Ah, Treachery!

by Ross Thomas

  “Simple,” she said. “Outlaw bundling. Do away with soft money. Provide Federal financing. Establish campaign spending limits—proportional ones, of course—so somebody running for the Senate in New York can spend more than somebody running for it in South Dakota. You know all the cures. It's just that most of you guys don’t want to take them.”

  The Congressman nodded thoughtfully, then turned to MacArthur, who was staring at Millicent Altford, his mouth slightly open. “I see no need for Mrs. Altford to appear in person before the subcommittee, do you, Will?”

  MacArthur closed his mouth, swallowed, then opened it to say, “Maybe she could just write a letter instead, setting forth her views.”

  “Would you be willing to do that—write us a letter? It needn’t be long.”

  “Happy to,” she said.

  “One last question?” the Congressman said. “Certainly.”

  “Would you accept me as a—well, as a client?”

  “In a general election? No question.”

  The Congressman twinkled at her. “I may get in touch with you later in the year.”

  “That’ll be too late,” she said. “I just got sworn in.”

  “And four men and at least two women are already thinking about running against you in the primary.”

  Before the Congressman could respond, MacArthur said, “Your bodyguard's here.”

  She looked up, saw Partain approaching, then smiled at MacArthur. “Who says he's my bodyguard, Willy?”

  CHAPTER 32

  After Jerry, the driver, turned his cab off Connecticut Avenue and into Kalorama Circle, Partain asked Millicent Altford if they were lost. “I heard that,” Jerry said. “Well?”

  “We picked up a tail.”

  “That I know,” Partain said. “But what I don’t know is why you’d head for a circle drive to lose it.”

  “Don’t wanta lose him. What I wanta do is let you all out, then do me a drop-behind, get on his butt and stick there till I find out where he lives and who he is.”

  “What's he driving?” Altford asked.

  “He's not,” Jerry said. “Got himself an old black ‘seventies Caddy limo with a driver. Thinks it makes him invisible.”

  The cab slowed, then stopped, and Altford said, “We’re here. The littlest house on the circle.”

  Looking to his right, Partain saw a four-story gray stone house that was tall enough to need an elevator and large enough to serve as an embassy for either Hungary, Portugal or the erstwhile Yugoslavia.

  As if anticipating his question, Altford said, “The General's second wife died and left it to him along with a few million dollars that kept company with the one and a half million his folks left him.”

  “What happened to the first wife?”

  “She broke her neck and left leg skiing Aspen in ‘sixty-seven while he was in Vietnam. She left him another million or so and her house in Aspen. He never quite got over her.”

  “Or you,” Partain said.

  “Or me,” she admitted. “Or Hank Viar's wife for that matter, who also had a few bucks.”

  “You all ever gonna get out?” Jerry said. “You have Vernon's number?” she asked. “Sure.”

  “When you find out who's following us, call me.” “Right.”

  “Where's the old Caddy now?” Partain said.

  “Three houses back, peeping around the curve. Lights off. Still invisible.”

  Once out of the cab, Partain took her left arm and felt it stiffen through her thick dark gray cashmere coat. There was just enough street and security lighting for him to inspect the house that had a black slate roof, a lot of black or dark gray shutters and a deeply recessed entryway.

  When they reached the front door he let her ring the bell while he turned to watch Jerry's cab pull away. Seconds later the old black Cadillac limousine, its rear windows tinted, its lights off, drifted slowly by the General's house.

  The thick carved door was opened by Winfield, who smiled and said, “Come in and let me take your coats, or coat, since I notice Mr. Partain's not wearing one.”

  Once they were inside, Altford turned, let the General have hercoat and said, “There's something you could do for me tomorrow, sugar.”

  “Anything.”

  “Take Twodees in hand and buy him a couple of decent suits, a jacket, some pants and a nice but not too heavy topcoat he can wear in California on the nine days of the year he’ll need it. Throw in some shirts, ties, socks and underwear. Charge everything, give me the receipts and I’ll write you a check.”

  With Altford's coat now over his arm, the General turned to Partain and said, “I don’t wish to impose.”

