Whom Gods Destroy

by Clifton Adams

  But moving out of Big Prairie was the thing I hated most. In the first place, the county sat right in the middle of the state and that meant that not many people would be driving over to Kansas or Texas or Arkansas for their liquor. Big Prairie was the ideal spot for bootleggers because the drinkers had to depend on them. And there was Vida, too. Maybe if I said the word she would leave Sid and go with me, but it seemed a shame to break up that direct connection to the county's political machine. Big Prairie was a tailor-made spot for a bootlegger and it made me sore to think of leaving it.

  But I think Lola was the real reason I hated to leave. I would go along for days keeping her locked in the back of my mind, then suddenly, unexpectedly all that dammed-up hate would break loose again. When that happened I'd go a little crazy, because I knew there wasn't a thing I could do about it. There was no way I could hit back at her. No way I could hurt her. God, I kept thinking, if I only had the money Seaward had! If I only had the power he had! Oh, I could make them crawl, all right. I could put the screws on that husband of hers and that would bring her to her knees. Paul Keating was Lola's weakness, and the startling thing about it was that I hadn't realized it before. Lola was ambition. She lived it. She breathed it. God, I thought—and the idea was as bright as a new sword—if I only had Seaward's power!

  There was no easy way of doing it and no good way of doing it. I'd have to take all I could and play it as well as I could, and the rest would depend on how much I could do in how little time. Assuming, of course, that I didn't get killed in the hijacking. Or if Seaward didn't get suspicious and track me down and send me to the bottom of some river. There were a thousand “ifs” and all of them were deadly, but as long as there was a chance in the gamble, I had to take it.

  So that is the way it would have gone, probably, if it hadn't been for the phone call.

  It was a routine call to the telephone office and they gave me an address out of my territory, way out in Western Heights, where the big homes were.

  “What the hell!” I said. “That's not my territory.”

  “It's nobody's territory,” the phone man said wearily, “but you have to make the delivery just the same. A lug of Scotch, two fifths of gin, and a lug of green-stamp bourbon.”

  “I haven't got it with me. I'll have to go back to the warehouse.”

  “Then go to the warehouse, but get it out there.”

  “Who lives there, anyway?”

  The phone man laughed. “Big Prairie's promising young county attorney. By the way, there's no charge on this. It's on Sid.”

  I got to the car somehow, sitting there for a long while until the wildness began to die. The lousy snob, I thought, she did it on purpose! But that didn't make sense either. If anybody like Lola Keating had asked for a special runner, the phone man would have said something about it. It was just a lousy break and there was nothing I could do about it.

  By the time I got to the warehouse I had cooled off some and begun to think straight again. Probably Keating was throwing a party, and if that was the case Lola would be so busy with that end I wouldn't even see her. The kid checked me out with the stuff and, on the long chance that there might be another runner around, I asked him if somebody else could make the delivery. There wasn't anybody else. So that settled it.

  I almost had myself believing that everything was going to be all right as I wound around the crooked, elm-lined streets looking for the address. When I finally found the place it was pretty much like all the others, a low, ranch-type brick house set back from the street behind a well-cared-for lawn. I looked at the house and thought, So that's where she lives. And then I realized that I was gripping the steering wheel tightly enough to snap it in two.

  I drove between two brick pillars and up a graveled road that curved around the back of the house, and I thought sourly, The back door's the place for you, Foley. I parked near the back steps and got the stuff out from under the front seat. The back door opened then and a young, dull-eyed girl stood holding the door open for me as I came up the steps with my arms full.

  I put the stuff on the kitchen table and looked around. “You alone here?”

  She nodded suspiciously, as though she expected me to start making passes at her. The hell with her. I was breathing freely now, feeling a queer sort of excitement take hold of me. Her house, I thought. This is where she lives. I wandered through the big white kitchen and came into a richly carpeted dining room where a lot of stuff was laid out, all kind of nuts in little copper bowls and trays of tiny sandwiches. It was going to be a party, all right.

  “Look,” the girl said worriedly, “you can't go in there.

  “Missus Keating won't like it.”

  “What she doesn't know won't hurt her.” The house fascinated me, now that I knew Lola wasn't there. I went to the front room and stood there staring savagely at the richness of it, while the girl followed behind me, complaining and whining.

  “Shut up—and get out of here!”

  She got out. She scurried like a rabbit in loose leaves. It was the wrong thing to do and I knew it. She would tell Lola and Lola would tell Keating and finally the word would get back to Seaward and Sid and I'd be out of a job. I'd be out of everything. But right then I didn't give a damn. I don't know how much time passed before the front door opened and Lola came in. She stood there, faintly startled, a key in her hand.

  She said coldly, “What are you doing here?”

  I said nothing.

  “Cora,” she called, “come here this instant!” The girl came in from the kitchen. She had been crying. “What is this man doing here, Cora?” Lola demanded.

  The girl made a strangled sound, too scared to talk.

  I said tightly, “I brought the liquor you ordered from Sid.”

  “To the front room?”

  The rage broke then. The dam washed out. “No,” I said, “I brought it in the back door. That's right, isn't it? You wouldn't want the neighbors to see a Burk Street bootlegger coming in the front way, would you, Lola?”

