The Pay-off

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After two years of working for Sam Tanner I had almost stopped being sensitive about the job. I had almost forgotten a lot of dewy-eyed ideals about government by the people, picked up from professors of political science in college.

From the very first Tanner let me in on everything. A man named Blessing had been his right-hand man for many years. Then Blessing had died of a strep throat, and Tanner told me later he couldn’t find anyone in the organization that he felt could handle the Blessing job.

I had answered the ad in the paper, and Tanner had interviewed me in the cream-colored office on the third floor of the Tanner Building. It had been an odd interview. He had sat behind his cheap oak desk, a great, raw, lean man with black hair curled tightly on the backs of his square white wrists. His mouth was twisted down on one side in sardonic good humor. His black eyebrows met above the bridge of his sharp nose. His long face gave an impression of angularity. I guessed his age at forty-five.

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