The Fools in Town Are on Our Side (6 page)

“I'm not Jewish,” he said in a completely ingenuous manner. “Are you?”

“No,” I said.

“Necessary isn't either. And, of course, Miss Thackerty is just
pure
WASP. I do so wish you were Jewish. Even
Italian
would do.”

“Sorry,” I said. “By the way, I have Scotch, and water to mix it with. If you want anything else, I'll have to call down for it.”

“Carol?” Orcutt said.

“Nothing, thank you,” she said.

“Homer?”

“Scotch is okay,” Necessary said. It was the first time he'd said anything since he arrived.

“I would like—let's see now. Yes!
I
would like a Dr Pepper.”

“Dr Pepper,” I murmured and moved to the phone. I got room service and told them to send up a Dr Pepper, a bucket of ice, four glasses, and some Pall Mall cigarettes. Two packs. I thought that the cigarettes made the order a little more respectable. “Hold on,” I said into the phone and turned to the girl. “You sure you wouldn't like something—tea perhaps?”

She smiled again—or almost did. “Why, yes, tea would be nice.”

“And a pot of tea with—” I looked at her.

“Lemon,” she said.

“With lemon,” I said.

“This is
extremely
kind of you, Mr. Dye,” Orcutt said as he patted a few curls into place.

“My Southern upbringing,” I said as I took a seat on the opposite end of the couch from Necessary.

Orcutt waved his right forefinger at me as if I'd said something naughty. “You were born in Montana, Mr. Dye. In Moncrief, Montana.”

I didn't bother to answer and I suppose it was the girl that kept me from kicking them all out. It had been a long time since I'd been near a woman, more than three months, and Carol Thackerty seemed to be as pleasant a prospect as I could hope to encounter. Carmingler, flushing a little and staring out the window, had once offered to run a whore into Letterman General for me, although he'd said that she was an Army nurse. I'd passed it up, more out of pique than moral squeamishness.

After the bellhop came and left, the one who looked as if he cried whenever they played “Melancholy Baby,” I served Carol Thackerty her tea, handed Orcutt a glass of Dr Pepper, and mixed two Scotches with water for Necessary and myself. They all said thank you, even Necessary.

“Now then,” Victor Orcutt said as he wriggled around in his chair to make himself more comfortable. “Let me tell you something about me. I won't tell
all
, of course. No one does that, not even to their very
best
friends. But I will tell you quite a bit because I know you're curious and I just
love
talking about myself, don't you?”

“Not especially,” I said, “except when I'm drunk.”

“Do you get drunk often?” he said.

“Probably not often enough. It's one of my failings.”

“You're
teasingl”
Victor Orcutt said. “I like that. But now let me give you a little personal background and then we'll talk about the proposal.”

I was looking at Carol Thackerty. She was looking out the window at either the fog or the insurance company tower. “All right,” I said.

“Well, I was born in Los Angeles twenty-six years ago. Not Los Angeles
exactly.
It was actually in the San Fernando valley. You know where that is.”

It wasn't a question, so I said nothing.

“Now then, I was graduated—summa cum laude I might add, if you don't think it's boasting—from the University of Chicago Law School seven years ago—”

“That would make you nineteen,” I said.

“That's right. I was nineteen.”

“And summa cum laude.”

“He was nineteen,” Necessary said. “I checked it out. The laude stuff, too.”

“Really, Homer, you don't have to—”

“You want another drink?” I said to Necessary. He drank fast.

“Why not?” he said and handed me his glass.

I got up and went over to the bottle and the ice. “Go on,” I said to Orcutt.

“After graduation I went to Europe and studied international law at the Free University in Berlin for a year and was awarded my doctorate degree, again with honors.”

“In a year,” I said.

“I checked that out, too,” Necessary said. “He's a fucking genius.”

“I
do
wish you would do something about your language, Homer, especially when a lady is present.”

Necessary glanced at Carol Thackerty, who was still staring out the
window. He said, “Huh,” and took a long swallow of his fresh drink. I followed suit.

