Judge Me Not Read Online Free PDF Page B

good-government bastards are concerned, Raval is laughing.”
    “And offering money.”
    Lonnie stared at him. “I could learn to dislike you, Morrow. Tell Dennison I’ve got a couple of boys who are so stupid they’re more trouble than they’re worth. I’ll set them up so Dennison can knock them over and be a hero.”
    “He’ll never go for that.”
    “Stay in my hair and you’ll both wish you never heard of this town.”
    “So far it only adds up to noise. What can you do? Have us killed?”
    Raval gave him a hurt look. “Jesus, boy. You better stay out of those B movies. How long do you think I’d last if I went around killing people? Jesus!”
    “I know that would be pretty crude, Raval. The point I was trying to make is that outside of killing us, there’s no way of stopping us.”
    “I don’t know why I have to explain all this to you, Morrow. Look. You and your boss nosed around the City Engineer’s office long enough to get the specs rewritten on the repaving of Grayman Street. It took most of the sugar out of that job and cost me personally twelve thousand. All right. Now suppose I was a manufacturer. Somebody starts cutting into my profit. What do I do? First I try to hire them. That doesn’t work. Do I kill them? Hell, no. I look them over until I find a little button. Like a doorbell. I just push on the button.”
    The man’s confidence made Teed’s mouth feel dry. “But …”
    “I take a look at a guy like you. Money doesn’t seem to interest you. Maybe you’ve got enough. So I try something else.” He threw his head back and yelled, “Alice! Alice, come on out here.”
    “Coming!” she called, from the recesses of the house. She appeared almost immediately. She had changed from the sun suit to a crisp white halter-back dress. She sat down in one of the chairs and said, poutingly, “What a terrible headache I got!”
    Lonnie Raval said, softly, affectionately, “Honey-lamb, what happens if I tell you to go out there and see how much grass you can eat?”
    She stared at him. “You going crazy?”
    “No. I mean, what happens if I
really
tell you to do that?”
    She held his gaze for a long moment and then her eyes dropped. “I guess maybe I’d do it, Lonnie.”
    “Show the man.”
    “Gosh, Lonnie, I …”
    “Show the man!”
    The tall, tanned girl walked out into the yard. Raval watched her without expression. She bent over and pulled up a clump of grass. She raised it slowly and put it in her mouth, started to chew.
    “O.K., honey-lamb. Spit out the nasty grass. Come back and sit down. Morrow, you see what I mean? Now this girl here, she was pretty snotty to me last year. So I had to find out which button to push. You find the button, and you own the person. I own her. Anything I tell her to do, she does, don’t you, baby?”
    She looked down at her hands. “Yes, Mr. Raval.”
    “You don’t ever want to make me mad, do you?”
    “No, Mr. Raval.”
    “Because when I get sore enough at you, you know what I’m going to do to you, don’t you?”
    Her voice was a barely audible whisper. “Yes, Mr. Raval.”
    Lonnie smiled at Teed. “I get a big yak out of how those newspaper guys make a big mystery out of how the Commies get those confessions. They ought to come talk to Raval.”
    Teed felt ill at having witnessed this humiliation of a human being.
    “Want to make a bet, Morrow?”
    “What do you mean?”
    “You stay in town long enough, and I’ll own you too. I tell you to eat grass and you’ll eat grass. I know. You’re telling yourself you’re a big strong guy and you’d die before you’d take orders like that. That’s fairy-story stuff, Morrow. Hero stuff, like in the books. People aren’t like that. You can break people. You can break anybody in the world, if you know how to go about it. If you want to be smart, just join my team. Dennison doesn’t have to know. Keep the five grand. You like this little girl? Take her home with you. She’ll do