Backup Men mm-3

by Ross Thomas

  Plomondon didn’t nod or frown or do anything other than blink at me twice with those seen-it-all eyes of his. “No,” he said. “Tell him that. No.”

  “He said he needed you by seven tonight.”

  “It’s still no.”

  “All right,” I said.

  Plomondon moved his head to look first right and then left and then over his shoulder. He had a small face for the size of his head. There was a great deal of forehead and chin and they seemed to have shoved his mouth, nose and eyes together into a neat, compact area that could be easily attended to. His nose tilted up at its end and his mouth didn’t have much upper lip which made him look as if he pouted a lot, although I don’t think he really did. When he was satisfied that nobody was eavesdropping, he leaned forward again and said, “You don’t talk about it a lot, do you?”

  “About what?”

  “About Padillo and what he does.”

  “He runs a saloon,” I said.

  “Good. I run a plumbing company. A big one.”

  “I’ve seen your trucks.”

  “I also take on the odd job now and then. Not often. Just now and then. So you see I’ve got my lines out.”

  After that he didn’t say anything for a while. We sat there sipping our drinks until the steaks came. Plomondon cut his up all at once into precise one-inch cubes which he proceeded to eat in a methodical manner, giving each cube twenty-five chews. I became so fascinated I counted. When he was through with the steak, he polished off the salad, cutting it up into manageable squares with knife and fork. I didn’t bother to count how many times he chewed his lettuce.

  Herr Horst was keeping an eye on us and when we were through eating, the coffee was served promptly. Mac’s Place is the only restaurant in the world where I get decent service. In others I seem to turn invisible. But Plomondon seemed no more impressed by the service than he had been by the food. I felt that he would have been just as happy eating fried cat as long as it came in one-inch cubes.

  When he’d finished his first cup of coffee he again leaned forward, signaling that he had something important to say. First, he nodded his head a couplc of times. “Nice lunch,” he said.

  “Thanks.”

  “I eat here quite a bit.”

  “I know.”

  “To eat here regular you’ve either got to have a lot of money or a loose expense account.”

  “We planned it that way.”

  “Yeah. Well, when I started out in the plumbing business right after Korea I couldn’t afford to eat in places like this. Sometimes I couldn’t even afford a White Tower.”

  “A lot of people had to struggle at first.”

  “You didn’t,” he said and before I could say how did he know, he went on. “I can look at a guy and tell whether he’s been hard up against it. You think I’m kidding? I can look at you and tell that you’re the kind of a guy who’d say screw it if you had to eat in a White Tower and then go and do something else. Maybe that’s why you went into the restaurant business, so you’d never have to eat in a White Tower.”

  “Maybe,” I said, “but I’ve eaten in them.”

  “But not because you had to.”

  “It was my own choice.”

  “That’s what I thought. When I first started out in the plumbing business I got a little impatient too. I wanted it big right away, but it doesn’t work like that unless you got the capital. So I put some lines out and started taking on the odd job now and then. I did pretty much what Padillo once did except that I didn’t stick to government work exclusively, if you know what I mean.”

  I told him that I did and he nodded and said, “I’m still not saying anything, not anything important anyhow, but those odd jobs provided the expansion capital I needed. Now I don’t really need the outside work, but that’s not why I’m saying no to Padillo.”

  “Why then?”

  “He and I don’t owe each other anything. We never worked together. But I know about him and he knows about me and I always figured if I really needed somebody, I maybe could call him in. Maybe. I guess he figured the same way.”

  “I guess he did.”

  “Well, like I said, I’ve still got my lines out and I think I know what Padillo’s on and who he’s up against and I don’t want any part of it. No hard feelings, understand?”

  “I think so.”

  “Amos Gitner,” he said quickly and watched my face closely for its reaction. There must have been some because he smiled for the first time. “I was pretty certain,” he said. “Now I’m sure.”

  “That it’s Gitner?”

  Plomondon shook his head. “That I don’t want any part of it.”

