The Lovely Chocolate Mob - By Richard J. Bennett Page 0,50
to be. We were well aware that this wasn’t necessarily the nicest or kindest way to do it, but there was a consensus that this had been the most effective way. Without knowing who we were, Franklin Burke would wonder for the rest of his life who the three mysterious gentlemen were, men who had invaded his life, knew his secrets and forced him to make a quick and good decision. We also left him with another mystery that he would have to wonder about: Would we tell? Would we blackmail him? We knew his secret, and his wife (and daughter) had suspicions, but perhaps nothing more needed to be said about his recent poor choices. Let the fellow live with his mistake; he’d taken his lumps and now would walk the straight and narrow.
David had successfully snuck in and out of his home as a painter, and we all had done the same with the hospital, complete with audio-visual equipment, and had timed it so any maintenance workers who usually walked around the basement were at lunch. Walter had rerouted the elevator controls, and rendered security cameras he came upon as useless. We were quite pleased with ourselves. We drank our drinks and tried not to smile, but we couldn’t help it.
By now, Franklin had cut all ties with Susan Lovely and turned his mind and hopefully his heart back to Helen Ceraldi-Burke, his wife, the mother of his children.
A saying at my workplace among the engineers, which had a ring of truth, was, “It’s cheaper to keep her.” This should appeal to men who think highly of their financial well-being, and so it ought to apply to Dr. Franklin Burke, as well, if he ever figured it out. This saying is usually true, unless the wife was a dedicated spend-thrift.
“Wish I could have seen his face,” said Walter. “I’d have paid real money to have been there for that.”
“You were needed at the party; you did your part well,” I said, trying to make up for Walter’s loss. “He wouldn’t have budged without your holding the picture.”
“I wonder if we should have brought the kids into this,” mused David.
“What do you mean?” said Walter. “Of course we should have brought them into it. You heard Randall; he wouldn’t have cracked without them being involved!”
David wasn’t totally convinced. “Why couldn’t we have just confronted him with his wife? After all, he knew he was cheating; why not have Helen be a part of this?”
“We could have done that,” I replied. “But do you think it would have been as effective? After all, as you said, he knew he was cheating on her. He just hadn’t thought out the consequences; that’s all.”
“I just feel kind of dirty about this,” said Dave.
“You’re feeling sorry for Franklin,” I said. “You may be feeling some remorse for what we’ve done. Look at the brighter side: We haven’t killed anybody. We haven’t stolen anything. We didn’t show that photograph to his children; we only threatened to.”
“Yeah, but what if he didn’t crack?” asked David. Would we have gone through with it? Walter, would you have done it?”
Walter didn’t reply; he only concentrated on his drink.
“Do you see what we’ve become?” continued David. “We’re a type of vigilante group, almost home-grown terrorists. We scared that man to death!”
“Yes, yes, you’re correct,” I said. “We did all that. We’re guilty. We’ve skirted the law and circumvented common decency. But sometimes common decency is slow, and we needed to move fast, before this relationship with the chocolate lady became more serious.”
Walter chimed in, “It’s a good thing we nipped this romance in the bud, before anything else developed… like a new rich chocolate baby.” He laughed and turned back to his drink.
David looked unconvinced; his attitude was beginning to bother me, so I had to do some fast-talking.
“Besides,” I said, “if we had been gentlemanly, if we had been civil about this, Dr. Burke might have simply said ‘No’ to us, and that would have been that. Don’t you think it’s better to operate in anonymity, without him knowing who we are and where we live?”
“You act as though we were super-heroes, with secret identities, like Batman,” said David.
“More like ‘The Shadow,’ I said. “We didn’t beat anybody up, we only had the ability to cloud men’s minds.”
David began to respond a bit. “I suppose…,” he began. “Life is preferable living in secret than being exposed as to what we’ve done: scaring a man straight.”