That""s the only reason you""re alive." The tape was mailed to Landy, and Abbott shortly afterwards committed suicide (after vowing to Landy in his hotel room: "I""m a patriot." The seemingly-naive country boy is told he must accompany them back to the big city of New York to move into his enormous, inherited mansion on Fifth Avenue." The detective is told that Sternwood is being blackmailedagain.A year previously, he explains how he was pressured to pay gambler and petty blackmailer Joe Brody (Louis Jean Heydt) $5,000 "to let my younger daughter alone.J.Hunsecker - a stern, cold-blooded, morally corrupt, monomaniacal, and treacherous newspaper columnist (allegedly based, in part, on influential real-life Broadway gossip columnist Walter Winchell who could similarly make and break reputations).