The Fools in Town Are on Our Side (37 page)

“Get its number, boy, get its number,” Necessary whispered to Soderbell.

The camera kept on whirring and then stopped. “I got it.”

“That's the lookout crew,” Necessary said. “They'll cruise around the block from now on.”

We waited four or five minutes more until another set of lights approached from the right end of the alley. I looked at my watch. It was almost exactly 3:30
A.M.
The car cut its lights when it was slightly past the furrier's steel door. I wasn't sure, but I thought that the car had two occupants. It was a dark color, either blue or black, and it had no markings.

“The thieves,” Necessary said.

Whoever was in the car made no move to get out. Another minute
went by before yet another set of car lights turned into the alley from the right. Then its headlights went out and the driver used his amber parking lights instead. He switched them on and off in rapid succession four times. The new arrival parked on the other side of the furrier's back door and from where I stood I could see that it was another black-and-white police car. Soderbell's camera whirred some more.

Two men got out of the police car and stood in the pool of light made by the shielded bulb above the metal door.

Soderbell whispered directions to them. “Move, you sonofabitch. Now turn this way and look up just a little… a little more, you mother … oh, that's fine … that's just fine … your shield and everything.”

The two men who got out of the squad car wore the gray-and-blue summer uniforms of the Swankerton police. They waited by the door until they were joined by two men in dark clothing who had waited in the unmarked car. One of the men carried a small bag. The two policemen took up positions so that they could watch both ends of the alley. The man with the bag handed it to his fellow thief and bent over the door. He turned his head two or three times, and the other man passed him something.

“He's fixing the alarm system,” said Necessary, who furnished us with a running commentary on the methodology of the theft. In a few minutes the man in the dark clothes had the door open. His fellow thief went back to the unmarked car, stored the bag away, and opened the trunk.

The two thieves, accompanied by one of the policemen, entered the building. Soderbell got a few shots of the remaining cop as he walked in and out of the circle of light. It was almost another five minutes before the two thieves and the policeman came out, all burdened with armloads of furs. They dumped them into the open trunk of the unmarked car. After that, they made three more similar trips. Soderbell filmed it all, muttering unheard directions to the silent stars of his back-alley drama.

During the thieves' final trip into the warehouse, the policeman on guard moved over to the driver's side of the squad car. He reached in
with his left hand and did something else with his right, but we never could see what it was because the car's spotlight blazed on. It blinded Soderbell and transfixed him before the window with his camera aimed directly at the spotlight. He stood there like that until the bullet hit him somewhere in the chest, I thought, and hurled him back into the room a few, wild staggering steps. He fell in a lump, still holding the camera, and in the brief, total silence that followed, I listened to it whir.

The cop must have been nervous because he fired through the window twice more. Then the spotlight went out and I could hear the four of them jabbering in the alley. I was flat against the wall next to the window. Necessary was already bending over Soderbell. He rose quickly and I saw that he had the camera in his hands.

“Let's get out of here,” he said, his voice tight, fast and low.

“Do we carry him or drag him?” I said.

“We leave him. Let's go.”

I could hear an engine start in the alley. A car trunk lid slammed closed, then two car doors thunked. Tires squealed in high-pitched protest for what seemed to be a long time but could only have been less than a second. Thieves' getaway, I thought. It was an idle, almost lazy thought.

“We can't leave him,” I said because it seemed to be the thing to say.

“He's dead, goddamnit,” Necessary said and headed for the door. I could think of nothing better to do than follow. We went down the stairs to the long hall much faster than we had come up. I felt or sensed that Necessary turned right instead of left.

“Where the hell you going?” I whispered, a little frantically, I suppose.

“Out the alley entrance. They're around in front by now.”

As if to prove it, something large and heavy crashed against the front door of the old house. Something about the size and weight of an archless foot encased in a number eleven shoe. It crashed again as Necessary thrust the camera into my arms and started to fumble with the lock and bolts on the rear door. On the third crash I could hear
the front door splinter open. Necessary got the last lock undone and swung the rear door wide. We went through it and down four steps. I stumbled on the last one, almost falling, almost dropping the camera. I recovered and ran after Necessary, who had turned right, heading for the squad car that was still parked in the alley, just beyond the pool of light that came from the bulb above the furrier's still-open door.

Necessary opened the left door of the squad car, reached inside, and came out with the keys. He threw them as far as he could into the darkness. Then he fumbled his hand in again. Once more the spotlight on the driver's side blazed on. I looked up and saw the too-white faces of the cops through the hole in the broken second-story window. They closed their eyes against the glare and I saw why it had been an easy shot for the cop who'd killed Soderbell. It would be hard to miss.

Necessary was off and running down the alley. I followed, the camera cradled in my arms. When we reached the end of the alley, Necessary stopped and peered around the corner. He was breathing even harder than I was, great, harsh, lung-filling pants. That pleased me.

“Let's go,” he said or croaked, and we darted across the deserted street, went another block down the alley, only trotting now and barely that. We came out of the alley, turned right, and walked to Necessary's rented car. He opened the trunk and I put the camera inside it.

We pulled out sedately and drove down Forrest at twenty-five miles an hour. A squad car roared by, headed in the opposite direction. Its siren was off, but its red-and-white dome light spun angrily.

Necessary slammed the steering wheel with the palm of his hand. “It just doesn't make any goddamned sense,” he said.

“That's probably what Soderbell thought, too, if he had the time.”

Necessary glanced at me and shook his head, a little impatiently, I felt. “I wasn't talking about that. I was talking about the cop turning on the spotlight. Christ, I never knew one of them who'd look up even two inches above his head.”

I could have said something like “you do now” or “there's always the first time,” but I didn't. I just sat there and looked for something that I didn't see.

