Ah, Treachery!

by Ross Thomas

  “Afraid not.”

  “After the murders, Colonel Hudson quickly—very, very quickly— rises to major general and Captain Millwed makes it to major and then full colonel, skipping over lieutenant colonel. I can’t help but wonder if their silence about the murders was bought by their meteoric rise in rank and the one-point-two million they were permitted, maybe even encouraged, to steal?”

  “Beats me,” Viar said.

  “The name of that unfortunate Major. Was it Partain by any chance?”

  “Edd-with-two-ds Partain.” “Any idea of where he is now?”

  “None.”

  “Too bad,” the General said and rose. “Well, I do thank you for your time and patience.”

  “Why’d you really come?” Viar said, not rising. “You already knew everything before you got here.”

  “Some, but not all,” the General said. “You confirmed a couple of points and supplied some interesting, even amusing, verisimilitude. The Deutsche Post mailbag, for instance, and that four-fingered Mickey Mouse seal. I rather enjoyed them.”

  Viar, still seated, grinned up at the General. “Then you won’t mind if I give General Hudson a ring and tell him you’ve been here, nosing around?”

  “Mind?” Winfield said. “Good Lord, Hank, that was the entire purpose of my visit.”

  CHAPTER 12

  At 9:23 P.M., EST, General Winfield, wearing his Borsalino and camel hair topcoat, its collar turned up against the 36-degree chill, closed the front door of the small house on Volta Place, and began to walk to his car. Five minutes later, at 6:28 P.M. PST, Edd Partain braked the Lexus coupe to a stop on the curved drive in front of the Eden on Wilshire Boulevard.

  Jack, the doorman, appeared as Partain got out of the car, leaving the key in the ignition. “He came back,” Jack said after Partain shut the not-quite-closed door with a hip to silence the insistent you-left-the-key-in-the-ignition chime.

  “Who?”

  “This morning's false messenger. Except this time he was totally immersed in his new role of David Laney, bibulous man about town.”

  Partain studied the doorman for a moment, noting the almost too regular and still-young features, the slight tan and the interested gray-blue eyes. “You an actor?” Partain said.

  “From five P.M. to one A.M., I’m Jack, an obsequious doorman. The rest of the time I’m Jack Thomson, without the usual ‘p,’ a sometime actor.” He smiled then, a wry, carefully crooked smile that displayed wonderful teeth. “Except it's not supposed to show.”

  “It's mostly the voice,” Partain said. “There's no trace of regional accent.”

  “Yeah, well, the one I’m using now is my standard American. Upon demand, I can do Deep South, Jersey low-life, west Texas, Scandinavian-tinged Minnesota, fair Cajun and an almost featureless Omaha, where a lot of eight-hundred-number companies are now locating because of all those white-bread voices.”

  “You get much work?”

  Thomson shook his head. “A TV commercial voice-over once in a while and some radio spots. They say my looks are too second-leadish for films. That's why I almost hoped Laney was shitfaced enough to take a poke at me and maybe break my nose, leaving me with a slight but memorable flaw.”

  “How’d you hear about Laney playing messenger boy?”

  “From Tom, the day man. We share whatever gossip there is at the shift change. Normally, we don’t have a lot to talk about. But Laney and his false-messenger dodge was a choice morsel.”

  “How shitfaced was he this afternoon?”

  “His diction was good although his eyes were sort of waltzing around. He also had a nice mouse under the right one. No staggers, though. No goofy smile. But he must have gargled a quart of Scope.”

  “I suppose he wanted to go back up to the Altford place.”

  “Insisted on it. I called Jessie Carver from the outside phone and she said no, not now, not ever. But by then Laney was through the front doors, into the elevator and on his way up.”

  “I thought those doors were always locked,” Partain said.

  “They are, but he had somebody's key card. I stopped his elevator between floors, took the other one up, coaxed him out and walked him down six flights of stairs. He kind of tripped over my foot and fellthe last few steps, but bounced right up and promised to be back after I got off.”

  “You take the key card away from him?” Partain asked.

  “That's not in my job description.”

