the Vineyard and East Hampton. There are people who still haven’t made their summer plans. They know they’ve got their pick of places this year. There’s no shortage of houses for rent … anywhere. If I run a story saying that a young woman was bitten in two by a monster shark off Amity, there won’t be another house rented in this town. Sharks are like ax-murderers, Martin. People react to them with their guts. There’s something crazy and evil and uncontrollable about them. If we tell people there’s a killer shark around here, we can kiss the summer good-bye.”