The Quiet Game by Greg Iles Page B

will never sell it.”
    â€œEverybody has a price. And we know Presley needs money.”
    â€œYou just said it could be a meal ticket for his kids for years.”
    â€œPresley knows me. By reputation, at least. I’m a nationally known prosecutor, a famous author. If I stand for anything, it’s integrity. Same as you. I’ll show Presley a carrot and a stick. He can sell me the gun, or he can watch me go to the D.A. and stake my reputation on convincing the authorities that you’re innocent. I have contacts from Houston to Washington. You and I are pillars of our communities. Ray Presley’s a convicted felon. At various times he’s probably been suspected of several murders. He’ll sell me the gun.”
    A spark of hope has entered Dad’s eyes, but fear still masks it, dull and gray and alien to my image of him. “Buying evidence with intent to . . . to destroy it,” he says. “What kind of crime is that?”
    â€œIt’s a felony. Major-league.”
    â€œYou can’t do it, Penn.”
    His hands are shaking. This thing has been eating at him every day for twenty-five years. Long before Presley’s blackmail began. God, how he must have sweated during the malpractice trial, worrying that Leo Marston would learn about Hillman’s murder from Presley, his paid lackey. I saw this situation a hundred times as a prosecutor. A man lives morally all his life, then in one weak moment commits an act that damns him in his own eyes and threatens his liberty, even his life. Seeing my father in this trap unnerves me. And yet, to get him out of it, I am contemplating committing a felony myself.
    â€œYou’re right,” I tell him. “We’ve got to take the high road.”
    â€œTalk to Mackey?”
    â€œYes. But I want to feel him out first. I’ll call him tonight. Maybe stop by his house.”
    â€œHe won’t be home. There’s a party tonight, a fund-raiser for Wiley Warren.” Riley Warren—nickname “Wiley”—is the incumbent mayor. “Your mother and I were invited, but we weren’t going to go.”
    â€œMackey will be there?”
    â€œHe’s a big supporter of Warren’s. You’re invited, by the way.”
    â€œBy you?”
    â€œNo. By Don Perry, the surgeon hosting the party. He stopped me at the hospital after lunch and asked me to bring you along.”
    â€œWhy would he do that? Especially after the story in the paper?”
    â€œWhy do you think? It’s a fund-raising party, and he thinks you’re loaded.”
    â€œThat’s it, then. I’ll talk to Mackey there. If he sounds amenable, I’ll set up a formal meeting, and we’ll figure a way to sting Presley.”
    Dad lays his hands on his desk to steady them. “I can’t believe it. After all this time . . . to finally do something about it.”
    â€œWe’ve got to do something about it. Life’s too short to live like this.”
    He closes his eyes, then opens them and stands up. “I feel bad about the Paytons. I feel like we’re buying me out of trouble by burying the truth about Del.”
    This is true enough. But weighed against my father’s freedom, Del Payton means nothing to me. Blood is a hell of a lot thicker than sympathy. “You can’t carry that around on your shoulders.”
    â€œBack during the sixties,” he says, hanging his stethoscope on a coat rack, “I was tempted to ask some of those Northern college kids over to the house. Give them some decent food, a little encouragement. But I never did. I knew what the risks were, and I was afraid to take them.”
    â€œYou had a wife and two kids. Don’t beat yourself up over it.”
    â€œI don’t. But Del Payton had a wife and child too.”
    â€œMom told me you patched up two civil rights workers from Homewood after the doctor over there refused to do it.