The Buck Passes Flynn Page 4

  “I am.”

  “Then you know the price of things. Isn’t it just wicked, the way the price of things has just skyrocketed?”

  “It is indeed, ma’am.”

  She had picked up a loaf of stale bread. “Just look at the price marked on that. My mommy would roll over in her grave, if she knew what we’re expected to pay for a loaf of bread just now. Sometimes I can’t help but think, Mister Flynn, that somehow we’re bein’ had.”

  “‘Had,’ ma’am?”

  “Well, the price of things. Just look. I suppose if you have a good salary, you just get used to it.”

  “No, ma’am.”

  “The farmers and ranchers aren’t makin’ that kind of money. They produce the food. Don’t get much for it. How come the food costs so much when you buy it in the store?”

  Flynn said nothing.

  Marge Fraiman put the loaf of stale bread carefully back on the shelf, as if she had decided not to buy it.

  “Of course, the people did get squeezed, you know. Well, they got squeezed.”

  “How do you mean?” he asked.

  “Well, because of inflation. They heard their farms and ranches went up two or three times in value so they all rushed off to the bank and raised their mortgages as high as they could, and went off and bought all this equipment on credit, these huge tractors, air-conditioned, some of ’em, combines, washers, dryers. Why, Raury Phil had three tractors out to his place, and his daddy had run the same place with nothing like a tractor. Never could keep up the payments. Every other week he was runnin’ into Bixby to up his mortgage some more, just to pay the credit charges. Some of these people around here were in real trouble, Mister Flynn.”

  Flynn stood ready to pull the door closed after them.

  She looked around the store. “I suppose I should come over here and clean up, one of these days. Someone will want this store. I don’t know whether it will be Mister Joe Barker, or not. I believe one of his grandsons is in Wyoming now.” She looked again at Bowie at her feet. “I don’t know how we’ll ever get all these animals buried.”

  The scrub pine had blown about a meter along the street.

  After Marge Fraiman was settled in the passenger seat of the car and had said, “My, that’s nice,” when the air conditioner went on, she offered, “I’ll show you the Spaulding place. That will mean something to you.”

  As Flynn drove, she said, “Now the Spauldings, Helen and Parnell, had to be the most sensible people you ever did know. Born and bred right here. Well, Helen, you know, was daughter of Joe Barker, whose grocery store we were just in? She married Parnell Spaulding just out of high school, and they’ve been workin’ his daddy’s place nearly ever since. Mister Spaulding, Parn’s daddy, died early, from smoking cigarettes. We prayed over him, all right. But you’ll see this is one of the best pieces of land in these parts. Down here. To the left.”

  Flynn turned onto a dirt road.

  “Look at that,” Marge said. “The men who took the cattle left the fence gates open. Well, why not, I suppose. Nothin’ to keep in. Nothin’ to keep out. Just leave the place to the wind.”

  Flynn parked beside the house and got out of the car and looked around.

  Thirty meters away from the house there was what could have been a streambed next to a tall tree.

  Marge said, “Real pretty, isn’t it?”

  Flynn looked at the house: a small, white, wooden frame building with a deep front porch.

  “When we first came here to feed the animals, Sandy put Parn’s big new tractor in the barn. He left it sittin’ out right there, and just last year at this time he was as proud as a peacock at havin’ that new tractor. Your hair, would gray considerable, if you knew how much cash money he had to put down to have it.” She looked toward the biggest outbuilding. “I wonder if it’s still there. I mean, the tractor in the barn.”

  “Shall I go look?” Flynn asked.

  “No.” She turned toward the porch steps. “I don’t want to know.”

  Opening the front door of the house, Marge said, “Sandy and I never did come in the house, while we were out here doin’ for the critters.”

  It did not surprise her that the front door was unlocked.

  Immediately she went down the passage to the kitchen.

  “Look at that,” she said.

  The kitchen sink was on the floor, leaning against a wall.

  “Lord have mercy,” she said in awe. “They took the good copper piping.”

  “What?”

