Flynn said, “As long as I know about this remarkable occurrence, whatever the source of my knowledge, I’d like to ask you gentlemen—quietly, mind you—your opinion as to where such scads of money came from…?”
More men left the room.
Beside Flynn, Manny got up and indicated he wanted to get out of the booth.
“A simple question …” said Flynn.
Manny stepped over him.
A steady stream of men made for the door.
Finally only the man in the necktie remained seated, staring at Flynn across the table.
“Surely,” Flynn said directly to the man in the necktie, “in all this time you must have wondered where the money came from …?”
The man in the necktie stood up. He said, “Whatever you’re talkin’ about, mister, it didn’t happen.”
“What didn’t happen?” asked Flynn.
“You know what didn’t happen,” the man said.
17
HE had arranged for the taxi to return to East Frampton to pick him up in front of the drugstore at three o’clock.
He found himself waiting at a quarter to two.
The street was empty. It had been empty since he came out of the restaurant. How the men who had been in the restaurant with him had disappeared that fast was a puzzle. There had been only one car, a Jaguar XKE, parked in front of the restaurant. Every other building on the street was closed. Every neighborhood has its nooks and crannies known only to its denizens. He wondered if they were peeking around corners at him.
“Sure, I’m about as popular,” Flynn muttered to himself, “as a skin doctor with a rash.”
He looked up and down the street for a place to sit. There was none. “An uncivil town,” he noted to himself. “Must remember to send Grover here, first chance I get.”
The sun was bright. At two-twenty there was no longer shade on the Reardon Street side of the drugstore. Flynn went to the corner and peered around it.
There, in the shade, his back and one sneakered foot leaning against the brick wall, hands folded across his chest, was a teenaged boy.
“Hallo,” said Flynn cheerily. “I was looking for you.”
The boy looked at Flynn suspiciously. “Me?”
“You.”
The boy spat through his teeth. “What do you want?”
“I want to know why a likely lad such as yourself, with his whole life ahead of him, is standing around this dead town.”
Again the boy spat through his teeth. “What’s a ‘likely lad’?”
“You are,” said Flynn, trying his best to sound convincing.
“You think I should leave this burg?”
Flynn waved at the town around him. “The place isn’t bustlin’ with opportunity now, is it?”
“Not much goin’ on,” agreed the boy. “Unless you’re a backgammon nut.”
“You don’t like backgammon?”
“I don’t get to play. No money.”
“What happened to your money?” Flynn asked. The boy searched his face. “Don’t worry, lad. I know about the money. Last April you were given one hundred thousand dollars. What happened to it?”
“My father took it. Even though my name was on it. He says it’s his. I’m seventeen. A minor, he says.”
“And what do you say?”
“I say my name was on it. Every other kid in town got money. At least got to buy a car, or somethin’.”
“Did every man, woman, and child in this town get one hundred thousand dollars last April?” Flynn asked innocently. The kid spat again. A face of spit was beginning to appear on the sidewalk. “You can tell me, lad. Apparently you have nothing to lose.”
“Sure …” said the kid. “Everybody.”
“Where did the money come from?”
“It was dumped outside everybody’s house. One morning it was just there. In big brown envelopes,” He grinned. “One guy didn’t get his.”
“Oh?”
“Lived upstairs in a two-family house. Slept late. Drunk the night before,” He spat and a left ear appeared on the face. “Heard everybody else in town got money. Figured his downstairs neighbor took his. So he shot him.” The kid laughed.
“Shot him dead?”
The kid nodded yes.
“And had the neighbor stolen the money?”
“It was in his refrigerator.”
“Fat lot of good the money did him, though,” asserted Flynn. “Arrested. Tried. Imprisoned.”
“He was never arrested.” The boy turned his head sideways and spat and a mouth appeared on the face. “You think everyone in town is going to risk losing one hundred big ones just to see one more punk in jail? No way.” Squinting, the boy looked up and down the street. “This has become a real quiet town, mister. Keeps a lot of things quiet, nowadays. They’ve all gone nuts. Everybody in town. They all hide behind their doors afraid some turkey like you is going to show up and tell them all to give the money back. ’Fraid of bein’ robbed. There’s been more than one shooting in this town lately, I can tell you. More like a dozen.”
Quietly, Flynn said, “And you’ve no idea who did this to the town?”
The boy shook his head. “Who cares? Some nut. Some nut just decided to drop a whole lot of money on the town to drive the whole town nuts. And he succeeded.”
“What about yourself?” Flynn asked.
“I’m just waitin’ until I’m eighteen.”
“What then? Join the navy?”
“Nope.” The boy spat a nose onto the sidewalk. The face was complete.
“What are you going to do?”
“Depends.” Again the boy looked out into the sunlight. “If my father doesn’t let me have my money then, I’ll kill him. Then maybe I’ll leave town. Maybe I won’t.” He stood up from the wall, dropped his arms, and started ambling loose-jointed up the sidewalk. “I’m not joinin’ no navy.”
At the back corner of the drugstore, the boy turned around and walked a few steps backward. “You oughta get outta town now, though, mister.” He wasn’t speaking very loudly. “So many skeletons at the bottom of the harbor now, one more won’t matter.”
