Just Another Sucker

there’s a chance we can use you in the office.’

I looked at him.

‘I wouldn’t work for the Palm City Administration if it was the last job left on earth.’

‘Nina’s had a pretty rough time,’ Renick said awkwardly. ‘She…’

‘I’ve also had a pretty rough time, so that makes the two of us. I don’t want anyone’s help. That’s final!’

‘Well, okay,’ Renick said. He made a helpless gesture with his hands. ‘Don’t imagine I don’t understand, Harry. I guess I’d be bitter too if I had been framed the way you were, but what’s done’s done. You have your future to think of now – Nina’s future too.’

‘What else do you imagine I have been thinking about all the time I have been in a cell?’ I stared out of the car window at the sea, grey in the rain, pounding against the sea wall. ‘Yes, I’m bitter all right. I have had time to realise just what a goddam sucker I’ve been. I should have taken the ten thousand dollars the Police Commissioner offered me to keep my mouth shut. Well, one thing I have learned since I have been in jail: I’m not ever going to be a sucker again.’

‘You’re just sounding off,’ Renick said sharply. ‘You know you did the right thing. The cards were stacked against you. If you had taken that rat’s bribe, you would never have been able to live with yourself, and you know it.’

‘Think so? Don’t kid yourself it’s going to be all that pleasant to live with myself now. Three and a half years sharing a cell with a child rapist and two thugs with habits that would sicken a pig does something to you. At least if I had taken that bribe I wouldn’t be now an ex-jailbird without a job. I’d probably be owning a car like yours.’

Renick shifted uneasily.

‘That’s no way to talk, Harry. You’re getting me worried. For Pete’s sake, get hold of yourself before you see Nina.’

‘Suppose you mind your own business?’ I snarled at him. ‘Nina happens to be my wife. She’s taken me for better or worse. Well, okay. You let me worry about her.’

‘I think you were wrong, Harry, when you wouldn’t let her attend the trial or even visit you in jail or write to you. You know as well as I do, she wanted to share this thing with you, but you turned her into an outsider.’

My hands closed into fists as I continued to stare at the rain-soaked beach.

‘I knew what I was doing,’ I said. ‘Do you imagine I wanted her to be photographed by those vultures in the court room? Do you imagine I wanted her to see me in that prison rig behind wire and glass? Do you imagine I wanted that jerk of a Warden reading her letters before I got them? Just because I acted like a sucker, there was no need for her to be dragged into it.’

‘You were wrong, Harry. Didn’t it occur to you she wanted to be with you,’ Renick said impatiently.

‘It was as much as I could do to persuade her not to come with me this morning.’

We were approaching Palm Bay, the swank residential district of Palm City. The long line of de luxe bathing cabins looked forlorn in the driving rain. The beach was deserted. The Cadillacs, the Rolls and the Bentleys stood in their parking squares outside the luxury hotels.

At one time Palm Bay had been my hunting ground. It seemed a long time now since I had been the gossip columnist of the Herald, the newspaper with the biggest circulation in California. Then, my column had been syndicated to over a hundred minor newspapers. I had been earning good money. I had lived well and had enjoyed my work. After a while, I had married Nina and bought a bungalow just outside Palm Bay where we set up home. I was doing all right, and looked set for life; then one night, when I was in the bar of the Beach Hotel, I happened to overhear a snatch of conversation between two strangers who had been hitting the bottle and had become indiscreetly loud.

Those few words put me onto something that was as hot and as dangerous as an exploding volcano. It took me two months of secret and patient investigation before I got the complete story. It was a story that would hit the headlines of the Herald for weeks.

A Chicago mob planned to take over Palm City. They planned to install slot machines, to set up brothels and all the rest of the paraphernalia of organised vice. The monthly take was estimated to be two and a half million dollars.

When I had convinced myself of the facts, I thought at first this mob must be crazy. I couldn’t believe they could just walk in and take over this city how and when they liked. Then I got a hot tip that the Palm City Police Commissioner as well as half a dozen of the important administrators had been bought and had agreed to give the mob the protection it needed.

Then I made my major mistake: I tried to carry on the investigation on my own. I wanted this to be a personal scoop, and it wasn’t until I had got the necessary evidence and an outline of the articles I intended to write exposing the conspiracy that I went to J. Matthew Cubitt, my boss and owner of the Herald.

I told him what was cooking and he listened, his grey, thin face expressionless.

When I was through, he said he would want to check my facts. There was a coldness in his manner and an odd lack of enthusiasm that should have warned me. Although I had dug deep and had persuaded a lot of people to talk, I hadn’t dug deep enough. The mob had bought the Herald. That was something I had never thought possible. I learned later they had promised Cubitt a seat in the Senate if he played along with them and the bribe had been too much for this grasping, ambitious newspaper owner.

He asked me to turn over all my information to him to check. On my way back to the bungalow to get the dossier, I was stopped by a police car.

The Police Commissioner, I was told, wanted to see me. I was escorted to police headquarters where I had an interview with the Commissioner.

He was a hard, direct man and he didn’t attempt to hedge. He put on his desk ten thousand dollars in new crisp bills. He would trade the bills for the dossier and I could forget the investigation. How about it?

Apart from the fact I had never taken a bribe and didn’t intend to start now, I knew the story I was ready to write would put my name on the front page for weeks and would establish my reputation in the newspaper world as