The Buck Passes Flynn

by Gregory Mcdonald

  “Hell, I know how the Fraimans are. He’s backslidin’ and she’s forward-pushin’. That’s how they allus get to stay exactly where they are.

  Flynn smiled.

  “I’ve known a few preachers,” Spaulding said. “If they really believed what they preach they wouldn’t have to work so hard at convincin’ others. That old Sandy. We sort of let him preach to us as a kindness. Kept him off the bottle. Givin’ us damnation kept him from raisin’ hell.

  “And ol’ Marge,” Spaulding continued. “She took Sandy on the way you’re apt to take a lame dog into the house. Plain ugly girl, growin’ up. She became Christian ’cause she needed the company.”

  Spaulding had had little of his drink.

  “What are you sniffin’ around for anyway, mister?”

  Flynn said, “You have to admit it’s a wee bit of a mystery when everyone in a town packs up and leaves within five days.”

  “I suppose it is,” Spaulding smiled. “I suppose it is. You from the Internal Revenue Service?”

  “No,” said Flynn. “I wouldn’t be.”

  “You’re from the government, anyway.”

  “Actually, I’m not,” Flynn said.

  “You’re just nosy.”

  “Somethin’ like that.”

  “You have somethin to grab onto?”

  Flynn stared at the man across the table.

  “I’m sure I’ll know what you mean …” Flynn said, “if you give me just a moment.…”

  “You have a name, mister?”

  “Ah, yes,” Flynn said. “That. Sure I have.”

  “You mean to hold on to it?”

  “Flynn,” said Flynn. “Francis—Xavier Flynn. And, yes, I mean to hold on to it.”

  “You must be from Washington,” Parnell Spaulding said. “You talk like such a damn fool.”

  “Your father-in-law,” Flynn said, “Joe Barker. He’s in the alcohol ward at Sunshine Hospital.”

  “Didn’t he just lap it up, though? He came to Las Vegas plannin’ to drink it dry. I told him it was nearly impossible, even for a young Texan. Got to give him credit for tryin’, though.”

  “You knew Alligator Simmons?”

  “Sure I know the Gator.”

  “He was shot dead in a Fort Worth bar.”

  “Ol’ Gator must have opened his mouth that once too many times. Put a pint of whiskey in him and he’d crow. Great one for sayin’ he could whup anybody. Gator’s allus been that way, ever since Lilly-Ann Wurkers beat the piss out of him in the schoolyard when they were sophomores in high school. Gator got shot dead, huh?”

  “You heard Ronald Ellyn shot himself, here in Las Vegas about ten days go?”

  “I heard. Helen mentioned something about that to me. Ol’ Ron never was sure which end of a gun was which. Look, mister … what are ya tryin’ to say? You want a drink?”

  So far the cocktail waitress had ignored Flynn. She was standing at the far end of the bar, in her G-string and bra and high-heeled shoes, concentrating on counting her tips.

  “How are you doing at roulette?” Flynn asked Spaulding.

  “I find I like the game.”

  “Win much?”

  “Sometimes. Not much recently.”

  In two nights—or mornings—Flynn had watched Spaulding lose over seventy-five thousand dollars at the roulette tables.

  “It’s an expensive game,” Flynn said.

  “I was doin’ all right at first,” Spaulding said. “Got way ahead. Thought I’d be able to buy Main Street out there, before I was done. In cash money. I’ve had two, maybe three big winning streaks since that time, too.”

  “How much of the six hundred thousand dollars do you have left?” Flynn asked.

  Spaulding smiled into his drink. “Whoever said I had six hundred thousand dollars?”

  “You have a wife and four kids,” Flynn said. “Each of you received one hundred thousand dollars in cash; six big manila envelopes all told: six hundred thousand dollars. How much of it do you have left?”

  Spaulding hesitated, sighed, sat back, reached into his pocket, and took out a stack of one-thousand-dollar bills. He counted them on the table.

  The waitress came over immediately.

  “You want anything?” she asked.

  “Go away,” said Flynn.

  Spaulding said, “Twenty-three thousand dollars.”

  He put the money back in his pocket.

  “That’s it?” said Flynn.

