The Fools in Town Are on Our Side

by Ross Thomas

  “Because they’ll put together what they think is a story, and at the last minute ask what we think of it. They’ve still got time to do that.”

  Orcutt made a church of his hands, and then a steeple, and then opened them up to look at the people. He was thinking. I wondered how much faster he thought than I did. “You know,” he said, “it’s really quite simple.”

  “What?” Necessary asked.

  “We’re going to apply Orcutt’s First Law.”

  “To get better, it must get much worse,” I said.

  “You remembered!” he said. “I’m so delighted!”

  “You were going to tell us how simple it was,” Necessary said.

  So Orcutt told us and as he said, it was simple, but then a broken neck can also be described as a simple fracture.

  Homer Necessary made two calls before we went back to his twelfthfloor office. Carol Thackerty was on the other phone that Orcutt had had installed in the Rickenbacker Suite and when I went out the door I heard her setting up a conference call between Swankerton, Washington, and New York.

  While we waited for the elevator I said, “How many times has he been out of the hotel since he got here?”

  “Orcutt?”

  “Yes.”

  “I don’t think he’s been out any since we got here from San Francisco,” Necessary said. “He was out a couple of times before that, you know, when you weren’t here yet.”

  “I’d think he’d get cabin fever.”

  Necessary shook his head. “Not him. He likes playing spider king.”

  There were two doors to Necessary’s office and both of them were busy that afternoon. Five minutes after we got there, Lt. Ferkaire came in, brimming with his sense of justice, eager to please, and proud of the University of Tennessee ring that he wore on his left hand. I think he made the chief of police nervous, although Necessary never said anything other than that he thought Ferkaire was “a nice, bright kid.”

  “They’re bringing the first one up now, sir,” Ferkaire told Necessary.

  “They got their instructions like I said?”

  “Yes, sir. They bring them in this door and when they come out your other one they take them back where they picked them up.”

  “Any trouble locating them?” Necessary said.

  “No, sir. Not yet.”

  “You tell them all to be goddamned polite?”

  “My exact words, sir. Goddamned polite. Excuse me for asking, Chief Necessary, but how important are these men?”

  “To who?”

  “Well, I mean how do they rank nationally?”

  “They’re major league, kid,” Necessary said. “Don’t worry about it, they’re all pros from the majors.”

  “Would you like me to sit in, sir?” Ferkaire asked stiffly, but not stiff enough to keep the eagerness and hope out of his voice.

  “Not this time.”

  “Thank you, sir.”

  “For what?” Necessary said. “I just told you you couldn’t sit in.”

  “I just meant—” Ferkaire grew flustered and tried to think of something else to say, something pertinent, when Necessary said, “Forget it. When the first one gets up here, bring him right in. Who’s first by the way?”

  Ferkaire looked at a three-by-five card that he carried. “Frank Schoemeister. Chicago.”

  Necessary nodded. “That’s all, Ferkaire.”

  Ferkaire said yes, sir, again and left.

  “Jimmy Twoshoes,” Necessary said as he moved behind his desk. “They come up with the goddamnedest nicknames. I knew one in Pittsburgh once that they used to call Billy Buster Bible because he used to carry one around and always let them kiss it before he shot them. He used to shoot them through the ear. The left one, I think.” He sank back in his executive chair and looked at me. “You going to be over there by the window?”

  “That’s right.”

  “I wish to hell more light would come through it.”

  “There’s enough to give them the idea.”

  “You want to go first?” he said.

  “Better if you did,” I said. “They may not know you, but they’ll know the gold braid. I’ll come in on the chorus.”

  Necessary looked at his watch. “It’s going to be a long afternoon.”

  “Longer than most,” I agreed.

  A few minutes later Ferkaire knocked on the door, entered, and said, “Mr. Frank Schoemeister, Chief Necessary.”

  Then he closed the door and left Schoemeister standing there in the center of the room. Schoemeister looked at Necessary, then at me, and then back at Necessary. After that he studied the rug, the ceiling, and the two flags behind Necessary’s desk. He nodded his head as if he’d reached some silent agreement with himself and put his hands in his coat pockets. Then he smiled and it came out hideous.

  Necessary waved a negligent hand at him. “Sit down, Schoemeister, pick a chair. That’s my special assistant over there, Mr. Dye.”

  Schoemeister nodded in my direction, selected a chair so that he could keep me in view, and sat down. Finally, he decided to say something: “Social?”

  “Social,” Necessary said.

  “You don’t mind if I smoke then?”

  Necessary waved his hand again. “You want a drink? I’m going to have one.”

  “A drink?” Schoemeister said. “That would be nice.”

  “What would you like?” I said, moving to the bar.

  “Scotch and water, please.”

