Ed Hartley -- End

But the corrupt members of the State Legislature had him over a barrel, too.

Fifteen minutes down the road after leaving the Governor's private offices, Ed's cell phone started blowing up.

The first to call him was Tom Scarlet, the oldest and most beloved member of the state legislature.

"Mornin Edmund," he said as cordially as you please.

Ed didn't like him, but he was afraid to cross him right now. The voters had a soft spot for the 87 year old World War II veteran. He always came off as the kindly, old Grandfather. Too bad none of them knew him as the Oversight Committee did.

"Good Morning, Mr. Scarlet."

"You're a good man, Ed even though you have a thing for young ass, and you know a lot about my indiscretions as well."

Ed pulled his Lexus into a deserted insurance building parking lot.

"What can I do for you?" he sighed.

Tom cleared his throat.

"Governor Blackwell just called me hoppin mad. He wanted to open up a congressional investigation into your leisure practices, but I don't see a reason things hafta get that kind of nasty."

"Well, I'm glad to hear that, Tom," he said with a bit of genuine relief.

"Yeah, well I've always thought you were a good man, Ed, but I can't speak for the boys in the oversight committee."

Ed nodded to himself.

"You and me need to stay close, right now. We are close, right?"

Ed sighed hard.

Before the discovery of Governor Blackwell's illegal activities, the Oversight Committee had been going after Tom Scarlet with both barrels.

The old, Grandfatherly Senator had been making a little money on the side with his racketeering business - breaking legs for bucks.

Ed ground his teeth. The fact that he had to utter the next sentence made him want to take a shower.

"There is no active investigation pertaining to you at the moment."

"Yes sir. That's good to hear. Please just see to it that it stays that way."

Ed sighed.

"And while I have you on the horn, there's some other boys who wanted me to speak to you on their behalf. Buddy Carson would rather no one know about his unfortunate weakness for indigent, young men, and Bill Adams doesn't want anyone to find out about his involvement with certain interest groups."

Ed sighed with frustration. "You're talking about some really bad boys."

"I know, but they also come in real handy in troubled times."

Ed shook his head. "Tell them we're not paying attention to them right now."

Tom laughed. "That's my boy! Just you don't worry about a thing. We're behind you."

Ed hung up.

But before he could pull out into the street, his phone started ringing again. He pulled into an empty parking space, picked up, and muttered a greeting into the receiver.

"We've gotta talk, Ed," Bob Vermin said.

Ed sighed. "I already know that Governor Blackwell's been on the horn."

"Then you know why we're calling. It's gotta be you Ed. It's a shitty situation, but you did get us into it."

Ed huffed. "You mean to tell me that you'd let this smug son-of-a-bitch get away with selling drugs to kids and ripping taxpayers off?"

Vic Swartz who had been listening in spoke up. "It's not about that, Ed. He's got worse stuff on us than he has on you. We have wives that'll leave us and prisons we'd have to go to. The worst thing that can happen to you is that you get impeached and lose your ability to teach in a University."

"Just what exactly are you proposing?" Ed snapped.

"That you go public with all the evidence against the governor and everything you've done as well. The fallout for you wouldn't be as bad if you did it that way. Hell, you might even get to be Governor."

"What makes you think I don't have the same stuff on all of you that Blackwell has?"

Bob Vermin laughed assertively. "Nice try, Ed. But you don't have the resources."

"Can I think about this?"

Vic spoke up again. "Ed we have to open an investigation on you right now. You don't have any other options. Go public, or we'll have to."

Ed hung up.

He was screwed.

So Ed Hartley, Lieutenant Governor, after leaving Kathy Weiss' trailer, called Raymond Wright, the Producer of the Nightly News and told him everything.

Governor Blackwell's enterprise of selling drugs to kids and ripping off taxpayers.

Tom Starlet's racketeering business.

Buddy Carson's Sadistic taste for indigent, young men.

Bill Adam's status as a Grand Wizard of the largest chapter of the KKK in the state.

Bob Vermin's Senator-for-hire status with the interest groups.

Vic Swartz problem with embezzling money from his own budget.

Two hours later, Ed sat in his den, much as he did now watching the special report on CNN concerning his public airing of dirty laundry - his own and everyone else's.

Seeing himself say the things he said on television made him feel nauseous, and he couldn't get over how old and pale he appeared - how tired he looked.

Still, it gave him a certain amount of sick pleasure to think of how all the dirty bastards must be squirming.

