Mike was amused. “I warn you, you’re talking libelously. There’s no genuine proof that—well, no matter. I’ve just bought a hundred acres on the lake for him. Up along the bay where they thought they were going to have the municipal air field.”
“What does Frescatti want property around here for?”
Mike shrugged. “He didn’t say, precisely. I imagine, to build a hotel. I had to make a careful examination of possible restrictions on something of that sort.”
“Hotel!” said Cap furiously. “Frescatti doesn’t run hotels, he runs gambling joints. You’d better remind him that this state has laws about that kind of tiring. He can’t bring one of his dives in here!”
“Who says he can’t?” said Mike softly.
“I do. I’ll close him down the minute he opens!”
“I’m sorry to hear that. I am, really. In the first place, it’s uncharitable of you to assume that tire hotel will be anything more than just a hotel. In the second place, Mr. Frescatti is a very generous man to those who understand him. If you were to be realistic about this scheme of his you might find it—rewarding.”
Cap got out of his chair. “Are you offering me a bribe? Did Frescatti tell you to—”
“He doesn’t know you exist, Paul. Sorry. Your fame hasn’t spread to Chicago. I was simply giving you some information for your own good. I see that my efforts were wasted.” He looked greatly pleased. “I drought they would be.”
Cap was left to puzzle over that last remark. From anyone else it might have been a compliment, but not from Mike, who had hated him since boyhood. Without cause, Cap would swear to that. Often, driven wild by his younger brother’s spitefulness, Cap had yearned to knock him down, but he never had. Mike was five inches too short and forty pounds too light to be fair fighting game. There was nothing for it but to accept the perplexing situation and try to make allowances.
Cap’s wife, Laura, said he made too many allowances. When they were first married, she refused to listen to his accounts of how brilliantly Mike was doing at the university. “Don’t get your hopes up, Paul. He won’t be any different when he comes home than he was before. It’ll save you a lot of trouble if you stop trying to be friends with him.”
“He’s bound to outgrow his crankiness. You’ll see.”
“He won’t outgrow being jealous of you.”
He had to look at her twice to make sure she wasn’t joking. “You’re talking through your hat! He’s a professional man, a lawyer, and I’m a policeman. What’s he got to be jealous of?”
“I don’t know. Being kid brother to a hero must be a hard tiling to shake off.”
“A hero!” he said with some of Mike’s own disdain. “That’s all past and done.”
“Not for him.” She laid her cheek against his shoulder. “In a way, lie’s right. You’re a better man than he is. That’s why I can’t bear to see you putting yourself out for him, over and over again, and getting kicked in the teeth for your pains. You have a thousand friends. You don’t need him.”
“Mike doesn’t care about people. With his brains, he doesn’t have to care.”
She sat up irritably. “I won’t have you feeling inferior to him! That’s what he’d like, that’s what he’s after. And you mustn’t trust him. He isn’t honest. Not even with himself.”
He laid most of this to wifely prejudice. Mike was devious but not dishonest. His professional reputation was impeccable. He couldn’t be bought. To be fair to him, he didn’t care particularly about money. So it was not like him to take Frescatti for a client. Why had he? Why did Mike want to visit Frescatti’s interests on a town where he himself lived? How did he reconcile this with the fact that he was a leading member of the Wentworth Civic Crusaders and adviser to the Better Business Bureau? Personal power and the manipulation of people were the things Mike cared about, and it was difficult to see how Frescatti could help him there. Then what were his motives?
Cap let a few weeks pass and then went to Mayor Haynes. The mayor was a pudgy little man who diverted attention from thought by talking continuously. It was one of Cap’s little jokes that he hated to ask the mayor a question for fear he might answer it.
