Backup Men mm-3

by Ross Thomas

  Our office wasn’t much except for the antique partners’ desk that Fredl had given us last Christmas and which we used sparingly because we were afraid that one of us would absentmindedly set a wet glass on its highly polished oak surface. There was the desk and a comfortable enough couch, two straight-backed chairs, three green filing cabinets, two black phones, a gaudy calendar, and a window with a view of the alley.

  Padillo and I sat at the desk. Walter Gothar chose the couch and his sister sat in one of the two chairs, her knees together and her ankles crossed.

  Padillo leaned back in his chair, almost put his feet on the desk, but caught himself in time, and said, “What are you working on, Walter?”

  “A protection assignment.”

  “Anybody I know?”

  “Do you mean our client?”

  “No.”

  “Then you must mean our antagonist?”

  “That’s a pretty way to say it.”

  “It’s Kragstein.”

  Padillo was silent as if skimming a mental file on Kragstein. After a moment or two he said, “He’s not that good anymore.”

  “Gitner is with him.”

  Padillo didn’t need to examine his file on Gitner. He said, “Then you have got trouble.”

  “That is why we need a—uh—backup man,” Gothar said and looked a trifle proud of his adroit use of the colloquialism.

  Padillo shook his head. Firmly. “I’m out of it,” he said. “I have been for a couple of years.”

  Wanda Gothar looked at him, not through him for the first time, and smiled before she spoke, but the chill in her tone canceled any meaning the smile may have had. “You’ll never be out of it, Michael. I told you that seven years ago in Bucharest.”

  “You told me a lot of things in Bucharest, Wanda, but none of them was true.”

  “And for how long have you been an authority on truth?”

  “I’m not,” he said, “but I’m damned good when it comes to lies.”

  Walter Gothar quickly interrupted what could have developed into a nasty quarrel between old rivals or old lovers. Or both. I was never really sure. “You must at least consider it.”

  “No,” Padillo said.

  “I told you he wouldn’t,” Wanda said to her brother.

  Walter Gothar gave her a quick, annoyed glance before asking Padillo, “Is it Gitner that disturbs you?”

  “Amos Gitner should disturb anyone who’s not a fool,” Padillo said, “but he doesn’t disturb me because I won’t be messing around with him.”

  “Could it be Kragstein who—”

  “Franz Kragstein’s getting old,” Padillo interrupted. “He can’t move like he once did, but there’s nothing wrong with his brain and if he’s got Gitner to run the errands, then it doesn’t matter whether he can move or not. I saw Gitner in action once and he’s faster and younger than any of us.”

  If the man called Amos Gitner had reflexes which made him faster than Padillo, then he was indeed in superb condition. Although the pronounced frosting of gray in my partner’s dark hair wasn’t all that premature, he had one of those rare natural athlete’s bodies that seem to keep themselves in perfect shape without any conscious effort on the part of their occupants. He ate what he wanted, smoked as much as I, drank nearly as much, and could run the hundred in ten seconds flat wearing street clothes and afterward be breathing no more heavily than I—should I ever have occasion to jog around the block, which I won’t. He also spoke six or seven languages perfectly, knew all there was to know about guns and knives, was a bit of a ladies’ man, if not an out-and-out rake, and there were some days that I was mildly bitter about it all.

  “We do not need him,” Wanda Gothar said and rose.

  “I don’t think you do either,” Padillo said. “What’s the assignment?”

  “Interested?” she asked.

  “Curious.”

  “Sit down, Wanda,” Walter said. She hesitated briefly and then resumed her seat in the chair. Walter Gothar frowned, as if thinking deeply, and then said, “Our problem is that our client is traveling incognito. Otherwise, we could draw on your Secret Service.”

  “You could anyway, if he’s the friendly type,” Padillo said.

  Gothar shook his head. “He refuses to hear of it. He insists that there be no official recognition of his visit, formal or informal.”

