Backup Men mm-3

by Ross Thomas

“I think I was followed,” she said, “but I couldn’t be sure because of the traffic.”

  “It doesn’t matter,” Padillo said. “They know we’re here.”

  He was back on his bed, inspecting the ceiling again. He hadn’t risen when Wanda came in. I indicated that she should have the chair that I’d been sitting in and she lowered herself into it as she glanced around the room with a look that gave it a C-minus rating.

  After inspecting the room she turned her gaze on Padillo who fared no better. She placed a cigarette in her mouth, but I didn’t bother to try to light it this time.

  “Well,” she said after blowing some smoke out in a long, gray plume, “when do you think they’ll try it?”

  “Before ten o’clock tomorrow,” Padillo said to the ceiling.

  “That’s no answer.”

  “It’s the best I have.”

  “You know how Kragstein works,” she said. “What’s his preference?”

  “He doesn’t have any. That’s what’s kept him alive. Morning, noon, or night. They’re all the same to him. You were two years old when he started in this business, Wanda, so don’t try to outguess him.”

  “Walter didn’t think that he was quite as good as you paint him.”

  “And Walter’s dead, isn’t he?” Padillo said.

  I thought that Padillo shouldn’t have said it. It seemed to be one of those needlessly cruel remarks that you would like to recall and disown as soon as they’re uttered. Wanda Gothar flinched slightly, but when she spoke her voice was low and controlled. “Is that why your friend in New York is dead, Padillo? Because you underestimated Kragstein?”

  Padillo sat up on the edge of the bed and stared at the floor for a moment before turning his head to look at Wanda. “I deserved that, I suppose.”

  I felt that it was as close as he would come to an apology, but it didn’t mollify Wanda. “But you did underestimate him?”

  “Not really,” he said. “I was faked out by too much money. It takes the edge off and gives you a false sense of security. That’s what it’s for, of course. So I let it lull me and Kragstein was smart enough to figure it out.” He stopped looking at Wanda, reached for a cigarette and lit it, and when he spoke again, he seemed to be talking more to himself than to us. “To stay in this business you have to stay poor. I don’t know any rich ones, not any who lived long enough to spend their money if they stayed in it. Kragstein’s been at it for thirty years and he still has to scramble around for next month’s rent. But he’s still alive.”

  “So are you,” Wanda said.

  “But someone is dead back in New York because eighty million dollars made me careless, although not careless enough to get myself killed. You’re right there. But careless enough so that I had to make a choice instinctively and I don’t like to make them that way. I chose to live and let Gitner’s bullets kill someone else.”

  “It wasn’t a choice,” I said. “It was an automatic reaction, a reflex.”

  Padillo turned to look over his shoulder at me. “Was it?”

  “I saw it,” I said. “I saw the whole thing.”

  “You saw me depend on a high-priced security system that had grown flabby because nobody like Gitner had ever taken it on. It was a system designed to discourage the gentleman jewel thief who’d be afraid to go up against it because he might get his dinner jacket mussed. I made my mistake when I believed that it would keep somebody like Gitner from getting where he wanted to go. He probably thought it was quaint. I know that’s what he thinks I am.”

  “Aren’t you?” Wanda Gothar said. “Oh, not just you, Padillo, but all of us. Aren’t we something like the characters in a post-World War II set piece? A trifle grim as we brood about revenge, but a little self-conscious about being here at all, and rather ashamed, I’d say, for having so quickly become such anachronisms. You’re right. Quaint is the word.”

  Padillo rose and walked over to Wanda Gothar and looked down at her for several moments and then smiled. It wasn’t his usual quick, hard grin. It was an almost gentle smile, one that he seemed to have been saving for a sentimental occasion on the off chance that he might have to attend one some day.

  “You’re not old enough to be quaint, Wanda, but you’re still young enough to get out.”