  “This was one of the few places around here that had copper piping. They took it! Can you imagine? Look at that! Helen’s washer and dryer are gone … even that yellow kitchen table she bought over at Bixby two years ago.”

  There was one wooden kitchen chair knocked over on the floor.

  Flynn stood it up.

  “You mean, the Spauldings took all this stuff with them, including the pipes?” Flynn asked.

  “They surely did not.”

  Marge Fraiman sat on the chair and looked around the kitchen. “The refrigerator’s gone!”

  On the windowsill was a plant that had gone brown.

  “You know, Mister Flynn, some years ago when Helen Spaulding was having some trouble carrying her fourth child, and we were all worried some, she said something to me I’ll never forget. Sandy and I and some others of us had been in to Austin to hear the Reverend Billy Graham, and wonderful that was. Helen hadn’t been able to come. Feelin’ poorly. When we came back we were all especially full of the Lord, and were talkin’ it up in front of her, our joy, and how many we had seen come forward and accept Jesus.

  “And quietly, she said to me, ‘You know, Marge, I’ve never felt the need to be born again. I was born into the spirit of Jesus, and surely I’ve never strayed…. ’ ” Marge said: “The bread box is here. Oh, where on earth has that Pam taken her?”

  Flynn wandered into the living room and looked around. The carpeting was gone, a divan, at least one other chair. There was no television. He glanced at the five or six titles in a comer of a bookshelf. They were all inspirational, except one: Plains Poetry.

  Marge Fraiman had come into the room and stopped in her tracks. Her eyes were huge and staring at the bookshelf. Her hands were gripping each other. Her lower jaw quivered.

  “Jesus,” she said.

  Flynn followed her eyes to where she was looking.

  “They left their family Bible,” Marge said. “Our Lord Jesus. Helen and Parn Spaulding went off and left their family Bible.”

  It was flat on the bookshelf.

  Flynn opened the old volume carefully.

  “Look.” She came to him and took the Bible from his hand and turned a few pages to show him handwriting. “The whole family history,” she said. The entries went from large copperplate to stunted ballpoint. “Their births, baptisms, marriages, deaths.”

  The earliest date was 1837.

  A tear fell on the hand of the minister’s wife.

  She closed the Bible.

  “Mister Flynn, I wonder if you’d mind takin’ me home now?”

  “I’d be pleased,” he said.

  She stumbled on the step down to the front porch.

  He put his arm around her shoulder. At first, her body tightened and she started away from him. Then she relaxed.

  She sobbed once.

  “Are you Christian?” she asked once they were back on the highway.

  “I’m workin’ at it,” he said. “And aren’t we all, though, whatever we believe?”

  Her hands worried each other in the lap of her cotton dress.

  She said, “I know my husband’s a drinkin’ man, Mister Flynn.”

  He looked at her, small against the car door.

  “I see.”

  “He was a drinkin’ man when he got the word in Alabama.”

  “He must have been very young.”

  “He was young. The army had him eighteen months in jail for something the drink made him do in Georgia. He
came to us in Ada after his schoolin’ and I married him. Once or twice he’s gone to drinkin’ … when we began to learn the Lord did not mean for us to have children.…”

  Flynn said, “He’s a good man, Mrs. Fraiman.”

  “He has the devil in him. That I know.”

  “Show me someone who doesn’t.”

  “His faith means a lot to him, Mister Flynn. His faith means a lot to me.”

  “I understand.”

  “Sometimes I think his faith is wild. Satan didn’t walk this land and take these people away.”

  “What did?”

  “I don’t know.”

  Flynn had learned, driving from Austin, that in Texas there was little driving to do. He sat at the wheel while the car took them along the flat, straight road.

  “Why do you stay here yourselves?” Flynn asked. “The town is abandoned. The people are gone. Three months are a long time without people.”

  “He won’t go,” she said. “He keeps saying the people will come back. He says they will need him more than ever then.”

  “Three months is a long time.”

  “Will you pray with him, Mister Flynn?”

