Dick's father had been alive then and living with them, and Gunn used to drop in there. Hadn't done old Rob Morgan any good either, losing his only grandchild like that. After a while they'd put their names down with a couple of adoption agencies, but those places were so damn finicky; they'd waited almost five years before they got Janny-but Janny was worth it. And just about then had come one of those squeeze-plays, a company merger, a few new hatchet men from the front office, and Dick was out-at thirty-seven, with nowhere to go, a mortgaged house, and less than a thousand in the bank.
Gunn wouldn't have blamed him for feeling bitter. At the same time, being Gunn, he wouldn't have had Dick Morgan on his staff-old Rob, sympathy, or no-If he hadn't known Dick could handle the job the right way. It wasn't a job that paid anything like what Dick had been earning before, but it was a job and Dick had seemed grateful and certainly competent and reasonably contented with it.
To anyone who didn't know him, Dick's manner just now might suggest a touch of indigestion, or a spat with his wife at breakfast, or an unlucky bet on the ponies. But Gunn knew Morgan for a man of abnormally equable temper, and that little nervousness and bad color meant a lot more than it would with another man. Besides, Dick and Sue never had spats; Sue wasn't that sort. And Dick didn't better drink, either. Not since eight years ago. Gunn hoped the boy wasn't in for another piece of rough luck somehow. Janny, maybe-some unless? Some people walked all their lives with bad luck at their shoulders.
No good worrying about it now.
His phone rang and he stepped back into his office to answer it. The voice at the other end was the heavy bass of Captain Bill Andrews.
'Say, Ken, among your little brood of wives you wouldn't have one Sylvia Dalton, would you?'
'Don't think so. Why?' Gunn riffled through the current file before him.
'Well, it was just a thought. Maybe you noticed by the papers that New York sort of misplaced Ray Dalton the other day. He was up on a three-to-five and got himself paroled, but he never did report in to his officer. New York thinks now-the usual information received-he lit out west, specifically to these parts, and'll be obliged if we can return the goods undamaged. Thing is, the party that said he headed west also said it was to see his wife. I came up with the bright thought that wives of crooks don't usually like to work very regular, and maybe this one was accepting our hospitality.'
'Not unless she's doing it under another name. It's a thought, all right.'
'Yeah. You might just check for initials. I can give you a make on her.'
'I've got nothing else to do but your work,' said Gunn. 'I don't know every one of our customers personally, you know. Sure somebody sees 'em all, but I've got eleven men on duty. Yes, sure, I'll check with them. Send over the make. Don't I remember Dalton? It rings a bell'
'It ought to. The Carney job, five-six years back. Cameron and Healey were on it-liquor store knocked over and two men shot, proprietor and a clerk. We couldn't tie Dalton to it tight enough, but he was in on it. I guess at that we made him nervous enough to run back east, and New York put the arm on him for another job.'
'I remember,' said Gunn. He leaned back in his chair and regarded the ceiling. For a minute, with the familiar shoptalk, he almost had the vision he was back at headquarters in a real job, not this make-weight piddling business, and under Kelleher too… but, damn, a job worth doing. 'It's worth a try,' he said. Any kids?'
'One, a boy about twelve-thirteen.'
'O.K.,' said Gunn. 'I'll have a look, might come up with something.'
Morgan drove slowly down Main Street, not cursing at the traffic; he handled the car automatically, stopping for pedestrians, for red lights. Mrs. Williams lived on a run-down street among those that twisted and came to dreary dead ends the other side of Main. He would surprise Mr. and Mrs. Williams together and deliver a little lecture on the dangers of conspiracy to defraud. Maybe it wasn't so stupid of them to pull the shabby little trick, the commonest one in the list, with scarcely any attempt at secrecy; until the formation of this new department, God knew how many people had got away with it for years.