Mayor Haynes launched into a happy monologue. “Yes, I’ve talked to Mike. He came around a few weeks back, to sound me out. All I can tell you is that we—the Council and myself—have the matter under consideration. Naturally I brought up some objections, but your brother assures me that they are invalid. He is certain that Mr. Frescatti wishes only to build a hotel—a luxury hotel, such as we do not have at present—and chose this location because it is the most beautiful in the state.” He paused, but Cap did not take the opportunity to echo praises of the local scenery. The mayor resumed, defensively. “Well, a place like that might be an excellent thing for the town. Increase business, draw tourists. Mr. Prescott, over at the bank, is all for it. He—”
The chief said bluntly, “Mr. Prescott is thinking of the bank, I’m thinking of the town.”
“Of course you are!” said the mayor approvingly. “And so am I. Mike pointed out, too, that if Mr. Frescatti exceeds the terms of the license we grant him we can always close him down. That’ll put him on his good behavior, as it were. The risk isn’t—”
“Once he opens, he’ll stay open, you’ll find. How do you suppose he keeps running in St. Louis and Los Angeles? The citizens don’t want him, but he’s going full blast.”
The mayor shifted in his chair. “No need to get stirred up about it yet, Paul, seems to me. It’s all a long way off. Mr. Frescatti may change his mind, the Council may not vote the permit—a lot of things can happen. Let’s not cross our bridges until we come to them.”
The signs of bridge-crossing appeared, soon enough. First, beginning nowhere, there was a ripple of excited gossip through the town. Then in quick succession Mike addressed the Chamber of Commerce and the Rotary and Kiwanis clubs. Businessmen began to look judicious and benign when the new hotel was mentioned. An alarming hint blew up that a site a hundred miles farther south was also under consideration. The Wentworth Eagle met this with an editorial: “Many people have called to inquire if Wentworth has lost the chance of playing host to the great hotel whose building is being contemplated by a Chicago corporation, represented locally by Michael Cassidy. As far as we can ascertain, there is no truth to the rumor. Mr. Forbes, president of the corporation, told us, when contacted in Chicago, that Wentworth is still the favored location, providing that various minor difficulties can be ironed out.” By August, when the architect’s drawings were displayed magnificently in the window of Stucky’s hardware store, crowds gathered before them all day, eager, impressed. So expertly had the town been softened up that anyone who denounced the project, on any grounds at all, stood a grave chance of being called an obstacle to progress and an enemy of the people.
Hoping against hope, Cap went again to the mayor. “Frescatti’s name isn’t connected with the hotel any more. Has he dropped out?”
“I believe he’s a member of the corporation. Just a member. Several of the biggest men in the Middle West are in it with him. Men of undoubted probity who—”
“Undoubted probity, my foot! Those boys are figureheads. Frescatti owns them.”
The mayor’s face flushed a bit. “I’m afraid you’ll have to leave the handling of this matter to the city government, Paul. I appreciate your concern. No one is more interested in keeping Wentworth clean than I am, but—” But stop trying to throw a monkey wrench into the works, and go away.
Useless though he suspected it to be, Chief Cassidy began to build up a folder on Frescatti and his previous business ventures. At his own expense he drove to the state library and spent two days among the newspaper files, taking notes. The folder grew so bulky that it scarcely fitted into the drawer of his desk, where he carefully locked it away after each ensuing addition. He indicated to Mayor Haynes that he had some pertinent information about Frescatti that His Honor should see, and this time the mayor told him f
irmly that he was out of his province.
All he could do, after that rebuff, was to consider the plight of the chief of police of Wentworth, once Frescatti was entrenched. That official would have to close one eye, grant special favors, overlook the presence of men listed in his files as criminal or undesirable, and help cover up the messes that threatened unfortunate publicity. Money would pass into complacent palms until the whole arm of the law was paralyzed. A hopeless and untenable situation.
The prospect depressed him to such an extent that Laura threatened to call a doctor and several of his friends complained that he had cut them dead on the street. Only Avery, the brightest young man on the Eagle, came close to the truth. “If you aren’t sick or in trouble at home, then you’re holding out on me. Have a heart, Cap. Spill it.” But there was no use in telling Avery. Mr. Hoiles, who owned the Eagle, was solidly on Mike’s side.
