by Ross Thomas
“You have any rubberbands?”
“Fredl saves them. She puts them on the kitchen doorknob.” I got three off the knob, gave them to Padillo, and he snapped them around the stacks of money and put the bills into the briefcase and closed it.
“I lost the key,” I said.
“It doesn’t matter.”
The door chimes rang again and I looked at Padillo. “It’s your house,” he said.
“But it’s your popularity.”
I crossed the room and opened the door. The man who stood there wore a plaid sports jacket, an open blue flannel shirt, dark grey slacks and three vertical creases in his forehead. It was a sign he was thinking. His name was Stan Burm-ser and he had once been able to tell Padillo where he should go in Europe and what he should do when he got there. I hadn’t seen him in more than a year. It had been in Bonn and even then he had been wearing the three vertical creases in his forehead. He seemed to think a lot.
“Hello, Burmser,” I said.
He smiled and the creases disappeared. The smile was as friendly as a fifth letter from the finance company. “I’m looking for Padillo.”
“Your search is ended.” I stepped back and held the door open. “A Mr. Burmser to see you.”
Padillo didn’t get up nor did he say anything. He watched Burmser cross the room and stand in front of him. Burmser had his hands stuck deep in his jacket pockets. He rocked back and forth on his heels as he stared at Padillo for what seemed to be long moments.
“We got a report two days ago that you were back,” Burmser said.
Padillo nodded. “Still got your trade-off with the FBI. The one-way trade.”
“They make mistakes sometimes.”
“And you just dropped by at nine o’clock in the morning to make sure. You’ll be late for Sunday School.”
“I’m Catholic.”
“Funny, you don’t look it.”
“You still have those tired old jokes.”
“One gets fond of them.”
“I’ve got a new one. It was too good to keep. That’s why I came over myself.”
“I’m ready.”
“You’re marked, Padillo. You’re in the book.”
“That’s not new. I’ve been in somebody or other’s book for years.”
“Not in this one. The British have got you down and they’ve got it assigned.”
“They wouldn’t tell you about it if they did.”
“You’re not the only one who’s doubled a few.”
“I suppose not.”
“And that’s what’s so funny.”
“I bet you’re coming to the punch-line now.”
Burmser’s grin got wider. “That’s right. I am. They handed the assignment to someone you yourself doubled. They handed it to Philip Price.”
“What have they got against me?” Padillo asked. He could have been asking if the bus stopped here, or across the street.
“I don’t know; I don’t really care.”
“Then why travel all the way in from McLean to tell me about it?”
“I live in Cleveland Park.”
“It must be pretty there in the fall.”
“Price is good. You doubled him; you should know how good he is.”
“He also works for you.”
“That’s right, he does.”
“You could call him off.”
“I could, but the British would have too many questions for him if he didn’t carry out his assignment. It might bust him wide open. He’s been fairly useful to us. We’d like him to continue that way.”
“And I’m not,” Padillo said.
Burmser quit smiling. “You’re nothing to us, Padillo. We’ve wiped you off. There isn’t a trace of you left. You never existed as far as we’re concerned.”
“How far back did you go?”
“All the way.”
Padillo smiled. “That’s a lot of territory and a lot of years. Why tell me about it?”
“I was told to.”
“I must have a friend left some place in the organization.”
“One is all.”
Padillo shrugged. “All right, Burmser, you got to play Old Blind Pew and pass out the black spot this morning. Anything else?”
“Just this: We never heard of you. If you’re in trouble, you’re alone. There won’t be any phone calls, no hush-ups. The fix won’t be put in anywhere. You’ve wanted out for a long time, Padillo, and now you are. As far as we’re concerned you’re a Mexican or a Spaniard who’s in this country illegally, but we’re not even sure about that, because we never heard of you. You’re nothing.” Burmser was breathing a little hard when he was through.
Padillo turned to me: “You think I should tell the shop steward about this?”
“Ask him about what happens to all the money you’ve contributed to the pension plan.”
Burmser smiled his final-notice smile. “You’re breaking me up. But, gentlemen, I’ve enjoyed it.” He turned and headed for the door. When he was there he stopped with his hand on the knob. “You were pretty good at one time, Padillo. Pretty good or lucky. Now you’d better be both.”
“Tell the old gang hello for me,” Padillo said.
Burmser looked at Padillo. “They never heard of you,” he said. He opened the door and left.
“He enjoyed himself,” I said.
“But he cleared Price up.”
“I’d say that Price told the British that you were actually going to shoot Van Zandt and they told him to take you out.”
“So it seems.”
“What’s Price after, a pat on the head?”
“A bonus.”
“From whom?”
“The British. He tells them that I’m planning the attempt, they tell him to take me out, and he does. They’ll give him a bonus.”
“What then?”
“He hooks up with Dymec to do the assassination for real.”
“Now you can tell me that this is all in keeping with the master plan. The one you have written down on the back of a match book.”