  “Does he know about Kragstein and Gitner?”

  “Yes.”

  “Then he’s a fool.”

  “In some ways.”

  Padillo stood up. “Well, I’m sorry I can’t help.”

  “The money will be excellent,” Gothar said.

  Padillo shook his head. “I’ve got enough.”

  “No one has enough,” Wanda said.

  “It depends on what you think you can buy with it.”

  “Your philosophy was always on the cheap side, Padillo.”

  “I seem to recall when you thought it was the most valuable kind around.”

  “That was before I knew what a—”

  “Please!” Gothar said, but it was more of a demand than a request. His sister shifted her gaze from Padillo and let it settle on the calendar. Padillo smiled faintly. Gothar rose, reaching into his inside pocket. He brought out an envelope and extended it toward Padillo. “It is from Paul to you,” he said. “I have no choice.”

  Padillo hesitated before accepting the envelope. Then he took it, examined the blue wax seal on its flap, ripped it open, and swiftly read it. “I recognize his handwriting,” Padillo said, handing the letter to me. “Do you know what it says?”

  “We have an idea,” Gothar said. “He told us that we might need it some day.”

  “It’s from their brother,” Padillo explained to me. “He’s dead now. He died last year in Beirut, wasn’t it?”

  Gothar nodded. “In Beirut.”

  The undated letter was written with black ink in a neat European scrawl that was all sharp, tight angles and unfinished descenders. It was in English and it read, “My dear Padillo, Some day the twins will find themselves with one which they may have the sense to realize that they cannot handle alone. We have exchanged favors many times and I am no longer sure whether I owe you or you owe me, but I hope that it does not matter. Please do what you can for them, if you can. I shall be, let us say, eternally grateful. Sincerely, Paul Gothar.”

  “He wrote a nice hand,” I said, handing the note back. Padillo nodded and passed the note to Gothar who read it and gave it to his sister. While she was reading it, Gothar said, “Well?”

  Padillo shook his head. “I’m not that sentimental, Walter. Maybe if your brother hadn’t been, he’d still be alive.”

  “We don’t need him, Walter,” Wanda Gothar said.

  The tall man with the too young face jerked his head in another of his neck-cricking nods and moved to the door, holding it open for his sister. She swept through it with what I thought was a fair amount of disdain. Gothar paused to look at Padillo thoughtfully. “We won’t beg,” he said, “but should you change your mind, one of us will be at the Hay-Adams.”

  “I won’t change my mind,” Padillo said. “Besides, I think you’re badmouthing yourselves. You don’t really need me.”

  “That is something that the next few days will determine,” Gothar said, turning to leave.

  “Good luck,” Padillo said.

  Gothar paused once more to give Padillo a cold stare. “In our business, Padillo, luck plays a very small role,” he said and then he was gone.

  “You want a drink?” I said, picking up the phone.

  “A martini.”

  I dialed a single number and ordered. “Why didn’t you lend a hand?” I said. “It was a nice note.”

  Padillo smiled slightly. “There was only one thing wrong with it,” he said.

  “What?”

  “Paul Gothar couldn’t read or write English.”

  4

  I MAY be one of the last persons in Washington to walk its streets late a
t night. I do so because I like to and because of a perverse conviction that the city’s sidewalks were built to be used twenty-four hours a day, just as they are used in such cities as London and Paris and Rome.

  I’ve had some trouble a couple of times, but that’s largely my lookout. Once it was a trio of young hoods who thought a fight might be fun and then whimpered when they found that it wasn’t. The other time was when two muggers decided that they had need of my watch and wallet, but crawled off down an alley without them. I wrote both incidents off as my contribution to law and order. In New York, of course, I take cabs. I’m not a complete fool.

