“Is that so?” Bushell purred. Jerry Doyle looked ready to haul off and belt his partner. Bushell didn’t blame him. Doyle had done his best to publish his harmlessness, and now Shaughnessy was making out that Common Sense wasn’t so harmless after all.
Samuel Stanley caught that, too. “You know, Chief, these gentlemen certainly sound like people who want to impede our investigation,” he said happily.
“Don’t they?” Bushell agreed. He glanced over at Doyle, who was shaking his head, as if to say such a thought had never entered his mind. Bushell went on, “They’re only trying to do their jobs, though.” At that, Doyle must have got a crick in the neck, so swiftly did he shift from shaking to nodding. Bushell took no notice of him: “If we want to get them off our backs, telling them to go away won’t work. They don’t take orders from us, they take orders from their publisher. If we want to get anywhere with them, we have to talk with him.”
Michael Shaughnessy laughed in his face. “If you think Mr. Kennedy will hear a word that comes from your lying mouths, you can go and think again. He’s been standing up to the lackeys of oppression his whole life long, and made Common Sense what it is today.”
“Reason enough to blame him, don’t you think?” Bushell said. Shaughnessy blinked; before he could answer, Bushell continued, “Do you want to know the truth, Mr. Shaughnessy? I don’t much care whether he heeds me or not. But for most of my whole life long, I’ve wanted to let him know how much I - mm, shall we say admire? - him. And now you’re given me the chance. Thanks very much. I never expected you to do me such a favor.”
He stepped forward, seized Shaughnessy’s hand, and vigorously pumped it before the startled reporter could snatch it away. Then, trailed by Samuel Stanley and Kathleen, he made for the bank of lifts, leaving the two men from Common Sense staring after him. Their dismayed confusion was as enjoyable as anything that had happened to him since The Two Georges disappeared. Boston had its share of modern buildings, whose architects tried to make up in curlicues and contrasting patterns of stone and brickwork what they lacked in imagination. Walking past one, Bushell turned to Kathleen Flannery and, pointing, said, “Is it my bad taste, or it that very ugly?”
“It’s certainly very busy,” she answered after judicious consideration. “That’s not quite the same thing, but it’s close.”
He looked ahead. “Now that’s more like it,” he said enthusiastically. “It has to date from before the days of the Union.”
“That’s Faneuil Hall,” Kathleen said. “You’re right; it was built in the 1740s. Boston has more colonial architecture left than any other city in the NAU. It’s a good deal - cleaner in line, isn’t it?”
“Just a bit, yes,” Bushell said, his voice dry. Verticals, sharp angles, straight lines - who needed more, except some overeducated tomfool who wanted to impress a client with his own cleverness?
“I like it,” Sam Stanley said. “It looks like a building where you’d go to get something done, not a gingerbread house or a fruitcake.”
With dark red brick and white marble trim, the office building across Dock Square from the noble Faneuil Hall did look like a gingerbread house. That was where Common Sense had its headquarters, though, and so it was where Bushell reluctantly betook himself.
The painting of a bald eagle behind the receptionist’s desk did not show the bird in a static, almost overstuffed pose, as it appeared on the Independence Party flag. Instead, the eagle’s eyes blazed and its beak gaped wide and fierce: it looked, in fact, a good deal more ferocious than its kind really were. The receptionist, an attractive blonde with her hair in a shingle bob and her cheeks red with rouge, said, “Welcome to Common Sense. How may I help you further the cause of freedom?”
As he had so often in this case, Bushell took out his badge and displayed it. “I am furthering the cause of freedom,” he said. By her expression, the receptionist did not agree. Her opinion worried him not a bit. He said. “I want to see Mr. Kennedy. I’m sick and tired of his running dogs sticking their noses into my investigation, and I expect him to call them off.” He relished using the rhetoric of the Sons of Liberty against Common Sense.
“One - one moment, sir,” the receptionist said, reaching for the telephone. “Let me speak to Mr. Kennedy’s secretary. Your name is - ?” Bushell gave it, and those of his companions. The receptionist dialed a number and talked in a low voice on the phone for a few minutes. While she did that, Bushell studied the alphabetical listing of Common Sense employees on the wall near the picture of the eagle. The publisher’s office was on the sixth floor. The receptionist hung up. With a bright smile, she said, “Mr. Kennedy will be able to see you at eleven o’clock this morning.”
“That’s nice,” Bushell said, and started for the lift down the hall. “I’m able to see him now.”
“Sir,” the receptionist called after him, “didn’t you hear me? Mr. Kennedy won’t be able to see you until- “
“Oh, I heard you,” Bushell said, stepping aside to let Kathleen precede him into the lift car. “I’m just not listening to you.” The lift’s sliding doors cut off the receptionist’s protests. In the Charleroi coal mine, Bushell had taken a lift that dropped him into the bowels of the earth. This one rose far more sedately, and carried him to what was, if not the earthly paradise, a good first approximation for it.
Somewhere in the background, a phonogram softly played Handel’s Water Music. Bushell’s feet sank deep into the thick, luxurious pile of the carpet. The secretary who guarded the way into the office whose doorway read JOHN F. KENNEDY, PUBLISHER made the receptionist in the lobby seem dowdy by comparison, something Bushell would not have imagined possible. Her perfume teased his nose. She frowned when he identified himself. “I distinctly told Roxanne Mr. Kennedy was not available till eleven this morning.”
“What a pity - we must have misunderstood,” Bushell said. “Since we’re here, maybe he’ll see us now.”
That could have sounded contrite. On the surface, it did. But when the secretary studied Bushell’s face, she realized he wasn’t asking a favor. He wasn’t waiting, either. He went to the door of John Kennedy’s office, opened it, and went in.
Kennedy was in a meeting with two men and two women, the oldest of them less than half his age. He was smiling; they were all laughing. “That will give them something to think about, Mr. Kennedy,” one of the women said in a low, throaty voice that struck Bushell as more appropriate for the boudoir than the office.
“Then it’s wasted, Dorothy, for I doubt any of them can think,” Kennedy said, his own New England-accented voice strong and younger than his years. That got more laughter. But then his associates - Bright Young Things, Bushell mentally tagged them - turned their heads to the doorway. So did he. For a moment, anger sparked in his green-blue eyes. “Who the devil are you?” he demanded.
“Colonel Thomas Bushell, Royal American Mounted Police.” As he had so many times, Bushell showed his badge. “I have some questions about The Two Georges.”
“And you think you’ll get answers from me?” Now Kennedy sounded amused. “Good luck to you.”
“You don’t have to tell him anything, Mr. Kennedy,” one of the Bright Young Men said fiercely, “except to go away.”
If Kennedy did that, Bushell knew he had little recourse. But the publisher of Common Sense waved a hand, a gesture full of careless confidence. “I’ll talk to him. Why not? I have nothing to hide.” He projected so much charm that even Bushell, who knew better than to trust him, wanted to believe. “Go on,” Kennedy told his colleagues. “We were about finished here, anyway, weren’t we? I’ll be all right. I may even convert this fellow here to - common sense.”