The Fools in Town Are on Our Side (34 page)

The story pushed Washington and Southeast Asia back to pages four and five. The reform candidate for mayor, a prissy-looking attorney with rimless glasses, said that he was “deeply disturbed.” The incumbent mayor, Pierre (Pete) Robineaux, whom I had met at Lynch's Victorian house, said that it was “shocking, but not surprising,” and
Phetwick's paper printed a picture of him saying it with his tiny mouth agape and his eyes bulging half out of their sockets. The law firm that handled Mrs. Sobour's affairs issued a statement that in one paragraph made vague threats about filing a libel suit and in the next announced that Mrs. Sobour would “have no comment at present.”

The TV stations picked it up, of course, and showed pictures of the virtually completed luxury development that Mrs. Sobour was in hock for. They also ran some old film clips of her which showed a still attractive, dark-haired woman with a broad smile and a cheery wave. Some of the Sisters of Solace were also interviewed. They said that they were praying for Mrs. Sobour.

At nine o'clock that night, Mayor Robineaux bought a half hour of political time on all three television stations and used it to attack the Clean Government Association as “the spoiler of Swankerton.” He wasn't a very good speaker and since he had preempted two of the top ten TV programs, he probably lost himself a few thousand votes.

It had taken me the entire week to get the information on the Sobour woman to Ramsey Lynch. I gave it to him piecemeal, an item at a time. Some of it was Xeroxed on different machines, some of it I had copied in my own scrawled handwriting on the backs of envelopes, and some of it was verbal stuff that Lynch could check out himself. Orcutt and I spent hours deciding what particular document or scrap of evidence Lynch should get on a particular day and what form it should take. Carol Thackerty had suggested that I use my almost indecipherable handwriting.

Lynch had been like a man who is given a jigsaw puzzle one piece at a time. He had a vague, general idea of its outline, but until I handed him the final damning piece of documentation, the picture had been of interesting composition, but inadequate impact. The final piece brought it all into focus and Lynch said, “Well, I'll be goddamned go to hell, so that's how she did it!”

“She's good,” I said.

“Good, my ass, she's damn near perfect. The thing is, she could've paid it all back in three months and nobody'd ever known the difference.”

“That's right.”

Lynch looked at me carefully. “How'd you get tipped off?”

“I listen a lot,” I said. “And I remember what I hear.”

“You must have done some sneaking around late at night.”

I shook my head. “Early in the morning. Before cock crow.”

Lynch grinned and nodded his four or five chins. “That's a good time all right.” He tapped the pile of Xeroxed material and scribbled notes with a forefinger. “You know what I'm gonna do with all this?”

“What?”

“I'm gonna get it all typed up neat with extra Xeroxed copies of everything and then I'm gonna wrap it up in a pink ribbon and send it over to old Phetwick at the
Calliope
with a note that says ‘for your information.' “

“He'll print it.”

“He might sit on it till it's hatched,” Lynch said with a dubious look. “He's one of the high muckety-mucks in the Clean Government crowd.”

“That's why he'll print it,” I said. “That and because he's in the business of selling newspapers. Christ,
The News-Calliope
will be more outraged and hurt than the nuns themselves.” I didn't mention that a reporter on the
Calliope
had dug up most of the material on Mrs. Sobour nearly two months before and that Phetwick had locked it away in a safe.

We were in my hotel room at the Sycamore, alone except for Boo Robineaux, the mayor's disenchanted heir, who was reading a copy of
Evergreen
, or at least admiring the pictures.

“Boo,” Lynch said, “bring me my bag over here.”

Boo rose, not taking his eyes from the magazine, picked up the briefcase, brought it over to Lynch, handed it to him, and went back to his chair without skipping a word. He seemed totally disinterested.

“Got a little something for you,” Lynch said, unlocking the briefcase.

“Like money?”

“Like money. Sorry I'm a week late with it, but we wanted a look at the merchandise.”

He started taking it out of the briefcase and stacking it on the coffee table. Then he was done and there were ten stacks of brand new fifty-dollar bills.

“Twenty-five grand,” he said. “Want to count it?”