  “Well, I haven’t hit a winning streak lately.”

  “I guess you haven’t. What are you going to do when that’s gone?”

  “It won’t be gone. I had over nine hundred thousand dollars at one point. Cash money. Would you believe it?”

  “Tell me, Mister Spaulding: the last three months have you been keeping up the mortgage payments on your ranch?”

  Spaulding ran his fingers over his chin. “Why, no. I guess I haven’t.”

  “Where are your wife and kids?”

  “They’re upstairs, I reckon. Asleep. In the suite. On the eleventh floor.”

  “I suspect you haven’t been seeing much of them lately.”

  “Well, sure. I sleep and eat in the suite. My son, Parney, seems to be havin’ himself a high ol’ time. Fast cars and fast women make for a fast time. I’ve got to tell you, though: you get playin’ these games and I don’t know what happens to time. It gets all jumbled up. I go out and walk around sometimes, to cool off? Sometimes it’s daylight, sometimes it’s dark. I wake up at five o’clock in the afternoon. The people in the hotel are real nice, though. You want breakfast and they’ll give you breakfast whatever crazy time of day or night it is. You know?”

  “I know.”

  “What time is it now, for instance?”

  “It’s almost quarter past five in the morning.”

  “See? Wasn’t I just tellin’ you that?”

  The cocktail waitress had finished counting her tips for the umpteenth time.

  “Mister Spaulding, what was the source of the money your family received?”

  “I never said we received any money, Mister Flynn.”

  “Where do you think the money came from?”

  Spaulding looked at his whiskey glass for a long time.

  “I don’t know.”

  “You have no idea?”

  “It was just there, lying outside the front door one fine Saturday morning: six little packages all in a row.”

  “What’s your best guess as to where it came from?”

  Quietly, after a long pause, Spaulding said, “I admit … I have wondered about it.”

  A woman was standing next to Flynn. He hadn’t heard her approach.

  Her hair seemed an unnatural shade of red, even in the dark of the bar. She was wearing a long, white evening gown.

  She was staring through the gloom of the bar at Parnell Spaulding.

  She looked the plumb American ranch wife and mother worn out by the merciless noise and lights and spirit of Las Vegas. Her fingers were filthy from feeding coins into the slot machines.

  Her makeup was smeared. Bulbous tears were before her eyes. Her chin quivered.

  “Parn,” she said. “Parney’s dead. Parney’s been killed! That crazy car you gave him …” She was struggling to breathe. “That crazy car! Police … Went off the road, rolled over.” She raised her arms and lowered them, slowly. “Parney’s dead! Our boy is dead!”

  The cocktail waitress looked over, snapping her chewing gum.

  Parnell Spaulding had started to get up when he saw his wife, then froze in his seat. He was staring at her now as if he were trying to figure something out.

  Flynn began to stand up, to slide out of the booth. Spaulding’s hand shoved him hard back into the seat.

  Parnell stood over his wife, looking down into her eyes. Flynn watched. Parnell looked as he had at the roulette table while calculating odds.

  A smile played at the corners of Parnell Spaulding’s mouth. A beam of joy came into his e
yes.

  “God,” he said hoarsely. “Now You owe me one. A big one. Now, God, You have to let me win.”

  He pushed his wife aside and marched out of the lounge. He went back to the central gambling room.

  Flynn was out of the booth in time to catch Helen Spaulding as she fell toward the floor.

  After a while Flynn led this woman, who said she’d been born into the spirit of Jesus and yet had left the family Bible behind, up to her suite on the eleventh floor, which was like livin’ on a hill.

  12

  FLYNN was surprised to find himself being talked to by a computer’s voice.

  He had called the number in Pittsburgh that had been left for him at Casino Royale’s message desk. He said just one word when it answered: “13.”

  After a click that sounded like someone aligning false teeth before speaking, he heard: “Information Requests N.N. 13.

  “What are the known values of oil rights in the area of Ada, Texas?

  “Response: negligible.”

  “Ach,” muttered Flynn. “Bein’ talked to by a machine, I am. Not a hello or a how-are-you this fine day do I get.”

  “Are there valuable oil or natural-gas rights in the area of East Frampton, Massachusetts, including offshore?

