The Buck Passes Flynn (8 page)

Miami’s a beach, Hawaii’s a beach
…
Las Vegas is a beach, but have you ever tried walking to the water from here
?

Deep fried tootsies you get five days before you see even a drunk seagull
!

Thus far, in Las Vegas, Flynn had traced the following people from Ada, Texas:

JAMES A. FURTHERER, 19. Furtherer had worked in the Ada Wesgas gasoline station. Furtherer was currently working in a Wesgas gasoline station outside Las Vegas. When Flynn asked him what happened to the one hundred thousand dollars he had received, Furtherer said, “What hundred thousand dollars?”

GABRIEL and ALIDA SIMS, 32 and 31, respectively. Ranchers. Divorced in Las Vegas three weeks previously. Sims was now working as a baggage handler at Las Vegas Airport. Alida had bought a small house on the outskirts of Las Vegas and was unemployed.

RONALD and BARBARA ELLYN, 39 and 43, respectively. Ranchers. Ronald dead on arrival, Las Vegas Sunshine Hospital; fatal gunshot wound believed self-inflicted. Barbara’s whereabouts were currently unknown.

JOSEPH BARKER, 58. Grocer. Currently in Alcohol and Drug Center, Las Vegas Sunshine Hospital.

MILTON and JACKIE SCHLANGER, 28 and 25, respectively.
Ranchers. Currently living in separate rooms at R.O. Motel. Flynn’s evidence suggested Jackie was supporting them both by prostitution.

CHARLES, WILMA, and WILMA AGGERS, 38, 36, and 12, respectively. Ranchers. Currently proprietors of the R.O. Motel. Although the Aggers would not state to Flynn the source of their investment in the motel, they did say they were being investigated by the Internal Revenue Service and feared being sent to prison.

Flynn had also found Parnell Spaulding, 54, but had not yet interviewed him.

Flynn had watched Spaulding play roulette between two and four-thirty the previous morning. Spaulding was alone. His concentration on the game was intense.

Las Vegas is a nice beach, but it’s a terrible long walk to the water
.

What has Las Vegas got
?

I’ll tell you what Las Vegas has got
.

I’ll tell you what you think Las Vegas has got
.

Money
!

Las Vegas has got money
.

I’ve got money; you’ve got money
.

Isn’t it great having money?
—
as long as we have some other means of supporting ourselves
.

Flynn’s Information Requests from N.N. included the following:

(1)  What are the known values of oil rights in the area of Ada, Texas, including “deep wells”?

(2)  Are there valuable oil or natural gas rights in the area of East Frampton, Massachusetts, including offshore?

(3)  Has any U.S. agency considered the area of Ada, Texas, as a nuclear-waste-materials dump?

(4)  State whereabouts of world’s ten top known counterfeiters.

(5)  What is the relationship of Captain William
H. Coburn, U.S.A.F.I.S. 11B, with Coburn families of East Frampton, Massachusetts, and Ada, Texas?

(6)  Is there a man of extreme wealth, age probably about sixty, whose last name is or was Lewis, originally from Ada, Texas?

(7)  Who is Ducey Webb?

So what’s money
?

What’s money anymore
?

I’ll tell you what money is
.

Money is tissue paper
.

You might as well blow your nose in it
!

You heard about the guy who broke the bank at Monte Carlo
—
really, he won a fortune
—
brought the money to Las Vegas and by the time he got here he discovered he had to blow it all on a tuna fish sandwich
?

Yesterday a guy put up a tent over his manhole in the street while he was down fixing the sewer pipes
.

When he came up at five o’clock there were seven sheiks standing in line, oil money in hand, trying to make a deal for his tent
!

You know why you’re here
?

You’re not here because you can afford to be
.

You’re here because what it cost you to get in doesn’t matter anymore
!

Twenty dollars you paid to come in and listen to Jimmy Silverstein at three o’clock in the morning
.

My mother would die, if she knew this
.

Your mother would die, if she knew this
.

You remember when money was real? Do you
?

Now here we all are in this big sandbox called Las Vegas, playing with money
!

Because it isn’t real anymore
!

Wheeeeeeee
!

Tell me honestly, ladies and gentlemen: did you ever think you’d live to see the day when the automobile companies had to recall their stock? I mean their common stock
?

Here, kid. Here’s a fifty-dollar bill. Go buy yourself an ice cream
.

