A little book of names.

Thrrrp. Thrrrp. Thrrrp.

Clark’s right index finger dutifully riffled the upper corner of the notebook. Small, worn, unassuming. He fixed his gaze on the smudged glass of the door he walked through half an hour ago and willed his left leg to stop shaking the faux-leather bench seats of the booth he’d taken up by the window.

The longer he waited, the more it seemed to Clark that everything about this place – from the plastic, easy-wipe menus to the slouched posture of the waitress touring the space and touting top ups from her seemingly endless supply of drip coffee – was like something out of a Hollywood book of cliches.

Like someone had Googled ‘extortion’ and clicked the first image they found. Thought Clark. Maybe this was a bad idea.

Maybe it wasn’t too late to slip the little, black Moleskin back into his jacket pocket and slip away himself, unnoticed, the same way he came in. The only way back out.

Thrrrp. Thrrrp. Thrrrp.

After what seemed like hours, the door eased open and in walked a man that had no business being in a setting like this, except maybe as part of a campaign tour designed to show he was a ‘of the people’. Wasting no time, he paced over to Clark’s booth and slid himself over the bench opposite.

“Nice and conspicuous,” he remarked, smiling, “what is this, Blackmail: The Movie?”

Clark felt his face get hot; he was right, this was a bad idea. The man in front of him laughed.

“Y’know, most people usually just come and see me in my office. Think you might be the first one to actually do the whole ‘shady meeting in a diner’ thing.”

He noticed Clark’s right hand resting on the notebook, forming a kind of protective cage for its contents.

“That what this is about?”

He reached over across the table causing Clark’s right hand to withdraw, sliding the book back towards himself two inches.

“May I?” The man asked with feigned politeness. “I mean, I’m assuming you’ve made copies of all the contents that are with a friend along with a set of instructions to leak them to the local news outlets if anything should happen to you. Right?”

Clark felt his face get hotter. His hand became unstuck and he casually freed the book from its clammy prison. No use letting his companion know that he’d actually been stupid enough not to make copies, or let a friend know what he was doing, or have any kind of plan beyond this meeting whatsoever.

“That’s right,” Clark announced, almost with too much assertion “and I think the papers will love what’s in here.”

The man surveyed Clark’s face for a little too long before casually flipping open the front page. He skimmed, then flicked to the next page. And the next. And the next. Dates, timestamps, locations, descriptions of events, durations of interactions between names of known criminals, all marked down in untidy strokes of ballpoint pen. And with each entry a name that no one in the city would have trouble recognizing. The man holding the book’s name: Alan Willoughby. Mayor.

He let go of the page and let it flip itself shut before sliding it back over

“Listen. Anyone with a biro can write my name down in a book and call it a bestseller. What you have here is a hastily scribbled list of fictional encounters. I mean, the handwriting alone just screams psychopath if you ask me.”

The little book slid its way back over to Clark. He pushed it back again.

“The back page.” Clark insisted, this time with genuine confidence.

Alan flipped the book over and pried open the back over. Taped to its edges was a mottled, off-white envelope. Empty. Alan shrugged, and Clark remembered that he’d stuffed the contents into his jacket pocket earlier. He pulled them out and tossed them between the pair.

“I want two-hundred and fifty-thousand dollars.” He announced, as he watched the mayor unfold each page and see his face staring back at him, confirming the notes scrawled in the book. “I think you’ll agree that’s a fair price.”

Alan’s unfazed appearance briefly gave way to a flash of uneasiness.

“Where did you get this?” He demanded.

“Don’t worry about that,” Clark replied coolly, “there’s plenty more where that came from.” He lied. “Two-hundred-and-fifty-thousand dollars. Or I turn these scribbled down notes into a bestseller.” He put extra emphasis on the last word and immediately wished he hadn’t. He felt bad enough about the extortion, being cocky about it was almost worse somehow.

The truth of the matter was that Clark wasn’t in any position to be so bold. He had no further damning evidence. In fact, he’d only happened upon this notebook and its contents by some force of circumstance a week earlier. There, on a table he almost didn’t sit at, in a café he almost didn’t go into (because it looked like the type of place where they served small, lukewarm drinks and charged for them as if they were three times the size) sat a tattered, old notebook that Clark almost didn’t bother to flick through.

Good thing he did, it would seem, because he was about to become a quarter of a million dollars richer overnight. Alan shifted in his seat a little, the synthetic upholstery was starting to make him uncomfortably warm.

“OK, let’s get this over with.” He muttered. “How do you want your money? Cash-filled duffel bag stuffed in a locker at the railway station? Or do you have some other B-movie plot in mind? Trunk of a non-descript car maybe?”

“Bank transfer is fine.” Replied Clark as he produced another piece of paper and pushed it over with his index finger. “Into this account.”

The mayor simultaneously plucked the sheet from Clark with his left hand and unlocked his phone with his right. He prodded and swiped the screen a few times before pressing the little white button on the side and casually setting it back down on the table.

He motioned towards Clark’s phone with his eyes. “Feel free to check your account.”

As his companion set about shimmying his way out of the booth, Clark stared intently at his account balance. Ten thousand nine hundred and thirty-three dollars and twenty-seven cents. Ten thousand more than he had this morning. Two-hundred and forty thousand less than he’d asked for. His face felt hot again.

“Two things,” spoke the blurred outline of the man in Clark’s peripheral vision, “one. What makes you think I have two-hundred and fifty-thousand dollars just lying around ready to give to some guy with some half-thought-out plan? I’m the mayor, not Jeff Bezos.”

He crammed the pictures back in the little sleeve taped to the back of the notebook and slipped it into his inner jacket pocket. “And two. If you’re going to blackmail someone because they’re friends with some very bad people, then I suggest you don’t do something as unbelievably idiotic as asking them to transfer money to their personal banking account that has their name and other identifying details on it. Clark Harris.

“Now. If you ask me, ten-thousand dollars isn’t a bad consolation prize for being a prime example of an absolute fucking moron. Is it?”

Clark fought the urge to comply and only half-shook his head in agreement. Alan looked over at the door.

“I suggest you take that very nice sum of money and use it to go somewhere a long way away from here because I somehow doubt that my friends in this little book will be feeling as generous as me.” He tapped his left breast pocket with his right hand as he spoke, just in case Clark was having trouble following. He wasn’t.

Clark could feel himself feeling the need to swallow more frequently. Saliva crashed like waves on the back of his tongue just like it used to on those long car journeys when he was younger. He tried to dislodge his eyes from his phone screen so that he could watch the man blackmailing him walk away.

The door with the smudged glass swung open and Clark sank back in his chair.

Should have gone with the duffel bag in the locker.