Famine Page 6

  ‘Are you sure you can trust me?’ asked Della, squeezing the limes.

  Shearson punched out a number. ‘No,’ he said, ‘I’m not sure at all. But if I see one single word of this in the Kansas City Herald-Examiner, I’ll have the whole damned paper closed down.’

  ‘You and whose army?’

  ‘Me and Mr Wendeil Oliver, the chairman of Western States Communications, who happens to control a majority shareholding in your newspaper, and who comes around here for dinner twice a month.’

  She glanced at him. He plainly wasn’t joking at all. She said, ‘Oh,’ and brought him his drink. Then she sat on the edge of the ottoman, her wrap slightly parted to reveal her breasts, while he puffed and popped away at his cigar and waited for his number to ring.

  ‘Alan?’ he said, at last.

  A wary voice said, ‘Who is this?’

  ‘Alan, this is Shearson. That’s right. Well, I know it’s kind of a strange time to be calling you, Alan, but as it happens something pretty interesting has come up.’

  ‘What do you mean by “interesting”?’ asked the voice. It was a rich voice, fruity, with a strong Georgia accent.

  Shearson pulled a face. ‘All kinds of interesting, Alan. Politically interesting – the kind of thing that would show a fellow up in a favourable light when it came to election time – and financially interesting, too. In fact, the very best kind of interesting.’

  ‘Go on.’

  ‘You’ve heard about this crop blight they’ve been experiencing in Kansas and North Dakota? The wheat disease?’

  ‘Sure. It was on the news tonight. I’ve already asked Wilkins to get together a dossier on it’

  Shearson nodded. ‘That’s good. You’ve told the media what you’re doing, have you? Good. Because from what I hear, this blight’s pretty serious. Hundreds of acres gone to rot, and nothing the farmers can do about it.’

  ‘Spreading all the time, too,’ put in Alan. ‘So far they’re projecting the worst wheat harvest for ten years, even if they can bring it under control by mid-week.’

  ‘Well, that’s what I hear, too,’ said Shearson. ‘Not that it’s really going to hit our grain reserves too badly. We’ve got more damned grain stored up than we know what to do with – especially after we stopped selling it to the Soviets. And if you ask me, it won’t do the farmers much harm, either. It’s about time Mother Nature slapped them down a bit, and gave them a genuine reason to be grateful for all those subsidies we give them.’

  Alan said cautiously, ‘I still don’t quite get your drift, Shearson.’

  The drift is this,’ Shearson explained, with a smug smile. ‘This blight is spectacular, and damaging, and right now it’s newsworthy. That means that the situation’s just getting ripe for some strong emotional rhetoric. You know what I mean. How the honest farmers risk their whole livelihood just to fill the nation’s bread-basket; how this strange and terrifying blight is going to drive countless small farmers to the wall; how they’re going to need more than their usual guaranteed floor prices to stay in business.’

  ‘I’m not sure you’re making sense,’ said Alan.

  ‘Oh, I’m making sense all right,’ said Shearson. ‘Because out of all this stirring talk, we’re going to propose a special emergency rescue fund – maybe call it the Blight Crisis Appeal. We’ll swing a vote in the House for some modest starting donation from the federal government – say ten million dollars – and then we’ll ask private industry to donate as well. As an acknowledgement, we’ll take out whole page advertisements in Fortune, with headings like ‘The grateful farmers of Kansas thank the following for their donations…’ All good heartwarming commercial stuff. The public will like it, the government will like it, industry will like it, and even farmers will like it.’

  ‘I’ll buy that,’ Alan said. ‘But where’s your angle?’ Shearson grunted in amusement. ‘You’re being slow tonight, Alan. The angle is that you and I will administer the fund, and that we’ll have total and legal control over the distribution of the money. Naturally, we’ll have to be paid a modest salary by the fund for the work we put in, and then we’ll have expenses to cover, and it might even be necessary for the fund to purchase extensive tracts of farmland for research purposes. You’ve always fancied a nice stud farm for your retirement, haven’t you, Alan? Well, you could have that, and serve the American people, too.’

  There was a long silence on the other end of the telephone. Then Alan said, ‘Legal? You sure?’

