Up on the seventh floor, I stuck my head through the door of Ron Lascow’s office and said to Jess, “Anybody want me?”
“Not that I can think of,” she said. She looked at the cardboard boxes. “You going away?”
“No such luck. Has Ron gone off to Hillview yet?”
She nodded. “He should be back by three.”
“Hokey-dokey. I’ll be in the office for a little while.”
She flipped the toggle, giving me back my phone service, and I went across the hall to key my way into my office. Once inside, I locked the door again, then unlocked my filing cabinet and went through the files. Stuff that had anything to do with the people who were going to be at that three-o’clock meeting went into the cardboard boxes, plus information on anybody else that might, in other hands, either send somebody to jail or leave him open to be blackmailed. When I was finished, the two cartons were bulging full and the filing cabinet was almost empty.
The phone rang as I was relocking the filing cabinet. An operator asked me if I was Tim Smith and I said I was and then she said she had a call for me from Albany.
The voice that came on was tweedy, slightly British, vaguely distracted. “Bruce Wheatley, Mr. Smith,” it said.
It took me a second to remember where I’d heard that name before. Paul Masetti had mentioned it. This was the head of the CCG. “I take it,” I said, “that Masetti just called you.”
“He told me you refused to offer him your assistance, Mr. Smith.”
“That about covers it.”
“I wonder,” he said, “if your decision was at all influenced by Paul Masetti’s, uh, personality. He isn’t, heh-heh, the most amiable of men and—”
“I noticed that,” I said. “But that wasn’t what decided me. What decided me was that I don’t believe this town needs much reforming, and particularly not by outsiders.”
“Come now, Mr. Smith,” Wheatley said heartily, “surely you aren’t going to tell me Winston is the best of all possible towns—”
“It does pretty well,” I told him. “The last time a reform outfit got hot around here was during the war — 1944. I came back and the place was a mess. The people in City Hall were one hundred per cent honest. They were also one hundred per cent stupid.”
“I assure you, Mr. Smith, Paul Masetti is anything but stupid. He may not have much personal charm, but he’s a brilliant man, absolutely brilliant. The work he did for us in Monequois—”
“You don’t have to apologize for Masetti. I’m sure he knows his business. But I’m sure I know my business, too, and my business is helping keep this town quiet and safe and well run. And I think it’s doing all right as it is.”
“Is that your final word, Mr. Smith?” He sounded disappointed, like a teacher whose most promising student has suddenly announced he isn’t going on to college after all.
“That’s the final word,” I told him.
“In case you should change your mind—”
“I won’t.”
“In case you should,” he insisted gently. “I’d like to give you my phone number, here in Albany. You can call me here any time.” He rattled off a number, which I didn’t bother to take down, and said, “I hope I’ll be hearing from you, Mr. Smith.”
“I doubt you will,” I told him.
I hung up, and looked at the cardboard cartons full of records. The locked filing cabinet in the locked office had always been safe enough, up till now. Now, I had the feeling there ought to be a safer place.
I got the masking tape out of my desk drawer and sealed the boxes. Then I unlocked the door and carried them, puffing, across the hall to Ron Lascow’s office.
Jess looked up at me in surprise. “Are you moving in?”
“Only temporarily. When Ron gets back with my car, ask him to do a favor for me, will you?”
“Put the boxes in the car?”
“Right.”
“I don’t suppose I should know what’s in them,” she said.
I shrugged. “Why not? It’s just some old stuff I’ve had hanging around.”
“Shucks,” she said. “I was hoping they were full of old mysterious secrets.”
“No such luck.” I grinned at her and went back to the door. “I’ll see you later.”
“I bet you don’t even have any old mysterious secrets,” she said.
Eight
Down on the street, it was still June and sunny, and the women shoppers were still bustling back and forth, lugging their shopping bags with “I’ve been shopping at SHELDON’S” emblazoned in red letters on both sides, and the Sal Mineos and Brigitte Bardots were still milling around the library entrance. In the window of Hutchinson’s Auto Dealers, somebody was putting up huge signs for the summer sale, as Fred Hutchinson got ready to unload the last of this year’s model before September, when next year’s cars would be showing up. Gar Wycza was still standing in the middle of the street, at the intersection of State and DeWitt, waving his arms as though he was doing something. We grinned at each other, and as I went by he said, “Good day to go drinkin, huh?”
“When’s a bad day to go drinkin?” I asked him.
He laughed and waved his arms, and I went on across the street. The grizzle-faced old-timers were still sitting on the benches in City Hall Park, leaning back and squinting off toward 1930.
City Hall was kind of impressive, seen from head-on. There was the block-square park, with a wide gravel walk cutting right down the middle of it from DeWitt Street to the wide stone steps of City Hall. Stately old trees — maybe they were elms, maybe they weren’t, I’ve never been much for identifying trees — were dotted here and there on both sides of the gravel walk, and the City Hall loomed high up above them, gray-black weathered marble in a combination Greco-Roman and American Colonial style, like most small-town City Halls in the northeast, the windows wide and tall and single-paned, towers awkward and out-of-place jutting up at the corners.
It was an architectural monstrosity, complete with a little bit of Dutch influence in the choppy roofline, but it was impressive anyway. It was impressive because it was ugly and awkward and bulky. I guess it seemed as though a building that far from being beautiful must be functional.
I walked down the gravel path, and something tugged at my right trouser cuff. I looked down, and there was a new rip in the cuff. I couldn’t figure that out to save myself, and I looked around on the gravel for a piece of glass or something, but there wasn’t anything there but gravel and my shoes.
The tree beside me went putt. I looked at it, and didn’t see anything in particular, and for a second I thought maybe I was going crazy. I looked around at the gravel path again, and a tiny dust puff sprang up from the path about four feet from me, toward De Witt Street.
Somebody was shooting at me! It was the middle of the afternoon, there were thousands of people around, school kids and women shoppers and old-timers, the sun was shining down, Gar Wycza was waving his arms up at the intersection, chrome-shiny cars were driving by with muted engines, and somebody was shooting at me. And my chunky frame was too good a target to miss forever.
I was behind the tree in one quick step. I looked around, and the world was still normal. There hadn’t been any sound, none of these people all around me knew I’d been shot at. One or two of the old-timers glanced at me curiously when I ducked behind the tree, but that was all, and they looked away again after a second when I didn’t do anything else interesting.