Chapter 8
Pacing his office like a trapped animal, Jack Pierce strove mightily to keep the roof from falling in on him. If a breath of hump-scandal were to be enleashed by that damned reporter, Bill Fogarty, not only would he never be Senior Vice-President over Harrison Home Products, he'd be politely booted out of his present position as well. And he didn't see himself starting at the bottom of the ladder again after all these years at I. E. C. Too bad I. E. C. had such a hypocritical puritan code of sexual behavior for its employees.
It was funny, in a way, that the threat of exposing blackmail should be aimed at him through Jean, his wife. He knew he was guilty as hell. He had been living with the fear of being caught in his motel fucking with Connie, his boss' wife. But that was a calculated corporation politics risk-he stood to gain the Vice-Presidency. Connie also gave him a sex thrill he had never had with Jean.
Now, if he didn't come up with something, Jean's naked humping with delivery boys, and maybe the milkman, the gas man and the TV repair man would be spread all over Harrison City.
But Jack Pierce was basically a sensible, rational logical man. He knew that he neglected giving Jean enough hump in order to build his own business career. He had left her alone, night after night, half a week at a time when the need dictated it. And even the nights he had been with her, he had usually been too exhausted from the strains and tensions of his burgeoning career to screw her properly.
Jean was a passionate woman. Pierce knew. A most passionate cunt. It was not the most astonishing thing in the world that she would fill up the emptiness of her cunt with extramarital cock.
Besides, Pierce knew, he was not in a position to seem holier-than-thou. Not after the many torrid nights he had spent fondling the tits and fucking the lush body of Bob Satterlee's wife!
So he could come to emotional terms with the idea that he had been wronged.
What he couldn't take was the notion of being blackmailed.
It was like sitting on a keg of live ammunition. So long as he remained in business life, Pierce knew, the reporter Bill Fogarty could smash him at a whim.
Just let a print of that picture get into the right hands, into the hands of church leaders, into the hands of the bluenoses who swung such influence in the community.
True, Fogarty had promised to destroy the negative. For a price. Ten thousand dollars. But what guarantee was there that Fogarty would also destroy every existing print? No guarantee at all.
Fogarty would probably squirrel a few prints