  ‘I’ll have Joe Dasgupta set up the framework. He may cost a little more, but he’ll make it watertight.’

  ‘What if the laboratories find out what’s causing the blight, and what if they manage to arrest it before it does too much damage? What happens then?’

  ‘Alan, my friend, you’re being naïve. The federal agricultural research laboratories are under our jurisdiction.’

  ‘You mean – even if they do find out what it is – we don’t have to accept their findings?’

  That’s right. We can keep this blight going just as long as we need to. Apart from our own laboratories, the only other people working on any kind of analysis are the local yokels in Wichita, and you know how limited their facilities are. They couldn’t analyse a cow flop.’

  ‘Well,’ said Alan, thoughtfully, ‘it seems like you’ve thought of all the possible wrinkles. What are you going to do now?’

  ‘I have a farmer,’ said Shearson. ‘One representative farmer, whose crop is turning as black as Sammy Davis Junior all around him. I used to know his father, before his father passed on, and so there’s a good old-time friendship story for the newspapers in that. This farmer’s going to be my mouthpiece for all the struggling crop growers of Kansas and North Dakota. He’s articulate, and he’s out for extra compensation on top of his crop insurance, and with the right handling he could be very appealing. I haven’t met him yet, but provided he doesn’t look like Quasimodo, I don’t think we’re going to have any problems at all.’

  There was a longer silence. Eventually, Alan said, ‘All right, Shearson. I’ll leave the ball with you. But don’t forget to keep me in touch. I don’t want you using my authority for deals you conveniently forgot to tell me about.’

  ‘Alan,’ said Shearson, warmly, ‘would I ever do a thing like that?’

  ‘Yes,’ replied Alan, and put the phone down.

  Della sat watching Shearson with a mixture of amusement and respect. ‘You amaze me,’ she said, as Shearson picked up his cocktail and took a long swallow.

  ‘I amaze you? Why? I’m only doing my job.

  ‘Your job is to set up personal slush funds disguised as emergency appeals for stricken farmers?’

  Shearson shook his head. ‘My job is to make the people who elected me happy. That’s why they voted for me. With this Blight Crisis fund, the agricultural aid supporters in Congress will get to feel happy, the private industries who donate money and have their names published in the papers will get to feel happy, the farmers will get to feel happy, and the public will get to feel happy.’

  Della stood up and walked across the Arabian rug. The loosely-tied belt around her silky wrap came undone, and Shearson glimpsed her small see-through nylon panties. He raised his eyes to her and saw that she was smiling.

  ‘We mustn’t forget you,’ she said. ‘You will get to feel happiest of all.’

  ‘You don’t begrudge me a little satisfaction out of life? A little financial compensation for all the selfless effort I put into this nation’s affairs?’

  ‘You still amaze me,’ she said. ‘To take a situation like this wheat blight, and twist it around into a profit-making venture with only a couple of phone calls and a few minutes’ thought – well, that’s what I call genius. Black genius, perhaps. But genius all the same.’

  He watched her closely, and then he held out his fat-fingered hand for her. She stepped a few inches closer, and he grasped her wrap.

  ‘I still don’t know if I can trust you or not,’ he told h
er, in a thick voice that had all the warning rumbles of an earth tremor. ‘I still don’t know if I should have let you overhear what I was saying.’

  ‘I don’t even know who you were talking to.’

  He grunted. ‘Don’t give me that. It was Alan Hedges, the chairman of the Agriculture Committee, and you realised that as soon as I started talking.’

  ‘All right,’ she smiled, ‘I did.’

  The question is,’ he said, ‘are you going to rush into print with this tasty little morsel of scandal, or are you going to accept my offer?’

  ‘Offer?’ she asked, tilting her head to one side. Shearson was tugging harder at her wrap now, and her right shoulder was bare. She didn’t make any attempt to resist him. Her skin was pale and freckled in the subdued light from the pierced-brass Moroccan lamp.

  ‘Come on, Della, you’re an intelligent woman,’ said Shearson. ‘I’m going to need someone to oversee this little fund-raising operation for me. A manager.’

