Росс Томас - The Fools in Town Are on Our Side

“It’s started,” Necessary said.

“When?”

“Just before dawn. Luccarella and his friends went calling.”

“On who?” I asked.

“On all of them.”

“What happened?”

“The next flight out of here is a direct one to Minneapolis and St. Paul. It leaves in fifteen minutes. Tex Turango’s on it.”

“He’s from Dallas,” I said.

“The Onealo brothers are from Kansas City, but they’re on it, too,” Necessary said.

“Anyone else?” I said.

“Sweet Eddie Puranelli. All he could get was economy class.”

“But he took it.”

“Uh-huh,” Necessary said. “And glad to get it. Lt. Ferkaire says Puranelli doesn’t look too well. There’re some teeth missing, Ferkaire says, and one eye’s closed, and something’s wrong with his nose. Looks busted, Ferkaire says.”

“He’ll feel better back in Cleveland,” I said. “What about Nigger Jones and Jimmy Schoemeister?”

“That’s why I’m calling you.”

“Where are you?” I said.

“In the lobby.”

“I’ll be down in fifteen minutes.”

“Make it ten,” Necessary said and hung up.

Carol rolled over in the bed and propped herself up on an elbow. “Necessary?” she said.

“He said it’s started.”

“You want some coffee?”

“No time.”

“I can use the immersion unit.”

“Okay,” I said and started to dress. She had the instant coffee ready by the time I came out of the bathroom. I drank two sips and lit a cigarette. I used to smoke Pall Malls then.

“He say anything else?” she asked.

“Some are leaving town; some aren’t.” I drank more of the coffee and then handed her the cup.

“I never knew what life could be, Captain,” she said, “until you came here to Pago Pago.”

I kissed her. “I’m riding with them, Alma,” I said. “Sodbusters’ve got rights too.”

Necessary was pacing the lobby when I stepped out of the elevator. His eyes looked tired and bloodshot and it gave them a peculiar three-toned look, or four, if you counted their whites.

“You took long enough,” he said in the grumpy voice of a man who’s been up most of the night.

“I had to rinse out a few things,” I said and followed him to the long black Imperial which waited in front with Sergeant Krone at the wheel.

Once we were rolling I asked Necessary about Nigger Jones and Jimmy Twoshoes. He shook his head as if trying to clear it. “They won’t budge,” he said. “Their people came in last night. Schoemeister’s got about a dozen; Nigger Jones’s got about the same.”

“What’s Luccarella got now?”

“About ten from New Orleans and maybe a dozen more from back east. Ferkaire’s keeping score out at the airport.”

“Anyone prominent?” I asked.

He shook his head again. “Run of the mill guys; nobodies.”

“So it’s a three-way race now,” I said.

“Three-way,” Necessary agreed and stared out the window. “You know something,” he said.

“What?”

“The little fellah would have liked all this.”

“Orcutt?”

“Yeah. He’d of wanted us to report in with color Polaroid shots of all of them. Then he’d of started plotting and figuring what to do next.”

“You miss him, don’t you?” I said.

He nodded again. “Sort of. Don’t you?”

“Sure,” I said and then tried to determine whether I’d lied. I decided I hadn’t.

“He had a head on him,” Necessary said. “You got to give him that.”

“I don’t think it’s hard to figure out what he’d do now,” I said.

Necessary turned to me and I’m sure he was totally unaware of the look of relief that spread across his face. He needed a new Orcutt and he thought he’d found him in me, but he was wrong, of course. I was intuitive where Orcutt had been coldly logical. I made it up as I went along while Orcutt already had the next two paragraphs polished in his mind. Orcutt had been a genius and I was just barely smart enough to knot my own tie. I didn’t want to play Orcutt for Necessary. I wanted to tag along and now and then say, “That’s right, Chief.”

“What do you think old Orcutt would do?” Necessary said.

“Where’s Nick the Nigger?” I said.

“In a private home over in Niggertown.”

I sighed. “I think that Orcutt might remind Schoemeister of that, in case he didn’t already know.”

Necessary stared at me for several moments. He shook his head slowly and then smiled, but there was nothing pleasant in it. “Orcutt never would’ve said that.”

“No?”

“No,” Necessary said. “He was damned cold-blooded, all right, but never that cold-blooded.”

We went calling on Frank (Jimmy Twoshoes) Schoemeister in his four-room suite on the top floor of the Lee-Davis Hotel, which was in a ho-hum race with the Sycamore for the title of “Swankerton’s Finest.” We had to go through three of the suite’s rooms before we were ushered into the one that Schoemeister occupied. He was alone, but the three rooms that we passed through had contained young and middle-aged men in quiet suits. They had looked at us with flat, expressionless stares and then gone back to whatever it was they had been doing, cleaning their Thompsons, I suppose.

Schoemeister smiled at us with his ruin of a mouth and I checked the morning’s shoes. They were made of soft-looking brown mottled leather and when Schoemeister caught my glance he said, “Ostrich,” and I said, “They’re nice.”

He turned then to Necessary and said, “Out early this morning, aren’t you, Chief?”

Necessary nodded as he gratefully accepted a cup of coffee that was brought in and silently served by a slim, fit-looking man in his late twenties. “Not as early as some,” Necessary said, after a sip. “Not as early as Luccarella.”

“A real early riser,” Schoemeister agreed, watching the young man pour my coffee. After serving it, he sat in a chair in the farthest corner of the room. Necessary looked at him and Schoemeister said, “Don’t let Marvin bother you. He’s my nephew. My oldest sister’s kid.”

“What’ve you got in those other three rooms?” Necessary said. “Cousins?”

Schoemeister smiled terribly again. “Just some friends.”

“I counted eleven of them.”

“That’s about right.”

“Did Luccarella count them?”

“I don’t know,” Schomeister said. “He didn’t stay very long.”

“What’d he want?” Necessary said.

“He wanted me to catch a plane.”

“To St. Paul?”

“That’s right. He seemed to get a little upset when I told him that I didn’t know anybody in St. Paul. Not even in Minneapolis.”

“The Onealo brothers do,” I said.

“Is that a fact?” Schoemeister said, trying to make it sound as if he were actually interested, and succeeding fairly well.

“They caught that plane,” I said. “So did Tex Turango and Puranelli.”

Schoemeister nodded at the information. “What about Nick the Nigger?”

“He doesn’t know anybody in Minneapolis either,” Necessary said. “Or St. Paul.”

“Nick’s still here, huh?” Schoemeister asked, trying to make it casual, and again almost bringing it off.

“He’s staying with friends,” Necessary said. “About twelve of them over on Seventeen Thirty-eight Marshall in Niggertown.”

Schoemeister glanced at his nephew who nodded. “I always liked Nick,” he said, “but that Luccarella’s something else. He’s buggy. I wonder if they still call him Joe Lucky?”

“I think the newspapers do,” I said.

Schoemeister locked his hands behind his head and gazed up at the ceiling. “Somehow,” he said softly, “I don’t think they will any more.”