Росс Томас - The Fools in Town Are on Our Side

Luccarella nodded after Lynch finished and slumped back into his chair as if winded. “You know what my analyst would call that?” he said. “My analyst would call that insight.”

“Or projection,” I said.

“You got an analyst, Mr. Dye?” Luccarella asked in a hopeful tone, as if he wanted to compare notes.

“No.”

“What do you think of what Lynch said?”

“Not much.”

“But you do want something, despite what he said. You want to name his successor, like you said.”

“That’s right.”

“I can tell you who it’s gonna be,” Lynch said.

“You want to let him guess?” Luccarella said. “After all, it’s his own successor.”

“I don’t care,” I said.

“Okay, who?” Luccarella said.

Lynch stared at me again. He seemed to find something about me fascinating. “It’s gonna be you, isn’t it, Dye?”

“That’s right,” I said. “It’s going to be me.”

“What do you think you should call yourself at this particular point in time, Mr. Dye?” Victor Orcutt asked. “Are you Swankerton’s vice lord apparent? Or would vice lord designate be more appropriate?”

Four of us had just lunched on some more of Orcutt’s homecooking, thin slices of veal swimming in a thick sauce whose principal ingredients seemed to have been sour cream and a heavy Marsala that I thought had been too sweet. I had eaten all of mine anyway.

“Either one,” I said.

Orcutt flitted over to the coffee and poured himself another cup. He wore a blue blazer with gold buttons, striped blue and white trousers, white buck shoes with red rubber soles, and another Lord Byron shirt, whose open neck was partially filled by a carelessly knotted narrow paisley scarf. He looked all of twenty-two.

“The only thing that disturbs me is Senator Simon’s speech,” he said as he glided back to his chair by the window that looked out over the Gulf.

“What about that magazine piece?” Homer Necessary said. “What’s that thing got, about nine million circulation?”

“Six,” Carol said.

“You know, Mr. Dye, you were right,” Orcutt said. “I really did place too much trust in Gerald Vicker. This grudge he has against you seems almost pathological.”

“His brother doesn’t like me much either,” I said.

Orcutt almost bounced up and down on the seat of his chair. “Oh, I would have given anything to have seen Lynch this morning! You give excellent reports, Mr. Dye, but you never include all the little spicy details. You’re really not much of a gossip, you know.”

“Sorry.”

“No matter. It just means that we’re going to have to move our schedule back — or is it up? I never could get that straight.”

“Back,” Carol said.

“Up,” Necessary said.

“Never mind,” Orcutt said. “What we hoped and planned would happen will now have to happen earlier than we had hoped and planned. All right?” He didn’t wait for a vote. “Senator Simon will speak Friday after next, that’s ten days from now, and the main thrust of his speech will charge that Mr. Dye’s former employers are now engaged in domestic politics and Swankerton will be his proof. Data on this and other details relating to Mr. Dye’s past activities were furnished the senator by Gerald Vicker and his brother, Ramsey Lynch. Am I correct so far?”

“So far,” I said.

“Good. Meanwhile that awful magazine — I simply never could read it, especially its editorials — will publish an article buttressing and embellishing the senator’s speech. It also will appear a week from Friday. It will not only attack Mr. Dye and his former employers, but it will also carry an account of Victor Orcutt Associates’ involvement here in Swankerton. Incidentally, Homer, have you heard of any of the magazine’s writers or photographers being in town?”

Necessary nodded. “They’re around, but they’ve been working with Lynch.”

“Isn’t it strange that they haven’t called any of us?”

“No,” I said.

“Why?”

“Because they’ll put together what they think is a story, and at the last minute ask what we think of it. They’ve still got time to do that.”

Orcutt made a church of his hands, and then a steeple, and then opened them up to look at the people. He was thinking. I wondered how much faster he thought than I did. “You know,” he said, “it’s really quite simple.”

“What?” Necessary asked.

“We’re going to apply Orcutt’s First Law.”

“To get better, it must get much worse,” I said.

“You remembered!” he said. “I’m so delighted!”

“You were going to tell us how simple it was,” Necessary said.

So Orcutt told us and as he said, it was simple, but then a broken neck can also be described as a simple fracture.

Homer Necessary made two calls before we went back to his twelfthfloor office. Carol Thackerty was on the other phone that Orcutt had had installed in the Rickenbacker Suite and when I went out the door I heard her setting up a conference call between Swankerton, Washington, and New York.

While we waited for the elevator I said, “How many times has he been out of the hotel since he got here?”

“Orcutt?”

“Yes.”

“I don’t think he’s been out any since we got here from San Francisco,” Necessary said. “He was out a couple of times before that, you know, when you weren’t here yet.”

“I’d think he’d get cabin fever.”

Necessary shook his head. “Not him. He likes playing spider king.”

There were two doors to Necessary’s office and both of them were busy that afternoon. Five minutes after we got there, Lt. Ferkaire came in, brimming with his sense of justice, eager to please, and proud of the University of Tennessee ring that he wore on his left hand. I think he made the chief of police nervous, although Necessary never said anything other than that he thought Ferkaire was “a nice, bright kid.”

“They’re bringing the first one up now, sir,” Ferkaire told Necessary.

“They got their instructions like I said?”

“Yes, sir. They bring them in this door and when they come out your other one they take them back where they picked them up.”

“Any trouble locating them?” Necessary said.

“No, sir. Not yet.”

“You tell them all to be goddamned polite?”

“My exact words, sir. Goddamned polite. Excuse me for asking, Chief Necessary, but how important are these men?”

“To who?”

“Well, I mean how do they rank nationally?”

“They’re major league, kid,” Necessary said. “Don’t worry about it, they’re all pros from the majors.”

“Would you like me to sit in, sir?” Ferkaire asked stiffly, but not stiff enough to keep the eagerness and hope out of his voice.

“Not this time.”

“Thank you, sir.”

“For what?” Necessary said. “I just told you you couldn’t sit in.”

“I just meant—” Ferkaire grew flustered and tried to think of something else to say, something pertinent, when Necessary said, “Forget it. When the first one gets up here, bring him right in. Who’s first by the way?”

Ferkaire looked at a three-by-five card that he carried. “Frank Schoemeister. Chicago.”

Necessary nodded. “That’s all, Ferkaire.”

Ferkaire said yes, sir, again and left.

“Jimmy Twoshoes,” Necessary said as he moved behind his desk. “They come up with the goddamnedest nicknames. I knew one in Pittsburgh once that they used to call Billy Buster Bible because he used to carry one around and always let them kiss it before he shot them. He used to shoot them through the ear. The left one, I think.” He sank back in his executive chair and looked at me. “You going to be over there by the window?”