  Her mouth turned down in a sneer and she wasn't beautiful at all. “I can see it's no use trying to be civil to you. Get out of my house.”

  “I'll get out,” I said, “but not until I'm damn good and ready.” It was funny, but I wasn't afraid of her then. In the back of my mind I knew that I was tearing everything down, destroying everything completely. But I was drunk with the knowledge that I could stand in front of her and look at her and not feel torn apart.

  “You were born in the gutter,” she said coldly, “and you'll live in the gutter all your life!” She laughed harshly. “You were going to college! You were going to amount to something! That's funny, it's really very funny!” She laughed again, but the laughter seemed forced, as though she wasn't quite sure of herself.

  “I guess it was pretty funny at that,” I said. “You thought it was funny when I first said it.”

  Her face seemed to drop and the laughter stopped. “You're sick,” she said. “Your brain is sick and twisted. No one but an insane person could keep a hate alive that long.”

  “You ought to know, Lola. I understand you. I've been afraid of you for a long time, but I'm not afraid any more. You know why, Lola? Because I'm going to break you before I'm through. I'm going to make you crawl, Lola.”

  She tried to laugh again but the sound died abruptly. “You are insane!” she said, and she sounded vaguely frightened. “By tomorrow you won't even have a job! I'll see to that. You won't even be allowed in Big Prairie!” She put her hands in front of her face, and I wasn't sure what was going on inside her until she said hoarsely, bitterly, “Oh, God, how I hate you!”

  And then I could laugh, because I knew that I had been right about her. I threw my head back and let my laughter roll and the sound of it filled the room.

  She sank into a chair, still holding her hands in front of her face. Her shoulders began shaking as I turned and walked out.

  It didn't take long for Lola to make her threat good. When I got
back to my rooming house the hall phone was ringing and when I answered it, it was Sid.

  “Where the hell have you been?” He was mad.

  “Out making deliveries. I just checked in at the warehouse.”

  “I want to see you, and damn quick.”

  I knew that was the end of it. I hung up. When the phone started ringing again I let it ring. I went upstairs and numbly started putting clothes into a suitcase.

  I should have been panicky, but somehow I wasn't. I sat down and thought about it for a few minutes, and I still wasn't sorry for what had happened. But had it been worth it, really? How was the thing going to settle after the elation had worn off? Jesus, I thought, here I was within reach of money and power and I threw it all away on one crazy impulse!

  It began to come then, the big emptiness as the elation slipped away. If it would have done any good, I think I would have gone back out there and begged her to call it off. She could do it. But she wouldn't, and I knew she wouldn't. She would laugh and I would probably kill her, and that would really be the end of everything. God, I thought bitterly, if I only had Seaward's power!

  And I guess that's when I began to get the idea. If I only had the power Seaward had! That thought stuck in my brain and I couldn't get rid of it. All right, what was the power he had? Money, for one thing, and plenty of it. But, it wasn't the money that made him big, it was his political power and the knowledge that he could make or break any politician in Big Prairie County. He could make or break Paul Keating.

  Then the thought hit me, the whole plan, full grown. It stunned me for a moment. It's too simple, I thought, there must be a catch in it somewhere. I turned it over in my mind, looking at all sides of it for the flaw, but I couldn't see it. I came to my feet. “Well, I'll be damned!”

  The way I saw it, Paul Keating was the key to the whole thing. The key to Lola's weakness—her ambition. All I had to do was find a club to hold over Paul Keating's head. Or if I couldn't find a club, manufacture one. I couldn't see any reason why it wouldn't work, at least for a little while. Keating seemed spineless enough, which was probably the reason Seaward had put him in the county attorney's office in the first place.

  If I tried it and it didn't work—I didn't like to think of what would happen. I was in enough trouble already. Out of a job and in bad with Barney and Sid. And Vida hadn't had a chance to get the information I had to have to try the hijacking.

  It was settled, actually, even before I went over all the arguments against it. I had to try it. It was either that or lose everything.

  Not more than fifteen minutes had passed between the time Sid said he wanted to see me and I made up my mind to take the gamble. If I didn't show up pretty soon Sid would be looking for me, and probably some of Seaward's truck drivers as well, so I had to get out of there. I looked at my watch and it was three-thirty.'

  The first thing I did was visit a camera shop. Then I went to the Travelers Hotel and rented a room on the fourth floor. The bellhop hustled around the way hops do when they show a guest to a room, pulling blinds, raising windows, snapping lights off and on.

  “Will there be anything else, sir?”

  “Yes,” I said. “I want a girl.”

  He blinked, then grinned. Nothing much could jar him.

  “Yes, sir. Things're kind of hot on girls, but I think I can get you something.”

  “Not just something,” I said. “She has to be young, reasonably good-looking, and put together like a brick out-house.”

  “I know just the one.”

  He was already heading for the door when I caught him and gave him five dollars. “This is to help make a bad memory worse,” I said.

  “Yes, sir!” He was on his way.

  I stood in the middle of the room for a few minutes, trying to decide what I should do next. Then I went over to the closet and began prying one of the panels off the door. After I got that done, I put the panel back in place and pressed in two small moulding nails to hold it there. Then I sat on the bed and unwrapped the camera I had bought.

