The Buck Passes Flynn (17 page)

Several times they had stirred the water with their hands and scooped some into their mouths.

Flynn said, “Rub-a-dub-dub.”

After a moment, Udine said, “I’ve been thinking about your friend in Washington. The prophet of gloom and doom. The soothsayer.”

“The economist.”

“Inflation is an event,” said George Udine, “just like a war or a depression, usually leading to either or both.”

Flynn had trouble seeing Udine through the gloom. He said, “I thought inflation could lead only to deflation.”

Udine said, “Money is only as good as people’s belief in it.”

“May I quote that?”

“Money is only an idea. There are lots of ideas: religious ideas, political ideas. People build their ideas slowly, but confront them with one catastrophe and they discard their ideas in the blink of a eye. I don’t trust ideas.”

“You don’t believe in money?”

“No. Of course not. It’s excrement.”

Flynn said, “You’ve collected a considerable amount of excrement.”

“I make money,” George Udine said, “because other people believe in it. I collect garbage because pigs want to eat it. Money is a convenient medium of exchange.”

Shortly after three o’clock in the morning, Flynn heard the cawing of a crow.

Flynn seldom believed what he heard, but he always believed his ears.

“Tell me,” Flynn said. “How did George Lewis, son of Ada’s pig woman, become George Udine of the
Udine Corporation, Cleary’s Mountain, or what’s left of it, and seven or eight other places around the world?”

For many minutes there was no answer.

Flynn would not ask him again.

Long after Flynn had decided there would be no answer, George Udine began talking.

“I said money is a convenient medium of exchange.”

“I got that part,” Flynn answered.

“I left Ada, Texas.”

“Nearly everyone has.”

“I was nine and a half, ten years old. Like everything else about me,” said the apparently disembodied voice, “I am free to decide the precise moment of my birth. The event not only didn’t shake the world, it didn’t even get registered at town hall. I have since had the event duly noted in the county records. I was born. And I was a child in that gully with the cats and the pigs and a mother who was perpetually some kind of catatonic.”

“I don’t see how that can be.”

“Neither do I. You said you saw her?”

“Yes.”

“The public school in Ada, Texas, taught me I could learn to read and write and do sums faster than anyone else. It also taught me I was garbage nevertheless, trash, something to be stepped on every day and thrown back into the gully every night.

“So one hot day I jumped a truck, and found myself in Dallas.

“Mister, you know nothin’ about livin’ in the street, unless you’ve done it.”

Flynn said nothing.

“You eat out of the garbage pails behind restaurants. You sleep in abandoned lots and abandoned buildings. You get attached to a certain pile of rubble, where you’ve slept a few nights, and you bring things to it, little things you find around the streets, old magazines,
paperback books, a ball, a broken kite, a broken Garrison belt. Then the people who live in that area come to know you’re there and pretty soon the men and the boys come after you and they chase you away, throwing stones at you.”

Flynn ran his eyes over the thousands of small, flaring fires along the shore.

“There were other men and boys, too,” Udine continued. “They wouldn’t throw stones. They’d stare at you in the street, and follow you around corners, and into alleys. I learned I was an attractive boy. I still couldn’t live anywhere, actually live anywhere, or at least I didn’t. But I could get clean clothes and eat in the front of sandwich shops instead of the back and, sometimes, some of the Johns were interested in seeing I took a bath.” Udine chuckled: “Literally.”

Flynn said, “You became a prostitute.”

“Sure.”

“With women, or just—”

“Women aren’t interested in boys that young. I was ten, twelve years old. I was with women later, of course.”

“You were a whore.”

“That’s the word.”

“You called your mother a whore.”

“My mother was a whore.”

“You were a whore.”

“Yeah, but I couldn’t get pregnant. I was a boy whore who went to the library.”

“You mean in all this time, no one—not one cop, minister—no one took a good look at you, realized what you were doing, and tried to take you off the streets?”

