Росс Томас - The Fools in Town Are on Our Side

“On the dot,” I said.

“How you, Miz Thackerty?”

“Fine, Roger.”

“Gonna be a nice day,” he said, pouring the coffee. “Shouldn’t get no more than ninety, maybe ninety-two.”

“In October,” I said.

“Nice day.”

I signed the check and added his usual dollar tip. He looked at it glumly and said, “Might rain later though.”

“Thanks, Roger,” I said.

“Might even storm,” he said, moving toward the door. “Even some talk about a hurricane, but that weatherman’s a liar.” He took another quick peek at Carol, but found nothing interesting, mumbled something else about the weather or the state of the world, and left.

I handed Carol her coffee. “You should walk around naked for him just once,” I said.

“Not really. If I did he’d have nothing to anticipate. An occasional glimpse of breast and thigh keeps him stimulated and interested.”

I finished my coffee and put the cup down. “Who am I this morning? It’s slipped my mind.”

“You’re Special Investigator Dye from nine until ten,” she said.

“Him, huh? He’s the one who always thinks he should have known what lay behind the sealed tomb’s door.”

“His reports are good, too,” she said. “They all begin, ‘Chief Homer Necessary and his faithful assistant, Lucifer Dye, moved cautiously through the fog-shrouded night.’ From ten-thirty this morning until eleven-thirty you’re back being Triple Agent Lucifer Dye. You meet Lynch at his place. At noon you revert to your original role as Orcutt’s number one skulk.”

“What’s a skulk?”

“It’s what Orcutt wants to meet with at noon in his suite.”

“He likes meetings,” I said.

“He needs his audience.”

I leaned over the bed and kissed her. “I’ll see you at noon.”

“After it was over — really over,” she said, “I never actually believed that I would come back here to Venice.”

“I’ve never once asked for your love, Myra,” I said. “Only for your respect.” It was a harmless enough way to say goodbye.

I only needed a glance to tell what he was and who had sent him. He stood in the center of my room, his hands carefully in sight, but well balanced on the balls of his feet in case I tried to throw him out before he said what he had come to say. I nodded at him and tossed my room key on the dresser.

“How’s Carmingler?” I said.

“Fine.”

I pointed at the bathroom door. “I’m going in there and shower and shave and probably take a shit. I’ll be fifteen minutes. You can make yourself useful in the meantime by ordering up some coffee. I’ve only had one cup this morning and I’d like some more. Okay?”

“All right,” he said.

He was still standing in the center of the room when I came out, but he now held a cup and saucer. I went over to the dresser and poured myself a cup. Then I sat in the room’s most comfortable chair and looked at him.

“You know what somebody else and I call you?” I said.

“What?”

“We call you ‘just a guy.’ ”

He nodded as if he didn’t care what I called him. He was young, probably around twenty-eight or twenty-nine, wore a sleepy expression and a faint smile, as if he thought I was just a little quaint or old-fashioned. Maybe I was.

“I’ll make two guesses,” I said.

“Yes.”

“You sent a couple of punks up here about a month ago to see how nervous I was. That’s one guess. The second one is that your name is Mugar and that you’re Section Two’s young man of the year.”

He walked to the dresser and put his cup down. He moved well and had a deft way of pouring a cup of coffee. He drank it black, I noticed. He turned and looked at me, taking his time. His ash blond hair fitted his head like a bathing cap except for a few curly locks that wandered partway down his forehead. It gave him a slightly tousled look that must have cost him fifteen minutes before the mirror each morning with comb and brush.

The rest of him was regular enough, about five-eleven, a hundred and sixty pounds, regular features except for his dark hazel eyes, which I thought were a little too confident for his age, but I may have been jealous.

“Carmingler wants you to pack it in,” he said. It was his first complete sentence and it came out Eastern Seaboard from somewhere south of Boston and north of Baltimore.

“All right,” I said and watched his reaction with pleasure. He started slightly, but recovered well enough.

“You’ll do it then?” he said.

“I’ll take the third flight out. If Carmingler had said, ‘please,’ I’d take the first one.”

“They told me to expect some smart answers.”

“Anything else?”

“He wants you out of here next week. Friday.”

“And you’re to see to it?”

“That’s right. I’m to see to it.”

“He wanted me out a month ago and you made a half-hearted attempt that didn’t work. Why wait till now to try again?”

“The first was just a precautionary move,” he said. “Now we’re certain.”

“Carmingler’s never been certain of anything,” I said.

“He is of this.”

“You’ve waited long enough for it so I’ll say what?”

“Gerald Vicker.”

“Old Gerald.”

“He’s got to Senator Simon.”

“That’s not quite news,” I said.

“It will be when Simon makes his speech next Friday.”

“You’re a born tease, aren’t you?”

“You want it all?”

“Most of it anyway.”

“All right. Vicker got to Senator Simon and told him all about the Li Teh fiasco and how you’d spent three months in jail. The Senator’s not too happy with Section Two anyway, but I won’t go into the reasons unless you insist.”

“I don’t.”

“So now he’s going to make a speech on the Senate floor about the Li Teh thing and about how Section Two is messing in domestic politics where it’s not supposed to be. And you’re the goat. That’s bad enough, of course, but Simon’s also working with a top magazine that’s going to run a muckraker’s delight on you and this crew you’re working with here in Swankerton.”

“They’ve got two sources, I’d say. Gerald Vicker and his brother, Ramsey Lynch.”

“That’s right.”

“Carmingler’s worried about his appropriations,” I said.

“That and he just doesn’t like publicity.”

“Well, you can tell him that I think he’s got a real problem.”

“You’ve got until Friday,” he said.

“Your name is Mugar, isn’t it?”

“Franz Mugar.”

“If I don’t bow out by Friday, what happens then, Franz?”

“You’ll bow out one way or another.”

“A promise, I take it?”

“If you like. If you don’t, it’s a threat.”

“What about my associates?”

“A little scummy, aren’t they?”

“Not for me, but then I bet you and I don’t travel in the same crowd. I know Carmingler doesn’t.”

“We don’t care about them,” Mugar said. “We just don’t want anything of ours around that can tie us into this mess when it breaks.”

“And I’m the anything?”

“That’s right.”

“And if I don’t go quietly, then I’ll go however you decide’s best?”

“That’s right,” Mugar said again.

“I don’t like threats. They make me nervous.”

“You should take something for it.”

I rose, walked over to the phone, and picked it up. “Chief Necessary’s room, please.”

Mugar stared at me. I beckoned him over to the phone. “I’ll hold it so you can hear,” I said. He moved over so that he could hear.

When Necessary came on I said, “How much room do we have in that new jail of ours?”