He was about to continue when Bess rapped once on the door and came in. Tanner scowled at her, and she said quickly, “Farrell is out here, and he’s excited. He says it’s urgent.”
“Send him in. Walker, you stick here.”
Farrell came bustling in, a small graying man in a rumpled brown suit. He had an air of importance, and he was chewing on his lip. He looked at me cautiously.
“Come on, Farrell. Shut the door behind you. Walker Towne sits in on this, whatever the hell it is.” There was no charm in Tanner’s manner. Farrell was one of the group, a small cog, full of self-importance. Nobody cared much for him, but he had never stepped far enough out of line to be brushed off.
Farrell said in a high nervous voice, “Sam, there’s all hell to pay. There’s a kid named Santosa in the City Engineering Department, and he got hold of a list of the fake overtime pay, and his name was on it, and he’s asking Mike Florence where the hell the money is.”
Tanner’s eyes narrowed. He said, “I told you a long time ago that your fake overtime is a clumsy damn way of making dough. Who let Santosa see the list?”
“This Santosa has been pestering Mike, asking when he’s going—”
“Answer the question, Farrell. Do you want me to call Mike up?”
Farrell came apart at the seams. His hands shook, and he dropped his hat. He swooped it up off the floor, and his face flushed with the exertion of stooping over. “Sam, it was just plain foolishness. You see, I had all these papers in my hand and I passed Santosa, who was heading toward the treasurer’s office, and I—”
“Yeah,” Tanner interrupted, in a voice that was dangerously soft. His face was expressionless. “You get too lazy to walk with the papers yourself so you let a guy carry them, and his name is on the list. You’ve been in the City Hall for over twenty years, Farrell. Resign this afternoon. Go buy a farm or something. You’re all through as a public servant.”
Farrell got dead white. “But I can’t. I haven’t got...” His voice trailed off.
“Resign this afternoon. If you don’t I’ll get your son fired at Consolidated. That’d be too bad. He’s got more on the ball than you ever had. And if I remember, your daughter’s husband works over at Sindley’s. Maybe he can find another job as good.”
Farrell stood for a few seconds staring at Tanner. Then he turned, fumbled for the doorknob and lurched out. We heard the outside door slam behind him.
Tanner said to me, “I bet you’re thinking I was too rough. I’ll let him stay out of work for six months or so, and then we’ll stick him back in some place where he can’t do any harm. This is no game for guys to be careless in. He won’t be careless again.”
I agreed and then he said, “I don’t know this Santosa. Forget the other stuff I gave you to do and go see him. Patch it up. Get Mike Florence, the treasurer, to give this Santosa the money for overtime that he saw on the list. You see, every two weeks over there, they run through a fake overtime list, make out checks, pay themselves off out of petty cash, fake the endorsements and then cash the checks at the bank to reimburse petty cash. When the checks come back in the statement, they get hidden real deep in the files. Tell Mike to fix up his books so it won’t show. I don’t care how the hell he does it. Maybe he better pay it out of his own pocket.”
On the way over to City Hall, I had to stop in a drugstore and phone Tanner and tell him that I had passed Farrell on the street. I told Tanner that he was right about Farrell not ever being careless again. One of the rear wheels of the truck he walked into went right over his head. I recognized the brown suit and cracked shoes. Probably was worrying so hard that he didn’t see the truck. Tanner sounded mildly shocked, then he told me to hurry up and see this Santosa.
I found Santosa behind a drawing board in the engineering department. He was a soft-looking Italian kid with big liquid eyes and a trembling chin. I told him to come along with me, and I took him out to the water fountain in the hall where we could talk. “I’m Walker Towne,” I told him. “I work for Sam Tanner. Mr. Tanner heard that there was a little trouble here about some overtime pay; he wants to know if he can help you out.”
The kid looked puzzled. “It’s like this,” he said. “Last month I take a list down to the treasurer’s office. Mr. Farrell give it to me to take down. I happen to see my name, John Santosa, and after it, it says twelve bucks. On the top of the list it says overtime. I don’t say anything about it, and I wait for a while to see if I get the check. I don’t. So I go see Mr. Florence, and he acts funny. He tells me that
I imagine it. He laughs and says I am nuts, to go back to work and don’t bother him. I don’t like no run-around like that. Something’s fishy, and I want to know who gets my twelve bucks, see.”
The trembling chin firmed up, and he suddenly looked very stubborn. I told him that I’d see what I could do. He went back to work, and I went down to Mike Florence’s office. Mike is a beefy citizen with crisp white hair, a ruddy face and a twinkling smile. He was able to see me right away. He shut the door to his office, and I pulled a chair up close to his desk.
He leaned toward me, and the twinkle was gone. “Does Sam figure I had anything to do with this?”
I made my voice quiet like Tanner’s and kept all expression off my face. “Not at all, Mike. Sam wonders why you didn’t pay the kid his twelve bucks and shut him up. By the way, Farrell’s dead.”
He arched his eyebrows and said, “Politically? Wasn’t he always?”
“No, Mike,” I said patiently. “D-E-A-D. As in corpse, coffin, undertaker. A truck wheel ran over his jolly little head.”
I waited while he absorbed it, wiped off his glowing face with a big crisp handkerchief. Then he said, “Damn it, Walker! You’re getting as cold as Sam.”
“You want me to tell Sam that you think he’s too cold?”
“Hell, no. What’s the matter with you? That was between friends.”
“I have no friends,” I said. “Now get back to the point. Why didn’t you give him his twelve bucks?”
“I tried to,” he complained. “It was after the pay period, and I couldn’t have another check made out. You know, we haven’t got everybody around here. Just key guys. When you make out checks you let clerks in on it, and they aren’t in the know. Besides, it would screw up the books. I can’t plumber them around, you know. These guys from the State Comptroller’s Office aren’t dummies. And this Santosa won’t take cash. He wants a check. I can’t do anything with him. Better see him and try to give him the twelve. Get him to take it; I’ll reimburse you.”
I went back and got Santosa out of his office again. He stood in front of me in the hall, a half head shorter. I counted out twelve dollars and tried to stick them in his hand. He put his hands behind his back.
“What’s the matter, John?” I asked him. “It was a little mistake. Here, you take the twelve bucks and forget it. Come on.”
“I can’t do it. I promised Bobby.”
“And who is Bobby?”
“My wife. An English girl I married when I was in London with the Army.”
“You don’t happen to know what she’s got in mind, do you?”
“Sure,” he said. “She says that by accident I found out where public money is going. It’s some kind of graft. She says that she has always heard about this country being a democracy, and she says I got to stick up for my rights. She wants me to make a big fuss about this. And I’m making a fuss.”