The Fools in Town Are on Our Side (27 page)

“It'll get me inside,” I said. “That's all. The Lynch people will never quite believe me, not even after I've helped them ruin a couple of persons. They'll still suspect my—oh, hell, my loyalty, you might say. But they'll play along because they think they're smart enough to spot any cross I might try. I'm betting they're not and all I've got to back that up is eleven years of nasty experience along similar lines.”

Orcutt tapped his lower lip with his right forefinger. “You would be, in effect, a double agent.”

“No,” I said. “I'd be a triple agent and that's the trickiest kind. There aren't many around. Not ones who're pushing forty.”

“Triple agent,” Orcutt said in a soft low tone and then said it again. He almost seemed to run his tongue over it. “Oh, I
like
that! What do you think, Homer?”

Necessary nodded slowly. “It's good,” he said. “Like Dye says, it'll get him inside. What I want to know is who gets set up?”

“You mean whom do we ruin?” Orcutt asked.

Necessary nodded again, even more slowly. “Just so it's not somebody in this room, I don't care.”

“You wouldn't care if it were, as long as it's not you,” Carol Thackerty said.

Necessary smiled at her coldly. “You're right, sweetheart, so long as it's not me.”

Orcutt giggled. “Then whom shall we pick?”

“Not we,” I said. “You.”

“Ah,” Orcutt said and tapped his finger against his lower lip. “I see. They must be prominent, but not so prominent that it will ruin the reform slate's chances, correct?”

“It doesn't matter,” I said patiently. “If you do it early enough, it'll be forgotten by election day. It'll be old news. People will be tired of it. They'll want something else.”

“Something just as juicy, maybe more so,” Necessary said.

“You're right,” I said. “And that's why I have to get inside.”

“Do you think we can find something like that?” Orcutt said and started pacing again, silently this time. He straightened another picture, gave himself one more approving glance in the mirror, fiddled with the knot in his tie, and then turned toward me. “This—this—well, whatever it is that you'll look for in the Lynch camp, or manufacture or whatever. Do you have any idea of what it might be?”

“It'll be slimy,” Carol Thackerty said.

“The slimier the better,” Necessary said and smiled comfortably. It seemed to be his kind of meeting.

“I don't know what shape it'll take,” I said. “Not yet.”

“And my immediate task is to select two persons of this community to be ruined by Lynch and his associates? Two of our more prominent supporters?”

“That's right.”

“What do you mean by ruined?”

“Scandal,” I said. “Public ridicule and scorn. Shattered reputations. Jesus, you know what ruined means.”

“Yes,” he said softly. “Yes, I do. And you want me to select these two persons or families or however it works out?”

“It's your job.”

“There should be a number of choices,” he said.

“There always are.”

“They won't be innocents, of course.”

“If they were, you couldn't ruin them.”

“It's really a little like playing God, isn't it?”

“I've known some who've grown to like it,” I said.

“What is it—power?”

I nodded. “That's part of it.”

“It should create quite a stir,” Orcutt said.

“You mean stink,” Necessary said.

“Yes,” Orcutt said and looked at me. “But not as great as the one that you'll create.”

“No.”

“I trust, Mr. Dye, that you haven't forgotten your ultimate role.”

“No,” I said. “When it's all over I still get ridden out of town on a rail,”

“The citizenry will need a catharsis then—something that will purge them of their emotions. It's all very much like a Greek tragedy, don't you think? Everything is so inevitable.”

“Somebody's got to play God, Victor,” Carol Thackerty said. “It may as well be you.”

Orcutt tugged at his lower lip, frowned, and then brightened. “You know something,” he said, “I really think that I'll like it.”

“I thought that you might,” I said.

I bought Carol Thackerty and Homer Necessary a drink in the Sycamore Hotel's Shadetree Lounge. We had left Victor Orcutt in his suite going over a list of names of persons to ruin. He seemed to enjoy his work.

