Backup Men

by Ross Thomas

  “Not is, young man, but was. It ruled San Francisco society for nearly forty years. I have been its only editor. Now society in San Francisco is no more and after this edition, neither is The Arbitrator.”

  She finished her drink in quick, tiny sips. “I shan’t keep you,” she said, moving around her desk and lowering herself into the chair. “Thank you for coming.”

  We turned to go, but she said, “Do you know something? Today is my birthday. I had quite forgotten. I am eighty-five.”

  “Our best wishes,” I said.

  “I’ve edited The Arbitrator since nineteen-o-nine. This will be the last edition, but I said that, didn’t I? May I ask you something, young man? You with the brooding eyes,” she said, nodding at Padillo.

  “Anything,” he said.

  “Can you think of a more ridiculous way to spend a lifetime than deciding who should or should not be considered members of something called society?”

  “I can think of several,” he said.

  “Really? Do tell me one to cheer me up.”

  “I’d hate to spend a lifetime worrying about whether I belonged to something called society.”

  She brightened. “And the bastards did worry, didn’t they?”

  “Yes,” Padillo said, “I’m sure they did.”

  We started moving up the stairs again, checking each floor as we went. There was nothing on any of them but dust and dirt and discarded furniture.

  We stopped before taking the stairs that led to the seventh floor. Padillo turned to look at Wanda and me. “I don’t think we’re going to be much of a surprise,” he said.

  “It’s a set-up?” I asked.

  “When Kragstein dropped the name of this building,” Wanda said, “he didn’t drop it casually.”

  “Well?” Padillo said.

  “Let’s go,” I said. He looked at Wanda. After a moment she nodded.

  “I’ll take the center of the corridor,” he said. “McCorkle will take the right.” He glanced at Wanda. “You take the left. If something happens, dive in the nearest office. If not, we’ll bust into the office with lights just like we did before.”

  The seventh-floor corridor was much the same as the others. There was dust and some untidy piles of abandoned office forms. Two scarred desks on broken legs tilted toward each other. Next to them was an old-fashioned water cooler minus its glass bottle. Light shone through the frosted pane of a closed door toward the end of the corridor.

  We moved slowly, checking each office. They were all empty. Once more we took up positions flat against the wall on each side of the lighted door. Padillo turned the knob and gave the door a hard shove. It swung in, banging against the wall. Padillo crouched as he darted in, his automatic extended like a fat steel forefinger. I followed, going in low and fast and then scuttling crablike to my left. I needn’t have bothered. There was nothing in the office but the king and Scales.

  They were seated on the floor leaning against the right wall. Their legs were tied at the ankles with what appeared to be steel wire. Their arms were behind them, apparently bound at the wrists. Broad strips of white surgical tape were plastered across their mouths. Their eyes were as wide as they could get them.

  Wanda Gothar stood next to me as Padillo moved over to the king and reached for the strip of surgical tape. He grasped one end and gave it a hard yank. The king yelled. A voice behind me said, “Don’t turn, Padillo.”

  He turned anyway, his move incredibly fast, but it wasn’t any use. Something hard jammed itself into my right kidney. Padillo stopped his turn, bent forward, and placed his automatic on the floor next to his right foot. He straightened and shrugged.

  The voice behind me said, “I didn’t think it would be so easy, Mike.” It was Gitner’s voice.

  “There was a time he’d have tried for your legs,” another voice said. I’d heard that one before, too. It was Kragstein’s. “But that was a long time ago, wasn’t it, Michael?” His voice came from behind and to my left. I assumed that Wanda Gothar had a gun in her kidneys, too. I didn’t turn my head to look.

  “Slowly and carefully, McCorkle,” Gitner said. “Bend down and put your gun on the floor, just like Padillo did.”

  “You do the same, Wanda,” Kragstein said.

  I did as I was told and when I straightened, Gitner said, “Turn slowly to your left, McCorkle. Very slowly. Walk over to the wall and lean against it, arms and legs apart, just like on TV.”

  “Padillo goes first,” Kragstein said.

