Free The Blackmail Club by David Bishop

compensation is monetary. The man’s an ape.”
    Art Tyson leaned into the bar and ordered another. Jack was close enough this time to hear him say double scotch rocks; he was also close enough to tell Tyson’s suit reeked of cigar smoke. When he turned, his shirt, between its struggling buttons, gave the other guests more than a subtle peek at his belly hair. He stumbled and nearly fell on his way over to corner Troy Engels, one of the CIA’s introverted and amoral geniuses. Engels had been the deputy director in charge of some of Jack’s quiet ops.
    Tyson’s behavior was drawing stares. Jack had put down his drink and moved toward Tyson when Chief Mandrake stepped close. “Let me. I know how to handle Arthur Tyson.”
    Mandrake gently gripped the gruff man’s elbow. “Mr. Engels, please excuse Arthur. I need his opinion on something.” The chief’s hand dented Tyson’s doughy back as he began moving him toward the door.
    “Welcome to our noble profession, Mr. McCall,” Tyson said in a loud voice gurgling with phlegm. “Call me. I’ll tip you off to the ins and outs of being a DC snoop-dick.”
    “My driver will take Mr. Tyson home,” Mandrake said. “He’ll come back tomorrow for his car.”
    The chief again nudged Tyson toward the door. The man’s head flopped to one side spilling liquid from the corner of his mouth. Tyson swiped at it with the back of his hand.
    Jack knew that Sam Spade would have just jammed Tyson’s hat on his head and booted him out the door. In Sam’s day these things had been simpler.
    Nora was standing beside Jack when Mandrake finally got Tyson out of their office. Jack breathed in the fresh scent from her silky hair. “Keep mingling, Senor,” she said before surreptitiously squeezing his tush and walking away. She looked back and smiled.
    Jack forced his eyes off Nora’s butt and strolled over to the hawk-nosed Troy Engels standing alone near the window. For a moment the two men stood quietly watching the river of cars flowing past the building.
    “You miss the ops in my department?” Engels asked.
    “No.”
    “Some people do deserve to die, Jack. You must believe that the world would be better off today had someone taken out Adolph Hitler or Saddam Hussein before those monsters destroyed their countries and damaged the rest of the world.”
    “I agree in concept, but the rub is who gets to choose the targets and the qualifying infractions?”
    “Nothing’s perfect, Jack.”
    The top dogs in the intelligence community who were opposed to Engels’s department called him the director of assassinations. Jack had spent many long, lonely nights thinking about Engels’s department and his own past role in their missions. He wanted to respond to this man who worked the buttons on most of the agency’s black ops, but this was neither the time nor the place.
    “I’m sorry you had to deal with Tyson,” is all Jack said. “I should not have let him in.”
    “P-p-please k-keep him away, J-j-jack.”
    The spittle from Engels’s “p” hit Jack’s lips—scotch. He casually wiped his fingers across his lips. He had never before heard Engels stutter.
    The last of the guests left two hours later; the catering service soon thereafter. Jack and Nora were alone.
    She came to him. “Why don’t you come home with me? I make a great omelette.”
    “Thanks, but I’m whipped. These kinds of events aren’t easy for me. You did a great job setting it all up and keeping things moving smoothly all night. But I think I need to head home. I’m hoping Saturday will be a sleep-in morning; I’ll talk to you sometime tomorrow.”
    She hugged him and went out the door.
    Jack flipped off the lights and looked around his empty office. His eyes finding the faint light wafting over from a few lit offices in the building across the street.
    He grabbed a half-full liter of Maker’s Mark by the throat, took a long swig, and collapsed onto the couch in his office. It had been raining on and