Росс Томас - The Fools in Town Are on Our Side

The phone rang and a man’s voice wanted to know if I were Mr. Dye. When I said yes, he said that his name was Robineaux and that Mr. Lynch had told him to wait in the lobby. I said I would be right down and when I got there, Mr. Robineaux turned out to be a tall young man with the posture of a question mark who had some interesting scars on his face that looked as if they had been stitched there by a sewing machine. I followed him out to a Lincoln Continental and he opened the rear door for me. The car was air-conditioned and Mr. Robineaux had nothing much to say until we arrived at a house in a residential section some twenty minutes later. Then he said, “This is it,” and got out and opened the door for me.

It was an old residential section of Swankerton where the pines grew tall and when the wind passed through them, they sighed a little, as if bored with their murmured, never-ending conversation about the weather. The house was a large, two-story frame structure with a turret at one end which poked up another story and was crowned by what looked to be a shingled dunce cap. There were screened porches running around both the first and second floors and carefully carved gingerbread scrollwork was nailed onto everything that would support it. It was a large house, perhaps three-quarters of a century old, and far too big for most of today’s families. Somehow I expected to spot a discreet sign announcing, in a hesitant manner, that there were rooms for rent providing, of course, that one could furnish proper references.

But there was no sign and I followed Robineaux and his interesting scars up the five steps that led to the screened-in porch. There was a lot of honeysuckle climbing around and its odor competed with that of the lawn’s freshly cut Bermuda grass. There were some magnolia trees and some azaleas, too, I noticed, but they weren’t in bloom, although they must have been a pleasant enough sight when they were, if one cared for that sort of thing.

Ramsey Lynch opened the door and gave me his hand to shake. He said “It’s good to see you” and I said something in reply that was equally meaningless. I knew he was Ramsey Lynch because he looked like his brother, Gerald Vicker, although Lynch was a little younger, but not much. His granite gray hair was long and thick and he wore it looped down and back over his forehead much in the same style that his brother favored. His eyes were steady and clear and somehow I knew that although they must have been in use for close to forty-five or even fifty years they still didn’t need glasses. He had Vicker’s right-triangle nose and the same thin lips but no mustache. He had three or four unremarkable chins, depending upon how high he held his head. Ramsey Lynch was a very fat man and he made no attempt to disguise it. He wore a pale blue suit of some synthetic fabric, a white shirt, and a dark blue tie. It all looked cool, loosely comfortable, and cheap.

The house was air-conditioned, I was relieved to find, as I followed Lynch into the living room or perhaps parlor. He turned and made a vague little gesture. “This was the parlor. Still is, I suppose. We bought it from two old maid sisters who finally couldn’t keep it up and went to a rest home. Everything is just like they left it — except the air-conditioning.”

It was a stiff room, filled with spindly chairs made out of dark wood and woven cane. There was a purple sofa, a loveseat, and a grand piano. Dead relatives or friends gazed down from the walls where they were trapped in their oval, glass-covered frames.

“We’re meeting in the dining room,” Lynch said and opened two sliding doors. Five men sat around an ornately carved table. There was a matching sideboard at the right and a tall, glass-fronted highboy at the left which held a collection of china and colored glassware that, to me, looked Bavarian.

The men were down to shirtsleeves. Three of them smoked cigarettes and from the looks of their ashtrays they had been there for at least two hours.

“This is Lucifer Dye,” Lynch said to the men. “You know who he works for and why he’s here. So I’ll just make the introductions and then we can get on with it.” Lynch started at the left hand side of the table and worked his way around it clockwise.

“Fred Merriweather,” he said. “Fred’s a city councilman and owns a lot of property over in Niggertown. Also has a restaurant on Snow Street, right across from your hotel, called the Easy Alibi. He’s up for re-election.” I nodded at Merriweather, who had a big-jawed face, stupid blue eyes, and a yellow-toothed smile.

“Next to him is Ancel Carp, who’s city tax assessor. We elect him, too, and he’s running again. He’s also the city surveyor.” Carp was around forty-five. He looked as if he spent a lot of time outdoors. His hands were extraordinarily large and they went with the rest of him. When he looked at me, his gray eyes seemed to be calculating my net worth and I felt that he wouldn’t be much more than two cents off.

“Now at the end of the table is his honor, the mayor. Pierre Robineaux. We call him Pete and his boy’s the one who carried you here.”

“Glad to have you with us, Mr. Dye,” Robineaux said, bobbing his head at me. He had a high forehead and a long chin, and both of them seemed to be too far removed from his button nose, small eyes, and pursed mouth.

“Next to the mayor is our chief of police, Cal Loambaugh. He’s appointed so he doesn’t have to worry about running. Not much.” The chief was younger than I expected, not more than thirty-five. He was dressed in a neat brown suit and had a tight, controlled look about him, like an alcoholic turning down a drink after he’s three days off the sauce. Loambaugh didn’t smile or nod. He just looked at me, and there was nothing in his gaze that I could find to like.

“And finally, this is Alex Couturier. He’s the executive secretary for the Chamber of Commerce, and belongs to the Lions, Kiwanis, American Legion, VFW, and God knows what else. He’s sort of the city’s public relations man.”

Couturier had one of those professionally friendly faces, loose and relaxed. His mouth seemed to be on the verge of a smile and I decided that it always looked that way. He was a big, bluff-looking man, well-dressed, but not so much that it would offend those who bought their suits at J. C. Penney’s. “Good to see you, Dye, good to see you,” he said and his voice boomed it all out and I thought it might have been nicer if his eyes had managed to join in on the chorus.

“Well, now, I think that’s everybody,” Lynch said. “Why don’t you sit right down here on my left and we’ll get started as soon as the mayor yells at that boy of his to bring us something cool.”

The mayor yelled “Booboo,” and the younger Robineaux popped his head through the door that must have led to the kitchen.

He said, “What?” and his father told him to bring bourbon and water all around.

After the drinks were served we sat there sipping them and waiting for someone to say something. Lynch was leaning back in his chair, his hands crossed over his belly, his thin lips smiling gently, at peace with himself and, for all I knew, with the world.

“You banging that blonde yet, Dye?” It was Loambaugh, the chief of police, and he didn’t look at me when he said it.

“Not yet,” I said.

“You know what I’d like to do?” he said softly. I looked at him. With a better barber, he could have posed for an FBI recruiting poster, if they had any.

“What?” I said.

“I’d like to get my head right down there between her legs and then have somebody jump up and down on the back of it. That’s what I’d like.”

The mayor snuffled and said something that sounded like, “Pshaw.” The other three grinned at each other and Lynch barked his fat man’s laugh. The chief had set the tone for the meeting. The preliminaries were over. The niceties were dispensed with. Nut-cutting time had arrived. I had seen it done often enough before, usually with more polish and grace, but seldom with such dispatch.