Росс Томас - The Fools in Town Are on Our Side

“I’ve buttered this guy up some,” Necessary said as we went in.

Most of the books were paperback and were written by authors with such alliterative names as Norman Norway and Jennifer Jackson and Paula Pale. The covers weren’t too well done, but they got their messages across. Often there were two girls of impressive physical proportions who went around in boots and whips and not much else. Sometimes there were two men and one girl or two girls and one man and they all seemed to have large, unmade beds in the background. The paperbacks’ titles were about as imaginative as the names of the authors. There was Red Lust and The Longest Whip and Broken Dyke and Fallen Devil. The paperbacks took up about three-fourths of the small shop and the rest was given over to magazines that featured extraordinarily well-built muscle boys or nude girls or sometimes both.

“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.”