  “You get off at one A.M., right?”

  The doorman nodded with a faint smile.

  “Then I’ll wait up for him,” Partain said.

  The faint smile was still in place when Jack Thomson said, “I thought you might.”

  Jessica Carver served herself a second helping of the corned beef hash from the old iron skillet that Partain had placed on the heirloom kitchen table. To the left of the skillet was a yellow ceramic mixing bowl that held a tossed salad of tomatoes, two kinds of lettuce and a thinly sliced sweet onion, allegedly from Vidalia, Georgia. The salad dressing was the only one Partain ever used: nine parts olive oil; one part red wine vinegar; vinegar-soaked salt; ground black pepper, and more garlic than most people liked. Jessica Carver also had more of the salad.

  They ate in silence until Carver finished her hash, leaned back in her chair and said, “You really like to cook?” “No.”

  “Then why bother?”

  “Because it's cheaper than eating out.”

  “That poor-boy act of yours. Is it inspired by poverty or parsimony?”

  “A little of both.”

  “What’d you do in the Army for fun, when you weren’t soldiering?”

  “I read a lot.”

  “What?”

  “European history. When I got to World War One I always stopped.” “Why?”

  “Because I already knew how it’d end in nineteen-forty-five.”

  “That was the end of World War Two, not One.”

  “Was it?” Partain said and smiled to take the edge off his answer. He was still smiling slightly when he said, “Tell me about you and Dave Laney.”

  “I already told you. He's a shit I lived with in Mexico.” “Where’d you meet him?”

  “God, I hate that question,” she said. “ ‘Where did you two meet?’ It's as if everyone's expecting something cute—like in the movies. So for a while I’d give them cute: ‘A bellhop at the Biltmore sent me up to his room.’ “

  “Dave says you met during the Dukakis campaign in ‘eighty-eight.”

  “He lied. We met in November of ‘ninety-one at a Beverly Hills wedding reception my mother’d dragged me to. I don’t know why Dave was there because he didn’t seem to know the bride or groom. Millie was working the room like a coyote. I stood in a corner, drinking the free Dom Perignon and wearing something I’d got at the Nordstrom Rack in the Valley for ninety-six bucks that looked like nine hundred and sixty. That's why Dave made his move. He thought I looked like money.”

  “You do,” Partain said.

  “Almost any woman who stays out of the sun, is under forty and doesn’t have a weight problem can look like money in this town. But for some reason, men can’t fake it. Money, I mean. Dave sure as hell can’t.”

  “Why?”

  “Take those clothes he wears. He looks like some real tan guy who walks into Carroll and Company on Rodeo and says, ‘Sell me some stuff that’ll make me look rich.’ And that's what they do: sell him stuffthat’ll make him look like a guy who wants to look rich but isn’t.” “Then Dave's what—medium rich?”

  She studied him for a second or two, smiled a small superior smile and said, “He told you about his trust funds, didn’t he?” “In passing.”

  “The two one-million-dollar funds that’re managed by the stuffy old bankers back in Boston?” Partain nodded.

  “Well, it's not two one-million-dollar trust funds. It's a hundred-thousand-dollar one at the Bank of America, which isn’t exactly giving Dave's money its undivided attention. The
y stuck it away in some money market account, for God's sake. When we went down to Mexico it was paying close to four or five percent. I forget which. When he came back it was below three percent. The main reason I came back is I got sick of Dave. The other reason is I’d run out of money.”

  “Where's it come from?” Partain said. “Your money?”

  “You sure ask delicate questions.”

  “I see no reason for delicacy.”

  “Well, this may come as a shock but, except for food, I’m almost as much of a miser as you are. Where food's concerned, I don’t want to buy it, prepare it, cook it or clean up after it. And even though I know I can buy a spring fryer at Vons for maybe $3.98, I’d rather pay thirty-two bucks at Chez Delano's for the poulet a la Memphis”

  “None of that answers my question.”

