Flynn's World

by Gregory Mcdonald

Flynn asked, “Dr. Loveson was your professor while you were an undergraduate at Harvard?”

  “Yes. So I know what I’m talking about.” Carver waved his beer bottle. “God! How we swallowed that stuff . . . at first.”

  “You are a white male, aren’t you?”

  “My great-grandmother was an Indian princess.”

  “Oh, God,” Flynn groaned. “A Cherokee, I’m sure.”

  “How did you know?”

  Bess came into the room. She hit her brother on the back of his head with a saucepan.

  Dripping blood from his feet, yowling, Charley fled to the back of the house.

  Carver laughed. “Bonk!”

  “My God, man!” Flynn stood up and snapped off the television set. “Will you curb your children?”

  “‘Curb’? Like you curb a dog?” His face reddened. “You mean, admonish my children?”

  “For starters,” Flynn said.

  “I have no more right to admonish my children than they have to admonish me,” Carver stated.

  “Then what in God’s name are you doing here?”

  “I’m not here in God’s name, copper. Neither are you. There is no authority in this world, or above it. And that includes you!”

  Standing, hands behind his back, Flynn said, “You studied at Harvard, one of the world’s most prestigious universities?”

  “Yes.”

  “You studied under Professor Loveson?”

  “Yes.”

  “That gives you the authority to teach?”

  “I don’t teach! Not as you use the word, anyway.”

  “What do you do with your students?”

  “We discuss. Sometimes we arrive at a consensus.”

  “Then why do they need you?”

  “They don’t, really.” Carver placed his empty beer bottle on his computer table. “Maybe they need a room to gather in, on cold days. A reading list. Maybe someone to knock the certainty out of them.”

  Bess ran shrieking through the room.

  Charley chased her with a raised kitchen carving knife.

  Flynn said, “Stop it, you two!”

  Carver caught Charley’s free arm. “Whoa, whoa, old chum. Time out!”

  Carver held firmly on to the wriggling boy’s arm.

  The boy shouted, “I’m going to kill her!” He tried to tug his arm free.

  “Time-out,” Carver said. “Now I want you to really think about killing your sister.”

  “Good God,” said Flynn. “Vandalism. Aggravated assault. Attempted murder. And you call a time-out!”

  “Maybe you’re just a little bit tired?” Carver suggested to his son. “Would you like some more Chinese food? Chicken Hoi Toi? You like Chicken Hoi Toi.”

  There was a crash from the back of the house. Flynn’s ears suggested the clatter was from a drawer full of knives, forks, and spoons.

  Carver looked up at Flynn. “And I do not appreciate your trying to correct my children!”

  “Beggar the thought!”

  “Are we done?” Carver asked Flynn.

  “What color is your car?” Flynn asked.

  “Brown.”

  “Your wife’s car?”

  “Blue.”

  “Where were you early afternoon yesterday?”

  “Playing hoops.”

  “You mean, basketball without the rules.” Flynn had difficulty seeing Louis Loveson engaged in such an activity. “This recreational use of your computer . . .”

  Carver held Charley lightly by his wrist. “Do me a favor, Charley? Drop the knife?”

  “Is it because recently you have spent hours feeding script and cartoons regarding Louis Loveson onto the Net?”

  “I have no idea what you mean.” Carver smiled.

  Charley dropped the knife onto the floor.

  With his hand thus freed, he slapped his father hard across the face.

  “Oh, Charley!” Carver dropped both his arms to his sides. His eyes watered. “I’m so sorry!” He looked at the boy. “I’m so sorry to have corrected you!”

  Charley darted toward the back of the house.

  “My God, man. Don’t you see what you’re doing?” Flynn looked around the room. He particularly looked at the small bloodied footprints. “Chaos!”

  Carver smiled. “We think they’re both creative.”

  “You said your wife works. What does she do for a living?”

  “She’s a child psychologist.” Yawning, Carver stood up. “The school’s a bit upset with us, because we don’t want to put Bess and Charley on Ritalin just yet.”

  Flynn opened the front door himself. Suddenly wild electronic music was blaring from the back of the house.