Flynn watched him cross the side street, go into a vacant lot, and disappear behind a huge pile of rubbish.
The taxi arrived at ten minutes past three.
18
LANDING in Washington, D.C., that night, Flynn mused at all the years of effort N.N. had expended to keep Francis Xavier Flynn away from Washington (and London and Paris and Bonn and Rome and other national capitals); away from nationalistically motivated governmental committees who wanted to know more of how the international, private, between-the-borders organization N.N. operated, and a great deal more of Flynn’s personal biography.
Flynn’s death had been reported, convincingly, a dozen times. He had been put “on ice,” under his own name, as an inspector (the inspector) of the Boston Police Department. But N.N. Zero continued to wheel him out when the need arose, and ride him through one more extraordinary (always “extraordinary”) case. Last year when Flynn was in Chad, the Boston Police were told that he had colitis. This year, on this case, appendicitis. There was no one more robust than Flynn.
Crossing from the airplane to the terminal, Flynn wondered what he’d die of at the end of this case.
The hotel desk clerk looked puzzled at Flynn.
“You’re already checked in, sir.”
“Am I, indeed?”
The clerk pulled a registration card from the file and looked at it, then compared it with the one Flynn had just filled out, looked even more puzzled, and handed both cards to Flynn.
They were identical—to the home address given, credit-card number, even signature.
“My, my,” said Flynn.
He handed the cards back to the clerk.
“One of those cards should be destroyed.”
“Of course.” The clerk tore one of the registration cards in quarters, as if its existence were an embarrassment to everyone.
“
Do you feel all right, sir?”
“I do. Yes, I do.”
“There is a doctor we could summon. The hotel guests find him quite satisfactory … and, er, discreet.”
“I’m very well,” said Flynn.
“It must have been just a lapse of memory.”
“Something of the sort,” said Flynn.
“Do you have them often, sir?”
“What?”
“Lapses of memory. Did you forget the question?”
“No, I did not forget the question—I’m amazed at it. And no, I’ve never had a lapse of memory in my life, to my continuous regret.”
“I have an old aunt who has lapses of memory. Of course, she is eighty-nine. She comes and goes, comes and goes.”
“Like a certain poet, from St. Louis, Mo.,” muttered Flynn.
“Sir?”
“I need to know my room number!”
“Ah, yes.” The clerk’s smile was superior. “Of course, I wasn’t on duty when you checked in the first time, at four o’clock this afternoon….”
“The room number…”
“Eleven twenty-three.”
“And I need the key!”
“But, sir…”
“The key, dammit!”
The clerk held the key to Room 1123 in his hand. “I’ll call the bellman.—Front!”
Flynn took the key from the desk clerk’s hand.
“I don’t need the bellman,” Flynn said. “I’ve already checked in. Don’t you remember? I’ll carry my own bag!”
In Room 1123 Ducey Webb, naked, was curled in a chair, reading Cosmopolitan magazine.
“Oh, hullo, Flynn.”
“ ‘Hullo,’ is it?” He lowered his suitcase to the floor and closed the hotel-room door. “Seldom have I had such an open greeting.”
She dropped the magazine. Her blue and brown eyes watched him watch her. Leisurely she stretched her whole body in the chair. Ducey Webb’s physical perfection provided her perfect poise while perfectly naked.
“Thanks for checking me in,” Flynn said. “It’s a service I didn’t know I needed.”
“It’s something I learned to do,” she said, imitating the rhythm of his speech, “checking you out of Caesar’s Palace, in Las Vegas. Are you chastened?”
“Chased is more like it.”
“I’ve been looking for you high and low.”
“You should have just looked low,” said Flynn, “as that’s where I’ve been.”
She stood up, picked up his suitcase, and swung it onto the double bed.
“What do you think you’re doing?”
She was unpacking him.
“If you think I need to play house with a slip of a girl—or, a girl without a slip, if I may so amend myself—”
“Oh, shut up, Francis.”
“—a girl young enough to be of more interest to my sons than the ordinary football—”
“How old are you anyway, Flynn?”
“I’m pushin’ forty,” said Flynn. “From the north side.”
“Oh, come on.” Beginning to unpack him, she loosened his necktie. “You can’t tell me you have no more interest in me than in a football.”
“Well,” said Flynn. “You’re about the same color.”
She put his hand on her hip. “A little smoother, wouldn’t you say?”
“Aye, that. But I have the suspicion your bounce is just as tricky.”
She put her hand behind her neck and turned slowly in the air. There were mirrors everywhere in the room, and Ducey was in each.
“Not the same shape at all, Flynn.”
“I admit: you’re something I hate to pass.…”
From the distance of two meters her eyes locked on his. “But you’re going to, aren’t you, Flynn? Instead of making love with me, you’re going to make jokes?”
He gulped. “I am.”
“What’s in your head, Flynn?”
“Suspicions. Wee voices of warning in the back of the cranium.”
“Of what, for God’s sake?”
“You have to admit, Ms. Webb, your approach has been odd.”
“Odd?” She wrinkled her face at him.
“Marked by a combination of the ingenuous and the disingenuous.”
