The Buck Passes Flynn

by Gregory Mcdonald

  “Thank you, sir.”

  “If you ever get any hard information, don’t hesitate to phone in.”

  “I won’t, sir.”

  “I’d be delighted to hear a fact one of these days. Any fact.”

  “The very first fact that comes over the horizon I will whisk away to you with blinding speed.”

  “I await the moment with bated B.”

  Flynn said, “My best to Ginger.”

  13

  DUCEY Webb was standing in the lobby of the Casino Royale when Flynn stepped off the elevator.

  She saw his suitcase.

  “Checking out?” she asked.

  “I am.”

  Drily, she said, “You mustn’t forget to check out of Caesar’s Palace, too—where you’re also registered.”

  “I almost did forget,” Flynn said.

  She followed him to the cashier’s cage.

  “You never did go back to Austin,” she said, “that night.”

  “You presumed I was going back to Austin because you saw me leave the hotel that morning without any luggage.”

  Her one brown eye and one blue eye shifted from his left eye to his right and back again.

  “I didn’t have any luggage at that point,” Flynn explained.

  She nodded. “My, my.”

  Flynn was checking his hotel bill.

  “Therefore,” she said, “you came to Las Vegas, checked into one hotel and actually stayed in another just to fool me.”

  “It took you a long time to figure it out,” Flynn said.

  Ducey shrugged. “Your room at Caesar’s Palace was used anyway. I got a key. I was in the bed every night.”

  Flynn colored. “What a nice idea,” he said.

  “So,” she shrugged. “You fooled me. You’ve interviewed people who came here from Ada, Texas?”

  “Some of them.”

  He left his room key on the desk and picked up his bag.

  “Where are you going now?” she asked.

  “To the airport.”

  “You’re just wasting my time, Flynn. You think I can’t find out where you’re going?”

  “I think you can,” said Flynn. “The truth is I myself don’t know where I’m going. I hope to make up my mind on the flight to Chicago.” He grinned at her. “Fact is, I hate bein’ observed when I don’t know what I’m doin’.”

  “I see.”

  “I don’t understand this situation much better than when I started in on it. And, as the man says, time’s a-wastin’.”

  “Oh, all right. You’re known for playing close to your chest, but this is ridiculous. Listen, Flynn, I know you’re not responsible to the great G. of the U.S., but, dammit, I am. The letter of introduction I showed you wasn’t signed by a county attorney, you know.”

  “It wasn’t signed at all.”

  “It was handwritten!” she whispered loudly, “By the President of the United States!”

  “An impressive fellow,” said Flynn. “Scrupulous about his appearance in public. You’ll never catch that fellow in a dirty shirt.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “Coming to the airport with me?”

  “My luggage is in your room at Caesar’s Palace.”

  “Ach, that’s right,” said Flynn. “Check out for me, will you? I keep forgetting that little particular.”

  14

  “HONESTLY, Frannie,” Elizabeth said as she settled down to Sunday family dinner at her end of the table. “You have no idea how much things cost.”

  “I do,” said Flynn. “I just paid a hotel bill in Las Vegas.”

  “Las Vegas!” said Todd, one of the twin fifteen-year-old sons. “Were you in Las Vegas?”

  “Gamboling on the green,” muttered Winny, trying his salad.

  On the flight to Chicago, Flynn had been unable to make up his mind whether to go to Washington immediately (as the assault on the Pentagon Intelligence section seemed to worry everyone the most), directly to Cleary’s Mountain, Cleary, Oregon, to interview the pig woman’s son, George Udine, or to begin arranging a trip to Solensk, U.S.S.R., to interview Cecil Hill, renowned counterfeiter.

  Something told Flynn he should stop in at East Frampton next, but maybe that was only because he had first heard of East Frampton in this case immediately after hearing of Ada. No, it was more than that: without spending much time on it he had to establish the two towns either had something in common, or they didn’t.

