Backup Men mm-3

by Ross Thomas

  “Well, now,” Kragstein said as he peered about. “This is rather nice. But would it be possible to speak German or French?”

  “Either one,” Padillo said, “although McCorkle’s German is better than his French.”

  “Then we shall speak German,” Kragstein said in German and I was surprised that he spoke it with an American accent. His English was easy, but also slightly accented, although I hadn’t been able to determine what flavor.

  “It was too bad about Walter, wasn’t it?” Kragstein said after he had taken a sip of his gin.

  “Terrible,” Padillo said.

  “And I believe that it happened in your apartment, Mr. McCorkle.”

  “In the living room,” I said.

  “A garrote?”

  “Steel wire attached to a couple of plastic bicycle handlebar grips,” Padillo said, looking at Gitner. “It’s supposed to be fairly popular in Southeast Asia. You spent some time out there recently, didn’t you, Amos?”

  “A few months,” Gitner said.

  “Cambodia, wasn’t it?”

  “There and a couple of other places.”

  “Free-lance or contract?”

  “Does it matter?”

  “I heard it was contract.”

  “Believe anything you like, Padillo, as long as it’s comforting.”

  Gitner wasn’t a tall man, but he had nice moves. I hadn’t seen him smoke and if he drank nothing but Coca-Cola, his teeth might have a few fillings, but there was nothing wrong with his liver. He looked American—the way young, earnest Americans looked a decade or so ago before they discovered things that they thought were more important than close shaves, clean fingernails, tidy haircuts and J. Press suits. Gitner was something of an anachronism, I decided, a throwback to the fifties with his crew cut light brown hair, his quiet tweed jacket, his expensive gray flannel trousers, his buttondown white shirt, the marble-sized knot in his red silk tie, and his burnished cordovan oxfords. I tried to decide whom he reminded me of and it came as faint surprise when I realized that Gitner was a blond version of Padillo as he’d been not quite fifteen years ago when I’d first met him, before he’d let his sideburns reach his earlobes and before he’d cultivated the moustache that I thought made him look like the Dark Knight from Iberia, a little down on his luck perhaps, but ready for either fight or frolic. But that’s what I get for having been reared on Tennyson.

  “I thought we should clear the air about a few things, Michael,” Kragstein said and waved his right hand around as if to demonstrate what he meant.

  “Go ahead,” Padillo said.

  “Am I to understand that you intend to lend your talents to Miss Gothar, now that her brother is dead?”

  “I’ve been thinking about it.”

  “Not out of sentiment, surely?”

  “No.”

  Kragstein nodded, as if reassured by Padillo’s answer. “Good,” he said and paused for another sip of gin. “We are, as you’ve probably gathered, interested in one Peter Paul Kassim.”

  “So I’ve heard.”

  “And you, too, are interested in him.”

  “Only in his health.”

  “As are we.”

  Padillo said nothing. Instead he borrowed a cigarette from me, lit it with his own matches, and blew some smoke up into the air, gazing around the bar as if wondering how much it would cost to buy in.

  “Perhaps I should first assure you that we are in no manner responsible for Walter Gothar’s death. I hope you believe me.”

  “Sure,” Padillo said. “But would it make any difference if I didn’t?”

  “None,” Gitner said. “None at all.”

  “Walter seemed a little worried about you, Amos. He thought you had him in your book.”

  “Did he say that?”

  “More or less.”

  “He was wrong.”

  “That won’t bother him now.”

  Gitner tasted his Coca-Cola as if he expected it to have turned sour. From the look on his face, it may have. He put it down and shoved it away from him toward Kragstein. “Gothar wasn’t as good as he thought he was,” he said. “That’s why he’s dead.”

  “He was pretty good,” Padillo said. “Personally, I thought he was too good to let somebody get behind him with a garrote.”

  “Maybe it was his sister,” Gitner said. “It sounds like her.”

  “Maybe,” Padillo said.

  “I thought you had a thing going with her.”