  “I want to drop you off,” said Flynn, “and go see the pig woman.”

  “Mrs. Lewis.”

  “Yes.”

  “She lives out the other side of town anyway. Just keep goin’. You’ll see a messy gully off the road down to the left. Start lookin’ just beyond Bob’s Diner.”

  “Tell me about Mrs. Lewis.”

  “Oh, she’s a poor old critter. Blessed with madness. A widow lady, I guess. I never remember hearing anything about a Mister Lewis. There used to be some story around that she had a son who went off to New York or South America or someplace and became real rich. She’s just been out there in that gully with her pigs since before I was born. What do you call her? A recluse? A hermit? She’s been an old woman since I was a child, too. Wonder she’s still goin’. Old Mrs. Crazy Lewis.”

  A yellow Fiat convertible was parked on the main street in Ada. Its top was down.

  Flynn slowed to steer around the scrub pine in the middle of the street and to look at the person in the convertible.

  “Now, who could that be, I wonder?” Marge Fraiman said.

  A woman was in the car, her blond hair just slightly darker than the yellow convertible. She was slumped comfortably in the driver’s seat. An open, oversized peppermint-striped collar was either side of her chin.

  She appeared to be sketching on a pad of paper placed against the steering wheel.

  “Some looker,” Marge Fraiman said. “She must be from Dallas.”

  Flynn stopped in front of the Fraiman house to let her out.

  “I’ll be back,” he said. “In about an hour. After I see Mrs. Lewis. I’d like to talk to you both again, if I may.”

  “You come on back,” Marge Fraiman said. “We’ll be here, I guess.”

  7

  MRS. LEWIS was standing so still in the yard when Flynn drove in, he wasn’t sure at first she was a person.

  She remained standing still after he stopped the car. She gave no indication of knowing someone was seated two meters away, staring at her.

  Mrs. Lewis was dressed in a pink evening gown. Her hair was henna’d some shade between red and pink. Her thickly cosmeticked face was as red as the setting sun, except for the large areas of blue eye shadow and the long, dark, heavy eyelashes. Her lips were a slash of heavy crimson. Her necklace and bracelets were sparkling in the sun.

  The slightly dirty hem of her ball gown was moving in what wind there was in the gully (not enough for Flynn’s olfactory sensibilities), but the rest of her rig was spotless.

  Pigs, having set up an alarm when Flynn drove in, now were snuffling around the yard, most keeping to the shade.

  There were also many cats in the landscape, in the shade of the sheds, on their roofs, on the windowsill of the shack where Mrs. Lewis apparently lived. The shack was showing its tar paper.

  “Praise the Lord,” Flynn said to himself.

  Getting out of the car, he looked up at the highway.

  The yellow Fiat that had followed him from Ada was parked on the shoulder of the road.

  The pig woman remained unmoving as Flynn approached and stood in front of her.

  “Mrs. Lewis?”

  She snapped her eyes on his.

  The woman must have been near eighty. Her mouth was sunken: toothless. Sweat beaded the cosmetics below her hairline.

  Flynn said, “Mrs. Lewis? About three months ago a package was left here, with your name on it. A large manila envelope. May I have it, please?”

  The woman’s eyes glanced at her shack.

  Immediately, she lifted the hem of her ball gown with both hands and daintily made her way across the muck and the mud of the pig yard, up the two board stairs of the shack, and went inside.

  Immediately she reappeared in the doorway, a large manila envelope under her arm.

  Still holding her hem up, she picked her way back to where Flynn was standing.

  She handed the envelope to him, again searching his eyes.

  Flynn looked inside the big, bulky envelope.

  He didn’t need to count it.

  The envelope held one hundred thousand dollars in cash.

  He smiled and handed it back to her.

  “Sorry, Mrs. Lewis,” he said. “Wrong envelope.”

  8

  “NOW, then.” Outside Ada, Texas, Flynn folded his hands together on the counter of Bob’s Diner. “What herb teas do you have to offer me today?”

  The wasted-looking counterman looked at Flynn as if he were wearing a space suit.