  I had the whole works, two dozen flash bulbs, a flash attachment, and one of those cameras that takes a picture and develops it and gives you the positive print all in sixty seconds. I'd never snapped a picture in my life, and now that I was finally going to snap one, it had to be perfect. I needed practice and I needed it in a hurry.

  The instructions seemed simple enough. I put the flash attachment on, then put in one of the bulbs, and fiddled with the lens until I guessed it was about right. The panel in the closet door came out again. I got inside the closet, aimed the camera through the hole in the door and pressed the shutter lever.

  The whole room lit up for an instant as though lightning had struck it. When I pulled the film out, sixty seconds later all I had was a black piece of glossy printing paper. Without a thing on it.

  I read the instructions more carefully this time, and went back into the closet to try again. It still wasn't good, but when I took the film out I could make out the ghostly image of the bed. Too much exposure, I decided, so I made more corrections and shot again. I used up a dozen flash bulbs, with a chair placed in the middle as a target, and every picture got a little better.

  Then the knock came.

  She didn't wait for an invitation. She tried the knob of the door and saw that it wasn't locked so she came in. If she was surprised at seeing me standing in the closet looking through the hole I had made, she didn't show it. She sat on the bed, staring vacantly around the room, until I came out. Then she smiled. The smile was vacant, too.

  “The boy said you wanted some fun, honey.”

  She was perfect for what I wanted, a broad-rumped, heavy-breasted, Jersey-cow-like girl.

  “Stand up,” I said. “Let's see what you look like on your feet.”

  She got up, stretching lazily. “This all right, honey?”

  “That's fine. Right there by the chair.” I went back into the closet and took aim at her. She was a long way from being ugly—her hair was rich brown and long, but uncared-for. She was about twenty, and it took only a brief glance to know that her young, overripe body was her stock and trade. Her dress was a sleazy off-the-rack print pulling almost to the bursting point across her bulging hips and breasts.

  “All right,” I said. When I pushed the shutter lever, setting off the flash bulb, she jumped.

  “What is this?”

  “Just a minute and I'll show you.” I came out and she looked on curiously as I began pulling the film out of the camera.

  I handed it to her and she said, “Well!” in a tone that didn't mean anything. “It makes me look a little fat, don't you think? But it isn't bad.”

  “It could be sharper,” I said. I changed the shutter speed the least bit, snapped off the ceiling lights and turned on a floor lamp. “Let's try it again, this time without clothes.”

  “Look, honey,” she said patiently. “I've seen plenty of strange ones, so if you want to take pictures it's all right with me. Clothes or no clothes. But I have to have my money in advance.”

  I gave her a ten and a five and she smiled in a vague sort of way, then put the two bills in a leatherette bag. “Honey, I can be real nice. Are you sure you want it this way?”

  “I'm crazy about it this way. I just like to take pictures all the time.”

  She shrugged the smallest shrug in the world, and began stripping.

  She was perfect. That overripe body, those swollen breasts—she looked like the great grandmother of all the whores in Babylon. For a moment she stood alone, pale, deadly white, in the midst of the flash bulbs' silent explosion. I came out of the closet, snapped the ceiling lights on, and after a minute we looked at the picture. It was perfect.

  I said, “All right, you can put your clothes on and we'll talk business.”

  I went over to the window and looked down on Big Prairie until she was dressed.

  When I turned around she was sitting there, fully dressed, waiting for me say something. I got out my wall
et, took out five twenties, and laid the crisp green bills on the bed. She looked at them hungrily, not moving.

  “Do you want to make a hundred?”

  “What kind of a question is that, honey?”

  “All right,” I said, “we're going to make one more picture and the hundred's yours. But you're going to have a partner in the next one. This is the way it's going to be. First, you've got to have a robe of some kind, something good and long that you can wrap yourself in and look dressed, even when you've got nothing on under it. The next thing you do is make a telephone call to the county courthouse and tell them you want to talk to the county attorney. His name's Paul Keating. When you get Keating on the phone you tell him you've got some information that his grand jury will be interested in. Tell him it's about Barney Seaward. Tell him it's so bad you're afraid to talk about it over the phone, and when he asks where he can talk to you, you give him this room number in the Travelers Hotel.”

  She looked up then, beginning to get it. “So when this Paul Keating comes around, I get him in the room, shuck my robe, and you snap a picture of us.”

  “That's it.”

  She got up slowly, reaching for the bills, but I grabbed them first.

  “After,” I said. “Now get going. Get that robe somewhere and make the telephone call—and don't put it through the hotel switchboard.”

  She picked up her bag and walked toward the door, switching her rump at me. She opened the door, then paused. “Honey, will you take care of the bellhop? After all, this isn't like a regular trick.”

  “All right,” I said impatiently. “Now get out of here.” She left.

  The whole thing seemed pretty damn crude. Still, I couldn't see any reason why it wouldn't work. I felt sure that Paul Keating would jump fast if he thought Seaward was in trouble. After all, Barney was the man Keating was depending on to put him in the governor's mansion.