The Cut of the Whip Page 9

  The change in sound made everyone in the long line stop talking and they wondered why Joe wouldn’t open the door. One time this had happened, the line not moving, and that day there hadn’t been any hand-outs. They hadn’t known it, but Joe hadn’t even been there. And they hadn’t known why, until Joe Flynn got out of prison thirty days later, and that day had been the only day the line had been longer than now.

  They stood in line, worrying. The door stayed closed.

  “I don’t know any Dan Port,” Flynn said. “I know everybody who might be thinking he wants to muscle in here, Tully, and there’s nobody wants to muscle in here.”

  Tully and a white-haired man, Bill, nodded at that because Flynn was waiting for it. But nobody talked. They had talked this thing back and forth for a long time and it hadn’t helped. There was just this man, Port, talking like a damn foreigner, toting a gun, and threatening to shoot everyone in sight if he didn’t get in to see Flynn.

  “Maybe he’s crazy,” said Flynn.

  “Then why don’t he use that gun?” said the white-haired man. “He’s so crazy, why don’t he shoot, instead of just threatenin’?”

  “That’s right,” said Tully. “At least shoot in the ceiling! Now if I was crazy—”

  “Shut up, Tully,” said Flynn. He felt disgusted and a little bit dizzy. Hadn’t eaten enough that day. And now, this. He pushed the warm beer can around a few times and said, “I may not know this Port, but he’s sure gonna know me.”

  The two men in the office with him picked up their heads and listened.

  “Tell you what,” Flynn continued. “You go on downstairs, Tully, and round up some of the fellers—you know who to pick. When you got six or seven together, have ’em take ahold of this crazy man and bring him up to me. Open the door now, Tully.”

  Tully got up from his chair and walked very carefully toward the door.

  “And tell those bums to keep their britches on, or else,” Flynn called after him.

  But when Tully opened the door there was nobody left in the corridor, no line, not even one grifter. Only Port stood there. He nodded at everyone and then he walked in.

  “Close the door, Tully,” he said.

  Tully closed the door. The man with the white hair just gaped, and Joe Flynn, a fat hulk behind the old desk, mottled a little.

  “Where—where,” he got out, “is the bums?”

  “I sent them away. You and me, Flynn, want privacy.”

  “You sent them—”

  “Yes. A little trick I have,” and Port took out a policeman’s badge. “I flashed this and they ran.”

  “Mary and Joseph!” said Tully and he kept looking from, the door to Joe Flynn and back, since one or the other would be his answer.

  “You like it so much,” said Port, “let me give it to you.” He walked over to Tully. “See? It says, ‘Junior Deputy, Eat Your Oaties,’” and Port put the badge into Tully’s hand.

  “You’re no cop!” Flynn managed.

  “Clever,” said Port.

  He walked to the desk, sat down on a chair that he found there, and crossed his legs. Flynn shifted his weight, and with a great moaning of springs let his swivel chair tilt back at an angle. The new posture, with feet dangling above the ground, gave Flynn the look of a sleeping boy.

  “Before anything else, let’s hear your story,” he said. “I’m fair. Start with that.”

  “First you send out your sidekicks, Flynn, and then you and me will get this over with.”

  “And what if I don’t?” said Flynn. “What’ll you do then, Mr. Wiseguy?”

  “I’ll explain it right in front of them. I’m talking about Heering and Powell…”

  “What’s he saying?” Tully came up. “You mean you do know this guy?”

  Flynn was sore, suddenly, and had to give it to somebody.

  “Get outa here,” he said to Tully. “Get the hell outa here and don’t show your face ’til I call you! And you too! Now git!”

  They did this quickly, closing the door behind them without any noise.

  “Now you!” and Flynn looked at Port. Flynn was still sore and in no mood to hide it. “Now let’s have none of that gun waving with me! That don’t count for nothing with me here alone. You got that?”

  “Of course,” said Port.

  “So what’s this gaff with Heering and whoozit? Start with that!”