“How'd you like the way he took the news that his hunch was right and those punks wanted to beat up on you?” Necessary said.

“Disinterested, if not bored,” I said and signed the check.

“That's because it didn't happen to him,” Carol Thackerty said. “He's only interested in things that touch him personally. Or that inconvenience him.”

“If they'd put me in the hospital, he might have been inconvenienced.”

“But you weren't, so he dismissed it,” she said.

Homer Necessary took a gulp of his Scotch and water, wiped his mouth as usual with the back of his hand, and grinned at me. “Tell me something,” he said.

“What?”

“You ever work for somebody that was younger than you before? I mean
that
much younger.”

I shook my head. “No.”

“Me neither. Christ, I'm almost old enough to be his father and I sit there and he tells me what to do. It's funny. I mean he's smart as hell and all, but it's still kind of funny.” He took another gulp of his drink and wiped his mouth again. “Listen,” he said and bent over the table toward me. “You know he and me are sitting there talking sometimes and I'll mention something, I mean something that once happened, and suddenly he'll get a blank look on his face like he hasn't got the goddamnedest notion of what I'm talking about. And he doesn't because I'm talking about something that everybody knows about, but something that happened maybe fifteen years ago when he was maybe eleven years old and he just doesn't remember.”

“You don't have that trouble with me,” Carol Thackerty said.

He looked at her in much the same way that the village wives probably had looked at Hester and her scarlet letter. Necessary had some curious standards. “Hell, you're a broad. Besides you're older than he is.”

“Three months older.”

“Well,” Necessary grumbled, “you act older. You remember things.”

“You mean I've read a lot,” she said.

“Yeah, you read a lot. Between Johns.” He paused for another swallow. “But you know what about Orcutt? You tell him something that he doesn't know about and he'll get that funny look on his face and then he'll stop talking about whatever you were talking about and make you tell him everything that you know. I mean, he'll milk you dry and then a couple of weeks later he'll bring it up and use it to
make a point to you just like you hadn't told him about it in the first place.” Necessary shook his head.

“Any other complaints?”

“I wasn't complaining, Dye. I was just talking about working for somebody who's younger than I am. I never did it before.”

“Homer was chief of police at twenty-seven,” Carol Thackerty said. “He'll never get over it. He still expects to be the youngest man in the room.”

“Like Peter Pan,” I said.

“Who?” Necessary said.

“Just somebody else who took a long time to grow up,” Carol Thackerty said.

“I don't know him,” he said. From his tone it was plain that if Necessary hadn't heard of them, they weren't worth bothering with.

“You want another drink?” I said to Carol Thackerty.

“All right,” she said. She was drinking Campari.

“Homer?”

He looked at his watch and shook his head. “I got to go.”

“Where?” Carol said.

“I'd better start looking for that ‘just a guy.' “

“You need any help?” I said.

He shook his head again. “I'll sort of nose around.”

“They know you're doing it,” I said.

“You mean Lynch and his crowd?”

“Yes.”

“I want them to. You going to see Lynch tomorrow?”

“Yes.”

“Ask him about ‘just a guy.' “

“I plan to.”

“You think Lynch set it up?”

“Maybe,” I said.

He rose and leaned over the table, resting his weight on his fists. “There's one thing I'm pretty sure of. Maybe a couple of things.”

“What?”

“One is that I'll find out who ‘just a guy' is before you do, and two
is that Lynch didn't have anything to do with him.” He winked one of his eyes at me, the brown one, and left.

Carol Thackerty stared into her fresh drink after Necessary had gone. “We make a lovely crew, don't we?” she said.

“Since you put it that way.”

“The crooked ex-cop, the ex-whore, the ex-secret agent—that's what you were, weren't you?”

“That's close enough.”

“I should say the cashiered ex-secret agent and the boy wonder boss who's not as swish as he sounds or looks.”

“I didn't ask.”

“I know,” she said.

“You know what?” I said. “That I didn't ask or that he's not swish?”