“No one. Not once. Cops were to be avoided. Who knew from ministers and churches? I didn’t. There was one librarian, a Miss Willikens, of Dallas Central Library, who was good to me. I brought her a list of words I didn’t understand from books I’d read. She showed me how to use a dictionary. She talked to me
about books and helped me to find good books to read. She was real good to me. Can you imagine a kid livin’ the way I was, reading the
Penrod
books and gettin’ a big kick out of them?
Peck’s Bad Boy?
Everybody else read those books thinking what little rascals those kids were. I read them dreamin’ of what their homes might be like. Of course, I never told Miss Willikens about how I lived. I suspect I made up some fancy story, right from the books she was giving me to read. I wanted her to think well of me.

“Then a drunken John left a camera with me by mistake, and that gave me an idea. I teamed up with another kid. We’d alternate. I’d do a trick and he’d take pictures; he’d do a trick and I’d take pictures. It was never hard getting into the pockets of these guys. They might protect their wallets, however they could, but usually they’d have an envelope in their coats, something, with their names and addresses on it.”

“You went into the blackmail business.”

“We did real well at it, too. Made real money. It came to an end, of course. Texans are real slow to anger, but once they decide they’ve had enough, they let you know in a real definite way. One week I got shot at. Twice.

“So I took a bus to New York.

“I was almost fifteen.

“More of the same there. Teamed up with other kids—boys, girls. But it was always my camera.

“By the time I was seventeen, eighteen, I had a fortune, a good suit, and had read everything I could lay hands on.

“I had a dream: to take over a company. I suppose I got the idea from all the books I had read. And it wasn’t my idea to take over a candy store. I had read you could take over a small corporation for not much more money than you needed to buy a farm. I studied up on it some more. I studied everything. Even ran myself through a couple of business courses.

“When I was nineteen, I discovered the Udine Corporation.”

“You mean it already existed?”

“It meant United Dynamics Industries of the North East. The stock was loosely held and worth only a few coins a share. I began buying it up. I changed my name. I got a job as a shipping clerk in the company. My name being George Udine caused some consternation at first, but everybody came to believe it was a coincidence.

“By my twenty-first birthday, I owned thirty-two percent of the stock, called a meeting of the directors, and had myself, the shipping clerk, elected to the board. Most of the rest of the stock in the company then just sort of fell into my hands.”

“I don’t believe that’s possible.”

“Oh, it was possible. I had spent almost two years in that company. You might say I knew the people well.”

“You mean to say you had no resistance from the officers of the company, the board of directors?”

“None to speak of. I had photographs, you see … if not of them, then of their wives, their sons, their daughters. It’s always been an operating principle of mine: in every family there’s at least one damned fool; more, if you look hard enough.”

Flynn said, “This is one of those questions I’m sorry I asked.”

Dawn gleamed dully through the cloud of smoke caught in the valley of the lake.

George Udine emerged: a little man with quick brown eyes sitting on the stern thwart of the rowboat.

He was smudged gray from smoke and ashes.

Udine said, “My methods never changed much through the years. Buy cheap and sell dear: another one of your money clichés. I was almost always able to add an element to negotiations that caused other people to sell cheap and buy dear.”

“Photographs.”

“Photographs. Tapes, later, when there were tapes. Stolen financial records. Sometimes just good guesswork could turn a man purple. I bought companies for their real estate and real estate for what could be dug out from under it or built on top of it. Hotels, an airline, an instruments business—”

“The Udine Corporation.”

“And that’s how George Lewis became George Udine. I am very much a man of my time.”

The fires along the shore had faded in the early-morning light.

Flynn locked his oars and began to pull for shore.

George Udine said, “Very much a man of my time.”

Flynn said, “Seems to me you believed very much in money.”

“I said it’s a convenient medium of exchange. A kid like me had nothing to exchange for it except my body.”

“And the blackmail? What do you have to say about the blackmail?”

“They used me. I used them back.”

Flynn shook his head. “When I first talked to you, you called your mother a whore. You’re a whore. You talked about your mother feeding garbage to the pigs. Yet you call money garbage and say you feed it to the people who work for you, whom you call pigs. Yet your mother is called crazy, and people all over the world say you’re brilliant.”

Udine said nothing.

Flynn ran the nose of the rowboat into the shore. Very little of the dock was left.

Softly, Udine said, “It all depends upon what people believe.”

