‘I have a farmer,’ said Shearson. ‘One representative farmer, whose crop is turning as black as Sammy Davis Junior all around him. I used to know his father, before his father passed on, and so there’s a good old-time friendship story for the newspapers in that. This farmer’s going to be my mouthpiece for all the struggling crop growers of Kansas and North Dakota. He’s articulate, and he’s out for extra compensation on top of his crop insurance, and with the right handling he could be very appealing. I haven’t met him yet, but provided he doesn’t look like Quasimodo, I don’t think we’re going to have any problems at all.’
There was a longer silence. Eventually, Alan said, ‘All right, Shearson. I’ll leave the ball with you. But don’t forget to keep me in touch. I don’t want you using my authority for deals you conveniently forgot to tell me about.’
‘Alan,’ said Shearson, warmly, ‘would I ever do a thing like that?’
‘Yes,’ replied Alan, and put the phone down.
Della sat watching Shearson with a mixture of amusement and respect. ‘You amaze me,’ she said, as Shearson picked up his cocktail and took a long swallow.
‘I amaze you? Why? I’m only doing my job.
‘Your job is to set up personal slush funds disguised as emergency appeals for stricken farmers?’
Shearson shook his head. ‘My job is to make the people who elected me happy. That’s why they voted for me. With this Blight Crisis fund, the agricultural aid supporters in Congress will get to feel happy, the private industries who donate money and have their names published in the papers will get to feel happy, the farmers will get to feel happy, and the public will get to feel happy.’
Della stood up and walked across the Arabian rug. The loosely-tied belt around her silky wrap came undone, and Shearson glimpsed her small see-through nylon panties. He raised his eyes to her and saw that she was smiling.
‘We mustn’t forget you,’ she said. ‘You will get to feel happiest of all.’
‘You don’t begrudge me a little satisfaction out of life? A little financial compensation for all the selfless effort I put into this nation’s affairs?’
‘You still amaze me,’ she said. ‘To take a situation like this wheat blight, and twist it around into a profit-making venture with only a couple of phone calls and a few minutes’ thought – well, that’s what I call genius. Black genius, perhaps. But genius all the same.’
He watched her closely, and then he held out his fat-fingered hand for her. She stepped a few inches closer, and he grasped her wrap.
‘I still don’t know if I can trust you or not,’ he told her, in a thick voice that had all the warning rumbles of an earth tremor. ‘I still don’t know if I should have let you overhear what I was saying.’
‘I don’t even know who you were talking to.’
He grunted. ‘Don’t give me that. It was Alan Hedges, the chairman of the Agriculture Committee, and you realised that as soon as I started talking.’
‘All right,’ she smiled, ‘I did.’
The question is,’ he said, ‘are you going to rush into print with this tasty little morsel of scandal, or are you going to accept my offer?’
‘Offer?’ she asked, tilting her head to one side. Shearson was tugging harder at her wrap now, and her right shoulder was bare. She didn’t make any attempt to resist him. Her skin was pale and freckled in the subdued light from the pierced-brass Moroccan lamp.
‘Come on, Della, you’re an intelligent woman,’ said Shearson. ‘I’m going to need someone to oversee this little fund-raising operation for me. A manager.’
‘Don’t you have anyone in the Department of Agriculture to do your managing for you?’
He shook his head. ‘They’re all too busy digging knives into each other’s backs and trying to outsmart me. I need an outsider. Someone new, and bright, and fresh, and personable. Someone like you.’
‘You don’t know anything about me.’
‘I know that you’re twenty-seven years old, born in Pauls Valley, Oklahoma, daughter of a horse-breeder and his wife. I know that you studied at Oklahoma College of Liberal Arts at Chickasha, and then found yourself a job in Oklahoma City as a copy girl for the Oklahoma News-Messenger. I know that you married a printer called George McIntosh when you were just twenty-one, and that you bore him a daughter. I know that your daughter died of meningitis when she was two, and that not long after, you and George split up. You went to Kansas City, and found a job on the Kansas City Herald-Examiner – and George – do you know what happened to George?’
‘No,’ said Della, white-faced. ‘I haven’t heard from George in two or three years.’
‘Well, that’s not surprising,’ said Shearson. ‘George died in a very nasty multiple road accident on the Indian Nation Turnpike, a couple of miles outside of McAlester, just about a year ago.’
‘How do you know all this?’ asked Della. ‘You’ve only been dating me for four days. And, my God, nobody told me that George was dead. I didn’t even get a letter from his mother.’
Shearson shrugged, but didn’t release his tight grip on her wrap. ‘I know because I have to know. I’m an influential man, Della, and influential men are at permanent risk from chisellers and con artists and sweet-talking whores with big tits. You – you’re different. You talk sharp and you don’t let me get away with treating you like dirt. I like you a lot. And that’s why my friends at the Federal Bureau of Investigation were only too glad to fill in a little background for me.’
Della looked down at his fist, gripping her wrap possessively.
‘You want me to give up the newspaper?’ she asked him. He nodded.
‘How much would it pay? I mean – running an emergency fund isn’t a career, is it? What would I do when it was all over?’
‘You wouldn’t have to do anything. A fund of this kind can raise up to three hundred million dollars. Maybe more. You and me and Alan Hedges – we’d all be working for a percentage. In rough figures, you may come out with a million and a bit.’
‘A million and a bit? A million dollars?’
‘You heard me. That’s the offer. But if you don’t take it, I don’t want a single word about this Blight Crisis Appeal turning up in the Kansas City Herald-Examiner, or any other newspaper for that matter. This is offered to you in confidence, because I like you, and because I think I can trust you.’
Della stood silent. Shearson watched her for a while, the sweat shining on his forehead, and then he heaved himself out of his chair, and stood over her.
‘You know why I like you?’ he growled. ‘You’re a smart bitch. A real smart bitch. Even now, you’re playing smart. Even though I know damned well what you’re going to say.’
He seized her emerald-green wrap in both hands, and pulled it right down over her shoulders, baring her breasts. They were big and white and heavy, with soft pale nipples, and Shearson looked down at them with the theatrical pleasure of a stage pirate who has just prised open a casket of gold.
‘You’re smart,’ he said, ‘and you’re damned sexy.’
He gripped her breasts in both hands, digging his fingers in deep. She raised her head, and closed her eyes, and he leaned forward and kissed her neck, and then bit it, until he was leaving bruises all over her skin. His fingertips worked at her nipples, tugging them and rolling them around the ball of his thumb, until the pink areolas crinkled, and the nipples tightened and stood up.
He was breathing hard now, from exertion; but he peeled off his dark businessman’s vest, loosened his cufflinks, and took off his shirt. Underneath, his body was huge, with sloping breasts that were almost as big as Della’s, and a belly that swung with its own ponderous weight. He leaned forward, panting, and took down his pants, and then his undershorts.