“After Berlin,” Orcutt went on, “I came back to the States and toyed with several positions that were offered to me at the time.”

“He got thirty-two job offers,” Necessary said. “None of them for less than thirty grand a year.”

Orcutt preened a little at that and forgot about admonishing Necessary. “Well, as I said, I toyed with them, but they really didn't interest me. It was all big corporation law and that can be terribly boring. So for a while I even thought that I might join the Peace Corps, but, well, you know—”

“I know,” I said.

“So I simply sat down and made a list of things that I really thought I could become interested in and which, by the way, would enable me to earn a
comfortable
living. Well, I had this list of about twenty things that ranged from undersea exploration to diplomacy. I narrowed that down to just
three
things. You know what they were?”

“I wouldn't even guess.”

“The three areas I finally selected were the practice of law, the problems of our metropolitan areas, and politics. Now guess which one I chose.”

“Private practice,” I said because I had to say something.

Orcutt seemed delighted that I'd guessed wrong and squirmed pleasurably in his chair. “I
almost
did. Almost. But I decided that I was too young and it would take too long. Not
mentally
too young, mind you, but
chronologically.
It would have prevented me from having the
kind
of clients I would like.” When he talked he supplied his own italics, like a bad editorial writer.

“The kind of clients you wanted were the kind with money,” I said.

“Precisely.”

“What about those thirty-two corporations who wanted to hire you?”

“That's just it. They wanted to
hire
me. They wanted me on their payroll at X number of dollars. It would have been
most
confining.”

“What did you choose, politics?”

“No, I chose to become an expert consultant on the problems facing our fair city. Or cities. You know, Mr. Dye, cities are fascinating microcosms of the world we live in. We're destroying them, of course, and they in turn are destroying us. Oh, I don't mean
literally
, although smog and traffic and fire and riots
do
take their toll. But the role of the city has changed
drastically
in the last thirty years—within our lifetimes.”

“So have we,” I said.

“Quite true. But now we flee the city to the suburbs to regain exactly what the city formerly offered—a sense of community, if you will. A sense of belonging, of having some voice in the affairs of the day. The city at one time offered all this, plus a sense of safety, brought about, quite probably, by what was once called the herd instinct, before the term went out of style. Now it offers nothing of the kind. The city is the enemy. And most of those who still live in it, really don't. They have set up their own private enclaves. Not
neighborhoods
, mind you, but
enclaves
from which they rarely stir—except to go to work, usually in neutral territory, or to another friendly enclave. It's all really quite feudal, if you think about it. People who live in cities are actually afraid to venture into what they quite frankly regard as the enemy camp. Some of this is based on race, some on income, and also on such things as resentment, hate, prejudice, greed, and all the other seven deadly sins. It's really most depressing if one has a liking for what cities have traditionally provided.”

“All right,” I said, “let's say that our cities are sick and that some of them are almost terminal cases. What cure do you suggest other than faith healing?”

“You're
teasing
again. Oh, I do like that! No, Mr. Dye, I don't propose to cure all of the ills that afflict our metropolitan areas. I specialize. You see, the
fears
of those who continue to live in our cities often prevent them from taking an
active
role in their community. They become apathetic, indifferent, and spend most of their time staring at television or drinking or wondering whether they shouldn't really move to the suburbs—for the children's sake, of course. A climate of such apathy is a
perfect
breeding ground for civic corruption. And
that's where Victor Orcutt Associates come in. We cure civic corruption and we're paid handsomely to do it. Of course, all we cure is the symptom, not the disease. But most of our clients cling to the belief that if the symptom disappears, the disease will shortly follow. They're wrong, of course, and sometimes out of sheer deviltry, I tell them that they're wrong, but they usually smile knowingly and thank me for a job well done and then hand over a fat check. Over the last four years, Victor Orcutt Associates have been
moderately
successful.”

“What's moderate?” I said.

“Well, we netted a little over four hundred thousand dollars last year, and our gross—which included all of our living expenses—was approximately four million dollars.”

