The Buck Passes Flynn (12 page)

Necktie’s eyes darted about the board. Manny’s eyes saw everything without appearing to move.

Knowing little about the game, Flynn soon concluded Manny would be the winner.

“Tell me,” Flynn said, “just to keep up the chatter and distract the players, mind you—not many tournaments enjoy the luxury of such silence—doesn’t George Udine have something to do with East Frampton?”

“Who?” said a voice absently.

“George Udine. Of the Udine Corporation. Maybe you know him better as George Lewis.” “No.”

“Yeah,” said the youngest man. “He came by a couple of summers ago.”

“He did,” confirmed another.

“He did?” Flynn said by way of encouragement.

“In this humungous yacht,” the youngest man said. “Barely fit in the harbor. Had to anchor way out.”

“Never came ashore,” said the toothless one.

“He had a senator and an actress on board,” said the youngest man. “They came ashore.”

“But Udine himself never came ashore, is that it?” Flynn asked lazily.

“They were only here overnight,” said the youngest.

Flynn finished his chowder, his sandwich, and his
milk. He waited for the game to get into its final stages before springing his big question—in his own way.

“ ’Course, I also heard what happened to this town last spring. April, was it?”

Again, only a few of the obsessed men gave him a quick glance.

“Now, that was a remarkable thing,” Flynn said.

Others gave him a quick glance, but no one said anything.

“Just think of it,” Flynn said.

There was no answer.

“That such a thing should happen to a town.”

No answer.

“Every man, woman, and child of you.”

No answer.

Flynn glanced around and saw faces reddening and jaws tightening. It seemed to him the action on the backgammon board had slowed. Their obsession with the game had diminished.

“Marvelous thing, that,” mused Flynn.

No answer. But three were sitting back staring at him.

“Every man, woman, and child of you waking up one fine day and finding one hundred thousand dollars in cash in your laps.”

The game stopped.

Everyone, including the players, was watching Flynn.

He was glad he had eaten.

Flynn said, mildly, “Hell of a place to leave the game. Do you mean to declare a winner at this point?”

The man in the necktie said, “What are you talking about, mister?”

“Backgammon,” asserted Flynn.

After a long pause, the man in the necktie said, “You said something about everyone in this town receiving some money last spring.”

“Ach, sure,” said Flynn. “Everyone knows that.”

“What do you mean, ‘everyone knows that,’ ” said whiskey voice.

“Didn’t I read about it in the
Wall Street Journal?”
said Flynn. “Or was it about some other town?” He looked from staring face to staring face. Pulses throbbed in their temples. “Ach, no. I’m sure it said East Frampton, Massachusetts.”

Two men in the booth behind Flynn got up and left the building.

The man with the necktie said, “What do you want, mister?”

Flynn said, “As long as I know about this remarkable occurrence, whatever the source of my knowledge, I’d like to ask you gentlemen—quietly, mind you—your opinion as to where such scads of money came from…?”

More men left the room.

Beside Flynn, Manny got up and indicated he wanted to get out of the booth.

“A simple question …” said Flynn.

Manny stepped over him.

A steady stream of men made for the door.

Finally only the man in the necktie remained seated, staring at Flynn across the table.

“Surely,” Flynn said directly to the man in the necktie, “in all this time you must have wondered where the money came from …?”

The man in the necktie stood up. He said, “Whatever you’re talkin’ about, mister, it didn’t happen.”

“What didn’t happen?” asked Flynn.

“You know what didn’t happen,” the man said.

HE had arranged for the taxi to return to East Frampton to pick him up in front of the drugstore at three o’clock.

He found himself waiting at a quarter to two.

The street was empty. It had been empty since he came out of the restaurant. How the men who had been in the restaurant with him had disappeared that fast was a puzzle. There had been only one car, a Jaguar XKE, parked in front of the restaurant. Every other building on the street was closed. Every neighborhood has its nooks and crannies known only to its denizens. He wondered if they were peeking around corners at him.

