All the King's Men - Robert Penn Warren [141]
But Tiny wouldn’t give up.
One night I came into the Mansion, saw Sugar-Boy, who was lounging in the high, chastely proportioned hall with a sheet of newspaper across his knee, a dismantled .38 in his hand, and a can of gun oil on the floor, asked him where the Boss was, watched him while his lips tortured themselves to speak and the spit flew, realized from the jerk of his head that the Boss was back in the library, and went on back to knock on the big door. As soon as I opened the door I ran right into the Boss’s eyes like running into the business end of a double-barreled 10-gauge shotgun at three paces, and halted. “Look!” he commanded, heaving his bulk up erect on the big leather couch where he had been propped, “look!”
And he swung the double-barrel round to cover Tiny, who stood at the hearthrug before him and seemed to be melting the tallow down faster than even the log fire on the bricks would have warranted.
“Look,” he said to me, “this bastard tried to trick me, tried to smuggle that Gummy Larson in here to talk to me, gets him all the way up here from Duboisville and thinks I’ll be polite. But the hell I was polite.” He swung to Tiny again. “Was I, was I polite?”
Tiny did not manage to utter a sound.
“Was I, God damn it?” the Boss demanded.
“No,” Tiny said, as from the bottom of a deep well.
“I was not,” the Boss said. “I didn’t get across that doorsill.” He pointed at the closed door beyond me. “I told him if I ever wanted to see him I’d send for him, and to get the hell out. But you–” and he snapped out a forefinger at Tiny–“you–”
“I thought–”
“You thought you’d trick me–trick me into buying him. Well, I’m not buying him. I’m going to bust him. I’ve bought too many sons-of-bitches already. Bust ’em and they’ll stay busted, but buy ’em and you can’t tell how long they’ll stay bought. I bought too many already. I made a mistake not busting you. But I figured you’d stay bought. You’re scared not to.”
“Now, Boss,” Tiny said, “now, Boss, that ain’t fair, you know how all us boys feel about you. And all. It ain’t being scared, it’s–”
“You damned well better be scared,” the Boss said, and his voice was suddenly sweet and low. Like a mother whispering to her child in the crib.
But there was new sweat on Tiny.
“Now get out!” the Boss said in a more positive tone.
I looked at the door after it had been closed upon the retreating form, and said, “You certainly do woo your constituency.”
“Christ,” he said, and sank back on the leather of the couch and shoved some of the blueprints aside. He reached up and tried to unbutton his collar, fumbled, got impatient and snapped off the button and jerked the tie loose. He twisted his heavy head a little from side to side, as though the collar had been choking him.
“Christ,” he said, almost pettishly, “can’t he understand I don’t want him messing round with this thing? And he shoved at the blue prints again.
“What do you expect?” I asked. There’s six million dollars involved. Did you ever see the flies stay away from the churn at churning time?”
“He better stay away from this churn.”
“He’s just being logical. Obviously, Larson is ready to sell out MacMurfee. For a contract. He is a competent builder. He–”
He lunged up to a sitting position, stared at me and demanded, “Are you in on this?”
“It is nothing to me,” I said, and shrugged. “You can build it with your bare hands for all of me. I merely said that, given his premises, Tiny is logical.”
“Can’t you understand?” he demanded, searching my face. “Damn it, can’t you understand either?”
“I understand what I understand.”
“Can’t you understand?” he demanded, and heaved up from the couch, and the instant he was on his feet, from the slight sway of his posture, I knew he had been drinking. He stepped to me and seized my lapel, and shook me a little, fixing his eyes upon my face–now close to him, I could see that they were bloodshot–and saying, “Can’t you understand either? I’m building that place, the best in the country, the best in the world, and a bugger like Tiny is not going to mess with it, and I