The Buck Passes Flynn

by Gregory Mcdonald

  “First, a question, sir,” said Flynn, “I’ve been burnin’ to ask you.”

  “Shoot.”

  “Sir?”

  “Go ahead.”

  “A woman by the name of Ducey Webb…”

  “Who?”

  “Ducey Webb. Did you send her out to work with me?”

  “No.”

  “You have never written a letter, in your own hand, concerning a woman named Ducey Webb?”

  “I haven’t written a personal letter since the California primary, Mister Flynn.”

  “I thought not.”

  “Not, I mean, in my own handwriting.”

  “Of course not.”

  “Did someone say I did? Did you see such a letter?”

  “It’s inconsequential now, sir.”

  “The money, Mister Flynn. That’s a consequential matter.”

  “It’s not a money matter, Mister President. It’s a currency matter. As I understand it.”

  N.N. Zero said, “Frank…”

  “Mister President, I think you have an emergency.”

  “How big an emergency?”

  “Pretty big. Tell me, Mister President, how quickly can the United States shift currencies?”

  “Shift it to what? What are you talking about?”

  “Shift the current form of currency to some other form of United States currency.”

  “You mean, scrap greenbacks?”

  “Scrap greenbacks. Yes.”

  “I know we can do it.”

  “You can?”

  “Yes. We’ve had masses of blue currency, all denominations, including paper coins, stashed away for years.”

  “Where?”

  “Warehouses. All over the country. All over the world.”

  “How long would it take you to prepare this blue money—may I call ’em bluebacks?—for general circulation?”

  “That I don’t remember. How much time do we have?”

  “I don’t know. Maybe a matter of hours. My daughter just told me we are coming into the weekend….”

  “My God, Mister Flynn. Do you know what you’re saying?”

  “Not really, sir. But I think it’s worth the saying.”

  “What the hell are you saying?”

  “I think, sir, you had better be prepared to shift currencies within a matter of hours. By the time the banks open Monday morning.”

  “Golly,” said the President of the United States. “Dammit, I said, ‘Golly.’ As if the American dollar hasn’t been under attack enough in recent years.”

  “Exactly, sir.”

  “Who’s doing this to us?”

  “You are, sir. No personal insult intended. I use the word you in the general, plural sense.”

  “Mister Flynn, your boss tells me you’re on a British aircraft carrier somewhere?”

  “Yes.”

  “Someone please make an arrangement to fly you here to Washington immediately.”

  N.N. Zero said, “I will.”

  “Come straight to the Oval Office.”

  Flynn said nothing.

  N.N. Zero said, “He will.”

  The President said, “Mister Flynn, you’re not saying we should actually put bluebacks into circulation?”

  “I’m saying I think you better be all-the-way prepared to, sir. Plus I think you ought to consider every other option you have.”

  “I guess it’s time we fell to a heavy dollar anyway.”

  “Exactly.”

  “People have been talking to me about it.”

  “I’m sure they have, sir.”

  “I guess I haven’t been listening. Is this what it’s all about?”

  “I’m reasonably certain of it, sir.”

  N.N. Zero said, “What is what all about?”

  The President said, “Devaluation, Damned devaluation.”

  Flynn said, “If you don’t know why someone is doin’ something, you have to look for the results of his doin’ it.”

  N.N. Zero said, “Has someone been experimenting with dropping these packages of money all over the country?”

  “No,” Flynn said. “Someone has been warning the United States Government.”

  “And we haven’t been listening,” the President of the United States said. “Typical.”

  “Frankly, Mister President,” said Flynn, “the signal hasn’t been all that easy to pick up.”

  The President said, “Let me get this straight. Mister Flynn, you know the source of the money?”

  “Almost perfectly certain, sir.”

  “And it is limitless?”

  “Virtually.”

  “Come here immediately.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  N.N. Zero said, “I really hate to break in, but, Frank, what are you talking about?”

  The President said, “The United States is about to be glutted with money. I mean, currency.”

  “More glutted,” Flynn said. “More glutted.”

  “Mister Flynn, answer me the obvious question,” the President said. “Is there any way to prevent this? To prevent what you think is about to happen?”

  “I don’t think so, sir. I would like to try, but I don’t think so. This plot has been hatching a long time. It’s pretty well thought out, if not perfectly thought out.

  The fact that money was just thrown around in Denver, helter-skelter, gaining publicity, raising expectations, I think means the final switch is about to be thrown.”

  “The damned press has already announced this money that showed up in Denver is real money—not counterfeit,” the President said.

  “But, Frank,” N.N. Zero said, “as long as the final switch hasn’t been thrown, are you sure we can’t prevent it?”

  “We don’t know the delivery system to be used,” Flynn said. “Or systems. We can be sure no one’s going to be tiptoeing around in the dark, dropping envelopes on people’s doorsteps. That technique was just being used to warn us of what might happen. Or will happen. Or was happening, in its own way.”

  “Maybe the President understands you, Frank,” N.N. Zero said, “but I’ve known you longer, and I don’t understand you at all.”