  He rose then and held out his hand and said, “Tell Padillo I’m sorry we couldn’t do business.” I shook his hand and he turned away, but turned back and leaned on the table, his large head thrust toward me. “Maybe you’d better tell him the real reason, too,” he said.

  “All right.”

  “Tell him,” he said slowly, “that I’m not good enough anymore.” He paused, as if thinking of something he wanted to add, but wasn’t sure whether he really should. Finally, he said, “Tell him that I hope he is.”

  “I’ll tell him.”

  Plomondon seemed satisfied that I would and nodded at me in a friendly fashion before he turned and headed for the door and out into the world where there were now enough stuffed-up toilets so that he no longer had to eat at the White Tower.

  I walked slowly back to the office and sat behind the partners’ desk for a while. After a few minutes I took down a two-year-old copy’ of the World Almanac and looked up Llaquah. The Almanac said that Llaquah was under British protection until it became independent in 1959, that it had nearly a third of the free world’s estimated oil reserves, that it was an absolute monarchy, that it was destined to become one of the richest nations in the world, at least on a per capita basis, and that it had a standing army of 2,000.

  I put the World Almanac back on the shelf and sat there at the desk, admiring my view of the alley. I looked at my watch and saw that it was nearly three. I continued to sit there, thinking of Llaquah and speculating about how its citizens were going to spend all that oil money. I also wondered who had used the garrote on Walter Gothar and why they’d chosen my apartment, and pondered the capricious fate that had turned me into a saloonkeeper, and then tried to figure out what income tax bracket we would be elevated into if Fredl got the raise that she intended to demand, and finally wondered how badly Padillo really needed Plomondon the Plumber who thought he was no longer good enough to cope with the likes of Amos Gitner. I thought about that last for quite a while and when I looked at my watch again it was nearly four.

  I got up and went over to one of the three filing cabinets and opened a drawer that was labeled Miscellaneous. It contained a small transistor radio whose batteries had gone dead, a pair of binoculars that some customer had left and never returned for, an emergency bottle of Scotch which Padillo had described as ridiculous, and a .38-caliber Smith & Wesson revolver with a one-inch barrel which I took out and dropped into an attaché case that contained two shirts, two pairs of shorts, some socks, a tie that I’d never really liked, and some toilet articles. I snapped the attaché case shut and used the phone to ask Herr Horst whether he could see me for a moment.

  When he came into the office I said in German, “I am joining Herr Padillo in New York for a few days.”

  “Very good, sir.”

  “Take care of things.”

  “Of course, sir.”

  “Check out the new pastry chef.”

  “With great care.”

  “Do we have five hundred in the till?”

  “I believe so.”

  “Get it for me and I’ll fill out a cash voucher.”

  When Herr Horst returned with the money I handed him the voucher. He politely followed me through the restaurant and to the front door which he held open. He bowed slightly and said, “Have a good journey, Herr McCorkl
e.” I looked at him, but there was nothing in his manner or on his face but polite, frozen reserve. If I’d told him that I wanted to burn the place down, he would have handed me the matches.

  I thanked him and went out into the street and flagged a cab, cheering the driver a little when I told him that I wanted to go to National Airport.

  As doughty McCorkle went rushing to the rescue down Seventeenth Street in his hired hack he remembered that he’d forgotten something. He’d forgotten to pack the bullets. That made him feel a bit foolish all the way out to the airport, but it was a feeling that seemed in perfect harmony with the rest of what he’d done that day.

  10

  I THOUGHT I’d lost them. They’d seemed clumsy at first, but later I decided that they weren’t clumsy at all, only indifferent about whether I knew that they were following me. They weren’t trying to hide, not with those twin blue blazers and those checked trousers and those pink shirts. Their ties were different though. The tall, muscular one with the thin dark face and the horseshoe moustache wore a dark red one that had a big knot and looked like satin. The other man, a little shorter, but not much, fair and almost pale, wore a purple and red striped tie that clashed with the pink of his shirt. At least I thought it clashed. He may have planned it that way.

