“You’ve made an old man happy. Now get out of here so I can get some sleep.”
I rose, a little unsteadily, and headed for the door. Smalldane followed, tacking a bit, much as he had done the first night that I’d seen him coming up the path in Tante Katerine’s garden. I turned at the door.
“Just like Ned Sparks,” he said.
“Two words.”
He pulled himself up so that he stood straight and taller than I. It required an effort that apparently caused considerable pain. Suddenly, he seemed completely sober. He held out his hand and I took it and was surprised at how thin it was.
“This is the real goodbye, kid, I’m leaving in the morning. Early.”
“All right.”
“That crap I was talking earlier. That zombie crap. Forget it.”
I nodded.
“And those two words. Forget them, too. It might be fun, but you’d never make it. You’re not put together that way.”
“All right.”
He held on to my hand and looked at me for a long time, his eyes steady and for once almost gentle. He nodded after his inspection. “You’re not quite dead after all, are you?”
“Not quite.”
He grinned then and released my hand. “Well, that’ll leave one of us around anyway.”
Chapter 32
I bought a new suit to go to Homer Necessary’s swearing-in ceremony. It was a dark blue poplin that cost all of sixty dollars plus tax at Biendorfer’s department store across the street from the Sycamore Hotel. I bought two others of the same material, one tan and the other gray.
The ceremony was held in the City Council chamber, which was on the seventh floor of the same new municipal building that housed Police Headquarters. Attendance was by invitation only and I went alone. Lynch had stubbornly refused to invite either Orcutt or Carol Thackerty.
The City Council was a seven-man body that sat at a long oval walnut table, the Lynch crowd on one side, the opposition on the other, and the popeyed mayor at the end near the door. Lynch himself sat in a spectator’s chair that was only a few feet from the far end of the table and gave Mayor Robineaux something reassuring to look at. Three tiers of chairs ran around three sides of the room and during the City Council’s regular meetings were used to seat witnesses, reporters, city officials and employees, and citizens who just wanted to kill a dull afternoon. If Lynch’s chair had been any closer to the table, it would have occupied the spot usually reserved for a city manager, except that Swankerton didn’t have one and, as far as I could see, didn’t need one as long as Lynch was around.
The three television stations were represented, as were five or six radio stations. The two newspapers had sent reporters and photographers. There was a handful of ranking police officials and one of them was the captain who had been playing poker a few afternoons before at the table next to Necessary and me.
The seven city councilmen were already in their seats when I arrived. The three who composed what passed for the loyal opposition were middle-aged, mild-mannered men who smiled a lot, wore sensible suits, and favored rimless glasses. The four who belonged to Lynch’s crowd seemed heavier and jowlier, liked cigars, and twisted around in their chairs to wave at friends and acquaintances. Fred Merriweather, big-jawed and stupid-eyed and owner of The Easy Alibi bar, covered all bets and even waved at me. I waved back. He was the only one on the council whom I knew.
All of the ones that I had met that first day in Lynch’s house were in the room, with the exception of Cal Loambaugh. Ancel Carp, the city tax assessor and surveyor, sat next to Lynch, looking as outdoorsy as ever. On the other side of Lynch was Alex Couturier, executive secretary of the Chamber of Commerce, who wore a big, pleased smile on his face, but that meant nothing because he never wore anything else.
Channing d’Arcy Phetwick III crept in with the aid of his cane, surveyed the room through his thick-lensed glasses, spotted me and came over and sat down at my left. “I understand this was all your idea, Mr. Dye,” he whispered. Before I could say that it wasn’t quite all mine, he whispered, “Splendid. Perfectly splendid.”
Homer Necessary sat in the first row of the tier of seats directly behind the mayor and I found myself wondering if he had called his wife about his new job.
Mayor Pierre (Pete) Robineaux picked up a gavel and tapped it apologetically against the table. The councilmen quit waving their arms and gossiping. The small crowd did the usual amount of coughing and throat-clearing. The mayor said, “This special session of the Swankerton City Council is now convened. Good to see y’all. Our first order of business is the resignation of Calvin Loambaugh as chief of police. I’ve sent you all copies of it, so we can dispense with its reading. Is there any discussion?”
He waited, but nobody said anything. After almost a full minute Fred Merriweather stuck up a big hand and said, “I move we accept it.” Somebody else seconded the motion, the mayor called for the ayes and then for the nays, and Cal Loambaugh was out of a job.
“Now before we go into the second order of business I’d like to make a few personal remarks, if nobody objects,” the mayor said. Nobody did, so he said, “Chief Loambaugh’s resignation came as a surprise to all of us, I know. Now my first thought was, where in the world are we gonna find somebody of high calibre, competence, and experience to take his place, and then how in the good Lord’s name, if we do find a man like that, are we gonna find enough money to pay him?” He waited for his laugh and he got it.
“Well, the good Lord smiled down on us. That’s all I can say. Because right after I got the bad news about Chief Loambaugh’s resignation, I got some good news. I learned that there was a man right here in Swankerton on private business who’s generally acknowledged as one of the top law enforcement officers in the whole United States. And not only that, but I learned that although he was mighty successful in private industry, he just might be interested in getting back into his first love.” That brought a titter from the press, if from no one else.
“Well, sir, I didn’t let any grass grow under my feet, so to speak. I contacted this man and asked him to come see me and when he did, I laid my cards on the table. We talked man to man and heart to heart. We discussed Swankerton’s law-and-order problems and I liked what he had to say. Now this man knows police work. He should because he was chief of police of a city larger than Swankerton when he was twenty-seven years old. Think about that. Twenty-seven. Course, he’s a bit older now, but still in his prime. We talked money, too, and I don’t mind telling you that I was downright embarrassed when I had to tell him what we could offer. I bet I even blushed some. Well, he said he understood our problems, but he also said that he’s a great one for merit increases. So I took the bull by the horns and said I’m going to offer you the job as chief of police, providing the City Council will go along, of course, and what’s more I’m going to recommend that we raise the salary of that job up to fifteen thousand dollars a year where it should be. So now I formally recommend to you, the City Council of the City of Swankerton, that we hereby employ Mr. Homer Fairbanks Necessary as chief of police. The meeting is now open for discussion.”
Fred Merriweather was the first to stick up a hand. “Your honor, do you think we might ask Mr. Necessary some questions?”
“That’s why he’s here, Fred,” Robineaux said. He turned in his chair and beckoned at Necessary. “Mr. Necessary, you might be more comfortable sitting up here by me.”
Necessary rose, walked over to the chair that the mayor had indicated, and settled himself into it. He wore the easy, attentive expression of an expert about to be questioned by amateurs. I decided that it wasn’t the first time that Homer Necessary had appeared before a board of inquiry.