The Fools in Town Are on Our Side (33 page)

“Hello, Croner,” Necessary said to the man behind the tall counter that held a cash register.

“You remembered,” Croner said and looked first over Necessary's right shoulder and then over his left.

“I remembered,” Necessary said.

Croner glanced at his watch. “Should be about fifteen minutes,” he said and darted another glance over Necessary's shoulders. I looked this time and found two large, curved mirrors up at the ceiling corners in the rear of the store which gave Croner a view of the entire place.

Croner caught my look and said, “You know what the freaks steal? They steal two, three hundred dollars' worth a week. I sometimes think when they boost it they get more of a jolt, you know what I mean?”

I told him that I did and Necessary said, “This is Lu; he's a friend of mine.”

Croner nodded at me and then shot another glance at his mirrors. He had three customers, two well-dressed men of about fifty who browsed through a couple of magazines, one of which was called
Bondage;
I couldn't see the name of the other. The third customer was about eighteen and wore hair down to his shoulders and some pink-and-white pimples on his face. He was moving his lips over some of the words in a paperback.

“So how's business?” Necessary asked and leaned on the counter.

“Compared to what?” Croner said in a bitter tone. His complexion was the color of overcooked rice with dark eyes that reminded me of fat raisins. He was taller than I, almost six-four or six-five, and his thin elbows rested easily on the high counter. He talked out of the left side of his mouth because the right side seemed to be frozen. At least that corner didn't move either up or down, although his dark eyebrows did. They jumped around in constant motion as if compensating for the immobility of his mouth. He had a long neck, extraordinarily long, and his shirt had a collar that was two and a half inches high and a monogram in the place of a breast pocket. I decided that business was good enough for him to afford custom-made shirts.

“Croner here used to write about two thousand bucks' worth of numbers a day until Lynch came to town,” Necessary told me. “Now he sells dirty books and rents blue movies. He could still be writing numbers except he thought the dues were too high.”

“How much?” I said.

“You'll see in a couple of minutes,” Croner said out of the side of his mouth and shot his eyebrows up and down a few times before flicking his glance at the two mirrors.

“Guy across the street in that dry cleaning place writes them now,” Necessary said. “Does a nice business. Just watch for a few minutes.”

It was a small shop called Jiffy Cleaners and it did seem to be doing a better than fair business. Every two or three minutes a woman or a man would go in, sometimes two and three at a time. They usually came out a minute or so later.

“Now what's wrong with that picture?” Necessary said.

“Not much,” I said, “except that they don't carry any clothes in or out.”

“Money in, a slip out,” Necessary said. “He writes maybe two to three thousand bucks' worth a day. And in about five minutes he'll pay his dues.”

We waited five minutes. A uniformed cop sauntered by and entered the dry cleaning shop. He came out forty-five seconds later according to my watch.

“Every day about this time he goes in and collects his five bucks,” Croner said. “Except Sunday when he's off. He's off Monday too, but he still comes down for it. I only used to pay him a couple a day. Talk about your goddamned inflation.”

“That's an extra thirty a week in take-home pay,” I said.

“Thirty shit,” Croner said. “He's got another one six blocks down. He drags down at least sixty to seventy a week. Tax free.”

“Now watch this,” Necessary said. “Should be any minute.”

Some more customers without dry cleaning either to be done or to be picked up entered and left the shop. A Ford squad car with Swankerton Police Department on its side double parked in front of Jiffy Cleaners for a minute while one of its uniformed occupants went in and came out. He hadn't dropped by to pick up his other suit either, and the squad car didn't move off until the one who had gone into the shop handed something to the driver.

“They're splitting the weekly take,” Croner said. “Three hundred bucks. I used to pay them two hundred.”

It was a half hour before something else interesting happened. Two more customers came into Croner's store and the two middle-aged men left after buying a couple of magazines each. The teenager with the long hair and the pimples didn't buy anything. The dry cleaning shop across the street continued to do a steady business.

