She shook her head.
“Good cement,” I said. “Because of me. Because I was nosing around and I found out they were building the goddam place with sand and I raised a bitch.”
“I don’t understand, Tim,” she said.
“This is my town,” I said. “Mine. I don’t run away from it, nobody chases me out.”
“All right,” she said. “All right.”
“In the morning, I go talk to those goddam friends of mine. There isn’t a one of them I couldn’t crucify and they know it. Vacation! The hell I’ll take a vacation.”
“I just don’t want you to get killed, Tim,” she said softly.
“You don’t have a thing to worry about,” I told her. “Not a goddam thing.”
We drove in silence back to her place. I braked to a stop at the curb, and she said, “Pull into the driveway.”
I nodded at the dashboard clock. “You’ll only get a few hours sleep as it is.”
“You’re still alive, Tim,” she said. “Think about that.”
I thought about it. Then I pulled the car into the driven way.
Three
I woke at ten, with sun in my eyes. There was a note from Cathy on the kitchen table, telling me to make my own breakfast, to come on over for dinner around six, and to try to keep from getting myself killed. I washed and shaved and dressed, made myself a quick breakfast of toast and instant coffee, and left the house to go find out who was rocking the boat.
I headed for my own office first, in the Western National Bank Building. I left the Ford in the bank parking lot and took the elevator up to the fourth floor. Jack, the pilot, said, “Hear somebody was gunning for you, Mr. Smith.”
“It was a case of mistaken identity,” I told him. “The guy actually wanted a fella name of Jones.”
He gave me an employee laugh and opened the doors. I went down the hall and stopped off at Ron Lascow’s office to see if there’d been any phone messages for me. I don’t spend much of my time in the office, so the phone company hooked up an arrangement whereby Ron’s secretary, Jess, can take my calls when I’m not around. Ron Lascow is either the town’s sharpest young lawyer or youngest sharp lawyer, and we find our businesses overlap every once in a while.
“Got two,” Jess told me as I stuck my head into the office. She’ll marry Ron one of these days, maybe when he makes her pregnant, and it’ll be a pity. She’s the best-looking girl this town has ever produced, tall and slender, built like a fashion model, with long reddish-brown hair and level Lauren Bacall eyes.
“Got to what?” I asked her, as usual.
“Got to get back to my own work,” she said, as usual. She handed me the two slips. “Will you be staying in the office now?”
“For a few minutes anyway.”
“Okay.” She thumbed the toggle that switched my calls back to my phone. I tossed her a salute and strolled over to my own place, directly across the hall.
It takes me a while to get into my office. I’m on the direct-wire burglar alarm, the one that sounds off down at Police Headquarters should anybody try to break in, and I have to clear that before opening the door. First, there’s the key to open the metal box attached to the wall beside the door. Then there’s the key to switch off the alarm control inside the box. And finally there’s the key to the door.
I played with all these keys for a while, and finally got into my one-room office, the door closed behind me. My office is strictly functional. Having a monopoly in town, I don’t have to impress my customers. So the floor is black linoleum, uncarpeted, the walls are neutral gray, the two windows overlooking De Witt Street are covered by Venetian blinds but not by curtains or drapes, and the desk and chairs are good workable office furniture, squarish and plain.
The filing cabinet is the one exception. It’s one of the most expensive cabinets on the market, made of solid steel, reinforced, with a double combination lock, and it’s the reason for the burglar alarm on the door. In that cabinet is everything that’s happened in Winston in the last fifteen years that could have gone to court and didn’t.
I sat down behind my desk and looked at the two slips Jess had given me. One was from Marvin Reed, the only son of Jordan Reed, who was the first half of Reed & King Chemicals and currently chairman of the board. Marvin, the son, wasn’t doing much of anything and never had, though he was now about thirty-two. He was married, and was sitting around the old man’s mansion waiting for the old man to die so he could take over the company. The “old man,” though, was a hearty fifty-five, so it looked as though Marvin’s taking control of the plant might occur around the same time he became eligible for Social Security.
Nevertheless, my first call was to Marvin, at home, and his wife Alisan answered. “Tim Smith, Mrs. Reed,” I said. “Your husband left a message for me to call him.”
“Here?”
“Yes, ma’am. Isn’t he there?”
Her voice was cold as ice. “Just one moment.”
I waited, just one moment, and Marvin came on the line. “I want to get together with you, Tim,” he said. “Lunch all right?”
“What’s the subject matter, Marv?”
“I’d rather tell you there.”
“If it’s something to do with Alisan, you made a mistake having me call you at home.”
“It isn’t anything like that,” he said quickly, and added, “Though she probably thinks so. Hotel Winston for lunch?”
“All right,” I said. I looked at my watch. “How about one o’clock?”
“Fine. I’ll see you in the lobby.”
“Right,” I said. “So long.” I held the phone to my ear and heard a click as Marvin hung up, and right after that another click. The advantages of the extension phone.
Though Alisan did have a legitimate reason to be suspicious. Marvin had decided, about five years ago, that he no longer liked the sleek slender civilized kind of woman any more, the Alisan kind of woman. What he liked now was the blond busty come-and-get-it kind of woman. But he had his old man to worry about. Papa Reed was a bug on family. If Marvin didn’t prove himself a son worthy of the Reed name, he wouldn’t be getting the Reed & King plant.
So the sallies with the blondes had to be sporadic, and at a distance, usually New York. And if Marvin Reed wanted to shed Alisan — as he did — it would have to be because Alisan had failed and was no longer worthy, not because Marvin wanted freedom to cat around.
In a pretty useless bid for freedom, four years ago, Marvin had tried to hire me to tail Alisan, on the off-chance she was doing something she shouldn’t. I knew the job was useless, and I don’t like shadow work anyway, so I cleared the thing with the local law and let Marvin import an investigator from New York. The import had tailed Alisan until he realized nothing was ever going to happen, and then he spent most of his time boozing, with me and other locals, telling tall tales about life in the big city.
In the meantime, Alisan had caught on. Life for Marvin had not been all joy and fa-la-la for the last few years.
Wondering what silly idea was irritating him this time, I made a note about lunch on the phone slip, put it in my pocket, and looked again at the other one. Paul Masetti, it said, a name I’d never heard before. He’d called at ten o’clock and wanted me to get in touch with him at the Winston Hotel.
I phoned the hotel, and there he was. “I just got here from Albany,” he said. “I may have a job for you. I’d like to talk it over with you.” His voice was rough and harsh, like a back-country preacher after a long day.
“What kind of job?” I asked him.
“Have you ever heard of the Citizens for Clean Government?”
I had to admit I hadn’t.
“It would be a lot easier to explain in person,” he said. “If you’d have time to join me for lunch—”