  Nodding over his Lipton tea on the airplane (when would airlines begin serving herb teas?), Flynn considered that the unexpected largesse had caused almost everyone to leave Ada, Texas, except the minister; apparently it had caused almost no one to leave East Frampton, Massachusetts, except two members of the clergy, the Congregational minister, who had gone to tour Europe, and the Catholic priest, who had gone to join the missionaries. Was that significant? Flynn smiled at the thought. He was swatting fleas.

  As N.N. Zero guessed he would, Flynn decided to go home. He arrived late Saturday in time to collect the twins from a school dance, see all his five children in their beds, and have a long sleep himself.

  Flynn sat down to his Sunday roast beef with his family.

  Around the dining-room table, to his right, were Randy and Todd, the twins; to his left, twelve-year-old Jenny with her blue saucer eyes, and, next to his mother, nine-year-old Winny. Baby Jeff had been fed his bottle and placed upstairs to play with his toes.

  The children had been full of their news.

  “Honestly,” Elizabeth fussed, “we’re now paying more for a simple head of lettuce or a pound of peas than we used to spend for an entire dinner for the family. Don’t ask what this roast beef cost.”

  “I won’t,” agreed Flynn.

  “Shoes!” Elizabeth exclaimed.

  “It’s the money they spend on advertising,” Flynn said, “notifying us how cheap everything is, that makes everything so expensive.”

  “Toothpaste!” expostulated Elizabeth.

  Flynn remembered that as a boy, in the last days of the Third Reich, he had learned to clean his teeth with mud, rinsing them with ditch water. Mud was still cheap.

  And all his children had sparkling teeth.

  “Some brokerage house,” Elizabeth said, helping the unwilling Winny to the broccoli, “has been keeping what they call a Trivia Index. Instead of recording the rate of inflation of those things on the Consumers’ Price Index kept by the government, for food, fuel, shelter, whatever else, they’ve kept track of the rate of inflation on things that aren’t essential but we all buy—like ice cream cones and brooms. And you know, they’ve discovered the rate of inflation on these items is nothing like what we believe, having only the Consumers’ Index to go on. They say the inflation rate on these items is as much as five and six hundred percent!”

  “Sure,” said Flynn, remembering the insanity he had just seen in Las Vegas, hands throwing “cash money” on a table and other hands picking the “cash money” up from the table as fast as hands could move, with neither goods nor services changing hands at all, “and the people are throwing away their money on trivia faster than ever before because the money means less to them than it did yesterday and they suspect it will mean even less tomorrow.”

  He was rather glad the broccoli had not been passed down to his end of the table.

  “What causes inflation?” Jenny asked her father.

  “Ask your mother.”

  She had survived wild inflation in Israel and other places before they were married.

  “Too much money,” Elizabeth said.

  “Then why don’t they stop making money?”

  “Because it keeps people employed.”

  “Then what’s wrong with inflation?”

  “Because the more money there is the less value it has and even the employed people become poorer and poorer.”

  Flynn smiled at his wife. She could fit the history of the world into a thimble without threat of overflow. He had no doubt she was
a direct descendant of the person—probably a woman—who had written Genesis, or at least edited it.

  He had no idea whether she was right about the economic forces at play in the world, but he noticed the children looked pleasantly informed.

  “Everyone from the Boston Police has called to see how you are, Frannie,” Elizabeth said. “Commissioner D’Esopo. The mayor’s called. Grover’s called at least every other day. He’s been most solicitous.”

  “I suppose Grover himself suffers good health?”

  “I guess so.”

  “Drat,” said Flynn.

  Flynn had spent much effort trying to get his assistant, Grover, out from under him.

  “The blithering idiot,” said Flynn. “How am I, anyway, now that I ask?”

  “Recovering nicely,” answered his wife.

  “Oh? And from what am I recovering this time?”

  “Appendicitis.”

  “The operation was successful, was it? The patient survived?”

  “You’re doing as well as can be expected,” Elizabeth said.

  “Didn’t I have appendicitis last year,” Flynn asked, “over that other matter in Chad?”

  “You can’t have appendicitis more than once, Da,” said Randy.

  “Precisely.”

  Elizabeth said, “Colitis. You had colitis last year.”