“Both. He's indifferent to sex. It just doesn't exist for him.”

“You found out, I assume?”

“You assume nothing. I just know. As Homer would say, I've had enough Johns to know whether they can, can't, or just don't care about it. Orcutt just doesn't care about it.”

“That's too bad,” I said.

“I don't know,” she said. “He may be lucky.”

“Do you think he is?”

She stopped staring into her drink and looked at me. “I was wondering how you were going to bring it up.”

“Now you know.”

“It's not especially innovative.”

“I'm not trying.”

“You're not interested?”

“I didn't say that.”

She blew a thin plume of uninhaled smoke at me. I waved it away. “Well?” she said.

“Well what?”

“Do we romance each other for a while or do we just go up and fall into bed?”

“It's been more than three months. I can skip the romance.”

She finished her drink, gathered her large purse into her lap, and said, “Let's go.”

“Your room or mine?” I said.

“Mine. I don't like the walk home.”

She had a room on the ninth floor, 912. It could have been the twin of mine on the floor below. There was a bed and some chairs and a dresser and a writing table. The floor was carpeted with a synthetic fiber. The pictures on the wall looked synthetic, too. She put her purse on the dresser and looked into the mirror and did something to her hair, something imperceptible that never changes it but which they all do anyway. “How kinky are you?” she said. She could have been asking if I thought that the United Nations had adjourned too early.

“I don't know,” I said. “It depends.”

“On what?”

“On how you like it.”

She turned and leaned against the dresser so that both her pelvis and her breasts arched out, thrusting against the fabric of her dress. She threw her head back slightly and opened her mouth letting her tongue play around her lips. It was an excellent parody of all of those film star pictures of the late fifties and early sixties and she knew it. Then she threw her head back even farther and laughed. I found myself laughing with her for what must have been the first time in more than three months.

Her hands went behind her neck to the fastener and she slipped out of her dress. She left it lying on the floor. Her half-slip followed it. She moved over to me and put her arms around my neck. She ran her tongue over her lips again. “Any fetishes?” she said. “High heels, wet towels, or the like?”

“I'll think of something if you need it,” I said, skillfully undoing her bra, pleased that I hadn't lost my touch. She lowered her arms to slip out of the bra and let it fall to the floor in a slow practiced movement. “You like them?” she said, fondling her breasts. She was good.

“Very much.”

Her hands went to the zipper on my trousers and then the belt. Then her hands went exploring. As I've said, she was very good. “It feels more like a year than three months,” she said and stepped back and slowly slid her bikini panties off. She was about to display the feature attraction and she didn't want to rush it. When they were off, she explored herself there too, her head back again, her mouth slightly open. “You like it?”

“It's fine,” I said, the words coming thick and a little phlegmy. “You sure you wouldn't really rather do it yourself?”

She caught my hand and guided it home. Then she started working on my tie and shirt, moving her hips langorously against my exploring hand. The tie came off, then the shirt, and she worked my shorts down to my ankles, where they joined my trousers. “Your shoes,” she said and knelt slowly to undo them. She didn't rise for quite a while and when she did we decided to try the bed.

 

 

Mischief arose early in Swankerton and it was afoot and pounding on my door
at seven-thirty the next morning. The pounders were the chief of police, Cal Loambaugh, and Ramsey Lynch himself, with the remains of his breakfast on display between the crevices of his upper teeth. I though of offering him a toothpick, but merely shuddered instead, averted my eyes, and opened the door wider. They came in.

“I think he was still asleep, chief,” Lynch said.

“Just wasting his life away lying in bed like that,” Loambaugh said and winked at Lynch. “Of course, that's unless you got something pretty to do your lying with. We're not disturbing anything are we, Mr. Dye?”

“Just my disposition,” I said and headed for the phone. I picked it up, got room service and ordered coffee. “You've already had yours, haven't you?” I said to Lynch and Loambaugh. It wasn't polite, but I have yet to be complimented on my morning manners.