  They probably had followed me from the restaurant, but I was never sure. I didn’t notice them until I got in line for the Eastern shuttle. I tried to be last in line. I always do because it’s rumored that if Eastern doesn’t have a seat for you on its regular shuttle to New York, it will roll out a special plane just for you. I’d like that. That’s why I always try to be last in line. I kept hanging back, but so did they and finally, when it was obvious that there were plenty of seats and there wasn’t a chance of getting a plane all for myself, I handed over the yellow boarding pass and walked out to the airliner which I think was a DC-9, but I wasn’t sure. The new jets are as indistinguishable to me as the new cars.

  I went as far back into the plane as I could, hoping that the blue blazers would have to sit in front of me. They did—one seat up and on the other side of the aisle so that I could admire their profiles all the way to LaGuardia.

  The dark one looked to be twenty-seven or so with a pronounced overbite that his droopy moustache didn’t do anything for. He had thick eyebrows and a beaked nose and was dark enough to be from either Cuba or Mexico. The fair one kept chewing on something, either gum or his tongue. He had a lot of freckles which not many persons seem to have anymore. Or perhaps I don’t notice them. The fair one was also around twenty-seven and wore dark glasses and occasionally picked his pink nose. They both wore their hair long enough to obscure part of their ears and their coat collars and neither of them even glanced at me all the way to New York.

  The first thing I did when I got off the plane was to head for the men’s room where I paid seventy-five cents for a shine. They both wore suede desert boots so they had to hang around and pretend not to watch until I was through. Then I headed for the Avis counter and rented a car. That wasn’t covered by their instructions and they held a hurried conference before deciding that one of them should go find a cab while the other kept an eye on me.

  The car that I rented was a Plymouth. I know because I looked at its emblem to make sure. I took a deep breath, started the engine, and headed out into New York’s six o’clock traffic, an act of bravery that deserved some kind of a medal. In the rear-view mirror I could see the cab containing the blue blazers right behind me.

  I decided on the Triborough Bridge, not because it was a quicker route, but because it promised the most traffic. I made use of it. I switched lanes a dozen times, slowed down and speeded up, and faked a couple of turnoffs. The tailing cab stayed right with me. On FDR Drive I stuck to the right-hand lane and turned off on Sixty-third Street. Traffic got snarled and we crept along, averaging something like three miles per hour.

  Sixty-third is one-way and between Lexington and Park I found what I was looking for: a double-parked delivery truck. I pulled up parallel with the truck and killed my engine. Leaving the keys in the ignition, I opened the left-hand door and got out, carrying my attaché case. I raised the Plymouth’s hood, shook my head, turned, and left it there in the middle of the street for the Avis people and the New York traffic cops to worry about. I headed up Sixty-third toward Park. By the time I turned the corner, the maddened drivers who were stuck behind the abandoned car were leaning on their horns. I could also hear a few coarse shouts. I looked back just once and the two men in blue blazers were out of their cab, but still involved in some kind of an argument with its driver.

  On Sixty-second and Park I got lucky and found a cab discharging a passenger. The driver was more or less willing to take me to the Biltmore and during the ride, I kept looking back, but the traffic was too heavy to be sure that I’d lost them, but I thought I had. The driver let me out on the Forty-third Street side of the Biltmore. I wandered about its red and gold lobby for fifteen minutes and when I spotted neither of them I went down the stairs and out the Forty-fourth Street entrance. After a quarter of an hour I caught another cab and gave the address on Avenue A.

  When we were three blocks away from where I wanted to go I told the driver to stop. He pulled up in front of a bar and I paid him and went inside. The bar was on Second Avenue and it was crowded. The clock above the bottles said six forty-five. I ordered a Scotch and water and stood at the bar, watching the door.

  I spent ten minutes in the bar and then I went out into the street and started walking toward Avenue A. I turned the corner at Ninth Street and First Avenue and the taller one with the heavy moustache hit me on the right arm with what felt like a blackjack.

