He took an envelope from his back pocket, dropped it on the table. It contained $2,000 in fives, tens and twenties, none of them new.
"That's it," he said. "Two thousand. My one and only contribution to this extortion racket. We can buy a month. I'm going to Washington tonight to tell the government."
"Do you remember we were warned?," Rucker said. "If we talk, there'll be an earthquake. A giant one. Everyone in San Aquino may die."
"I don't think so," Feinstein said. "They'll have their eight thousand. And no one has to know that I've gone to Washington."
"You don't think so?" said Boydenhousen loudly. "You don't think so? Well, I can't live by what you think."
"Look," he said. "We opened up this community to you Feinsteins, way back in the 1920's when a lot of towns just weren't too all-fired happy to have your kind. We welcomed you. And I'm not saying you didn't like build the hospital and everything, but I am saying, you're a part of this community, dammit, and you don't have any right to endanger us. That's what I'm saying."
"And I'm saying, Sonny Boydenhousen, that we weren't all that welcome, but we made some good friends, of which there was never a Boydenhousen, which also is no great loss. What I'm saying is, I'm part of a larger community and that's every poor town in this state. Every town that may someday be digging its babies out of piles of rock because they can't afford to pay. That's what I'm thinking."
"And I'm thinking," yelled Sonny Boydenhousen, "how fucking grateful I am that we can feel safe and not have to worry about that. How grateful that my kids are safe from that. You want to kill my kids, Harris? Is that it?"
Harris Feinstein lowered his gaze to the corporate table, a glistening, polished oak masterpiece, handed down from Curpwell to Curpwell, through generations of San Aquino patricians. The Curpwells were good people. He knew their family well. So did his father,
That was one of the grievously hard things about this decision. He wavered for a minute, looking at the faces of the men around him. Friend, enemy, he did not want to endanger one life. There were part of his life, all of them. They meant, really meant, more to him than someone living in Los Angeles or San Francisco or any of the other California communities that might be the next to be blackmailed for earthquake insurance.
Really, Harris, he told himself, aren't you being a bit prideful? Remember how you and Sonny were keychain guards on the 1938 San Aquino football team, the year you beat Los Angeles Gothic. And how when you were labelled the dirtiest football player in the state, the whole team celebrated by stealing a keg of beer and getting drunk? And Wyatt. Wyatt never made the football team, saying he had to hunt to keep food on the family table. But everyone knew the reason Wade Wyatt went hunting in the fall was because he didn't want to be accused of chickening out on football. Wade's father always put food on the table, but Wade had seen a movie in which the young frontiersman didn't go to school because he had to hunt for the family's supper.
And Dourn, loverboy Dourn. Dourn who got Pearl Fansworth pregnant in the junior year of high school and how Pearl had to go away. And how Dourn got Sonny's sister pregnant in his senior year and how he had to marry her.
And of course, Les Curpwell. A beautiful human being.
Harris Feinstein lowered his eyes to the table again and wondered why everything wasn't as clear as when he was in school or studying the Talmud with his father. Then, things were clear. Now, nothing was clear but that he felt very unintelligent and longed for someone to tell him what was right and good and which way to go. But that could not be. God had given him a mind. And meant for him to use it. So Harris Feinstein looked at his friends, and at the jewelled flag pin on Sheriff Wade Wyatt's collar, and he said, very sadly and very slowly:
"I must do what I must do and it is not an easy thing. And I am only sorry that you are not doing this thing with me."
His envelope sat on the table. Sonny Boydenhousen took a similar envelope from his attache case and put it on the table. Curpwell added another and so did Dourn Rucker.
Sheriff Wyatt gathered the envelopes together and pushed them into a small plastic garbage bag. The four other men watched silently as he closed the bag with a red covered wire tie. He made a small bow of it.
"Leak-proof," he said. No one smiled. Harris Feinstein avoided the other men's eyes.
"Well, goodbye," he said.
"You going to Washington?" asked Dourn Rucker.
"Tonight," said Harris Feinstein.
"Oh!" said Sonny Boydenhousen. "Look. Those things I said about your family being welcomed here in San Aquino, like we were doing you a favor ... well, you know what I mean."
"I know," said Feinstein.
"I guess you're going to do it," said Curpwell.
"Yes."
"I wish I could say I thought you're doing the right thing," said Boydenhousen. "And I wish I could say I would want to do it with you. But I think you're doing a very wrong thing."
"Maybe, but...." Harris Feinstein did not finish his sentence. When he had shut the large brass-studded door to the most hallowed sanctum of power in San Aquino, the Curpwell office, Sheriff Wyatt made a suggestion.
He did so fingering the notches on his gun.
Les Curpwell didn't bother to answer and Dourn Rucker told Sheriff Wyatt that Feinstein would probably pound him into dentifrice anyway, so Wyatt might as well put away the gun.
Curpwell noted that Feinstein might be right. So did Rucker. So did Boydenhousen. But they all agreed that they all had families, and hell, weren't they all really doing enough-paying for everyone who lived in the town and county of San Aquino?
"I mean we're acting like damned philanthropists. Two thousand dollars from each of us, every goddamned month. We didn't ask anyone else to chip in, not even the sheriff because he doesn't have the money," said Rucker. "So shit, nobody's got any right to point a finger at us. Nobody."
"All I know," said Boydenhousen, "is that we've got a chance to be quakeproof. Now going to Washington may louse it up. And that's just not right. We should just pay up and keep quiet."
"Gentlemen, you are right and Harris is wrong," said Les Curpwell. "Only I'm just not sure how much righter we are."
Then Sheriff Wyatt announced a plan.
"Look, I get my instructions on delivery in the morning. Suppose I go to the place, wherever it is, and hide. You know, camouflage, like the Ranger training I picked up in National Guard summer camp. Then, when whoever it is comes for the money, I follow. All right. When I get 'em all, using my Ranger techniques, bam! I let them have it. Let loose with a Carbine. Bam. Hand grenades. Whoosh! Bam! Whoosh! Kill or be killed. I give you the word of a captain in the National Guard of the State of California."
The voting of the three leaders of San Aquino was unanimous.
"Just leave the money where they tell you."
Les Curpwell sat in his office a long time after all the others had left. Then he walked to his desk and telephoned a close friend who was an aide to the President.
"If what you say is true, Les, they have the power to gut the whole state of California."
"I think it's true," Curpwell said.
"Wow. All I can say is Wow. I'm going right to the top with this. I can get to see the President immediately on this one."
The aide was shocked by the President's reaction. He had delivered the report thoroughly and professionally, the way Les Curpwell had given it to him.
Lester Curpwell IV, former OSS agent, thoroughly-reliable Lester Curpwell. The time. The threats. The earthquake. No guesses. Hard information.
But when the aide was through, the President said:
"Okay. Forget about it. Tell no one."
"But, sir. Don't you believe me?"
"I believe you."
"But this is something for the FBI. I can give them all the details."
"You will give nothing to anyone. You will be absolutely quiet about this. Absolutely. That is all. Good evening."