  It was the second and last time I ever saw her smile and she still didn’t put much into it, perhaps because she didn’t want to waste what little was left. But still, it was a smile, and some of it seemed to creep into her voice. “You’re forgetting something, Padillo.”

  “What?”

  “The Gothar tradition, the one that goes back almost a hundred and seventy years. You know what it means?”

  “Not really.”

  “It means that I’ve always been too old to get out.”

  The motel was a U-shaped affair, two stories high, built of redwood and glass and some kind of stone that looked too pretty to be real although it was. Our room and the one that Scales and the king occupied were at the bottom of the U. Padillo had rented two more rooms. One of them was on the right-hand side of the U on the second floor. The other one was on the ground floor on the U’s left-hand side.

  Padillo handed Wanda Gothar a room key and she dropped it into her purse. It clunked against something metallic.

  “What are you carrying?” he said.

  “A Smith and Wesson thirty-eight.”

  “That all?”

  “No. A Walther PPK. It was my brother’s.”

  “Which one?”

  “Paul.”

  “I seem to remember that he did like a Walther.” He turned to me. “You know what the PPK stands for?”

  “Polezei something,” I said.

  “Polezei Pistol Kriminal. They’re both a lot of gun for you, Wanda.”

  “I know how to use them,” she said. “Or don’t you remember?”

  “I remember. You get the upstairs room.”

  She nodded. “McCorkle will be downstairs on the left. I’ll be upstairs on the right and so you have a crossfire. Where will you be, in with them?”

  “If I were in with them when it happens, it would be too late for me to do any good. I’ll be here. You want to see them before you go up?”

  She rose, shaking her head. “Is it necessary?”

  “No.”

  “Then I see no point in it unless they need reassurance. Do they?”

  “No.”

  She turned and started for the door, but stopped, and looked back at Padillo.

  “Tell me something.”

  “What?”

  “You’re not putting me up there because it’s the farthest and presumably the safest place, are you?”

  “No.”

  “But you do have a reason?”

  “Yes. I have a reason.”

  “Well?”

  “You shoot better than McCorkle.”

  “Yes,” she said. “That’s what I thought it was.”

  18

  IT WAS nearly dark and the April fog was settling down for the evening as I walked Wanda Gothar to the stairs that led to the second floor.

  “You should have brought a coat,” I said.

  “I’m not cold.” She stopped at the stairs and looked up at me. Curiously, I thought. “Why are you here, McCorkle? This isn’t your métier.”

  “My wife’s out of town,” I said. It was as good an answer as any.

  “Is she pretty?” Before I could reply, Wanda Gothar nodded thoughtfully and said, “Yes, she would be. You’d need that.” She looked at my face some more, studying it as if she hoped to discover some vanished trace of character. “Children?” she said.

  “No.”

  “Are you planning on any?”

  “The demand for them seems to have slacked off.”

  “And you’re faithful to your wife.” It wasn’t a question.

  “Being unfaithful is hard work and I work hard to avoid that.”

  “Was Padillo in love with her?”

  “Who?” I knew who
m she meant, but I was trying to think up an answer.

  “The woman in New York.”

  “He seemed to like her a lot.”

  “And she was rich.”

  “Very.”

  “That could have stopped him.”

  “From what?”

  “From marrying her. Did you ever notice that in some ways he’s frightfully old-fashioned?”

  “No.”

  “If he weren’t concerned about such an outdated emotion as revenge, we wouldn’t be here.” She made a small gesture that took in the motel. “This is no sanctuary, it’s a trap. There must be a great many places to hide in San Francisco. He could easily have found one.”

  “Why don’t you tell him?”

  “Because,” she said, “I’m even more old-fashioned than he is.”

  She turned and started up the stairs to her room. From the rear she looked as old-fashioned as next week. But perhaps she was right, I thought, as I made my way around the heated, Olympic-sized swimming pool that no one was swimming in, and headed for the room that Padillo had rented for me, the one from which I could pot away at Kragstein and Gitner with the office .38 if they ever showed up. And if I could see them in the fog. And if I didn’t fall asleep.

