Whom Gods Destroy by Clifton Adams

especially it wasn't going to look right to Barney Seaward who supplied the retailers and furnished the protection in the county.
    But moving out of Big Prairie was the thing I hated most. In the first place, the county sat right in the middle of the state and that meant that not many people would be driving over to Kansas or Texas or Arkansas for their liquor. Big Prairie was the ideal spot for bootleggers because the drinkers had to depend on them. And there was Vida, too. Maybe if I said the word she would leave Sid and go with me, but it seemed a shame to break up that direct connection to the county's political machine. Big Prairie was a tailor-made spot for a bootlegger and it made me sore to think of leaving it.
    But I think Lola was the real reason I hated to leave. I would go along for days keeping her locked in the back of my mind, then suddenly, unexpectedly all that dammed-up hate would break loose again. When that happened I'd go a little crazy, because I knew there wasn't a thing I could do about it. There was no way I could hit back at her. No way I could hurt her. God, I kept thinking, if I only had the money Seaward had! If I only had the power he had! Oh, I could make them crawl, all right. I could put the screws on that husband of hers and that would bring her to her knees. Paul Keating was Lola's weakness, and the startling thing about it was that I hadn't realized it before. Lola was ambition. She lived it. She breathed it. God, I thought—and the idea was as bright as a new sword—if I only had Seaward's power!
    There was no easy way of doing it and no good way of doing it. I'd have to take all I could and play it as well as I could, and the rest would depend on how much I could do in how little time. Assuming, of course, that I didn't get killed in the hijacking. Or if Seaward didn't get suspicious and track me down and send me to the bottom of some river. There were a thousand “ifs” and all of them were deadly, but as long as there was a chance in the gamble, I had to take it.
    So that is the way it would have gone, probably, if it hadn't been for the phone call.
    It was a routine call to the telephone office and they gave me an address out of my territory, way out in Western Heights, where the big homes were.
    “What the hell!” I said. “That's not my territory.”
    “It's nobody's territory,” the phone man said wearily, “but you have to make the delivery just the same. A lug of Scotch, two fifths of gin, and a lug of green-stamp bourbon.”
    “I haven't got it with me. I'll have to go back to the warehouse.”
    “Then go to the warehouse, but get it out there.”
    “Who lives there, anyway?”
    The phone man laughed. “Big Prairie's promising young county attorney. By the way, there's no charge on this. It's on Sid.”
    I got to the car somehow, sitting there for a long while until the wildness began to die. The lousy snob, I thought, she did it on purpose! But that didn't make sense either. If anybody like Lola Keating had asked for a special runner, the phone man would have said something about it. It was just a lousy break and there was nothing I could do about it.
    By the time I got to the warehouse I had cooled off some and begun to think straight again. Probably Keating was throwing a party, and if that was the case Lola would be so busy with that end I wouldn't even see her. The kid checked me out with the stuff and, on the long chance that there might be another runner around, I asked him if somebody else could make the delivery. There wasn't anybody else. So that settled it.
    I almost had myself believing that everything was going to be all right as I wound around the crooked, elm-lined streets looking for the address. When I finally found the place it was pretty much like all the others, a low, ranch-type brick house set back from the street behind a well-cared-for lawn. I looked at the house and thought, So that's where she lives. And then I realized that I was gripping