The pictures of the banker with his head between the legs of the waitress were the safe ones-her face was clear but his was not. In others, his own grandmother would have recognized him. There were pictures of Gendron and the waitress involved in a whole medley of sexual delights-hardly all the positions of the Kama Sutra, but there were several positions represented that had never made the “Sexual Relationships” chapter of the Ridgeway High health textbook.
Gendron looked up, his face cheesy, his hands trembling. His heart was galloping in his chest. He feared a heart attack.
Greg was not even looking at him. He was looking out the window at the bright blue slice of October sky visible between the Ridgeway Five and Ten and the Ridgeway Card and Notion Shoppe.
“The winds of change have started to blow,” he said, and his face was distant and preoccupied; almost mystical. He looked back at Gendron. “One of those drugfreaks down at the Center, you know what he gave me?”
Chuck Gendron shook his head numbly. With one of his shaking hands he was massaging the left side if his chest-just in case. His eyes kept falling to the photographs. The damning photographs. What if his secretary came in right now? He stopped massaging his chest and began gathering up the pictures, stuffing them back into the envelope.
“He gave me Chairman Mao's little red book,” Greg said. A chuckle rumbled up from the barrel chest that had once been so thin, part of a body that had mostly disgusted his idolized father. “And one of the proverbs in there… I can't remember exactly how it went, but it was something like, “The man who senses the wind of change should build not a windbreak but a windmill.” That was the flavor of it, anyway.”
He leaned forward.
“Harrison Fisher's not a shoo-in, he's a has-been. Ford is a has-been. Muskie's a has-been. Humphrey's a has-been. A lot of local and state politicians all the way across this country are going to wake up the day after election day and find out that they're as dead as dodo birds. They forced Nixon out, and the next year they forced out the people who stood behind him in the impeachment hearings, and next year they'll force out Jerry Ford for the same reason.
Greg Stillson's eyes blazed at the banker.
“You want to see the wave of the future? Look up in Maine at this guy Longley. The Republicans ran a guy named Erwin and the Democrats ran a guy named Mitchell and when they counted the votes for governor, they both got a big surprise, because the people went and elected themselves an insurance man from Lewiston that didn't want any part of either party. Now they're talking about him as a dark horse candidate for president.”
Gendron still couldn't talk.
Greg drew in his breath. “They're all gonna think I'm kiddin, see? They thought Longley was kiddin. But I'm not kiddin. I'm building windmills. And you're gonna supply the building materials.”
He ceased. Silence fell in the office, except for the hum of the clock. At last Gendron whispered, “Where did you get these pictures? Was it that Elliman?”
“Aw, hey. You don't want to talk about that. You forget all about those pictures. Keep them.”
“And who keeps the negatives?”
“Chuck,” Greg said earnestly, “you don't understand. I'm offering you Washington. Sky's the limit, boy! I'm not even asking you to raise that much money. Like I said, just a bucket of water to help prime the pump. When we get rolling, plenty of money is going to come in. Now, you know the guys that have money. You have lunch with them down at the Caswell House. You play poker with them. You have written them commercial loans tied to the prime rate at no more than their say so. And you know how to put an armlock on them.”
“Greg you don't understand, you don't…”
Greg stood up. “The way I just put an armlock on you,” he said.
The banker looked up at him. His eyes rolled helplessly. Greg Stillson thought he looked like a sheep that had been led neatly to the slaughter.
“Fifty thousand dollars,” he said. “You find it.”
He walked out, closing the door gently behind him. Gendron heard his booming voice even through the thick walls, bandying with his secretary. His secretary was a sixty-year-old flat-chested biddy, and Stillson probably had her giggling like a schoolgirl. He was a buffoon. It was that as much as his programs for coping with youthful crime that had made him mayor of Ridgeway. But the people didn't elect buffoons to Washington.
Well-hardly ever.
That wasn't his problem. Fifty thousand dollars in campaign contributions, that was his problem. His mind began to scurry around the problem like a trained white rat scurrying around a piece of cheese on a plate. It could probably be done. Yes, it could probably be done-but would it end there?
The white envelope was still on his desk. His smiling wife looked at it from her place in the lucite cube. He scooped the envelope up and jammed it into the inner pocket of his suitcoat. It had been Elliman, somehow Elliman had found out and had taken the pictures, he was sure of it.
But it had been Stillson who told him what to do.
Maybe the man wasn't such a buffoon after all. His assessment of the political climate of 1975-76 wasn't completely stupid. Building windmills instead of wind-breaks… the sky's the limit.
But that wasn't his problem.
Fifty thousand dollars was his problem.
Chuck Gendron, president of the Lions and all-round good fellow (last year he had ridden one of those small, funny motorcycles in the Ridgeway Fourth of July parade), pulled a yellow legal tablet out of the top drawer of his desk and began jotting down a list of names. The trained white rat at work. And down on Main Street Greg Stillson turned his face up into the strong autumn sunlight and congratulated himself on a job well-done-or well-begun.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
Later, Johnny supposed that the reason he ended up finally making love to Sarah-almost five years to the day after the fair-had a lot to do with the visit of Richard Dees, the man from inside View. The reason he finally weakened and called Sarah and invited her to come and visit was little more than a wistful urge to have someone nice to come to call and take the nasty taste out of his mouth. Or so he told himself.
He called her in Kennebunk and got the former roommate, who said Sarah would be right with him. The phone clunked down and there was a moment of silence when he contemplated (but not very seriously) just hanging up and closing the books for good. Then Sarah's voice was in his ear.
“Johnny? Is it you?”
“The very same.”
“How are you?”
“Fine. How's by you?”
“I'm fine,” she said. “Glad you called. I… didn't know if you would.”
“Still sniffin that wicked cocaine?”
“No, I'm on heroin now.”
“You got your boy with you?”
“I sure do. Don't go anywhere without him.”
“Well, why don't the two of you truck on out here some day before you have to go back up north?”
“I'd like that, Johnny. “she said warmly.
“Dad's working in Westbrook and I'm chief cook and bottlewasher. He gets home around four-thirty and we eat around five-thirty. You're welcome to stay for dinner, but be warned: all my best dishes use Franco-Amencan spaghetti as their base.”
She giggled. “Invitation accepted. Which day is best?”
“What about tomorrow or the day after, Sarah?”
“Tomorrow's fine,” she said after the briefest of hesitations. “See you then.”
“Take care, Sarah.”
“You too.”
He hung up thoughtfully, feeling both excited and guilty-for no good reason at all. But your mind went where it wanted to, didn't it? And where his mind wanted to go now was to examine possibilities maybe best left unconsidered.