Killing Time

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.”

“Of course,” said Les Manners.

“No, I don’t know that,” I said. “I know I’ve co-operated with you people in the past, and you’ve co-operated with me—”

“Well, that’s what I mean,” said Reed.

“But that doesn’t mean,” I said, drowning him out, “that I’m on the Jordan Reed string, like the rest of this crowd.”

“We’re not on any string,” said Myron Stoneman angrily.

“Of course not,” said Les Manners indignantly.

“That isn’t the question,” said Reed smoothly, and I knew he damn well didn’t want it to be the question.

“The question,” I said, dragging them back to what I’d been talking about, “is whether or not I can feel safe in this town, as long as you people are running it. If I can—”

“Now, Tim,” Reed started, placatingly, smiling at me some more, while the others all looked to him for help.

I wouldn’t be interrupted. “If I can,” I said again, louder, “then you people can feel safe from me. If I can’t, then neither can you.”

“That sounds something like a threat, Tim,” said Les Manners, in his most businesslike manner.

“It is a threat,” I told him. “You people know I talked to Paul Masetti of the CCG, just a couple hours ago. He asked me to work with him, to help him get the goods on all of you.”

“You wouldn’t do that, Tim,” said Reed.

“Not if I felt safe,” I told him. I looked at each of them in turn. “You people,” I told them, “are safe from me only as long as I’m safe from you. But if it comes to a showdown, there isn’t a one of you I wouldn’t crucify.”

“We’ve all been kind of upset, Tim,” said Claude Brice, looking intelligent as hell.

“We know where we stand now,” George Watkins added firmly, in the same tone he undoubtedly used when talking to the director of one of his Broadway flops just before opening night. “We can handle this CCG business,” he said positively, “so there’s no need for anybody to fly off the handle.”

“If you’re right,” Myron Stoneman told him.

George bristled. “I’m right,” he snapped.

I didn’t know what they were arguing about, and I didn’t care. “There’ve been two tries,” I said, breaking into their squabble. “There better not be a third.”

“There won’t be a third,” Reed told me soothingly.

“Of course not,” piped up Dan Wanamaker, smiling at me like an ad in the Saturday Evening Post.

“I want to be sure of that,” I insisted, ignoring Dan, talking to Reed.

Harcum piped up. “Let me get things straight now, Tim,” he said, giving a passable imitation of competence. “Do you want me to look for whoever it was took the shot at you and hired Tarker, or do you just want the guy to stop gunning for you and if he does everything’s forgiven and forgotten?”

“I want him to stop,” I said.

He looked puzzled. “Then what about me?”

“You do whatever you want,” I told him. “The guy you’re looking for is one of the seven people at this table. Do you want to take a chance on booking one of these pals of yours? He’d want to make damn sure he dragged you down with him, wouldn’t he? And he could do it, too, couldn’t he?”

“This makes it damn tough, Tim,” he said.

“Do you want him caught?” Les Manners asked me.

“I want him to stop,” I said. “If he does, then the whole thing is over and forgotten, and we all go on the way we’ve done in the past. If he tries again, I turn the CCG on the whole lot of you.”

“What you’re saying, in effect,” said Myron Stoneman softly, “is that this person shouldn’t miss the next time. He should make sure he kills you.”

“He’ll miss,” I told him. “I’ve seen him in action twice now. He’s too clumsy. He’ll miss again.”

“He may improve with practice,” Stoneman said.

Jordan Reed suddenly wasn’t smiling. “There won’t be any more practice,” he snapped. “And that’s that.” He looked at me, serious now. “I don’t know who the idiot was, Tim,” he said. “But he’s finished, I guarantee it.”