Free The Buck Passes Flynn by Gregory McDonald

mouth.
    Spaulding sat alone in a dark corner, his shoulders hunched over a double straight bourbon.
    He looked up at Flynn through exhausted eyes, but said nothing.
    Flynn slid into the plastic booth across from Spaulding.
    After the noise of the cabaret where Flynn had been entertained by Jimmy Silverstein, the lobbies, the gambling rooms—the sight of expensively dressed and coiffed women everywhere, their fingers filthy from feeding coins to the slot machines from Styrofoam cups—this corner of the nearly empty cocktail lounge was a quiet relief.
    “I was in your house the other day.” Flynn said to Parnell Spaulding. “In Ada, Texas.”
    There was no reaction from Spaulding.
    “Your cattle’s dead or gone. Most of your furniture. Your television. I don’t know about your farm equipment. Sandy Fraiman ran your tractor into the barn, but I expect it’s gone, too.”
    Spaulding’s eyes grew wide.
    “Someone has even ripped the copper piping out of your walls and run off with it.”
    “The copper piping?” Slowly, Parnell Spaulding shook his head. “The copper piping. Don’t that beat all?”
    Flynn said, “Your family Bible’s still there. On the living-room shelf. Where you left it.”
    “Yeah,” Spaulding said. “We left in sort of a hurry.”
    “I guess you did.”
    “Did we really leave my great-granddaddy’s Bible?”
    “You did.”
    “Wonder Helen didn’t think to bring it along. She allus did take the Word of God as bein’ somethin’ she was in charge of.”
    “Everyone left Ada,” Flynn said. “Except the Fraimans and the pig woman.”
    “Well,” Spaulding drawled, “no matter how long you spend growin’ up in Ada, the old place don’t improve none.”
    “Have you found something better?”
    “I surely have. We’re livin’ in a big suite upstairs. Eleventh floor, if you’d believe it. Good as livin’ on a hill. I allus wanted to live on a hill. You can see a piece. No dust. Ever. People bring your meals to you, just as polite as they can be. I don’t mind livin’ in the air conditioning, either. Why, now I change my shirt just for somethin’ to do.”
    Flynn said, “You haven’t asked how the Fraimans are. I just mentioned I saw them.”
    “Hell, I know how the Fraimans are. He’s backslidin’and she’s forward-pushin’. That’s how they allus get to stay exactly where they are.
    Flynn smiled.
    “I’ve known a few preachers,” Spaulding said. “If they really believed what they preach they wouldn’t have to work so hard at convincin’ others. That old Sandy. We sort of let him preach to us as a kindness. Kept him off the bottle. Givin’ us damnation kept him from raisin’ hell.
    “And ol’ Marge,” Spaulding continued. “She took Sandy on the way you’re apt to take a lame dog into the house. Plain ugly girl, growin’ up. She became Christian ’cause she needed the company.”
    Spaulding had had little of his drink.
    “What are you sniffin’ around for anyway, mister?”
    Flynn said, “You have to admit it’s a wee bit of a mystery when everyone in a town packs up and leaves within five days.”
    “I suppose it is,” Spaulding smiled. “I suppose it is. You from the Internal Revenue Service?”
    “No,” said Flynn. “I wouldn’t be.”
    “You’re from the government, anyway.”
    “Actually, I’m not,” Flynn said.
    “You’re just nosy.”
    “Somethin’ like that.”
    “You have somethin to grab onto?”
    Flynn stared at the man across the table.
    “I’m sure I’ll know what you mean …” Flynn said, “if you give me just a moment.…”
    “You have a name, mister?”
    “Ah, yes,” Flynn said. “That. Sure I have.”
    “You mean to hold on to it?”
    “Flynn,” said Flynn. “Francis—Xavier Flynn. And, yes, I mean to hold on to it.”
    “You must be from Washington,” Parnell Spaulding said. “You talk like such a damn fool.”
    “Your father-in-law,” Flynn said, “Joe Barker. He’s in the alcohol ward at