“No, I don't think I loved him,” she said flatly. “But I adored him. He was the kindest, gentlest, most generous man I have ever known. When I was with him he made me feel that I belonged to another world. The world my family had once belonged to, long ago.”
That stopped me for a moment. I had only to look in her eyes to know that she actually believed it, what she had said about Burton.
Great God! I thought, what a politician he must have been! That thieving bastard, that robber of the poor, that murderer who could look a girl like Pat in the eye and convince her that he was kind, gentle, generous—a saint, practically! I felt the laughter bubbling in my throat but didn't dare let it come out. What a joke this was!
But she would never know. Not from me. I had the good sense to see that nothing I could say would change it—it would only make her hate me—so I said nothing. I accepted it.
After all, what difference did it make now? Alex Burton was dead.
Then I began getting a hunch about Pat Kelso. I began to wonder if it had been Burton's gentleness, kindness, that had really drawn her to him. I wondered if it couldn't have been his “generosity” that had really hooked her...
I saw the wine waiter headed in our direction and I said quickly, “I told you once I was going to shake this town till its teeth rattled. And I will. A lot of loose change is going to fall from a lot of pockets—how'd you like to be standing in just the right place to catch some of it?”
She smiled, mostly with her eyes.
“You amaze me, Mr. O'Connor. I'd like very much to be standing there when the money starts to fall.”
CHAPTER ELEVEN
IT WAS CALLED the Marlow Building, a relatively new and modern building in downtown Lake City. I walked in and studied the building directory for a moment, then headed for the elevator. The elevator starter, a uniformed girl of about twenty-four, held the car when she saw me coming.
“Going up, sir?”
“I sure am!”
Yes sir, there was no doubt about it. I was on my way and the sky was the limit. The elevator doors came together with a whisper, shutting out the marble-floored lobby, the small exclusive shops. It's quite a building, all right, I thought, and it must cost Parker King a pretty penny to keep a suite of office in it. A man with a very tall stack of blue chips. That was Mr. King, Senator Parker Everest King.
I felt nine feet tall when I stepped out of the elevator on the fourteenth floor. This was one of those buildings that had no thirteenth floor—ten, eleven, twelve, fourteen. But it was still the thirteenth floor, no matter what they called it, and Parker King was going to find it plenty unlucky; you could bet your life on that.
I walked left from the elevator and there were eight doors, all in a line, all with frosted glass panels, all with the lettering on them: THE P. E. KING COMPANY CONTRACTORS. I opened the first door and went in.
The receptionist, an attractive, businesslike woman of about forty-two or three, said, “May I help you, sir?”
“Yes, I'd like to see Mr. King.”
“I see. Mr. King has a very full morning, sir, I'm afraid I couldn't possibly disturb him just now. May I have your name, sir, and the nature of your business?”
“William O'Connor, which won't mean anything to him. The business is... confidential.”
“I see,” she said, writing it down: William O'Connor, no appointment, confidential business. She took the note and went into another office.
She returned. “I'm sorry, Mr. O'Connor, but Mr. King's morning schedule is completely filled. Perhaps if you could come again tomorrow, or call...”
“I'm afraid that will be impossible,” I said.
I took an envelope from my inside coat pocket, selected one of several photostats that had been in it, and put the other photostats back in my pocket. I borrowed the receptionist's fountain pen and wrote across the face of the photostat:
I said, “Will you please give
She didn't like the, idea of disturbing the Great Man again, but that hocus-pocus with the photostat had looked pretty important and she didn't want to miss any bets. The receptionist gave the envelope to the other girl, and the girl took it into the other office, and after a moment she came back, spoke to the receptionist, both of them looking at me.
“Mr. King will see you, Mr. O'Connor,” the receptionist said.
“Thank you.”
“This way, sir,” the other girl, the secretary, said.
I followed her out of the front office, through the other office, and through the doors of the sanctum sanctorum itself.
Parker King was waiting, and he was angry. He stuck the opened envelope under my nose and said, “What the hell's the meaning of this!”
“I thought it was perfectly obvious.” I said. “It's blackmail.”
That stopped him. He was a good looking guy about forty, well tanned, well dressed, well fed, and no doubt well satisfied, until I had stepped in with that photostat and knocked the wind out of him. There is some sort of perversity in most humans that makes it impossible for them to call a spade a spade, no matter how obvious it is.
“Blackmail,” I said. “There's no use chasing out tails and wasting time. You have in your hand a photostatic copy of some very important and confidential documents, made from originals which are in my possession, though not on my person, naturally. To get down to cases, you will notice that there is a cancelled check, made out to cash and signed by you, in the amount of thirty-five hundred dollars. And here is a photostat of the county commissioner's bank statement —please note the deposit date of May Third, the day after you wrote the check; the entry is a deposit of thirty-five hundred dollars. Strangely enough, here is a photostat from the commissioner's office records which shows that your firm was awarded a large turnpike construction contract on the very day the check was written, despite the fact that there were seven bids lower than the one your firm submitted.
“How am I doing, Mr. King? Is the picture beginning to form? Well, I'm not through yet, there's still the clincher, there's the photostat of a memo you made dated May First —can you read it, Mr. King? You're damn right you can. It says, 'See Anderson 11 A.M. 5-3 re turnpike deal'. It's a note made in your own hand, on the memo pad that's on your desk right now. Well, King, how does it look? Have I got you or haven't I?”
He looked gutshot and sick, but there was still some fight in him. “You punk,” he said hoarsely, “Do you know who you're talking to! Do you know what the penalty for blackmail is in this state!”
I knew who I was talking to, all right. I took a step forward and pushed him against his desk. “Do I know who I'm talking to?” I said. “Now there's an idiotic question— I know more about you than your own mother could ever guess. I know you for the thieving sonofabitch you really are, King, and that's not just guessing; I've got the proof. Sure, you're a state senator, which bothers me not at all. You're a state senator who has a pretty good chance of becoming Governor someday, if you keep your nose clean, and that's exactly the reason you're going to do as I say, because you want to be Governor, and because you haven't got the guts to do anything else. Oh, I know who I'm talking to, all right. You think I'd be damn fool enough to approach someone with a deal like this unless I knew him?”
I let him go and he almost fell.
“What... what do you want!”
“Money, of course.”
“And what... do I get for it?”
“I am not an unreasonable man, Mr. King. Get in and get out, that's my motto. I'm here to sell you the originals of those photostatic copies you have in your hand—my price is twenty thousand dollars.”
“What!”
“Twenty thousand dollars,” I said. “Think of it, that's not so expensive for complete protection. You'll be buying the original documents, remember that, not the copies. You won't have to worry about my milking you year after year. One price buys everything, a clean bill of health. Anyway, what are you hollering about? You made more than twenty thousand out of that contract deal with Commissioner Anderson.”