  “All right, Padillo, move,” Gitner said.

  Padillo headed toward the wall opposite the king and Scales. He moved past my line of vision. I had nothing to look at now but the bound pair on the floor. The king smiled at me tentatively, but I didn’t smile back. I didn’t feel like it.

  “All right, McCorkle. Your turn.”

  He prodded me over to the wall. Padillo and Wanda were already leaning against it. I assumed the position, something I’d never done before, and found that I didn’t like it. Gitner ran his hands over me, but discovered nothing that he wanted.

  “Why aren’t they dead?” Padillo said.

  “That should be obvious, old friend,” Kragstein said. “They’re far more valuable alive. We’ve come to an understanding.”

  “You get a cut of the five million, right?”

  “Let’s just say that under the new arrangement we now work for the king.”

  “There’s nothing new about that,” Padillo said.

  “I don’t follow you, old friend.”

  “I may be getting slow, Kragstein, but you’re getting dumb. You’ve always worked for the king. You just didn’t know it.”

  23

  THERE WAS a silence that lasted for nearly fifteen seconds until the king made a noise that began as a scornful laugh but ended as a nervous titter.

  “Turn around, Padillo,” Kragstein said, his voice sounding strained and tight. “Keep your hands behind you.”

  I sensed rather than saw Padillo straighten and turn. “Like this?” he said.

  “Like that,” Kragstein said. “Now let’s have that remark again.”

  “About how dumb you’re getting?”

  It sounded like a slap. A hard one. “Your wit has always bored me,” Kragstein said. “You’ve got ten seconds to explain it.”

  “It’ll take longer than that,” Padillo said.

  “Take the tape off Scales’s mouth and undo their hands,” Kragstein said and I assumed he was talking to Gitner. There was a brief silence and then I heard the tap being ripped off. Scales didn’t yell.

  “All right, Padillo, start,” Kragstein said.

  “Who approached you?” Padillo said. “Somebody we both know in England?”

  “Who told you?”

  “Scales. He didn’t tell me really. He said that somebody who had once been in British Intelligence recommended me. Now who could that be?”

  “Clegg,” Kragstein said, breathing the name out.

  “Harold Clegg,” Padillo said. “He also recommended the Gothars, according to Scales. How did Harold look when he aproached you, Kragstein? Well, I hope.”

  “It doesn’t make sense,” Gitner said. “Why would they hire somebody to bodyguard them and then turn around and hire somebody to try to kill them?”

  “Nobody ever said you had brains, Gitner, but I’ve always credited Kragstein with some.”

  Kragstein forgot to hit Padillo again. I heard someone walk across the room. When Kragstein spoke again, his voice sounded farther away. He said only one word: “Talk.”

  “He’s raving,” Scales said. “Padillo’s angry because his incompetence frightened his Majesty and forced us to seek refuge elsewhere. He’s obviously trying to save his own—” A hard slap interrupted Scales. He whimpered a little.

  “Talk,” Kragstein said again.

  “I’m telling you the truth,” Scales insisted. His voice broke on the last word and rose to a high falsetto.

  “He says you’re lying, P
adillo,” Kragstein said.

  “You didn’t hit him hard enough. Try the king.”

  “Don’t hit me!” the king said. He sounded frightened.

  “It will be far worse than a simple blow, I’m afraid, if you don’t talk. Now I’m going to ask some questions.” Kragstein paused. “They can be answered with a yes or no. If I think that you’re lying, I am going to hurt you. If you continue to lie, I am going to hurt you very bad. Is that clear?”

  “Yes,” the king said, “it’s clear.”

  “Did Harold Clegg recommend the Gothars and suggest that you retain my services? And did Clegg also recommend Padillo?”

  “I didn’t retain anyone,” the king said in a whisper so low that I could barely hear it. “I don’t know any Harold Clegg.”

  “Did Scales?”

  “I don’t know.”

  There was a thud or a thump that was followed by a high-pitched scream. I assumed that Kragstein had kicked the king. “I don’t know!” he screamed.

