The Fools in Town Are on Our Side (15 page)

“You're doing fine,” I said.

“Okay,” he said. “Okay. I'll just tell it the way it happened. Well, the New Orleans crowd comes in and they land hard. First, they move in on the numbers in Niggertown and take that over. Then they run all the white whores out of town and bring in their own and jack up the prices from fifteen and twenty bucks a lay to thirty-five and forty. They don't bother the nigger whores any. Then they knock over a few blackjack games and the next day drop around selling protection. They spread a lot of juice around—the city council, the mayor, the chief of police, and a few of his buddies all get well, if you know what I mean.”

I said that I did and went on listening to Homer Necessary's tale, which for him would now and forever remain in the present tense.

“Finally, they move in on the nightclubs and bars. They bust up a few and then work the protection slam. If the guy hasn't got enough money, they loan it to him at twenty percent a week—or ten percent, if they like him real well. If he can't pay, they buy him out for maybe forty cents on the dollar. I mean they really make it legal and everything. Next they get the city council to pass a new ordinance allowing the bars to stay open twenty-four hours a day. They do this because they got three shifts working to build that new air depot and when it's finished the civilians are going to be working three shifts, too.”

Necessary stopped for a large gulp of his warm Scotch and water. “Now then,” he said, “they finally get the air depot built and then they start hiring the civilian help. Well, the niggers get all upset because not enough of them are being hired. At least that's what they say. So some of their fire-eaters move down from up North and start stirring up the colored people. Then the unions get mad because they still aren't able to organize the runaway plants from up North, although they do all right with the air depot because that's all Federal money. So they finally call a strike at six of the biggest textile plants and then the union
guys at the depot walk out in sympathy. I hear it's against the law, but what the hell, they do it anyway.”

After that, Necessary said, the city officials turned to the New Orleans crowd to break the strike and also put an end to the mounting pressure from the black population.

“It takes them a week,” Necessary said with something akin to admiration. “Just a week. The niggers and the laborskates are getting together, you know—starting to cooperate—so the New Orleans people import a few hard cases from somewhere, up North probably. Well, they knock off a couple of the chief niggers and make it look like it's done by a couple of local rednecks from the union. They leave evidence all around, like a rifle that belongs to one of the rednecks. Well, the chief of police can't do anything but bring the two white guys in. Or have ‘em brought in. But on the way four niggers stop the car, take the two white boys out, and blast them deader'n hell. Well, that tears it.”

“I would imagine,” I said.

“The town gets real ugly,” Necessary said, after another swallow. “The whites are scared of the niggers and the niggers are scared of the whites. The strike just peters out and a carload of new nigger agitators from up North can't even round up a crowd big enough to fill an outhouse. So everything settles back to just like it was before with the New Orleans crowd running things nice and smooth.”

“At this point, Mr. Dye,” Orcutt said, “I suppose you do have some questions.”

“Lots of them,” I said, “but only a few that won't keep for a while. First of all, the deadline of the first Tuesday in November means an election is coming up, right?”

“Right,” Orcutt said.

“Since it's an off-year, that means a local election.”

“Yes.”

“Those who're paying your fee,” I said. “Doctor Colfax and Phet wick the third. I assume that they want to throw the rascals out so that theirs will get in?”

“Precisely.”

“And what you want me to do in the next two months is to make this town so corrupt that even the pimps will vote for reform?” I said.

“Most graphic, Mr. Dye,” Orcutt said. “Most graphic indeed.”

“You're not taking this on a contingency basis are you?”

Orcutt smiled. “I may be young, Mr. Dye, but I am not naive.”

“No, I don't think you are. But I'm quite sure that you haven't collected your fee in advance.”

“No.”

“I've heard of deals like this,” I said. “One that comes to mind happened in Germany.”

“In Hamelin?” Orcutt said.

“That's right.”

“They didn't want to pay off after the man got rid of the rats,” he said.

“No. They didn't.”

“So he piped their children out of town, I recall,” he said.

“Everybody does. You may need something like a pipe.”

“What do you suggest?”

I tapped my breast pocket that contained the Xeroxed list. “This list is missing a couple of names,” I said.