I shook my head. “I don't even want to touch it.”

“What's the matter? You said cash.”

“Tell you what you do,” I said. “You put the money back in the briefcase, give it to Boo, and tell him to go across the street to the First National and ask that nice vice-president over there, the one who's so friendly, to change it into used tens, twenties, and just a few old fifties. You wouldn't mind doing that, would you, Lynch?”

Lynch chuckled. “By God, I bet you think it's queer.”

“No,” I said. “I just think it's new and so are the serial numbers.”

Lynch tried to look gravely offended, but it was ruined by the twinkle in his eyes. “There's not much Christian trust in that heart of yours, Brother Dye.”

“None at all, Brother Lynch.”

We had a drink while Boo Robineaux went across street to switch the new money for old bills. “What else do you think you might dig up?” Lynch said.

“You just named it,” I said. “Something else.”

“Just as good.”

“Better, I think.”

“You're not sure yet?”

“No.”

“Well, I'm gonna have something for you to slip your friend Orcutt.”

“When?”

“You anxious?”

“I'm supposed to be working for him.”

“That's right, I keep getting confused about who you really work for.”

“So do I.”

“I hope it's nothing you can't straighten out.”

“It's not.”

“Orcutt pressing you?”

“He keeps asking.”

“Next time he does, tell him a couple of days.”

“It had better be good.”

Lynch smiled comfortably, as if well pleased with life and his place in the scheme of things. “It'll be just dandy,” he said.

After I put the $25,000 in old bills in my safe-deposit box, I called an airline just for the hell of it, I told myself, and asked what flights there were from Swankerton to San Francisco and if there was a connecting polar flight from there to Geneva. When she said that there wasn't, I thanked her and lied about how I would make other arrangements out of New York.

I'm still not sure what I would have done if I could have made connections. For a few moments I had been on my way, gone from Swankerton and heading west, the only way to go when flight turns into the final solution. It had happened too quickly, of course. That was most of it, if not all. The body went through its normal functions. It ate and bathed and talked and made love, but the mind still wandered around and waited for the key to turn in the lock and for the thud of the bolt as the guard slid it back. I went over to the mirror and took a good look at the man with the too pale face who only four or five weeks before had been dining on fish and rice and amusing himself by counting the number of lice he killed each day. It wasn't exactly a stranger's face, it was just the face of someone whom I no longer knew very well and whose renewed acquaintance would require too much effort. I waved at him and he of course waved back. It was not a wave of greeting but rather of vague acknowledgement, one that admitted existence, but nothing else.

Gloomy persons like gloomy weather. They like foggy days and rain and sleet. They can understand those and cope with them. But it's on those shiny, bird-singing days that they order up the two-fifths of vodka and take the sleeping pills down from the medicine cabinet, or
crawl out on the ledge of the building, or go out to the garage with a length of hose and tape it to the exhaust. I went over to the window and stared down at the girls in their sunglasses and short summer dresses and wished it would rain. I waited five minutes for a bolt of lightning or a thunderclap or at least for a cloud to hide the sun, but when nothing happened I went over to the phone and called Carol Thackerty.

“I'll buy you a drink,” I said when she answered.

“I thought you had company.”

“He's gone.”

“You're supposed to see Orcutt.”

“Not for lunch, I hope.”

“No. He's having that with Phetwick the third and Doctor Warner Colfax.”

“Of the Colfax clinic?”

“The same. You're supposed to give them a report after lunch.”

“When will that be?”

“A couple of hours.”

“Fine. I'll buy you a drink and lunch.”

“Where?”

“My room.”

“Shall I bring Homer, and don't say it's not necessary.”

“Don't anyway.”

“Just a cozy
tête-à-tête
with perhaps a nooner thrown in, right?”

“That did occur to me,” I said.

“Me too.”

“Fifteen minutes?”

“Make it twenty,” she said, “and order my lunch.”

“What?”

“Steak tartare with lots of capers.”

“And a raw egg?”

“Two,” she said.

“Chopped onions?”

“Gobs.”

“Well, there's one thing about steak tartare,” I said.

“What?”

