by Ross Thomas
“How much?” Lynch said.
“I’m getting to that.”
“You’re sure as hell in no hurry,” Loambaugh said.
“Well, after they have the film all put together, with additional facts, a big name voice—what do you think of Gregory Peck?”
“Not much,” Lynch said.
“Just an idea. So after they put it all together in a slick, professional, competent manner and give it a catchy title, something like, ‘Swankerton’s Cops: the Best that Money Can Buy,’ well, they’ll have no problem giving it—or even selling it—to one of the networks and then you’ll have about twenty or thirty million viewers instead of a mere hundred thousand or so here in Swankerton. Think of what the publicity will do for the place. You’ll have a special team down here from Life the next day plus a couple of dozen other hard-nosed reporters, all specialists in crime and corruption. The state cops will move in. They’ll have to, and they’ll be falling over the feet of the Justice Department types from Washington. That film, I’d say, can really put Swankerton on the map.”
Lynch sat through it all, puffing calmly away on his cigar. Loambaugh listened, at first with a certain amount of affected boredom that changed into interest and then deepened into fascination. By the time I was through he was chewing on his fingernails again.
Lynch sighed and ground his cigar out into an ashtray. It was only half-smoked. “I don’t know about Cal over there, Lucifer, but you don’t have to paint me any more word pictures. For an old country boy, I got a pretty good imagination. So I’m going to ask you again, how much do they want?”
“They?”
“That’s right. They. Them.”
“There is no they or them, Lynch. There are no expensive middlemen. I’m what’s called the sole source.”
“You are, huh?”
“He’s a lying sonofabitch,” Loambaugh said.
“Well, shit, Cal, we already know that.” He turned to me again. “I thought you was kind of working for us.” He tried to sound a little disappointed, even hurt, but it didn’t come out that way. Just petulant.
“Is there anyone else in town who’d have shown you the film?”
“So you’re the man?” Lynch said.
I nodded. “That’s right; I am.”
“Well, Mr. Man, what’s your price?”
I coughed once to clear my throat so that I could be sure that my voice wouldn’t crack when I named it. I kept my hands flat on the table so that they could be plainly seen, but not their fibrillary tremor. I ignored the sweat that formed in my armpits despite the air-conditioning. I looked at Lynch, but nodded my head toward Loambaugh.
“I want his resignation as chief of police. Today.”
Loambaugh hurtled across the table at me, his knees working on the polished surface in a scrambling effort to gain purchase. His hands were around my neck in less than a second and I could smell his SenSen breath and count the veins in his rolling eyes. I brought the heel of my right palm hard against his chin and I heard his teeth click shut. I shot both locked hands up and out through his arms and broke his hold on my neck. Then I hit him again as hard as I could, once with the heel of my left palm just at the base of his nose, and when that straightened him up, I hit him just below the breast bone with my right fist. He was softer than he looked and my fist seemed to sink in several inches and he whoofed and grabbed his middle with both hands, pressing hard. His nose was bleeding now and so was his tongue where he had bitten it when I had knocked his jaws shut. He knelt there on the long table, his head bent as he clutched his stomach and bled all over the polished surface. I leaned back in my chair, pressed my hands flat on the table again, and watched him without much interest. I noticed that the tremor was gone from my hands.
Lynch yelled, “Boo!” and the young man poked his head through the door. He looked at the kneeling figure of Loambaugh on the table, but it wasn’t unusual enough to make him change his expression.
“Get Chief Loambaugh a cold, wet towel,” Lynch said, “he’s had a little accident.”
After the blood was mopped from the table and Loambaugh was back in his chair with a towel pressed to his nose, Lynch gave me a genial smile and said, “Well, I reckon that’s enough excitement for one afternoon, don’t you, Lucifer?”
“Plenty,” I said.
“You were serious?”
“Completely.”
“It’s a mighty awesome thing,” he said, “asking a man to resign at the peak of his career for the good of the community. It takes a big man to do that. A real big man. You think you’re a big enough man to do that, Chief Loambaugh?”
