John D. MacDonald
The Pay-off
After two years of working for Sam Tanner I had almost stopped being sensitive about the job. I had almost forgotten a lot of dewy-eyed ideals about government by the people, picked up from professors of political science in college.
From the very first Tanner let me in on everything. A man named Blessing had been his right-hand man for many years. Then Blessing had died of a strep throat, and Tanner told me later he couldn’t find anyone in the organization that he felt could handle the Blessing job.
I had answered the ad in the paper, and Tanner had interviewed me in the cream-colored office on the third floor of the Tanner Building. It had been an odd interview. He had sat behind his cheap oak desk, a great, raw, lean man with black hair curled tightly on the backs of his square white wrists. His mouth was twisted down on one side in sardonic good humor. His black eyebrows met above the bridge of his sharp nose. His long face gave an impression of angularity. I guessed his age at forty-five.
“Your name is Walker Towne. You are trained in methods of local government. You can type. You can keep your mouth shut. You can handle yourself in a rough crowd,” he said. They weren’t questions. They were facts. I nodded.
“What do you know about the city administration here in Harthaven?”
“Not a great deal, sir. I understand you take — an active interest in it.”
“I run it,” he said quietly. “I like your looks. I’ll have you investigated. Report back here in three days. I’ll tell you then whether I want you. Fifty a week to start.”
He had wanted me. I had gone to work. It wasn’t easy work. There were two of us in the outer office — Bess Proctor and myself. She did all the routine stenographic work. I did everything else. Bess is black-haired Irish, tall, casual and hard as nails. She helped me get the hang of things.
I remember her first serious words of advice. “Look, Towney,” she had said, “you are going to be his man Friday. He’s quite a guy. He turns on the charm with all the strangers, but with his own people he’s like tool steel. Don’t try to kid him. Don’t trade on his name. Lots of jokers will think that just because you work for him, they can ask you to get him to do things. Report all those requests to him, but don’t try to do anything about them unless he tells you. He’s in this office about two hours a day. He’s afraid of women. Once in a while he’ll drink sherry. He smokes two cigars a day. His only hobby is making Sam Tanner the biggest thing there is.”
It didn’t take too long to find out how he managed to run Harthaven, a city of over a hundred thousand. He paid no attention to party lines. He merely did every favor that was asked of him. Everyone for whom he did a favor was automatically indebted to him. He traded on the indebtedness. If he had loaned John Smith a thousand in 1930, then in 1933 John Smith’s cousin on the zoning board would help Tanner get around a local ordinance so as to help Henry Brown. Then in 1935, Henry Brown would, at Tanner’s request, speak to his brother on the liquor board about helping Jim Jones get a license. Then in 1938, Jim Jones would hire the son of another of Tanner’s friends. This other friend would end up on the draft board in 1942 and get the son of another client deferred for a while. This other client’s cousin would be writing specifications for county road contracts, and slant a specification toward the equipment of still another client. His gratitude to Tanner might take the form of cash. It was a confusing, tangled web, and Tanner kept it all clear in his mind. Small initial favors had pyramided to such an extent that his influence was felt in every meeting of the Common Council. His men were in office, and he kept them in office. The American public are too lethargic to inform themselves about the relative merits of candidates for office. The voters of Harthaven knew that there was a political boss. They knew Sam Tanner. And yet the city was reasonably clean; taxes weren’t too high; and the pay-offs were handled in a discreet fashion.
Sam Tanner maintained three office staffs. Bess and I were one — the political and patronage angle — public affairs. The second was down in the Magnum Brewery which he owned. The third was in the Excello Construction Company, which handled a good many city and county contracts and also handled the rentals on the Tanner Building. As Bess said, the Boss spent only two hours a day with us.
I remember the first conversation I had with Tanner about ethics. From time to time, quiet men would come into the Tanner Building office, and I would have no clue as to their purpose. After I had been there about six months, Tanner called me in just after one of the quiet men had left.
He told me to sit down. There was a white envelope on his desk. He tore it open with a blunt thumb and spread a sheaf of bills on his desk blotter. He took out five twenties and handed them to me.
“This is a bonus, Walker,” he said. I took the money a bit uncertainly, wondering about social-security deductions and withholding tax. He saw my hesitation and said, “Stick it in your pocket and forget it, son. It won’t bite you. There’ll be other bonuses.” I stuffed it into my wallet and it looked good to me, even though I did feel a little uncomfortable about it.
He leaned his elbows on the desk and said, “Now listen to me for a minute, Walker, and remember what I tell you. This city, or any American city, is set up in such a way that it is very easy for one man or group of men to run it. I’m running Harthaven. You might call me a political boss. That word doesn’t sting. I’m not too greedy. I take risks and I get paid for them — paid well. I don’t grab too much. Suppose I died tomorrow. Somebody would step into my shoes. I imagine he would be greedier than I am. He would take bigger pay-offs. The city would suffer. I take a little, and I have the interests of the city at heart.”
I got courageous and said, “You thinking along the lines of the greatest good for the greatest number? Isn’t that a rationalization?”
He smiled at me, twisting one side of his mouth downward. “You’ve still got some damp idealism behind your ears, Walker. But now you’re sharing in it — in the pay-off. Just remember that.”
I did remember it. I kept wondering just how the money had got into my pocket — where it had come from. I had some ideas. But I had taken it, and I had bought a suit, hat and shoes with it; it was no good wondering. At times I detested the roundabout, sneaking methods of the game, the small furtive men, the crumpled bills changing hands. At other times I felt smart and proud and happy to be on the inside, while the suckers milled around in the street and paid their taxes like little angels.
I tried to date Bess, but she told me something that I couldn’t quite forget. “No thanks, Towney. I go out with you, and all I’ll be able to smell is changed assessments, construction contracts and the damp rotten wood in the City Hall. This is a business, and it’s no pleasure. When I go out I want to go with a clean kid in the grocery or chicken-farm racket. Then I can pretend to be a lady.”
“I didn’t know you felt like that, Bess!”
“I don’t, Towney. I just like to picture myself as a gal with enough sensitivity to dislike the whole business. You keep asking me; one of these days I’ll say yes.”
I remember the morning when things first started to go wrong. Tanner had Bess in for a while for some routine dictation, and then he called me in. There was nothing unusual about the assignments. I scribbled in my pocket notebook as he said, “Go over to the mayor’s office and tell that clown not to use a city employee as a chauffeur when he goes out to get drunk. This is the second time, so tell him in a rough way. Then stop in and see Vince at the sales agency, and tell him that the next sedan he gets goes to Harold Vogler over at Consolidated. Tell him I don’t care who the hell is on his list. Vogler gets the next one. Then call on a Mrs. Mary Hanrahan at 16 Otter Street, and tell her that her assessment has been reduced to three thousand. Tell her that I arranged it and tell her to keep her big mouth shut about it. Don’t tell the neighbors. Then go see Lamonte on the park board. Tell him that I’ve decided that the tree-surgery contract should go to Watson. Tell him to check Watson’s equipment and write the specifications around them. Call up Watson, and tell him that I’ll stop in at his club at five for a drink with him. Then...”