Roadwork - Stephen King [97]
He shook his head, disgusted. "They ought to hold a competency hearing on you road guys, not me."
Fenner said: "I'm going to lay all my cards on the table, Mr. Dawes."
"You know, it's been my experience that when anybody says that they're ready to stop screwing around with the little lies and they're about to tell a real whopper."
Fenner flushed, finally angry. "You wrote the newspaper. You dragged your heels on finding a new plant for the Blue Ribbon Laundry and finally got canned-
"I didn't. I resigned at least a half an hour before they could pink me."
"-and you've ignored all our communications dealing with this house. The consensus is that you may be planning some public display on the twentieth. Calling the papers and TV stations, getting them all out here. The heroic home owner dragged kicking and screaming from his hearth and home by the city's Gestapo agents. "
"That worries you, doesn't it?"
"Of course it worries us! Public opinion is volatile, it swings around like a weathervane-"
"And your clients are elected officials."
Fenner looked at him expressionlessly.
"So what now?" he asked. "Are you going to make me an offer I can't refuse?"
Fenner sighed. "I can't understand what we're arguing about, Mr. Dawes. The city is offering you sixty thousand dollars to-"
"Sixty-three five."
"Yes, very good. They are offering you that amount for the house and the lot. Some people are getting a lot less. And what do you get for that money? You get no hassles, no trouble, no heat. The money is practically tax free because you've already paid Uncle the taxes on the money you spent to buy it. All you owe is taxes on the markup. Or don't you think the valuation is fair?"
"Fair enough," he said, thinking about Charlie. "As far as dollars and cents go, it's fair. Probably more than I could get if I wanted to sell it, with the price of loans what they are."
"So what are we arguing about?"
"We're not," he said, and sipped his drink. Yes, he had gotten his salesman, all right. "Do you have a house, Mr. Fenner?"
"Yes I do," Fenner said promptly. "A very fine one in Greenwood. And if you are going to ask me what I would do or how I would feel if our positions were reversed, I'll be very frank. I would twist the city's tit for all I could get and then laugh all the way to the bank. "
"Yes, of course you would." He laughed and thought of Don and Ray Tarkington, who would have twisted both tits and rammed the courthouse flagpole up the city's ass for good measure. "Do you folks really think I've lost my marbles, then?"
Judiciously, Fenner said: "We don't know. Your resolution to the laundry relocation problem was hardly a normal one."
"Well, I'll tell you this. I have enough marbles left to know I could get myself a lawyer who doesn't like the eminent domain statute-one who still believes in that quaint old adage that a man's home is his castle. He could get a restraining order and we could tie you up for a month, maybe two. With luck and the right progression of judges, we could hold this thing off until next September."
Fenner looked pleased rather than disconcerted, as he had suspected Fenner would. Finally, Fenner was thinking. Here's the hook, Freddy, are you enjoying this? Yes, George, I have to admit I am.
"What do you want?" Fenner asked.
"How much are you prepared to offer?"
"We'll hike the valuation five thousand dollars. Not a penny more. And nobody will hear about the girl. "
Everything stopped. Stopped dead.
"What?" he whispered.
"The girl, Mr. Dawes. The one you were banging. You had her here December sixth and seventh."
A number of thoughts spiraled through his mind in a period of seconds, some of them extremely sensible, but most of them overlaid and made untrustworthy with a thin yellow patina of fear. But above both fear and sensible thoughts was a vast red rage that made him want to leap across the table and choke this tick-tuck man until clocksprings fell out of his