Hey, mister. I’m out of work. Can you spare two hundred and fifty dollars
?

Listen, it’s all right, ladies and gentlemen
.

The President of the United States has just written a short book:
How I Saved the World’s Economy.

It’s available from the United States Government Printing Office for only nine hundred and twenty-five dollars
.

Plus eighty-two dollars postage
.

Thank you, thank you, ladies and gentlemen. You’ve been a wonderful audience
.

Thank you, and good morning
.

“Funny place, America,” Flynn said to the Fischbecks of Milwaukee, who had been kind enough to invite him to share their table.

“Funny?” the male Fischbeck said.

“Yes,” said Flynn. “In America, the truth gets told in some funny places, in some funny ways.”

“MIND if I join you?” Flynn asked.

It was four forty-five in the morning.

After again watching Spaulding at the roulette table for a while, Flynn had followed him into the bar area.

Parnell Spaulding was a big man, broad-shouldered, thick-handed, with a face just as baked and creased as the land around Ada, Texas. There was a spot of skin cancer at the corner of his mouth.

Spaulding sat alone in a dark corner, his shoulders hunched over a double straight bourbon.

He looked up at Flynn through exhausted eyes, but said nothing.

Flynn slid into the plastic booth across from Spaulding.

After the noise of the cabaret where Flynn had been entertained by Jimmy Silverstein, the lobbies, the gambling rooms—the sight of expensively dressed and coiffed women everywhere, their fingers filthy from feeding coins to the slot machines from Styrofoam cups—this corner of the nearly empty cocktail lounge was a quiet relief.

“I was in your house the other day.” Flynn said to Parnell Spaulding. “In Ada, Texas.”

There was no reaction from Spaulding.

“Your cattle’s dead or gone. Most of your furniture. Your television. I don’t know about your farm equipment. Sandy Fraiman ran your tractor into the barn, but I expect it’s gone, too.”

Spaulding’s eyes grew wide.

“Someone has even ripped the copper piping out of your walls and run off with it.”

“The copper piping?” Slowly, Parnell Spaulding shook his head. “The copper piping. Don’t that beat all?”

Flynn said, “Your family Bible’s still there. On the living-room shelf. Where you left it.”

“Yeah,” Spaulding said. “We left in sort of a hurry.”

“I guess you did.”

“Did we really leave my great-granddaddy’s Bible?”

“You did.”

“Wonder Helen didn’t think to bring it along. She allus did take the Word of God as bein’ somethin’ she was in charge of.”

“Everyone left Ada,” Flynn said. “Except the Fraimans and the pig woman.”

“Well,” Spaulding drawled, “no matter how long you spend growin’ up in Ada, the old place don’t improve none.”

“Have you found something better?”

“I surely have. We’re livin’ in a big suite upstairs. Eleventh floor, if you’d believe it. Good as livin’ on a hill. I allus wanted to live on a hill. You can see a piece. No dust. Ever. People bring your meals to you, just as polite as they can be. I don’t mind livin’ in the air conditioning, either. Why, now I change my shirt just for somethin’ to do.”

Flynn said, “You haven’t asked how the Fraimans are. I just mentioned I saw them.”

“Hell, I know how the Fraimans are. He’s backslidin’
and she’s forward-pushin’. That’s how they allus get to stay exactly where they are.

Flynn smiled.

“I’ve known a few preachers,” Spaulding said. “If they really believed what they preach they wouldn’t have to work so hard at convincin’ others. That old Sandy. We sort of let him preach to us as a kindness. Kept him off the bottle. Givin’ us damnation kept him from raisin’ hell.

“And ol’ Marge,” Spaulding continued. “She took Sandy on the way you’re apt to take a lame dog into the house. Plain ugly girl, growin’ up. She became Christian ’cause she needed the company.”

Spaulding had had little of his drink.

“What are you sniffin’ around for anyway, mister?”

Flynn said, “You have to admit it’s a wee bit of a mystery when everyone in a town packs up and leaves within five days.”

“I suppose it is,” Spaulding smiled. “I suppose it is. You from the Internal Revenue Service?”

“No,” said Flynn. “I wouldn’t be.”

“You’re from the government, anyway.”

“Actually, I’m not,” Flynn said.

“You’re just nosy.”

“Somethin’ like that.”

“You have somethin to grab onto?”

