The Fools in Town Are on Our Side

by Ross Thomas

  “He’s quit,” Carmingler said.

  “Drinking?”

  “Yes.”

  “What was it, his liver?”

  “Heart.”

  “Well, after the first hour, during which he denounces the super-secret Section Two for groveling, with a couple of passing swipes at the State Department, he recounts how this same notorious agent, Lucifer Dye, is now deeply embroiled in the domestic politics of one of the South’s fairest cities in blatant defiance of all legal safeguards. I can hear him now.”

  “Hear him what?” Carmingler said.

  “‘Where will it all stop, Mr. President? Where will it ever end? How would you like agents of the FBI or the CIA to guide the destiny of your home town? Would you want your City Council to be elected through the machinations of ruthless, devious men who take their orders from a super-secret agency on the banks of the Potomac? Are we entering into a police state, Mr. President?’”

  “You don’t do imitations very well,” Carmingler said.

  “The essence is there,” I said. “At the same time Simple is making his speech, America’s favorite picture magazine will blanket the country with a sixteen-page spread on ‘The Men Who Are Corrupting Swankerton.’”

  Carmingler almost looked startled. “Have you seen an advance copy?” he demanded.

  “I just like to make things up.”

  “Oh.”

  “Why don’t you get the White House to stop him?”

  “They tried, but not too hard. They need his vote on the tax bill.”

  “What about the magazine?”

  “No chance.”

  “You tried?”

  “Yes.”

  “You’re in a bind,” I said.

  “So are you.”

  “You could blackmail the senator. Threaten to reveal that slush fund of his.”

  “I said they need his vote.”

  “That close, huh?”

  “It’s that close.”

  “So you sent your young friend Franz Mugar down to take care of me.

  “That was a mistake.”

  “That’s two you’ve admitted. It must be a record.”

  “There won’t be any more.”

  “Sorry I can’t help.”

  “You won’t then?”

  “No.”

  Carmingler looked at the window and said, “If it’s money—”

  “It’s not.”

  “It would only be for six months.”

  “I don’t have six months.”

  He looked at me quickly. “Do you have—”

  “Don’t get your hopes up. I don’t have anything fatal. I just don’t have time to sit around in Brazil or the Canary Islands while you try to tidy things up. It’s not that important to me.”

  “It is to us,” Carmingler said.

  “Why?”

  Carmingler’s hand darted to the Phi Beta Kappa key, which hung on the gold chain that decorated the vest of his glen plaid suit. The key didn’t seem to give him as much reassurance as it usually did. For a brief moment, a very brief one, he almost looked bewildered. “What do you want, a lecture?” he said.

  “I’ve heard them all.”

  “It wasn’t a good question.”

  “That’s because you don’t have a good answer for it.”

  He shook his head. “You’re wrong. I have an answer.”

  “I’ll listen.”

  “You asked why it was important.”

  “Yes.”

  “It’s important because it’s what we do,” Carmingler said with more fervor in his voice than I’d ever heard before. “We do a job, and you know what kind of job it is because you once did it. You weren’t all that good at it because you never really believed in it, but most of us do, and that’s something you’ll never understand because you don’t really believe in the importance of anything, not even yourself. If your wife had lived, you might have changed a little, but she didn’t and you didn’t. So you ask why it’s important. It’s important because form and substance are important to us and we’re part of both, the important part. Without us, there’d be no form and substance—no structure. There might be another one around, but not the one that we shaped. I don’t detach myself from what I do. It’s an important part of me and I’m an important part of it.”

  “It’s the job,” I said.

  “Yes, goddamn it, it’s the job. I think the job is important.”

  “I remember,” I said. “I remember that briefcase in Manila was important.”

  “It was the job.”

  “You had to cut off his hand to get that briefcase. You chopped it off with a machete. All part of the job.”

  “My job. Yes.”

  “And your job is to make me go away. To make me disappear as if I’d never really existed. And then I’d just be something else that the senator had found in the bottom of a bottle of Old Cabin Still.”

  “We’ll pay you for your loss of identity,” Carmingler said, losing a small battle to keep the sarcasm out of his voice.

  I said no again for the same reason that I’d once said yes, which was for no reason at all other than that it seemed the thing to do at the time.

  “I’ll ask why one more time,” Carmingler said.

  “Because I don’t care enough to say yes, I suppose.”

  “It would be easier.”

  “That’s part of it, too.”

  “You don’t think we’re very important, do you?”

  “No,” I said. “Not very.”

  Carmingler nodded and rose. He took out his pipe, looked at it, and then replaced it in his coat pocket. He studied me for several moments as if trying to decide how to say what I knew that he had to say. “I’m sorry,” he finally said and sounded as if he might really mean it, if he could ever mean anything. “I’m sorry,” he said again, “but you’re not very important to us either.”

  CHAPTER 38

  I had breakfast with Victor Orcutt the next morning. Or rather he had breakfast while I nursed a hangover, the rotten kind that makes everything taste yellow, even coffee and tomato juice.

  “Breakfast is really the only hotel food that I can abide,” Victor Orcutt said, and I nodded my agreement or understanding or whatever it was. I didn’t yet feel like talking.