  “That was a few years back.”

  “What happened?”

  “Do you feel it’s vital that you know?”

  Gitner smiled, but it wasn’t a pleasant one. I felt that he may not have had any other kind. “You’re not letting me needle you, are you, Padillo?”

  “I don’t think so.”

  “Good. I just want to make sure that if something happens to Wanda, you won’t feel any great personal loss.”

  “None,” Padillo said. “But whoever gets to her might have to go through me.”

  Gitner nodded slowly, more to himself than to anyone else. “That could be interesting,” he said. “That could be real interesting.”

  “Wanda has told you about Kassim, of course,” Kragstein said comfortably.

  “She hasn’t told me anything except that she’s got a client that you’ve taken an order on.”

  “I thought you said—”

  Padillo interrupted him. “I said that I’d heard that you were interested in Kassim and that I’m concerned about his health. That’s all. The rest of it you assumed.”

  “But this arrangement of yours with the Gothars. It would—”

  “There’s no arrangement.”

  “Are you trying to cut yourself in or out, Padillo?” Gitner said.

  “I’m already in. The only question left is for how much and who’s going to pay it.”

  Gitner and Kragstein traded glances, meaningful ones, I assumed. Kragstein decided to do the talking, probably because he was better at it. “We could always work out an accommodation, Michael.”

  “What kind?”

  “We’ve accepted this assignment on an incentive arrangement. The young man is to sign certain papers as soon as his brother dies. If he does not sign those papers, we receive a sizable bonus. Our fee is still adequate if he does sign the papers, but does not return to Llaquah. We receive virtually nothing if he does sign the papers and returns to Llaquah.”

  “So you’re in a hurry,” Padillo said.

  “That’s right,” Gitner said. “We’re in a hurry.”

  “Who’s your client?”

  “Does that matter?” Kragstein asked.

  “It does to McCorkle.”

  “Really? How?”

  “He was hoping it would be the wicked uncle.”

  “Kassim doesn’t have any uncles,” Gitner said.

  “Cousins?” I said, trying to make my voice sound hopeful.

  “He’s got some aunts and some cousins, but no uncles, except by marriage.”

  “I don’t suppose they count,” I said.

  Gitner turned to Kragstein. “What’s he talking about?”

  “We were discussing the possibility of working out an accommodation with Padillo before we became sidetracked,” Kragstein said. “Shall we continue?”

  “Fine,” Padillo said.

  Kragstein nodded. “We could arrange it several ways, of course, Michael. The one I prefer is that you come to your understanding with Miss Gothar and then be not nearly as proficient as you usually are.”

  “In other words, you take a dive,” Gitner said.

  “For how much?” Padillo said.

  Kragstein pointed the end of his beard at the dirty ceiling. “Oh, say twenty-five thousand. Dollars, of course.”

  “And I’d also be expected to tip you off about where Kassim might be stashed away,” Padillo said.

  “Yes,” Kragstein said. “That would be expected.”

  “All for twenty-five thousand dol
lars.”

  “That’s right,” Gitner said. “Twenty-five thousand. That’s good money for doing what you’d be doing which is nothing. I’d like to make twenty-five big ones for doing nothing.”

  “How much front money?” Padillo said.

  Kragstein ran a thick, nicely cared for hand over his gleaming scalp before answering. “Possibly seventy-five hundred.”

  Padillo laughed. It wasn’t really a laugh, it was more of a sharp, wordless bark of contempt. “Both you and Wanda,” he said.

  “Both of us what?” Kragstein said.

  “You’re both working on spec. How much oil do they guess is underneath Llaquab—eighty billion barrels?”

  “Ninety,” Kragstein said.

  Padillo leaned toward him across the table and switched from German to English. “That means a country whose annual income has been hovering around zero will get to watch it shoot up to seven or eight hundred million dollars a year—which is more than Kuwait gets. But that’s all sweet bye and bye money. Right now there’s not enough hard cash in this deal on either side to buy a pack of cigarettes.”