  “What I wear embarrasses her,” Partain said. “Maybe you can pick out something that won’t.”

  “What time?” the General said.

  “Around noon—right after Hank Viar's funeral?”

  “It's at eleven, I’m told, so why don’t I pick you up at the Mayflower at, say, ten-fifteen and we’ll go to the funeral together. May I lend you a shirt, tie and jacket?”

  Partain agreed with thanks and the General turned back to Milli-cent Altford. “Are you planning to go?”

  “I liked Violet a lot, but I despised him and can’t think of any reason why I ought to be at his funeral.”

  The General nodded his understanding. “I remember what good friends you and Violet were.”

  “You should,” she said. “You introduced us.”

  Partain guessed that the General's library on the second floor contained at least 9,000 volumes. It was about the size of Partain's high school library in Bakersfield but smelled pleasantly of leather and furniture polish instead of library paste and janitor. Partain wanted to spend months in it.

  There were a number of high-back upholstered chairs and just-so floor lamps. There were also a big carved desk and a black walnut magazine table and a couple of rolling ladders to reach the top three or four shelves.

  Two big leather chairs were drawn up in front of the fireplace. Curled up in the left one, her hands wrapped around a mug of hot chocolate, was Jessica Carver, who rose, put the mug down, kissed her mother on the cheek, patted Partain's and announced that there was a pot of just-made hot chocolate in a Pullman kitchen behind the folding doors.

  Her mother said she wanted a stiff drink, not chocolate, but Partain chose chocolate and the General served everyone, not forgetting a whiskey for himself. After they were settled around the fire, General Winfield asked, “How did it go with the Congressman?”

  “I lectured him and the subcommittee's new counsel on ancient history and then discoursed briefly on the primacy of money in politics. By the time I’d finished, they were pleading with me not to appear before them, but write ‘em a letter instead. A short one.”

  “Were they—competent?” the General asked.

  “They were young. The Congressman was a smart-enough forty-two or-three. The counsel was thirty, if that, and tiresome. He may’ve been the one who set me up. I’ll nose around town tomorrow and try and find out if any of those Little Rock kiddy snots put him up to it. If so, I’ll do something about it.”

  “What?” Partain asked.

  “Explain the rule.”

  Partain smiled. “Which is?”

  “Don’t fuck with Millie Altford.”

  “How far back did the ancient history lecture go?” the General asked, but before Altford could reply, the telephone rang. The General murmured an apology, rose and crossed the room to answer it.

  Partain looked at Jessica Carver and said, “Want to go to Henry Viar's funeral tomorrow?” “Why should I?”

  “There’re a couple of people I’d like you to meet. Nick Patrokis and Viar's daughter, Shawnee.”

  She looked at him for a moment and said, “You want a second opinion on her, don’t you?”

  It was then that the General said the call was for Altford. She gave him an inquiring look before reaching for the phone, and the General, his hand over its mouthpiece, murm
ured, “Sylvia.”

  “Aw, shit,” Altford said, took the phone, put it to her ear and said, “What's wrong, honey?”

  She listened, then shuddered visibly, sucked in a deep breath and used it to say, “I’m so sorry, Sylvia, so very, very sorry. Where is he?” She listened, nodded and said, “I’ll be there in ten minutes.”

  Back at the fireplace, the General at her side, Altford took another deep breath and said, “Jerry's been shot. He's in intensive care at Sib-ley and they don’t know if he’ll make it. That was Sylvia. His wife. I have to be there.”

  “I’ll drive you, if the General will lend us his car,” Partain said.

  “Of course,” Winfield said.

  Millicent Altford studied Partain for a second or two, then nodded and said with great formality, “That's very kind of you, Mr. Partain.”

  CHAPTER 33

  Sibley Memorial Hospital was out on Loughboro Road in northwest Washington and after Partain found himself on Massachusetts Avenue, heading more or less northwest, he increased the speed of the borrowed BMW convertible to 60 miles per hour until he was stopped by a red light.

  While they waited for the green he asked Altford, “Who is he? Jerry?”