  “Response: yes; all such rights have been secured by the Mobil and Exxon corporations.”

  “How are you yourself,” Flynn muttered, “and your mother, the vacuum cleaner?”

  The machine continued: “Has any U.S. agency considered the area of Ada, Texas, as a nuclear-waste-materials dump?

  “Response: no.”

  “And your father, the Broadway taxi?” Flynn asked.

  And the machine continued: “State whereabouts of world’s ten top counterfeiters.

  “Response: Hughie Esbitt, the Yacht Buck, Villefranche, France; Louise Reynick, Villa Caprice, Etel, Switzerland; Cecil Hill, Dascha 11, Solensk, U.S.S.R.; Melville Himes, 11 Wall Street, New York City; Philip Stanley Duncan, Duncan Farms, Willing, Kentucky …” The voice droned on without taking a breath—of course. “… Franco Bonardi, Villa Chicaga, Cagna, Italy; Martin Malloy, 0748266, Federal Prison, Marion, Illinois …” (“Finally,” muttered Flynn.) “… Muir Jacklin, care of American Express, Paris, France; Robert Prozeller, Seaview Nursing Home, Methodist Center, San Diego, California; Myron Uhlig, Kokkola, Finland, street address unknown.”

  “I’ll bet you had the same breakfast I had,” Flynn said. “Two bolts, a dozen washers, and a glass of lubricating oil.”

  And the machine continued: “What is the relationship of Captain William H. Coburn, U.S.A.F.I.S. 11B, with Coburn families of East Frampton, Massachusetts, and Ada, Texas?

  “Response: no known relationship.”

  “Thanks a ton, you assortment of junk.”

  And the machine continued: “Is there a man of extreme wealth, age probably about sixty, whose last name is or was Lewis, originally from Ada, Texas?

  “Response: yes; George Udine, businesses, addresses various, currently at Cleary’s Mountain, Cleary, Oregon.

  “Who is Ducey Webb?

  “Response: who is Ducey Webb?”

  “Your father was a toaster,” said Flynn.

  “Thirteen: hold. Zero connecting.”

  “Nice talking with you,” Flynn said to the machine. “Call anytime.”

  “Who are you talking to, Frank?” N.N. Zero, John Roy Priddy, asked.

  “Exactly,” said Flynn. “Where did we get the rollicking robot?”

  “Do you like it?”

  “Rollicking. Some of its jokes and stories are a bit out of school, of course. I wouldn’t repeat them to the wife of the local vicar.”

  “I guess we have some new equipment since you’ve been working with us full-time.”

  “Does it have a name?”

  “Who?”

  “Your rollicking robot?”

  “I understand some of the young people on the staff call it Ginger.”

  “Ginger! That’s personable enough. Why Ginger?”

  “That’s what color it is.”

  “A ginger robot?”

  “It’s only as big as a cigar box, Frank. Isn’t that wonderful?”

  “You compressed brains are a constant embarassment to me,” Flynn said to the little man. John Roy Priddy said nothing. Flynn added, “Sir.”

  “Frank, who is Ducey Webb?”

  “That’s what I’d like to know. I have my suspicions. Were you listening in on Ginger?”

  “Just the last part. I didn’t want to miss talking with you. Was any of the information useful?”

  “Yes. I got exactly two leads out of it.”

  “How’s Las Vegas?”

  “It’s not a bad place to live, but visiting here gets under the fingernails, if you know what I mean.”

  “Frank, what the hell are you doing, anyway?” N.N. Zero could ask some super questions. “Start anywhere. It’s early yet.”

  It was six fifty-six A.M. Las Vegas time. John Roy Priddy hated sleep. All the horrors came back to him in the vulnerability of sleep.

  Flynn said, “I went to Ada, Texas, to establish that the town was abandoned within a five day period by everyone except the minister, his wife, and an eccentric old woman. Everyone else who could creep, hobble, or stamp on an accelerator skedaddled.”

  “ ‘Skedaddled?’ ”

  “That’s a word we use here in the Southwest.”

  “It didn’t sound either Gaelic or German.”

