'Why else is it so fortunate for you that you didn't burn the pictures?'
'Because it's the only hold I've got on you.'
'And what are you going to do with it?'
'Nothing.'
'Then—'
'It's what you're going to do, Mr. Huysendahl.'
'And what am I going to do?'
'You're not going to run for governor.'
He stared at me. I didn't really want to look at his eyes, but I forced myself.
He was no longer trying to keep his face a mask, and I was able to watch as he tried on one thought after another and found that none of them led anywhere.
'You've thought this out, Scudder.'
'Yes.'
'At length, I would suppose.'
'Yes.'
'And there's nothing you want, is there? Money, power, the things most people want. It wouldn't do any good for me to send another check to Boys Town.'
'No.'
He nodded. He worried the tip of his chin with a finger. He said, 'I don't know who killed Jablon.'
'I assumed as much.'
'I didn't order him killed.'
'The order originated with you. One way or the other, you're the man at the top.'
'Probably.'
I looked at him.
'I'd prefer to believe otherwise,' he said. 'When you told me the other day that you'd found the man who killed Jablon, I was enormously relieved. Not because I felt the killing could possibly be attributed to me, that any sort of trail would lead back to me. But because I honestly did not know whether I was in any way responsible for his death.'
'You didn't order it directly.'
'No, of course not. I didn't want the man killed.'
'But somebody in your organization—'
He sighed heavily. 'It would seem that someone decided to take matters into his own hands. I…
confided in several people that I was being blackmailed. It appeared that it might be possible to recover the evidence without acceding to Jablon's demands.
More important, it was necessary to devise some way in which Jablon's silence could be purchased on a permanent basis. The trouble with blackmail is that one never ceases to pay it. The cycle can go on forever, there's no control.'
'So somebody tried to scare Spinner once with a car.'
'So it would seem.'
'And when that didn't work, somebody hired somebody to hire somebody to kill him.'
'I suppose so. You can't prove it. What's perhaps more to the point, I can't prove it.'
'But you believed it all along, didn't you? Because you warned me that one payment was all I was going to get. And if I tried to tap you again, you'd have me killed.'
'Did I really say that?'
'I think you remember saying it, Mr. Huysendahl. I should have seen the significance in that at the time.
You were thinking of murder as a weapon in your arsenal. Because you'd already used it once.'
'I never intended for a moment that Jablon should die.'
I stood up. I said, 'I was reading something the other day about Thomas Becket. He was very close to one of the kings of England. One of the Henrys, I think Henry the Second.'
'I believe I see the parallel.'
'Do you know the story? When he became Archbishop of Canterbury he stopped being Henry's buddy and played the game according to his conscience. It rattled Henry, and he let some of his underlings know it. 'Oh, that someone might rid me of that rebellious priest!' '
'But he never intended that Thomas be murdered.'
'That was his story,' I agreed. 'His subordinates decided Henry had issued Thomas's death warrant.
Henry didn't see it that way at all, he'd just been thinking out loud, and he was very upset to learn that Thomas
