Росс Томас - The Fools in Town Are on Our Side

“Luccarella might get a little unfriendly,” Necessary said.

“Who takes care of him?”

“You do,” Necessary said. “And anybody else who starts getting pushy. There may be a couple of them or so.”

“I’ll have to get some people down.”

“How soon?” I asked.

He shrugged. “I call ‘em today; they’ll be here tomorrow. How much trouble you think there might be, not counting Luccarella?”

“Two or three maybe,” Necessary said.

“You got any names?”

“A couple. Tex Turango from Dallas. Nigger Jones from Miami.”

Schoemeister shook his head and smiled his horrible smile. “That ain’t much trouble.”

“We didn’t think it would be.”

“One thing though.”

“What?” I said.

“I’d like to go over the books. I mean you go into a business like this and invest time and money and you’re a damn fool if you don’t go over the books.”

“Tomorrow afternoon be okay?” I said.

“Fine,” Schoemeister said. “I’ll have my accountant come down too.”

“Good,” Necessary said.

“Well,” Schoemeister said, rising, “I guess that does it for now.”

We shook hands all around. “I think it’s going to be nice doing business with you fellows,” he said.

“I think it’ll work out fine all the way around,” Necessary said.

“You might want to use the private entrance over here,” I said and steered Schoemeister to it.

“Thanks for the drink,” he said as he went out, and I told him not to mention it.

When he had gone Necessary picked up the phone and spoke to Lt. Ferkaire, who came in promptly.

“Who’s next?”

“The Onealo brothers, Ralph and Roscoe. Kansas City.”

“Send them in,” Necessary said.

After they came in and after they were seated, Homer Necessary leaned back in his chair and said, “We got a nice little town here. Got some new industry and more on the way. Got one of the best little beaches...”

It went that way all afternoon. The Onealo brothers, blond, dumpy and stupid-looking, couldn’t conceal their eagerness. Arturo (Tex) Turango, handsome and olive-skinned, smiled a lot with his big white teeth and said he did believe it was his kind of proposition. Edouardo (Sweet Eddie) Puranelli from Cleveland wanted to know more about how Luccarella figured in the deal and when we told him he said that he never did like the sonofabitch anyhow. Nicholas (Nick the Nigger) Jones from Miami was whiter than either Necessary or I, spoke with a clipped Jamaican accent, and thought the proposition had “fascinating possibilities” and asked if we wanted him to fly his people in that same evening and we told him that it might be a good idea.

When Jones had gone, I turned to the window and stared out at the Gulf Coast through the black-tinted glass. “How many times did we sell Swankerton this afternoon?” I said.

“Five,” Necessary said. “Six if you count the Onealo brothers twice.”

“The meeting with Luccarella tomorrow could get rough.”

“You think he’s as nutty as they say?”

“It’s worse than that,” I said.

“How?”

“He knows he’s nutty.”

Lt. Ferkaire stuck his head in the door. “That’s the last of them, Chief Necessary.”

“Good.”

“By the way, Mr. Dye, I just got a report from the airport.”

“Yes?”

“A Mr. Carmingler arrived on a Braniff flight from Washington about twenty minutes ago.”

“Redheaded?”

“Yes, sir. I thought you’d want to know. Do you want us to keep him under surveillance?”

I turned back to the window and looked out at the Gulf and wished it would rain. “No. He’ll get in touch with me.”

“Yes, sir,” Ferkaire said, and I could hear the pneumatic door close behind him.

“The hard case?” Necessary said.

“That’s right.”

“You need some help?”

I turned and shook my head. “Nobody stocks the kind I need anymore.”

Necessary examined a hangnail. He bit it. “Maybe they never did,” he said in between bites.

I turned back to the window. “You’ve got a point, Homer. Maybe they never did.”

I had long admired Carmingler’s ability to summarize a situation. His facts were always neatly marshaled and if a few of them needed embellishment, as they sometimes did, he supplied it with an airy phrase or two that usually began “of course” or “naturally” or “it goes without saying.”

He had been talking now, and talking well, for almost fifteen minutes. We were in my room in the Sycamore, still on our first drinks, and he was near the end of his summary of things as he saw them, or wanted to see them, or as they should be, and I could only marvel at his single-mindedness.

“Of course,” he said, “I don’t deny that we may have made a mistake about Gerald Vicker,” and with that manly confession of near fallibility he gave me a satisfied smile, as if he had just stepped on the old homestead’s last termite.

“You knew he was recommending me for this thing, didn’t you?”

“We’d heard.”

“But you didn’t mention it to me.”

“It seemed harmless enough at the time. And we felt you could use the money.”

“Can’t you get to Simple the Wise?”

Carmingler looked pained. “We’ve tried.”

“What’s he say?”

“That we paid blackmail to get you out of jail.”

“Does he know how much?”

“Yes. He got it from Vicker.”

“Who did Vicker get it from?”

“From Tung, the man who interrogated you.”

I grinned at him. “When you question somebody for seven hours, it’s a debriefing. When they do it, it’s an interrogation.”

“You’re quibbling.”

“You want another drink?” I said.

“No.”

“Okay, let’s see if I’ve got it straight. The senior senator from Utah—”

“Idaho,” Carmingler said.

“I just wanted to make sure you were listening. The senior senator from Idaho, Solomon Simple, will rise on the floor of the Senate a week from Friday and denounce Section Two on a couple of counts. First, that it paid some Oriental despot three million dollars ransom to get three of its bungling agents out of jail and that the Secretary of State compounded the error by writing a letter of apology for the mess that his colleagues down the street were still trying to deny. All that rehash should be good for at least an hour, if he’s halfway sober.”

“He’s quit,” Carmingler said.

“Drinking?”

“Yes.”

“What was it, his liver?”

“Heart.”

“Well, after the first hour, during which he denounces the super-secret Section Two for groveling, with a couple of passing swipes at the State Department, he recounts how this same notorious agent, Lucifer Dye, is now deeply embroiled in the domestic politics of one of the South’s fairest cities in blatant defiance of all legal safeguards. I can hear him now.”

“Hear him what?” Carmingler said.

“‘Where will it all stop, Mr. President? Where will it ever end? How would you like agents of the FBI or the CIA to guide the destiny of your home town? Would you want your City Council to be elected through the machinations of ruthless, devious men who take their orders from a super-secret agency on the banks of the Potomac? Are we entering into a police state, Mr. President?’”

“You don’t do imitations very well,” Carmingler said.

“The essence is there,” I said. “At the same time Simple is making his speech, America’s favorite picture magazine will blanket the country with a sixteen-page spread on ‘The Men Who Are Corrupting Swankerton.’ ”

Carmingler almost looked startled. “Have you seen an advance copy?” he demanded.