The Fools in Town Are on Our Side (29 page)

I only nodded.

“I hear he's paying fifty thousand.”

“Twenty thousand of it this morning,” I said. “You owe me twenty five thousand.”

“You aim to collect from both of us, of course. Can't say I blame you for that.”

“No, I didn't think you would.”

“Now if we got a little information up within the next few days, you wouldn't mind slipping it to Orcutt, would you, as something you'd sort of wormed out of us, so to speak?”

“That's part of the services,” I said. “After I'm retained, of course.”

“Wouldn't do it on spec just so we can take a reading on how well you perform?”

“That's a dumb question, if you don't mind my saying so.”

Lynch shook his big head glumly. “I suppose it is,” he said. “Suppose it is. When can we expect some results?”

“In a few days. Less than a week.”

Lynch was silent for almost a minute while he inspected his half-smoked cigar. Then he looked up at me and there was an expression on his face that I'd seen often enough before, but on other faces. It was a mixture of contempt and curiosity and suspicion and a dash of grudging admiration. I'd probably worn it myself when doing a deal with a double agent. Carmingler, I recalled, had often worn it. “We got a deal, Lucifer,” Lynch finally said. “It's not one that we have to shake hands on ‘cause I just as soon shake hands with a cottonmouth. But we got a deal.”

“No we don't,” I said. “Not until I count the money.”

“You think you're a pretty hard nosed son of a bitch, don't you?” Loambaugh said.

“When it comes to getting paid I am.”

“We'll get a check up to you this afternoon for twenty-five thousand,” Lynch said and rose from his chair. He moved easily for the weight he carried.

I sighed. “No checks. No checks from you and no checks from Orcutt. Cash.”

“When do you expect the rest of it?” Lynch said.

“I'll let you know.”

“I bet you will,” Loambaugh said.

“We'll get it to you in the morning,” Lynch said, moving toward the door, hurrying a little as if the air had grown slightly foul. It probably had. Loambaugh followed him.

At the door, Lynch turned and said, “Better bank that money, Lucifer. It's a tempting bundle to leave around loose in a hotel room.”

“I intend to,” I said. “Any particular bank that you recommend?”

He grinned at me with his breakfast-decorated teeth. “So happens I've got a little interest in the First National across the street and we'd be proud to do business with you.”

“Fine.”

He paused again, ducked his head, and rubbed the knuckles of his right hand across his nose. It seemed to itch. “By the way, those two punks who tried to bounce you around.”

“What about them?”

“I didn't send them.”

“Okay.”

“Well, if I didn't send them and Orcutt didn't send them, I was just wondering who might have?”

“I don't know,” I said.

“Since we're in business together so to speak, maybe we'd better find out.”

“Their names were Frank Smith and Joe Carson, or so they said.”

Loambaugh nodded. “I know who they are.”

“Check ‘em out,” Lynch said. “We don't want Mr, Dye to have any more trouble or enemies than he needs, do we?”

Loambaugh gave me one of his bleak stares that again classified me as the town horror. “Something tells me that before he leaves Swankerton he's going to have plenty of both.”

I couldn't think up much of a rebuttal to that.

 

 

It was only nine o'clock in Swankerton when I placed the call to New York, which
meant that it was ten o'clock there, but that was still too early for Smalldane Communications, Inc. I could hear the firm's receptionist assuring the operator that Mr. Smalldane never arrived before eleven. I left word for him to call.

Carol Thackerty arrived at nine-thirty, a few minutes before room service decided that it was time to send up my breakfast now that the eggs and bacon were cool enough to have congealed the grease. The toast wouldn't burn any fingers either.

Carol Thackerty sat in a chair across the room, her legs crossed, her large purse in her lap, and an amused smile on her lips as the waiter lifted up the lids of various silver salvers to let me inspect what the Sycamore's menu fobbed off on the world as “Southern cuisine.”

“You forgot the asbestos gloves,” I told the waiter.

