Ah, Treachery!

by Ross Thomas

  “In here,” she said, turned and led the way into the living room. Patrokis followed but stopped when he was no more than two steps inside it. He looked around carefully, taking his time, noting the fireless fireplace, the eclectic furniture, the jammed bookcases and, finally, the dead man in the old oak and leather chair with its wide wooden arms.

  “Touch anything?” he said.

  “I touched him for the first time in, I don’t know, ten years—fifteen? I felt for a pulse in his throat. There wasn’t any.”

  Patrokis went slowly over to the body of Henry Viar, stared down at it and at the semiautomatic that lay on the floor close to the dead man's dangling right hand. He then turned to read the one line on the sheet of bond paper in the portable typewriter. With his back still to Shawnee Viar, he asked, “He have insurance?”

  “I guess so. My mother did.”

  Patrokis turned. “Your mother?”

  “I found her after she shot and killed herself. But she was upstairs in the bedroom. It was, I don’t know, almost twenty-five years ago— nineteen-sixty-eight. I was ten and I’d just come home from school. She shot herself right here.” Shawnee Viar used a forefinger to tap her right temple. She turned, looked down at the gun on the rug, then up at Patrokis. “I think they may’ve used the same gun. Wouldn’t that be strange?”

  “Very,” Patrokis said, squatting to inspect the dead man. “Would you like it better if he hadn’t killed himself and somebody else’d shot him?”

  “I get a choice?”

  “Maybe,” he said. “When people shoot themselves in the heart like this they almost always pull the trigger with their thumbs. They don’t have to but most of them do. And once they’ve shot themselves that way, the weapon’ll usually drop into their laps or between their knees to the floor.” He paused. “Unless they’re wearing skirts.”

  “You’re an expert?” she said. “Some kind of authority?”

  “I once investigated eight guys who did it to themselves in the heart, and twenty-two others who stuck their pieces in their mouths and did it the messy way.”

  “What were you—a detective?”

  He shook his head. “I was just somebody they sent around in Vietnam to investigate suicides. It was a kind of punishment duty. I investigated thirty-six of them.”

  “Twenty-two and eight add up to thirty,” she said. “Not thirty-six.”

  “The other six were homicides,” Patrokis said and turned to read the suicide note again.

  “What’d you do to make them punish you?” she said.

  His back was still to her when he said, “I tried to kill myself. I was going for a temple shot, like your mother, but somebody walked through the door, saw what I was up to and threw his Zippo at me.”

  “What happened?”

  “I still pulled the trigger but my aim was off.” He turned and tapped the right side of his head a few inches above and beyond his ear. “The round zipped in and out. They put a metal plate in.”

  “Ever try it again?” she said.

  “I found a cure.”

  “What?”

  “I discovered I had an overwhelming curiosity about what happens next.” He studied her for several moments. “You ever think about suicide?”

  “Only when I’m awake.”

  He nodded, then asked, “Well, what d’you want your father to be—a homicide victim or a suicide?”

  She closed her eyes, swayed slightly, opened them and the swaying stopped. “I really do get a choice?”

  Patrokis nodded again.

  “Which is simpler?”

  “For you? Suicide.”

  “But you think somebody killed him, don’t you?”

  “Yes. And if I think that, so will the cops. But I can pickup the piece with a pencil and lay it on his lap, or maybe let it fall between his legs to the rug and the cops’ll probably call it suicide. His prints’ll be all over it and they won’t find anyone else's—unless you fooled around with it.”

  “I didn’t touch it,” she said.

  “When they find out he's ex-CIA,” Patrokis said, “they’ll make a courtesy call to Langley, who’ll be relieved that Henry Viar died by his own hand and not by somebody else's. A murdered CIA guy, even a retired one, always raises the specter of scandal, old grudges, treachery and nameless foreign powers. On the other hand, CIA suicides are usually regarded as regrettable but neat, logical and fitting.”

  “Why was he killed?” she said.