  “A little kappa, perhaps?” Flynn asked. “No?”

  The counterman slid a greasy, finger-stained menu under Flynn’s hands.

  “Hyssop?”

  Down the counter sat three young men in wide leather belts and jeans. Their motorcycles were outside.

  They had been staring silently at Flynn since he’d entered.

  In front of each was a can of beer.

  “Sure, now, you must have dandelion root?”

  “Coffee,” the counterman said. “Tea, if you want it. You want a hamburger?”

  Coming up out of the pig woman’s gully, Flynn had passed the parked yellow Fiat convertible without looking at its driver. He knew she would follow him.

  He had driven only a short way before pulling off the highway into the diner’s parking lot.

  “I could do with a glass of water,” Flynn said. “Is your water fresh today?”

  The girl came through the door behind him and sat on the counter stool next to him.

  The jaws of the three young men fell slack at the sight of her. One could have played marbles with their eyes.

  “A glass of water for my friend here, too,” Flynn said to the counterman. “Or you might bring us one large glass of water and two straws, we’ve been together that long, we have.”

  Keeping his eyes on Flynn, the counterman went to get the water.

  “You’re Flynn,” the girl said.

  She had one brown eye and one blue eye.

  “Am I?”

  “Francis Xavier Flynn. N.N. 13,” she said. “Believed by most of your friends and your enemies to be dead.”

  “They might be right.” Flynn ran his hand over the sweat and grime on his face. “At that. One should hesitate before correcting one’s enemies.”

  One of the young men down the counter said, “Pretty lady. Uh! Uh! Uh!”

  “I’m Ducey Webb.” She took a piece of paper out of the deep pocket of her skirt and handed it to Flynn.

  He drank his water before looking at the paper.

  Office of the President

  The White House

  Washington, D.C.

  Flynn—

  This is to introduce Ducey Webb to my favorite assassin. Discussed this Texas-Massachusetts-Pentagon mystery with Atty. Gen. Agree situation is so curious it must be thor
oughly investigated. However, as it is most likely a domestic matter, we would feel less than responsible having it investigated solely by N.N.—an international private organization. Therefore, please work with Ms. Webb, who has carried out successfully many delicate investigations at and for the Justice Department. Atty. Gen. assures me she is tops. Again, thanks for “killing me” without causing me public embarrassment.

  The note was handwritten and neither signed nor initialed.

  Flynn folded the paper and handed it back to her.

  “He writes a nice letter,” Flynn said, “doesn’t he?”

  Ducey put the note back in her pocket.

  Flynn said, slowly, looking at her, “It will be nice knowing you, Ms. Ducey Webb.”

  “I haven’t had much briefing,” she said.

  Flynn drank her water.

  “Uh! Uh! Uh!” said the young man down the counter.

  The face of one of the other young men was beet red.

  “What do you know?” Flynn asked Ducey Webb.

  “Not much,” she said. “I know that three months ago the town of Ada, Texas, became depopulated, over a four- or five-day period. That a resort town in New England closed down, chased its tourists away, and yet still seems able to pay its bills. And that an entire Pentagon Intelligence section has had to be replaced. Someone seems to be dropping one-hundred-thousand-dollar cash packages on people indiscriminately.”

  “Indiscriminately?” said Flynn. “I don’t know.”

  “What could the pattern be?” asked Ducey. “What do the three areas have in common?”

  “You’re ahead of me, Ms. Webb,” Flynn said. “I’m not thinking in terms of there being a pattern yet. First, I’m trying to establish that everyone in Ada, Texas, did receive a package With one hundred thousand dollars in it.”

  “Have you established that?” she asked.

  “Well, I know it wasn’t only the minister and his wife who were so favored. The lady I just visited, down in the gully, she who tends her pigs in an evening gown, received a similar package. If Mrs. Lewis wasn’t forgotten by the mysterious benefactor, it’s doubtful anyone was.”

  Arms folded over his chest cavity, the counterman was continuing to watch Flynn. He had not refilled the water glasses.