"Destroyer - 011 - Kill Or Cure" - читать интересную книгу автора (Murphy Warren)
‘Too late,’ she said. ‘Too late.’
‘It’s not too late,’ he said. ‘I’ll burn it now.’
‘Too late.’
With great fanfare, Bullingsworth brought all the copies of the printouts to the private bathroom in his office and burned them, creating lung-choking smoke.
‘Now are you happy?’ he asked Miss Carbonal.
‘Too late,’ she said, still weeping.
‘I burned everything,’ he smiled.
But Bullingsworth had not burned everything. He had saved his notes, which, among other things, told him why his bank was willing to pay him a salary for volunteer work with the Greater Florida Betterment League. It also told him why so many Florida officials had suddenly been so successfully indicted for kickbacks and extortion. It even gave him a hint as to how the upcoming local elections would come out, and why.
Bullingsworth suddenly felt very proud of his country, secure knowing that America was doing more to fight the disintegration of the nation than met the eye. Much more.
Only one thing in the notes bothered him. That was the section on proposed pay raises for approval by Folcroft, whatever or whoever Folcroft was.
Everyone at his level in the League was getting a 14 percent raise and his was a non-inflationary 2.5 percent. He decided he wasn’t going to let it bother him, because he shouldn’t have been aware of the injustice anyway. He would put it out of his mind. And if he had done this thing as he had planned, he would have lived to collect his non-inflationary 2.5 percent pay raise.
But his resolve disappeared later that day when he met the President of the Greater Miami Trust and Investment Company and wondered why he had received only a 2.5 percent raise. The president, who considered himself an expert in industrial and human relations, told Bullingsworth he was sorry but no one on loan to the Betterment League was getting more than 2.5 percent.
‘Are you sure?’ said Bullingsworth.
‘I give you my word as a banker. Have I ever lied to you?’
The first thing James Bullingsworth did was have a drink. A martini. Double. Then he had another martini. And another after that. And when he arrived home, he told his wife that if she mentioned he had been drinking, he would punch her heart out, noted that she had been right all along about how the bank was using him, put on a fresh jacket - carefully transferring his notebook to the inside pocket—and flailed out of the house yelling how he was ‘going to show those sons of bitches who James Bullingsworth was’.
At first he played with the idea of exposing the Betterment League in the Miami Dispatch. But that could get him fired. Then he thought of confronting the president of the bank. That would get him the increased money, but somewhere along the road the bank president would make him suffer.
The proper course of action came to him when he switched to bourbon. Bourbon focused the mind, elevated it to awarenesses of human relationships not understood in mere gin and vermouth.
Bourbon told him that it was every man for himself. It was the law of the jungle. And he, James Bullingsworth, had been a fool to think he lived in a civilized society. A fool. Did the bartender know that?
‘We’re cutting you off, Mister,’ said the bartender.
‘Then you’re the fool,’ Bullingsworth said. ‘Beware the king of the jungle,’ he said, and remembering a Miami Beach official who once spoke at a church picnic and said he was glad to see young men like James Bullingsworth get involved in civic affairs, he phoned that official.
‘Why don’t we talk this over in the morning, huh, fella?’ said the official.
‘Because, baby, you may not be around in the morning. They’re going to indict your ass next. Parking meter receipts.’
‘Maybe we’d better not talk about this on the phone. Where can we meet?’
‘I want a million dollars for what I have. A cool million, buddy, because this is the law of the jungle.’
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