An unmarked green Mercury double parked in front of the cleaning shop. Its single occupant entered the store, remained less than a minute, came out, and drove off.

“He just picked up the monthly take of seventeen hundred bucks for the brass down at headquarters,” Croner said. “His name's Toby Marks and he's regular bagman all over town.”

“Altogether, that's about three thousand a month,” I said.

“About,” Croner said. “I figure that guy across the street's working about ten or eleven days a month just for the cops. If he can't cut it and goes out of business, that's too damned bad for him. Somebody else'll open up and pay off and the bastard cops are the only ones who're guaranteed a profit.”

“Why pay off the beat cop?” I said. “He's not going to arrest anybody if they're dragging in that much downtown.”

Croner gave me a pitying look, which he managed by manipulating his eyebrows. “Why pay off the beat cop, he asks. Well, all he has to do is stand out there for about three hours and the guy inside begins to hurt. Nobody's gonna play numbers at a spot where a cop's holding up the wall.”

“How many places like that in town?” Necessary said, mostly for my benefit, I thought.

Croner shrugged his bony shoulders. “I don't know. Maybe a couple of hundred, maybe more. I think they lose count in Niggertown. Last time I figured it out the total monthly payoff to the cops was around maybe half a million a month.”

“Nice,” Necessary said. “Real nice.”

“Why aren't you still writing?” I said.

Croner shot quick looks at his two curved mirrors. “Like your buddy here says, I thought the dues were too high so I quit paying the beat cop. He stood outside my place for four hours a day for two
weeks. I went broke. Then the people I banked with got mad and took it away from me and gave it to the guy across the street.”

“Seen enough?” Necessary said.

“I think so.”

“Thanks, Croner,” Necessary said. “I'll be around in a couple of days with a little something for you.”

Croner nodded glumly. “You want anything to read?” he said and waved a hand at the racks of books and magazines. “On the house.”

Necessary shook his head firmly. “My wife don't like me to read that stuff less I'm home where it'll do her some good. How ‘bout you?” he said to me.

“I don't think so,” I said.

Croner nodded again, just as glumly as before. “Don't blame you. It's all a bunch of crap. You'd be surprised at who buys it though. Sometimes I think this whole town is full of freaks.”

We got the car out of the lot and Necessary drove down Fifth to Forrest and turned left. “How much cash you got on you?” he said.

“About eight hundred.”

“That'll get you in.”

“Where?”

“I'll show you in a minute.” He turned right on Sixth Street and went two more blocks. “Just to your left is the new municipal center and police headquarters where I spent last night,” he said.

It was new, about fifteen stories high, and with its parking lot took up most of a city block. It was built of precast concrete slabs and its windows were tinted almost black and recessed a foot or so into the outer wall. The black windows gave it a grim, forbidding air and that was probably the way that they wanted it to look.

“They got the criminal courts in there, too,” Necessary said. “The city and county jails are around back.”

Across Sixth Street from headquarters were the usual inexpensive restaurants, poolhalls, and bars frequented by those who have good and bad reason to hang around police headquarters. There was a lawyers'
building and a number of signs painted on windows in gold leaf advertising twenty-four-hour bail bond service. The block also had three pawnshops.

Necessary drove into another parking lot and we walked up Sixth Street and turned into the side entrance of a three-story brick building whose ground floor was home to the Bench and Gavel Bar. We walked up a flight of stairs and down a hall that was lined with the offices of bail bondsmen and one-man legal offices. A phone rang occasionally. The sound of electric typewriters was constant. Necessary pushed through a door with no lettering on it. Past the door was a regular reception room with a desk and a chair. Behind the desk sat a young, uniformed policeman who nodded at Necessary and stared at me.

“You gonna try it again, huh?” he said to Necessary.

“Try,” Necessary said.

“He okay?” the cop said, nodding at me.

“He's okay,” Necessary said.

