Free A Spectacle of Corruption by David Liss Page B

pushed past us selling newly baked meat pies that steamed madly in the cold afternoon.
    Littleton held his shoulders tight, bunching them up toward his ears as though in a perpetual shrug. “I know it was my maggot at the start, but the Goose and Wheel is Greenbill’s place, and if any of them blackguards recollect my face, they won’t think too much of my being there. The end result will be to my prejudice, it seems.”
    “You needn’t go in,” I said. “You’ve proved as helpful as Mr. Ufford could have hoped. You’ve pointed me in the direction you think right, and I can proceed alone from here most assuredly.”
    He looked like a petulant child. “I’ll go. I don’t want you to have to fend for yourself. But I’ve been giving this matter some thought. You asked for five pounds from the priest. That is a great deal of bread from the baker, and all for one man too. Now when you get to thinking about it, all you done for this rhino is to ask me some questions and have me lead you to where I know you ought to go. A shilling here and a shilling there is mighty generous, but as I’ve been your friend all throughout, don’t you think more like half of what you get is what’s called for?”
    “I think you ought to be happy with what you’ve been given and what you’ve been promised.”
    “And happy I am,” he said, and grinned so as to prove it. “It’s just that I’d be happier with what’s fair.”
    “How can you say what is fair until the matter is resolved?”
    “Well, if it goes smooth and all, I think I should get two and a half pounds. That’s all.”
    “Let us say I speak to Greenbill and determine that he is our man. Then what shall we do? How will you earn your two and a half pounds then?”
    Littleton let out a dismissive laugh—merely a method of disguising his confusion. “We shall see, I suppose.”
    At that moment we passed an alleyway hidden in shadows. I turned toward it and grabbed Littleton, pushing him two or three feet inside. As he stumbled, I took from my pocket a pistol and held it to him, not two inches from his face. “I am paid for what I do because, if called to do so, I will not hesitate to discharge my lead into Greenbill’s body. I may have to strangle him or crush his feet or hold his hand in a fire. Will you do those things, Mr. Littleton?”
    To my surprise, he appeared neither frightened nor horrified, only slightly bewildered. “I must say, Weaver, you know how to make yourself understood. I’ll take my odd shilling and be happy that I am asked to set no one ablaze.”
    I returned my pistol to my pocket, and we resumed our walk. Littleton, in an instant, appeared to have entirely forgotten the whole exchange. He was like a dog who, a quarter hour after receiving a beating from its master, lies contentedly at the same man’s feet.
    “Ufford brung all this on himself, if you want my opinion,” he said to me. “Him with his politics and suchlike.”
    I felt myself grow tense. “How do his politics come into play?”
    “You don’t think he’s taken a sudden interest in the poor for no reason, do you? With the election nigh upon us, he’s doing what he can for the Tories.”
    Here was a new twist. I had thought this was but a matter of a wellborn priest pecking his beak into matters none of his concern. If Ufford’s troubles related to the election, however, I understood that things might be more complicated than I had at first realized.
    “Tell me how these porters connect with the election,” I said. I knew little enough of these things, only that the Whigs were the party of new wealth, men without titles or history, men who did not want the Church or the crown to rule over them. The Tories were the party of old families and the traditionalists, those who wanted to see the Church restored to its former strength, who wanted to see the power of the crown strengthened and Parliament weakened. The Tories claimed to want to destroy the corruption of the new