  It was usually a little after midnight when I got home, which was on the eighth floor of an apartment building located just south of Dupont Circle. If the neighborhood wasn’t as fashionable as Georgetown, it had more flavor, and that’s what city living supposedly is all about. Within a one-block radius, I needed no more than three minutes to contract for either a bag of heroin or an angel food cake and that must have been what the apartment’s management meant when it advertised the place as being convenient to fine shopping.

  I walked home later than usual the Tuesday night that the Gothar twins called on Padillo. It had been one of those relatively rare spring days in Washington when even the three-packs-a-day boys can smell the magnolias. The dinner trade had been particularly good, the chef had been sober, the annual income tax nick promised to be less traumatic than usual, and nothing but mild guilt would prevent me from sleeping till noon.

  The editors at House Beautiful would have blanched at our two-bedroom apartment because it was furnished with the disparate possessions of two persons who’ve married a little late in life and whose tastes have already been shaped and molded into what some might regard as prejudice. We usually agreed on paintings, but when it came to furniture Fredl favored what I regarded as unhappy Hepplewhite while she more than once had accused me of trying to turn the place into the Senior Members’ Room at the Racquet Club. There had been a series of painfully negotiated compromises, but I’d drawn the line at The Chair.

  I had won it with three of a kind in college and it had crossed the Atlantic twice and if its leather was a bit worn and the springs sagged a little, it was still The Chair and I’d read some fine books in it and used it to doze away some dull afternoons and even made some big plans in it, and if they hadn’t quite materialized, it wasn’t The Chair’s fault.

  When I arrived home that night and opened the door and switched on the light, I knew what Papa Bear must have felt like because someone had been sitting in my chair—was still sitting in it, in fact, sprawled in it really, his head back, his hands in his lap, and his feet stuck straight out in front of him. His eyes were open and so was his mouth and his tongue, dark and swollen, bulged out of it. Two white plastic bicycle handlebar grips lay on his chest on top of a broad green and gray foulard tie. The grips were attached to the piano wire that had been used to choke the life out of Walter Gothar.

  He may have put up some kind of a struggle, but there was no sign of it. No lamps were knocked over. The ashtrays, full as usual, were neatly in place. So perhaps all he had done was to claw at the wire that bit into his neck while he drummed his heels on the carpet. It was a rotten way to die because it took so long—possibly two minutes depending on the skill and the strength of the garroter.

  I crossed the room and picked up the phone and dialed 444-1111 and when the man’s voice said, “Police emergency,” I gave him my name and address, told him that a man had been killed in my apartment, and then hung up. I dialed another number and when Padillo answered, I said, “Your friend Walter Gothar.”

  “What about him?”

  “He’s dead.”

  “Where?”

  “In my chair. Somebody garroted him. Piano wire and plastic handlebar grips. I think it’s piano wire.”

  “Cops on the way?”

  “I just called them.”

  “I’ll be there in five minutes.”

  “If they get here first, is there anything you want me not to tell them?”

  Padillo was silent for a moment until he said, “No. Nothing.”

  “Then I might try the truth.”

  “They might even believe you,” he said and hung up.

  I understand that you’re not supposed to touch anything, but I had a small bar in one corner so I went over and poured myself a Scotch, reasoning that the killer might not have liked the brand, or perhaps hadn’t wanted to hang around leaving fingerprints all over a glass while he toasted his handiwork.

  Holding the drink, I stood there in the center of the living room and stared at the dead body of Walter Gothar and wondered why he had wanted to see me, and how he’d got into my apartment, and whether he had known the person who had produced the wire and looped it around his neck, pulling it tight from behind until the spinal cord went or until lack of oxygen destroyed the brain. Either way, Walter Gothar was thoroughly dead so I stood there and wondered what that was like until Padillo knocked at the door.

  He came in and crossed over to Gothar’s body and quickly went through the pockets. He took nothing and replaced everything carefully, using his coat sleeve to wipe away or smear his fingerprints. When he was through he straightened and stared down at the dead man.

  “Not pretty anymore, is he?”

  “Not very,” I said. “Did you call his sister?”