There was always that about Orcutt. He never needed the simple diagram that came with the do-it yourself kit. He just smiled again and even managed to put something into it other than nothing.

“You mean the names of Doctor Colfax and Mr. Phetwick?” he said.

“Yes.”

“I'm glad you mentioned it,” he said. “I really am. It demonstrates your level of awareness. However, while we were negotiating our contract, we also investigated the personal background and history of the two gentlemen in question. We secured some most interesting information,”

“Okay,” I said. “You've answered my first question. The advocates, I take it, are Dr. Colfax and Phetwick the third and the people they can control through sympathy or blackmail or coercion. Right?”

“Right,” Orcutt said.

“My last question—for tonight, at least. The New Orleans adversaries or bunch or crowd. Who runs it?”

“He's on the list under adversaries,” Orcutt said.

“I only skimmed it.”

“His name is Ramsey Lynch.”

I leaned back into the couch and rested my head against its rich green upholstery. For several moments, long ones, I inspected the ceiling, which was painted the color of vanilla ice cream. Finally, I said, “Middle name Montgomery?”

“Lynch's?” Orcutt said.

“Yes.”

“I really couldn't say. Homer dug up most of the information on him.”

“Then he didn't dig far enough,” I said.

“I beg your pardon.”

“You should. Ramsey Lynch. That isn't his real name.”

Necessary snorted. “He did eighteen months in Atlanta under it and that was a Federal rap.”

“I know,” I said. “But that still doesn't make it his real name.”

“Mr. Dye,” Orcutt said, “I'm really not overly fond of melodrama. If you have something to say…” He let the sentence die as if it had bored itself to death.

I looked at him. His dark blue eyes were chillier than usual. So was his expression. I examined him carefully for a few moments and could find nothing that I really liked.

“Well?”
he said in his own private brand of frozen italics.

“Well,”
I said, mimicking him for no special reason other than I felt he was being a little pompous for twenty-six. “His name isn't Ramsey Lynch. His name is Montgomery Vicker. He's the brother of Gerald Vicker. You remember Gerald. He's the one you retained in Hong Kong who recommended me. He's the one I got fired because he killed the wrong man.”

 

 

I inherited Gerald Vicker. He came with the desk and the filing cabinets and the
stationery and the thirty-six-year-old Memphis secretary (my first one) who finally found romance in the Far East and married a pink ginfaced Volkswagen dealer from Malaysia. He was a widower who, after a few drinks, had once confided that my former secretary was a terrific old girl in the sack. She was the one who taught me how to write up an insurance policy.

It was Carmingler, of course, who finally told me about Vicker only three or four hours before I was to catch a plane to San Francisco and there make a connecting flight to Hong Kong. Carmingler brought up Vicker's name casually, as if he were mentioning a mutual friend who had just changed jobs, got married, or gone to jail. We were sitting in one of those bare offices that Carmingler always seemed to prefer. This one was in the Kansas City Post Office and although I've tried often enough, I still can't remember why we met in Kansas City.

The room was small, with only one window. It held a Federal-green desk and two matching chairs, a black telephone, and a picture of the President. It was during the last days of Eisenhower's administration and the photograph was the one that made him look as if he had actually enjoyed the job.

“You'll be in full control, of course,” Carmingler said.

“Vicker was number two under Grimes, wasn't he?”

“Yes, he was. Did a good job of it, too.”

“And he'll be number two under me, the new boy?”

“I can see what you're driving at, but there's no need to worry. None at all.”

“Then he's not human,” I said. Carmingler puffed on his pipe two or three times and then waved it at me for either emphasis or reassurance. “Vicker is all right,” he said. “He's one of the old crowd who came with us during the big war, drifted away, and then came back. He's solid.”

Carmingler had been either fourteen or fifteen when World War II ended, but he always referred to the OSS as the “old crowd” or “us” or “we.” It was one of his minor foibles that I eventually found time to forgive.

“Does Vicker know anything about insurance?” I said.

“No more than you, but your secretary does. Her name's Klett, I believe.” He took out a small Leathersmith notebook to make sure. “Francine Klett. Miss.”