  “The money will be there,” Kragstein said.

  “What’s your asking price, Franz, a quarter of a million?”

  “That’s close enough,” Gitner said.

  “And you’re offering me ten percent, except that all you can scrape up between you in front money is seventy-five hundred. That means that you’re both almost broke and that’s why you’ve taken it on spec—because there’s nothing better around.”

  “You’re not rejecting our offer, are you, Padillo?” Kragstein said in a new, soft low tone that made what he’d said sound more like a threat than a question.

  Padillo rose. “That’s right,” he said. “Maybe your new partner doesn’t know that I’ve never worked on the cheap, Franz, but you do.”

  “I’ve heard that about you, Padillo,” Gitner said. “That and a lot of other things. Maybe now I can find out if some of them are true.”

  I was standing by Padillo now as he looked down at Amos Gitner. He looked at him steadily for several moments before he shifted his gaze to Kragstein.

  “Maybe you’d better tell him, Franz,” he said. “Somebody should.”

  “Tell him what?”

  “That’s he’s not all that good.”

  Kragstein did something with his mouth so that his teeth showed through the thicket of his beard. It could have been a smile. “I think he is,” he said.

  “You’re talking about technique, aren’t you?”

  “Of course.”

  “Then you forgot something.”

  “What?”

  “Brains,” Padillo said. “He hasn’t got enough.”

  8

  OUTSIDE I waved at a Diamond cab but he sailed on by after looking us over carefully. It may have been that he didn’t care for the cut of my forest green cavalry twill suit, the double-breasted one that caused kindly friends to ask whether I hadn’t lost a few pounds. Or it may have been that the black scowl on Padillo’s face bothered him. It would have bothered me.

  “Smile, for Christ’s sake,” I said, “or start walking.”

  Padillo pulled his lips back and showed his teeth. “It hurts,” he said.

  “It was just like in the movies,” I said, waving at a Yellow cab whose driver nodded cheerfully at me as he drove on past.

  “How?”

  “A Western,” I said. “Old Gunfighter, living on nothing but his reputation, drifts into End-of-the-line, New Mexico, slapping the alkali dust from his chaps—”

  “End-of-the-line’s good.”

  “And runs into none other than Big Rancher’s only son who’s craving to get out from under Daddy’s shadow and make it on his own.”

  “So Only Son challenges Old Gunfighter to a showdown.”

  “You’ve seen it,” I said as an Independent cab rolled to a stop in front of us.

  “I never could sit through to the end,” Padillo said as he climbed in. “How does it turn out?”

  “Sad,” I said and told the driver that we wanted to go to the Hay-Adams Hotel.

  “You know how I’d end it?” Padillo said.

  “How?”

  “I’d have Old Gunfighter wait for a moonless night and then sneak quietly out of town.”

  “You may be the last of the romantics, Mike.”

  “How’d you know I wanted to go to the Hay-Adams?”

  “Wanda Gothar’s message. I figured it out. I think.”

  “‘In or out by four in six-two-one.’”

  “That means you’re supposed to make up your mind by four o’clock today. She’s in room six-twenty-one. I can also do large sums in my head.”

  “You’re a comfort.”

  “What’re you going to tell her?”

  “That I’m in.”

  “How do you think she really took her brother’s death?”

  “Hard,” he said and then looked at me. “You’re actually curious, aren’t you?”

  “I get that way about people who’re killed in my own living room,” I said and hoped that the cabdriver was enjoying the conversation.

  “So now you want to see act two?”

  “Only if it doesn’t drag.”

  “For some reason,” Padillo said, “I don’t think it will.”

  The Hay-Adams is a middle-aged hotel on Sixteenth Street right across from Lafayette Square where they recently went to a lot of trouble to build some new sidewalks and trash baskets for the crowds who gathered under the trees to say nasty things about the war in Indochina, pollution, the economy, and the man who lived in the big white house on Pennsylvania Avenue across the street from the square. The crowds and what they said must not have bothered the man much because up until then he hadn’t done a great deal about the things that they complained about.

