The Fools in Town Are on Our Side (31 page)

“Your shorts, too,” I said.

He didn't like that at all. “What is the meaning of this?” he said.

“I want to look at your cock,” I said.

He almost blushed and shot another look of appeal at Speke, who must have played the only friend role with them.

“Drop them,” Speke said.

The taller man did blush this time and dropped his shorts. They were blue-and-white striped ones, but a lot of men wore those. I looked at his penis. He wasn't circumsized and it lay there shriveled from cold and fear and embarrassment. I went down on one knee to get a better look at it and he jumped. I rose and stared at the man. “You remember me, don't you?” I said. “You remember how I got to watch you rape my wife and then shoot her one Saturday night?”

He was a good liar, but not good enough. There was a twitch in his left eyelid when I mentioned Saturday because it hadn't been Saturday. It had been Friday. It was only a twitch, “I don't know you,” he said. “I have never seen you before.”

I turned to Carmingler and Speke. “Are you through with them both?” I said.

Carmingler said, “We are,” and turned to Speke who shrugged.

“May I use one of those pistols?”

Speke nodded and one of the guards handed me his. It was a .38 Smith and Wesson, I noticed. I turned back to the pair and pointed the gun at the smaller one. “You remember me, don't you?” I said.

“No,” he said and locked his blue eyes with mine.

“I remember your friend there because of the blue spot on the end of his cock.”

The taller one jerked his head forward to look for the blue spot. “There isn't any,” he said.

“You got it cured after all.”

“I didn't have—” He stopped then.

“I'm going to kill you both, you know,” I said.

The taller one must have believed me. He swallowed and began to work his lips around. I knew what he was doing, so I waited. When he had enough saliva he spat at me and it landed on the lapel of my topcoat. He was snarling now. “She was rotten sex!” He yelled it in German. Then he switched to English and screamed it. “She was a lousy fuck!”

I almost killed him then. I tried to. I remember that my finger was beginning to pull at the trigger and the scene came back of him sprawled across Beverly, his pants and shorts down to his ankles, as he grunted and lunged. I recalled her face and how she looked and what had happened to her eyes. I tried to kill him then, but instead I turned and said, “Ah, shit,” and shoved the gun at Speke and hurried for the stairs before any of them could see my face.

We flew back to New York the next day.

 

 

The friendly folks at Swankerton's First National Bank couldn't have been nicer.
Someone smiled pleasantly when I said that I wanted to open a checking account. Someone else beamed when I rented a safety deposit box in which to store the $20,000 in cash delivered to me that morning by Carol Thackerty. A vice-president was absolutely radiant when I showed him the letter of credit from Orcutt's St. Louis bank and for all I knew they were equally charming to those who said they could use a couple of hundred till payday.

I was rich now, I decided. I had more money than I'd had since I was eight years old and a partner in a crap game on the
Gripsholm.
I had $19,500 in San Francisco; $20,000 in a Swankerton safe-deposit box; $5,000 in a checking account for expenses, and the promise of another $25,000 on the way from Ramsey Lynch. I also had $816.59 cash. I thought about retirement and that kept me busy until around eleven o'clock when Homer Necessary called from the lobby and said that he was on his way up.

“You got a drink?” he said as he came in.

“I still have some Scotch,”

“That'll do.”

I mixed two drinks and handed him his. “No ice,” I said.

“I'm used to it.”

“How was it?”

“How or why?”

“Both.”

Necessary told it quickly in his usually concise manner and once again he placed everything in the present tense. “I leave you last night around ten to twelve and head down the street to a joint called The Easy Alibi. You know it?”

“I've seen it,” I said. “A city councilman owns it.”

“That figures. I order a drink and I'm sitting there wondering how talkative the barkeep might be when a couple of plainclothes come in, let me look at their badges, and then give me a ride to headquarters. They're new, by the way, the headquarters, I mean, real nice. So they print me and mug me and then they take me into a quiet little room and ask me a few questions.”