In September he impulsively wrote out his resignation, to take effect on the last day of the year. “In the light of present circumstances, I believe it will soon be impossible to discharge my duties as chief of police properly and to the satisfaction of the mayor and the Council, therefore I...” He left the letter on the mayor’s desk before he went home that night.
It was harder to tell Laura than he had thought. He stood before the upstairs mirror while he changed his clothes, and the reflection in the glass disturbed him. From a distance he looked like a husky young fellow; there were no pouches under his eyes, no gray in his hair. But, closer up, he saw the telltale slackness under the jaw, the lines that stayed even when the face was composed. He was forty-seven years old. What kind of new job could you get at forty-seven? His whistling, as he ran down the stairs, was not as cheerful as he would have liked.
The news was far more than Laura had bargained for. “You shouldn’t have!” she wailed. “Oh, Paul, is it too late to get that letter back?”
“I don’t want it back. I’ll find something else to do. A situation like that would drive me crazy.”
“But you’ve played right into their hands. Don’t you see? You’ve done just what Mike wanted you to do!”
“Don’t blame my resignation on Mike. He had nothing to do with it.”
“Oh, didn’t he? Why did he jump at the chance to let this—gangster—loose on the town? Why did he make a special visit, first thing, to tell you about it? Because he knew you wouldn’t be able to stomach it, that’s why!”
Downhearted as he was, he had to laugh. “You believe that Mike went to all this trouble just to make me quit? That this million-dollar deal was all for my benefit? I’d be flattered if I could think so.”
“He knew you’d never believe it! For half a cent I’d call him up myself and—”
He forbade that. “He’d laugh at you, Laura. I won’t let you make a fool of yourself.”
“No. You’d rather let him get away with making fools of all of us. I know.” And, though she hugged him tenderly a minute later, he was left with an impression that he had failed her in some mysterious fashion.
The mayor paid him a call the next morning, bearing the letter in his hand and looking grieved. “You don’t mean this, my boy. A hasty, ill-considered action. We all make them. What do you say we tear it up, here and now?” Even in the face of refusal, he would not concede the matter settled. “Maybe you need time to think it over, Paul. I won’t show this to the Council until—oh, the first of December. Meanwhile, we won’t say a word about it, to anybody. Then, if you reconsider, as I’m sure you will, there’ll be no awkwardness about your simply keeping on. No explanations, no newspaper stories—”
“That’s very good of you, but—”
The mayor waved a magnanimous hand. “You’ve nothing to thank me for. I’m glad to go along with you, just as far as I possibly can.”
Which was pretty decent of the old codger, any way you looked at it.
In October great shipments of lumber and steel began pouring into town. The second week in November the Eagle printed a regretful item: “Mr. and Mrs. Michael Cassidy have recently purchased a home in Cleveland, Ohio, and have announced that they will take residence there by next April. The move is necessitated by Mr. Cassidy’s business interests. We wish them bon voyage and an eventual return.”
Cap read this at four o’clock in the afternoon. At four-ten he walked into his brother’s law office, ready to say a thing or two about rats and sinking ships, but the secretary said that Mike was out of town. “I’m sure he’ll be sorry to have missed you, Mr. Cassidy. His wife happens to be here, just stepped in for a minute. Would you care to talk to her?”
“Well, no, I—”
But Olga had heard his voice. “Is that you, Paul? Come on in.”
She was sitting at Mike’s desk leafing through a big scrapbook, and her smile for him was genuine. Childless herself, she had frequently borrowed one of his three youngsters for a picnic or a movie, but she hadn’t done that for a long time now. Interested in other things, likely. Club work or shopping sprees. He had an idea that her dress was extremely stylish. She had always borne her loneliness picturesquely and with dignity.
“Why don’t you age a little?” he said. “You’re making the rest of us look conspicuous.”
“Lovely man!” She pointed to the scrapbook. “Look what I found on Mike’s desk. Speaking of aging, here’s your lost youth.”