“Four million two,” Carol Thackerty said.

Orcutt shrugged. “Miss Thackerty does have a head for figures. By the way, I met Miss Thackerty and Homer Necessary when I landed my first assignment.” He mentioned the name of a city in the Midwest that was about the size of Youngstown, Ohio.

“The mayor's son was a college buddy,” Necessary said. “That's how he got his in.”

“Well, what are friends for, Homer?” Orcutt said. “Incidentally, Homer was chief of police there, and my first recommendation was that he be fired. You've never
seen
such graft—or perhaps you have, in China.”

“Perhaps.”

“Well, I
immediately
hired Homer as a consultant. I did it quietly, of course, but I thought to myself, now who would know more about foxes than another fox?”

“Maybe a chicken,” I said.

“Mr. Dye, you've just
ruined
my favorite allegory.”

“Sorry.”

“At any rate,” Orcutt said, “that city was
absolutely
corrupt. Rotten to the core. To the
very
core. The police sold protection along with football betting cards. They had a burglary ring going. The numbers' racket flourished. The tax assessors could be had for as little as five dollars per five thousand dollar evaluation. Gambling was nearly wide
open. Not quite, but nearly. Dope was peddled in the
junior
high schools. The city itself was bankrupt. The city manager was a drunk,
pathetically
inept, and hadn't been paid in nearly three months. Neither had the police, but
they
didn't seem to mind. Prostitution. Well, it was simply awful. Anything the perverted taste wanted, from thirteen-year-old girls—or boys—on up. Shocking.
Really
shocking. And, of course, Miss Thackerty here, then a senior in the local college, was part of the vice ring. She'd even bought a very large motel out on the edge of town.”

“Just working her way through college,” Necessary said.

Carol Thackerty shifted her gaze from the window to Necessary. She smiled shyly, even sweetly, and in a quiet tone told Necessary to fuck off.

“Swell kid, huh?” Necessary said to me. “Nice, I mean.”

“To continue,” Orcutt said, ignoring the exchange as if it happened often enough, “we first—Homer and I, that is—turned our attention to the police. Homer had collected enough evidence to fascinate a grand jury, but unfortunately most of it was self-incriminating. We decided we needed something else. Homer came up with the idea. My word, he
should
, I was paying him enough.”

“I made more as a chief of police,” Necessary said.

“But not honestly, Homer.”

“Who cares about how?”

Orcutt shook his head sadly.
“Totally
amoral. But he did have a splendid idea, one that would bring the city's police immediately into line. Of course, we had to enlist Carol's aid, and that took some persuasion, but she finally agreed that cooperating with us would be better than spending a number of months behind bars. I
must
say she cooperated so nicely that I asked her to become my executive assistant. That
was
four years ago, wasn't it, Carol?”

“Four,” she said, still staring out the window. I noticed that her teacup was empty.

“Through her cooperation we were able to obtain some rather provocative photographs of most of the police force as they lay, deshabille, shall we say, in the arms of a series of very young ladies.”

“What he's saying is that we got pictures of most of the cops shacking up with some of her high school whores,” Necessary said. “That's what he means. We mailed prints to them at headquarters. They shaped up real good after that.”

“So for a modest fee you brought in honest government, morality, and reform?” I said.

Orcutt smiled that meaningless smile of his, rose and walked over to the ice, put another cube into his glass, and filled it with the remains of the Dr Pepper. “No, Mr. Dye, we didn't. You see, although the city was in bad condition, it really wasn't bad enough. The majority of the citizens weren't yet ready. They
liked
paying off fifteen-dollar traffic tickets with a dollar bill. They
liked
the close-by gambling and the teenage prostitutes. They
liked
paying less real estate taxes, if all it took was a small bribe. I'm afraid I misjudged that town. Six months later it was worse than it was when I came. But by then some people from Chicago had moved in. They run the city now. Formerly, its vice and corruption were home-grown products. Now they come from outside and the people are frightened. I can't say that I blame them.”