“More or less.” He walked into the kitchen with the cup and saucer. When he came back, I asked him: “What’s the less part?”
“I hadn’t planned on making a hero out of Price. But now we’re going to have to.”
NINETEEN
Sylvia Underhill walked in from the bedroom before Padillo could tell me the rest of the master plan—or make it up—I was never sure which. He stopped talking and we both said good morning.
“I heard you with someone and I thought I’d overslept,” she said. She was wearing a blue wool suit with big white buttons and the warm glow on her face seemed a little radiant to be the result of just six hours’ sleep.
“An old acquaintance dropped by,” Padillo said. “He couldn’t stay long.”
“May I cook breakfast?” she asked.
“Just toast for me,” I said.
“That’ll be fine,” Padillo said.
“Do you mind if I scrounge an egg or two?” she asked. “I’m famished.”
“It’s all in the refrigerator.”
Padillo followed her into the kitchen and stayed there until she came out with the toast, some more coffee, and bacon and eggs for her. There was a dining area, but we ignored it and used the coffee table.
“We have the meeting at eleven this morning,” Padillo told the girl. “I want you to stay here. I want the door locked and bolted. I don’t want you to let anyone in but McCorkle or me. No exceptions. If the phone rings, don’t answer it.”
“When should I expect you back?”
“About three—after we meet with Hardman and the people he’s bringing.” He looked at his watch and turned to me: “We’d better be going. I left your car in the garage downstairs. You want to use it?”
“We may as well.”
“Put the chain lock on when we leave,” he told Sylvia. Padillo picked up the black attaché case and we went out. He waited until he heard the lock slide into
place.
“That wouldn’t stop anyone who really wanted in,” I said.
“But it would slow them down long enough for her to get that .25 out of her purse.”
The car was running well and I cut down to M Street and turned left, past St. Matthew’s Church where they held the services for Kennedy, and then around Scott Circle and under Thomas Circle and down Massachusetts Avenue to Mount Vernon Place and right on Seventh Street. Our progress was slow because of church traffic, but we finally found a place to park in Chinatown and walked back to Seventh.
We climbed the stairs to the shabby office and unlocked the door and went in. It still had its echo of sallow little men talking fast over a battery of telephones. “Try the chair behind the desk,” I said. “You can put your feet up.”
Padillo placed the attaché case on the desk and tried my suggestion. I took one of the folding chairs that faced the door. We waited only three minutes until someone knocked. Padillo said come in and it was Magda Shadid. She wore a light wool coat which she took off so we could see her rust-colored knit dress.
“You look beautiful,” Padillo told her.
She smiled at him and then at me. “Do you like it? I wore it just for you.”
“It accents your best features,” he said.
“They’re still available for closer inspection.”
“I’ll keep that in mind.”
“And you, Mr. Sad Face, wouldn’t you like to be cheered up? You look so sad.”
“He’s just hung over,” Padillo said.
She moved over to me and ran her hand through my hair. “I could cheer you up.”
“Watch out. I bite when I’m hung over.”
She had extremely dark eyes and if the makeup she used around them was intended to make them seem merry and wicked, it was successful. “That might be interesting,” she said, “if you don’t bite too hard.”
“I think you’ve got the message across, precious,” Padillo said. “Why don’t you sit down and cross your legs and be decorative.”
“It’s all so dirty here. Why can’t we meet some place that doesn’t look like a doss house?”
“For what you’re getting paid, you can’t complain about the accommodations.”
“Paid for what though, Michael?”
“We’ll get to that. Tell me, what do you do with all your money?”
“I invest it in Israeli bonds,” she said, opened her purse, and took out a cigarette. I let her light her own.
Dymec was the next to arrive. He said hello and sat next to Magda; his large capable hands rested calmly on his knees. He sat straight in the metal chair and gazed at nothing. He seemed to have spent a lot of time waiting and knew not to rush it.
Price was last, arriving a few minutes after Dymec. Padillo had been right. Price was tweedy. He wore a grey and black suit that looked as if it needed a shave, a wide maroon wool tie, and grainy brown brogues with thick soles. He put a plaid hat on one of the vacant chairs as he said hello and sat next to Dymec.
“For the benefit of you two,” Padillo said, nodding his head at Magda and Price, “they accepted Dymec as the substitute. They’ve inspected him and they agreed to the price—seventy-five thousand dollars.”
“And we’re to get partial payment today,” Price said.
“That’s right.”
Magda dropped her cigarette on the floor and ground it out with her shoe. It was interesting to watch her ankle wiggle. “I believe my portion of seventy-five thousand will be $18,750 which is most generous, considering the fact that I have yet to do anything except meet in shabby offices and listen to your dreary threats. You have never been overly generous in the past, Michael—with anything. I believe I’ll have to earn my share. So what do I have to do that’s going to be worth that lovely sum?”
“You’ll help us get Mrs. McCorkle away from whoever’s got her.”
“I see. And how do I do that?”