  ‘Don’t you have anyone in the Department of Agriculture to do your managing for you?’

  He shook his head. ‘They’re all too busy digging knives into each other’s backs and trying to outsmart me. I need an outsider. Someone new, and bright, and fresh, and personable. Someone like you.’

  ‘You don’t know anything about me.’

  ‘I know that you’re twenty-seven years old, born in Pauls Valley, Oklahoma, daughter of a horse-breeder and his wife. I know that you studied at Oklahoma College of Liberal Arts at Chickasha, and then found yourself a job in Oklahoma City as a copy girl for the Oklahoma News-Messenger. I know that you married a printer called George McIntosh when you were just twenty-one, and that you bore him a daughter. I know that your daughter died of meningitis when she was two, and that not long after, you and George split up. You went to Kansas City, and found a job on the Kansas City Herald-Examiner – and George – do you know what happened to George?’

  ‘No,’ said Della, white-faced. ‘I haven’t heard from George in two or three years.’

  ‘Well, that’s not surprising,’ said Shearson. ‘George died in a very nasty multiple road accident on the Indian Nation Turnpike, a couple of miles outside of McAlester, just about a year ago.’

  ‘How do you know all this?’ asked Della. ‘You’ve only been dating me for four days. And, my God, nobody told me that George was dead. I didn’t even get a letter from his mother.’

  Shearson shrugged, but didn’t release his tight grip on her wrap. ‘I know because I have to know. I’m an influential man, Della, and influential men are at permanent risk from chisellers and con artists and sweet-talking whores with big tits. You – you’re different. You talk sharp and you don’t let me get away with treating you like dirt. I like you a lot. And that’s why my friends at the Federal Bureau of Investigation were only too glad to fill in a little background for me.’

  Della looked down at his fist, gripping her wrap possessively.

  ‘You want me to give up the newspaper?’ she asked him. He nodded.

  ‘How much would it pay? I mean – running an emergency fund isn’t a career, is it? What would I do when it was all over?’

  ‘You wouldn’t have to do anything. A fund of this kind can raise up to three hundred million dollars. Maybe more. You and me and Alan Hedges – we’d all be working for a percentage. In rough figures, you may come out with a million and a bit.’

  ‘A million and a bit? A million dollars?’

  ‘You heard me. That’s the offer. But if you don’t take it, I don’t want a single word about this Blight Crisis Appeal turning up in the Kansas City Herald-Examiner, or any other newspaper for that matter. This is offered to you in confidence, because I like you, and because I think I can trust you.’

  Della stood silent. Shearson watched her for a while, the sweat shining on his forehead, and then he heaved himself out of his chair, and stood over her.

  ‘You know why I like you?’ he growled. ‘You’re a smart bitch. A real smart bitch. Even now, you’re playing smart. Even though I know damned well what you’re going to say.’

  He seized her emerald-green wrap in both hands, and pulled it right down over her shoulders, baring her breasts. They were big and white and heavy, with soft pale nipples, and Shearson looked down at them with the theatrical pleasure of a stage pirate who has just prised open a casket of gold.

  ‘You’re smart,’ he said, ‘and you’re damned sexy.’

  He gripped her breasts in both hands, digging his fingers in deep. She raised her head, and closed her eyes, and he leaned forward and kissed her neck, and then bit it, until he was leaving bruises all over her skin. His fingertips worked at her nipples, tugging them and rolling them around the ball of his thumb, until the pink areolas crinkled, and the nipples tightened and stood up.

  He was breathing hard now, from exertion; but he peeled off his dark businessman’s vest, loosened his cufflinks, and took off his shirt. Underneath, his body was huge, with sloping breasts that were almost as big as Della’s, and a belly that swung with its own ponderous weight. He leaned forward, panting, and took down his pants, and then his undershorts.

  Della said, ‘Now? You want to do it now?’

  He kicked aside his discarded clothes with his feet. He was naked now – a vast bulky Buddha – pale and hairy and imposing. He stood with his thighs apart, his fists on his hips, and the erection that rose from between his legs was dark crimson and challengingly thick. Unlike many fat men, whose sexual functions declined as their weight increased, Shearson Jones had kept up a greedy interest in women, and the size of his penis was renowned amongst more than a few Washington hostesses whose husbands occasionally found themselves posted abroad on State Department business.

