“I asked you something,” Luccarella said.
“You asked me if I thought I’ve lost touch,” Lynch said, still looking at me.
“That’s what I asked you.”
“I’ve only made one mistake, Joe, and you’re about to make the same one. I haven’t lost touch. I just made that one mistake.”
“Sometimes one mistake’s one too many,” Luccarella said, looked around for confirmation, and got it from Samuels, the lawyer, who nodded automatically.
“The only mistake I made,” Lynch said, “was to believe one word that lying sonofabitch down there at the other end of the table ever said.”
“I told you I was a liar,” I said.
“Yeah,” Lynch said. “You did. And I believed that, too.”
“So your price is gonna cost me Lynch, huh?” Luccarella said to me.
“That’s right.”
“What else?”
“I name his successor.”
“What about this new chief of police, what’s his name — Necessary?”
“What about him?”
“What’s he gonna cost me?”
“I don’t know,” I said. “He sets his own price.”
“He’ll probably come high.”
“Probably.”
“But all you want to do is name Lynch’s successor?”
“That’s right.”
“When?”
“Tomorrow.”
Luccarella nodded. “What time?”
“Ten o’clock. My room in the Sycamore.”
Luccarella shook his head. “My room. It’s six twenty-two.”
“Your room,” I said.
“You’ll bring Necessary?”
“I won’t bring him; he’ll come with me.”
Luccarella turned to Lynch. “There’s a plane out of here this afternoon for New Orleans. Be on it. Just make sure you hand all the records over to Samuels.”
Lynch didn’t argue. He nodded his understanding and then in a mild tone said, “You’re making a goddamned bad mistake, Joe.”
“At least I’m making it and not letting somebody do it for me.”
“I’m not fixing to dispute that,” Lynch said. “I’m just saying that if you try to make a deal with him, you’re gonna regret it to your dying day.”
“You don’t think I’m smart enough to do a deal with him?”
“I’m wasting my breath,” Lynch said.
“No. I want to know. You don’t think I’m smart enough, do you?”
“Being smart don’t have anything to do with it. I’ve skinned lots of guys smarter than Dye is, twice as smart, and so have you, but like I said, smart has got nothing to do with it.”
“What’s got to do with it?” Luccarella said.
Lynch stared at me some more. “I’ll tell you what it is. He’s a loser who doesn’t expect to win. You don’t have to worry about losers who think they’ll win because that always gives you the edge. But you haven’t got any edge on the loser who’ll play by your rules and not give a damn if he wins or loses or breaks even. He doesn’t really give a damn if he even plays, so that means that you never hold the edge on him and it means that you never really win. And that matters to you, but it don’t to him, so that puts you in the hole, I don’t care what happens.”
Luccarella nodded after Lynch finished and slumped back into his chair as if winded. “You know what my analyst would call that?” he said. “My analyst would call that insight.”
“Or projection,” I said.
“You got an analyst, Mr. Dye?” Luccarella asked in a hopeful tone, as if he wanted to compare notes.
“No.”
“What do you think of what Lynch said?”
“Not much.”
“But you do want something, despite what he said. You want to name his successor, like you said.”
“That’s right.”
“I can tell you who it’s gonna be,” Lynch said.
“You want to let him guess?” Luccarella said. “After all, it’s his own successor.”
“I don’t care,” I said.
“Okay, who?” Luccarella said.
Lynch stared at me again. He seemed to find something about me fascinating. “It’s gonna be you, isn’t it, Dye?”
“That’s right,” I said. “It’s going to be me.”
Chapter 36
“What do you think you should call yourself at this particular point in time, Mr. Dye?” Victor Orcutt asked. “Are you Swankerton’s vice lord apparent? Or would vice lord designate be more appropriate?”
Four of us had just lunched on some more of Orcutt’s homecooking, thin slices of veal swimming in a thick sauce whose principal ingredients seemed to have been sour cream and a heavy Marsala that I thought had been too sweet. I had eaten all of mine anyway.
“Either one,” I said.
Orcutt flitted over to the coffee and poured himself another cup. He wore a blue blazer with gold buttons, striped blue and white trousers, white buck shoes with red rubber soles, and another Lord Byron shirt, whose open neck was partially filled by a carelessly knotted narrow paisley scarf. He looked all of twenty-two.
“The only thing that disturbs me is Senator Simon’s speech,” he said as he glided back to his chair by the window that looked out over the Gulf.
“What about that magazine piece?” Homer Necessary said. “What’s that thing got, about nine million circulation?”
“Six,” Carol said.
“You know, Mr. Dye, you were right,” Orcutt said. “I really did place too much trust in Gerald Vicker. This grudge he has against you seems almost pathological.”
“His brother doesn’t like me much either,” I said.
Orcutt almost bounced up and down on the seat of his chair. “Oh, I would have given anything to have seen Lynch this morning! You give excellent reports, Mr. Dye, but you never include all the little spicy details. You’re really not much of a gossip, you know.”
“Sorry.”
“No matter. It just means that we’re going to have to move our schedule back — or is it up? I never could get that straight.”
“Back,” Carol said.
“Up,” Necessary said.
“Never mind,” Orcutt said. “What we hoped and planned would happen will now have to happen earlier than we had hoped and planned. All right?” He didn’t wait for a vote. “Senator Simon will speak Friday after next, that’s ten days from now, and the main thrust of his speech will charge that Mr. Dye’s former employers are now engaged in domestic politics and Swankerton will be his proof. Data on this and other details relating to Mr. Dye’s past activities were furnished the senator by Gerald Vicker and his brother, Ramsey Lynch. Am I correct so far?”
“So far,” I said.
“Good. Meanwhile that awful magazine — I simply never could read it, especially its editorials — will publish an article buttressing and embellishing the senator’s speech. It also will appear a week from Friday. It will not only attack Mr. Dye and his former employers, but it will also carry an account of Victor Orcutt Associates’ involvement here in Swankerton. Incidentally, Homer, have you heard of any of the magazine’s writers or photographers being in town?”
Necessary nodded. “They’re around, but they’ve been working with Lynch.”
“Isn’t it strange that they haven’t called any of us?”
“No,” I said.
“Why?”
“Because they’ll put together what they think is a story, and at the last minute ask what we think of it. They’ve still got time to do that.”
Orcutt made a church of his hands, and then a steeple, and then opened them up to look at the people. He was thinking. I wondered how much faster he thought than I did. “You know,” he said, “it’s really quite simple.”