He turned the heavy pages slowly. Every picture was of himself: at ten, scowling out from beneath the visor of a baseball cap; at fifteen, in football harness; at seventeen, accepting the County Tennis Tournament Singles Cup. The clippings, crisp with age, detailed each achievement of his, no matter how small or long-forgotten: the day he had pulled two half-drowned vacationers out of the lake; the award for being voted Best All-Around Boy in the senior class. (He knew now what happened to Best All-Around Boys. They ended on the ash heap at fifty.)
“Where did all this come from?” he said wonderingly.
“Mike must have saved it. I’ve never seen it before, didn’t dream you’d been so famous.”
He closed the book and his voice was harsh. “Guess Mike kept it for laughs.”
“Why would he? There’s nothing funny about it.”
“Mike does strange things.”
She considered this, tilting her head reflectively. “And you’ve never tried to stop him,” she said almost absently. “Have you?”
“I learned a long time ago that there’s no stopping Mike once he gets the bit between his teeth.”
“I think he can be stopped. Oh, not without a struggle. More of a one than I could put up. But you might be a match for him, if you cared to be.”
Her tone was light and friendly, and he suppressed the resentment he had begun to feel. “A lot of bickering and brawling, that’s what it’d take. I won’t stoop to it.”
“Too proud to fight. I see.” She took his arm, laughing as if there were some joke that they both understood. “Well, I guess one excuse is as good as another.”
He left her at the curb where her car stood and walked back to the City Hall. The clock in the Methodist steeple tolled five, but he didn’t want to go home until he was calmer. The scrapbook and Olga had upset him. There was an unwanted tension in his nerves and muscles, a physical sensation of needing to run or fight, or both. If he ate dinner feeling like this, he’d be sick.
In the outer office the police stenographer handed him a note. “This just came in for us, sir. It’s marked urgent.”
“Thanks, Bill. Have you looked up this Norris in the files yet? I’d like to see what we have on him.”
“I’ll do that, right away. Mr. Avery from the Eagle is inside, waiting for you.”
“Good. Call my wife and tell her I won’t be home for dinner, will you? Think I’ll stick around awhile.”
Avery greeted him enthusiastically. “Say, Cap, I’ve had a brain storm. Should have had it a long time ago. I’d like to do a big feature story on you!”
He liked Avery. His good humor was restored
. “Going to make a little go a long way?” he asked indulgently.
Avery scowled. “None of this modesty business, please. I’m after facts. You’re the worst public relations man in the world, but I’m going to make you famous in spite of yourself.”
It turned out that Avery had a friend on a Milwaukee paper that was running a series on Wisconsin’s Outstanding Citizens. “You know, people who haven’t been publicized but have a strong influence on their communities. Well, take all this work you do with delinquent kids, for one thing. The principal of the high school says that you—”
The record from the files was delivered. “Just a second, Avery. I have to take a look at this.”
“Something come up? I hope.”
“A convict escaped from the Michigan State Prison Farm about an hour ago. That’s in the Upper Peninsula, about a hundred miles from us. They’re alerting all points.”
Avery came to look over his shoulder. “Bad medicine, hey? A real tough hombre. Maybe I’d better stay downtown tonight. Hoiles is in Florida, and if this guy heads our way—”
“A hundred miles across fairly open country is a long way to come without being caught. It’s more likely he’ll stay on the Michigan side, mix in with a bunch of deer hunters, and try to get the boat across the Straits.”
Avery went back to his chair and began scribbling rapidly in a small notebook. “God knows, nothing exciting has happened around here since that farmer murdered his wife, back in 1950. If he does come this way and you get him, it’ll make a wonderful finale for my feature story.”
Cap looked silently at the bent head and the hurrying pencil. He had planned to stall Avery along until events themselves showed the young man that he had chosen unwisely in the matter of Wisconsin’s Outstanding Citizens. But now he felt a twinge of pity. The Big Story. The Happy Ending. How young a man had to be to believe in those! “There isn’t going to be a feature story,” he said slowly. “Not about me.”
The Frightened Ones Page 5