  Padillo shook his head and moved over to the bar. “I’ll let the cops do that.”

  “Find anything in his pockets?”

  “He has an interesting set of keys.”

  After Padillo poured his own drink we continued to stand in the center of the living room, like two persons who don’t know anybody else at a chairless cocktail party. We stood there, not saying much, until the police arrived. After that we both found plenty to talk about.

  Counting manslaughters, there had been 327 murders in the Washington area during the past year and the two homicide squad cops who’d drawn the Gothar death looked as if they had been stuck with at least half of them. The two cops were black and white and they didn’t seem to care much for each other and not at all for Padillo and me.

  The white cop was a detective sergeant, a tall, sour man of about thirty-three or -four with bleached blue eyes that somehow went with the whine in his West Virginia accent. He introduced himself as Sergeant Lester Vernon and I decided that he probably was a sixth- or seventh-generation American WASP who thought that poking around dead bodies was better than mining coal. Maybe it was.

  The black cop was Lieutenant Frank Schoolcraft. He was a few years older than Vernon and he had a big wide nose and a big wide mouth and looked as if he would speak with a mushy accent and use man every other word, but he didn’t. Instead, he talked out of the left side of his mouth because something had happened to the muscles on the right side and he seemed a little self-conscious about it. If he had any accent at all, it was East Coast Bitter.

  “So when you found him you called us and then you called your partner here?” Schoolcraft said, nodding his long head at Padillo.

  “That’s right,” I said.

  “Why’d you call him?” Vernon said. “Whyn’t you call a lawyer?”

  “Because I’m not going to need a lawyer,” I said.

  “Huh,” Vernon said and went over to look at the dead body some more.

  The two of them had been questioning Padillo and me for twenty minutes and during that time a half dozen uniformed cops had flowed in and out of the apartment, doing nothing useful that I could see. The technical crew was still at work, but I didn’t pay much attention to them. After thirty minutes or so they wheeled the body of Walter Gothar out of my apartment and I was glad to see him go.

  Sergeant Vernon joined us again. “Never seen that before,” he said.

  “What?” Schoolcraft said.

  “Those plastic handlebar grips. They had lead pipe inside of them and the pipe had little holes bored in it and the wire went in and out of those holes
so it wouldn’t slip.” There was nothing but admiration in Vernon’s voice.

  “Seems funny to me,” Schoolcraft said.

  “What seems funny?” Vernon said.

  “That a man would go to all that trouble to fix up something like that and then leave it behind. Anybody who’d go to all that trouble was planning on using that thing more than once. What do you think, Mr. Padillo?”

  “I don’t,” Padillo said.

  “And you don’t know where his sister might be either?”

  “Gothar told me the Hay-Adams.”

  “We tried that again and she’s still not there.”

  Padillo looked at his watch. “It’s only one fifteen,” he said. “Maybe she’s out on the town.”

  Padillo’s observation was about as pertinent and useful as the rest of the information that he had given the police about Walter and Wanda Gothar. Yes, he had known Walter Gothar and his sister for some time, nearly fifteen years, but no, he didn’t know exactly why they were in Washington, although they had mentioned they were here on business, but he wasn’t sure of its exact nature because they hadn’t told him, and no, he didn’t think he knew who might have wanted Walter dead.

  “And they just dropped by to see you socially, is that it?” Schoolcraft said.

  “I didn’t say that,” Padillo said.

  “What was the reason?”

  “They wanted to know if I would be interested in one of their ventures.”

  “Business ventures?”

  “It could be called that, I suppose.”

  “What kind of business?”

  “The confidential kind.”

  “So you don’t know what it was?”

  “No.”

  “What kind of business were the Gothars in as a rule?”

  “I’m not sure that there were any rules in their business.”

  “Is that supposed to be a smartassed answer?”

  “Just informative.”

  Schoolcraft shook his head. “You’re about as informative as a fireplug. What kind of business?”