The shots had come from City Hall. I peered around the tree at the building, the wide blank windows, feeling silly. Right in the middle of all those normal people doing all those normal things, there was a stocky nut, me, peeking around a tree at City Hall.
After the first few seconds, I didn’t feel scared. I felt ridiculous, I felt as though somebody had just made a fool of me. And that made me mad. I stood behind the tree, trying to figure out what to do next, and my own helplessness made me even madder.
What could I do? I couldn’t shout for help, the only people in hearing distance were the old-timers on the benches. I couldn’t go charging City Hall. And I couldn’t stand behind that stately old tree forever, either.
I finally backed away, heading back toward DeWitt Street again. I was trying to keep the tree between me and City Hall, and at the same time I was trying not to look like a nut playing games in the middle of the park, so I had a few awkward moments before I got to DeWitt Street. And when Gar Wycza grinned at me as I crossed the street, I growled at him, and that made me feel even sillier.
The sillier I felt, the madder I got, and the madder I got, the sillier I felt, and all the way back to the office it kept spiraling up, until finally the anger blanketed the silly feeling, and I felt nothing but enraged. By the time I got to my office, impatiently working the keys, I was boiling.
There was a shallow closet beside the filing cabinet, where I kept my overcoat in the winter. Hanging on a hook in there was a shoulder holster, and in the shoulder holster there was a.32 revolver. I had a license for that revolver* but I hadn’t toted it for years, not since the first novelty of owning it had worn off, back in ’46. There had never been any need for it, not in a town like Winston.
There was a need for it now. The next time somebody shot at me, God damn it, I was going to be able to shoot back.
I’d put on weight since I’d bought the gun and holster, so it fit a little too snug, but I could still move with relative freedom, and I could get at the handle of the revolver without too much struggling. I felt a lot better once it was safely on. Not quite so ridiculous, and not quite so impotently angry. I put my suit coat back on, locked myself out of the office, and went off to pound on a conference table.
Nine
The meeting was already under way by the time I got there, seven worried men sitting around a long oval table beneath a haze of blue-gray smoke. Besides Dan Wanamaker and Harcum, the seven included our District Attorney, three of the five members of the City Council, and the boss of them all, Jordan Reed.
Jordan Reed had been talking when I walked into the room. He broke off what he was saying and looked up at me, his well-scrubbed face smiling. “Tim! Come in, my boy, come in! Dan tells me you have something to say to us.”
Reed was sitting at one end of the table. Among the empty chairs was the one at the other end, opposite him. I moved down to that chair and stood with one hand on its back, facing Jordan Reed and looking at each of my present friends in turn. “One of you bastards,” I told them, “just took a shot at me.”
The faces were startled, bewildered and innocent. Reed said, “Tim, you don’t mean—”
“Why don’t I mean? Not ten minutes ago somebody shot at me from this building. Last night a gunman hired by one of you people tried to kill me. That’s two—”
“From City Hall?” That was Harcum, looking incredulous. “Somebody shot at you from City Hall?”
“You’re goddam right somebody did. And it was one of you—”
“That’s ridiculous.” The speaker was Myron Stoneman, Councilman from the Third Ward. “Nobody’s going to fire a gun in this building, in broad daylight—”
“I didn’t hear a shot,” added George Watkins. He’s our DA, a bald butterball with a quarter cigar in its head.
Then they all talked at once, all of them agreeing that nobody had heard any shots, and none of them would go gunning for good old Tim Smith, and all that jazz.
I let them talk for a minute, while I looked at each of them in turn, knowing that one of these seven had tried twice so far to murder me. In that minute while they all jabbered, I tried to figure out which one.
There was Jordan Reed, the boss-man of the crowd. Paunchy, dapper, well tailored, late-fiftyish, amateur genealogist, Jordan Reed owned a fine shock of graying black hair and a soft round face lined with smile wrinkles, betrayed by eyes that were dark and deep-set and humorless. He also owned Reed & King Chemical Supplies, and he also owned the other six men in this room.
There was Dan Wanamaker, the shaven Santa Claus with the wire-framed spectacles and the figurehead role of Mayor. Right now his whole face and body gave an expression of worry and bewilderment and growing fear. All except his mouth. That was smiling, beaming, forgotten by its owner.
There was Harcum, born Hezekiah, slope-shouldered and heavy-faced and balding, lately the Great Romancer with the well-bottled Sherri.
There was George Watkins, the beachball DA, as round and soft and bald as Silly Putty. Originally from Buffalo, he had come to Winston fifteen years ago to work in the legal department at Reed & King. He’d apparently proved his worth, since, seven years ago, he’d been made District Attorney. He was also a culture-vulture, spending a lot of time in New York, where he sank money into artsy-fartsy plays that usually dropped dead.
There was Claude Brice, Councilman from the First Ward, tall, well groomed, graying, distinguished-looking and very, very stupid. The First Ward is mainly upper-middle-class professional people, doctors and lawyers and teachers and white-collar workers. Such people judge intelligence almost exclusively by appearance, which is why they were being represented by Claude Brice.
There was Myron Stoneman, Councilman from the Third Ward, where they also judge intelligence by appearance. But this is a working ward, lower-middle-class population, skilled and semi-skilled labor from Reed & King and the small businesses around town. Such people instinctively distrust intelligence, and dislike anybody who looks as though he might be smarter than they. Myron Stoneman, one of the shrewdest lawyers alive, looked like a reformed hood, short and chunky and balding, with heavy jowls and a big nose and clothes invariably a half-size too large. He was a natural for the Third Ward voters.
And there was Les Manners, Councilman from the Fifth Ward. His voters were middle-middle, Time-Life-Satevepost readers. Les looked like the prototype businessman, complete with blue or gray double-breasted suits, slate-gray hair carefully parted on the left side, and the squarish face of a ruggedly handsome man who had aged gracefully and still, at fifty-three, got up before dawn the first day of hunting season.
These were the seven, and one of them was trying damn hard to be a murderer. Was a murderer, of Alex Tarker, but that apparently didn’t count. He wanted to be my murderer, and nobody else’s.
They didn’t know it yet, but their minute of jabbering was up. I opened my suit coat and pushed it back at the sides, putting my hands on my hips, so the butt of the.32 peeked around the lapel. It was a melodramatic gesture, but the hell with it. I felt like being melodramatic.
Besides, it shut them up. Into the wide-eyed silence, I said, “Twice in the last twenty-four hours, there’ve been attempts on my life. One of you people here—”
“Why us?” George Watkins again, pushy and demanding.
“You know why as well as I do,” I told him. “The CCG.”
Jordan Reed, his fleshy face beatific in a salesman’s smile, said, “You’re one of us, Tim, you know that.”