  “Do you like the South, Mr. Dye? I don’t think I’ve ever asked,”

  “It’s all right,” I said.

  “There’s something about it that fascinates and repels me at the same time.”

  “It affects a lot of people like that, I’ve heard.”

  “Really? Does it affect you that way?”

  No.

  “Of course, Swankerton isn’t really the South.”

  “It isn’t?”

  “Well, it’s in the South, but it’s right on the Gulf and it gets all the traffic from New Orleans and Texas and Florida and those places. No, to be in the South, the real South, you have to go about forty miles north of Swankerton.”

  I decided to try a cigarette.

  “Swankerton is such an ugly name for a city, I think,” Orcutt said, spooning some marmalade on to his toast, which still looked warm as did his link sausage and scrambled eggs. He must have had a different room waiter.

  “It also has an unfortunate nickname,” I said and felt as if I were prattling.

  “You mean Chancre Town? Isn’t that perfectly ghastly?”

  “Terrible.”

  “They have such beautiful names down here. Natchez-under-the-Hill. That’s really nice. So is Pascagoula.”

  “They’re in Mississippi.”

  “But they’re still beautiful names. So is Mississippi. It’s from the Chippewa and they pronounced it more like mici-zibi.” He spelled it for me. “It means large river.”

  I put out my cigarette after the third puff.

  “You sure you won’t have a piece of toast?” Orcutt asked.

  “No, thank you.”

  “I called New York and Washington yesterday,” he said.


  “Hmmm,” I said to indicate interest.

  “I learned that magazine story is definitely scheduled and that any amount of pressure has been brought to have it killed. I also learned that Senator Simon is adamant about making his speech.”

  “I heard the same thing.”

  “You’re going to bear the brunt of it, you know.”

  “I know.”

  “Does it bother you? I know that’s such a personal question.”

  “It’s what I’m being paid for.”

  “I do hope Homer will bear up under it.”

  “He’ll be all right,” I said. “He did fine yesterday.”

  “I heard! He really seemed to enjoy himself. Let’s see, you have your meeting with Luccarella this morning, right?”

  “At ten,” I said.

  “I’d so like to be there.”

  “I’ll try to give you a spicier report.”

  “Do. Please. Incidentally, I had a most curious call this morning.”

  “Who?”

  “Frank Mouton, the druggist.”

  “Our candidate for the City Council?”

  “The same. You did turn that evidence of his drug-peddling activities over to Lynch, didn’t you?”

  “Yes,” I said.

  “Well, Mouton was weeping and sobbing into the phone. He kept telling me how he had betrayed the Clean Government Association because Lynch had forced him to.”

  “That was the plan,” I said.

  “But then he stopped crying and started to shout. He said that he knew what we were up to, that we were out to ruin him.”

  “He’s right. Or at least he was.”

  “He really sounded disturbed, poor man. He said Lynch had told him the entire story.”

  “It probably was the last thing Lynch did before he left town.”

  “Mouton was almost hysterical.”

  “Did he threaten you?”

  Orcutt shook his head. “No. He said that God would take care of me.

  “Well, Mouton is a deacon in his church.”

  “That’s right,” Orcutt said. “I’d almost forgotten. The First Methodist.”

  At three minutes to ten Homer Necessary came by Orcutt’s room for me and we rode the elevator down to the sixth floor of the hotel. We stopped in front of 622 and Necessary tugged at his new uniform. “This is gonna be interesting,” he said.

  “Let’s hope that’s all it is,” I said and knocked on the door.

  It was once again opened by Shorty and the baldheaded man who knew about bumblebees. “Come on in,” the baldheaded man said. We went in and once again they steered from the rear.

  Luccarella had a suite, not quite as large as Orcutt’s, and his two human sheepdogs nudged us into the living room where Luccarella and Samuels, the lawyer, sat side by side on a couch. Two large closed briefcases rested on a low coffee table that was within handy reach of both.

  Luccarella looked at his watch when we came in. “You’re right on time,” he said. “That’s a good sign. I like doing business with people who’re on time.”

  “This is Chief Necessary,” I said. “Mr. Luccarella and Mr. Samuels who is his attorney.” Necessary shook hands with both of them.

  “Sit down, sit down,” Luccarella said, making vague gestures toward a couple of chairs that were drawn up to the coffee table. We sat down. “You want some coffee?” he said.

  “You wanta drink?”

  “I’ll take a drink,” I said and drew a disapproving glance from Samuels, who apparently didn’t think much of those who drink in the morning. I didn’t feel that I could stand to care what he thought.

  “How about you, Chief?” Luccarella said.

  “Scotch and water,” Necessary said.

  “Dye?”

  “That’s fine.”

  Luccarella jerked his head at Shorty. “Fix them,” he said.

  After Shorty mixed and served the drinks, he moved over to help the baldheaded man lean against a wall. “Go on, beat it,” Luccarella snapped at them. “And close the door behind you.”

  When they had gone, Luccarella leaned back on the couch and smiled with his gray teeth. “Heard a lot about you, Chief Necessary.”

  “That right?”

  “You got a good reputation up North. Reputation of a man you can do business with.”