The problem created, Morgan thought as he had before, went beyond the Williamses or any individual-or the amount of public money. In essence, a social problem, and not a new one. If it wasn't money from this county office, it'd be money from another: people like the Williamses didn't give a damn. Williams, letting himself be branded a wife- and child-deserter, getting a job and a cheap room somewhere out of town, sneaking back for week-ends with his family, all to cheat sixty-three-fifty a month out of the county top of the three hundred or more he could earn as a skilled workman.
At a bar last night with his wife until midnight. Last thing they'd worry about was leaving the kids alone: four kids, the oldest eleven. It was a shabby, cheap neighborhood, almost a slum, though there were worse streets. People like the Williamses didn't care where or how they lived: often they had more money than others who lived better, but their money went on ephemeral thing n flashy cars and clothes and liquor.
Morgan was driving a six-year-old Ford. He wouldn't be surprised to find that Williams' car was a new model, and something more expensive. But all that was on the surface of his mind; he couldn't, for once, be less concerned. Deeper inside a voice was screaming at him soundlessly, What the hell are you going to do? Ten thousand bucks. Ten thousand.
All right, so he knew what he ought to do: Richard Alden Morgan, law-abiding citizen, who'd always accepted responsibilities and stood on his own two feet, and where had it got him? So it was just the breaks: everybody had bad luck. But, God damn it, so much bad… And a damn funny thing to think maybe, but if he could blame himself (or anybody), some concrete way, reason he'd just brought it on himself, he wouldn't feel so bitter. Nothing like that with Dick Morgan, he thought in savage sarcasm: respectable, righteous Morgan who paid his bills and lived within his income, Morgan the faithful, considerate husband and father-how did the old song go, everything he should do and nothing that he oughtn't-and got kicked in the teeth all the same. You could say 'the breaks,' but it damn well wasn't fair that Sue should be dragged under with him. Sue hadn't done anything, neither of them had done anything to deserve it. Janny hadn't done anything. Except get born.
He coasted gently to the curb two doors from the apartment house where the Williamses lived, and sat for a minute, getting out the watchers' report, rereading it but not really taking it in. Parked smack in front of the apartment was a year-old Buick, a two-tone hardtop. That'd be Williams, sure; Henry had taken down the license.
All right, so he knew what he ought to do. Go to the police, tell the story. Honest citizen. Sure. The police would take care of the man with the pock-marked face and dirty nails and cold gray eyes and the rasping voice that said Ten thousand bucks, see. And would that be the end of it? Like hell it would. The juvenile court would have something to say then, miles of red tape to unwind, and in the end they'd lose Janny anyway-he knew how those things went, how judges figured, how the cumbersome, impersonal law read. It was all the fault of the damned pompous law to start with: the silly God-damned inhumanly logical rules of the accredited agencies.
Suddenly his control broke one moment and he pounded his fist on the steering wheel in blind, impotent fury. Not fair, after everything else-the panic in Sue's eyes, the panic he heard in his own voice telling her-ten thousand-what the hell could he do? The police. The money. No choice for him even here, it had to be the police; he couldn't raise money like that.
You had to be logical about it. Juvenile hall, a state foster home, an orphanage, still better than anywhere with that pock-marked hood, the kind of woman he'd… Ten thousand. The car wouldn't bring five hundred.
They still owed four thousand on the house, a second mortgage wouldn't-Sue's engagement ring, the little odds and ends of jewelry they had, maybe another five hundred if they were lucky.
He'd sat still to be kicked in the teeth for the last time. If he could get from under this by forgetting every righteous standard he had- But it wasn't so easy, it never was. So, go and rob a bank, hold up a liquor store, sure, get the ten thousand. It wouldn't cancel out: the threat would be just as potent, and in a month, six months, a year, there'd be another demand.
He straightened up after a while and took a couple of long breaths. It wasn't any good agonizing round and round in the same circle, they'd gone over all this a hundred times last night. He'd just have to play it by ear. Meanwhile he had a day's work to do-conscientious, methodical Morgan, he thought tiredly.
He got out of the car, slipping the ignition key in his pocket. See the Williamses and try to put the fear of God into them. The county wouldn't prosecute this time, on a first offense involving a relatively small amount: the courts