  “When you say whoozit, I assume you—”

  “Yeah, yeah, yeah. I mean Herbie. I mean that Herbie Powell bastard.”

  Instead of relieving himself with his shouting, Joe Flynn only became more upset. He grabbed for the can with the warm beer, and not until he had taken a gluttonous swallow did he remember how lousy warm beer is. He hefted the can into a corner and spat out what he had in his mouth. He cursed, wiped himself, and walked to a door which didn’t lead to the hall.

  The adjoining room was nothing like the one they had just left. There was a small bar, with built-in refrigerator, leather chairs and a leather couch. And whoever had done the decorating had felt that old hunting prints were the right thing to have around Flynn. Those prints were arranged all over the walls, and in one corner was a stuffed fox.

  “You like riding to the hounds?” Port asked.

  “Shut up. You just sit down there and talk.”

  Port sat and watched Flynn get cold beer from the refrigerator. Flynn got one can, opened it, drank most of it standing. After that he took off his jacket, got a silk robe out of a closet and wrapped himself in it, picked up his beer. Then he sat down in a leather chair and kept his eyes closed while the cushions sighed. After that he opened his eyes and looked at Port. Joe Flynn, so it seemed, was somebody else now. He looked right and comfortable inside his fat, and inside that fat was a sharp brain.

  “Go ahead,” said Flynn, waiting.

  “You delivered Powell’s letter?”

  “Powell never sent no letter to me,” said Flynn. “How come you know Herbie Powell?”

  Port sighed. “Herbie Powell isn’t very smart. All he had was the setup. I found out about it and rigged up this snatch.”

  “Snatch?”

  “Kidnaping, Flynn.”

  “Go ahead.”

  “That means fifty-fifty for me and Herbie. I’m down here to find out where in hell you come in.”

  Flynn, too fat for fast bending, put his beer can down very slowly, but when he came up again his face showed a different mood. Flynn was suddenly boiling with rage, and he started cursing with a filthy violence.

  “… suck me in on a sucker deal, will he? Get me to jumping in the middle of the night with a telephone call! Too big to come down here and set this up right. A telephone call in the middle of the night and yammering at me and moaning about all this loot coming his way and me, old buddy Joe, call up old buddy Joe for old times sake and to give him a cut. Fifty for you!” he yelled at Port. “Then where in hell’s fifty for me?”

  Up to this point, then, Port had figured it right. Flynn was in on the deal.

  “That’s why I’m down here,” said Port. “And I apologize.”

  “What’s that?”

  “For thinking you were a chiseler. Powell’s the chiseler.”

  “Ahh…” Flynn said, and let himself sink back into the chair, face turned up toward the ceiling.

  “Better get Powell down here,” said Port.

  And now Flynn was himself again. “Get him down here?” said Flynn. “You sound like you’re doing me a favor.”

  “I wouldn’t dream of it, Flynn.”

  “Then why get him down here. Why aren’t you wherever Herbie is, huh? That makes only two of you, that way.”

  “You know where Herbie is,” said Port. “Could I maneuver up there and find him, if he decided to hide?”

  “City boy, huh?”

  “Dry Waters,” said Port, “is the moon, as far as I’m concerned.”

  “It is,” said Flynn. “Just exactly like it, up there.”

  Which showed Port th
at Flynn knew where Powell was.

  “The truth is,” and Port told the truth, “I’d be lost chasing him all over his home territory, but down here I can maneuver.”

  “Why would you be chasing him? I thought you and him—”

  “Don’t you know about Herbie yet?” said Port, sounding weary. “He’s a chiseler, I told you.”

  “I see that. I can see that good.”

  “And stupid. Take for instance that letter to Heering. You dropped that letter for him?”

  Flynn nodded, because it had sounded like an aside, and admitting that part seemed of little importance.

  “You got that letter off a guy at the railroad station, isn’t that right?”

  “That’s how we set it up.”

  Port was happy to hear he had figured it right.

  “You know the man who gave you the letter?”

