Chapter 11
He had to knock twice to get any answer, but the sounds of music and laughter from inside told him he had the right house. Jake peered out finally from the bolted door, then closed it to release the latch and let him in. The big trucker had a big smirking grin on his face when he swept the door open and bowed mockingly. "Well, if it ain't the college boy, just in time. C'mon in, Leonard, and take a look at the action."
Leonard felt his stomach tighten in revulsion at the promise of untold horror the darkened house offered him. He knew the worst moment would be the first ... if he could get over the shock of seeing his wife naked with another man, as she was sure to be, since Jake Ralston wore only a pair of undershorts, then he could manage the rest with aplomb.
He saw her before his eyes had adjusted to the darkness. The body was definitely hers, all right, and she was naked on all fours ... his own wife slavingly taking another man's cock up in her cunt from behind! He felt a surge of hurt and grief, but he swallowed back his own pain and faced Jake Ralston, who looked at him with a leering victorious grin wetly on his lips, clearly the confident smirk of a man who had won.
Leonard shook his head uncomprehendingly ... to think I let it come to this! All Anna needed was a man and I couldn't even offer her that! I've let this bastard push me and order me around until there's nothing left of me but a hollow shell! Well, not any more, pal ... you're going to see a brand spanking new Leonard! Or maybe the Leonard I used to be, before I let this son of a bitch get the best of me.
He looked back at Anna and the man he didn't recognize. His fingers gripped her buttocks, his wife's buttocks, squeezing groans of passion from her throat as her full-mounded breasts jiggled and bounced nakedly beneath her. She had not seen him yet and he didn't want her to ... she had gone too far to turn back now. It was for him to make the next move.
"Jake, I want to talk to you," Leonard said calmly, reveling in the look of surprise on his boss's face.
"What about? Can't it wait? The rest of us didn't come here to talk business, sonny," Jake chuckled. "Take a look at your wife there ... she ain't worried about business, is she?"
"It's about a raise, Jake," the young management trainee said innocently.
"A raise! You must be outta your mind, college-boy! Why don't you go home and let us grown-ups play," he laughed over the loudness of the stereo music.
"It's not a raise for me ... it's for Luke Taylor and Al Armstrong. And Bobby Wilder and Gene Davis and a few others. They've been making the same wages for so long now, I thought you'd like to up their salaries a bit."
Jake looked around as if the walls had ears. "Come over here," he demanded and grabbed Leonard's shirt front and pulled him into an alcove off the dining room. "Where'd you get those names, boy?"
"Take your thieving hands off me, Ralston, or your ass will rot in the state prison!" Leonard's voice was strong and assertive and Jake removed his hand immediately. "I know all about your little business, Jake old buddy. How you've been drawing paychecks under a half-dozen names for over two years. You kept men on the payroll who were fired a long time ago. In fact, I strongly suspect you only hired them because they were deadbeats and you knew you could get rid of them. You have the pay records sent to you before they go to Maryland and you've been adding the phony ones for two years, collecting the checks before they went out for disbursement and depositing them in dummy accounts you somehow worked out with Citizens' State Bank in Pine Junction. I don't know about that part of it ... yet ... but I imagine you have an accomplice there. Maybe one of the men in this room. It all adds up to a pretty penny, Jake, over fifty thousand dollars in fact, and it would probably mean about, say ten to twelve years for embezzlement, plus a little for forgery and fraud, and maybe...."
"All right, all right ... but you can't prove it!" His voice was thin all of a sudden and his statement had more of the tone of a question. Could he prove it? Jake seemed to be saying.
"I've got photocopies of everything in your files, Jake, enough to put you away for a long time."
"That's burglary! You've got no right to be nosin' around in my files!"
Leonard pushed a finger against Jake's burly chest. "Call the cops, then."
"You lousy little shrimp, I oughta' break your fuckin' neck!" Jake's thick meaty hands shot out for the young husband's shoulders, but Leonard knocked them away with two quick feints.
"That's another thing they taught me in college, Jake ... boxing. So try that again and one of us will be missing a few teeth.
And if you've got any ideas about killing me and taking the copies, forget it ... there're another two copies already in the mails on their way to the two old friends of the family. And one's an attorney, with instructions to turn it all over to the police if anything happens to me. You see, I wouldn't trust you any further than I could throw you, you lard-ass son of a bitch." Leonard's voice was steady and sure, without the rising pitch of emotion that would have made him less convincing. He had the dead-sure certainty of a self-made man and Jake knew he was licked.
"What'ya want? Money? There's lots of it and there could be a lot more. They're stupid as hell in the home office and we could make this pay really well, you and me."
"I don't want any of your dirty money, Jake. And you'll get all those men off the payroll over the next six weeks, one a week. All I want is what I was sent here for. Experience in management. No more office flunkie business, Jake, we run things by the book now, together!"
"That's all? Nothing more?" Jake was incredulous, too anxious to be relieved.
"That's all. You haven't got a thing I want, Jake, not a thing." He heard a familiar gasping voice from somewhere in the living room, but didn't bother to look. There was plenty of time for mending those fences later, and for the first time in months, he was certain he could handle the job nicely indeed.
"There is one thing, Jake," he said in a whisper, his hand intentionally on his boss's shoulder.
"Sure, name it, it's yours!"
Leonard looked around the darkened room, lewdly rubbing the bulge in his crotch in a manner Jake could not misunderstand. "Where's that sexy blonde wife of yours? I might as well get warmed up if I'm going to enjoy the party!"
Jake glowered at him, his neck flushed with red and his eyeballs bulging until they looked like they would pop from their sockets. He started to speak, but turned to walk away instead. "I'll find her," he mumbled as he walked away. And suddenly he didn't look so big at all to Leonard, and getting smaller all the time!