A helicopter was flying low over the eastern ridge of the valley.

Flynn stepped ashore, into several centimeters of ash.

Udine, moving stiffly, was getting out of the boat.

Every step Flynn took set up a flurry of ash. He
looked around. The steel parts of the dock were still recognizable; the foundation, a few beams, a section of the roof of the Shack; all around the shore of the lake there continued to be spirals of smoke.

Udine stood near Flynn, not looking at him.

Flynn said, “I suspect I have just seen a vision of your eternity.”

Udine smiled.

He pointed at the helicopter. “They’ve come to see if I’m still alive. ’Fraid I have to disappoint them. You want a lift?”

Flynn said: “I’ll walk.”

The next night, Flynn arrived at the station where he had bought gas three days earlier. Twice on the long walk over Cleary Mountain he had found high, rocky places where he could he down and rest awhile.

At first the old gas-station attendant did not recognize him. Flynn was covered with soot. Finally, the old man said, “Oh, yeah, you’re the guy goin’ up Cleary’s Mountain to see old George. I was wonderin’ what happened to you. You must have wanted to see old George real bad—but did you have to burn up the whole mountain to do it?”

BETWEEN airplanes in San Francisco, Flynn telephoned the Fraimans in Ada, Texas.

Marge Fraiman answered the phone. “Surely is nice of you to call, Mister Flynn.”

He coughed. “Just wanted to know how everything is in Ada.”

“You never saw such a mess. This place looks like it’s been abandoned thirty years already. I didn’t know a place could run down so quick. But—there’s nothin’ more we can do.”

“How’s your husband doin’?”

“Oh, he’s doin’ fine. We worked somethin’ out with the Lord. Fact, it’s a good thing you called today. If you’d have called tomorrow, you’d have missed us. We’ve been in touch with Sandy’s old Bible college, you know, in Alabama? Well, we didn’t know what else to do with all this money, ‘cept give it to them, for the Lord’s work. And they’ve offered Sandy a job there. Teachin’. Isn’t that nice?”

“Very nice,” coughed Flynn.

“Leavin’ tomorrow, first thing. We’re takin’ that old Mrs. Lewis—remember the lady people ‘round here
called the pig woman—anyway, we’re takin’ her with us to our new life at the Bible college. Sandy’s out packin’ up the piggory now.”

“Packing the piggory?” Flynn wondered how one packed a piggory. He decided he’d never know.

“Well, we can’t leave the poor thing here, can we?

She hasn’t anyone else to look out for her.”

“No,” Flynn said slowly. “She hasn’t.”

“It’s right nice of you to call, Mister Flynn.”

“Delighted to hear everything’s looking up for you,” said Flynn. “All the best.”

“WHERE are you, Frank?” N.N. Zero’s voice sounded almost vexed.

“Hawaii.”

“Should I ask you why?”

“Wanted to go for a swim. Besides, I need to be fed into Solensk, U.S.S.R.”

John Roy Priddy inhaled, exhaled, inhaled, while Flynn waited.

N.N. Zero said, “Things are that bad?”

“Yes. I can only deal with the leads I have. I’ve pretty well discounted the eccentric-billionaire theory.”

“You’ve talked with George Udine?”

“Yes.”

“Any good my asking you why it took you four whole days to do that?”

“He was having a cookout,” Flynn said.

“What?”

“There was a fire in his backyard that got out of hand.”

“Did you find out all about him?”

“More than I’d ever care to know.”

“What makes you decide he’s not our Santa Claus?”

“George Lewis Udine is capable of anything, for fair reason or foul. But he couldn’t remember the name of East Frampton, Massachusetts. He’s been there, but the name means nothing to him.” Flynn coughed.

“I don’t think it’s wise of you to go into Russia, Frank.”

“Ach, sure, I promise you I’ll carry it off with my usual beguiling charm.”

“Why do you need to go?”

“One of the world’s top ten counterfeiters, an American, has taken up residence there.”

“I agree that’s odd. But is it worth risking you?”

“I think so,” Flynn said, coughing. “When suddenly great quantities of apparently good American money are plopped on unsuspecting citizens in three different places in the U.S.”