  “Some buddy of Powell’s. Some salesman buddy from the bowling club, and he was coming down to Galveston anyway. We both wore a carnation,” said Flynn.

  Port almost laughed, but kept it down.

  “That shows you, Flynn, what I mean. A thing like that letter, as important as that, and he sends it down here with some stupid drummer! A guy who could have got drunk on the train, or maybe get himself rolled by some hooker he picks up on the way—”

  “Yeah,” said Flynn. “Yeah, yeah…” and he was thinking about it.

  “And the same thing with that stupid stunt of going up there in the wilderness, that Dry Waters place. All out of touch, so few people up there he’s bound to attract attention. And maybe that Heering kid suddenly gets impatient. Maybe he doesn’t believe all of a sudden that Powell is doing this thing for his own good. He starts smelling a rat, he doesn’t like sleeping in some windy shack, eating cold beans and so forth. Why, man, here’s a million bucks or so riding on Powell’s half-ass planning, a million bucks teetering out of sight because of that dumb stumble bum up there!”

  “Yeah! And I argued with him! Over the phone I was trying to tell him!”

  “And here he goes to the trouble,” Port kept it up, “to get you into the thing, to help handle this thing, and then what does he do? Use you to deliver a letter, for God’s sake!”

  “Damn his hide, yes!”

  “And you know why, Flynn? For the same reason he left me with my mouth hanging open. He gets the best out of me he can, and then skips. He gets the best advice out of you and then he tries it alone. He needs you like a hole in the head, is Powell’s opinion.”

  It worked. It worked so well Port got impatient with Flynn’s lengthy cursing. But when Flynn had calmed down and sat still again, he said, “Maybe you got other reasons for wantin’ him here. Like you said, you can’t move so good in a place like Dry Waters. But down here…

  The whole thing was a stall, Port figured. At one time or another, Powell would come down to Galveston anyway, or wherever the hide-out was going to be, because that would have been part of the plan whether Port pushed or not.

  Port’s main reason for working through Flynn was to make the job clean. If Port caught Powell and Robert Heering, up in some shack in the panhandle, he might manage to get Robert away, but not Powell, not two men at the same time. And then Powell would still run around with his tongue hanging out, and more so, Joe Flynn. There wouldn’t be anything to keep them from trying again.

  They had to get burned, and both of them.

  Port got off the couch and walked over to Flynn. He put his hands in his pockets and stood in front of the man without saying anything for the moment. When Flynn started to frown Port started to talk, as if this was the last thing he wanted to do.

  “I guess you know Powell’s angle. Do you?”

  “About Emmy Semmerling? Sure I do.”

  “So you know,” said Port, “that it all depends on her.”

  “No problem. I met her once. And she’s Herbie’s wife.”

  “Did you know she’s a wino?” said Port.

  Flynn hadn’t known. The thought was disturbing.

  “You know about winos then, about how unreliable they are.”

  “She’s still the mother of that Heering kid, drunk or sober.”

  “Who says, Emmy herself?”

  “Powell says! That’s what the whole thing’s about!”

  “The hell with Powell!”

  Flynn hoisted himself around in the chair, very uncomfortable. He hated looking up, and Port was still standing in front of him. And he hated to see things get complicated.

  “So come on,” he said. “About this angle. Start with that.”

  “Emmy Semmerling, or Mrs. Herbert Powell, she doesn’t remember so good. Those winos, you know—”

  “Come on, dammit, get to it!”

  “I know this from talking to her, when I was with Powell. Now, if she leaves home, if she goes out of reach, and old Heering should get to her, how long do you think it’ll take him to get a deposition out of her, signed, sealed, and paid for, that she never slept with Carl Heering, never had a son, and maybe is even a virgin? How long, Flynn?”

  “Good God—”

  “Then Robert Heering wouldn’t be worth a red cent.”

  This time it really worked.

  “I’m gonna pick that sonofabitch up myself!” and Flynn wrestled himself out of the chair.

  “When you going to be back?” Port asked him.