  Staring straight ahead she said, “He's my first husband's bastard son.”

  “The husband who didn’t finish the inside loop?” She turned, examined him indifferently and said, “Jessie already told you, didn’t she?” “Not about Jerry.”

  “He was born in nineteen-fifty-seven, the son of Harry Montague, my future husband, and the young black maid who worked for Harry's folks. Harry and I were engaged when I found out about it and I told him the wedding was off unless he acknowledged the kid legally and did something for the mother financially. The son of a bitch laughed at me.”

  “Not much of a civil libertarian, Harry,” Partain said.

  She shrugged. “In Dallas then who was? So I went to Texarkana the next weekend and talked to my former Congressman, the sainted Wright Patman. He told me there wasn’t anything he could do since Harry didn’t even live in his district, but then he grinned and said he had an idea but couldn’t tell me about it.”

  “You asked a U.S. Representative to involve himself in a domestic squabble?”

  “Maybe it sounds like a domestic squabble to you, but to me it was a civil rights issue and back then I was the biggest mouth in Dallas on that.”

  “I still don’t see why a Congressman—”

  She interrupted. “Because the Montague family was in the airplane parts business and the Federal government was their biggest customer. And because in Texas you damn well mess with whatever gets you elected and my kinfolks had lots of votes and lots of friends in Patman's district.”

  “Anything happen?” he asked.

  “The light's green,” she said and after a silence of two blocks, looked at Partain and said, “What do you care, anyway?”

  “Somebody just shot one of your baby-sitters and I care just one hell of a lot about who and what he was.”

  “Okay,” she said. “Harry and I were still arguing about the baby and his mother and we still weren’t married but sleeping together almost every night at this place his folks had out at the lake. That's where we were when the phone rang one morning and Senator Lyndon B. Johnson's on the line.”

  “No kidding?”

  “No kidding. Johnson was talking so loud I could hear snatches of what he was telling Harry. Stuff like ‘doing right by that little nigger baby’ and how Harry’d also better do ‘something nice for that baby'smama.’ It went on and on and Harry Montague, the Korean War Marine pilot and almost ace, shivered and shriveled and damn near wet his drawers.”

  “So you got married.”

  “Yeah, we got married but not until Harry agreed that ‘H. Montague’ would go where it said ‘father’ on Jerry's birth certificate.”

  “Did his mother come to work for you and Harry then?”

  Again, she turned to stare at him. “You sure like soupy endings, don’t you? No, she didn’t come to work for us. All Harry ever did was mail her ten ten-dollar bills the first of every month, if he didn’t forget and I had to remind him. Most months he forgot. But the money stopped when Harry went up in his old biplane and failed to make the loop.”

  “What happened to Jerry and his mother?” Partain said.

  “I’m coming to that. Right after I married Dr. Carver, I told him about Jerry and his mama, and the doctor—devout secular humanist that he was—suggested she become our live-in housekeeper and bring the kid with her.”

  “A happy ending after all,” Partain said.

  “It was for a while. Then Jessica came along and Jerry sort of looked after her some. After the doctor died in ‘sixty-nine, I managed to keep us all together ‘til Jerry got out of high school. After that he sort of scuffled around for a while, dealing dope mostly, but then he straightened out, went to Denver and got on as an undercover narcotics cop. That lasted nine years until he got shot, retired on a small disability, moved to Washington, landed a job at the National Archives, bought himself a cab and moonlighted whenever he could.”

  “He ever change his last name?” Partain said. “No. Why?”

  “I don’t know,” he said. “I think I would’ve.”

  By the time they reached Sibley Memorial, Jerry Montague was dead from a bullet wound in his head. Altford tried to comfort Jerry's handsome wife and pretty young daughter while Partain talked to a pair of bored homicide detectives.

  To them it was another in a long string of random Washington cabdriver shootings. The only thing unusual about it, they said, was the eyewitness testimony of a homeless man they called “Billy the Bum,” who claimed to have seen it all happen.

