The city that Victor Orcutt wanted me to corrupt had a population of a little more than two hundred thousand and was located on the Gulf Coast somewhere between Mobile and Galveston. It was called Swankerton but the local wits had long ago changed that to Chancre Town, which, Orcutt said, had some basis of fact.
He went on for quite a while and I half-listened, knowing that a recitation of facts and names and statistics was no substitute for personal appraisal. Necessary was on his fourth Scotch without visible effect and Carol Thackerty, still looking bored, kept her vigil at the window. I liked to look at her. Her profile offered a high calm forehead, a straight nose, not at all thin, just delicate, or some might even say aristocratic. She had a good chin, rounded and firm, which swept gracefully back to her long, slender neck.
Victor Orcutt had stopped talking and was looking at me as if he expected a remark or a question. I decided on a question. “What’s the deadline?”
“The first Tuesday in November.”
“This year?”
“This year.”
“It’s not enough. You can’t even shake down city hall for the Heart Fund in two months.”
“We’ll have to,” Orcutt said. “There’s absolutely no lead time, Mr. Dye. The persons whom I’m dealing with in Swankerton have been dilatory. They now recognize full well that they started late. Very late. That’s why I was able to demand my fee and that’s why I’m able to offer you fifty thousand dollars for two months’ work.”
“That’s too much money for two months’ work,” I said. “But I won’t argue about it. It just means that I’ll have to do something that I don’t want to do. Something tricky probably. But the real reason I’m taking it is because Gerald Vicker wants me to. And the only reason he wants me to is because he thinks something nasty might happen to me. So do you, or you wouldn’t make the ante so high. Vicker worries me. He worries me enough so that I’ll go along until I learn what it’s all about.”
“This seems to be a long-standing feud between you and Vicker, Mr. Dye,” Orcutt said.
“It’s more of a vendetta than a feud and it goes back about six years.”
“What happened?”
“He used to work for the same people I did. I got him fired.”
“Jealousy? Rivalry?”
“No. It was because he killed someone.”
“Who?”
“The wrong man.”
We talked some more about Swankerton and then Homer Necessary announced that he was hungry. “Just a minute, Homer,” Orcutt said and turned to me. “Your decision is firm, Mr. Dye? You will go to Swankerton with us?”
I looked at Orcutt, took a breath, then sighed and said, “When do we leave?”
He rose and clapped his hands together in pleasure. I thought for a moment that he might even do us a little dance. “Tomorrow morning. There’s a direct flight, but we still have so many things to discuss. You’ll join us for dinner?”
“Fine,” I said.
“But not here. I just can’t abide hotel food. Any hotel. Homer, go down and get the car. Carol, call Ernie’s and make a reservation for four. A good table, mind you. Do you know Ernie’s, Mr. Dye? It’s on Montgomery.”
I told him no.
“It’s marvelous. Simply marvelous.”
Victor Orcutt did the ordering and everything was as good as he said it would be. We had the Tortue au Sherry; Dover Sole Ernie’s with a bottle of Chablis Bougros; Tournedos Rossini with some more wine, this time Pommard Les Epenots. There was a Belgian endive salad followed by a crêpe soufflé, coffee, and cognac. It was all simply marvelous and it only cost Victor Orcutt $162.00.
Orcutt sent Necessary for the car while he headed toward the rear, either to compliment the chef or to pee. That left me with Carol Thackerty. She put a cigarette between her lips and I leaned over to light it.
When she had it going she smiled and said, “I understand that you grew up in a whorehouse.”
“That’s right.”
“Well,” she said, “we have that much in common. So did I.”
Chapter 10
It must have been in the autumn of 1939 that I first met Gorman Smalldane. I was five then, going on six, and sober, and Gorman Smalldane was thirty-four and a little drunk. It was either a Monday or a Tuesday night, about ten o’clock, and I was at my usual post outside the door of Tante Katerine’s joy emporium, waiting to greet customers. There weren’t many and I was glad when the taxi drew up and the man in the blue suit jumped out, paid off the driver, and checked the polished brass plate to make sure that this was Number 27. That was all the identification that Tante Katerine’s establishment ever had. It was all it needed.
Smalldane pushed through the brick wall’s wrought-iron gates, which Tante Katerine claimed came all the way from New Orleans, and made his way towards me, tacking only a little now and then. I was wearing my fancy uniform with the pillbox monkey hat. My face was powdered and painted and for added splendor two of my front teeth were missing.
Smalldane stopped in front of me, all six feet three inches of him. He cocked his blond head to one side and studied me carefully. Then he cocked it to the other side and studied me some more. After that he shook his head in mild disbelief and walked around me to see whether the view was any better from the rear. In front of me once more, he bent from the waist until his face was no more than six inches from mine and I could smell the whiskey. It was Scotch. “Now just what in fuck’s name are you supposed to be, little man?” he said.
“The humble greeter of clients, my lordship,” I lisped because of my teeth, backed up a step, and bowed. Then I launched into a lisping, Australian-accented, English version of the official welcome with all of its bows and flourishes and leers.
Smalldane stood there listening to it all and shaking his head from side to side. When I was done, he bent down from the waist again and said: “You know what I think you are? I think you are a gap-toothed sissy, that’s what.”
I gave him the full benefit of my black and white smile, bowed again, and said in Cantonese, “And your mother, drunken pig, was an ancient turtle who coupled with a running dog.” I’d picked that one up someplace.
Still bent down, Smalldane smiled and nodded his head as if in full agreement. Then he straightened up, put his hands on his hips, and said softly: “You should guard that dung-coated tongue of yours, my little pimp for poisonous toads, or I will rip it from your mouth and shove it up your rectum where it can flap in the breeze of your own wind.” His Cantonese was as good as mine, his imagery more vivid.
He didn’t scare me. Nothing scared me then, probably because I was spoiled rotten. But Smalldane did impress me with his size and his brilliant command of the foul invective. I bowed again, quite low, and made a sweeping gesture toward the door. “This way, my lordship, if you please.”
“Here you go, sonny,” he said and tossed me an American half-dollar.
“A thousand thank yous, kind sir,” I said, another archaic phrase that someone had taught me, but which — because of my absent teeth — came out with all the sibilants missing.
Smalldane went through the door and I followed, partly because I was curious, partly because business was slack, but mostly because I wanted the cup of hot cocoa that Yen Chi, Tante Katerine’s amah, prepared for me nightly.
I was right behind Smalldane when the madame of the house swept into the large entrance hall. She stopped abruptly, her eyes widened, and her hand went to her throat, a dramatic ploy that she copied rather successfully from either Norma Shearer or Kay Francis. I had watched her practice it often enough before her vanity table mirror. But now, for once in her life, she abandoned her pose and ran with arms outstretched toward Smalldane, crying, “Gormy!” at the top of her voice. He wrapped her in an embrace and kissed her for a long time while I watched with clinical interest. That’s one thing about being reared in a whorehouse: displays of affection and emotion will never embarrass you.