Росс Томас - The Fools in Town Are on Our Side

“It has something to do with Lynch,” Orcutt said.

Necessary nodded. “Dye’s tipping him off, huh?”

“Not all the way.”

“Okay,” Necessary said. “I get it.” He turned to me. “I’ll call you about two unless you want to stay up.”

“Call me,” I said. “I’ll call Lynch from a phone booth.”

“When it’s too late,” Necessary said.

“That’s right,” I said. “When it’s too late.”

Homer Necessary came back up to my room with me, probably because he knew that I had laid in a new supply of Scotch, and he was thirsty as usual. I ordered up some ice and some coffee for myself while Necessary mixed himself a drink, not waiting for the ice.

“Where’d you find Soderbell?” I said.

“Cleveland,” Necessary said. “He was in the army in Vietnam for a year and when he got discharged he went back out there as a civilian free lance. He helped shoot a documentary for some German producer that won an award in Berlin.”

“What was he doing in Cleveland?”

“Looking for a job.”

“Does he know what he’s getting into tonight?”

“Hell, this isn’t his first time. He’s been flying in and out of here for the last month from New Orleans. Old man Phetwick let us commission him to do a documentary on Swankerton. He’s shot some real nice stuff.”

“Such as?”

“Well, he sets up inside a delivery truck at noon around a grade school and gets some close-up stuff of kids spending their lunch money on numbers. Now that’s not bad, is it?”

“No, that’s pretty good.”

“Then he sets up just above that dirty book store we were in and shoots the payoffs of the cops and the customers going in and out across the street without any dry cleaning. Then he rigs a camera up in a briefcase and goes to one of the better cathouses and gets some prominent citizens coming and going. He rigs another one up in a big box, like it was gift-wrapped, you know, and puts it on the front seat of his car and then goes out and gets himself arrested for stop line running and speeding. They arrest him six times in one day and he pays the cops off on the spot with five-dollar bills and gets it all down on film. You can even read their numbers. Then he gets some good shots out in Niggertown of cops just standing around on a corner grinning while a pusher takes care of his customers.”

“Have you seen any of it?” I asked.

Necessary shook his head. “He’s keeping it all in New Orleans. He’s made duplicate prints of everything just in case. Oh, yeah, he got one more pretty good shot too — with sound.”

“What?” I said.

“Well, Phetwick owns a hell of a lot of property around town, you know, and he owns this small store building that he’s going to tear down anyway. It’s a three-story building over on Early. The top two floors are vacant and downstairs is a grocery store, one of those mom and pop things, and their lease is about to run out. So I make a deal with them.”

“What kind of deal?”

“The old guy has been paying protection to some of Lynch’s hard cases. Not much. About twenty-five or thirty a week. We offer him a bundle not to pay the next time they come around and to let Soderbell film and tape it.

“The old guy’s afraid he might get beat up, but we tell him not to worry about it, and that we’ll stop any rough stuff. Soderbell rigs everything up in the back room, gets his mikes hidden away, and we sit and wait.”

“You were with him?”

“I was with him on all of them except when the traffic cops stopped him. I tell the old guy not to pay and sure enough, here they come, a couple of real punks. They call him dad and ask for the weekly premium and all that and the old man says he’s not paying. They just smile and open a big jug of Lysol and pour it all over his vegetables. Soderbell gets all that. The old man still won’t pay so they get a couple of cans of shaving cream in those aerosol things and squirt it all over the inside of his meat case. Nothing rough yet and Soderbell gets that on film too.”

“The conversation, too,” I said.

“That too. Then they start getting rough with the old man. They slap him a couple of times and bend his arm a little and he starts yelling. Soderbell wants to go help him, but I tell him to shut up and just keep shooting. Finally, one of them hits too hard and the old man faints or passes out. They open the cash register, take out their thirty dollars or whatever it is, and leave. Soderbell gets it all.”

“What happened to the store owner?”

“We send him to Colfax’s Hospital, all bills paid. Then we give him his bundle and as soon as he gets over his concussion he heads for Florida.”

“He recovered?” I said.

“Sure, he recovered,” Necessary said. “If I thought they were going to kill him or anything like that, mess him up real bad, I’d of stepped in. But they just mussed him up a little and if I’d done anything about it, then Soderbell’d lost some real fine stuff.”

“You’re nothing but heart, Homer.”

“What the Christ would you have done?”

“I don’t know,” I said. “Probably have gone for the film instead of the rescue.”

Necessary stared at me with his brown and blue eyes and I could find no admiration in them. “You know, Dye, you got something wrong with you inside somewhere. Maybe in your head. You remind me of some tough old cops that I’ve known who got worried when they couldn’t feel about things like they did when they were rookies. It bothered some of them so much that they went out looking for things that’d make ‘em feel like they thought they should, and if they didn’t get killed doing it, they got preachy. I don’t think you feel a hell of a lot about anything or anybody. But you think you should because of all the crap around that says that’s the way normal people are. Well, you just as well face it: you ain’t normal. You might have been once, but not anymore, so you may as well get used to it.”

“I feel I should be taking notes.”

Necessary shook his head. “I haven’t got much hope for you, Dye. You’re the kind who’ll keep on playing by somebody else’s rules, lose every time, and always wonder why.”

“Whose rules do you play by?”

“My own, good buddy, my very own.”

“And you never lose?”

Necessary finished his drink. “Sure I lose,” he said, “but when I do, at least I know why.”

The telephone rang fifteen minutes after Necessary left and it was Gorman Smalldane calling from New York.

“You’re five days late,” I said.

“And you’ve got some nice playmates,”

“I know.”

“You want the good as well as the bad?” Smalldane said.

“Just the bad.”

“I’ll skim it for you.”

“Fine.”

“The Thackerty woman’s been arrested twice for prostitution. It was nol-prossed both times.”

“Anything else?”

“She was Phi Beta Kappa in her junior year.”

“Is that supposed to be good or bad?” I said.

“I won’t try to influence you.”

“Thanks.”

“Victor Orcutt,” Smalldane said. “No record other than a rather startling academic one. He’s a genius.”

“If you don’t believe it, ask him.”

“Like that, huh?”

“Like that.”

“Homer Necessary. Now there’s a name I like. At twenty-six he was a second-grade detective who busted his own police department wide open. By himself. He nailed every one from the chief on down. He had facts, figures, documents, photographs, and his evidence and testimony helped send thirty-one of his fellow officers to the state penitentiary. The chief himself got five years. The city was so impressed and grateful that it made Necessary its new chief of police at twenty-seven, and for the next fifteen years he — shall we say — prospered. He did everything the old crowd did and added a few new licks of his own.”