  “I don’t know, but if I don’t fix things, the cops might wonder why there's no blowback on his right hand and how come the piece is lying where it is. Then they’ll ask you a lot of questions about where you were today and where you went and what you did and who you saw while poor Dad here was being murdered. If they think it's suicide, they’ll ask you all that anyway but won’t pay much attention to your answers.”

  “What else will they ask, if they think it's suicide?” “They’ll want to know if he had any money worries, health problems, or disappointments.”

  “That's all he did have,” she said.

  The next question was as casual as Patrokis could make it. “You think he killed himself?” “No.”

  “You going to tell the cops that?” “No.”

  “Then I’d better call them,” Patrokis said and headed for the phone.

  The last Metropolitan Police homicide detective left shortly after 11 P.M .and at 11:17 P.M .a very junior CIA employee dropped by to offer the agency's condolences. Shawnee Viar listened to him in the foyer, thanked him and sent him off into the night.

  “They used to send them out in pairs,” Patrokis said after she returned to the living room, where the only trace of her dead father was a half-empty pack of Pall Malls. “Condolence teams. One old guy and one young guy. I don’t think they have that many old guys left now.”

  “You ever work for them?” she said. “Not really.”

  “Either you did or you didn’t.”

  “I handled the occasional chore for them. In Vietnam.” “What about Central America?” “I was out of it by then.” “Of what?” “Special activities.”

  She turned and went to a small secretary desk. “I’d better show you something,” she said, lowered the desk's lid and began opening drawers.

  Patrokis waited, then said, “Show me what?”

  “A picture of my dad and three guys in Central America. In El Salvador.” She searched the last drawer, closed it, turned and said, “It was here yesterday because he’d showed it to me the night before. Now it's gone.”

  “Who were they—the three guys?”

  She stared at him, chewing on her lower lip. “I can show you one of them.” “How?”

  Instead of replying, she went to her large purse, took out the videocassette, examined it briefly and said, “I’ll have to rewind it.” She then switched on the TV set, slid the cassette into the VCR and pressed rewind. “Like a beer or something?” she said.

  “I don’t think so,” Patrokis said.

  They sat side by side in easy chairs and silence, waiting for the tape to rewind. She then used the remote to press “Play.” A wide static shot of the motel bedroom came on the screen. There was no sound and the camera didn’t move. Then Shawnee Viar and Colonel Ralph Millwed tumbled onto the bed naked except for her boots. The two-person audience watched the tape in silence. After it ended, she used the remote to switch off the set, then turned to Patrokis and asked, “Know him?”

  “Colonel Ralph Waldo Millwed. Who picked who up?”

  “It was a kind of mutual selection by the frozen pizzas in the Georgetown Safeway. On Wisconsin. He didn’t think I knew who he was but I did from that photo my dad’d showed me. He sure knew who I was all right.”

  “How’d it play out?”

  “After the sex stuff? He threatened to send a copy of the tape to Langley with his face whited out somehow.”

  “Unless you did what?”

  “Monitor everyone Hank saw, called, wrote or faxed and make
two phone reports a day—one at noon, one at midnight.” “What’d you say?”

  “I called him by name, let him know my husband’d died of AIDS, which is true, and that I’m HIV positive, which isn’t true. I told him to stay away from Hank and me or I’d send the tape to the Army along with proof I’m HIV positive.”

  Patrokis stared at her for a long time before he said, “You’re lucky.”

  She frowned. “Lucky?”

  “That you’re still alive,” he said.

  CHAPTER 27

  The next morning at 5:23 A.M., as if on schedule, Edd Partain heard the faint clink from the kitchen of cup against saucer. He again rose silently from the sleeping Jessica Carver's bed, pulled on his pants and plaid robe and went barefoot into the kitchen where the Braun coffeemaker was at work and General Winfield already had set out two cups and saucers.

  They muttered their good mornings and silently watched the machine dribble coffee into the glass pot. When there was enough for two cups, the General filled one, handed it to Partain, then filled his own. They took seats at the old scarred breakfast table and neither spoke until after their first few sips.