  “About where my money comes from. Okay. I earn a lot and save most of it. The only thing that gives me a bigger rush than saving money is sex. When I work, my money's parted out like this: about forty-eight percent for Social Security, state and Federal taxes. After you hit fifty-five thousand, most of the Social Security bite stops. Overall, I pay about forty-three percent in taxes. I live on forty percent of my take-home pay and save the rest. No stocks. No bonds. Nomutual funds. Just a regular savings account in a too-big-to-fail bank that still gives out those little passbooks and records every deposit along with the picayune interest.”

  “You must be in the top bracket.”

  “Next to the top.”

  “Doing what?”

  “I write advertising copy. TV, radio and print. Freelance. I even do billboards. One time I had three of them down on the Sunset Strip— big mothers—all at the same time. Real bust-eye stuff.”

  “You’re good, then?”

  “The best.”

  “Since it takes a certain amount of cunning to sell anything, I don’t quite understand—”

  She interrupted. “About me and Dave Laney.” Partain nodded.

  “Sex,” she said. “He's awfully good at it.”

  Partain gave her another nod, which he hoped said, “That explains everything.” She apparently interpreted it to mean, “Please continue.”

  “What you’re still wondering,” Carver said, “if she's so shrewd and cunning, why didn’t she spot Dave Laney for the rat he is. The sad answer is I did—from the moment he first opened his mouth and started in on his trust funds. People with trust funds don’t talk about them. And people from fine old California families don’t brag about how old and fine they are right after they’ve told you about their trust funds. The Laneys, this is Dave's version now, sailed around the Horn in either eighteen-forty-nine or ‘fifty and made their first fortune off the miners. Every generation after that made another fortune off something or other—real estate, oil, insurance, agriculture, wars. The last big Laney fortune was made in real estate in the late ‘seventies and early ‘eighties. Dave says they bailed out because they saw it coming. The crash.”

  “It’d be more interesting if they hadn’t,” Partain said. She nodded her agreement.

  “Anyway, the Laneys performed all these wonderful economic tricks when they weren’t serving their country in every war since the one between the states, as Dave calls it, when some of the Laneys fought for the Confederacy and some for the Union. He told me all this ten minutes after we met. Well, maybe fifteen. He even threw in an uncle who's recently been promoted to Army general.”

  “What year was this?” Partain said.

  “When we met? ‘Ninety-one.”

  “Who's the General?”

  “General Laney, I suppose. Ever hear of him?” Partain's reply was delayed and, when it came, it was a question. “Does your mother have a Who's Who?” “Every volume since ‘fifty-two.” “Where?” “In her study.” “Let's take a look.”

  They couldn’t find any Laney who was a general under the Ls, but Partain did find one under the Hs. He was Major General Walker Laney Hudson, USA, b. Pasadena, May 19, 1943; grad. U.S. Military Academy, 1964.

  After she closed the big red L to Z volume and put it back on the shelf, Jessica Carver said, “You know him, don’t you—this General Walker Laney Hudson?”

  “We’ve met,” Partain said.

  CHAPTER 13

  They had dined at a card table on salad and spanakopita, the Greek spinach and cheese pie that was a specialty of the uncle's ground-floor restaurant. For dessert, there was a far too rich baklava that General Winfield politely declined. Nick Patrokis ate both portions, then wrapped up the paper napkins, plastic plates and plastic cutlery in the Washington Post that had served as a tablecloth and dumped it all into a big brown plastic garbage can. The General folded the card table and stored it away.

  It was just after 9 P.M . when they moved to the golden oak desk for the Greek coffee that Patrokis poured from a Thermos into a pair of small cups. After finishing one cup, Patrokis poured himself another and said, “Sounds like a nice job of mind-fucking to me.”

  The General winced slightly, then shook his head. “You have to understand that Henry Viar simply doesn’t care anymore. He spends much of his time in the upstairs front bedroom, sipping whiskey, smoking Pall Malls, watching the street and, I suspect, fantasizing about the farther shores of Might’ve Been.”

  “I sailed there a time or two,” Patrokis said, “but always sailed back as soon as possible.”

  “Most of us do. But Viar still regards himself as the ultimate realist. You’ve heard the phrase ‘tough-minded’? It was popular during the Kennedy administration.”

