Last Contract by Clark Howard

Author:Clark Howard
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: MysteriousPress.com/Open Road
Published: 2020-09-15T00:00:00+00:00

Chapter Ten

The apartment of Noble Foremaster was high up in a terraced building overlooking the city. When its entrance door was opened, one could look from the hall directly through a foyer, a long sunken living room, and across a glass-doored terrace out to a wide expanse of sky. Part of the time the sky was overcast with gray smog, but on the day that Trevor arrived to lunch with his employer, he saw that the terrace was bathed in sunlight and that their table had been set outside.

“You’ll be lunching on the terrace today, Trevor,” said Willis, who had answered the door and let him in. “You look as if you could use some sun; you’re positively pasty.”

“I didn’t know I looked all that bad,” Trevor replied. “Maybe I ought to slip into your room and borrow some makeup.”

“It’s just impossible to be nice to you, isn’t it, Trevor?” the younger man said tightly. “You seem to thrive on being nasty.”

“Maybe it’s the people I’m forced to associate with in my particular line of endeavor,” Trevor said in a clipped voice. “And speaking of my work, please get out my briefcase so I can take it when I leave.”

Willis pursed his mouth like a small fig. “I’m broiling a small veal cutlet for Mr. Foremaster’s lunch,” he said. “Would you care to have the, same?”

“Thank you, no. I happen to be on a restricted diet. Just bring me a glass of milk; skim milk if you have it.”

Willis nodded.

“Wait on the terrace, please. Mr. Foremaster will join you presently.”

Trevor walked down three curved steps into the richly furnished living room and crossed to the glass doors. They were already parted and he stepped through them to the tiled terrace. He sat at the small table that Willis had prepared. The tablecloth and napkins were fine linen, the napkin rings etched sterling; the silverware was heavy and ornate, the crystal delicate and beautiful. A long way from Korea to this, Trevor thought. A very long way.

He remembered Noble Foremaster’s words to him on the C-47 as they flew home from the war. “I had it all once, Trevor,” he had said. “I had the finest of everything and I lived like a prince. My men were the elite group of the System. Then this filthy war came along and took me away from it. But I’ll get it back,” he smiled. “With you as a beginning, I’ll build a new group like nothing the System has ever seen before!”

“What’s this System you’re talking about?” Trevor had asked, puzzled.

“That was just our name for the national organization,” Foremaster explained. “It has many different names, of course. The newspapers usually refer to it as the Syndicate. J. Edgar Hoover and his plainclothes storm troopers insisted on calling it the Mafia, as if every criminal in the world was an Italian. And some years back, when it was just beginning to form as a single cohesive operation, a lot of people called it the Combination.

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