  As I said, I thought I’d lost them, but I hadn’t. I dropped the attaché case and backed off. I wanted to rub my right arm because it ached and when I moved it, it hurt even worse. The smaller one came at me first, low and with his left hand stiff and well-extended. I assumed he was some kind of karate devotee, possibly self-taught, so I kicked his left kneecap and when he yelled and grabbed for it, I hit him just below his right ear with my left fist. I hit him hard and he sat down on the sidewalk and held his kneecap and yelled some more. I turned toward the taller one who was bringing the blackjack around and down in an arc and it seemed to whistle as it came. I blocked it with my left forearm, which hurt far more than I’d expected, and then drove a right into his thick chest. He stumbled back and I moved after him, trying to ignore the pain in both of my arms.

  A middle-aged man wearing a black, unbuttoned vest and a white tieless shirt stepped out of a produce store and asked, “What’s going on here?” I hit the taller man in the stomach with my left hand. His breath exploded from him and he doubled over and the man who’d come out of the produce store said, “Let’s break it up.” I kicked the tall man in the face, just as if I were trying for a sixty-yard punt. That straightened him up long enough so that the man in the white shirt and I could note how I’d ruined his looks. The beaked nose was smashed almost flat and some bone showed through the blood.

  A small crowd had formed and a fat man in a blue suit asked the man in the vest and the white shirt what had happened. The man in the white shirt pointed at me and said, “That big guy’s been beating up on these two little guys.” Both of the little guys were an inch or so over six feet.

  “Anybody call the cops?” the fat man asked.

  “Nah. It’s just getting started good.”

  The taller man with the ruined nose was now kneeling on the sidewalk, not too far from his friend with the bad kneecap, which I hoped would give him trouble for years to come. I picked up my attaché case and walked over to them. The tall man didn’t know I was there. He didn’t seem to know much of anything other than that his nose was a bloody, shapeless lump of pain. The shorter man, still sitting on the sidewalk, still holding his kneecap, had stopped yelling. He looked up at me. I had some questions to ask him but I had to wait until he got tired of calling me five different kinds of motherfuck
er. Then I started to ask who had put him on to me, but I saw the blue uniform on the motor scooter down the street, so I turned and headed the other way—or started to. The fat man in the blue suit moved in front of me.

  “You want something, friend?” I said.

  “Those two guys are hurt real bad. You can’t just—”

  I put my hand on his chest and pressed gently. He didn’t move. Instead, he stared at me with mean little blue eyes that were only slits in the fat folds of his face. “Those two guys are wanted in six states,” I said. “If you hustle, you can nail ‘em and beat the cops to the reward.”

  “How much reward?” he said.

  “Six thousand in Pittsburgh and seventy-five hundred in Altoona. Bank jobs.”

  The fat man looked at me and then over my shoulder. He gave me another quick glance, as if hoping that there was something in my face that would let him believe me. Apparently there was because he stepped aside and I started across First Avenue. I’d only gone a few steps when there was a yell. I turned. The fat man stood over the dark Spanish-looking man whose nose I’d ruined. The dark man still knelt on the sidewalk and the fat man had an arm around his neck. He was choking him. At the same time he was trying to kick the smaller, blond man in the head. He missed in what must have been his second try, but the blond man yelled anyway and tried to crawl toward the curb. It hurt him to crawl and he yelled again as the fat man aimed another kick at his head, but again missed. The crowd was watching it all happen when the policeman arrived and I turned the corner.

  The address on Avenue A that Padillo had given me was in a grimy seven-story apartment building which was located across the street from a dusty-looking park. It was a block of small, sour businesses that looked as if they could provide their owners a bare living, if the owners didn’t eat too much and too often. There were two candy stores, a dry cleaner’s, a small grocery, and a liquor store. None of them looked solvent and the liquor store for some reason appeared to be on the verge of bankruptcy. It may have been because of the defeated look in the eyes of its owner as he stood in the doorway, searching for whatever signs of Spring he could find in the dusty park across the street.