If Winter Comes (4 page)

“Touché. He’s not a bad
man, you know,” he added quietly. “Just dedicated.”

“I know. Anything else
you want me to check on while I’m there?”

He consulted his sheet.
“Not that I know of. If anything comes up, I’ll track you down.”

She knew that already.
Edwards had a knack for tracking down his reporters that was nothing short of
legendary.

“I’ll check back in
before I go home,” she said.

He nodded, already
buried in his copy again.

She only had to wait
ten minutes before Bryan Moreland’s middle-aged secretary motioned her into his
office. He was sitting behind a massive oak desk, his dark eyes stormy, his jaw
clenched, when she walked in and sat down, eyeing him cautiously. His big hand
was still on the telephone receiver, as if he’d only just finished a telephone
call that didn’t agree with him.

“Would you rather I
come back later?” she asked gently. “Say, in two or three years?”

He took a deep breath,
leaned back in the leather-padded executive chair with his hands behind his
leonine head, and studied her down his straight nose. “I don’t like reporters,”
he said without preamble.

She grinned. “Neither
do I. See, already we’ve got something in common!”

His hard face relaxed a
little. “That was Graham—Dan Graham of the
Sun,
on my neck again for the
federal grant for the landfill experiment.” He sighed angrily. “If only I could
plead justifiable mayhem….”

“Graham thrives on bruises
and contusions,” she laughed.

“So I hear.”

She pulled out her pad
and pen, and he watched her curiously.

“I thought modern
reporters used tape recorders,” he taunted.

“I don’t have a lot of
luck with machinery,” she admitted, peeking up at him. “My car stays in the
shop, my hair dryer blows fuses, and I think the garbage disposal ate my cat.”

His massive chest shook
with deep, soft laughter as he studied her flushed young face with a curious
intensity. “What kind of cat was it?” he asked.

“A duke’s mixture.”

His chiseled mouth
curved faintly. “No doubt, if the garbage disposal got him.”

“Speaking of garbage,”
she said quickly, latching onto the subject, “I’d like to know about that new
trash-into-power concept.”

“It’s all still in the
planning stages right now,” he told her, “but the idea is to take raw garbage
and use it to produce power. We’re running out of land. And it takes one hell
of a lot of land to accommodate the refuse from a population the size of this
city’s. People don’t want to live near sanitary landfills, and they’re
organized. Obviously, the only answer for the future is recycling.”

Shc scribbled
furiously. “And the grant?”

“The planning
commissioner knows more about it than I do,” he admitted, “but we lined up a
matching federal grant and some regional funds to go with it. Give Ed a call;
he’ll fill you in.”

She raised her eyes
from her pad. “Mr. King isn’t my greatest fan,” she told him. “I called him
last week to ask about the land the planning commission was purchasing for the
new airport, and I couldn’t even get any figures out of him.”

He shrugged. “Ed’s like
me; he doesn’t trust newsmen. We’ve learned to be wary,” he explained.

She nodded, but her
mind was still on King. “Do you, by any chance, have the figures on the cost of
the land?”

His dark eyes narrowed
with amusement. “Don’t try to pump me. If you want information on figures, you
ask Ed. That’s his business at the moment.”

She sighed. “Fair
enough. Anyway, back to the landfill. Doesn’t the incinerator tie in to that
energy production idea?”

“Honey, you’ll need to
talk to Tom Green,” he told her, “as soon as he’s comfortably in office. I’m
not that familiar with specific technical aspects of the project. This is one
hell of a big city. I’m more concerned with administration and budget than I am
with various ongoing projects—outside of my downtown revitalization
proposals—and right now I’ve got all I can do to cope with striking Street
Department workers. And the damned horse club wants to hold a parade!”

She smothered a grin.
“You could make the horses wear diapers.”

“Care to apply for the
job?” he asked.

She shook her head. “I
didn’t realize how sweeping your responsibilities were. Of course, we do have a
strong-mayor system here, but I’m a long way from home, and I tend to forget
the size of this city. I suppose that tells you more about my background than a
resume.”

“It tells me that
you’re used to a town of under five thousand, where the mayor can tell you
everything that’s going on. Right?” he asked.

“Right. My father owns
a weekly newspaper in the southern section ofGeorgia .”

“Well, this city has
almost two million people,” he elaborated, “and no city manager. I handle all
the administration, greet crown princes, cope with strikes and riots, hire and
fire department heads, give the Public Safety commissioner hell twice a day and
grant interviews I don’t have time for.”

She felt vaguely
uncomfortable. “Sorry. I’ll hurry. Can you tell me…”

The intercom buzzed.
“Excuse me,” Moreland said politely, and leaned to answer it. “Yes?”

“Bill Harrison on line
one,” came the reply.

He picked up the
receiver. “Hello, Bill, what can I do for you?” he asked pleasantly.

He looked thoughtful,
his darkly tanned fingers toying with a fountain pen while he listened to whoever
was on the other end—apparently a friend, she surmised. Decision flashed in his
dark eyes and he laid the pen down abruptly.

“Tell Carl I’ll meet
with him and his boys in my office tonight at seven. And try not to leak it to
the press, okay?” He cast a speaking glance in Carla’s general direction and
winked at her lazily. “Thanks, Bill. Talk to you later.”

She remembered his
invitation to dinner suddenly, and felt a vague prick of disappointment when
she realized that the meeting would put an end to that. Although why it should
bother her…

“A meeting with the
labor leaders?” she probed with a smile.

“Tell your friend Peck
he’s got a personal invitation. It’s going to get a little rough for you,
kitten.”

“You 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 eat
breakfast?” she asked suddenly.

“Because I don’t
usually have time to cook,” he replied matter-of-factly. “I have a daily woman
who comes in to do the cleaning, but mostly I eat out. I don’t like women
snooping around my kitchen trying to ingratiate themselves, so I don’t keep a
full larder.”

“Oh,” she said
noncommittally and let it drop.

He took her to an
intimate little coffee house with white linen tablecloths and fresh roses in
tiny bud vases and where waltz music danced around them. He sat her down at a
small table in the corner and gave the waitress their order.

As she darted away, he
pulled a cigarette from his engraved gold case.

“I wish you wouldn’t,”
she said.