  At the door, Carver said, “If there were a God, I’d pray to her you don’t have children, Copper Flynn. They’d probably grow up just like you.”

  THIRTEEN

  Elsbeth was right, of course. The sign over the butcher shop in Winthrop said, in big letters, CAPRIANOS’ MEATS.

  Still, Flynn had seen the name somewhere else, recently, in an odder context.

  He wished he could remember where.

  “Good afternoon, Mr. Flynn!” The big-chested man behind the counter wiped his hands on his white apron. A finger was missing from his left hand.

  “Good afternoon, William. How’s the family?”

  “Still cookin’ along,” William said. “Cookin’ along.”

  “Who could ask for anything more?”

  Flynn had spotted Billy Capriano, also in an apron, stacking cans from a box in one of the aisles.

  Billy had glanced at Flynn when he came in.

  And looked away.

  “Do you have a leg of lamb?” Flynn asked.

  “Why? Did you lose one?” William guffawed at his own pleasantry. “We have a nice leg of lamb for you. Would you like me to dress it for you?”

  “Dress a leg of lamb?”

  “In sheer nylon,” William suggested. “Or maybe a black net stocking would be more to your taste? We’ll throw in the brass anklet inscribed ‘Feeling Sheepish,’ for free.”

  “You’re beginning to make me lose my taste for a leg of lamb, William.”

  “Naked leg of lamb coming right up, Mr. Flynn. I should have known you’d prefer it that way.”

  As William went into the huge freezer, his brother Tony came out.

  “Hey, Inspector Flynn! Send any bad guys away for a vacation today?”

  “Not yet,” Flynn said. “But I have my eye on your brother.”

  “That’s good,” Tony said. “Before you send him to prison, make sure he has a new tennis racket and enough tennis balls to last a while.” He said to the woman he was serving, “Here’s your crown roast, Mrs. Featherstonehaugh. Isn’t it a beauty?”

  So, Flynn mused to himself: Tony Capriano thinks we police are soft on crime.

  William washed the leg of lamb in a big sink behind the counter before wrapping it.

  Flynn said, “I see you have Billy working here now.”

  “Oh, oh,” William said. “Are you going to charge us with violating child labor laws?”

  “First tell me how much the lamb is a pound.”

  “We’re not violating Capriano labor laws.” William lifted the lamb onto clean white wrapping paper. “My Daddy had me working here when I was three years old. Sweeping floors. Billy did, too.”

  “But look how you turned out.”

  “Billy’s been handy with a knife since he was nine.”

  “I thought he was on the school wrestling team. Doesn’t he need to practice after school?”

  “His choice. He quit Monday. Came home. Told me at supper he wanted to work in the market after school. I was some surprised. Usually we only use him during school vacations. Boy, was the coach some mad! He’s called me a dozen times, if once.”

  “There wasn’t a discipline problem?”

  William looked puzzled at Flynn. “Why would you ask that?”

  “The kids have told me how much he likes wrestli
ng, how good he is at it.”

  “Billy’s a discipline problem, all right,” his father said. “He’s got too much of it, to my mind. Gets himself up in the morning, cleans his room before going to school, never misses a day, does his homework as soon as he gets home. He spends his free time either working out or reading these books of history so huge you could never grill ’em. You think he might have the makings of a history teacher, Mr. Flynn?”

  “Maybe. If we ever decide again that we have a history.”

  “You know what he does when I say, ‘Billy, relax a little, take off your sneakers, look at this movie on TV?’ He says, ‘Okay, Dad,’ and goes out and runs twelve miles. To him, that’s relaxing! Discipline problem? I should slap him down! Anything else, Mr. Flynn?”

  “I’ll go find some of that excellent mint sauce you sell.”

  “Okay.” William lifted the wrapped leg of lamb over the meat case and handed it to Flynn. “You’ll find some down there near where Billy is working.”

  Leg of lamb under his arm, Flynn said to the boy kneeling in the aisle, “Good afternoon, Billy.”

  “Hi, Mr. Flynn.”

  Billy did not really look up at him. He continued stamping and stacking cans of tomato paste.

  “How’s the ear?”

  “Fine.”

  “What’s that I see gleaming from it?”