After a moment or two, Necessary said, “It was a lucky shot. That cop was just lucky.” I could have argued that, too, but I didn't. I just sat there and looked some more.

“Funny about Soderbell though,” Necessary went on. “He goes all through Vietnam twice and winds up getting shot in some back alley. Makes you think, doesn't it?”

“Yes,” I said, “it does that all right.” I found what I was looking for and said, “Here's one.” Necessary stopped the car beside the lighted telephone booth. I got out, dropped in a dime, and dialed a number. It rang for a long time before someone answered with a gruff hello.

“This is Dye,” I said.

“Yeah … Yeah,” Lynch's sleepy voice said.

“Homer Necessary was up to something tonight. I just found out about it.”

“What?” Lynch said and sounded less sleepy.

“I hear that some cops were in on a fur burglary. Homer Necessary got the whole thing down on film. The cops shot somebody. I don't know who yet.”

“When'd all this happen?” Lynch said, and his voice was crisp and wide awake now.

“I just heard about it.”

“You didn't know about it before?”

“I just heard about it,” I said again. “I thought you might want to wake up Loambaugh.”

“Shit,” Lynch said just before he said goodbye and hung up.

I got back in the car and Necessary said, “What'd he say?”

“He said shit.”

Necessary chuckled a little. “Can't say that I blame him,” he said. “Can't say that I blame him at all.”

 

 

Necessary and I spent a long, predawn hour with Victor Orcutt in his Rickenbacker
suite when we returned to the hotel. Orcutt listened politely while we told him how Soderbell had died. When we were finished he said, “Well, I suppose those things are bound to happen,” and never mentioned him again, except indirectly, when he made sure that we had brought back the camera, if not the cameraman.

I spent five minutes telling Orcutt what I thought should be done with the film. He listened attentively, said, “Good. I agree,” and then launched a twenty-minute monologue which instructed me how to carry out my suggestion. “You
do
understand?” he said.

“Does that mean do I agree with you?”

“That isn't important,” he said. “It merely requires understanding so that you'll be able to function properly.”

“Since it was my idea, I understand well enough not to blow it.”

“But you don't agree with my method?” he said.

“As you mentioned, that's not important.”

Orcutt turned to Necessary. “Homer?”

“Oh, I understand everything just fine,” he said, “and I like it even better. I like it so much that I might even have a drink to celebrate.”

Carol Thackerty came away from the phone that she'd been using since we arrived. “There's no ice,” she said to Necessary, “and your
plane will be standing by in fifteen minutes. The lab in New Orleans already has a rough cut of what Soderbell previously filmed. As soon as they process what he shot last night, or rather this morning, they'll make a print and splice it on to the rough cut.”

“I don't need any ice,” Necessary said and poured himself a drink from a bottle that he'd found on a table near the door. “Did you tell the lab that the new stuff'll need special processing?”

“They know all about it,” she said. “Soderbell had already filled them in. They'll be able to deliver a completed rough cut to you by one o'clock this afternoon. The plane will get you back here by two-thirty. You should be able to turn over the rough cut to Dye by three.”

“What kind of plane?” said Necessary, the detail stickler.

“A Lear jet.”

Necessary finished his drink. “See you around three,” he said and left.

I stood up. “I need some sleep,” I said.

“Mr. Dye,” Orcutt said, also rising, “I dislike to harp on this, but I do very much hope that you will follow my instructions as closely as conditions permit.”

“You want it in writing, Orcutt?” I said, the testiness in my voice stronger than I had intended.

“I don't particularly care for that tone.”

“Neither do I, but it's the only one I have left at five in the morning. I've had a bad night. I always do when somebody gets killed. It makes me irritable. Even surly.”

“It wasn't your fault that—”

“Nothing's ever my fault,” I said. “I just do the job I'm paid to do and if somebody dies along the way, well, as you say, those things happen. So quit worrying. I'll do it just the way you told me to and for all I know, it may work. If it doesn't, you can always fall back on contingency plan R-twenty-three.”

“You're teasing again,” Orcutt said. “I'm so glad. That means you're in a better humor.”

“Ah, Christ,” I said and went out the door, slamming it behind me.
I finally went to sleep around six and Ramsey Lynch didn't call until seven-thirty and when I picked up the phone there was no trace of jolly fat man in his voice.

“You'd better get your ass over here,” he said.

“I'm busy.”

“I'm serious.”

“So am I and I'm still busy.”

“I might send somebody around for you.”

“Who? A pair of those moonlighters who got their pictures taken last night?”

“It's an idea,” he said. “They know all about it now, and if I told them that you were kind of involved in the whole thing, they'd volunteer to go fetch you.”

“Do that and you'll never see it.”

“Have you got it?”

“I can get it.”

“When?”

“This afternoon about three.”

“What're you going to do with it?”

“I thought you might like your own private preview before it goes out over the airwaves and into the living rooms of Swankerton.”

“You got an idea how to kill it?”

“Maybe. It'll cost a little.”

Lynch was silent for a moment and I listened to his heavy breathing. “You bring it out here.” He almost managed to make it sound like a polite request.

“Around three or three-thirty. You'll need a sixteen-millimeter projector.”

“I'll get one.”

“You'll need something else, too,” I said.

“What?”

“Your chief of police.”

At three-ten that afternoon, about the time that Gorman Smalldane was supposed to be landing at the airport, I was driving out to Lynch's Victorian home in a newly rented Plymouth Roadrunner which had a hot engine under its hood and a brown, round can of 16mm film on the seat beside its driver whose nerves, some might have said, were shot.

I parked the car at the curb with its bumper about a foot from the driveway so that if a hurried departure were called for, there would be nothing to stand in its path. I put the can of film under my arm, plodded up the brick path to the screened-in porch, and knocked on the door, trying in vain for the confident rap of an aluminum-siding salesman.