  “Sir, I’m sayin’ there’s every good reason to believe the United States is about to be glutted with its own currency. I don’t know precisely how it’s going to happen. I think it’s too late to stop it. We can’t prevent its happening, but we can prevent the effect of its happening. If you understand me…”

  “But if you know who is behind this…?”

  “If I may paraphrase my wife Elsbeth, sir: the most momentous events in history are apt to be caused by a little schnook with a grievance….”

  The President said, “Anything else, Mister Flynn?”

  “Well, she also makes a darlin’ soup, Elsbeth does….”.

  30

  AS soon as the British Navy jet fighter landed at Andrews Air Force Base a dark blue Lincoln Continental sedan with District of Columbia license plates pulled up alongside it.

  The dark-suited man who got out of the front passenger seat did not offer to shake hands.

  “Mister Flynn? Name’s Craig, White House aide. Have a nice flight?”

  “Got some sleep.”

  “Orders are to take you to the White House immediately, sir.”

  “We’re not going to the White House immediately, sir,” Flynn said.

  The man had opened the back door of the car.

  “Sir?”

  “We’re going to Georgetown first.”

  “Sir? But, sir!”

  A ten-dollar bill was fluttering in the air between them. They watched it fall to the ground.

  Flynn looked up.

  There were three or four more bills falling from the sky.

  Near a hangar, a mechanic stooped, picked up a bill, looked at it, looked up, and shouted to his friends inside.

  “Too late,” said Flynn. “Here it comes. But I’m goin’ to Georgetown anyway.”

  Craig picked up the ten-dollar bil
l and looked at it.

  Flynn knocked it from his hands.

  Craig looked at him as if admonished, and then at the bill on the ground.

  “What’s the matter?” Craig asked. “Is it fake?”.

  “No,” said Flynn. “It’s real. That’s what’s so devastatin’ about it.”

  The driver and the White House aide in the front seat, Flynn in the back, they drove into Georgetown an hour before dark.

  Georgetown was bedlam.

  Cash money was falling from the sky.

  “Keep moving,” Flynn ordered.

  People were all over the street, some on their hands and knees, scooping up money, others running among the abandoned cats, jumping up and snatching money out of the air. In one corner, two men, each with fistfuls of money, were beating each other bloody. Shopping bags had been dropped in the street One young woman, carrying a baby, stood on a curb, sobbing. They passed a policeman, carrying his hat upside down, full of money. An old woman was stuffing money down the front of her dress.

  “Keep moving!” Flynn ordered.

  People were jumping at the slow-moving car, grabbing money off the hood before it slipped to the ground. Through the windshield their faces were blind with greed.

  The driver stopped the car, looked back at Flynn with wild eyes, put the gearshift in Park, and jumped out. He ran up the street, scooping up bills as he went, grabbing them from the air. He bumped into an old lady, hard, knocked her to the ground, stepped over her, and kept on running.

  “Ah, well,” muttered Flynn. “Prices being as they are…”

  The aide remained where he was.

  Flynn got out of the back seat and looked up.

  Three airplanes were circling slowly in the sky, small pieces of paper—United States currency—streaming from them. There was no wind. Cash was falling on the city like confetti.

  “Santa’s reindeer,” muttered Flynn. “A jolly old soul is he! And I thought he might be up to usin’ the post office!”

  Behind him, the window of a department store crashed. In the window, a man ran among the manikins, grabbing cashmere sweaters off them.

  Flynn got into the driver’s seat and put the car back into gear. He had to use the wipers to clear the windshield of five-, ten-, and twenty-dollar bills,

  31

  “I WAS hoping you’d show up, Flynn.”

  The front door of Paul Sankey’s house had been left open, light spilling through it into the alley.

  Standing in the living room-workroom door, Flynn said to Paul Sankey, “I should have listened to you.”

  Sankey was burning papers in the fireplace. The economics graphs were still on the wall.

  “You did listen. You just didn’t hear any more than I wanted to tell you.”

  He rose from the hearth and dusted his hands against each other.

  “Oh, I heard, all right,” Flynn said. “I think I even heard you confess. Or rationalize. Or whatever. You said all the right words. I just didn’t put them together right. My mind wasn’t prepared yet for such a monstrous idea.”

  Sankey dropped into the room’s one upholstered chair.

  Flynn moved farther into the room.

  “You told me your Special Section had set up new systems to conduct the flow of money—of currency. That means a system for the Federal Reserve Bank’s manufacturing new money. And a system for destroying old, worn-out money. Is that it?”

  Sankey nodded.

  “But you haven’t been destroying the old, worn-out money, have you?”

  “No.”

  “You’ve been stashing it away somewhere. Billions and billions of dollars.”

  “Billions.”

  “For years and years?”

  “A few years.”

  “How did you get away with it all this time?”

  “Anyone setting up any new system has the advantage,” Sankey said. “You can build holes into the system no one sees. Others see what’s there. Only the original designer sees what’s not there.”

  “So instead of burning up the old currency in recent years, what have you been burning? I know for a fact the ashes from the Federal Reserve’s incinerator are chemically analyzed.”