The cop reached under the desk and a buzzer sounded. We went through another door and into a room whose three windows offered a fine view of police headquarters across Sixth Street. There were two poker tables in the room, six chairs at each, and at least three of the gamblers wore the blue uniforms and the insignia of police lieutenant or captain. There were two chairs open at the far table and Necessary and I sat down next to each other. On my left was a police lieutenant with a small stack of chips in front of him. He nodded at me and I nodded back.

A young man of about thirty with green eyes and crinkly brown hair grinned at Necessary and said, “Well, Chief, you gonna try to get even?”

“I'll take two hundred worth,” Necessary said and pushed ten twenties across the table. The man with the green eyes looked at me and said, “How much, friend?”

“Two hundred,” I said and gave him four fifties. We played draw for an hour and I won nearly fifty dollars. Necessary lost a hundred. The police lieutenant was the big loser. He dropped nearly a thousand during the hour to a pair of quiet thin men with careful faces whose
conversation was limited to “in, out, call, up twenty, or check.” Whenever the chips in front of the lieutenant disappeared, he merely looked at the man with the crinkly hair, who shoved another two or three-hundred-dollar stack at him. The lieutenant was a bad player, a compulsive better, and an indifferent bluffer. At four o'clock he looked at his watch, cashed in forty dollars' worth of chips, nodded at me again, rose and left. The two captains at the other table also cashed in and left.

The man with the crinkly hair sighed. “Thank God he doesn't win often,” he said to nobody in particular.

“Free ride again, huh?” Necessary said.

“When they win, they win. When they lose, they put it on the tab and the tab's never paid.” He looked at Necessary. “Hear you had a little trouble last night.”

“Just a misunderstanding,” Necessary said.

“Uh-huh,” the man with the green eyes and crinkly hair said, “that's what I heard. A misunderstanding.”

“Deal,” said one of the men with a careful face. We played until five and I lost $125. Necessary was ahead a hundred or so. He shoved his chips in and the man with the crinkly hair cashed them without comment. I tossed him the couple of chips that I had left and he handed me $10.

“Come back,” he said, “now that you know the way.”

“Thanks,” I said. “I will.”

A different young policeman was on duty at the desk in the waiting room. He looked at us as we went out but said nothing. Halfway down the stairs, Necessary said, “That's one of the six games that Lynch runs. It starts at nine every morning and runs till about five
A.M.
The headquarters' brass play free, but they're all pretty bad and don't win much.”

When we were on Sixth Street, Necessary paused and said, “You want a drink?”

“Sounds good.”

We went into the cool, damp interior of the Bench and Gavel, sat
in a booth, and ordered two gin and tonics. Necessary took a long swallow of his and said, “How'd you like the tour?”

“Educational.”

“Give you any ideas?”

“A few.”

“We only skimmed the surface today,” he said.

“What's it look like underneath?”

“It's not the looks so much, it's the smell.”

“Pretty bad?”

“It stinks,” Necessary said.

“And the more it's stirred, the worse it'll get.”

Necessary finished his drink and waved for another one. “You figure on doing a little stirring?”

I nodded. “When I find a long enough spoon.”

 

 

The evening paper,
The News-Calliope
, broke the story a week later with a
screaming, eight-column banner. Skirting the libel laws by a legal pica or so, the publication charged that Mrs. Francine Sobour, prominent realtor and secretary of the Swankerton Clean Government Association, had stolen nearly a half million dollars from some Catholic nuns and had used the funds to get herself out of a financial hole.

To prove it, the newspaper printed pictures of Xeroxed copies of various checks and documents that had been involved in the transaction. There was even a signed, front-page editorial by the editor and publisher himself, Channing d'Arcy Phetwick III, calling upon Mrs. Sobour to resign from the Clean Government Association “until these damaging and shocking allegations are explained to the complete satisfaction of concerned citizens, Catholic and Protestant alike.” He forgot to mention those of the Jewish faith, but that must have been an unintentional oversight.