Free Judge Me Not by John D. MacDonald Page A

always the job had been something he could toss over his shoulder at five o’clock. And smacking down the crooked ones had been a pleasure not so much from any innate sense of righteousness, but rather from joy in a good scrap. Detachment had been his armor and maybe, he thought, things had come a bit too easy. Maybe he was a very special type of flawed hero, a guy who could turn the last card without a tremble merely because nothing really important was at stake.
    In that moment he envied Powell Dennison. Dennison believed with all his heart in what he was doing. And he felt guilt that Dennison presupposed a similar dedication in his right-hand man. Powell would never sell out. Teed had thought he would never sell out, either. And now … if the price were high enough … if safety were the price?
    The old saw was that a man has to live with himself. Butif the choice is to either live with someone you can’t respect, or stop living entirely …
    He recognized the potential danger of that train of thought, and tried to push it out of his mind.
    At three o’clock Miss Anderson told him that a Mr. Armando Rogale was here to see Mr. Morrow.
    Rogale came bustling in. He was about thirty, a small, stocky, swaggering man wearing a beautifully cut gabardine suit. His face was pale and, except for the snapping black eyes, as expressionless as an egg. From the small, thin-lipped mouth came a rich and astonishing baritone.
    He shut the door behind him, shook hands briskly, plumped himself down in the chair and stared at Teed with both amusement and speculation in the dark eyes.
    “I appear to be your attorney, Mr. Morrow, according to that Leighton spook.”
    “I don’t really know whether I’ll need a lawyer, Mr. Rogale.”
    “We’ll call this preventative medicine.”
    Teed studied him. “How come you’re willing to be unpopular?”
    Rogale inspected manicured nails. “Good question. This town is a jungle. The jackals run in a pack. You want to be a jackal, you can get along O.K., if you listen to the boss jackal. I’m a porcupine. Every once in a while a jackal takes a slap at me and gets a noseful of quills. Just say I’ve got a porcupine temperament, Morrow. Too sharp to be swallowed. You ever see a skinny porcupine? They live pretty good.”
    “Rebellion for the sake of rebellion?” Teed asked.
    Rogale gave him a sharp look. “What do you want from a lawyer? An emotional strip tease? I grew up in Deron. My old man was a carpenter, an immigrant, a professional patriot. Bill of Rights. Constitution. You know what I mean. In our ward there was a code of behavior. No matter how bright you were, you were supposed to ask for help when you voted, just like you were illiterate. Our ward always threw every vote to the machine. My old man went to night school. He did his own voting and kept splitting his ticket. Bad example to the others. They beat him up three times, and the third time they accidentally cracked his skull and he was in a coma for three weeks before he died. After I passed the bar I tried to set up in Utica, then in Syracuse. No dice. I had to come back here. Now I’m aminor irritant. Someday I want to be some sort of avenging angel—or maybe demon. Cross-examine?”
    “No, thanks.”
    “You and Dennison are on the hot spot. Want to hear a theory?”
    “Sure.”
    “Felice Carboy was a bitch. And a pretty bright gal. She tried to make a trade—her body for hubby’s immunity. No dice, I imagine, from what Leighton told me. So she wanted to add a little more to her side of the scales. Something juicy. Something that would help you and Dennison. It might have been good enough so that you would be willing to make a deal with her. She actually knew more about the Raval operations here than Mark Carboy does. Maybe she trusted the wrong guy. Anyway, somebody found out. She’s potentially dangerous, playing around with you. So kill her and implicate you. Two birds with one thud.”
    Teed said slowly,