“About what?”

“About what we've got on who. So I tell ‘em that we haven't got anything on anybody and they ask me again. After a while they get tired of asking and smack me around a little, but not too hard, more like they don't really have their hearts in it. So one of ‘em pulls out a pint and tells me to drink it. What the hell, it's better than getting smacked around so I drink it. Cheap bourbon. Well, I can drink a pint and still move around okay, but they take me down and book me for drunk and disorderly and resisting arrest. Then they toss me into the tank. It's not so bad—only three drunks in it. You oughta see one when they got forty or fifty packed in and most of them are coming down with the d-t's.”

“When did they let you go?”

“Maybe an hour ago. One of the trusties comes by and says I must have pull someplace because they're changing the blotter. Trusties know everything. A little later they give everything back, even my money, and send me home in a goddamned squad car.”

“Did anyone apologize?”

“No.”

“They were supposed to.”

“You fixed it?”

“With Lynch. The chief wasn't too happy.”

Necessary nodded thoughtfully. “One guy did say something about ‘these things happen' and even called me ‘mister,' so I guess that's as close as they can bring themselves to an apology.”

“It shouldn't happen again,” I said.

“You made your deal?”

“Yes.”

“They buy it?”

“Only after I told them Orcutt knew that I was doing it and that he's dumb enough to believe that I'll really stick with him instead of switching to them.”

Necessary nodded again. “Yeah,” he said, “that would make them feel smart.” He took a large swallow of his drink, saw that there was only a little left, and finished it. “Only thing is, you might be telling the truth.”

“I might,” I said.

He flicked his brown and blue eyes over me and there was only indifference in them. “You know something? I bet there're times when you're not sure yourself what side you're on.”

“There're times,” I said.

“This one of ‘em?”

“I don't think so.”

He looked at me again, more carefully this time, and then got up and mixed another drink. He came back to where I sat and looked at me some more.

“They probably made a lot of hard noise about what might happen if you crossed them.”

“They mentioned it,” I said. “In passing.”

“Uh-huh. Well, I'll mention it myself and just give you some advice about not getting too cute unless you want a real unhappy ending.”

“You're loyal, huh?”

“To Orcutt?”

“Yes.”

Necessary looked into his drink and for a moment he seemed a little embarrassed. Finally he said, “He pays me.”

I let it go at that.

Orcutt was cooking lunch for the four of us when we gathered in the Rickenbacker suite at noon after I'd waited in Necessary's room for him to shave, shower and change clothes. There were two chafing dishes bubbling away over lighted cans of Sterno. Several opened bottles of wine stood around as if some of their contents had been splashed into whatever was on the burners. Orcutt was peering into one of the chafing dishes and stirring it with a long wooden spoon. He wore a frilly apron.

“I just don't feel like going out in this heat,” he said and followed my gaze down to the apron. “Isn't it ridiculous? But it's the only one that Carol could find. Or so she said.”

“It was the only one they had unless I wanted to go traipsing all over town,” she said.

“Smells good,” Necessary said. “What is it?”

“Chicken livers Orcutt,” Carol said. She was sitting in an armchair and I noticed that she wore a dress different from the one she'd had on that morning.

The hotel (reluctantly, I guessed) had set up near a window a cloth-covered table which held dishes and silverware and glasses. A shallow silver tray contained some green and black olives and I helped myself to one. I also noticed a large green salad.

“You got anything to drink?” Necessary said.

“You'll
simply
have to help yourself, Homer,” Orcutt said as he glided between the two chafing dishes, stirring this and poking that,

“Have you got any goddamned ice for a change?” Necessary said to Carol after he found a bottle.

“In the bucket over there,” she said.

Orcutt tasted one of the dishes with his wooden spoon. “Now,” he said. “Carol, if you and Mr. Dye will bring your plates over, I'll serve while it's still hot. Homer doesn't really care what he eats.”

