She looked at me and then she began to giggle. It changed into a kind of hysterical cackle that left her hanging against the door frame. I shook her, but she couldn’t come out of it, couldn’t speak. Finally she said, “Johnny was trying to be an idealist. He talked about cleaning things up. I just gave the man from the State Comptroller’s Office the photostat. Johnny gave him a description of the men who beat him up.” She pulled away from me and went into the apartment.
I stood for a time outside the closed door. The king was soon to be dead. Long live the king. I knew that I would be pulled down along with him — that when the whole machine blew up in his face, it would blow Walker Towne to bits along with it. Days without end behind gray walls. I remembered movies. This was where my studies in local government had taken me. I was at the end of the road — unless...
I knocked on the door and when Mrs. Santosa opened it again, I walked in. There were two men in her front room, both grave and somber. I walked up to the oldest one of the two and said, “I’m Sam Tanner’s confidential assistant. Here is the fifteen thousand he gave me to bribe Mrs. Santosa. I want to give evidence against him and the machine.”
It was eleven o’clock at night when I was through. More men had been called in. I had given names, dates, places, amounts. I had their assurance of immunity in exchange for the information I had given them. They let me pack a bag, and they took me away to a neighboring city and had me register at a hotel under a different name. They told me that it would be safer that way.
I should have felt cleaner than I did. I wanted to feel washed and pure. After all, hadn’t I mended my ways? Hadn’t I killed the machine?
On the third night I called up Bess. I remembered what she had said about being clean. I knew that she would understand. She agreed to drive over and meet me in the hotel lobby.
I dressed and waited for her. At last she walked in, smiling, tall, casual and confident. She took my hand warmly, and we went into the hotel bar and sat at a small table in the corner. She had heard about what I had done.
After I gave her the whole story and my reasons, she sat back in the chair and inspected the end of her cigarette. She didn’t look at me. She said, “Towney, if you’d done all this before the Santosa thing came up, then you’d be okay for my money. But you didn’t. You waited until it was too hot on one side of the fence, and then you jumped the fence. Can’t you see it? All you did was squeal, which isn’t good no matter what the end result is. Tanner will get about ten years, I think. That’s the general theory. The trouble with you is, you can’t see yourself. You think you’ve done something good for your country. Nuts, Towney! You’re dirtier than you ever were.”
I tried to explain to her how, all along, I had been growing more disgusted with Tanner’s methods. She didn’t seem to listen. Finally she said, “Let’s get out of here. My car’s out front. We’ll take a drive while you talk.”
She drove, and I talked. She stared straight ahead into the night, her hands tight on the wheel. Finally she pulled up onto the shoulder of a narrow, unlighted road. I reached for her, but she took the keys and slid out her side.
She turned to someone standing in the night and said, “He’s all yours, boys.”
I locked my door on the inside, but the window was open on the driver’s side. They had white handkerchiefs tied over their faces. There were three of them. They hauled me out, and two of them held me by the arms. A short, stocky one stood in front of me. I didn’t see the first punch, but I felt my teeth go, and the world reeled as the salt blood seeped into my mouth. There were sharp, smashing blows I couldn’t count — an infinity of pain as the stocky one grunted with each swing. At last the blows began to grow dull, as though I was standing behind thick cushions. I felt them let go of me, and I floated off into space...
I was walking along Kimball Street in Harthaven the other day, browned off because Bess Proctor had just passed me without even the flicker of a smile, when I saw Bobby Santosa walk slowly out of a store. I took one appreciative look at the gray-green dress which suited her perfectly, and walked over. Her gray eyes looked up into my face. “So it’s Mr. Towne!” she said. “How are you today? Public-spirited?”
It was my chance to let her know how little she knew about politics. “Listen, Bobby,” I said, blocking her way so that she couldn’t walk on as Bess had done, “maybe you don’t know it, but a slick apple named Hickock is ready to pick up right where Tanner left off. All you did was switch the pay-off into new pockets.”
She studied me for a moment, and the fact that she looked more amused than annoyed stung me a little. I was conscious of my need for a haircut, shoeshine and new suit. “You consider yourself a realist, don’t you, Mr. Towne? A rather cynical chap with an eye for what you people call the angles.”
“I’m not a joker with stars in his eyes.”
“Shortsighted would be a better description, I believe.”
“I don’t get you.”
“Mr. Towne, you don’t startle me with this talk of a person named Hickock. It’s inevitable that in your American cities there will always be Tanners and Hickocks trading on inertia, building themselves up in all sorts of nasty little ways.”
“So knocking Tanner down was pretty pointless?”
“Not at all, Mr. Towne. It’s just as inevitable that there will always be little people like Johnny and me who can’t be bought, who will come along and spoil the most powerful and complicated setups. It has to be that way.”
The gray eyes bothered me. I had to look down at the sidewalk. When I glanced up at her, she was smiling a little. “I’ve known that from the start.” She hesitated.
“You’re not all you pretend to be, Mr. Towne,” she said gently. “I’m working in the new mayor’s office. If you have no other plans, stop in... There’s lots of work to be done. We need trained men.”
She walked away down the street. I walked to a diner and sat down to a cup of coffee. It’s a bitter job, looking squarely at yourself — wondering if deep inside you there are enough untarnished bits to fit together — wondering if you have the guts...
I had just short of two dollars. Enough for that haircut, shine, press. And enough time to get to City Hall by three o’clock.