That's when his doorbell rang.

He stood and looked around the room with its hardwood floors and white walls - diplomas hung neatly in a perfect square behind the big screen TV.

A kind of sinking feeling came over him.

He walked through the paneled hallway and into the Foyer where he peeked through the frosted window to the left of the doorway. Outside, Kathy stood on the porch wearing a black, leather jacket, and her mother stood beside her wearing a navy parka with a black wool cap and tresses of curly, died-blond hair poking out of the sides.

Relief washed over him.

He opened the door.

"Kathy, I'm glad you came."

She nodded. "We saw the news."

He shrugged. "So would you like to come in?"

She shook her head. "No, we just stopped by for a minute on our way back home. I wanted to congratulate you."

He gave her a confused look, and she responded with a mischievous grin. "You were a real public servant for the first time today. You'll probably be impeached, and I doubt The University will let you continue to teach. But you did the right thing."

Now he really was confused. He shuffled his feet and furled his brow.

She gave him an incredulous look. "Underage Russian prostitutes? Paying an official to lose the results of your child's DNA test?"

Ed sank.

"I'm glad you did the right thing, for once. That'll go toward reversing some negative karma, but you really are a bad man. It's too bad that you did nothing illegal."

Ed's mouth fell open.

"As for our encounter, I never intended for it to go further. I was just an insecure Freshman looking to increase my standing. It was just a fling, and I exercised bad judgment."

Ed shook his head. "I don't understand."

"As for your marriage proposal, that really didn't have anything to do with me. You'd stained yourself with your bad behavior again, and you were looking to restore the faith of your constituents by making me an honest woman."

She handed him his ring.

"I never intended to marry you; I just wanted to see if I could get you to do what you were supposed to for once."

"That's really heartless."

She smiled. "I'm in no position to refuse child support, but I don't want you to have anything to do with our baby. I don't think you'll have a problem with that."

She nodded at her mother and started to turn away, but just before walking back to her mother's rickety, old blue Tempo she turned back to him.

"And don't come by my house again."

Edmund James Hartley sat in his den with all the lights out late into the night staring at his father's .38 sitting in his lap gleaming like a new car.

Since when had he become the bad guy?

At first, he hadn't wanted to be in government at all. He was an Assistant District Attorney and part-time law professor when the previous Governor approached him about becoming the State Attorney General.

At the time, he didn't want to go into politics because he didn't want to soil his good name, but in the end, he sold out.

Now, he was old and alone inside a big empty house. He had more than enough money to retire on, but no one to share time with, and when he died, everything that he'd ever done would likely be forgotten in short order - just another empty suit with no legacy to honor him.

And he deserved whatever he got.

He lifted the gun up off his lap and tucked the cold barrel under his chin clinching his eyes shut.

His hand trembled.

His mouth went dry.

The sweet smell of gun oil was thick in his nostrils.

He thought of his father. Bold and righteous in his uniform and wondered if his own father had ever had any moments of weakness.

The faces of the women he'd been with cycled through his head.

The Russian prostitutes with their hair spilling into his face, Michelle Farthing who died giving birth to a baby girl that was later put up for adoption because no one knew who the father was for certain, and then Kathy Weiss who in a rather cold way had held up a mirror to him and pointed out how ugly he'd become.

He sucked in a hard breath.

His finger tightened around the trigger.

A loud crack resounded through the room.

Ed opened his eyes.

Dust from the sheet rock ceiling snowed down upon him.

He couldn't.

The same selfishness that had gotten him into this mess was going to make him live through the fallout.

He stood up, walked across the room past the big screen Television and stared in the mirror. He hated the dried-up and distorted version of himself that stared back, but he had to keep ongoing.

It was time to pick up the pieces of his life and do the right thing. He needed to find out where his other child was and own up to the fact that he was the father, and even though Kathy Weiss had been cruel he would take care of her, too.

His father hadn't raised him to be like this.

As he pondered his atonement, the doorbell rang once more.

He placed his father's revolver on the coffee table and crossed through the dark hallway into the foyer. When he opened the door, he found a man he'd never seen standing outside.

"May I help you?"

"Mr. Hartley?"

Ed nodded.

The man reached inside his trench coat, and what he took out of his inside pocket seemed so incredible that Ed didn't recognize it, at first.

"Representative Scarlet sends his regards," the man said.

"No," He pleaded.

But his cry was silenced by the loud crack of the man's pistol.

And Ed Hartley knew no more.