  The General said, “Patrokis called me around midnight at the hospital. Three A.M. his time. Henry Viar is dead. The Washington police think it was suicide. Patrokis disagrees—privately. He thinks someone shot Viar through the heart, using Henry's own weapon. A thirty-two semi-automatic.”

  “I’m sorry,” Partain said, surprised that he really was. “Who found him?”

  “His daughter. Shawnee.” “When?”

  “Around four-thirty P.M. East Coast time. One-thirty Pacific time. She must’ve discovered him while we were at lunch with Mr. Kite.” “The daughter called you at VOMIT and got Nick instead?” The General nodded.

  “Well, Nick's certainly the expert on suicide.”

  The General nodded again, sipped more coffee and said, “Henry left a brief unsigned note in his typewriter. It read, ‘Had enough? Try suicide. I did.’ “

  Partain shook his head. “Sounds like somebody trying to sound like Viar.”

  “So it does,” the General said, rose, went to the coffeemaker, poured himself a fresh cup, warmed up Partain's, resumed his seat at the table and said, “There's more. It involves Shawnee Viar and Colonel Millwed.”

  Partain started to say something, decided not to and listened silently for four minutes to the General's report, which was a concise, dispassionate tale of motel sex in the afternoon, including an account of how Shawnee Viar obtained a copy of the tape.

  When he finished, Partain asked, “She went straight home from the motel?”

  “Yes.”

  “Then Millwed couldn’t’ve—”

  “No,” the General said, interrupting, “he couldn’t’ve. Patrokis suspects that whoever was operating the camera in the next motel room gave Millwed a ride back to his car. The Colonel had left it at the Last Call, according to Shawnee. That's a bar almost in Bethesda. Know it?”

  Partain shook his head. “I don’t know Washington that well.”

  “Patrokis says the distance would’ve made it impossible for Mill-wed to have killed Viar.”

  “Why the hell would Millwed want to kill him? Hank was probably their errand boy, their gofer, their on-call dissembler. If Millwed’d wanted to kill somebody, it’d be Shawnee Viar so he could get his tape back.”

  “Patrokis thinks it may have been whoever stole the photograph.” “What photograph?”

  “Of Viar, Millwed, Colonel Walker Hudson and you. In El Salvador.”

  “What does a photograph prove?”

  Winfield sighed. “That's what I asked Patrokis.”

  At 8 A.M. the telephone in Millicent Altfford's living room rang. General Winfield, Jessica Carver and Partain were all in the room, sharing various sections of the Los Angeles Times and the New York Times. Because Partain was closest, he answered the phone with a hello.

  “This is Emory Kite,” the deep growling voice said. “I got a report on Jack, the dead doorman. You want it by phone or in person?”

  “How do we pay you over the phone?”

  Kite chuckled. “You’ll pay me. That's my business. Making people pay up.”

  “We’d like it in person.”

  “Okay,” Kite said. “How ‘bout right away?”

  “Right away's fine,” Partain said.

  Kite sat in an easy chair with the glass of orange juice he’d accepted after turning down an offer of coffee. Seated on a couch were Partain and Jessica Carver. General Winfield occupied an easy chair opposite Emory Kite.

  The short detective drank half of his orange juice, put the glassdown on a table and addressed General Winfield. “I don’t know if the lady's supposed to hear all this.” “She is,” the General said.

  “Okay, then. Here we go: John Byford Thomson with no ‘p.’ Born January thirty-first, nineteen-sixty, Boulder, Colorado. Son of Mr. and Mrs. Richard Clark Thomson; he, insurance salesman; she, housewife. One younger brother, one older sister, both married. Jack had two years at the University of Colorado, majored in speech, whatever that is, and minored in Spanish. Quit college to take a staff radio announcer's job at KOA in Denver. That was in nineteen. Fired, nineteen-eighty-three, NRG.”

  “What's NRG?” Jessica Carver said.

