“We’re meeting in the dining room,” Lynch said and opened two sliding doors. Five men sat around an ornately carved table. There was a matching sideboard at the right and a tall, glass-fronted highboy at the left which held a collection of china and colored glassware that, to me, looked Bavarian.
The men were down to shirtsleeves. Three of them smoked cigarettes and from the looks of their ashtrays they had been there for at least two hours.
“This is Lucifer Dye,” Lynch said to the men. “You know who he works for and why he’s here. So I’ll just make the introductions and then we can get on with it.” Lynch started at the left hand side of the table and worked his way around it clockwise.
“Fred Merriweather,” he said. “Fred’s a city councilman and owns a lot of property over in Niggertown. Also has a restaurant on Snow Street, right across from your hotel, called the Easy Alibi. He’s up for re-election.” I nodded at Merriweather, who had a big-jawed face, stupid blue eyes, and a yellow-toothed smile.
“Next to him is Ancel Carp, who’s city tax assessor. We elect him, too, and he’s running again. He’s also the city surveyor.” Carp was around forty-five. He looked as if he spent a lot of time outdoors. His hands were extraordinarily large and they went with the rest of him. When he looked at me, his gray eyes seemed to be calculating my net worth and I felt that he wouldn’t be much more than two cents off.
“Now at the end of the table is his honor, the mayor. Pierre Robineaux. We call him Pete and his boy’s the one who carried you here.”
“Glad to have you with us, Mr. Dye,” Robineaux said, bobbing his head at me. He had a high forehead and a long chin, and both of them seemed to be too far removed from his button nose, small eyes, and pursed mouth.
“Next to the mayor is our chief of police, Cal Loambaugh. He’s appointed so he doesn’t have to worry about running. Not much.” The chief was younger than I expected, not more than thirty-five. He was dressed in a neat brown suit and had a tight, controlled look about him, like an alcoholic turning down a drink after he’s three days off the sauce. Loambaugh didn’t smile or nod. He just looked at me, and there was nothing in his gaze that I could find to like.
“And finally, this is Alex Couturier. He’s the executive secretary for the Chamber of Commerce, and belongs to the Lions, Kiwanis, American Legion, VFW, and God knows what else. He’s sort of the city’s public relations man.”
Couturier had one of those professionally friendly faces, loose and relaxed. His mouth seemed to be on the verge of a smile and I decided that it always looked that way. He was a big, bluff-looking man, well-dressed, but not so much that it would offend those who bought their suits at J. C. Penney’s. “Good to see you, Dye, good to see you,” he said and his voice boomed it all out and I thought it might have been nicer if his eyes had managed to join in on the chorus.
“Well, now, I think that’s everybody,” Lynch said. “Why don’t you sit right down here on my left and we’ll get started as soon as the mayor yells at that boy of his to bring us something cool.”
The mayor yelled “Booboo,” and the younger Robineaux popped his head through the door that must have led to the kitchen.
He said, “What?” and his father told him to bring bourbon and water all around.
After the drinks were served we sat there sipping them and waiting for someone to say something. Lynch was leaning back in his chair, his hands crossed over his belly, his thin lips smiling gently, at peace with himself and, for all I knew, with the world.
“You banging that blonde yet, Dye?” It was Loambaugh, the chief of police, and he didn’t look at me when he said it.
“Not yet,” I said.
“You know what I’d like to do?” he said softly. I looked at him. With a better barber, he could have posed for an FBI recruiting poster, if they had any.
“What?” I said.
“I’d like to get my head right down there between her legs and then have somebody jump up and down on the back of it. That’s what I’d like.”
The mayor snuffled and said something that sounded like, “Pshaw.” The other three grinned at each other and Lynch barked his fat man’s laugh. The chief had set the tone for the meeting. The preliminaries were over. The niceties were dispensed with. Nut-cutting time had arrived. I had seen it done often enough before, usually with more polish and grace, but seldom with such dispatch.
Alex Couturier, the Chamber of Commerce lackey, was up next. “I don’t know, chief,” he said in an exaggerated drawl, “of a real warm summer evening I wouldn’t mind taking it out and letting little old Orcutt have a go at it. Not so much sweating and flopping about. He appears to me like a real tube cleaner. How about that, Mr. Dye? Is that little old boss of yours as good as he sounds like?”
“He probably hasn’t had as much time to practice as you have,” I said and smiled my boyish grin, the one that I kept in reserve for such events as famine, flood, and afternoon sessions with professional country boys.
There was some more tittering by the mayor, and the rest of them did some honking and har-harring, which I assumed was laughter. There was no humor in any of it and they seemed to be the kind who laughed only at someone else’s discomfort, but then that’s what a lot of laughter stems from. All except Lynch. His deep chuckle sounded as if he really thought that my remark was funny, but he seemed to always chuckle like that.
It was Fred Merriweather’s time at the plate. He rolled his stupid blue eyes and moved his big jaw around as if it were taking a couple of practice swings. Even before he spoke, he’d already lost my vote. “You know, I was just recollecting somebody that reminds me of that Orcutt feller.” The city councilman paused and let his jaw ruminate about it for a few more moments. “Name was Sanderson and it was right after the war and he was shoe clerking at Mitchell and Fames, I think it was.”
“It was Mitchell and Fames all right,” the mayor said. “His name was Thad Sanderson and he taught Sunday School at the First Methodist when it was still over on Jasper Street.”
“Believe you’re right, Pete,” Councilman Merriweather said and then rolled his blue eyes at me. “Feller reminded me of your Mr. Orcutt. Way he talked and walked and all, but none of us thought anything about it.”
“That was way before my time,” the police chief said, “but I remember hearing about it.”
“Old man Kenbold was chief then,” the mayor said.
“Well,” the city councilman went on, still rolling his blue eyes at me, “they caught this Sanderson feller fooling around with these two youngsters. Weren’t more’n eleven or twelve. Know what happened, Mr. Dye?”
“The chief of police went fishing,” I said.
The stupid blue eyes popped a little at that. “How’d you know?”
“I just guessed.”
“You’re a pretty good guesser, aren’t you?” said the current police chief.
“Just fair,” I said.
“Maybe you can even guess what happened,” the city councilman said.
“Probably. But I’ll let you tell me.”
Councilman Merriweather moved his jaw up and down again, leaned over the table toward me, and licked his lips with a furry, yellow tongue. Bad liver, I thought. “Well,” he said, “a bunch of them caught him right in the act, so to speak, so they cut off his gonads with a dull old Barlow knife, but they didn’t want him to bleed to death, so they doctored him up.” He paused to snigger a moment. “You know what they doctored him up with? Hot tar, that’s what. Hot tar. Feller left town.”