I followed instructions and brought a plate over. Orcutt served Carol and then me. He spooned what looked to be a half-pound of sautéed chicken livers on to my plate and then moved to the second chafing dish. “This is really a kind of paella except that it has a bit more saffron than most people use and also a
tiny
smidgeon more garlic. I hope you like garlic?”

“I love it,” I said.

Orcutt waved the spoon. “The wine is over there, so please help yourself.”

I helped myself and when we were all settled around the room I tried the chicken livers, which may have been the best I'd ever eaten, but the paella had too much garlic. Everyone complimented Orcutt on his cooking and he beamed for almost five minutes and then remembered to take off the apron.

“Well, I think it's fortunate that I
do
like to cook,” he said. “There's only one
decent
restaurant in town and it's not open until six. And there's something else about the South that I've never understood. It doesn't have any
real
delicatessens. I can get by just fine with a proper delicatessen, but there simply aren't any here and no place else in the South unless it's New Orleans or Atlanta. I've also heard that there's one in Montgomery.”

“They got some damned good ones in Miami,” Necessary said around a mouthful of chicken livers. “They got to because of all the kikes.”

“Really
, Homer,” Orcutt said. “Miami isn't the
South.”

We ate in silence for a while until Orcutt sighed, rose, put his plate on the cloth-covered table, and smoothed the lapels of his double-breasted coat. The coat was one-half of his white-on-white seersucker suit that was set off by a dark blue shirt, a white knit tie, and black-and-white wing-tipped shoes with built-up heels. He was, I decided, a man who took his fashion seriously.

He turned toward me. “Now to business. What happened at your meeting this morning?”

I told him in detail without embellishment or unnecessary footnotes
and he listened well, asking only a couple of pertinent questions. When I was done, he said, “You think they really believed you?”

“Not completely. Their faith will increase after I hand over our first victim and when you seem to act on some of their phony information that I'll transmit to you.”

Orcutt paced the room and tapped a forefinger against his lower lip. It seemed to help him think. “Oh, by the way,” he said, “I understand that someone is checking us out for you.”

“An old friend. He's also checking out Ramsey Lynch and the chief of police.”

“Good,” Orcutt said. “I'm glad you've done that. I'd say it shows that you prefer our side, providing that our references prove satisfactory.”

“You can say that,” I said. “You can also say that I'm merely suspicious.”

“I certainly hope so,” Orcutt said. “Now then, I've spent scads of time going over a list of persons who might be sacrificed to enhance your reputation with Lynch and his people. For the purpose of verisimilitude, I've selected a man and a woman, both of whom, as you would say, Mr. Dye, need ruining.”

“A woman's good, if she's gone and done something real smelly,” Necessary said and then looked around the room as if he expected someone to contradict him. Nobody did.

“We'll start with her then,” Orcutt said. “I'll give you a condensed version.” He took several four-by-five-inch cards from an inside coat pocket and flipped through them.

Her name, he said, was Mrs. Francine Sobour, widow of Maurice Sobour who had died at seventy-eight six years ago of a heart attack brought on, some said, by the rapacious demands of his bride of six months. Mrs. Sobour was forty-two years old when she married her husband and two months after the wedding he changed his will, disinheriting a number of deserving sons, daughters, grandchildren and charities, and leaving his new wife the entire estate, which was valued at approximately a million dollars. Although Mr. Sobour had no medical
history that indicated a heart condition, there had been no autopsy. “We have a sworn statement that she paid the county coroner five thousand dollars cash not to conduct the autopsy.”

“Where's the coroner now?” I said.

“Dead,” Orcutt said, “but his statement is witnessed and attested to by his wife and two sons, who claim to have been present at the transaction with the Sobour woman.”

“Where are they now?” Necessary said.

“In Florida, I think.”

“How much the statement cost us?” Necessary said.

“Another five thousand.”