  I mixed three of them and handed Schoemeister his. He accepted it with a slim, well-cared-for hand that went with the rest of him, which was equally well tended. He was not yet forty, looked even younger, and wore dark, quiet clothes that almost made him look like a successful corporate executive whose career was a couple of years ahead of schedule. He looked like that until you noticed his shoes. And his mouth. The shoes were black alligator with large silver buckles that got encouragement from the white, brushed-suede fleurs-de-lis that decorated each toe. I had read somewhere, probably in a barber shop, that Jimmy Twoshoes had more than two hundred pairs of customcobbled footwear and sometimes wore as many as six different pairs in a day. But he had only one mouth, and there was nothing he could do about that, although he had tried hard enough. The twelve puckered white scars were still there where they had sewed his lips together with fishing line in 1961. The heavy mustache he wore failed to disguise the scars that twisted his mouth into a perpetual snarl. The Chicago police never did learn who had sewed Schoemeister’s lips together, nor would Schoemeister tell them. During the month after he was released from the hospital funerals were held for four of Schoemeister’s more prominent contemporaries. They had all died messily and none of their caskets was opened during their funerals.

  “We got a nice little town here,” Necessary said after he took a swallow of his drink.

  “I noticed,” Schoemeister said.

  “Got some new industry and more on the way. Got one of the best little beaches on the Gulf. The niggers have been fairly quiet up till now. Nice big Air Force depot about fifteen miles out of town helps keep the unemployment down. Got a good, clean, local government that listens to reason. Of course, Swankerton’s no Chicago, but it’s a real nice little city where you can still walk the streets safe at night. You here on a vacation?”

  “Vacation,” Schoemeister said.

  “There’ve been some changes here recently,” Necessary said. “They put me in as chief of police and Mr. Dye’s my new special assistant and it’s sort of up to us to look out for law and order.”

  “I hear the last chief of police shot himself,” Schoemeister said.

  “He sure did, poor guy. Pressure, I guess. Funny you’d bring that up, but a good friend of his left town this afternoon sudden like. Name’s Ramsey Lynch. Ever heard of him?”

  Schoemeister nodded. He did it carefully. “I’ve heard of him.”

  “Well, he was quite prominent here in certain circles. Had a lot of interests.”

&nbs
p; “Who’s looking after them for him?” Schoemeister said, and I decided that he knew what the right questions were.

  “Well, that’s funny, too, but it seems that me and Mr. Dye here are sort of going to have to look after things. We were talking about it just this afternoon, weren’t we, Mr. Dye?”

  “This very afternoon,” I said. “Just before you got here.”

  “I see,” Schoemeister said. He wasn’t pushing anything.

  “The trouble, Mr. Schoemeister,” I said, “is that neither Chief Necessary nor I have schedules that will permit us to devote full time to the various activities that formerly were under Mr. Lynch’s personal supervision. We were thinking of taking in a partner—a working partner, of course—who could devote at least a portion of his time to these various interests. Your name happened to come up, so we thought we’d arrange this meeting.”

  “I’m going to ask you a question,” Schoemeister said.

  Necessary smiled. “Go ahead.”

  “This place bugged?”

  “You think I’d bug my own office?”

  “Some do.”

  “Some are goddamned stupid, too.”

  “Okay,” Schoemeister said and looked at me. “You talk awful pretty, but you don’t really say anything. See if you can’t make it not quite so pretty and a little more plain.”

  “All right,” I said. “Lynch is out as of noon today. I’m in. So is Necessary and so are you, for a third if you can run it.”

  “I hear it’s pretty rich,” Schoemeister said.

  “You hear right,” Necessary said.

  “I also hear that Lynch was under Luccarella.”

  “Luccarella’s out too,” I said.

  “Since when?”

  “Since tomorrow,” Necessary said.

  “What keeps him out?”

  Necessary tapped the third gold button down on his uniform. “This keeps him out and gets you in, if you’re interested.”

  Schoemeister nodded. “Like I say, I’ve been on vacation down here, but you know how it is, I sort of nosed around.”

  “We know how it is,” Necessary said.

  “I’d kinda heard of some trouble when I was up in Chicago.”

  “It gets around,” I said.

  Schoemeister looked at me. “When you talk about these interests, just what’re you talking about?”

  “Everything,” I said.

  “How much you figure it’s worth?”

  “By the month?” Necessary said.

  “That’ll do.”

  Necessary looked at me. “What did we come up with?”

  “Before we reorganized the police department it grossed about two million a month. There was the usual big overhead and that knocked the net down to around two or three hundred thousand. Some months were better than others.”

  “How many ways is the net split?” Schoemeister said.

  “Three,” Necessary said. “Just three ways and each of us pays his own expenses.”

  “And what do you expect me to do?” Schoemeister said.

  “The operation has deteriorated during the past month,” I said. “Gone to hell really. We expect you to personally supervise its rebuilding. After it’s functioning smoothly again, you can appoint your own supervisor. He—and whoever he hires—will be responsible to you and you will be responsible to us.”

  Schoemeister nodded thoughtfully. “Suppose I just moved in on my own? Suppose that happened?”

  “We’d move you right out,” Necessary said.

  “What about Luccarella? He’s tied in back east, you know.”

  “That bother you?” I said.

  “Those guys back east don’t bother me,” Schoemeister said. “I don’t go looking for trouble from them, but they don’t bother me.”

  “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.”
r />   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.”

  CHAPTER 37

  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.”