Flynn stared at the man across the table.

“I’m sure I’ll know what you mean …” Flynn said, “if you give me just a moment.…”

“You have a name, mister?”

“Ah, yes,” Flynn said. “That. Sure I have.”

“You mean to hold on to it?”

“Flynn,” said Flynn. “Francis—Xavier Flynn. And, yes, I mean to hold on to it.”

“You must be from Washington,” Parnell Spaulding said. “You talk like such a damn fool.”

“Your father-in-law,” Flynn said, “Joe Barker. He’s in the alcohol ward at Sunshine Hospital.”

“Didn’t he just lap it up, though? He came to Las
Vegas plannin’ to drink it dry. I told him it was nearly impossible, even for a young Texan. Got to give him credit for tryin’, though.”

“You knew Alligator Simmons?”

“Sure I know the Gator.”

“He was shot dead in a Fort Worth bar.”

“Ol’ Gator must have opened his mouth that once too many times. Put a pint of whiskey in him and he’d crow. Great one for sayin’ he could whup anybody. Gator’s allus been that way, ever since Lilly-Ann Wurkers beat the piss out of him in the schoolyard when they were sophomores in high school. Gator got shot dead, huh?”

“You heard Ronald Ellyn shot himself, here in Las Vegas about ten days go?”

“I heard. Helen mentioned something about that to me. Ol’ Ron never was sure which end of a gun was which. Look, mister … what are ya tryin’ to say? You want a drink?”

So far the cocktail waitress had ignored Flynn. She was standing at the far end of the bar, in her G-string and bra and high-heeled shoes, concentrating on counting her tips.

“How are you doing at roulette?” Flynn asked Spaulding.

“I find I like the game.”

“Win much?”

“Sometimes. Not much recently.”

In two nights—or mornings—Flynn had watched Spaulding lose over seventy-five thousand dollars at the roulette tables.

“It’s an expensive game,” Flynn said.

“I was doin’ all right at first,” Spaulding said. “Got way ahead. Thought I’d be able to buy Main Street out there, before I was done. In cash money. I’ve had two, maybe three big winning streaks since that time, too.”

“How much of the six hundred thousand dollars do you have left?” Flynn asked.

Spaulding smiled into his drink. “Whoever said I had six hundred thousand dollars?”

“You have a wife and four kids,” Flynn said. “Each of you received one hundred thousand dollars in cash; six big manila envelopes all told: six hundred thousand dollars. How much of it do you have left?”

Spaulding hesitated, sighed, sat back, reached into his pocket, and took out a stack of one-thousand-dollar bills. He counted them on the table.

The waitress came over immediately.

“You want anything?” she asked.

“Go away,” said Flynn.

Spaulding said, “Twenty-three thousand dollars.”

He put the money back in his pocket.

“That’s it?” said Flynn.

“Well, I haven’t hit a winning streak lately.”

“I guess you haven’t. What are you going to do when that’s gone?”

“It won’t be gone. I had over nine hundred thousand dollars at one point. Cash money. Would you believe it?”

“Tell me, Mister Spaulding: the last three months have you been keeping up the mortgage payments on your ranch?”

Spaulding ran his fingers over his chin. “Why, no. I guess I haven’t.”

“Where are your wife and kids?”

“They’re upstairs, I reckon. Asleep. In the suite. On the eleventh floor.”

“I suspect you haven’t been seeing much of them lately.”

“Well, sure. I sleep and eat in the suite. My son, Parney, seems to be havin’ himself a high ol’ time. Fast cars and fast women make for a fast time. I’ve got to tell you, though: you get playin’ these games and I don’t know what happens to time. It gets all jumbled up. I go out and walk around sometimes, to cool off? Sometimes it’s daylight, sometimes it’s dark. I wake up at five o’clock in the afternoon. The people
in the hotel are real nice, though. You want breakfast and they’ll give you breakfast whatever crazy time of day or night it is. You know?”

“I know.”

“What time is it now, for instance?”

“It’s almost quarter past five in the morning.”

“See? Wasn’t I just tellin’ you that?”

The cocktail waitress had finished counting her tips for the umpteenth time.

“Mister Spaulding, what was the source of the money your family received?”

“I never said we received any money, Mister Flynn.”

“Where do you think the money came from?”

Spaulding looked at his whiskey glass for a long time.