  “Ah, yes,” said Flynn. “I’m glad you keep my medical records for me, Elsbeth. Otherwise I wouldn’t have a clue what to say when people ask me how I am.”

  “You’re as well as can be expected,” Elizabeth said.

  “I’m not done with this N.N. matter, you know,” Flynn said, “just because I’m home for the day. You’ll have to make up more excuses for my absence from the Boston Police Department.”

  Elizabeth shrugged. “I guess you’ll have complications.”

  “That’s the truth,” Flynn said. “Complications I have.”

  Winny said, “Da didn’t get any broccoli.”

  “Oh, my,” said Flynn in mock dismay. “I was never passed the broccoli.”

  “Pass your father the broccoli, Winny,” Elizabeth said.

  The little scamp was already doing so, his eyes alight.

  Flynn felt the bowl with the palm of his hand.

  “Wouldn’t it be cold now?”

  “I’ll heat it up,” Elizabeth said.

  “Never mind.”

  Taking care not to look at Winny, Flynn spooned some broccoli, a very little, onto the edge of his plate.

  “Funny,” Elizabeth said. “Cocky only called once to ask how you are.”

  “Cocky knows how I am, I suspect,” said Flynn. “He has three-quarters of the brains of the Boston Police Department between his own ears.”

  Detective Lieutenant Walter Concannon (retired handicapped) unofficially worked with Flynn, and invariably beat him at chess. He knew Flynn, well.

  “He asked if you were so stopped by the Knibridge Gambit you wouldn’t come to the office,” Elizabeth said.

  “Knibridge? He couldn’t have said Knibridge Gambit,” Flynn said. “I never heard of the Knibridge Gambit.”

  “Maybe that’s why you’re stumped by it,” Todd said.

  “Maybe…”

  “Are you going back to Las Vegas?” Elizabeth asked.

  “No.”

  “At least you can’t starve in Las Vegas,” Winny said.

  “I’m going someplace,” Flynn said, hesitantly.

  Elizabeth’s look asked him if he wanted more questions.

  “So what’s the answer to the riddle you gave me?” Randy asked.

  “What riddle?”

  “On the phone. What can depopulate a town in Texas, drive the people of a town in Massachusetts crazy, and wrack up the Pentagon?”

  “Oh,” Flynn said. “That riddle.”

  “What’s the answer?” said Jenny.

  “I said a skunk,” said Randy.

  “Mrs. Williams,” said Todd. “She could do all that.”

  “Who’s Mrs. Williams?” asked Flynn.

  “Our math teacher.”

  “Oh,” said Flynn.

  After dinner they would all repair to the living room, to the piano and stringed instruments, and have their little musicale. Flynn had not been informed what piece the youngsters had been practicing to play with him that day. Flynn looked forward to that. It would give him a chance to think.

  “You can’t starve to death in Las Vegas,” Winny insisted.

  “The areas are so unlike each other,” Elizabeth said. “I think. Massachusetts, Texas, D.C. I mean, I was thinking of a mineral seepage, or something, you know….”

  Flynn did not know and would not ask. He was not at the point where he wanted this particular problem thimblized.

  “So what’s the answer?” asked Jenny.

  “The root of all evil,” said Flynn.

  “Money?” Randy said.

  “Money?” Jenny said.

  “At least,” Winny said, “you cannot starve in Las Vegas.”

  Flynn said: “Money. Apparently every citizen of Ada, Texas, every citizen of East Frampton, Massachusetts, every member of a Pentagon Intelligence section woke up one fine day—or, I should say, three different fine days—and discovered they each—every man, woman, and child—had been given anonymously, and apparently without reason, one hundred thousand dollars in cash.”

  “Wick!” said Randy.

  “Ex!” said Todd.

  “Apparent results,” said Flynn: “the people of one town ran away; the people of another town kept everyone else away; the people working in the Pentagon grew distinctly shiftless.”

  “East Frampton,” Elizabeth said. “We went out there two summers ago.”

  “I don’t think that had anything to do with it,” Flynn said.

  Winny said, “I knew we should have stayed longer.”

  “That’s some riddle,” Randy said.