“What?”
“The direct and the indirect.”
“I understand English.” She shook her head. “No one understands the Irish.”
“You followed me in a yellow Fiat convertible from Austin, Texas. Yet after following me awhile, you suddenly turn off down a dirt road. You could have caught up to me—that is, if it was your purpose to work with me.”
The skin over her cheekbones darkened. “I wanted to change clothes. Into something cooler.”
“You raised a lot of dust and wasted considerable gasoline giving vent to your modesty.”
“There’s a difference between the eyes of Texas and smiling, Irish eyes.”
“Is there? I’d say it’s more likely that at that point of the trip you were able to confirm I was definitely headed for Ada, Texas.”
“Confirm to whom? How?”
“Next you pop into Bob’s Diner with two extraordinary things. The first was a letter of introduction handwritten by the President of the United States, no less, unsigned, as if it were from the bowers of the imperial bedchamber.”
“Have you checked its authenticity?”
“No.”
She placed her hand on her hip.
“The second wondrous thing you brought to our meeting at Bob’s Diner is woolly speculation regarding Ada itself: that there could be vast quantities of oil underneath; that the town could be schemed for a radioactive-materials dump.”
“What’s wrong with that?”
“With your own apparent resources you could have checked out both elements in the time it takes a wee lamb to give the world a steady gaze and say, ‘Baa!’ ”
She sat in the chair.
“Next you pop up in my bed in Las Vegas, my investigation in East Frampton, and now, very much in my view, here in Washington.”
She fitted a toe against the faded pattern of the rug.
“I’m just trying to help.”
“I’ll repeat, in my own way: your help seems both oddly personal and oddly distracting.”
“Well… we’re traveling together.”
“We are not traveling together.”
“Flynn. I know something of your background. I know you must lead a guarded life. I know you have to be suspicious of everyone and everything, just to survive. But tell me, you big lummox: with all this darting around under bushes you’ve had to do, when was the last time anyone told you you are a beautiful, gorgeous man?”
“The last time someone wanted something from me. I can’t figure what you want, Ms. Webb. For the life of me I can’t.”
“The married Flynn,” she scoffed. “‘Reluctant’ Flynn. I told you what I want.” She gestured at her own body. “I’m concealing nothing!”
He was putting things back into his suitcase.
“Where are you going?” she asked.
“Home to Mother,” he muttered.
She rose and put her arms around his neck and nuzzled his earlobe. “Flynn…”
“Ulysses and sirens!” exclaimed Flynn, disentangling himself. “A job’s a job, for a’ that. Don’t you know I never mix pleasure with pleasure?”
She threw herself on the bed.
“I guess I’m insulted.”
Flynn said, “I haven’t the experience to know.”
“Anyway,” she said. “There’s a message for you.”
“Ach! Now we get to my business part of the business.”
“A man named Sankey called. Paul Sankey. Federal Reserve Bank. Special Section. Said he’ll see you at nine-thirty in the morning.”
“Sankey,” said Flynn.
“You’re welcome,” she drawled.
Ducey Webb rolled onto her side and, arm akimbo, put her head on her free hand.
“F
lynn.”
He snapped his suitcase shut.
“What did you learn in East Frampton?”
“Ah, there’s the point,” said Flynn. “You either want my money, or what I know—and I haven’t any money.”
He headed for the door. “Good night to you.”
“Flynn?”
Lying on the bed as she was, Ducey Webb may have been the most beautiful thing Flynn had ever seen.
She said, “I’m wet for you.”
Flynn said, “Aw, dry up.”
Again Flynn stood at the hotel’s reception desk, suitcase in hand.
He said, rather more loudly than usual: “I’d like to check in for the night.”
The desk clerk said, “Oh, no! Not again…”
19
ACCORDING to Flynn, the city planners of Washington, D.C., were so proud of their work they weighted the entire area down with outsized architectural lumps so the city would not blow away in the winds of political fortune.
It was twenty to ten the next morning before Flynn found the right architectural lump, and five to ten before he found the Special Section, headed by Paul Sankey, within the lump, and ten past ten before Sankey had extricated himself from his staff, vaults, offices, corridors, and other machinery within the lump to join Flynn in a small lounge furnished in metal and plastic. Flynn ordered coffee and rolls for two.
Paul Sankey was a short, slim man with intense, dark eyes.
His greeting was a perfunctory nod.
He sat across the small metal table from Flynn, tipped back his chair, and crossed his arms across his chest He ignored the coffee and roll set out before him.
Sankey said, “Eighteen years ago you and I were together at a rather key money conference at The Hague.”
“That long ago?” encouraged Flynn.
“You were young,” Sankey said, “to be doing whatever you were doing. How old were you eighteen years ago?”
“Eighteen years ago? Twenty-two or twenty-three.”
In fact, at that time Flynn had been so impressed by the astuteness of Paul Sankey that he considered recommending him to N.N. Ultimately he decided against it. He believed Sankey old enough to have lost the mental flexibility he would need to begin with a “between-the-borders” operation such as N.N. Eighteen years before, Sankey had been thirty-three.
The Buck Passes Flynn Page 10