  Mrs Gene Bolsover had called it ‘the only pole I’d salute whether they ran a flag up it or not.’

  Shearson took hold of Della’s arm, and pulled her towards him. Her wrap was hanging around her waist now, and he tugged it right off, so that she, too, was naked, except for her panties. He kissed her mouth, and pressed her close to his big pillowy belly, and squeezed her breasts until they hurt.

  ‘You’re a bitch, you see,’ he panted. His face was laced with shining sweat. ‘You’re a bitch who has to be taught to be appreciative.’

  She had seen him in this mood before, but never so fiercely. He had never actually hurt her before, despite his bulk, but now it seemed as if he was going to try to force her to do whatever he wanted, both in bed and at work. She arched her back to get away from his thick-lipped kisses, but he wrapped his arms around her in a massive, spine-cracking bear-hug from which she just couldn’t break herself free. Apart from being huge, Shearson was also overwhelmingly strong.

  ‘I’m offering you everything a woman could want,’ he whispered, close to her ear. It was a harsh, uncompromising whisper that frightened her. ‘Everything you ever desired. Money, fur coats, pleasure, popularity. You can’t tell me that you’re going to say no.’

  ‘Shearson—’ she said, but he gripped her even tighter. Her lumbar vertebrae felt as if they were being compressed in a vice.

  ‘Come on, Della, you can’t say no! A million dollars, maybe more than a million dollars, and me, too!’

  ‘Shearson – I can’t—’ she gasped. ‘Shearson – I can’t – breathe properly—’

  Shearson suddenly released her, and raised his arms, like a boxer showing the referee that he’s broken completely free from a clinch. His eyes were giving nothing away at all. They were bland and bulbous and they didn’t even blink. He backed away, his thighs wobbling, his hands still raised.

  ‘Well, then, Della,’ he said, softly, ‘you can do whatever you choose. But if you decide you want to stay with that newspaper of yours, you’d better get yourself dressed and leave this house right now, and there’s something else you’d better consider, too. You’d better consider my friendly association with Mr Wendell Oliver, and how that might adversely affect your career. What’s more, you’d better think
about all those confidences to which you’ve accidentally become a party, and how dangerous those kind of confidences can be. Why, I’ve known people with information like that get themselves into all kinds of trouble.’ In the dim Moroccan room there was no sound at all, save for Shearson’s laboured breathing. Then, the senator reached out behind him for the ottoman, and sat down on it, still breathing heavily, and still watching Della with those intense, vacant eyes of his.

  ‘If you decide you want to take up a new career in my employment, of course, your whole life’s going to be different,’ he said. There was no expression on his face at all. ‘You’re going to discover a whole new world of diamonds, and mink, and Cadillacs. That part of life which my good friend Alan Hedges calls “The Gravy”.’

  He lay back, his belly spreading wide, his thighs crowding underneath its fleshy overlap like the carcasses of two white whales being towed along by a factory ship. But between them, his erection rose as strong as ever, and his balls were as tight as a fist.

  ‘Are you coming?’ he asked her.

  She stayed where she was while an unseen clock ticked away another minute in her life. A brass-and-ebony clock which had ticked away the lives of unknown Moroccans in Tangier, and which Shearson had brought back with him from North Africa on one of his regular antique-plundering trips.

  During this minute, she didn’t look pretty, even though her hair was shining bright red, and the shadows which fell across her nearly-naked body were soft and flattering. But then she approached the ottoman, and looked down at Shearson’s massive body, and smiled. The smile of a sensual woman, possibly – even the smile of a hooker. But she knew what she had to do and the smile went with it.

  While Shearson lay on his back, she climbed on to him, straddling his thighs first, and then leaning forward, so that his erection was touching her stomach. She held it in her small fist, her small fist with the thin gold rings on every finger, and she slowly rubbed it up and down, until the head swelled purple and glossy, and the slit in it began to gape the same way that Shearson’s mouth was gaping.