“Sure, I’m about as popular,” Flynn muttered to himself, “as a skin doctor with a rash.”

He looked up and down the street for a place to sit. There was none. “An uncivil town,” he noted to himself. “Must remember to send Grover here, first chance I get.”

The sun was bright. At two-twenty there was no longer shade on the Reardon Street side of the drugstore. Flynn went to the corner and peered around it.

There, in the shade, his back and one sneakered foot leaning against the brick wall, hands folded across his chest, was a teenaged boy.

“Hallo,” said Flynn cheerily. “I was looking for you.”

The boy looked at Flynn suspiciously. “Me?”

“You.”

The boy spat through his teeth. “What do you want?”

“I want to know why a likely lad such as yourself, with his whole life ahead of him, is standing around this dead town.”

Again the boy spat through his teeth. “What’s a ‘likely lad’?”

“You are,” said Flynn, trying his best to sound convincing.

“You think I should leave this burg?”

Flynn waved at the town around him. “The place isn’t bustlin’ with opportunity now, is it?”

“Not much goin’ on,” agreed the boy. “Unless you’re a backgammon nut.”

“You don’t like backgammon?”

“I don’t get to play. No money.”

“What happened to your money?” Flynn asked. The boy searched his face. “Don’t worry, lad. I know about the money. Last April you were given one hundred thousand dollars. What happened to it?”

“My father took it. Even though my name was on it. He says it’s his. I’m seventeen. A minor, he says.”

“And what do you say?”

“I say my name was on it. Every other kid in town got money. At least got to buy a car, or somethin’.”

“Did every man, woman, and child in this town get one hundred thousand dollars last April?” Flynn asked innocently. The kid spat again. A face of spit was beginning to appear on the sidewalk. “You can tell me, lad. Apparently you have nothing to lose.”

“Sure …” said the kid. “Everybody.”

“Where did the money come from?”

“It was dumped outside everybody’s house. One morning it was just there. In big brown envelopes,” He grinned. “One guy didn’t get his.”

“Oh?”

“Lived upstairs in a two-family house. Slept late. Drunk the night before,” He spat and a left ear appeared on the face. “Heard everybody else in town got money. Figured his downstairs neighbor took his. So he shot him.” The kid laughed.

“Shot him dead?”

The kid nodded yes.

“And had the neighbor stolen the money?”

“It was in his refrigerator.”

“Fat lot of good the money did him, though,” asserted Flynn. “Arrested. Tried. Imprisoned.”

“He was never arrested.” The boy turned his head sideways and spat and a mouth appeared on the face. “You think everyone in town is going to risk losing one hundred big ones just to see one more punk in jail? No way.” Squinting, the boy looked up and down the street. “This has become a real quiet town, mister. Keeps a lot of things quiet, nowadays. They’ve all gone nuts. Everybody in town. They all hide behind their doors afraid some turkey like you is going to show up and tell them all to give the money back. ’Fraid of bein’ robbed. There’s been more than one shooting in this town lately, I can tell you. More like a dozen.”

Quietly, Flynn said, “And you’ve no idea who did this to the town?”

The boy shook his head. “Who cares? Some nut. Some nut just decided to drop a whole lot of money on the town to drive the whole town nuts. And he succeeded.”

“What about yourself?” Flynn asked.

“I’m just waitin’ until I’m eighteen.”

“What then? Join the navy?”

“Nope.” The boy spat a nose onto the sidewalk. The face was complete.

“What are you going to do?”

“Depends.” Again the boy looked out into the sunlight. “If my father doesn’t let me have my money then, I’ll kill him. Then maybe I’ll leave town. Maybe I won’t.” He stood up from the wall, dropped his arms, and started ambling loose-jointed up the sidewalk. “I’m not joinin’ no navy.”

At the back corner of the drugstore, the boy turned around and walked a few steps backward. “You oughta get outta town now, though, mister.” He wasn’t speaking very loudly. “So many skeletons at the bottom of the harbor now, one more won’t matter.”