  “An earring. Jenny gave me an earring. Fill up the hole. Make it less obvious.”

  “I’ve never seen an earring placed so high up in an ear before.”

  “Whoever pierced my ear didn’t think I’d use the hole for an earring.”

  Looking down at the boy’s head, Flynn noticed how neatly Billy’s brown hair was cut, combed.

  “The kids all think it’s cool.” Billy chuckled. “A few of my buddies want to have their ears pierced in the same place.”

  “Trendsetting, are you? I worry the brass will turn your ear green.”

  “It’s gold.”

  “Is it? Jenny must be getting too much allowance. I’ll see about that!”

  Below the rolled-up sleeves of his white shirt, Billy’s forearms were remarkably well formed, muscular, for a fourteen-year-old.

  Warmly, Flynn liked Jenny’s loving him.

  “Are you ready to tell me yet who pinned you to the tree, Billy?”

  Looking up, the boy’s brown eyes were steady in Flynn’s. “If I was willing to tear my ear off rather than tell you, Mr. Flynn, do you think I’ll tell you now? Or ever?”

  “I guess not.”

  Billy’s attention returned to tomato paste.

  “Why did you quit the wrestling team, Billy?”

  “I want to work in the store. Make some money.”

  “No one believes that.”

  Billy shrugged.

  “There’s a rumor around that in your last match last Thursday, you didn’t try your hardest.”

  “I didn’t need to.” Billy tried to hide a slight smile. “In a way, I tried my hardest.”

  What did that smile mean?

  Flynn said, “I always believe a person should do what he’s best at—as long as it’s not illegal, immoral, or slothful.”

  Billy said, “I’m very good at stacking tomato cans.”

  “That you are,” Flynn said. “Yes. I can see that. Where’s your bottled mint sauce?”

  “Woe!” Randy came into the kitchen where Flynn was trying to make room in the refrigerator for the leg of lamb. “There’s a real belt-in-the-belly waiting for you in the living room, Da.”

  “What’s a ‘belt-in-the-belly’?”

  Of course, Flynn had heard the doorbell.

  Randy placed his forearms where his belly would be, if he had one. “Woe! A real gorgeous lady . . . She’s so gorgeous, she makes me wobble.”

  Flynn closed the refrigerator door. “You’ve gone queer all over, have you?”

  “No.” Randy groaned. “Not queer.”

  “Did she give a name?”

  “Dr. Huong. Oh, Huong!” He pretended to lurch against the kitchen counter. “Huong!” He said it as if it were a musical sound, perhaps of a temple bell. “Huong . . .”

  “Bless your raging hormones, lad.” Flynn patted him on the head. “Sure, I hope we get you through school before they carry you off to prowl the alleys like a tomcat.”

  “Huong,” Randy said.

  “Good afternoon, Dr. Huong,” Flynn said in the living room. In a trim beige suit and ruffled shirt collar, clear eyes, healthy skin, Dr. Huong indeed was gorgeous.

  “Hope I haven’t upset things by dropping in at your home, Inspector Flynn.”

  “Not at all. You’ve just confirmed, for the second time this afternoon, my conviction that my children have very good taste.”

  Flynn heard someone go up the stairs.

  “Was that your son who answered the door?”

  “He used to be. Suddenly he’s just a jar of jelly.”

  Todd came into the room. “Hello,” he said.

  Francine said to him, “You don’t look like a jar of jelly to me.”

  “What?”

  “This is Todd,” Flynn said. “Dr. Huong.”

  “We’ve just met,” Dr. Huong said.

  Todd said, “Never. I’d remember. Excuse me. I need the new bow.”

  Francine looked the boy up and down. “Where are you thinking of wearing it?”

  “What?” In a corner of the room, Todd knelt on one knee and took a bow out of a violin case.

  Big-eyed, Randy came into the room.

  Francine looked from one to the other. “Oh, I see.” She said to Randy, “You’re the jar of jelly.”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  “Can’t you two mark your shorts, or something? At least wear different colors?”

  Randy stuttered, “School uniform.”

  “I should have realized,” Francine said. “I guess I’ve read about you two.”

  “You have?” Randy was entranced.

