If Winter Comes Read Online Free PDF Page A

mean,” she said,
prickling, “there are actually words I haven’t heard?”
     
    His arrogant head
lifted. “Woman’s libber?” he challenged.
     
    She lifted her own
head. “Reporter,” she replied. “Sex doesn’t have anything to do with it.”
     
    A slow, sensuous smile
curved his mouth, and his eyes studied her with a bold thoroughness that made
her look away in embarrassment. “Doesn’t it?” he asked.
     
    She cleared her throat.
“Uh, where were we?” she hedged.
     
    The intercom buzzed
again. “Phone, Mr. Moreland,” his secretary said apologetically. “It’s the
governor’s office calling about that appropriations request you plan to make
for inner-city revitalization.”
     
    Moreland picked up the
phone. “Hello, Moreland here,” he said, leaning forward to study his calendar
while he listened and nodded. “Yes, that’s right. Oh, roughly a couple of
million. Hell, Ben, you know that’s a conservative estimate! Look, I convinced
the Nelson companies to invest in cleaning up the fifteen-hundred block on a
nonprofit basis. They deal in building products. When the slums are cleared
out, we’ll have to have new housing, right? So the building companies that make
this kind of investment ultimately profit from increased sales, do you see the
light? All I have to do is convince a few other firms, and I’ll have
practically all the local funding I need to match an urban redevelopment grant.
If you’ll do your part, and help me get my paltry two million…”
     
    Carla hid a smile at
the disgusted look on Moreland’s dark face. He didn’t like opposition—that was
evident.
     
    “I know you’re having
budget problems,” Moreland said with magnificent patience. “So am I. But look
at it this way, Ben, slums eat up over half my city services. While they’re
doing that, they pay only around one-twentieth of the real-estate taxes. We
have a yearly deficit of twenty-five thousand dollars per acre of slums, Ben.
That’s a hell of a figure, considering the concentration of them in the
downtown area.”
     
    He picked up the pen
again and twirled it while he nodded. “Yes, I know that. But have you
considered how it affects the crime rate here? Slums account for half of all
the arrests our policemen make, at least fifty-five percent of all juvenile
delinquency. If we can clean up the areas and provide decent housing—give the
kids something to do and get them off the streets—God only knows what we could
accomplish.”
     
    Whatever he was hearing
didn’t suit him. The pen snapped in his powerful fingers. “Oh, good God, you
mean giving a pencil pusher a two percent increase is worth more than cleaning
up my slums? Where the hell is your sense of priorities?”
     
    The answer must have
been a good one, because he calmed down. Wearily, he tossed the two halves of
the fountain pen onto the desk. “All right, Ben, I’ll see what else I can work
out before the budget goes into committee. Yes. Thanks anyway.”
     
    He hung up and studied
Carla’s young face. “Do you like fresh croissants with real butter?”
     
    “Oh, yes!” she said
without thinking.
     
    “Let’s go.” He got up
and opened the door for her, waiting while she fumbled to get her camera, purse
and accessories together.
     
    “I’m out, if anyone
else calls,” Moreland told his secretary.
     
    “Yes, Mr. Moreland,”
she said with a secretive smile.
     
    He led Carla to the
elevator and put her in, pushing the first-floor button.
     
    “Where are we going?”
she asked breathlessly.
     
    “Away from the
telephone,” he replied, leaning back against the wall of the elevator to study
her. “I feel obligated to answer it as long as I’m sitting at my desk. But I
haven’t had my breakfast, and I feel like a decent cup of coffee and a roll.
Even a mayor has to eat,” he added wryly, “although some of my supporters
question my right to do that, and sleep, and go home.”
     
    “Why don’t you