Flynn watched him cross the side street, go into a vacant lot, and disappear behind a huge pile of rubbish.

The taxi arrived at ten minutes past three.

LANDING in Washington, D.C., that night, Flynn mused at all the years of effort N.N. had expended to keep Francis Xavier Flynn away from Washington (and London and Paris and Bonn and Rome and other national capitals); away from nationalistically motivated governmental committees who wanted to know more of how the international, private, between-the-borders organization N.N. operated, and a great deal more of Flynn’s personal biography.

Flynn’s death had been reported, convincingly, a dozen times. He had been put “on ice,” under his own name, as an inspector
(the
inspector) of the Boston Police Department. But N.N. Zero continued to wheel him out when the need arose, and ride him through one more extraordinary (always “extraordinary”) case. Last year when Flynn was in Chad, the Boston Police were told that he had colitis. This year, on this case, appendicitis. There was no one more robust than Flynn.

Crossing from the airplane to the terminal, Flynn wondered what he’d die of at the end of this case.

The hotel desk clerk looked puzzled at Flynn.

“You’re already checked in, sir.”

“Am I, indeed?”

The clerk pulled a registration card from the file and looked at it, then compared it with the one Flynn had just filled out, looked even more puzzled, and handed both cards to Flynn.

They were identical—to the home address given, credit-card number, even signature.

“My, my,” said Flynn.

He handed the cards back to the clerk.

“One of those cards should be destroyed.”

“Of course.” The clerk tore one of the registration cards in quarters, as if its existence were an embarrassment to everyone.

“Do you feel all right, sir?”

“I do. Yes, I do.”

“There is a doctor we could summon. The hotel guests find him quite satisfactory … and, er, discreet.”

“I’m very well,” said Flynn.

“It must have been just a lapse of memory.”

“Something of the sort,” said Flynn.

“Do you have them often, sir?”

“What?”

“Lapses of memory. Did you forget the question?”

“No, I did not forget the question—I’m amazed at it. And no, I’ve never had a lapse of memory in my life, to my continuous regret.”

“I have an old aunt who has lapses of memory. Of course, she is eighty-nine. She comes and goes, comes and goes.”

“Like a certain poet, from St. Louis, Mo.,” muttered Flynn.

“Sir?”

“I need to know my room number!”

“Ah, yes.” The clerk’s smile was superior. “Of course, I wasn’t on duty when you checked in the first time, at four o’clock this afternoon….”

“The room number…”

“Eleven twenty-three.”

“And I need the key!”

“But, sir…”

“The key, dammit!”

The clerk held the key to Room 1123 in his hand. “I’ll call the bellman.—Front!”

Flynn took the key from the desk clerk’s hand.

“I don’t need the bellman,” Flynn said. “I’ve already checked in. Don’t you remember? I’ll carry my own bag!”

In Room 1123 Ducey Webb, naked, was curled in a chair, reading
Cosmopolitan
magazine.

“Oh, hullo, Flynn.”

“ ‘Hullo,’ is it?” He lowered his suitcase to the floor and closed the hotel-room door. “Seldom have I had such an open greeting.”

She dropped the magazine. Her blue and brown eyes watched him watch her. Leisurely she stretched her whole body in the chair. Ducey Webb’s physical perfection provided her perfect poise while perfectly naked.

“Thanks for checking me in,” Flynn said. “It’s a service I didn’t know I needed.”

“It’s something I learned to do,” she said, imitating the rhythm of his speech, “checking you out of Caesar’s Palace, in Las Vegas. Are you chastened?”

“Chased is more like it.”

“I’ve been looking for you high and low.”

“You should have just looked low,” said Flynn, “as that’s where I’ve been.”

She stood up, picked up his suitcase, and swung it onto the double bed.

“What do you think you’re doing?”

She was unpacking him.

“If you think I need to play house with a slip of a girl—or, a girl without a slip, if I may so amend myself—”