“No resigning, Lynch. You can go fuck yourself.”
“Hear that, Lucifer? The chief doesn’t much care for your proposition.”
“I heard,” I said.
“You think this bastard’s got something on you?” Loambaugh said to Lynch, his voice muffled by the wet towel. “I got enough on you to send you down for twenty years.”
Lynch turned his head slightly and yelled for Boo again. When the young man popped his scarred head through the sliding doors, Lynch said: “Bring us some writing paper and some carbons and a ball-point pen, will you, Boo? Chief Loambaugh here wants to write up something.”
When Boo came back he offered the writing materials to Loambaugh, who ignored him. Boo glanced at Lynch, who said, “Just put them down here in front of him. He’s busy with his nose right now. He’ll get to them directly.”
“You know something, Cal?” Lynch said. “I can’t recall a day when I’ve been threatened so much. First old Lucifer here with his film and then you acting uppity and making threats just because it’d be in the best interest of the community if you was to resign. Now when you think it over, you’ll just pick up that pen and write out a real nice letter of resignation and sign the original and maybe three or four carbons. You might mention something about personal reasons and other interests. That’s always good, isn’t it, Lucifer?”
“Usually,” I said.
“You want him to say something else?”
“No.”
“See how cooperative everybody’s being, Cal?”
Loambaugh’s nose had quit bleeding and he dropped the bloody towel on the table. “I swear to God I’m not resigning. And the first thing I do when I get back to the office is open the safe and take out some stuff I’ve been saving. Then I’m going to call in the FBI—that’s right, the FBI, Lynch—and they’re going to rack you so hard you won’t know if you’re in Swankerton or Cincinnati.” He picked up the writing paper and the carbons and threw them across the table at Lynch. They fluttered in the air, caught a current from the air-conditioner, and floated back in a zig-zag pattern to the table. Lynch waited until the last one had settled to the table before he spoke, and then it was only a mild query,
“Is that a fact?”
“You goddamned right it’s a fact. This afternoon, Lynch. This very afternoon, not more than a couple of hours from now.”
Lynch got up from his chair and bent over the table. He carefully assembled the papers and the carbons in two neat stacks and slid them back across the table to Loambaugh.
“Write it out, Cal, for your sake,” he said in a soft tone.
Loambaugh shoved his chair back and rose. “You can get me fired, you sonofabitch, but you ain’t about to get me to resign. Ever. You’ll like it back in Atlanta, Lynch. And that’s where you’re headed sure as shit stinks.” He turned to leave.
“Little Timmy Thornton,” Lynch said in a low, soft voice that still managed to stop Loambaugh in midstride. “Little Timmy Thornton, five years old, with a torn up rectum where somebody cornholed him.”
Loambaugh turned slowly and his face was pale and his hands began to shake. He looked at his hands as if they belonged to somebody else and then rested them on the back of a chair. But the shakes were in his arms now and they seemed to travel up them slowly until they reached his shoulders. He quivered visibly, but seemed unaware of it. His f
ace was no longer white, but almost gray instead, and his eyes were fixed on Lynch in an unblinking stare as if he had just peered into the future and didn’t much like what he’d seen.
Lynch wouldn’t look at Loambaugh. He gazed at the surface of the table instead, and when he spoke again, his voice was still low and soft as if he were talking to himself and was comfortable doing so. “Well, we’ve been talking about a lot of threats here this afternoon, haven’t we, Cal? So I’m going to talk about something that I thought I’d never have to. I’m going to talk about little Timmy Thornton with his torn asshole and little Beth Mary Fames, all of six and a half, with her little pussy chewed up so much that they had to take twelve stitches in it, and maybe I should mention little Barbara Wynnewood, who got it both front and rear and then had all of her upper teeth knocked out because she bit it. Now these are the ones that I got evidence to prove, Cal. I admit that there are a couple of others that are nothing but pure D speculation and rumor, but the ones I mentioned, well, I got the facts and even some nigger witnesses to back them up. Now I suggest you sit yourself down and write out that resignation and then we’ll just forget about everything that’s been said and done in this room this afternoon.”