  Revenge might be an old-fashioned emotion or motive or whatever it was, I thought, as I tossed the room key onto the plastic topped writing desk, but it still drew all sorts of people into all sorts of trouble. It could make a wispy little housewife chuckle as she splashed acid in the Other Woman’s face. A fifty-year-old accountant grinned at midnight while he stuffed the money into the suitcase and thought about the look on the boss’s face when it was discovered that the monthly payroll was on its way to Rio. And I had seen the self-righteousness in the face of the steady customer who had sped out to Chevy Chase to pick up his shotgun so that he could come back and blow the head off the waiter who had spilled the veal Niçoise all over the wife’s new dress.

  That type of revenge was based on rage which, if heated to just the right temperature, can make any action, no matter how foolish, seem coldly logical and completely justified—even slamming the six-week-old baby against the wall because it won’t stop crying.

  But there was nothing impetuous in the way that Wanda Gothar and Padillo sought their revenge. They went about it dispassionately, purposely setting a weak-jawed trap and then installing themselves as part of the bait. I decided that I didn’t want either one of them miffed at me.

  I turned a chair around at the window, mixed a drink from a pint of Scotch that I’d bought in Los Angeles, turned off the lights, and settled down to watch the entrance of the motel. I even took the revolver out of my jacket pocket and laid it on a convenient table next to my chair so that I could reach it easily when I needed to shoot someone.

  After an hour of this I went over to the phone and asked the desk to ring Padillo’s room. When he answered, I said, “You forgot something.”

  “What?”

  “The magic glasses. I can’t see through the fog.”

  “I’ve noticed,” he said. “You’re the native, do you think it’ll lift?”

  “Not tonight.”

  “It could be to our advantage.”

  “How?”

  “Kragstein may not want to try it in the fog.”

  “You’re the expert,” I said.

  “I’m just trying to think like Kragstein.”

  “Is it hard?”

  “Not if you have a nasty turn of mind.”

  “What you’re saying is that he could keep us up all night and then try it in the morning when he’s fresh and we’re pinching ourselves to keep awake.”

  “That’s what he could hope that we think.”

  “And if we do,” I said, “it could make us careless.”

  “Especially around three or four o’clock in the morning.”

  “So either way we stay awake,” I said.

  “That’s right.”

  “All night.”

  “All night. What’s your visibility now?”

  “Wait a second,” I said and crossed over to the window and peered out. Across the swimming pool I could still see the glow of the light above the room that the king and Scales occupied. Their curtains were drawn and I could see no shadows moving behind them. Perhaps they had already locked themselves in the bathroom.

  I went back to the phone and said, “If the inspector’s hansom cab draws up, I’ll be able to tell what it is, but that’s about all. I’d say that I’ve got about forty percent visibility, but it’s going to get worse.”

  “How much worse?”

  “I’m not the weather bureau.”

  “Guess.”

  “All right, I’ll guess that it’ll get so bad within an hour that I won’t even be able to see the swimming pool.”

  “Christ,” Padillo said. He was silent for a moment while he sorted out the alternatives. Or options, since he lived in Washington. “We’re going to have to feed them.”

  “Don’t forget the hired help.”

  “Okay. I’ll call room service and order some hamburgers and coffee. They can deliver Wanda’s and mine. You can deliver to the king and Scales. If the fog’s worse after we eat, you and I will move in with them and Wanda can take my room.”

  “There’s just one other thing,” I said.

  “What?”

  “I want onions on mine.”

  The room service waiter who brought the hamburgers and coffee was a sad-eyed youth whose despondency seemed to stem from society’s failure to recognize his true potential.

  “You know what they call this?” he said. “They call this on-the-job training. I’m supposed to be learning it from the ground up.”

  “The motel business?” I said, watching him slam the tray down on top of the television set.

  “Motel management, they call it. Down at the employment service they claim it’s got a real future. I already been here three weeks and ain’t learned a damn thing.”