“If we're busy doing something else, we won't have to worry about it getting cold.”

After the drinks, and the wine, and the raw chopped steak, and a most satisfactory midday journey down some heretofore unexplored avenues in sexland, Carol Thackerty and I sat drinking coffee and waiting for my command appearance in the Rickenbacker suite before the crowned heads of Swankerton.

“It's not really your dish, is it?” she said.

“What, sex?”

“No.”

“Well, what?”

“This whole Swankerton bamboozle.”

“That's a good word.”

“It describes it.”

“Probably,” I said.

“But you don't fit in, do you?”

“I haven't thought about it.”

“You're a good liar, but not that good.”

“All right, I thought about it. For five minutes just before I called you.

“And what did you decide?”

“Why the hell do I have to decide something? I just thought about it.”

“If somebody were setting me up, I'd think about it. Hard.”

“I read the enlistment papers carefully,” I said.

“You signed on to be tough, huh?”

“Something like that.”

“Why?”

“My thinking hasn't got that far yet,” I said. “That's tomorrow's episode.”

She ground her cigarette out in an ashtray and kept on grinding it
even after it was dead. “You're in for a long fall,” she said. “I don't think you know how far.”

“I've got a fair idea.”

“If I had to fall that far, I'd be looking for something to catch me.”

“Maybe I'll just bounce.”

“No,” she said, shaking her head. “You won't bounce. You'll just shatter into a million, billion, trillion pieces.”

“That's a lot of pieces.”

“I used to say that when I was a kid.”

“Why all the sudden concern?” I said.

She looked at me steadily. “Jesus, you ask some dumb questions sometimes.”

“Yes,” I said, “I suppose I probably do.”

 

 

Channing d'Arcy Phetwick III crossed one bony leg over the other, cleared his
throat, and in his old man's faltering tenor said, “What precisely was the reaction of the Lynch person?”

I turned from the window which had a view of the Gulf and said, “He thought Mrs. Sobour was a financial whiz.”

Phetwick must have been close to eighty. He occupied one of the three chairs that were drawn up around a coffee table in the Rickenbacker suite. Orcutt and Doctor Colfax sat in the other two, Orcutt on the edge of his so that his feet could touch the floor. Phetwick's voice kept cracking when he spoke, going from tenor to soprano, but each word came out all by itself, freshly minted, and the phrasing of each word was exactly the same. It was a curious way of speaking, something like a talking robot whose voice box needed oiling. Phetwick wore a hearing aid and thick bifocals and the backs of his hands were covered with brown liver spots. He had on a dark suit, almost black, that may have been broadcloth if they still make it, and a high collar, like the one that Herbert Hoover wears in all the history books. His stringy neck was too small for the collar and his flesh hung in gray, flabby folds, as if he had lost a lot of weight.

“Does Lynch believe that I will publish the story?” he said.

“Yes, I think so. He's going to turn the stuff over to you today.”

“Excellent. I wrote my signed editorial this morning. It is, I think you will agree when you read it, exceptionally forceful.” Phetwick never seemed to use contractions when he spoke. “Now let us get on with the affair of the druggist.”

“Doctor Colfax has gone over the information concerning Frank Mouton,” Orcutt said. “It appears incontrovertible to him as well as to me and I suggest that Mr. Dye transmit it to Lynch much in the same manner that he transmitted the material on the Sobour woman.”

“Mouton is a deacon in my church,” Phetwick said to no one in particular. “Pity, I suppose.”

Dr. Warner Colfax stirred in his chair at Orcutt's left. He was my idea of what a doctor should look like: his expensive tweed suit was carelessly rumpled, his tie was the wrong shade, and his shirt, while clean enough, was a little too tight at the neck and snug at the belly. His shoes, also expensive, were thoughtlessly cared for, and his blue eyes twinkled merrily behind practical, steel-rimmed glasses. He had a brush mustache, clipped fairly well, but gone to salt and pepper, and a wide sensitive mouth over a strong chin, with gray thinning hair that he brushed just so to cover a bare patch and to reveal that he, too, had a reassuring streak of harmless vanity. Good, gray Dr. Colfax.