  Sankey laughed. “Newspapers. Slightly damp newspapers treated with the same chemicals, plus one rectifying chemical—again of my own design. I produced perfectly convincing ashes. Control saw the right amount of currency go into the top of the incinerator, and the right ashes come out the bottom. Need I point out the obvious to you, Flynn? That the incinerator had a false bottom?”

  “Fascinatin’,” said Flynn. “There’s nothin’ more dangerous than a frustrated man who’s clever.”

  Sankey said, “I wanted you to know about it, Flynn, in case you and I didn’t have this chance to chat. Frankly, I was delighted when you showed up at the Federal Reserve. It threw me off for a moment, because I didn’t know exactly how far you’d gotten on this—what you doubtless call—‘case.’ ”

  “You’ve had a long-standin’ belief in the deviousness of my mind,” Flynn said. “Pity it hasn’t been warranted.”

  “When I discovered you were only checking the validity of some bills, I had to laugh. At you, Flynn. At you. Here I was about to set the world on its edge and you came around like a rubber-hose flatfoot. After talking with you, at the Fed, I knew I was running free for the home stretch. You were too far behind me to catch up.”

  “You glommed my natural stupidity.”

  “You’re not so stupid, Flynn. You’re here.”

  Flynn said, “Not as early as I might have been.”

  “Then I had the desire, the compulsion, if you will, to fill you in as much as I could on my thinking. Without threatening implementation of my plan, of course.”

  “Thus the late-night lecture in economics. World Economics According to Paul Sankey.”

  “A nice piece of irony. Eighteen years ago you fed a couple of sentences into our ambassador’s speech at The Hague.”

  “You’re wrong about that, too, by the way.”

  “And eighteen years later—just as I’m about to rectify an historic error—you showed up. The same Flynn. The chicken comes home to roost. Nothing I wanted more than to have you witness the devastation you had caused. You or your people.”

  “And those two wee sentences surreptitiously inserted into the ambassador’s speech at The Hague eighteen years ago—I know the ambassador quickly fled into retirement—but did they also ruin you professionally?”

  “Of course. At that time there was no reason why I shouldn’t have made ambassador myself, and by the age of forty. Anything irregular happens in a governmental career and one is shelved. Don’t you know that, Flynn?”

  “I’ve heard.”

  “It took me a long, long time to work back up—even to a Federal Reserve department head.”

  “You weren’t the best choice for that job, either,” Flynn said. “All in all.”

  “I think I was.”

  “You also think you’re a great economist.”

  “I am. The greatest. I am the only man in the world who has understood, consistently, what has been happening to the American dollar, and thus to the whole world’s economy.”

  “What you are,” said Flynn, “is the economist willing to destroy the economy to make your own economic predictions come true.”

  From his chair, Paul Sankey’s eyes ran along the graphs pinned to his wall.

  “You’re no economist, Flynn.”

  “No. I’m not. But I am a man with more experience with prophets, seers, oracles, and other damned fools than I’d care to admit. God save us all from people who act upon their idea of the truth!”

  Sankey said, simply, “The Free World’s economy could not be based permanently on the American dollar.”

  “And you set out to prove it, yes?”

  “It was being proven. In the natural flow of events. No one listened to me. I was a clerk in the Fed. Right? I didn’t have to prove it. Time was doi
ng that. What I did is to reveal the truth. Now everyone will realize the world was headed in the wrong direction economically—had been for years and years. I’ve stopped the world from going farther in that direction.”

  “I suspect your cure is worse than our cold,” said Flynn.

  “Sometimes it is. Sometimes it has to be.”

  “Are you dropping cash money all over this country at the same moment by the same method?”

  Sankey nodded. “No way you can stop it, Flynn. Human greed is being satiated coast to coast. There have been planes dropping currency over the nation’s sixty largest cities the last two hours. Billions and billions of dollars. Used dollars, but real dollars.”

  “How did you get so many pilots to aid you in this horrible assault upon our well-being?”

  “Money.”

  “I don’t believe that.”

  “Money and a lie. They were paid in advance. Oh, they didn’t know they were going to drop currency. They were given bags—which I designed and had manufactured—that would remain sealed until after they left the plane and hit the wind.”

  “What did you tell the pilots was in the bags?”

  “Political pamphlets.” Sankey smiled. “In a way, it was no lie at all.”

  Flynn said, “Do you know you’re insane?”

  “I know the world’s insane.”

  “Same difference.” Flynn took his pipe and tobacco pouch from his pocket. “Your wife and daughters were killed near National Airport by a three-axled army truck speedin’ to deliver twelve dozen fresh flowers to a cocktail party at the Pentagon. Have I got it right?”

  “That,” said Sankey, “is only one incident of government waste. Excessive government spending, you might say, for less than desirable results.”

  Across the room, filling his pipe, staring at Sankey, Flynn said, “I’m sorry for you, man. But you have tried to create one hell of a mess.”

  “Is that all, Flynn?” Sankey stuck his right hand between the upholstered seat cushion and the chair arm. “Is there anything else you want to say?”

  “Yes,” Flynn said. “I think you’ve failed.”

  Curiosity in Sankey’s eyes was only momentary.

  He nodded agreeably.

  Smiling, he drew a revolver out of the chair, placed the muzzle against his temple, and squeezed the trigger.