“Any more surprises?” I said.

Carmingler looked around for an ashtray to knock his pipe out in, but finding none, settled on a metal wastebasket that was filled with paper. For a moment I thought that he wanted to burn down the post office.

“This is quite a leg up for you,” he said.

“That's been impressed on me often enough.”

“Vicker should prove quite useful. He's been out there a long time, knows everyone, and has a quick mind.”

“Then why doesn't he have my job?”

Carmingler rubbed the bowl of his pipe against some of the freckles that were sprinkled over his large pink nose which some kindly person had once described to me as distinguished. If that meant it was a nose that you wouldn't soon forget, the kindly person was right. “We thought about that,” he finally said when he finished his internal debate about how much to tell me.

“And?”

“We decided that you were the better man for the job.”

“That still doesn't tell me anything,” I said. “What's the matter with Vicker? Does he drink, gamble, whore around, and talk too much? Or does he just diddle the expense account and stay out late at night?”

Carmingler smiled, displaying his long, wide, strong teeth that helped him to resemble a horse. “No, it's none of that. It's simply that we find him—well—a bit
overly
ambitious.”

“Christ,” I said. “I bet he has a lean and hungry look, too.”

Despite the Phi Beta Kappa key there were some gaping holes in Carmingler's education. He looked surprised for a second and then nodded thoughtfully. “Why, yes, now that you mention it. He does look a bit that way.”

It was no good from the beginning and both Vicker and I knew it. Age had something to do with it, but not all. He was forty and I was barely twenty-seven. He was patronizing and I was insufficiently deferential. He talked too much, sometimes even brilliantly, but I listened too little. His attention to detail was phenomenal and he resented my cavalier attitude. His Chinese had been painfully acquired and my easy fluency irritated him. He had an opinion about everything in God's world and if I didn't share them, he sulked. He would spend an hour telling me why a Patek Phillippe was better than a Rolex Oyster; or why a Nikon was better than a Leica and how a Canon was the match for both; or why the memory of Mao would be banished in less than a year after his death. He was shrewd, glib, and forgot nothing. He lied beautifully, fretted incessantly, and vaguely alluded to tragic experiences during his stretch with the OSS. He was a walking definition of overweening ambition that I found awful and which I got stuck with until one August day three years and eight months later.

It was the middle of August, around the fifteenth, and Vicker was already at his desk when I arrived at the then fancy, new downtown island offices of Minneapolis Mutual on Pedder Street, which I'd leased
just to shut him up. I did balk, however, when he wanted to issue a press release claiming that the reason for our move was a recordshattering jump in business.

He walked into my office carrying his coffee cup, the one with “Vicker” carefully glazed on it in a Chinese ideograph. He liked having his name on things and his shirts, ties, lighter, and cigarette case were all monogrammed. He sat in one of the chairs and propped his feet on my desk, probably because he knew that it irritated me.

“Lucky I was here this morning,” he said so that I would have to ask why. I think he sometimes sat up half the night figuring out his morning opener which would cause me to ask about something that I didn't know.

“I'm grateful.”

“Might have missed him if I hadn't arrived early.”

“You're always early and it's earned you a head start in life's great race.” It also gave him the chance to read the mail first, both his and mine.

“He wants five thousand,” he said.

“Sounds like a bargain.”

Vicker lowered his feet, brushed some imaginary lint from the lapel of his burnt orange, raw-silk jacket, put his coffee cup on my desk where it was sure to make a ring, and reached for his silver lighter and cigarette case. He was about my height and about my weight, but I always thought of him as lean and of myself as skinny. He had a smooth, oval face, nicely tanned, and his black hair was thick and straight. He wore it long for the times and it looped down over his high forehead and then back in a style that would become popular years later. His eyes were deep-set and dark brown and he could hold them perfectly steady in the middle of an enormous lie. They also had that cool glow peculiar to persons who will never need glasses. Some commercial airline pilots in their fifties have eyes like that. Vicker's nose was a right triangle and he sported a carefully clipped mustache above thin lips that he sometimes licked around lunch time. His chin was unremarkable in any respect.