“You walk up to a door, knock on it, and when somebody comes—and they will, because you’re a woman—you’ll produce a gun and tell them that you wish to see Mrs. McCorkle. If they don’t believe you, you may have to use the gun. Your job will be to get them to open up.”
“Do you know where she is?”
“No.”
“Then I’m to be your stalking horse.”
“Something like that, except you could play a more active role.”
“Such as shooting someone.”
“You don’t have to kill them.”
“Just shoot them,” she said sweetly.
“That’s right.”
“For $18,750.”
“No. You’re forgetting the fourteen thousand. For $32,750—which is a great deal of money for shooting anybody in this country.”
“How do you propose to find out where they’re keeping his wife?” Dymec asked.
“We’re still working on it.”
“Any luck?” Price said.
“None so far.”
“If you don’t find her, what then?” Magda said.
“Then you don’t get paid the last half of $18,750. You get the first half for just being on call.”
“All right,” she said. “I accept.”
Padillo turned to her and said in a quick, hard voice: “You’re forgetting something, Magda. You’re not accepting, you’re doing what I tell you to do because you don’t have any choice. I could make you do it for nothing, except that I’ll pay to keep your efficiency up. When you’re free, you tend to get sloppy.”
He turned to Price and Dymec. “Before. you two start talking about whether you accept or not, what I’ve told Magda holds, true for you both: you’re here because I told you to be here. The money is to keep your interest up and to keep you from getting any ideas about pulling a cross.”
Price waved a hand as if he were brushing away a lazy fly. “It’s all been so vague till now, you know. A chap does wonder a bit.”
“All right,” Padillo said, “you can quit wondering. Here’s how it works: Magda, McCorkle and I will be going after McCorkle’s wife while you two pull the fake assassination. We don’t know exactly what we’ll be doing because we don’t know where she is yet. That’s the loose part of the operation. It has to be. Your part isn’t.” He paused and lighted a cigarette.
“The whole point,” he continued, “is to get Mrs. McCorkle back. The secondary phase is to expose the Van Zandt crowd to ridicule—to disclose that they paid out seventy-five thousand dollars to have their own Prime Minister shot and that they paid it to con men.”
“That’s a bit thick,” Price said.
“When it doesn’t come off,” Dymec said, “what do you expect them to do: run down to the Better Business Bureau and file a complaint?”
“Your American is getting better, Dymec.”
“Thank you.”
“You’re going to get cold feet, Dymec.”
“Why?”
“Suppose you actually carried out the assassination. What guarantee do you have that you’d get the rest of the money? None. What guarantee do you have that the Africans simply wouldn’t tip off the law to start looking for you? If you told the law that they hired you, who’d believe you? Especially you. And what difference would it make?”
He paused again. “So here’s what you do, Dymec. You ask them for a letter spelling out the details of their agreement with you. The whole thing. And that letter is to be on their official stationery, signed by Van Zandt, and bearing the official seal. It also has to be witnessed by Boggs and Dar ragh.”
“My God!” Price said.
Dymec looked skeptical. He looked the way I felt. “How would such a letter help?”
“Insurance, man,” Price said. “If they wrote a letter stating that they had hired you to assassinate their Prime Minister, that letter would be priceless. Of course they’d pay up to get the letter back.”
“They’re not that stupid,” Dymec said.
“Have they any reason to doubt that you’re going
to kill Van Zandt?” Padillo said.
Dymec looked at him calmly. He had a fine face for poker. “None.”
“All right. You’re taking all the risk. You’d like to share a little of it. You’d like to make sure you get paid. When the Prime Minister’s dead, and you’re paid, they get the letter back.”
“I could copy it—there are a number of machines that can do that.”
“Not with the official wax seal on it,” Padillo said.
“Who keeps the letter?” Dymec said.
“You do, until it’s all over.”
“I thought you’d have a tricky one, Padillo,” Dymec said. “What happens to the letter then?”
“It falls into Price’s hands.”
“So that’s why I’m in,” Price said.
“That’s right.”
“I turn the letter over to my masters and they expose the entire thing.”
“Right. The British stand to profit more from this exposure than anyone else. You turn the letter over to them and they create the scandal. It should be a juicy one.”
“Who makes the proposition to the Africans?” Dymec said.
“You do.”
“What do I tell them?”
“You tell them that we don’t believe they’re going to release Fredl McCorkle when it’s all over and we want some insurance that they will. The letter will do that. They’ll get it back when we get Mrs. McCorkle. Second, tell them that you’re getting nervous and that you also want some insurance. The letter will do that, too.”
“But I get the letter?” Dymec said.
“That’s right.”
“And then I get it and turn it over to Price who’ll make the best use of it.”
“Yes.”
“Fantastic,” Magda said. “Really fantastic. And you say you’re not working any longer, Michael?”
“I wouldn’t be turning the letter over to the British if I were still working.”
“True. But it all still hinges on one thing, doesn’t it?”
“That’s right.”
“And that’s on getting Mrs. McCorkle back before the assassination is supposed to take place.”