  Flynn went to his closet, took off the silk wrapper, and put on his coat. He gave Port one sideways look but didn’t answer.

  Port lit a cigarette and talked very quietly.

  “You might as well face it, Flynn. You don’t shake me. Nobody does.”

  “All right. But we got to talk this whole thing over yet, about the split.”

  “I’m willing to split.”

  “We’ll talk about that when I get back.”

  “I’m willing. When will you be back?”

  “You mean you aren’t coming along?” Flynn said this hopefully.

  “Not if you tell me where and when we’re going to meet.”

  “Trusting, aren’t you?” Flynn put on his hat.

  “I can afford it. I can take Powell’s wife up to Heering myself.”

  Flynn almost choked on the picture of that, and then he just nodded. He didn’t open the door, the way he had planned, but came back and explained.

  “You know Route 87, from here to Port Arthur?”

  “Like the palm of my hand.”

  “Once you’re off the Bolivar peninsula you come to Route 124, going north. Where it crosses the waterway—”

  “What waterway?”

  “Intercoastal waterway, for pete’s sake, the canal!”

  “All right. The canal.”

  “Right there, over the bridge, you come to the maintenance road that goes off to the right.”

  “It’s open?”

  “No. But you go there just the same. You drive down there after five-thirty and there won’t be anyone at the maintenance sheds. You go to the second way-house, not the first, the second, and that’s where I’ve got it set up.”

  “No cops, no canal men, nothing?”

  “Taken care of,” said Flynn.

  “When?”

  “I’m flying up as far as I can. Amarillo, I guess. I’ll rent a car there or take the bus, I don’t know yet. And the same way back. Figure the second day.”

  “Okay,” said Port and watched Flynn go to the door. He let him go so far and then stopped him.

  “One more thing.”

  Flynn turned, his heavy face dark and way off.

  “Maybe Powell won’t want to come. Maybe once he sees you and finds out I got to you, he’ll start snowing you, the way Powell knows how.”

  “I remember about Powell good. Don’t—”

  “Get this, Flynn. Tell him, first off, that he’s made me sore. That I’m switching to Heering’s side and I’m after him, hot and bothered. So he better hightail it down here with you, where it’s safe. Got that clear?”

  �
�Don’t worry,” said Flynn and opened the door.

  “Just remember this,” said Port. “If you don’t show up the way you explained it—because you changed your mind, because Powell changed it for you—then remember I’m going to get Emmy Powell. You can start with that,” said Port, and then they both left the building without saying any more to each other.

  Now Herbie Powell could talk his head off once he heard about Port. Whether Powell believed Flynn or Flynn believed Powell, it would come to the same thing: Port was in.

  He made two phone calls. He called Heering to lend him a plane, and he called Jane, to tell her to meet him.

  Chapter XI

  IT WAS completely dark when Port got to 912 South Brandywine. The street was empty and the nightwind funneled against him, cold and unpleasant. And Emmy Powell, or Semmerling, would be sitting in her warm room, the flowery housedress wrapped around her body, the wine warm inside her, cloudy and comfortable.

  It would be an unpleasant visit, but he knew of no other way. The image of Heering was riding him.

  It took her a while to open the door, but then she stood there and smiled.

  “Mr. Port! Did you find your little black book?” and she stood there hoping he had. “Come in, Mr. Port. Herbie isn’t in right now, but come in.”

  He came in and while Emmy Powell sat down in her chair, Port stood by the television set. Then he said, “Do you mind if I turn that off?”

  “Why—why, yes, go ahead,” and she smiled uncertainly.

  Port snapped off the set and sat down on the hassock close by her chair. Sitting the way he was he had to look up at her and she smiled back at him.

  “You want to tell me about Robert?” she said.

  Perhaps she was much less of a wino than Port had thought, and much less confused.

  “He told us how nice you were, what a nice young man…” She was looking off now, at the wall. Then she looked at Port again, smiling politely. “What I don’t understand yet is you being a utility man here in Lubbock, and also a friend of Robert’s. I don’t see…”