Росс Томас - The Fools in Town Are on Our Side

“That’s right.”

“I wish to hell more light would come through it.”

“There’s enough to give them the idea.”

“You want to go first?” he said.

“Better if you did,” I said. “They may not know you, but they’ll know the gold braid. I’ll come in on the chorus.”

Necessary looked at his watch. “It’s going to be a long afternoon.”

“Longer than most,” I agreed.

A few minutes later Ferkaire knocked on the door, entered, and said, “Mr. Frank Schoemeister, Chief Necessary.”

Then he closed the door and left Schoemeister standing there in the center of the room. Schoemeister looked at Necessary, then at me, and then back at Necessary. After that he studied the rug, the ceiling, and the two flags behind Necessary’s desk. He nodded his head as if he’d reached some silent agreement with himself and put his hands in his coat pockets. Then he smiled and it came out hideous.

Necessary waved a negligent hand at him. “Sit down, Schoemeister, pick a chair. That’s my special assistant over there, Mr. Dye.”

Schoemeister nodded in my direction, selected a chair so that he could keep me in view, and sat down. Finally, he decided to say something: “Social?”

“Social,” Necessary said.

“You don’t mind if I smoke then?”

Necessary waved his hand again. “You want a drink? I’m going to have one.”

“A drink?” Schoemeister said. “That would be nice.”

“What would you like?” I said, moving to the bar.

“Scotch and water, please.”

I mixed three of them and handed Schoemeister his. He accepted it with a slim, well-cared-for hand that went with the rest of him, which was equally well tended. He was not yet forty, looked even younger, and wore dark, quiet clothes that almost made him look like a successful corporate executive whose career was a couple of years ahead of schedule. He looked like that until you noticed his shoes. And his mouth. The shoes were black alligator with large silver buckles that got encouragement from the white, brushed-suede fleurs-de-lis that decorated each toe. I had read somewhere, probably in a barber shop, that Jimmy Twoshoes had more than two hundred pairs of customcobbled footwear and sometimes wore as many as six different pairs in a day. But he had only one mouth, and there was nothing he could do about that, although he had tried hard enough. The twelve puckered white scars were still there where they had sewed his lips together with fishing line in 1961. The heavy mustache he wore failed to disguise the scars that twisted his mouth into a perpetual snarl. The Chicago police never did learn who had sewed Schoemeister’s lips together, nor would Schoemeister tell them. During the month after he was released from the hospital funerals were held for four of Schoemeister’s more prominent contemporaries. They had all died messily and none of their caskets was opened during their funerals.

“We got a nice little town here,” Necessary said after he took a swallow of his drink.

“I noticed,” Schoemeister said.

“Got some new industry and more on the way. Got one of the best little beaches on the Gulf. The niggers have been fairly quiet up till now. Nice big Air Force depot about fifteen miles out of town helps keep the unemployment down. Got a good, clean, local government that listens to reason. Of course, Swankerton’s no Chicago, but it’s a real nice little city where you can still walk the streets safe at night. You here on a vacation?”

“Vacation,” Schoemeister said.

“There’ve been some changes here recently,” Necessary said. “They put me in as chief of police and Mr. Dye’s my new special assistant and it’s sort of up to us to look out for law and order.”

“I hear the last chief of police shot himself,” Schoemeister said.

“He sure did, poor guy. Pressure, I guess. Funny you’d bring that up, but a good friend of his left town this afternoon sudden like. Name’s Ramsey Lynch. Ever heard of him?”

Schoemeister nodded. He did it carefully. “I’ve heard of him.”

“Well, he was quite prominent here in certain circles. Had a lot of interests.”

“Who’s looking after them for him?” Schoemeister said, and I decided that he knew what the right questions were.

“Well, that’s funny, too, but it seems that me and Mr. Dye here are sort of going to have to look after things. We were talking about it just this afternoon, weren’t we, Mr. Dye?”

“This very afternoon,” I said. “Just before you got here.”

“I see,” Schoemeister said. He wasn’t pushing anything.

“The trouble, Mr. Schoemeister,” I said, “is that neither Chief Necessary nor I have schedules that will permit us to devote full time to the various activities that formerly were under Mr. Lynch’s personal supervision. We were thinking of taking in a partner — a working partner, of course — who could devote at least a portion of his time to these various interests. Your name happened to come up, so we thought we’d arrange this meeting.”

“I’m going to ask you a question,” Schoemeister said.

Necessary smiled. “Go ahead.”

“This place bugged?”

“You think I’d bug my own office?”

“Some do.”

“Some are goddamned stupid, too.”

“Okay,” Schoemeister said and looked at me. “You talk awful pretty, but you don’t really say anything. See if you can’t make it not quite so pretty and a little more plain.”

“All right,” I said. “Lynch is out as of noon today. I’m in. So is Necessary and so are you, for a third if you can run it.”

“I hear it’s pretty rich,” Schoemeister said.

“You hear right,” Necessary said.

“I also hear that Lynch was under Luccarella.”

“Luccarella’s out too,” I said.

“Since when?”

“Since tomorrow,” Necessary said.

“What keeps him out?”

Necessary tapped the third gold button down on his uniform. “This keeps him out and gets you in, if you’re interested.”

Schoemeister nodded. “Like I say, I’ve been on vacation down here, but you know how it is, I sort of nosed around.”

“We know how it is,” Necessary said.

“I’d kinda heard of some trouble when I was up in Chicago.”

“It gets around,” I said.

Schoemeister looked at me. “When you talk about these interests, just what’re you talking about?”

“Everything,” I said.

“How much you figure it’s worth?”

“By the month?” Necessary said.

“That’ll do.”

Necessary looked at me. “What did we come up with?”

“Before we reorganized the police department it grossed about two million a month. There was the usual big overhead and that knocked the net down to around two or three hundred thousand. Some months were better than others.”

“How many ways is the net split?” Schoemeister said.

“Three,” Necessary said. “Just three ways and each of us pays his own expenses.”

“And what do you expect me to do?” Schoemeister said.

“The operation has deteriorated during the past month,” I said. “Gone to hell really. We expect you to personally supervise its rebuilding. After it’s functioning smoothly again, you can appoint your own supervisor. He — and whoever he hires — will be responsible to you and you will be responsible to us.”

Schoemeister nodded thoughtfully. “Suppose I just moved in on my own? Suppose that happened?”

“We’d move you right out,” Necessary said.

“What about Luccarella? He’s tied in back east, you know.”

“That bother you?” I said.

“Those guys back east don’t bother me,” Schoemeister said. “I don’t go looking for trouble from them, but they don’t bother me.”