  “The riddle,” Flynn said, “is who and why.”

  “Who gave the money and why?” Elizabeth, watched by ten eyes, was cutting a chocolate layer cake.

  “So what’s the answer?” Jenny said.

  “Get away with you,” Flynn said. “Why do I come home at all? All the help I get from this collection of ravenous nincompoops.”

  “Da didn’t finish his broccoli,” Winny observed. He was clearing away the plates.

  Flynn said, “It was cold.”

  “I could have heated it,” Elizabeth said.

  “It was too late in the meal when I got it,” Flynn said.

  Winny said, “Da doesn’t like broccoli. Either.”

  “Clear the table, Winny. Here, you others, help Winny clear the table before I serve the cake.”

  The children clattered back and forth to the kitchen.

  Over the cake, Elizabeth said, “That’s a great deal of money, Frannie.”

  “A dreadful lot.”

  “Well,” she said. “I’m sure the answer’s very simple.”

  “You’re always sure the answer’s very simple.”

  “And have I ever been wrong?” she asked.

  “Not yet,” begrudged Flynn.

  “Da likes chocolate cake!” announced Winny, stuffing his own mouth.

  “Now,” Flynn said, “I have a very important question.”

  They all looked at him apprehensively.

  “For Winny.”

  They all looked relieved, except Winny, who continued to look apprehensive.

  “Winny,” Flynn said slowly. “Answer me this … if you can. I know you’re not ready for the question … the topic is new to you, and all…” Winny swallowed his cake in a gulp and stared at his father. “Winny … why can’t you starve to death in Las Vegas?”

  After Jenny giggled and the boys snickered, Winny, with a straight face, still staring at his father, said, “What?”

  “Why … can’t you starve to death in Las Vegas?”

  “I didn’t get the question, sir.”

  “The
question,” Flynn said with mock patience, “is why can’t one starve in Las Vegas?”

  “Why can’t one starve in Las Vegas?” Winny asked blankly.

  “That’s the question,” Flynn said. “What’s the answer?”

  “Oh, what’s the answer, Winny?” Giggling, Jenny punched him on the arm.

  Winny shrugged. “Because of the sand which is there.”

  Without cracking a smile, he returned to his chocolate layer cake.

  15

  IN his stout shoes, tweed suit, and raincoat, Flynn was pleased to remain on the sunny, windy deck of the converted dragger as it moved slowly out of the harbor.

  As the ferry was passing the entrance buoy, she picked up speed and began a nice canter over the low swells.

  The wizened deck man who had been coiling the lines slowly, now went up to the deckhouse and took the wheel.

  The captain of the ferry, a lean man of about twenty, came down to the deck near Flynn and resettled the lines. He gave Flynn a friendly nod.

  Flynn was the only passenger.

  Also on deck were stacked crates of whiskey, gin, soda water, backgammon, and electrical appliances all marked for East Frampton delivery.

  Over the wind, Flynn shouted, “Someone in East Frampton planning a party?”

  The captain grinned. “East Frampton is a party. They been a party all summer and fall. Longest happy hour I ever see.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Didn’t you read about those people chasin’ the tourists out of town beginning of summer?”

  “I heard something about it.”

  The skipper said, “Damnedest thing ever.”

  “What caused the riot?”

  Hands in the pockets of his thick jacket, the young skipper shrugged. “Got me. Somethin’ weird’s been goin’ on in that little corner of the universe. All summer long.” The young skipper bounced the toe of his sneaker against the side of a crate a few times. “You know the island?”

  “Not very well. I’ve been there once before, for the day.”

  “Ride in the car—you see about everything in a half-hour. Walk on the beach. The movie show’s open only Friday, Saturday in the winter.”

  “Pretty lively place.”

  “I used to know a girl over there—never mind her name. We dated a few times, last winter. As much of a date as you can have on the island. Tried to get her to come over to the mainland with me, but she never would come. Well, she’d come over to look at the stores and have a sandwich for the day and come back on the ferry. Everyone did that. What I mean is”—the young man seemed to be concentrating on the toe of his sneaker—“I couldn’t get her to come over for the night.”