  “It isn’t. I think I have established that everyone in the town—man, woman, and child—received one hundred thousand dollars in cash money.”

  “Cash money?”

  “I acclimate easily,” said Flynn.

  “Frank, didn’t we know all this before?”

  “Actually, not. I’m not absolutely sure we know it now.”

  “We pretty well knew all that, Frank.”

  “What I did not know, sir, was whether a crime had been committed. Passing around the cash like old Saint Nick is not generally thought a punishable offense. There are very few chubby old gents with long beards and red suits in the various penitentiaries, I believe.”

  “I’ll check. Has a crime been committed?”

  “In my use of the word crime, yes. You see, I’m trying to discover the results of this largesse as a means of discovering why it happened.”

  “What are the results?”

  “Devastating. The minister is disoriented, his wife is worried sick, the grocer is in the drunk tank, someone else shot himself, a young wife has turned to prostitution while her husband pimps for her … I just saw a solid-citizen type react to his son’s death by challenging God at the roulette table.…”

  “A tale of woe.”

  “Admittedly, I chose to trace those citizens of Ada, Texas, who came to Las Vegas, Nevada—as if they were lookin’ for trouble. What the tales are of the more stable elements, who chose to go somewhere else, I don’t know. But even one little family that stayed out of the casinos and bars and invested their windfall in a motel are scared to death the Internal Revenue Service is going to peck down on them and have them in jail within the hour—because they can’t say where they got the money.”

  “I don’t know where this leads us.”

  “I don’t know, either,” Flynn sighed.

  “You’ve been concentrating on the human element, Frank—as usual.”

  “No, I’ve considered the real estate, too. I can find no practical reason why anyone would want the town of Ada, Texas, abandoned.”

  “It’s been a week, Frank, since you and I talked at the zoo.”

  “This is a most unusual crime, sir. Unprecedented. Novel, I might say. If you have any ideas …”

  “I haven’t.”

  “We might pose the problem to Ginger the Rollicking Robot, of course.…”

  “You’re satisfied that in human terms a crime has been committed?”

  “In fact, I’m getting a bit angry about it. Whatever whoeve
r meant to accomplish, the results of this largesse are devastating. Better some of these people were knocked out by a bomb. That’s the thing I know now I didn’t know a week ago.”

  “You always turn philosophical at the weirdest times.”

  “I’m a seeker after truth.”

  “Okay. Seek after truth, Frank, but leave the accumulation of wisdom for after you’re retired.”

  “I’ll do that, sir,” Flynn said. “I will.”

  “What do you do next?”

  “East Frampton.”

  “Oh, no.”

  “I learned something by visiting Ada. I can’t be as precise as Ginger in describing it, of course …”

  “All right. Then what?”

  “I’m not sure. But I suspect I’ll find myself doing some real traveling.”

  “Like?”

  “Like Solensk, Russia.”

  “Christ, Frank, getting you in and out of Russia at this point in your life … Are you crazy?”

  “Solensk’s on that damned island, isn’t it?”

  “Okhotsk. Sakhalin. Whatever it’s called.”

  “Where the seagulls do not stop for lunch.”

  “Why Solensk, Frank?”

  “There’s a great counterfeiter who has taken up residence there. Name of Cecil Hill.”

  “Cecil Hill. So what?”

  “Don’t you think Solensk, U.S.S.R., is a funny place for a counterfeiter to take up residence?”

  “Yes. I do. You’re right. But, jeez, Frank, getting you in and out of Russia…”

  “Believe me, it will be the last thing I do.”

  “It may be.”

  “I appreciate your humor, sir.”

  “You’re going to East Frampton, Massachusetts, next because you want to see your family in Boston, right?”

  “I might stop by to see what’s in the refrigerator.”

  “I envy you.” John Priddy had no family. He had No Name. “I guess you know that. The time element worries me, Frank. This thing in Ada, Texas, happened three months ago. East Frampton, even longer ago.”

  “No one got worried, though, until it was a few people in the Pentagon who got assaulted with money.”

  “That’s true. Well, I agree. This is a weird one. That’s why I assigned you to it. You have the weirdest mind I’ve ever met. If you can’t figure why someone is scattering millions around the country, no one can.”