He said, “Sir?” so I let it pass. He was around fifty with a squeezed-up face, a bad limp, and the look of someone who's realized that he's gone as far as he'll ever go and now wonders why he ever made the effort. He was also white, which the hotel management apparently felt compensated for any laxity in service.

“Heah yo grits,” he said and displayed a cold wad of them as if he were showing off the Christmas turkey, “and heah yo aigs and bacon.
Toast righchere. I got an extra cup for the lady case she wants some cawfee.” He left out a few verbs now and then—to save time, I suppose.

“You shouldn't have run all the way,” I said as I signed the check and added an overly generous tip.

“I dint run,” he said, and I apologized for accusing him of it.

After he left I asked Carol Thackerty if she would like some coffee and she said that she would so I poured her a cup and served it to her. It was still hot by grace of its sterno burner.

“You look quite pretty this morning,” I said as I handed her the cup.

“Thank you,” she said, either for the cup or the compliment or both.

“I enjoyed last night,” I said, trying to smear some cold butter on some colder toast.

“You're full of compliments.”

“Simple courtesy.”

“You're not fishing, are you?” she said.

“For what?”

“I just hope you're not leading up to the one that they all like to ask.”

“Which one?”

“Did I enjoy it, too?”

“I really don't give a damn,” I said. “All I know is that I'd like to try it again.”

“When?”

“You have anything against mornings?” I said.

“Not a thing.”

I decided that I didn't really want the cold breakfast after all. I took a final sip of the coffee, rose, and walked over to where Carol sat. I remember thinking that I should call her Carol now. She put her coffee cup down and held out her hands to me. I pulled her slowly to her feet. I recall that she still had that faint smile on her face. It was almost quizzical. “No hurry,” she said, just before we kissed. “No hurry,” I
agreed. We tried one of those long, exploratory kisses in which the tongue ventures forth, encounters token resistance that turns quickly into surrender and then into active collaboration. It was a nice girl's kiss after she's decided that she's tired of being nice.

Unlike the night before, we undressed carefully, helping each other when it might prove interesting. There was nothing frenzied about it this time and in bed we stroked and caressed each other with our hands and mouths and words which, if not endearing, were harshly erotic. It went on like that for what seemed to be a long time, her dark red, almost brown nipples taut and erect, her hips thrusting against whatever touched them, sometimes in a smooth and languorous motion, but more often frantic and demanding. And after a look or a moan or a twitch, or whatever it was, we both knew that it was time and I was inside her and she moaned about the ecstasy of it all and we tried to make it last, did make it last, until we damned well couldn't anymore and accepted it, with no regrets, and plunged into that final frenzy of oblivion.

There is, of course, always an afterwards and some are far better than others. This one was at first. We lay there in the tumbled sheets, not speaking, just breathing deeply while we each listened to the pound of our pulse. Finally, Carol stirred, rolled over on her side, and ran a fingertip down my chest. “I knew a girl once,” she said, “who was terribly afraid of dying until someone told her what death really was.”

“What?”

“One long orgasm.”

“So she killed herself?”

“No. She just took up parachute jumping, scuba diving, things like that. She'll probably live to be a hundred.”

The phone rang and I reached for it. “Is this Mr. Lucifer Dye?” the operator said.

“Just a moment,” I said, crossed to the closet, slipped on the topcoat, and came back to the phone. “This is Mr. Dye.”

“On your call to New York, we have Mr. Smalldane for you.”

There was some more chatter while Smalldane's secretary wanted
to make sure that Mr. Dye was on the line and the long distance operator kept assuring her that I was. Smalldane came on in his usual style.

“What do you want with an old fart like me?”

“You're not so old, Gorm,” I said.

“I'm sixty-five and don't you ever write?”

“I've been in jail.”

“Good or bad?”

“Not bad. Not as bad as Bridge House.”

“How long?”

“Three months.”

He asked where and I told him.

“What for?”

“I made a mistake.”

“You still with the spooks?”