  “References,” Francine said. “In some of your mother’s poems. You’re ‘Double Love,’ aren’t you?”

  “We are?” Todd asked absently. “Da, Jenny took my resin!”

  Flynn said, “More commonly known as the ‘Flynntwin.’”

  “Is it fun,” Francine asked the boys, “being a twin?”

  They started their routine.

  “Only when I’m Randy,” Todd said.

  “And when I’m Todd,” said Randy.

  “But when I’m Todd,” said Todd.

  “And I’m Randy . . .”

  “Then we each have to pull on our own pants,” Todd concluded, for this time. He left the room calling, “Jennifer! Give me back my resin, or I’ll pluck your eye out and put it in Mama’s fruit salad!”

  “Do sit,” Flynn said.

  Randy sat, too. Agog.

  “Lovely home.” Francine looked around the living room, the baby grand piano, Flynn’s cello nestled in the curve of it, the music stands, the three violin cases. “Lovely family.”

  Flynn said, “This afternoon someone said to me, ‘If there were a God, I’d pray to her you don’t have children, Copper Flynn. They’d probably grow up just like you.’”

  “A fate worse than death,” Randy muttered. “I’m hoping to grow up a head of lettuce.”

  “I’m sorry anyone would say that to you,” Francine said. “Who was it?”

  “Actually, your colleague, Don Carver.”

  “Is Don guilty . . .” Francine kept her eyes on Flynn’s face. “. . . of anything?”

  “Yes,” Flynn said. “I’m thinking of having him charged with child abuse.”

  Francine settled her large, soft-leather purse in her lap. “As you asked, Inspector, I inquired about the Samson Chair, currently held by Professor Loveson.”

  “Yes?”

  “What I understand is that Louie is to be the last holder of that chair, as such.”

  “How can that be? Aren’t such chairs usually endowed forever?”

  “Usual
ly. The endowment for the Samson Chair, however prestigious, is pitifully small. In fact, the chair’s prestige mostly has derived, until recently, that is, from the fact that Louie Loveson holds it.”

  “What will happen to the endowment?”

  “Apparently it will be folded in with some other endowment, possibly for a chair in Women’s Studies, possibly for Gay and Lesbian Studies.”

  “How very compartmental.”

  “Isn’t it.”

  Flynn looked at Randy. At first, Flynn thought Randy was being politely quiet. Then he saw that Randy was so agog staring at Francine Huong that he wasn’t hearing a word.

  “So,” Flynn said, “at the moment, no obvious person feels deprived by Louie Loveson’s maintaining the Samson Chair, or deriving what little income there is from it.”

  “No. The Samson Chair will be retired with Louie. The money means little or nothing, thanks to inflation, whatever.”

  “‘Inflation,’” Flynn mused.

  Flynn and Randy stood up when Elsbeth entered the living room.

  So did Dr. Francine Huong.

  “Are you Elsbeth Flynn?” Francine asked.

  “I have that pleasure,” Elsbeth answered.

  “Francine Huong. I’m sorry to burst in on you this way. I met your husband yesterday. I’m afraid I’m taking advantage of a short acquaintance with your husband as an opportunity to meet you.”

  With a straight face, Elsbeth said, “It’s a great thrill meeting me. The man in the produce department says so every time I approach the banana stand.”

  They all sat.

  Elsbeth sat on the edge of her chair. She crossed her ankles. She folded her hands in her lap.

  Flynn wondered what his wife was playing at.

  Francine took one of Elsbeth’s slim volumes from her handbag. “I brought only one of your volumes. My favorite. Hoping you’d sign it for me?”

  “Oh, no.” Elsbeth raised her nose. “I never sign my books. For that, you’ll have to get in touch with my vice president in charge of public relations. If you write him, in San Francisco, maybe he’d sign it for you. My secretary will get you his address.”

  Francine’s cheekbones colored. “Oh, I’m sorry.”

  Flynn said. “And you have to send him a check for $750.00, plus postage.”

  Francine looked slapped. “I didn’t understand.”

  “Baseball players get paid for their autographs now,” Elsbeth said. “Since when are baseball players more important than poets?”