  “I like a quiet town,” Necessary said, “where everything fits in place.”

  “You’ve sort of quieted this town down,” Luccarella said.

  “It could get even quieter.”

  “I think I sort of understand you,” Luccarella said.

  Necessary smiled. “I hope so.”

  Samuels cleared his throat. “Shall we go over the books?”

  “We ain’t got no deal yet. What do you mean go over the books? We go over the books when we got a deal.” Luccarella was growing excited again,

  “I just thought—”

  “Don’t think,” Luccarella said sourly.

  “Let’s talk deal, Luccarella,” Necessary said.

  “There,” Luccarella said to Samuels. “You see what I mean. We make a deal and then we look at the books.” He waved a hand at Necessary. “Go ahead, Chief. I hear you like to talk for yourself.”

  Necessary lit one of his Camels and blew some smoke at the fourth gold button on his uniform. “Before we do, I thought I’d mention something and if it offends you, I’m sorry.”

  “Go ahead,” Luccarella said with another wave of his hand. He was all magnanimity that morning.

  “I like my privacy just like you do. So I told one of my men to watch the door to the hall. He’s my driver, Sergeant Krone.”

  “So we won’t be interrupted, huh? I don’t mind, but Shorty and Jassy’U take care of the door.”

  “I’m not worried about anyone coming in; it’s about their going out. So if you got a bug in this room and you’re thinking of taping any of this, I suggest you forget it.”

  “What the hell kind of creep do you think I am?” Luccarella said, not quite yelling.

  “The kind who might bug a conversation like we’re about to have.”

  Luccarella smiled suddenly. “Yeah, maybe I am at that. But there’s no bug. I swear to God.”

  “We’ll make sure later,” Necessary said.

  “Okay, you made a point, now make an offer.”

  “It’s no offer,” Necessary said. “It’s take it or leave it. I get a third. You and Dye can fight over the rest.”

  An incredulous look appeared on Luccarella’s squeezed-up face. “A third of what?”

  “The net. On everything.”

  “A third! Christ, what do you mean a third? Lynch only got ten percent.”

  “I may as well give you the bad news now,” I said. “I get a third, too.”

  “You’re out of your fucking mind,” Luccarella yelled. “You get a third, he gets a third—you know what that leaves me? You know how much?”

  “A third,” I said.

  “Like shit it does. It leaves me just what Lynch got—ten percent. The rest goes back east.”

  “That’s too bad,” Necessary said and drained his Scotch and water. “I don’t want to argue. I’ll take thirty percent. Dye can talk for himself.”

  “Thirty’s okay,” I said. “That leaves you forty.”

  “I can’t operate on forty.”

  “You won’t operate at all unless I say so,” Necessary said.

  “Fifty-five, forty-five,” Luccarella said.

  Necessary shook his head. “It’s too complicated. I can figure the easy ones like thirty percent and a third and a half and the round numbers. Figuring forty-five and fifty-five percent’s too hard.”

  “I’ll have to check back east,” Luccarella said. “I’ll have to explain to them what I’m up against.”

  “I tell you something, Luccarella,” Necessary said. “Either you’re in or you’re out for forty percent. You can explain things later. Right now it’s yes or no time.”

  Lucc
arella looked at Samuels, who refused to return his gaze. “Well, don’t just sit there, dummy! Say something, for Christ’s sake. That’s what I pay you for.”

  Samuels sighed. “Under the new circumstances, perhaps Chief Necessary’s proposal does have merit, particularly if the net increases over what it formerly was.”

  “It’ll increase,” Necessary said, shaking the ice in his glass. “Dye and I’ll see to that, won’t we?”

  “Sure,” I said.

  “How much?” Luccarella said, a measure of greed creeping into his voice.

  “Well, Dye and I’ve been talking about that and we thought we just might turn Swankerton wide open now that I got the department all reorganized the way I like it. From what me and Dye can figure, Lynch and that doodlebug who was his chief of police kept things running about half speed. We thought we just might edge her up a notch or two.”

  “What the hell’s he talking about?” Luccarella said to me.

  “Just what he said. We’re going to exploit the town’s full potential.”

  “Why don’t you translate that into dollars and cents?”

  Necessary looked at me. “Go ahead,” he said.

  “It means the net should go up by one hundred percent at least.”

  “Ah,” Samuels said. “I think I see.”

  “In one-syllable words, just for me,” Luccarella said. He was almost pleading.

  “I believe what Mr. Dye is saying is that the fixed costs will remain fairly constant despite a marked increase in the volume of business.” Samuels looked at me for confirmation and I nodded.

  “You mean the nut’s going to stay the same because the payoffs will stay the same and any new business will be just that much gravy? That’s what you mean, ain’t it?”

  “That’s it, Luccarella,” Necessary said. “So your forty percent share of the new net will be equal to eighty percent of the old.”

  “That’s better,” Luccarella said softly, almost to himself. “That’s a hell of a lot better. You got a deal.”

  “Almost,” Necessary said. “Almost we got a deal.”

  “Now what’s the matter?” Luccarella looked at me. “Now what the hell’s bugging him?”