Free All These Condemned by John D. MacDonald Page B

Steve. Sure.”
    We went around the wing of the house and out to the tables near that croquet layout. We sat down there and I rapped a cigarette on the tin tabletop and lighted it. “Wilma gave me some yak over the phone Wednesday, Randy. Something about saving money.”
    “My God, she has to, Steve. She had to borrow to pay taxes. This thing put her in the hole when she built it, and she’s never got well since she built it. I’ve been after her and after her. Now, for the first time, she’s beginning to listen.”
    “I’d hate to think for even one minute, Randy, that you’d want to do any cuts in my direction.”
    “Now, don’t try to get hard with me, Steve.”
    “Look, you call yourself her business manager. You’re more of a personal secretary, aren’t you?”
    “I manage all her affairs.”
    “It looks to me more like she does the managing. Now, how about that profile thing? Happen to remember that?”
    “I certainly do. You did a good job there, Steve.”
    I knew I’d done a good job. I’d happened to have a friend on a magazine. He let me get a look at a piece they were considering. It was an article on Wilma Ferris. A girl had done it. It was good work. She was a couple of years out of Columbia, free-lancing. It was one of those snide jobs. The magazine wanted a fairly extensive rewrite on it, but the top editorial brains were excited about it. And well they should have been. Nothing libelous, but very, very tongue in cheek. And it would have done quite a job of blowing the Wilma Ferris myth sky high, the mythology I had created. My friend wasn’t placed high enough to clobber it. It was one very hot item indeed. The girl had all the dope. And our Wilma, on her way up the cosmetic ladder, had been one very rough girl.
    I had to move on it. I went to a friend on another magazine. I did him a favor once. I had something coming. And he was placed high enough. He gave the freelancer a staff job. She withdrew the article from the first magazine. He lined up a tame seal to do the rewrite, and between us we took all the sting out of it and stuck in some of the usual glop. The deal was that he would fire the girl after the article was published. But as it turned out, she began to work out pretty well on the staff, so they kept her. So nobody was hurt.
    “I wouldn’t want you going in for any false economy, Randy. Not at Wilma’s expense.”
    “I don’t think you realize how serious this is, Steve. She’s got to pull in her horns. She’s got to take it easy. I mean very easy, or she’ll never get her head back above water. I risked my … position with the things I told her. She’s got to get that Gilman Hayes off her back, let the apartment go—it’s too big, anyway, and rent the Cuernavaca house. Since she’s going to have to live a good deal quieter, anyway, I see no reason why she should continue to retain you. I told her that. Furthermore, Steve, I see no reason for her to retain you even were she quite solvent.”
    “And let things like that magazine story go through?”
    “The public has a short memory.”
    For a few minutes there he sounded fairly impressive. I remembered people saying he was a pretty good man before he went to work for Wilma. He had one of those little businesses that do accounting work, personal financial management, and insurance work for their clients. He had built it up himself, and when he took on Wilma she kept him so busy with all kinds of weird errands and services that he started dropping his other clients, and ended up working for her, giving up his office, maintaining a so-called office in her apartment.
    “I don’t think it would be wise to stop retaining me, Randy.”
    “And I think it would be.”
    “So there we are.” I stood up. “I better look for somebody else to convince, Randy.”
    He shrugged. “You can talk to her, of course. I can’t stop that. But I’m pretty certain she’s made up her mind, decided to take my recommendations. Her