I watched Loambaugh disintegrate as Lynch spoke. He slumped, caved in really, I suppose, and I wondered if he would ever get his posture back. His eyes glazed, but they never left Lynch, and they seemed to watch the words that came out of the fat man’s mouth. He continued to tremble and his mouth opened and his swollen tongue played around his lips, but he didn’t seem aware of it. His color went from gray back to pasty white and a couple of red spots appeared high up on his cheekbones. When Lynch stopped talking, Loambaugh looked around warily as if he might have stumbled into the wrong room. Then he pulled out a chair, sat down on it cautiously, like an old man, reached for the paper and carbons, interleaved them in a mechanical fashion, and began to write. His hand still shook and he wrote large, bearing down hard on the paper with the pen. I watched him sign his name. He did it carefully and slowly, as if these were the last times he would ever sign it. All five copies. He put the pen down slowly, pushed the papers toward Lynch, rose, and walked out of the room. He moved blindly, bumped against two chairs, and fumbled with the sliding doors.
Lynch watched Loambaugh leave and when he was gone, the fat man said, “Now, by God, I hated to do that to old Cal.” He slipped the carbons from between the sheets of paper and handed me one of the copies. “I’ll turn the rest over to the mayor and the city council. You drive a hard bargain, Dye. Mighty hard.”
I folded the carbon of the resignation and put it in my pocket. “You haven’t heard it all yet.”
Lynch turned slowly in his chair until he could face me. He looked as if he expected to chew something that would taste bad. He swallowed once and coughed. “I haven’t heard it all?” he said.
“No. There’s more.”
“You better tell me what it is then, hadn’t you?” He was using the same low tone that he had used on Loambaugh. I didn’t like it.
“I name the new chief of police.”
“You?”
“That’s right.”
“You name the new chief of police,” he said slowly, spacing the words so that he could savor each one. “You.”
“Me.”
“Well,” he said. “Huh. That’s really something, isn’t it?”
“Yes.”
“Part of the whole deal, huh?”
“Part of the deal.”
“I suppose you got a candidate?”
“That’s right.”
“Can I ask who?”
“Sure.”
“Who?”
I smiled and tried to make it a reassuring one. I don’t think I succeeded. “Who?” Lynch said again.
“Homer Necessary,” I said.
CHAPTER 31
There were five messages under my door when I returned to room 819 in the Sycamore and all of them urged me to call Mr. Gorman Smalldane. I tossed them into the wastebasket, stretched out on the bed, and made a careful study of the ceiling. In my mind I could still hear the sound of my voice which, in retrospect, had all the warmth of a mechanical duck as it quacked away the afternoon, first with Lynch and Loambaugh, and later, for another hour, with Orcutt, Necessary, and Carol Thackerty. It had taken that long to describe how Homer Necessary would be sworn in as Chief Necessary at a special meeting of the Swankerton City Council come next Friday afternoon, which was three days off.
“You’ll receive a hand-delivered letter from the mayor tomorrow offering you the job,” I told Necessary.
“How far did you have to bend?” he said.
“Over backwards.”
“Be more precise, Mr. Dye, please,” Orcutt said.
“I know what he means,” Necessary said. “He means I clear it all with Lynch.”
“That’s right,” I said. “You might be able to fix an overtime parking ticket without checking, but that’s all.”
“Did you have to concede so much?” Orcutt said.
“Once he’s chief, I don’t think Homer’s going to give a damn what I conceded.”
“Lynch knows that, of course,” Orcutt said.
“Sure. But he still needed the concession. It was a matter of pride. Face. He’ll make his own deal with Homer when he thinks it’s time. Knowing Lynch, that’ll probably be fifteen minutes after the swearingin ceremony.”
“Now that deal’s something I really look forward to,” Necessary said. “Lynch say anything else?”
“About you?”
“Uh-huh.”
“There was one thing.”
“What?”
“He said to tell you that you’d have to buy your own uniforms.”