“They fired me.”

“Good. You need some money? You want a job?”

“I'm on a job.”

“In Swankerton? That's a horseshit town.”

“So it seems.”

“You know what it hit yesterday. It hit seventy-nine and it's going up again today.”

“Don't rub it in.”

“I told you to hang on to it. Hell, with that two-for-one split you'd have been worth almost a quarter of a million today.”

“I was never intended to be worth a quarter of a million.”

Smalldane switched to Cantonese. “Truly, you were destined to collect the wastes of cockroaches and turtles.”

“It is unfortunate that old age is too often accompanied by the wisdom of a child.”

“Huh,” Smalldane said and was silent for a moment. “That's what they seem to think around here. You know what I am now? I'm chairman of the goddamned board. They booted my ass right upstairs. You sure you don't want a job? I think we can use someone in the mail-room.”

“Keep it open,” I said. “I may need it, but right now I need something else.”

“What?”

“You still run that executive check service for your clients?”

“Sure.”

“I need a few people checked out. I'll even pay for it.”

“You got something going down there that might be fun?”

“I think so.”

“You want some help?”

“I just told you what I wanted.”

“Shit, I'll take care of that. I mean do you want some sage advice and wise counsel? I'm bored stiff.”

“I don't know yet. Maybe.”

“I can be there in six hours,” Smalldane said.

“How long will it take you to run a check on these names?”

“Forty-eight. We've got the FBI beat by twelve hours, but that's because old man Hoover's not sure that computers are here to stay. There's one thing about him though that I like.”

“What?”

“He's older than I am.” Smalldane's tone changed. “Okay, Lucifer, just read off the names and I'll get the rundown to you in forty-eight hours. What do you want, a full check?”

“As much as you can get.”

“Just read ‘em off.”

“You're taping?”

“I'm taping,” he said.

“First, Victor Orcutt, Los Angeles. President of Victor Orcutt Associates. Second, Homer Necessary.” I spelled it and gave the city where he was formerly the chief of police. “Third, Ramsey Lynch, Swankerton, that's an alias. Real name is Montgomery Vicker. Spent some time in Atlanta. The Federal pen. Fourth, Cal—probably for Calvin— Loambaugh. I'll spell it.” After I spelled it, I said. “He's chief of police, Swankerton. Fifth and last, Miss Carol Thackerty, who's from the same city that Necessary's from.”

“You son of a bitch,” Carol said.

“What's that—what's that? You got a girl there, I can hear her.”

“Her name's Carol Thackerty.”

“Well, you must have just screwed everything up royal,” Smalldane said.

“I'd already done that.”

“That's all the names?”

“That's all.”

“Forty-eight hours. I can either telex it to our New Orleans office and have somebody fly it over to you or I can call you back.”

“Call me back and then we'll decide.”

“What do you have down there, Lu, something political?”

“Partly.”

“If you want an old fart's help, let me know. I'm bored.”

“I will.”

“I'll get back to you.”

“Fine,” I said and hung up.

Carol Thackerty was sitting cross-legged on the bed and smoking a cigarette when I turned to her. She smiled at me, but all it contained were some very white teeth. “The fucking you get's not worth the fucking you get, is it?”

“I've heard that before.”

“Most have. Who was that?”

“An old friend.”

“So you're checking us out?”

“What you really mean is that I'm checking you out. You don't give a damn about the others.”

She shrugged and it made her breasts jiggle in an interesting manner. “You almost said that you would.”

“That's right.”

“You don't trust Orcutt?”

“About as much as he trusts me. He didn't pick my name out of the Yellow Pages.”

“I'd be interested in what it will say about me. Have you ever seen one of those government reports that they write about people who they're thinking of hiring?”

“A few,” I said.

“They throw in everything. Rumor, speculation, lies, conjecture, intuitive leaps—what have you. They're all neatly typed up on little green-lined forms, although the typing's not always so neat. Sometimes it looks like hunt and peck.”