At three the next afternoon, I began calling around trying to locate Morgan Carmichael. It came as a mild shock when I found he was at his desk in his father’s offices. He would not talk to me and I had to put pressure on some top Carmichael Corporation officials to wangle an appointment with Morgan for four.
He was faintly puzzled as to why I would want to see him. So I had my picture, but who was I fighting? He even tried to buy me off.
“Anything particular you want to see me about, Ballard?” he kept saying, as if we had not met last night and I were there just to ask him to sponsor me in the Wednesday Squash Club, of which he was a member.
I did not actually say so, but I finally let him nurture the impression I wanted to talk to him about a block of a hundred tickets for the Policemen’s Ball.
I knew he was muddled, trying to think of his way out of this jam as his father might have, but without letting the old man know.
Finally he blurted, “Look, Ballard—I haven’t been exactly idle since I saw you last. I went through my old man’s files, without his knowing. I found this picture of you—I’ll trade it for whatever you got on me last night.” He picked up a glossy print from his desk, held it in his hands.
I looked straight at him. “I’m not selling, buying or trading,” I said.
“Do you have any idea what my father can do to you for trying a stunt like blackmail?”
“I know what your father could do to me for spitting on the sidewalk. I just don’t give a damn—he could have told you that. But I haven’t said a thing about blackmail.”
“Well, I’m not going to pay you anything. Not a damned cent—not even for tickets to the Policemen’s Ball.”
He flipped the glossy toward me. It fluttered to the floor at my feet.
I glanced at it, then moved toward him. He stared at me a moment, his eyes wild, and wheeled around, leaping toward the row of buzzers on his desk. He never reached them. I snagged his collar, brought him up and around.
He swung at me once, but half-heartedly, as if he knew better than actually to hit me.
I beat him about the face—then lowered my blows to his midsection, until he sagged to the floor like an empty sack. He lay at my feet, bleeding into the expensive carpeting. One of his eyes looked bad. What the hell? He could afford the best medical care.
He didn’t yell. He knew better.
I stood waiting until he finally stirred slightly on the floor. He had no idea of what else was going to happen to him. I bent over, caught his lapels in both hands, lifted him bodily and shoved him into one of his bright green overstuffed leather chairs.
He talked through the blood in his mouth. He wiped at the crimson stuff with the back of his hand, but it kept coming. He pulled a handkerchief from the breast pocket of his English-tailored jacket, pressed the white linen oblong against his nostrils.
His voice shook. “My father will break you for this. We’ll get you for this. I’m sorry for you. You’re out. You hear me? You’re dead, or you’ll wish you were—”
I caught his tie in my left hand and backhanded him across the face.
“You know what’s dead? That picture you showed me. It’s more than four years old. It shows me with one of Luxtro’s whores. I’ve seen it before— hell, Tom Flynn was going to use it when he tried to break me off the force, send me to jail—but decided against it because it didn’t prove anything. I’ve seen it before. What the hell do you think I am—a brat like you?”
“What do you want?”
“You figure it out, Morgan.”
He tried to writhe free and I backhanded him again. For a moment he couldn’t see anything, Gradually his eyes focused again.
“I begin to get an idea, Mike.”
He whispered, sick in his guts with fear for the first time in his life. He began to get it. Nothing his father could do to me later was going to help him now. He was scared, and for the first time, he couldn’t pay some money and stop being afraid. His father couldn’t help him.
“I’m a police detective, Morgan,” I said. “I don’t blackmail people. Do you understand that, Morgan?”
He was crying suddenly. He began to cry helplessly, unable to stop.
“I didn’t mean it—I was upset. I hardly knew what I was saying.”
“Sure you knew. It just didn’t work. I can see how you thought it might. A man like you, twenty-six, saddling up with a seventeen-year-old chick. I can see how you’d be mighty upset. That’s rape.”
“Oh, hell, Ballard! She begged me to come over.”
