leverage acquired

The op's payoff is intelligence, and on this hill intelligence is currency. Pemulis walks in on Avril in a cheerleader outfit and John Wayne three-point-stanced in a football helmet and jockstrap, registers the whole tableau ("Pemulis made rather a show of not looking south of her face"), and converts it instantly into leverage — the demure "Hoping for a second of your time," the schoolboy-straight posture that "on Pemulis this posture did look insolent," the promise that "this'll take about two minutes at most." The scene is not about the affair (that meaning is family-hamlet's); it is about a watcher acquiring the one thing the E.T.A. economy trades in — a secret held over the person who runs the place.