Time to Murder and Create

BY the time I was done talking to him, I had the feeling he might not make bad governor at that. He must have realized the minute I sat down across the desk from him that it would be to his advantage to listen to what I had to say without interrupting. What I had to say must have come as a complete surprise to him, but he just sat there looking absorbed, listening intently, nodding from time to time as a way of punctuating my sentences for me. I told him that he was off the hook, that he had never really been on it, that it had all been a device designed to trap a killer without washing other people's dirty laundry in public. I took my time telling him, because I wanted to get it all said on the first try.

When I was done, he leaned back in his chair and looked at the ceiling. Then he turned his eyes to meet mine and said his first word.

"Extraordinary."

"I had to pressure you the same as I had to pressure everyone else," I said. "I didn't like it, but it was what I had to do."

"Oh, I wasn't even feeling all that much pressure, Mr. Scudder. I recognized that you were a reasonable sort of man and that it was only a question of raising the money, a task which did not seem by any means impossible." He folded his hands on the desk top. "It's hard for me to digest all of this at once. You were quite the perfect blackmailer, you know. And now it seems you were never a blackmailer at all. I've never been more pleased at being gulled. And the, uh, photographs—"

"They've all been destroyed."

"I'm to take your word for that, I take it. But isn't that a silly objection? I'm still thinking of you as a blackmailer, and that's absurd. If you were a blackmailer, I'd still have to take your word that you hadn't retained copies of the pictures, it would always come to that in the end, but since you haven't extorted money from me to begin with, I can hardly worry that you will do so in the future, can I?"

"I thought of bringing you the pictures. I also figured I might get hit by a bus on the way over here, or leave the envelope in a cab." Spinner, I thought, had worried about getting hit by a bus. "It seemed simpler to burn them."

"I assure you, I had no desire to see them. Just the knowledge that they cease to exist, that's all I need to feel very much better about things." His eyes probed mine. "You took an awful chance, didn't you? You could have been killed."

"I almost was. Twice."

"I can't understand why you put yourself on the spot like that."

"I'm not sure I understand it myself. Let's say I was doing a favor for a friend."

"A friend?"

"Spinner Jablon."

"An odd sort of person for you to select as a friend, don't you think?"

I shrugged.

"Well, I don't suppose your motives matter very much. You certainly succeeded admirably."

I wasn't so sure of that.

"When you first suggested that you might be able to get those photographs of me, you couched a blackmail demand in terms of a reward. Rather a nice touch, actually." He smiled. "I do think you deserve a reward, however. Perhaps not a hundred thousand dollars, but something substantial, I should say. I don't have much cash on me at the moment—"

"A check will be fine."

"Oh?" He looked at me for a moment, then opened a drawer and took out a checkbook, the large sort with three checks to the page. He uncapped a pen, filled in the date, and looked up at me.

"Can you suggest an amount?"

"Ten thousand dollars," I said.

"It didn't take you long to think of a figure."

"It's a tenth of what you were prepared to pay a blackmailer. It seems a reasonable figure."

"Not unreasonable, and a bargain from my point of view. Shall I make it out to cash or to you personally?"

"Neither."

"Pardon me?"

It wasn't my province to pardon him. I said, "I don't want any money for myself. Spinner hired me and paid me well enough for my time."

"Then—"

"Make it payable to Boys Town. Father Flanagan's Boys Town. I think it's in Nebraska, isn't it?"

He put the pen down and stared at me. His face reddened slightly, and then either he saw the humor in it or the politician in him took over, because he put his head back and laughed. It was a pretty good laugh.

I don't know if he meant it or not, but it certainly sounded authentic.

He made out the check and handed it to me. He told me I had a marvelous sense of poetic justice. I folded the check and put it in my pocket.

He said, "Boys Town indeed. You know, Scudder, that's all very much in the past. The subject of those photographs. It was a weakness, a very disabling and unfortunate weakness, but it's all in the past."

"If you say so."

"As a matter of fact, even the desire is completely over and done with, the particular demon exorcised.

Even if it were not, I would have no difficulty in resisting the impulse. I have a career that's far too important for me to place in it jeopardy. And these past few months I have truly learned the meaning of jeopardy."