  “It was Clegg,” Scales said in a dull, resigned tone. “He recommended the Gothars and also Padillo. I used another intermediary to get him to recommend you, but Clegg didn’t know it.”

  “It’s pretty, isn’t it?” Padillo said. “We’ve all been working for the same boss. You’ve been trying to kill him and we’ve been trying to keep him from getting killed and he picks up the tab for both operations.”

  “I had nothing to do with it,” the king said. “Nothing.”

  “Not much,” Padillo said. “How large a slice of the five million did they offer you, twenty percent?”

  “Ten,” Kragstein said.

  “That’s because they didn’t need us anymore. But even if they didn’t need us, there was still the chance that you’d kill them. So they decided to buy you off. It could have worked if the king weren’t such a rotten actor. Why do you think they really hired you, Kragstein?”

  “I still don’t know that they did.”

  “Ask Scales. Ask him hard.”

  There was another thud that was followed by a moan. This time it must have been Scales who got kicked. I was growing tired of leaning spreadeagled against the wall so I started to shift my hands. Something dug into my kidney hard enough to hurt and Gitner said, “Don’t.”

  “Why did you hire us through an intermediary, Scales?” Kragstein said.

  The pain was evident in his voice, but nevertheless Scales tried to lie. He wasn’t good at it and he seemed to know that he wasn’t, but he tried anyway. “It was a mistake. I didn’t—”

  Kragstein didn’t want to hear about any mistakes. “You tell it, Padillo. Your version.”

  “Fine,” Padillo said. “Suppose you were visiting royalty who wanted to travel across the country incognito. First, you’d have to get the State Department off your back. Then you’d have to avoid representatives of your own country. So you hire yourself an assassin, an international hit man. Better yet, you hire yourself a pair of them through an intermediary. That gives you the reason for traveling incognito. But because you don’t want to die, you also hire yourself a couple of topflight bodyguards and just to make sure that nothing’s really going to happen to you, you make them hire a backup man—me. If Washington offers you official protection, you turn it down with the claim that you’re convinced that it’s either incompetent or because it can be corrupted—and you cite the deaths of the Kennedys and King to prove your point. How does it sound so far, Kragstein?”

  “I’m still listening.”

  “It’s a gamble, of course. You have to make the threat real. So you actually bet your life that the crowd you hired to protect you is better than the bunch that you hired to kill you: If you win, you win five million dollars.”

  There was a silence. Finally, Kragstein said, “When did you find out, Padillo?”

  “It didn’t come to me in a dream. The king kept making mistakes. Little ones. They began to add up.”

  There was another silence. I wanted to say something, to venture an incisive comment perhaps, but nobody asked what I thought. They probably didn’t care.

  The silence kept on growing until Kragstein said, “Who else knows?”

  “Only one other person.”

  “Knows what, for Christ’s sake?” Gitner said.

  “Padillo’s right, Gitner,” Kragstein said. “You are dumb.”

  “Small words,” Gitner said. “Use small words and maybe I’ll understand. Only one other person knows what?”

  I could hear Kragstein sigh. “That the king’s not really a king. He’s a ringer.”

  “Ah, shit,” Gitner said.

  “You said somebody else knows, Padillo. Who?”

  “You don’t have to worry about him.”

  “Why?”

  “Because he’s dead. Because the king killed him.”

  I caught her move. It was a bare, peripheral glance, but one moment Wanda Gothar was leaning against the wall next to me and a moment later she was gone and then there was a high-pitched scream. I could sense that Gitner had moved away so I turned around. She was trying to kill the king and she knew how to do it. Her right arm was around his neck and she had his head bent back at an almost impossible angle. The king flopped about on the floor, his hands clawing at Wanda’s right arm.

  I glanced at Padillo. He wasn’t watching the battle. He was watching Gitner who wasn’t watching the battle either. He had moved to the door and stood there in a slightly crouched stance, his revolver aimed at Padillo’s stomach.

