Грэм Мастертон - Famine

‘The news is going to break out anyway,’ said Della. ‘But right now, I want to keep this Blight Crisis Appeal going for just two or three more days.’

‘For what? For Shearson Jones to make himself two or three million dollars richer?’

‘Precisely.’

Ed lifted her hand away from his wrist. ‘In that case, you can count me out. I wouldn’t give that fat slob a subway token.’

‘Ed,’ said Della, ‘I work for the Federal Bureau of Investigation.’

Ed slowly turned his head and stared at her. ‘Now I know you’re joking,’ he said. ‘You just want me to go out there and speak my words like a good little boy, so that Shearson and you can get away with as much loot as possible.’

‘You don’t believe me?’

‘Why should I? You certainly don’t look like an FBI agent. Do you have a badge?’

‘Back in Washington, yes.’

‘Well, that’s convenient,’ said Ed.

‘Ed,’ insisted Della, ‘you have to believe me. We’ve been trying to catch Shearson Jones red-handed for nearly two years. Now, we’ve got ourselves a chance.’

‘So why did you silence Dr Benson?’ asked Ed.

‘I had to. I didn’t want to, but I had to. None of the appeal money has been transferred to Shearson’s private accounts yet, and until that happens, he isn’t guilty of anything. He told me to keep Dr Benson quiet and that’s just what I did, in the most harmless way I could think of. I had to keep his confidence.’

Ed looked at her again. At the curly red hair, and the soft shining lips, and the huge breasts.

‘You’re an FBI agent?’ he asked her. ‘I don’t believe it. Eliot Ness always wore pinstripe suits.’

‘I was chosen for my looks. I worked on the Miami pornography scam a couple of years ago. It’s the kind of work I do best.’

‘I’ll bet.’

‘Ed,’ said Della, ‘you don’t have to believe me. But if you don’t, Shearson Jones could escape from this whole set-up scot-free.’

Ed closed his eyes for a moment. He knew what his urgent duty was: to stand up in front of those television cameras and tell as many people as possible what was going on. They were voters, and citizens, and human beings, and they had a right to know. Yet if Della was telling the truth and she did work for the FBI, it was equally important that he didn’t blow her carefully-arranged scam and warn Shearson Jones off. After all, she had actually given her body to Shearson Jones for the sake of a watertight arrest, and Ed wasn’t the kind of man who thought that was an easy or an offhand thing for a woman to do, even a woman like Della McIntosh.

He opened his eyes. Della was still looking at him intently.

‘I don’t know,’ he said. ‘I don’t know whether to believe you or not. If you’re really an FBI agent, why didn’t you tell me this last night?’

She gave an ironic smile. ‘I was always told that it was impolite to talk with your mouth full.’

‘I mean seriously.’

‘Because I wasn’t sure of you,’ she said. ‘I wasn’t sure how you were going to react. And because I was making love to you. That’s all.’

Ed said, ‘I don’t know if that’s enough. Not to convince me of what you are, anyway, and what you’re doing here.’ Della gave him a long, level look. ‘In that case, you’d better go out in front of those cameras and say just what your conscience dictates.’

Ed said quietly, ‘I think I’m going to have to.’ Surprisingly, Della had tears in her eyes. Ed could see them sparkling in the back light from the television floods. ‘The goddamned wretched thing about it is. I’ve fallen in love with you,’ she said. That’s the goddamned wretched thing about it.’

Ed said, ‘Della—’ but she turned quickly away and walked back across the television cables, and out through the door that led to the side verandah. Ed felt tempted to follow, but he could hear that Shearson was almost finished with his introductory speech, and he knew that the television people would be calling him forward in a minute or two.

The director twisted around in his folding-chair, caught Ed’s eye, and pointed towards the place where Ed was supposed to stand. Ed nodded, and tippy-toed across the floor. As if in a dream, he could hear Shearson Jones saying ‘… and now… I want you to meet one of the farmers I’ve been talking about… one of the hardworking, strong-willed Kansas wheat growers who have had to fight against this terrible and unprecedented disaster alone and single-handed… with only their guts and their know-how to rely on…’

It was discovered by chance. It could have remained hidden, and nobody would ever have known, not until it was far too late. Although, by the time it was found, it was far too late anyway. The damage had been done.

The grain ship City of Belleville was docked at St Louis, Missouri, taking on a cargo of hard wheat for Europe. It was Sunday afternoon, a few minutes after five o’clock, and Ed Hardesty had already started speaking on the television. Not that the stevedores at Jefferson Docks cared very much – they were too busy on overtime, loading thousands of tons of grain from the wharfside silos into the City of Belleville ’s holds. The shipment was already a week overdue and the men had been promised double time if they caught up on the lost seven days.

The ship’s first mate was a tough, bullet-headed little man from Milwaukee. His shore friends called him ‘German’. His ship friends called him ‘Square’, because of his shape. His real name was Herman Heller, a second-generation immigrant whose only surviving relative, his dotty father, now sang off-key Lieder in a Wisconsin nursing-home.

Herman Heller was standing at the ship’s rail smoking his pipe and watching the pale brown river roll by. Here in St Louis, the weather was humid and uncomfortable, and there was a dark stain of sweat down the back of Herman’s light blue T-shirt. He was thinking about a woman he knew in New Orleans – a quiet, jolly woman with a big nose who ran a delicatessen on the south side of the city. She had a husband who was confined to a wheelchair, and she didn’t ask anything of Herman but vigorous humping when he was there and suggestive letters when he wasn’t. Herman was good at suggestive letters. The woman’s blutwurst was unsurpassed.

Herman was deep in his reverie when Dan Bashnik came up to the bridge in his red woolly hat and held up what appeared to be a black metal baton. ‘Square,’ he said. ‘Take a look at this.’

Herman took out his pipe. ‘What’s that? Where’d you find it?’

‘Number One hold. It was just lying there on top of the grain.’

Herman held out his hand for it. Dan Bashnik passed it over, and watched while Herman inspected it. Herman hefted it in his palm, then twisted it around, and finally sniffed it to see if it smelled of anything.

‘What do you make of it?’ asked Dan.

‘I don’t know. Never seen anything like it. Maybe it’s part of a grain sorting machine, got itself loose.’

‘You going to hand it in?’

‘Sure, it’s no use to me.’

Dan wiped his nose with the back of his hand. ‘Well, if there’s any kind of reward for it, don’t forget who found it.’

‘I should forget my friend, Dan Bashnik?’

‘You’d forget your own mother if it meant the difference between two bucks and ten.’

Herman jammed his pipe back between his pecan-coloured teeth. ‘Just fuck off, Bashnik. If there’s anything in it. I’ll make sure you get your share.’

He opened the door to the bridge and laid the black metal baton on the varnished shelf beside the maps of the Mississippi. It stayed there all afternoon and all evening, until Herman went ashore to check the cargo inventory and the bills of lading. Then – almost as an afterthought – he shoved it into the pocket of his windbreaker.