  We took an elevator up to the sixth floor. Padillo knocked twice on 621 and Wanda Gothar’s voice asked, “Who is it?” before she opened the door after Padillo identified himself.

  She nearly winced when she saw me, but all that she said was, “Still the mute witness, Mr. McCorkle?”

  “I speak up from time to time.”

  After we were in the room she turned to Padillo. “Well?”

  “I’m in.”

  “How much?”

  “How much can you afford?”

  “Fifty thousand, plus ten thousand for whoever killed my brother.”

  “Just the name?”

  “Just the name.”

  “Amos Gitner thinks you might have done it.”

  “That’s not worth ten thousand.”

  “I didn’t think it would be. How much front money, Wanda?”

  She looked away from him and ran her left forefinger up and down the dark blue material that made up the pants of her suit. “Five thousand.”

  “Business must be bad all over. Kragstein and Gitner could only offer me seventy-five hundred and from what I hear, they’ve been working regularly.”

  “We took it on a contingency basis.”

  “So did they.”

  She turned back to him and when she spoke her voice was low and level and very hard. “Just get me that name and you’ve got the ten thousand, Padillo, even if it takes every last cent I’ve got.” She turned away again, as if the melodrama of the statement embarrassed her. “What did Kragstein and Gitner say?”

  “That they didn’t kill Walter.”

  “What else?”

  “That they get a bonus if Kassim doesn’t sign certain papers. No bonus if he does sign, but doesn’t make it back to Llaquah.”

  “A sliding scale,” she said. “Did they mention who’s paying them?”

  “No.”

  “Did you ask?”

  “Yes.”

  “And you turned them down?”

  “That’s right.”

  “What did they say?”

  “Not much.”

  “Gitner must have said something.”

  “He se
emed to think that I’m getting old.”

  She inspected him carefully, much as she might inspect a cold-storage chicken that had been a trifle long in the freezer. “You are, you know.”

  “Everybody is,” Padillo said.

  “Well, does the five thousand hold you?”

  “Forget it.”

  “What do you mean, forget it? What are we playing now, Padillo, one of your clever little games?”

  “No games. I’m in for free and if I find out who killed Walter, you get that for nothing, too.”

  “I don’t like anything when it’s free,” she said. “If it’s a gift horse, I look in its mouth. Since it’s from you, I might even ask for X rays.”

  “Don’t.”

  “Why?”

  “Because,” he said, “you might find out how old and tired he really is.”

  Wanda Gothar’s room wasn’t the best that the Hay-Adams had to offer, nor was it the worst. The view from the two windows was mostly of AFL-CIO headquarters, which was across Sixteenth Street, and the room was furnished with a double bed, a few chairs, a combination dresser-writing table, and the inevitable television set. It was a commercial traveler’s room, one to sleep in for a couple of nights, three at the most, before hastening back home or on to the next town. From the looks of the room she could have been there for an hour or for a month because there was nothing in it that seemed to belong to her. No suitcase, no cosmetic kit, nor even a box of Kleenex or a paperback book. I decided that she was either a highly experienced traveler or a compulsive neatener, one of those who gag at the sight of a crushed-out cigarette in an ashtray.

  She was turned toward the windows, her back to Padillo and me, when she said, “All right. When do you start?”

  “As soon as you give me some answers,” he said.

  “Such as?”

  “Why did you fake the note from Paul?”

  She turned from the window and made a small gesture with her left hand, as if the question were hardly worth an answer. “We were almost broke and we needed help. The only way we landed this assignment was by assuring them that you’d be in on it. You and Paul had been close and we thought that you might feel something—a sentimental obligation perhaps. That was dumb of us.”

  “You should’ve remembered that I knew he didn’t read or write English.”

  She shrugged. “It was a chance we took. Not many knew it because he spoke it perfectly. He had that block, which for some reason kept him from either reading or writing it. Walter forged his handwriting.”