  “That’s too bad,” I said. “How much?”

  “Six hamburgers and three coffees. That’s twelve-eighty-six with tax.”

  It was an exorbitant tab, but there was no sense in arguing with the help so I handed him three fives and then watched him fumble around in his pocket for change. He gave me a small embarrassed laugh and even managed to blush a little. “I ain’t got any change,” he said, looking so wretched and apologetic that I almost wanted to pat him on the shoulder.

  “I didn’t think that you would.”

  “I can run get it.”

  “Don’t bother,” I said. “You know, if you get tired of this job, they’ve got some fairly good acting schools down in L.A.”

  He made himself look both interested and grateful. “You think they might let me in?”

  “No, but they might let you teach.”

  After he had gone I put my own food aside to cool and carried the tray containing the rest over to the king and Scales. I knocked on the door three times, announcing loudly that it was McCorkle. I could hear the bolt and lock being undone and after Scales made me tell him three more times who it was he opened the door.

  “Hamburgers and coffee,” I said, entering the room and putting the tray down on the writing desk. The king was sitting in a chair, fully dressed. Scales was hovering around, still wearing his worn blue suit. He looked even more seedy than usual.

  “The fog, Mr. McCorkle,” Scales said, “will it get worse?”

  “Probably. If it does, Padillo and I are going to move in with you after we eat.”

  The king was already devouring one of the hamburgers and he didn’t mind talking with his mouth full. He wanted to know whether the fog would be an advantage to us or to them. At least that’s what I thought he asked.

  “To them,” I said. “We have to stay awake no matter what. They don’t. They can take a nice nap and then use the fog as cover.”

  “When do you think that they’ll—”

  “I have no idea,” I said. “Ju
st keep your door locked until we get here.”

  Walking back to my room I noticed that the fog had grown thicker even in the short time that I had been with Scales and the king. When I was inside I put the revolver back on the table, placed the hamburgers and coffee next to it, and sat down to watch, wait and eat. There wasn’t much to watch now because I could no longer see the light that burned above the room where the two men waited for someone to kill them. Or try to. One car drove in and went past on its way to a room two doors down from mine, but I could see only its headlights.

  I was finishing the last of the coffee when there was a knock on my door. It was Padillo. He came in wearing a sour look and shaking his head.

  “It’s worse,” he said.

  “I know.”

  “I’m going to get Wanda. You may as well rejoin them.”

  “All right.”

  I put the revolver back in my pocket and we started around the swimming pool. Another car entered the motel drive and moved slowly past my room, then headed toward the end of the U-shaped drive. I couldn’t tell what kind of car it was or how many people it contained. Both of us watched it carefully. When the car rounded the end of the U, it cut its lights, but we could tell from the sound of its engine that it was still moving, heading up the other arm of the U-shaped drive, heading toward the room occupied by Scales and the king.

  We were still at the pool, halfway from either of its ends, when the driver gunned the car’s engine once as if to pick up speed. We could see nothing until he applied the brakes and the band of red lights across the car’s rear sent a ruby glow through the fog.

  Padillo was already racing around the pool. He swore as he ran. We rounded the pool’s far end just as the explosion ripped through the fog. It was a deep, harsh cracking blast, far too loud for a shot. Before its echo died away there was another blast and then a third and after the echoes there was nothing but silence until two car doors slammed. The dull red glow of the car taillights blinked off and the engine screamed and whined as the driver jammed the accelerator to the floor and shot the car toward the motel entrance.

  By then we were at the room that Scales and the king occupied. Padillo had his gun out, but there was no longer anything to shoot at. He looked disappointed. Some people had popped out of doors and were asking the fog and each other and the night what had happened, but none of them seemed to know. The door to the room had been blown off its hinges and into the driveway. We entered the room quickly and saw that the bathroom door also had been ripped from its fastenings, but the bathroom light had somehow escaped. It was the only light there was.