I shrugged. “That makes it statutory rape. You got any idea what that can buy you? It can get you a lifetime lease on a jail cell.”
“I’ve got lawyers. My father’s got lawyers.”
“Sure. And you both have money. Would you like to ask your old man how many kids he left on the sidewalk? Or would you like to make good on the kid you made with Lupe?”
He sat there a long time. “My God, Ballard—Mike—what do you want? What do you want me to do?”
I released him, thrusting him back in the chair. I sat on the edge of his desk. “First of all,” I said. “Forget about calling me Mike. Next, don’t say Ballard. Try to get used to Mr. Ballard—we’ll never be friends. Then figure out what it cost your old man to raise you, and double it. You’d want your kid to be at least twice the man you are, wouldn’t you?” I smiled. “He’ll be born about a block from where I was.”
Morgan looked as if he might vomit. “Oh, hell,” he whispered. He drew a deep breath. “It could be anybody’s baby.”
I shrugged. “Another crack like that could cost you new bridgework. However, I can have witnesses to swear in court Lupe was a chaperoned, protected, revered and untouched virgin up until the moment she first shacked up with you—and that would be the truth. You see, Morgan, you’re in a bad spot. All you’ve got is money. The kid’s got me.”
He sucked at his bloodied lip for a moment. I let him suck. It was his blood.
“What—if I gave her twenty thousand for her baby?” He said it without much hope.
“One thing,” I said. “You’re beginning to see the point. Your thinking is a lot better.”
He said, “Forty thousand—”
I waited.
“Tax clear, Mr. Ballard. You understand. Invested. A living trust. He—the baby’d always have something.”
I let him sweat himself up to seventy-five thousand, tax clear, then I cut him off, told him to write a check.
“I have lawyers,” he said. “I’ll have them fix up a living trust for the baby.”
“I know some lawyers, too. You just give me the check. I’ll have the trust set up. In your name.”
He wiped his hand across his mouth. “I don’t have that kind of money in my account. It’ll take me a couple of days. I’ll have to get it.”
I shrugged. “You’ll have to get it. That’s up to you. But for right now, write out a check to Lupe Valdez. She can’t deposit it until morning. That’ll give you plenty of time to cover it. And you’ll cover it—or I’ll see you in the state pen for statutory rape.”
He wrote out the check, looked up at me. “There’s just one thing, Ballard. I’m going to have to tell my father about this. You understand? All about it and all about you. And then, God help you, Ballard.”
“I figured you’d do that boy. I’m prepared for it. You see, I found out a long time ago that nothing is ever easy.”
“You’ve never had it tough the way you’re going to.” He blew on the check, held it out to me. “Take it and get out of here.”
“Oh, there’s a little more,” I said.
His face went white. “What now?” He lost some of that arrogance he figured the seventy-five grand entitled him to.
“If I ever have to come up here again, Morgan, I’ll have to be rough. I was easy on you today, because I like you. Hell, I figure you’re just a spoiled kid. Just a twenty-six-year-old mixed-up kid.”
“Why should you have to see me again?”
I shrugged. “I don’t know. Let’s just say if anything happens to Valdez, or her baby—if they even die of pneumonia or are killed in an accident—I don’t give a damn if you’re in Europe when it happens, I’ll want you, boy. If they’re hurt, you’ll be hurt, bad. If they die you’ll die, too—but slowly.”
Young Carmichael jumped up wildly. His voice rose, frantic.
“How can I protect that girl? Dammit—how can I guarantee nothing will happen to her?”
I shrugged. “We’ve all got our problems, Morgan. Looks like you’ve named yours.”
I turned and walked across the deep carpeting toward the outer door. Morgan stood frozen a moment, then wheeled and almost ran toward his father’s suite of offices. He was wasting no time, but I had not expected he would.
I looked his secretary over as I went out. She gave me a smile, and tired as I was, I knew what I wanted right now. Lupe Valdez had gotten me all stirred up and what I wanted was a girl—any kind of girl.