  The older of the detectives described what Billy the Bum claimed to have seen. “There's this old black Caddy limo rolling along Mass Ave about seven blocks west of Wisconsin, okay?” the detective said.

  Partain nodded.

  “And not far behind it, according to Billy, comes this indy cab with the owner-victim behind the wheel. Got the picture?” Partain said he did.

  “Well, the old limo starts to buck and snort and backfire like it's got engine trouble, then stops dead. The cab, it stops maybe fifty feet behind it.”

  “Now comes the funny part,” said the second detective. “The limo driver keeps turning the engine over trying to start it, but it won’t fire up. So finally the limo's left rear door opens and out gets this real short guy, I mean short, who starts walking back to the cab, spreading his hands out like, you know, he's helpless and what the hell can he do? The cabdriver just sits there behind the wheel, staring at him.”

  The first detective again took over. “When the short guy reaches the cab, the cabbie won’t roll down his window. The short guy taps on it politely and says something Billy the Bum can’t hear and that's when the cabbie lowers the window. When he does, the shortguy comes up with a small semiautomatic of some kind, sticks it in the cabbie's ear and blows him away. Then he looks around, the short guy, I mean, strolls back to the limo, gets in and away they go.”

  “How short is short?”

  The first detective nodded his appreciation of Partain's question. “Yeah, I know what you mean. Billy the Bum's six-two or-three and skinny as a pole. So short to him might mean five-five or-six. But we pressed him on it pretty good and he swears the shooter was no more’n five even. Maybe less.”

  “Did Billy the Bum call it in?” Partain asked.

  “Nah,” the second detective said. “He just waited for us to show up. Right after a shot's heard in that neighborhood, you probably got nineteen different houses dialing nine-one-one.”

  “We figure it was a busted drug deal.”

  Partain nodded as if he liked the notion and asked, “I don’t suppose Billy the Bum got the license number of the old limo?”

  “Billy don’t think that's way up there on his list of civic responsibilities,” the detective said.

  Just after midn
ight Partain let himself out through the General's front door and started walking toward Connecticut Avenue in search of a taxi. The temperature had dropped into the low twenties and he felt the cold immediately. He had gone less than a hundred feet when he heard the rapid clicking footsteps. He turned to find Jessica Carver hurrying toward him, a blue airline bag slung over her right shoulder.

  “It's turned into sort of an Irish wake back there,” she said. “That's why I left.”

  “Millie's getting nostalgic and a little bombed and she and Ver-non’ll probably wind up in bed.” He nodded.

  “So I thought tonight I’d sleep in her room at the hotel.” “Or mine,” he said. “Right,” she said. “Or yours.”

  CHAPTER 34

  The Memory Room of the funeral home on Wisconsin Avenue seemed to have been designed for those who died without leaving more than a dozen mourners, for that was the number of chairs that had been set out, four wide and three deep.

  Seven of the twelve chairs were occupied. Partain and Jessica Carver sat in the second row on the right just behind the kid from the CIA, who had delivered the agency's condolences the night of Henry Viar's death. Next to Partain and Carver were General Winfield and Nick Patrokis. In the back row by himself was Colonel Ralph Millwed in dress uniform. In the front row, seated together, were Shawnee Viar and Major General Walker L. Hudson.

  A closed wood casket, painted to look like old silver, rested on two trestles draped in dark blue velvet. Four mourners had sent flowers. Partain had sent the roses and suspected that the three other floral tributes were from Vernon Winfield, General Hudson and the CIA.

  The muted CD strings ended promptly at 11 A.M. Shawnee Viar, wearing no makeup and a black dress that came to mid-calf, rose,turned and said, “Thank you for coming. General Walker Hudson has offered to say a few words. General Hudson.”

  She sat down and General Hudson rose, turning to face his audience of six, including Shawnee Viar. Hudson was also in dress uniform but the only medal he wore was the long blue and silver badge of the combat infantryman. He looked grave, if not particularly sad, as he inspected each member of his audience, then snapped open his purselike mouth and said, “We’re here to mourn the passing of an old friend, Henry Viar, and to offer our sympathy and condolences to his daughter, Shawnee.”