  “Still is.”

  “Well, back then Viar always claimed it was the Kennedyites’ unconscious euphemism for ‘hopelessly romantic.’ The only truly tough-minded people Viar claims he ever knew were pimps, double agents and golf hustlers.”

  “Sounds like you guys were friends.”

  “We knew each other well, too well, probably, but we were never friends. And yet I introduced him to his wife, you know. To Violet.” “I didn’t.”

  “A mistake I still regret. She was young and fairly well off. He was young and terribly ambitious. To her it was love. To him it was a career move. She came to see me years later. It was shortly after I retired in ‘sixty-eight. You know my living room.”

  It wasn’t a question but Patrokis nodded anyway.

  “She sat on one side of the fireplace and I on the other. I served coffee and, at first, made all the proper social noises. She made no response. None. So we sat there for almost an hour in silence until she rose and said, ‘Thank you, Vernon, you’ve been a great comfort.’ Then she went home and shot herself. Their daughter, Shawnee, who was eight or nine at the time, came home from school and found the body.”

  “Sorry.”

  Winfield nodded and a silence began that Patrokis eventually ended with a false cough followed by a question. “Which way d’you think Viar’ll bounce?”

  Winfield gave it some thought. “He’ll study his options with the aid of a few more drinks, then choose the one he believes will do him the least harm.” He glanced at his watch. “That means he’ll have called General Hudson by now and made a full report on my visit.”

  “And Hudson?”

  “He's called Colonel Millwed and they’ll’ve met, or could even be meeting now in some room at the Mayflower.”

  Patrokis reached for his Rolodex, found a number and called it. When it was answered, he said, “Mr. Jerome Able's room, please.”

  He listened as the Mayflower Hotel operator rang the room, finally gave up, told him there was no answer and asked if he’d like to leave a message. Patrokis said he’d try again, thanked her and ended the call.

  Winfield rose and reached for his hat and coat. “You didn’t really expect them to answer?”

  “No, I just want them to wonder who the hell's calling Jerome Able.”

  “The Odyssean mind never rests. Well, I’m going home and to bed. I suggest you do the same.”

  Patrokis glanced around the big empty
VOMIT headquarters and shrugged. “I’m already home.”

  Their room at the Mayflower Hotel was much like their previous room except this one was on the fourth floor instead of the fifth. Their topcoats again were on the bed. Colonel Ralph Millwed sat on the edge of it. General Walker Hudson and his rank again occupied the room's only comfortable chair. Neither had wanted anything to drink and the General had just lighted a cigar without apology.

  He blew the smoke to his left and away from Millwed before he said, “That phone call,” but didn’t bother to complete his sentence.

  “It could have been a simple mistake. Some guest, direct-dialing another room, could’ve hit a four instead of a five.” There was no conviction in Millwed's tone.

  “Well, it’d be smart of Jerome Able to empty out his safe-deposit box at the Riggs Bank, cancel his VISA card and join the ranks of the disappeared.”

  “Able disappears tomorrow,” the Colonel said, “replaced by Gordon C. Beale.”

  “What's the ‘C’ for?”

  “Collin,” Millwed said, then asked, “How’d he sound when he called—Hank Viar?”

  “Neutral. But he was born neutral and’ll stay that way as long as he's on our payroll at—I forget how much.”

  “Two thousand a month. Cash.”

  “Viar claims he didn’t tell Winfield anything the old crock didn’t already know. And certainly nothing Twodees can’t tell him, if he hasn’t already.”

  “Viar drinks too much,” Millwed said.

  “Does he, now? But we knew that, didn’t we, when we gathered him into the fold by offering him just enough cash money to keep him in booze and happy pills? We’re his supply line now and, drunk or sober, Hank Viar’ll never endanger it.”

  “I don’t trust drunks,” Millwed said. “Especially old ones. The closer they get to the end, the more they start thinking about redemption.”

  “That's your religious drunk,” the General said. “But your bedrock atheist drunk like Viar has a belief in the Great Oblivion that's as devout as any Christian drunk's belief in the Great Hereafter.”