The Porkchoppers Read Online Free Page A

happened, the bus ride, the screen test, the instant fame, and the gigantic salary. He had it all for one impossibly fine moment until he remembered his mother, the new widow, waiting alone upstairs, waiting for the only person she knew in Pittsburgh to come home and tell her how she was going to live for the rest of her life. I’ll send for you, Mother, he thought, but told Bernie Ling, “My father’s just died and I can’t leave my mother.”
    â€œOh, well, that’s tough. I’m sorry,”
    â€œMaybe later when things get straightened out.”
    â€œSure,” Ling said. “Here’s my card. When you get things settled drop me a line and we’ll try to work something out.”
    â€œYou say you really think there’s a chance?”
    â€œI never wire my uncle unless I think there’s a damn good one.”
    â€œWell, I hardly know how to thank you—”
    â€œForget it. No, hell, don’t forget it. Drop me a line instead.”
    â€œSure,” Cubbin said, “I’ll do that. As soon as everything’s settled.”
    But he didn’t and six months later Ling left Hollywood for a job with a newly formed New York advertising agency where after a time he grew rich enough to help back a few plays that had depressingly short runs.
    As for Donald Cubbin, there wasn’t a day in his life that he didn’t remember his front-porch conversation with Bernie Ling and the decision that he had made. And there wasn’t a day in his life that he didn’t regret it.

    The six-place, twin-jet Lear 24 bearing Donald Cubbin and his entourage of four had just left Hamilton, Ontario, and was pointing itself toward O’Hare International in Chicago when Fred Mure, having waited until his boss had finished reading the entertainment section of the newspaper, which was the first section he always read, leaned across to tap Cubbin on the shoulder.
    â€œYeah?”
    â€œChicago in an hour. Not bad, huh?”
    God, he’s an idiot, Cubbin thought. But he nodded and said, Not bad, before surrounding himself with the paper again. It was his second trip to Chicago in less than a month and he would make at least three more trips there before the month was over because he knew that they were going to try to steal it from him, and the best place for them to make their try was in Chicago. It was a town, Cubbin thought, where they were very good at stealing almost anything and where, over the years, they had made a fine craft out of stealing what they would try to steal from him, which was, of course, an election.

4
    Not too many persons other than those who retained his services knew exactly what it was that Walter Penry did for a living. His wife had some notion, but she spent most of her time by their pool in Bel-Air while Penry spent most of his time traveling, or in Washington, where the headquarters for Walter Penry and Associates, Inc., was located.
    Penry had about ten associates but his two principal ones were Peter Majury and Ted Lawson and they knew what he did. At least most of the time. Majury was a planner and manipulator and haunted the corridors of Washington dressed invariably, winter and summer, spring and fall, in a long, belted trench coat that looked as though it had been bought cheap at an Afrika Korps surplus sale. Majury spoke in a tone that was just louder than a whisper and spiced with a slight accent that somebody had once described as Slav Sinister, but which was actually German, the legacy of his parents, both Swabians, who emigrated to New Braunfels, Texas, in the thirties and never bothered to learn English. When he wanted to, Majury could also speak with a grating Texas twang.
    Ted Lawson, the other principal associate, was a big, slab-sided man who seemed to gangle as he walked. He was usually all bluff heartiness and employed a loud bray for a laugh because he had decided that that was what people expected from a man of his