  “No reason given,” said Kite and went on with his no-notes report. “Hired by Golden Assets, Inc., a boiler room outfit that peddled penny stocks by phone. Jack apparently gave good phone because he stayed with Golden Assets till the state closed ‘em down eighteen months later. Thomson must’ve saved a few bucks because he went to Mexico, lived mostly in Guadalajara and claimed to be an independent travel consultant, whatever that is, until the Mexicans kicked him out in nineteen-eighty-nine. By nineteen-ninety he's here in L.A., where he hooks up with a woman agent who gets him a little acting work, mostly two- and three-line stuff in TV pilots that never went anywhere.

  “She also gets him some radio commercials and TV voiceovers, but never enough to live on. But Jack joins the Screen Actors Guild and then, in nineteen-ninety, a little over two years ago, goes to work here as night doorman. He never had any bank accounts or credit cards, but he did join the SAG credit union. His salary here at the Eden was fourteen hundred a month, plus tips.

  “Well, he starts depositing one hundred, two hundred, and once or twice even three hundred in his credit union account every month. I figure it's his tips or maybe radio money. All this time he's living inthis crummy studio apartment just off Pico in west L.A. Drives an ‘81 Honda Civic. But on November fifth last year he deposits five thousand cash in his credit union account.

  “Jack's got no steady girlfriends, no boyfriends, no priors, but he still gets shot dead two nights ago just outside here down by the front entrance. Thirty-caliber round. Cops think it's some kind of sporting rifle. His folks in Boulder want him cremated and his ashes shipped home to them. I guess the only thing really interesting about Jack was his time in Guadalajara, but that’ll cost you an extra two-fifty because that's what I hadda wire a private cop down there that speaks English. The interesting stuff is that our friend Jack wasn’t just running a travel consultant business. He was also running a stud service and blackmail game on his mostly middle-aged women clients. After the Mexican cops listen to a few of the girls’ complaints, they tell Jack to take the next flight out. He catches the bus instead.”

  Emory Kite stopped talking, looked around the room and said, “Any questions?”

  “What do the L.A. cops think?” Partain asked.

  “Well, they don’t exactly confide in me, but a guy they do talk to told me, for two hundred bucks, that they’ve almost decided to write it off as another random drive-by shooting. But an upscale drive-by, what with that limo and all.”

  “Just another homicide, then,” the General said.

  “Doesn’t mean the homicide guys aren’t gonna work on it,” Kite said. “But it's not way up on their must-solve list.”

  “W
hat do you think, Mr. Kite?” Jessica Carver said.

  He looked at her thoughtfully. “Well, if it was me looking into it, I’d try and find out where that five thousand cash money came from. Your friend Jack lived sorta like a hermit—except for his making the rounds looking for acting work. He seemed to do his job here okay. No complaints from management. He saved his money. Drove an oldclunker. Didn’t do dope. Didn’t drink a lot. Went to the pictures in the afternoon when they’re cheap. Didn’t spend a lot on clothes, but out here you don’t have to. Pair of jeans and a nice clean T-shirt out here and you’re all dressed up. So where does the five thousand cash money come from? About the only thing I could think of is maybe he made a porn picture.”

  “That wouldn’t have done his career any good,” she said.

  “What career?” Kite said, finished his orange juice, stood up, looked at the General and said, “Anything else?”

  Winfield rose, produced a plain white envelope from his breast pocket, added a $50 and four $100 bills to it, walked over and handed it to the detective. “Thank you, Mr. Kite. You were very efficient. We appreciate it.”

  “Glad to be of help.”

  The General asked, “Are you going back to Washington now?”

  “Haven’t decided yet. All depends on how things work out.” He nodded goodbye to Carver and Partain, turned, left the room and, from the foyer, called, “See you back in Washington, General.”

  There was a silence after Kite's departure that lasted until Jessica Carver said, “Four years in Guadalajara?”

  “How long’d your friend Dave Laney been going down there?” Partain said.

  “Five or six years.”

  General Winfield sighed. “Guadalajara is a very, very large city with an extraordinarily large North American population. There is no evidence whatever that the doorman and your friend ever met there.”

  “But it sure makes things neat, doesn’t it?” she said. “First Dave is dumped out dead on the driveway here. Then a day later, somebody waits in a limo across the street and takes out Jack. Drive-by shooting—like hell. A witness removal program is what it looks like.”