That was the day or evening that The News-Calliope broke the story on the Widow Sobour. An eight-column banner read: REFORM LEADER BILKED THEM, NUNS CHARGE and old man Phetwick’s editorial was also featured on page one in a two-column box bang under the picture of Mayor Pierre (Pete) Robineaux, bug-eyed and gap-mouthed. The photo had a cute little caption line that read: “… not surprised …” Phetwick’s editorial was self-righteous and sonorous, but the news story was well-written, simple, even trenchant. It also left no doubt in anyone’s mind that Mrs. Sobour was guilty as hell.
I tossed the paper aside, lay back on the bed, studied the ceiling some more, and tried to decide how I felt about the culmination of my efforts, which that afternoon had helped wreck the lives of a couple of none too-innocent persons, not to mention their families. I consoled myself with the discovery that while I felt no remorse, neither was there any pride nor any sense of accomplishment, which must have balanced things out in the record book of whoever was bothering to keep score. I wasted some more time wondering if Victor Orcutt ever thought of himself as a spiderlike genius who spun his web of intrigue and coercion only because it served some impossibly lofty ideal, and if he did think of himself as such, whether he realized that his web only caught a few emotional cripples, such as me, whom he apparently liked to have around for company. I had noticed that Orcutt spent very little time by himself and then I wondered if anyone ever called him Vic, decided probably not, but promised myself that I would the next time I saw him. I was thinking some additional, similarly rich thoughts when the phone rang and Carol Thackerty wanted to know if I’d like to take her to dinner.
“I have to see an old friend,” I said.
“The one from New York—Gorman Smalldane?”
“You keep busy.”
“That’s what I’m paid to do,” she said. “Smalldane’s in room seven-nineteen and he called you four times this afternoon according to my spies at the desk and on the switchboard.”
“How’s Vic?” I said.
“Who?”
“Orcutt.”
“Nobody calls him Vic.”
“I didn’t think so, but I had to make sure.”
“He’s fine, if you still want to know. He and Homer are meeting with Phetwick an
d one of his reporters tonight. The reporter’s going to write a profile-type piece on the aging boy wonder who’s to be Swankerton’s new chief of police. Orcutt and Phetwick are sitting in to make sure that Necessary doesn’t mention too many facts.”
“I think both of you underrate Homer,” I said.
“Victor may; I don’t. I don’t underrate him for a second.”
“That’s about how long he’d need.”
“If that.”
I told her that I would call later to see whether she wanted a nightcap and she said that if it were after twelve not to bother, and I said that I wouldn’t, and we hung up. I thought about Carol for a while and decided, or felt, or whatever it was that I did, concluded perhaps, which implies at least a little emotional involvement, that if I needed a temporary entangling alliance, it might as well be with her. It was the nicest thought I had all day.
Because I couldn’t postpone it any longer, although I wasn’t sure why I’d delayed as long as I had, I picked up the phone and asked for Smalldane’s room. When he answered, I said, “Let’s have dinner and get a little drunk.”
“Why a little?” he said.
“Because I’d only have a little hangover. I can’t stand the regular brand anymore.”
“You want to come down or do you want me to come up?”
“I’ll come down.”
I hadn’t seen Smalldane in more than ten years and I don’t quite know what I expected, but certainly not what opened the door to my knock. Age smooths many by rounding off craggy edges with personal growth which the unkind sometimes call fat. It dehydrates others by squeezing out most of their life juices, leaving nothing but dry husks. The cosmetics of age occasionally dignify a few past all recognition by anyone who knew what clunks they were when young. Age simply ravages some, and Gorman Smalldane was one of those.
When I’d first seen him more than a quarter of a century ago in Tante Katerine’s courtyard, he’d been a broad-shouldered man with a nipped-in waist who topped my present 6′ 1½ by at least 2″. He then had a long mop of light blond hair that always needed a trim and kept falling down over the pale blue eyes that had questioned it all. His mouth, I remembered, had been wide and sardonic and out of it had come some of the world’s most infectious laughter.