  Kragstein moved in and aimed a hard, chopping blow at Wanda’s neck. She rolled away from it and it probably saved the king’s life because she loosened her hold and then lost it completely when Kragstein hit her again, aiming once more for her neck but catching the back of her ducked head.

  She was up then and if her timing had been a little better, Kragstein would have been dead. Her left arm shot out, her knuckles clenched and extended. Kragstein ducked his chin, protecting his throat, and her blow smashed into his nose. The blood spurted once and then flowed down around Kragstein’s mouth and into his beard.

  She was good, very good, and I understood why she was in the business she was in. She could have escorted me to the bank anytime. But she weighed only 120 pounds to Kragstein’s 180 or so and in fifty years he had learned a few nasty tricks which nobody had yet got around to teaching her.

  He used one of them when he feinted a left at her head. It wasn’t much of a feint and she caught his fist with both of her hands and her fingers dug for the nerve between his thumb and forefinger. But instead of pulling back, Kragstein went with the blow and I saw his right hand move. It moved only six inches or so, but he got his shoulder into it. She saw it coming and tried to turn her left hip to it while digging even harder at the nerve in his left hand. Kragstein yelled but managed not to pull his right and it smashed into her low and knocked her back against the wall where she bent over and gasping, sank to her knees, her hands pressed to her lower abdomen.

  Kragstein glanced quickly at the king and Scales and then turned toward Padillo and me. He now had his revolver out again.

  “She almost had you,” Padillo said and smiled cheerfully.

  “Almost,” Kragstein said, mopping at his bloody beard with a handkerchief. “You knew she’d try it, didn’t you?”

  “Yes.”

  “But Gitner wasn’t as dumb as you thought.”

  Padillo shrugged. “Being careful doesn’t make him smart.”

  “Being smart is my department, isn’t it?” He turned toward the king and Scales. The king was huddled up next to the wall, his hands clasped around the back of his neck. Scales was still seated, leaning against the wall, staring at nothing.

  “Who is he?” Kragstein said to Scales.

  Scales didn’t look at the king. He still stared blankly at nothing. Or he could have been watching his dreams disintegrate. “An actor,” he said. “An unemployed actor.”

  “He’s from Llaquah?”

  “Yes. I kn
ew him there. Then he came to London. He wanted to be an actor. A second Omar Sharif. But he was not nearly good enough.”

  “What happened to the real king?”

  “He sent for me you know. He really did. When he came out of the monastery, he sent for me. He said he needed me. I came over from London. We were going out to dinner the third night I was there and he was taking a shower in the flat that he had borrowed. He slipped and broke his neck. It was an accident. A foolish accident.”

  “What happened then?” Kragstein said.

  “I buried him that night.”

  “Where?”

  “In the Bois de Boulogne. The plan just came to me.” He glanced at the king. I still thought of him as the king. I suppose I always will. “I remembered that there was a strong resemblance. And no one had seen the king during the five years that he was in the monastery. A man can change between sixteen and twenty-one. I had all the credentials. It seemed worth the chance.”

  “It still is,” Kragstein said.

  Scales looked up at him. Some life came back into his eyes. He didn’t speak, but the question was on his face.

  Kragstein nodded. “No one at the oil companies ever saw the real king?”

  “As a child perhaps, but not as an adult.”

  “And you’re sure nobody else knows?”

  “No one,” Scales said. “No one possibly could. Gothar was beginning to suspect. We made a slight slip. So we sent him a telegram, urging him to be at McCorkle’s apartment. We signed Padillo’s name to it.” He began to talk faster, as if he found release in the confession. “When we arrived there, we told him that we’d also received a telegram. I handed it to him—we’d sent it to ourselves—and he—” Scales paused to look thoughtfully at the huddled figure of the king. “He went behind Gothar and used the garrote. I thought of the garrote. I thought that it might confuse things.”

  “Not bad,” Kragstein said. “Not bad at all. Now then. What are the arrangements concerning the money?”

  Scales shrugged. “The king’s dead brother arranged it all. As soon as the papers are signed, the oil company deposits five million dollars to the king’s account in Switzerland.”